Intermediate tips and strategies for both attacking and camping.
Hmm, I want to talk about camping first.
Effective Camping:
Now, I'm going to throw out a basic definition of camping so we can be relatively on the same page of what I'm talking about when I say "camping."
Playing in a style which emphasizes taking as little damage as possible, as opposed to damaging your opponent.
I have several pet peeves about notions of camping in Brawl, so let me clear up some things.
A) There is no such thing as an unbreakable wall.
B) You don't need a projectile to camp
C) NOT ALL PROJECTILES ARE MEANT TO CAMP BEHIND
There are a couple of key theories that will probably likely boost your camping game.
First off, when you begin to camp, you must still make decisions, just as if you were on offense. Typically, if your opponent is exceptionally aggressive (like myself) then you'll probably have to be able to repel a series of attacks at a reasonable rate. Consider the following:
A) How is my opponent likely to approach me?
B) Am I able to make my opponent take risks when I'm camping. Am I able to punish those risks?
C) Is this actually safe?
D) Am I defending a ground that my opponent has the MOST DIFFICULTY approaching me from?
Falco is a character good at camping, so I will use him as my example. I will also use Battlefield as an example, as it provides a fairly good amount of options for camping, while being a popular stage.
Let's say you are Falco fighting Marth, and you want to camp. Let's go through the checklist.
A) Marth is most likely to approach head on, and be very powerful in this aspect.
B) Marth approaching Falco has to contend with lasers. He also has to manage to pressure me hard enough to prevent phantasm, while not leaving himself open to roll or spot-dodge. Roll is very effective vs. Dancing Blade, and spot dodge is very effective against anything else. Dancing Blade is Marth's best approach on Falco, so I probably want to roll more. I can punish very effectively if I spotdodge an attack, or roll behind Dancing Blade, and sometimes Dash Attacking after an auto-canceled laser will catch Marth off guard, allowing for yet another mix-up. These are the basic tools that I want to utilize when camping.
C) Well, laser is safe when used from a range. Phantasm is safe unless it's predicted, so I'll be careful about using phantasm, since that option is frequently covered. I'll use my other options as they find more or less success.
D) Both Marth and Falco are very powerful horizontally, but Marth has huge upper-hands in controlling nearby space, and fighting in the air/on platforms. This means I want to be on the ground most of the time, and should try to avoid being on the ledge or platforms.
And hence, the strategy for fighting against Marth and Falco is borne. Analyze your ENTIRE MOVESET and determine whether it's possible you're overlooking any of the tools that might be useful. Ftilting and Grabbing should be thrown into the mix because of how safe the ftilt is, and how often the opponent will shield. Zoning Bair isn't effective in this MU, because Marth's sword beats it. Shine is good for edgeguarding, since Bair is not as good due to the lack of safety.
Now, let's consider Falco vs. Snake on Battlefield instead.
A) Snake is likely to approach head on, and be very powerful in this aspect. Also, while he can throw grenades in many ways, he will mostly be throwing them forward.
B) Snake's ftilt isn't safe on block, but it's a pretty nasty frame trap. Once Snake is out of chain-grab range, it won't be too easy to put him in a bad spot, and grab is less rewarding, and risky to do. Snake can punish phantasm pretty well with a read, or sometimes on reaction. Snake also has a frame 2 jab, which can battle with my frame 2 jab.
C) It's possible to remain mostly safe, but Snake can leave C4s to punish phantasm even from far, or use DACUS.
D) Snake has low mobility, and typically combats camping opponents by punish lag or landing with a Dash attack or DACUS. Perhaps camping the platforms is a better option against Snake, because he has a far more difficult time navigating them.
Falco can full hop to the top platform of Battlefield. He rises and falls faster than Snake. Grenades are very telegraphed and easy to avoid while on platforms. Dair beats out an Usmash, or you can just jump around it. Falco can phantasm from one side platform to another, and Snake will have a MUCH harder time punishing this, and Snake can definitely be punished for committing to a predictable aerial. If I mix up some laser phantasm camping, on top of a platform camping with strategy, I can remain REALLY safe, while not giving Snake many options to approach me. This forces Snake to take huge risks, especially if I take a stock lead, and through careful play, I can typically avoid risky moves, and repeatedly punish them with high rewarding moves. Utilt is dangerous if I'm on one of the lower platforms, but almost all attacks can be avoided through shielding on the center of that platform, and jumping around on the high platform will allow me to conserve shield.
Take some time out to analyze you own camping strategies.
Before I talk about approaching, I want to preface it by talking a bit about my own primary strategy in Brawl, which is an aggressive style. However, I don't simply rush in and try and hit my opponent whenever possible. I enter the match with a very specific strategy in mind. This is not the only strategy that is effective for approaching, but I feel that it's my most effective method, and perhaps the best method.
Utilizing Stage Control
Even at high level play, players still don't seem to understand the basic concept of stage control, so I'm going to break it down for a moment.
For the simplicity of this particular article, I'm only going to be discussing stage control on "standard stages". Basically, stages that resemble FD, Battlefield, Smashville, Yoshi's, Lylat, and the like. This will apply to most stages, but there are some dynamic stages like Delfino or Rainbow to which this applies DIFFERENTLY.
In competitive Brawl, to defeat your opponent, you must force them past a deathline. For the time being, we are going to disregard vertical K.O.s. Not that they aren't relevant, but they just don't serve as much purpose in articulating the point of this article.
If your back is to an edge, and your opponent is in front of you with their back to the middle of the stage, you are unlikely to K.O. them horizontally. Through good DI, most kill moves will not land a K.O. until at least 150% or more, and that's IF the opponent DIed too far upwards, not considering their position. However, if the reverse is true, than your kill moves are likely to kill much earlier, sometimes even at 90%. Even if the opponent isn't outright K.O.ed, they are set up for an edgeguard, or potentially a gimp.
But how does the opponent get to this position in the first place? What you must learn to do is control the stage. When I go into a fight, I often like to think of my opponent as a lion, while I think of myself as a tamer, with a chair and a whip. In the very beginning of the fight, I will often rush to the center of the stage. You start on opposite sides of the stage, so why not further yourself from the deathline? Though you are not recovering percent damage, you are effectively making yourself more distant from death. From here, I consider the following:
A) How can I stop my opponent from advancing?
B) How can I push my opponent closer to the deathline?
Now, it is unrealistic to expect to outright K.O. my opponent at the beginning of the match. However, using these basic considerations, I can make decisions which not only damage my opponent, but push them closer to their demise.
I greatly enjoy the fact that my sparring partner mains Lucario, because Marth vs. Lucario is a perfect example of a match that depends a lot on stage control. Lucario is very difficult to maintain stage control against, because he has a powerful roll that makes him difficult to capture in one location. I know that when fighting Lucario, if I don't want him to get past me, it is important to cover that roll above all else.
Once I limit the opponents options by making it clear that I'm not going to let them roll back into the stage, or use a similar method to easily regain stage control, I proceed to make a read to hit them again. At early percents, I aim to generate a combo/attack string. At later percents, this does something very important. It pushes them to the ledge.
The ledge is a pivotal part of stage control. Once you've knocked your opponent off the ledge, they are all but off the stage. As the Lion Tamer, you have now forced your lion into a cage. That's pretty much how Scar was able to beat an opponent as powerful as Mufasa. Got him on dat ledge and then finished him off. Once your opponent is on the ledge, I like to think of them as halfway dead. They have lost almost all their main options for returning to the center of the stage, they are near the death line, and you pretty much have the upper hand.
Approaching and Attacking:
There are three primary forms of approach in Brawl:
A) Poke
B) Blitz
C) Trap
Poking is basically attacking your opponent with a relatively safe option. This might be a spaced aerial designed to hit instead of parry. Hopefully, this option is relatively safe on block. It might also be a grounded move with a lot of speed and range. Poking typically leads to pressure, or follow-ups, which I'll get to in a bit. Good pokes are moves like Marth's Fair or MK's Dtilt.
Blitzing is essentially picking a rush-down option that allows you to penetrate the opponent's wall, counter-act a defensive option you predict, or using a fast/tricky/confusing option to produce a mistake from the opponent. Blitzing is a lot more risky than poking, but often less predictable, and sometimes more rewarding. Common Blitz attacks are Snake's Dash Attack, or Diddy's SideB.
Trapping is a typically done with projectiles. It utilizes a combination of hitboxes that attack in succession or simultaneously to encourage a response from the opponent, and then immediately capitalize on that response. A good example of a trapping move is Pikachu's aerial Thunder Jolt, which encourages the opponent to block so Pikachu can get in.
Using one or move of these tactics successfully will allow you to approach and attack your opponent, and counter-act their defenses. Once you do this, you will typically generate advantage. Normally, your opponent loses options when they are hit, and successfully following up, and capitalizing on casting them from neutral and into a poor position is virtually mandatory at high level play. Very often, a successful offensive attempt can lead into high damage strings even without any true combos. To do this, you must realize which of the opponent's options have been eliminated (hint: most of the good ones that involve blocking) and proceed to cover their remaining options.
Mixing up the three forms of approaches can make you very effective at attacking your opponent.