Smash Ultimate Tips & Tricks: 4 Key Offense Fundamentals

In my last Ultimate blog post, I mentioned defensive strategies for players caught in disadvantage state. As with said entry, this post covers some of the more common struggles I notice when coaching my students. This time, I want to focus on what to do in neutral and advantage state. Players will rack up the most damage in neutral and by juggling their opponent. However, taking certain risks will amplify that damage or even lead to an early stock.

Learning to edgeguard properly can help you end stocks sooner.

Likewise, knowing what risks to take — and to not take — is key to survival in Smash. You need to know when to approach, when not to approach, and how to keep pressure without giving your opponent room to breathe. Learn how to sink your fangs into your opponents with this guide.

Pressure

Creating pressure can force your opponent to make vain attempts to defend themselves. When you’re in their safe zone, they may be prone to attacking you. Knowing that you’re in their zone keeps you in control.

Robin players do well when in control. But when they’re forced to defend, they lose their options.

For instance, Samus can dominate neutral thanks to her zoning tools, dash attack, and tether grab. But get in to her space from center stage and corner her and you may see her game fall apart. Samus’ escape tools from juggles and punishes are less than ideal in the roster. As such, it’s easy to capitalize on offense when you launch her above or offstage.

Safely get in their burst range without getting attacked. Some players struggle escaping the pressure.

This applies in disadvantage state too. Launching an opponent upwards enables you to jump up. Meanwhile, launching them offstage, you can just go for an edgeguard or even snap the ledge. In both cases, you do not have to commit to any attacks. Using this to goad your opponent into reacting and capitalizing on their mistakes is pressure.

Edgeguarding

On the subject of edgeguarding, many players think of falling off the stage and using a Forward Aerial (Fair). This is the most basic of edgeguard attempts and a surefire misunderstanding of the concept in general.

Edgeguarding is especially prevalent for anyone who can snap the ledge. When you position yourself to the ledge, after launching an opponent, you have far greater angles to attack. You can jump back or ledge-drop and commit to offense such as Back Aerial (Bair) and various other techniques. Keep in mind that any character can do this.

However, some characters are generally better at edgeguarding than others. Pikachu is floaty and can Quick Attack back to stage. Joker has a tether, a great jump, fantastic aerial mobility, and disjointed aerials. Finally, Captain Falcon has powerful KO moves with disjoints and can even use his own recovery, facing away from the ledge, to KO you with a lengthy, lingering hitbox.

Approaching

One thing to keep in mind is how approaching can actually detriment you. At some point, one player needs to commit to offense. Certain fighters, like Snake, Joker, and Greninja have fantastic approach options. Meanwhile, characters like Samus, Link, and Sephiroth tend to favor the bait and punish option instead.

Zelda’s approach options are less than stellar to say the least.

It’s hard to define what makes for “good” approach options. It’s a combination of dash attack, ground speed, aerial speed, frame data, hitboxes, and even special options. Terry and Captain Falcon can both use special moves to cover ground and get in on fighters safely. But attempting to do so with Ike is riskier due to his slower speed. His Quick Draw can get in but it’s not necessarily a better attack than Falcon Kick or Crack Shoot.

Crack Shoot hits twice, crosses up opponents, goes over projectiles, and deals significant damage.

The key to approaching is to be wary that you’re approaching. Understand that you’re sticking your neck out every time you go in on your opponent. Instead, be mindful of your opponent’s burst range options before you commit to an attack. Also, you’ll do better holding center stage as opposed to diving to the ledge for a dash attack which could whiff and cause you to be launched offstage instead.

Avoid Mashing

Finally, one of the most basic fundamentals is to read out your opponent. Pressing buttons in neutral can cause endlag which makes you susceptible to punishment. When launched, attempting to attack an opponent while falling from disadvantage state can get you punished even harder.

Attacking a guarding opponent is a surefire way to get hit with an Up B out-of-shield counterattack.

Be mindful of your percent, your stock, and what you have to risk before you commit to an action. When you’re confident in your attacks, you tend to read out your opponent before you commit. This works better than attacking aimlessly and allowing your opponent to get a free hit in.

If you lack safe landing options, it’s okay to retreat and reset neutral or snap the ledge. Don’t attack and fall into an opponent’s counterattack!

This also applies to when you’re on the defense. As mentioned earlier, when recovering back to stage and into neutral, you have the opportunity to attack your incoming opponent in order to land or recover safely. However, as they say, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes the best action is no action at all.

I want to continue covering Smash Ultimate tips in the near future. If you have any questions, feel free to reply or reach out to me. If you enjoyed this read, consider following my blog.

Finally, if you’re interested in coaching lessons, please consider booking me on Metafy!