DABUZ'S PREMIERE GUIDE TO SMASH | EPISODE 2 (NEUTRAL)

what sup guys your boy the buzz here and guess what my eight part series of guys High better smash is up on medify right now along with other content including content I'm actively making right now an AMA thread and more so check it out you want to get better at the game it's awesome highly produced shout out some editor Zen for it and today's video is actually going to be the neutral guide from this eight part series hope you enjoy peace sup guys it's your boy the buzz here and we got the next video in

the series of teaching you how to play smashy Bros as well and today we're going to be talking about neutral uh we're going to go over a lot of Concepts in a short period of time so hope you're paying attention first thing we're going to talk about is spacing this is the core of neutral right is understanding where you shouldn't shouldn't be I always tell people in Ultimate it's more important to position well than use the right attacks as a platform fighter your movement your positioning is the most difficult like ubiquitous skill you are going

to constantly be learning even Pro players are still working on their ability to position and move properly and when it comes to spacing good roll thumb is you want to know your max range and play around your max range especially on your Aerials Aerials and ultimate tend to be very strong and most characters are really playing towards spacing their falling Aerials to safely pressure their opponents when I say max range the max range in your attacks isn't just the actual range in the attacks it's the range on your attacks plus the range on your movement

so I'm playing palena you know my back here is this much range but if I jump in at my opponent my back a actually has that much range right the range of my jump in plus the back a or let's say I'm near the opponent I can back your in play sure but that's too close it's not max range is easier to punish where if I were to jump back oops like jump back here I cover all this range it's much safer right and that's going to apply to everything you know tilt this down to

doesn't reach but walk up down to it reaches like that doesn't reach but walking up here it does reach right so knowing where you can initiate attacks from is very important another concept very related to this also is playing at ranges where your attack is unpredictable this is a common thing I see from people where they have a big attack and they are really easy to read because they keep playing at the range with that big attack like palatana you know she has this back back here is great but if a palatana player is always

jumping in and back aaring from this range I know at this range she's going to back but also by knowing how Palo works I know that this range doesn't have many other options immediately Dash attack won't reach kills obviously won't reach projectiles can reach but they're really slow and punishable like if they they whiff you know someone can roll in versus explosive flame yada yada the point is she's kind of predictable if she chooses to attack here so what you want to do with most characters is find ranges where you have multiple options from here

for example palena tilts reach Dash attack reaches grab reaches run up narrow reach and back a still reaches so the idea is I'm going to be playing in kind of a place where I can move into that ambiguous range like I might be playing here with Palo and then I'll move into this and when I move into this range this is when I'm going to start attacking a lot right I'm going to be like playing neutral y yada oh Dash okay now I can jump and it's up to you figure out what what that range

is for your character they're all different in that regard but yeah you're generally going to be moving in and out of that ambiguous range another important concept burst ranges you know most characters have a pretty good Dash attack in Ultimate and most Dash attacks function as punish tools where let's say the opponent misses an attack Dash is a good way to punish them for missing that attack it's a really important ultimate with most characters to move around bait out the opponent's attack especially if they're like a long range character like a sorty and you're a

character like Fox to run in bait out that attack at a range they want to swing from dash out Dash and dash attack so just always keep that in mind they don't tend to be that rewarding on hit or anything they tend to be very laggy if you don't connect with them but they're meant to be oh I know this is a guaranteed hit if I react to you doing something another thing that's similar is using your Shield shielding is the most powerful tool in Ultimate universally Shield is the best button you can press comes

out frame one you know blocks every attack only loses two grabs and you can act actually sh pretty quick Shield grabbing an ultimate has four frame extra startup so let's say your character has a seven frame grab normally if your Shield gets hit and you grab it's frame 11 which is very slow that's why Shield grabbing is kind of a bad option but meanwhile jumping ass Shield has three Fram start because a jump Squat and most aerial characters have fast Aerials in this game palatana has like frame five neutral air very fast but the point

is since Shield blocks so many attacks a lot of times you can just block an attack do whatever and there's kind of two ways to Shield there is defensive shielding where you mess up your spacing your opponent gets to apply their offense a lot of times good players are going to hit your Shield at like safe spacing so whatever jumping away after to blocking an attack resetting the positioning losing some space pretty good and then there is a runup shield where you want aggressively gain your opponent's face like I run up here expect my opponent

to attack and response I'm not Point Blank they didn't space well and then I can do an attack at a shield to get my pressure going those tend to be kind of the the two like uses for shield there's a lot more Nuance you're going to be constantly shielding but yeah keep that in mind is that you generally need to position your Shield aggressively to get punishes on good players at Shield another important thing when it comes to spacing and I show this before with KNN like jump in range but understanding how much a character

can drift a character like poo she jumps and I can jump back like I can jump forward and jump back right so I can make I can make this jump kind of unpredictable where a character like Roy kind of when he jumps he's very committed to a jump so he can react to his jump but then a character like Peach when she jumps she has very high air acceleration so she's able to jump and drift really far back no matter what her initial jump momentum was the final like I guess part of spacing we're going

to talk about is projectiles now projectiles vary a lot across the board I can't go over all of them but a good R thumb is projectiles are meant to control space and for almost every character their projectile is a key part of their game right you got things like palatana projectiles which hers are they're really meant to stop the opponent from moving she does it you get hit by them and next time you see this you want a shield and then when palotina positions here expecting you Shield a projectile she can go am I go

projectile am I go neutr be nope going to run up grab cuz you're shielding oh same with SBE right you're going to expect her to do this you Shield it and then instead of doing this she runs up and she NS you for example so there's space control moves and then you have ones like Mario where you know he does a fireball and the idea is he can move behind it right control space but he's not controlling space to lock the opponent down he's controlling space so he can run behind it get in your face

and apply his really strong close range pressure and like there there's a lot with the projectiles as I said just try to figure out what space they control and what they do with your character now let's get on to another kind of like concept of the neutral and that is attack interactions one of the most I think unintuitive but unimportant parts of Smash is rising Aerials versus falling Aerials so Rising Arial means you're you're jumping with the aial right short Hut macro Aerials falling aerial means as it implies you're falling with the aerial normally want

fast fall them sometimes you slow fall so you can drift a bit more before landing you want to hit falling aals most characters can combo off of falling aals very easily like most characters get their best combos off of hitting falling AEL to really imagination and they also tend to be safer on block cuz you're hitting the ground just as the aerial comes out so that's why you're trying to hit these they're more rewarding and they're safer um a lot of times if you hit someone's like Shield the falling aerial you can like press another

button afterwards and it's hard for them to do anything about it they have to hold that block which can be really scary cuz then you can start doing things like falling aial falling aial and keep the pressure going but yeah so that's your goal for most characters is land those falling Aerials Rising Aerials tend to be kind of the counter to Falling Aerials though because it takes time to short hop falling aial or fullop falling aerial Rising aals come up pretty much immediately right so this interaction happens a lot where someone reads the falling aial

they run up they do a rising aerial they stuff it out the problem with Rising aial is you trade speed for safety and reward most characters don't get nearly as much damage on hitting a rising aerial as a falling aial right like if I hit like this Rising back here for example I get some damage I get positioning is not bad but it's not rewarding and if I were to whiff this I'm in all this lag right I I do this I land I Shield so that's kind of the dynamic is you use as a

call out but it's something you don't want to do as much or maybe you can do something like you can Rising aerial drift back with it to make it safe but then you're losing space so it's not as rewarding but yeah you're going to see his interaction a lot um a lot of the strongest characters in Ultimate do have Rising aial as they can combo off of so keep that in mind also and one of the reasons that sh pressor is so good is that when you hit someone's Shield um a lot of people respond

to the shog gang hit with a rising aerial so if you hit someone's Shield block we up the rising aerial you can then punish that Rising aial now I will say any hit is a good ultimate ultimate's a game about Advantage State don't worry too much if you're struggling with hit falling aals and good players you can turn Rising Aerials into good Advantage regardless we'll talk about that in a future video now grabbing I see people spam grabs people I I've seen so people they just always show grab they always look for grabs in neutral

and they always tell me it's because of combos they can get consistent combos off grabs while that is true grabs tend to be the worst attacks in the game universally the only reason grabs are good is one you can get consistent combos off of them and two they beat Shield sure and I always tell people if you going for grab you want to grab as a reaction to Shield specifically if you see someone's Shield pop up and you're inrange to grab them go for it sure but go for hard read grabs tends to not be

worth it now why are they bad using Mario's an example my JB is frame three with Mario and it covers this much range you know not the most range but you know pretty fast also low lag right like no lag pretty much now compare that to is grab frame six so it has about the same range as his jab in this case but comes out three times as slower and if I whiff this grab look at this lag significantly More Than This Jeb and if I do a dash grab it's even worse comes out almost

five times slower than his jab in this case or if you compare to a dash attack Dash attack is frame six dash CB is frame nine has significantly less range than the dash attack and significantly more lag so yeah grabs the they they lose to other attacks and they're poor by every single metric relative to attacks so you want want to play neutral almost entirely with attacks and save grabs for specific situations I'd say very common mistake all right so there's lots of different attacks in this game but I'm going to try to categorize attacks

by two types close range and dis joints dis joint attacks are like sorty attacks palatina back here there attacks that are they have a hit box separate from the character's H box so like if someone like swings at let's say my back air right my shield they're just going to lose to it let say this was like a a cloud back a right that sword range is they're going to beat like other attacks they're not reallying risk of that back here getting hit these attacks tend to however have the weakness of slower startup and more

lag so you can run up and you can intercept them you can let them with and then you can punish their lag and they tend to not be as rewarding on a hit close range attacks things like what Mario has where you know he has low range but his attacks come out really fast they have like no lag whatsoever and on hit they tend to be extremely easy to combo off of extremely rewarding but the thing is you have to get in the opponent's face you got to use your Shield you have to whiff punish

you have to find angles they're not swinging at and so when you're playing I think in most matchups one character is going have a range advantage over the other one so you have to figure out are you the one that's supposed to space and keep the opponent out in the match up or you the character that needs to get in and assert your your buttons to win the matchup but yeah just keep that in mind when you're fighting a sorty versus character like Mario is you know what what is the general weakness of their move

set is it the the range or is it the Frame data all right stage control this is very important concept every single character every single match up doesn't matter general rule of thumb is the more Center you are towards a stage relative to your opponent the better just your opponent has less options right let's say I'm Center Stage is pal and the Mario's in the corner if he runs back he's now at the edge of the stage right he can't run back to evade my attacks like if I'm spacing it back here and he's in

the corner he can't go anywhere to avoid this he has to deal with it whereas if the inverse would happen I would trying to back a Mario he could just run back to make my attack with and get a punish or a position for S fire whatever he wants so the idea is the the more space you have the less space your opponent has to work with avoiding attacks if you get hit and you're in the corner this could be an EDG guardar but let's reverse situation let's say you're in the corner and your opponent

has stage control and you hit them I hit the Mario here he's still on stage I can't EDG guard him I can't let tra him effectively hitting the Mario here because he had Siege control he's still playing neutral I have to win another attaction to get my advantage St going so yeah having stage control allows you to take more risks because they're less risky and it gives you greater reward on Landing your hits so really when you watch top level play watch how much the player currently winning is Center Stage right you'll watch players like

just be between these platforms throwing at hit boxes you know backing up when they need to and then taking space whenever they can while if they land that hit you know it's it's almost Advantage when you have Center State uh screen control it's essentially Advantage State let's talk about platforms real quick platforms are nice because they really deny the opponent's approach and allow you to pressure like if I'm under a platform here the Mario he can't fall up at me or I'm inversely palena she can't fall backer at me platform blocks it you know I

could short hop but then my my attack angle is really predictable right or if I'm throwing projectiles you know I know they have to run through these projectiles as result so this a great spot to to stand from and if I want to I can always jump on this platform and then pressure with attacks really quickly cuz oh I don't need to jump anymore being on this platform effectively removes the time needed to jump and I just get to do this or I can do this right I could even jump off of it but yeah

so having platform control is huge for every character and most of the time you're going to want position kind of under and behind platforms or on top of the platforms if your opponent's like in front of them control space pretty much and finally just keeping a certain distance from your opponent right like if I'm Center Stage but my opponent's here like I should be closer because even though I have Center Stage I'm not doing anything I can't pressure my opponent this is do nothing I can't really hit them with anything except like a slow projectile

right so I'd rather be here and be at this distance to pressure my opponent than be Center Stage or like similar with like a platform right like I could control this platform here but if my opponent's here this platform control isn't doing anything for me right now you can think of it like a priority system where it's most important to keep a certain distance to your opponent then you prioritize stage control uh Center Stage mostly and then you prioritize platform control and you if you watch Topo matches you'll see this all the time there's a

lot of nuance that we can't cover in this exact moment but when you're playing think to yourself where should I be on the stage let's talk a little about strategies when it comes to playing each matchup you're going to basically have to apply all these Concepts and understand your opponent's character to play neutral right you can kind of look at the chart from the last video about different character archetypes and think about how these Concepts apply right like where does my opponent want to be um are they a combo heavy character are they like a

spacing character are they fast they can take stage control quickly are they looking to hit these falling aals do they have good Rising aals does their projectile let them close the gap or control space are they good at controlling platforms there's so many things to apply but just thinking to yourself what is my opponent's basic character archetype what is my basic character archetype will help you a lot A good rule FM also is most characters have a win condition whether it's hitting a certain move maybe the the character is really good lights trapping or they

have a really strong setup and they have like they want to hit like a buff or something you generally want to play to your win condition whatever it is and to avoid your opponent's win condition whatever that is and finally there is a concept I want to go over cook cook Tempo the best way think of tempo is how fast or slow are you playing right are you trying to be aggressive Tempo player or defensive um and it's re important playing is to read your opponent's Tempo like are they aggressive are they fast or are

they slow do they try to wait for you to make mistakes are they kind of taking space at a more safe pace something I uh that really good players do is switching Up Tempo where a lot of good players can go from you know an aggressive play style to a defensive play style back and forth and make the opponent not sure what their strategy is at that moment what their Tempo is what they're trying to do so just keep that in mind when you're playing like if you feel like you're getting predictable why is that

are you always playing to a certain Pace or if you can't read the opponent what's going on are are they playing at a certain speed do they have a certain strategy they're playing towards or a certain move and since ultimate is a game with 80 plus characters there's a lot to work with there but hopefully this gets you thinking a little bit but yeah and in summary really I'll tell you when you're trying to get better at this game and neutral try to apply like a couple things don't apply all the things in this video

at once try to apply like one or two things at a time and when you feel comfortable with that move on to the next things and if there's one good rule of thumb it is it is important to try and stay in range where you can attack the opponent while saying out of the range the opponent can attack you whether that's through like the range of your attacks projectiles the uh speed of your movement or other things if you visualize the game in terms of bubbles of well I think it's hbox's bubble Theory you visualize

the game in terms of Bubbles and ranges that good for you and not good for your opponent you'll figure out a lot about the game all right guys with that that's my second video The Buzz signing off catch you later [Applause] t