Improving Your Neutral in SSBU: The Neutral Triangle

the phrase neutral game is used quite a lot in the competitive super smash bros scene and is described as a quality that all top players are good at if you want to be a top player at the game you must also have a good neutral game and while the statement is as correct as a phrase fire is hot what really is a neutral game what makes a neutral game so important and more importantly how can we become good at the neutral game the phrase neutral game or neutral for short is used to describe a game state where neither player has a positional advantage the emphasis is on position rather than a stock lead or percent lead mainly because well it would be easier for a boxer to get hit in the corner rather than getting hit at the start of the round mainly because well in the corner there's no space to actually move and dodge in neutral the objective of both players is to put their opponent in a disadvantageous spot where they're more likely to get more hits in or potentially kill their opponent if they get the hit they're an advantage state but if they are hit they're in disadvantaged state so now we know that having a good neutral is essential since obviously you want to be hitting your opponent more while also getting hit by your opponent much less however because of this a lot of people misinterpret the neutral game to them there are only two ways to play it aggressive and passive the way to beat aggressive play is passive play and somehow the only way to be passive play is more passive play but then why can't we take this to its most logical extreme where in 20xx everyone plays fox and rock paper scissors is now what's used to determine the outcome of a match the obvious answer is that neutral is a much more deep and nuanced game state than you may think and although we're not able to explain every single intricacy of neutral in one video we at you suck at neutral want to at least explain one of its many nuances with what legendary guilty gear player majibo calls the three-way structure or what i like to call the neutral triangle one of the most common situations you'll see in neutral is your opponent throwing out an aerial or tilt as if they're not trying to hit you this is called a poke it's meant to catch you in your movement or it's meant to hit where you might move into generally good pokes have long range low startup safety on shield low end lag and cross a potential with the best ones having a combination of these qualities high reward is also a desirable quality but not necessarily a determining factor of what makes a poke good but not all pokes are created equal for example cloud's back air is significantly better than mario's ftill at poking some examples of strong poking moves are nest forward air ike neutral air and zss zaire if you're fast enough your poke can beat your opponent's poke this is called counter poking now your opponent decides to move into your range you try to poke at them and then your opponent dashes back and hits you your opponent anticipated your attack and whiff punished you a form of reactive play that specifically counters poking there are many ways to play reactive maybe instead of dashing in and out the opponent could just dash back and punish you all with or maybe you're throwing out a bunch of pokes in their face so they wait and punish you for it [Music] you don't always have to whiff punish to play reactive you could also run in shield and punish their attack out of shield this works because many moves are safe on block because of their spacing but running in and shielding can turn a safe move into an unsafe move because there is a smaller space between you and the opponent however this depends on your out-of-shield options combined with your opponent's character how safe are their moves on block what answers do they have to shielding and do those answers yield good reward keep these questions in mind when you're deciding to emphasize shielding in your game plan like pokes not all reactive play is equal some characters are better at whiff punishing than others because of their good movement speed maybe they have a fast attack or a fast projectile or maybe they have a fast move out of shield so we now know what our opponent is doing how do we beat this with punishing we can't poke them because they'll react to it and punish and we can't use our own reactive play because there's nothing to react to but if they're waiting for us to use an attack and we know they're going to dash back to make us whiff why don't we attack where they're going to dash back to this is called overshooting which beats reactive play every character can overshoot into the opponent by running at them and grabbing or by tomahawk grabbing which is jumping at your opponent and grabbing them when you land instead of using an aerial attack you can also overextend with a lunging dash attack or command grab to call out your opponent's dashback overshooting works because there are no obstacles in your way of running up and hitting your opponent if your opponent is doing nothing then there's nothing in your way on your way to hit them so how can you punish your opponent for overshooting into you with a poke if you hit your opponent before they can get to you you've stopped their overshoot attempt so what's the counter play to a poke reactive play if your opponent keeps swinging into the air you can wait for them to attack and punish them in their end lag now we've created a rock paper scissors dynamic reactive play beats poking poking beats over shooting and overshooting beats reactive play although using the neutral triangle is a good way to start learning how to play neutral there's so much more nuance to it especially with the incredibly large amount of match up that the game has maybe your character is really fast so you can whiff punish from really far away or maybe your character focuses on projectiles so you can force the opponent to come to you another thing i want to note is that you'll often see a lot of players playing aggressively at lower levels and reactively at higher levels however at a high level playing with only one corner of the triangle is insufficient and if you really want to become one of the best you'll have to start using all three if you want to understand more about the neutral triangle read this article written by professional guilty gear player matchable it may be about guilty gear but most of it applies to most fighting games anyways i hope you enjoyed today's video remember to subscribe for character overviews more analysis videos and more importantly to help you not suck at neutral

Channel: You Suck at Neutral

Views: 84,008

Keywords: Smash Ultimate, Smash bros, Super smash bros, You suck at neutral, Smash neutral, neutral, Machabo, Neutral Triangle, How to play neutral, Smash guide, How to improve, Improvement, Guides, How to, How to win, How to get good, Guilty Gear, Three way structure, YSAN

Id: Ujo9NukUvtU

Length: 7min 10sec (430 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020