Keeshu

I adapt to whatever gameplay style a character requires, so I have no idea what the "best" playstyle would be for me. So I just go with the characters I love the most. Smash makes me love all the characters, so in the past I would try to main characters that represented a part of me/my life because I love it when people have more personal reasons to main a character.

Then came along Sephiroth, and he's like the embodiment of the emotional feeling I'm trying to chase by trying to get better at smash. When you get so good that most people you run into, you can just stay calm and polite while you kick their butts effortlessly because you know exactly what they are going to do while you move around swiftly with precise strong attacks. I used to spend my time mastering random games all the time, so it was common for this to happen, but I don't have the time I used to anymore, so I had to pick one game and it was Smash. Turns out fighting games are a lot more complex than I originally thought, but I'm still chasing that feeling. Unfortunately I feel like at this rate I will never be satisfied unless I can consistently 3 stock my Pikachu main friend who does go to tournaments.

Here's the thing about Ralsei though, he's the character I've related to the most out of any video game (probably any type of media) because the way he acts around everyone. I like it when people play characters that represent who they are as a person (not everyone does this, as much as the smash community likes to portray literally everyone as a copy of their character/gameplay). So if Ralsei got in, I'd main him no matter what... though uh.. I'll be honest, if he got banned from competitive play, or generates an absurd amount of hate from friends would definitely discourage me quite a bit.


Speculating about what Ralsei would be like in Smash

Pros
Projectile that is easy to hit opponents with
He has special grabs
Has a reflector on Left Splits Kick (why does he have this? At least Min Min reflects in her game, Off the top of my head I don't remember there being any projectiles in Tekken)

Cons
Lacks a reliable projectile to help approach unlike hadouken and power wave, and is very unsafe if missed.
Devil Fist is underwhelming when done at a distance compared to Tatsu or Burning Knuckle, but at least it leads into combos. Up close it's effective, but kinda has the "oops, forgot to take out the trash" kind of vibes.

Things he has in common with other fighting game characters:
Emphasis on inputs and many moves
Many moves have intangibility on them
Multiple shield breaks that are easy to use
Tons of KO moves
Crazy combos
Crazy damage
Heavy
Slow and short range overall. Ken and Terry aren't nearly as bad about this though.
Recovery that is probably going to be rather exploitable if the opponent knows when you're going to use it.

Stuff that will make me biased towards Kazuya because of my time with other characters:
Special grabs - Ganondorf and Ridley made me fall in love with special grabs and suicide grabs. Even if Ridley doesn't have to, and the grab that moves people with him is more like Bowser (which is one of his more fun moves anyways but I don't play him)
Crumple + forced trip attacks - Ridley make me love crumple attacks because of his skewer. Forced tripping is kind of similar.
Laser - I played R.O.B. for a while, his lasers are kind of fun. However I never got to use him enough to be super precise with his lasers and it's not the most exciting thing to get better at, and I don't like annoying my opponents with nearly unavoidable quick attacks (I want to give my tournament going friends a tough time, not make them hate me). So I actually really like this laser because of it's consistency and not being as spammy
Oni Front kick - Just like Ganondorf's f-tilt. The move is just stupidly good on both characters.
Doriyah (Ganondorf, but apparently he was saying it because of Kazuya. I like Kazuya's version more)
Dame da ne (White suit is basically Kiryu, who does sing Dame da ne in Yakuza. This song is basically a meme in chess videos so I hear it all the time..... Song also represents how I feel about Smash a lot too lol)
Tekken is probably the fighting game I'd want to get into if I got into a "normal" fighting game because I like it's mechanics more.
He gets a lot of close ups in 1v1 for some reason. Though usually it's on my favorite moves anyways. His double face kick is one of my favorite moves of his

First the guides then I'll say my thoughts.
Frenzy Light's Super quick video of Bread and Butters for Ryu for quick reference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDnUQGvbPVo

The video I watched the most when wanting a quick reminder of what things to go for by watching top level Ryu play
Vendetta vs Sytonix first to 10

Various guides I looked at:
Maketheknife's "Art of fighting" guide
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv6_l9SQlYFgIS9XCXiRJDXBF4WhXn0Fv

RoninX1819's "Art of Ken" guide. Not specifically for Ryu, but I did learn a few things for Ryu that helped me a bunch that the others didn't teach. However since it's more for Ken, there's quite a few things that Ryu can't do that are shown. I'll definitely use these guides if I decide to "upgrade" to Ken.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh5ZByultcOyiX8aa-Cjl_Rhk9YKaGo8P


Vendetta's Ultimate Ryu guide - Who better to learn from than the best Ryu player?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPiP51BOp9E


I gotta say I really loved playing the character. No where near as intimidating as I was expecting them to be. At first I realized how terrible I was at actually knowing where my analog stick was so there was a lot of mis-inputs in the beginning. Still not the greatest after 1 week, but it's decent at least now. However, this should help tremendously with combos on other characters.
Also I wasn't expecting Ryu to be so ground focused, since he actually has some nice aerials unlike Little Mac. So he's probably going to become my go-to character when I start slacking on my ground game a bit. Unless when I go train with Kazuya and Terry later on and they become a better fit for me for that.


Playing Ryu makes me really realize just how wacky a lot of characters in the roster are. Gets a little annoying and makes me just say "Arg, why can't you play the game normally so I can play neutral properly!?" which I thought was funny because I never had that feeling when playing other characters nearly as much as when I play Ryu.

I had no idea that Ryu's hadouken is so incredibly versatile, and I've fallen in love with it. It losing to almost everything is a little annoying though.

I didn't realize just how many anti-air options Ryu has, it's pretty nuts. Up tilts, up airs, Heavy jab and even up smash all do decent jobs at keeping people from jumping in on you. Amuses me to beat out even the safest of down airs using Ryu because the hitboxes are so huge alongside his intangibility.

Focus Strike is really addicting to use. Since I often get my wins through reading the opponent, Focus strike is like a free KO (If I stop flippin down tilting and actually do the Shoryuken input I want). However, I feel like at higher levels, it leaves you open so long that you're likely to die if you miss. I still have to get used to canceling it more though. Since I'm not used to the input of double tapping to get out of it, it's such a mental commitment that it's not worth doing, similar to walking. However I could see it being amazing if I got over that mental block.

Tatsu is such a strange anti-projectile move because I was not expecting there to be intangibility. Led to me KOing Samus and Link players a lot since I can just Tatsu right through their projectiles and hit them while they are in end lag or from them panicing.

I'm still struggling with combos, but at least it made me feel nice to land down air into down air reliably often, especially since it looks so cool. Also down tilts into hadouken also feels nice. I'm sure with time I could do other combos that are nice. Sometimes he feels like he flows so well because sometimes I feel like I'm just escorting my opponent across the stage doing like 60% damage. I'm new to Ryu so it didn't happen every match, but knowing what it feels like is addicting. To be honest, playing Inkling before playing Ryu helped me thirsty for getting combos because I landed a 70% combo (I doubt it was true) on a friend and I was like "what is this power?". Of course I consistently did a lot of other higher damage combos with Inkling as well, that character is nuts. Anyways, Ryu is known for consistently doing this kind of power, I was rather motivated to play Ryu and I was not disappointed. Though I definitely need to get better to really enjoy the benefits of Ryu.

I feel playing Ryu will make me a much better player faster than any other character I've played in Ultimate for any decent amount of time so far. He targets my weakness of being bad at inputs and control over my characters in general, but doesn't overwhelming me with insanely fast speed like Pichu or Sheik. That is also the reason why I picked him over Ken to start off with (also I like projectiles, and Ryu has more hadouken options).

Playing around 2 million GSP is weird. Feels like everyone down here is just trying to learn how to play their characters so they aren't using their full kits, or don't know how to use it well. It's very strange because you can tell when they get upset or didn't like that you won too fast, they'll resort to the easy tricks to win that don't require much time into a character to pull off. Other people it just feels like they are depressed where they slowly start pressing fewer and fewer buttons, until they just stop moving altogether and let you nudge them off a cliff.

I will say, you're definitely not confident in your inputs if you feel overwhelmed by Doctor Mario's speed. That pill is so annoying and it's like someone going up to you and flicking your head. It doesn't hurt, but dang. Anytime I focus on doing tilts and shielding while walking to do bait and punish type stuff, I'm too slow to react to projectiles.
Jigglypuff coming in as my favorite opponent today, and is basically tied with Greninja for my favorite matchup with Ryu at the moment. I just love the strong emphasis on neutral since Ryu can't really combo Jigglypuff due to being so tiny and floaty that she falls out of everything, and the Jigglypuff wasn't wall of paining me off the stage at this point. Jigglypuff was just the right speed for me to get use out of all my tilts so I understand my tilts better. Though I keep getting caught off-guard by the proximity tilts which usually leads to the opponent punishing me for using them since they react faster than I do.

Walking has been very scary for me because I'm used to jumping/running all the time with every character, and I feel like whenever I walk my brain goes into a bit of tunnel vision trying to use walking, so I react a bit slower. Little mac was the original character I used to force me to stay on the ground when I notice I'm not using my grounded options enough on other characters, Ryu might become the new character for that role. Especially since playing him makes me very aware of the position of my left stick.

I thought there was more time to play Ryu before Kazuya comes out, so I'll probably play Ryu for one last day and just prepare everything else outside of smash so I can spend some quality time with Kazuya. I'll probably play Ryu one last time on Thursday so I can say I at least played 1 week of Ryu, and say my thoughts on playing him for a week. Though at this moment, I'm just going to say, he's not as hard as I thought he was going to be. I'm just mostly unconfident as heck, but that can be removed with just a bit more practice. I look forward to comparing Terry, Kazuya, and Ryu/Ken when I get done training with Kazuya and Terry next. I'll probably use one of these characters to improve my ground game. My first impression of Terry is that he's pretty easy, but that was mostly day 1 Terry stuff and more casual focused matches, so I'll have to see what he's like to use him properly.

The limited jump arc that Ryu has is starting to get to me since it really feels like every jump is such a large commitment that everyone can see what you are doing looong before you ever do it. I did kinda just realized I've been jumping too much out of panic because I kept losing so hard though (I blame that on my Meta Knight when I was picking him up. His multi jumps make him nearly untouchable by a lot of characters so I sometimes revert back to that when I get overwhelmed). I just feel like on the ground I try so hard to do the footsies thing that I just kind get punched for standing around.

Maybe it's just because my last few matches were against a ZSS, but his slow speed is starting to bother me a bit too. Whether it people using speed at an unreactable distance, or walling me out with projectiles. I feel like I wouldn't be bothered by this if I knew the combos though. It still feels like everyone is terrified of being close to you at all times and I like that, just I don't have the combos for them to justify the fear yet.
Now down in the 2 million GSP area. He is now my new lowest character in quickplay. The other one was Pichu around 3million gsp because they are also a very combo heavy character I struggle to play. It's very demoralizing playing these characters because it makes me question how much I was being carried by my other characters. Especially when some people at this low of GSP feel like they are just as good as people I meet in Elite Smash.

I feel like I'm constantly struggling with myself mentally trying to play Ryu. One side of me just wants to repeatedly punish the opponent with the quicker strong option since I always start winning right away when I start playing Ryu like that. However that's me using Ryu like a sword character. I just have a lot more experience with sword characters, but that's not what makes Ryu strong. The lack of experience is why I'm trying Ryu out after all. So I know how a Ryu player thinks more and see if there's anything I can slap onto my other characters in terms of mentality.
The other side of me is trying to improve with his combo games so I can get better at playing him. After all his combo game is insane. It's just I do them in the training mode for a while, then I just can't pull it off in combat because the situation never presents itself because of whatever character/playstyle the opponent has. Then when I practice other combos, I kinda forget the previous combos I did, and a new set of character/playstyles make it so the new combos don't show up. So it kinda feels like I'm playing rock paper scissors with the combos I'm learning. I'm sure that overtime the combos will just stick with you so it's not a problem, but until then it's just a bit frustrating because it'd be nice to have at least one reliable combo.

Lastly, trying not to hadouken spam too much because I hate making people mad (I know it's inevitable though cause that's how fighting games are). It's just really really easy to hit on people. I also keep accidentally holding the button too long so I can't get into range to follow up on it.

Gotta say I like saying these little status updates on how the Ryu progress is going. It's a nice vent session, and it helps me take a step back and realize what's happening with my Ryu gameplay. Even if I decide to stop posting it in my status on Smashboards, I will probably start making text documents talking about this stuff in the future for other characters so I don't run in circles when trying to get better at some characters.

I cannot tell you the pain, to almost never mis-input the Shoryuken on the first day, then today my second chance to play Ryu, and I never landed a single Shoryuken on the opponent and struggled to input it at all. Is this the pain that all shoto players must go through while improving with them?

So many focus attacks..... Just leading into down tilt instead of Shoryuken KO. So disheartening. Lost so many games from this because I can't react fast enough to follow up on a down tilt.


Down air is much easier to hit on people than expected though! Feels a bit telegraphed though. I find it funny, the most recurring player I fought today was a Bayonetta who also struggled to do their character's combos. The one time I decided to not go for the down air, they tried to witch time instead of like the 50 other times I hit them with it.

I finally got Ridley in Smash. Gotta say it made me realize just how many people are playing Sephiroth. I'm used to outranging people with Ridley. I can't do that against Sephiroth, so there was a lot of intense mind games going on.

So now I have 8 characters currently in Elite Smash in order from first to last.

Trying to use Elite Smash as a gauge on who I want to main so I can get better since I have to use a character decently to get in Elite Smash. I have a bunch of characters that are just a match or two away from Elite Smash trying to learn them. Belmonts were the most shocking because I'm used to seeing people spam projectiles with them, and playing them made me realize just how frequently they use the whip. At that point it felt like playing Sephiroth, just Belmonts can angle their fair/bair, but not their ftilt, which is reverse from Sephy.

I'll be honest I only played K Rool, Bowser, and DK because they were simple characters (I'm bad at combos) and I was addicted to getting characters into Elite Smash. Fun characters, though Ridley is the only big boy I could play competitively. Though Sephiroth and Ridley overlap a lot, and I'm inclined to pick Sephiroth over Ridley since his tilts and fair feel safer... Also I keep command grabbing and attempting skewer when I probably shouldn't and people should've punished me a lot more instead of running away.

It's hard to decide between Sephiroth and Inkling for my favorite of the 8. Love Sephiroth's emphasis on hard reads while still being able to poke and stuff quite safely. I love Inkling because they have a nice balance between using projectiles, and just getting up in the opponent's face for sweet combos and making them panic since they have Ink on them.

Mii Swordsman I got into Elite Smash kinda as a joke pretending to be Sephiroth (with 1321) after his announcement until Sephiroth got in. So I didn't get to play with the Chakrams, and that's a big deal. Mii Swordsman actually feels pretty good to play.

Dark Pit still feels like the most "honest" character in the roster for me. At this point he kinda feels like a mini Winged Sephiroth. So I'll probably stick with Sephiroth at this point. Sephiroth just outclasses so many characters for me. Never thought a character I obsessed over in my Melee days that I thought was impossible for many reasons would get in.


I plan to get more characters into Elite Smash. Though most of the 3 ones I'm considering to main the most about are significantly harder to play.

Then there's a few more that I care about a lot that I may main but probably aren't so hard. They'll probably up next for trying to get into Elite Smash.

I've been having a massive character crisis lately as per usual and the whole character archetypes thing has been making it much easier to narrow down who I play. I was already thinking of this a little bit because of Sephiroth basically outclassing all normal swordies for me. Though the archetype videos that have been going on lately have been making me try to take it a bit further and select a single character from each archetype, and currently I'm basing it off of this little playstyle chart as a really quick estimation:


So I don't talk about literally every character in the roster, I'll go with a few rules I've made for myself that removes most characters:
With that out of the way I've basically narrowed it down to these characters in each archetype:
(half) Grappler: Ridley. He's the only one near this category that I can play competitively. He also is my favorite of the big-bodies. He can surprisingly play a lot like Marth who I mained in Melee, I realized this once I fought perhaps the best Marth main I've encountered and our neutral was rather similar at times. (funnily enough I ended up winning a lot because I would do intentionally dumb stuff because I knew it would work since he always played optimally, never thinking outside the box). I was shocked to look up how similar their air movement is, and how a lot of their moves fulfill the same purposes, generally Ridley being slightly slower, but more forgiving with tippers due to how huge he is, but Marth is better at microspacing due to best walk speed. Space Pirate Rush > Shield Breaker, especially since I play Sephy too. Anything else is apples to oranges, and I prefer Ridley's apples. Even if I like Marth's orange dair spike, and dolphin slash being more reliable to recover with and can up+B OoS.

Footsies: I've been taking a break from him to improve at the game, but I will go back to Meta Knight. I always feel like a badass playing him, and people often praise and request to fight my Meta Knight more than any other character. He benefits from general tech, but he does not play in a way to naturally make you use general tech like most characters. So playing other characters to improve with naturally until I can get to a level where I can use Meta Knight properly.

Turtle: Chart isn't updated for Pythra + Sephiroth but I assume Sephy is a Turtle due walling people out with his massive range and projectiles. I may not have played FF7, but I've seen enough cutscenes of him. Also in my Melee days I was obsessed with Sephiroth for a while because he looked so "badass". Got him into Elite Smash on day 1, and he's just one of the easier characters for me to just kick butt with. Optimizing him is going to be hard though. Nair combos and Shadow flare give me a lot of trouble.

Hit & Run - I play a particularly aggressive Sonic, but even doing that I was just 1 match away from Elite Smash on my first day playing him, despite not training with him. I like Sonic's "it doesn't matter" attitude, and if I was forced to have a theme from Smash to play to hype me up "Open your heart" would probably be the song. So I can easily stick with him for a main... With that said, I could see myself dropping him if Shadow got in a future Smash game.

Mix-Up - Wolf is just stupidly easy, and I do love his character. Blaster is just a bit too reliable (but I haven't played him since that nerf). However the blaster does help prevent me from getting tilted, especially if someone is trying to tilt me. My biggest concern is that he may teach bad habbits since everything he can do everything and do it better than most characters.

All-around - Lucario needs general tech to be good to even function since he's so underwhelming in this game compared to most characters so he forces me to improve. Love the character because the movie hit me hard so there will always be character loyalty for him. He also doesn't have BS or auto-pilot combos like Mario. I feel like Pits are the only characters more "honest" than Lucario since his Aura isn't insane like previous games. Playing Lucario often improves my game with all other characters due to how difficult he is to play. Takes a specific kind of person to play Lucario.
I love Yoshi, but stuff always keeps happening to prevent me from giving him a good shot. I gotta train with him a little to know whether or not to totally remove him from my potential mains/secondaries. However I can't imagine Yoshi replacing Lucario, especially since I hear complaints about how he nairs constantly, eggs being annoying, and I personally dislike mechanics that require mashing like being in an egg.

Trapper and Rushdown I have significantly more troubles narrowing it down though.
Trapper: Links, R.O.B. - I like playing all the trappers as their gameplay is unique, interesting and I love seeing projectiles everywhere, but the problem is I don't care too much about any of them outside of smash which is a bit of a problem for sticking with them. However when I look at these characters, it makes me want to remove that rule.
BOTW Link I love a lot, however his bomb recovery and zair drop combos are very intimidating and I know I have to learn it eventually, and he's probably the slowest character that I would consider maining (R.O.B. doesn't feel slow because of his projectiles, tilts, fair and uair).
Young Link is like a smaller, faster Smash 4 Link, so he is pretty fun but he almost feels spammy at times because everything he does is so fast that it feels like there's no commitment.
So I feel like Toon Link might be a nice in-between but with a stronger emphasis on projectiles. Only problem is that Toon's dair and nair aren't as good, and they are incredibly useful for the other Links. Also I've probably put more time into Wind Waker than BOTW, Ocarina, and Majora's Mask put together so I might be a bit more biased to play him.
R.O.B. is just an easy character to play, and it feels like you can get creative with him at times, also I feel like probably one of the only players that actually likes R.O.B. outside of smash since I grew up with him just watching me play video games. I feel he'd be fun to optimize stuff with.
Then just about every other trapper has a story, but I don't care about them much. Snake is the most likely though since he seems to take the trapper archetype to the extreme since he has essentially 3 traps on the screen almost all the time. Due to 2 grenades + c4. Izaw's Link vs Calzorz's Snake matches in Brawl is what got me into playing Smash more competitively. Just so much happening, so many mind games, I love it.

Rushdown - Now I've always been intimidated by rushdown characters because they are so combo intensive that I may not see why they are so good because I'm too bad. So it's hard to narrow them down.
Currently I'm playing Pichu because he's like the opposite of Sephiroth, and also seems to cover his bad matchups quite well. Pikachu is easier gameplay-wise at a glance because of his range, and no self-harm. However I get bored with Pikachu, unlike Pichu, so Pichu forces me to pay attention all the time since he's so light, small, and fast. Also Pichu just makes me happy whenever I play him. Pichu is one of my worst characters right now since I'm used to abusive long range and/or projectiles to attack opponents, and I'm not used to crazy combos. So I'm struggling around 3 million gsp, however I feel like he's forcing me to make better decisions and I feel like my other characters have been improving because of my time with Pichu. Also I can easily see Pichu becoming one of my best characters because of how insanely powerful he can get if you know what to do.
Joker feels as if someone reached into my brain, and took out what I'd make for a character, then make a few changes, then add on the arsene mechanic. I looked into Persona 5 afterwards and I love the character even more. So Joker is a strong possibility for a main despite never playing their game (I will if it comes to switch). Only problem I have with him is that he looks like a regular anime guy, but at least his outfit makes up for that a bit, and I'm not sure if stuff happens later to make me dislike him, whether from his game or smash gameplay. I've definitely fought Joker a bazillion times and I don't see anything bad about him as long as people don't gun camp when I'm a slow character.
Inkling is fast, and has projectiles, and I love Splatoon a lot. However I do hear talks about how they are bair spam the character, but I have to test them out more.
Lastly there's Fox. While I don't care about him as a character that much, he is the reason why I got into Smash and Nintendo as a whole because at the time I was like "how in the world is there a character so cool!?". Though Brawl onwards, and actually looking into his games he lost all that "cool" factor. However his gameplay still stands up, and he feels amazing.

I'm surprised I've finally managed to narrow it down this much, but it's still going to be hard.

I think it's absolutely impossible for me to main a single character because of the many many times I've tried in the past with the following . Sephiroth does feel like a nice mix of what it'd feel like to play a swordie, heavy (even though he's light), and a projectile user (even if it's simple compared to others0. Also I love the contrast between Sephiroth's crazy range with high end lag and Pichu's quick movements that basically requires you to touch the opponent.
I don't know the super close details of the matchups of each character as I was basically looking around for who to main among the roster before 2021. Sephiroth made it easier to cut a lot of people out (especially fire emblem characters). So I kinda used event hubs (maybe not the most accurate but it's something) as a quick glance of what characters Sephiroth and Pichu can counter and it seems that they go even with or are favorable against everyone except Olimar and Snake. Though since I haven't been at top level of play, I've never struggled with these characters and can generally beat them with any character I'm using at the time since it feels like a lot of Olimar and Snake players rely on using tactics that scare most players at low to mid level play. I'd probably just use Sephiroth for these matchups because it doesn't feel that bad, but I might just use Wolf as a pocket for these matchups since he was very easy to pick up and I normally don't see these two characters anyways.


I gotta say Sephiroth feels like a combination of many characters I love playing, so he feels rather natural to me.
Of course, I love the style of Sephiroth a ton and thought he was the coolest thing ever (along with Alucard. Something about long grey haired swordsmen in a black outfit I guess... Though I prefer Sephiroth's attitude just a bit more. Something about that smirk he always has). So that'll help sticking with the character so I don't get as tempted to swap off.

Pichu just makes me feel incredibly happy whenever I play it. Something about being so small and fast with a lot of power, but you have to be careful because any stray hit could lead to your death. It's almost like playing high aura Lucario all the time, it's so intense! Like the only bad thing about Pichu is that the fast fall speed is about 30% and that makes me incredibly sad, especially since I abused Smash 4 Link's 90% fast fall speed so much (yes I love 90% increase on Joker too). It's so good for messing with the opponent!.... Also not getting the second teleport when playing online against a laggy opponent is pretty lame.

I've been around since before Melee was released. Only started getting competitive when Smash 4 was announced. I spent most of that game trying everyone out until I got competent enough to pocket them until I realized I could learn more effectively if I mained a character first before trying everyone out. So I picked Meta Knight since he was the only character I wanted in smash at the time, and then I played him until I got totally burnt out for several reasons. Afraid of being burnt out again, I decided to do a 100 matches with every character challenge to get a decent understanding. Pace was too slow since I only got through about 10 characters before Ultimate got announced.

Early Ultimate I was too sleep deprived to remember much about changes or the new characters and I didn't realize how bad it was until my brain would randomly wake up from time to time when I was playing Wolf (who I was testing out for a long time) and just absolutely obliterate my opponents who were previously destroying me, until someone mentions I'm kicking butt and then I'd go back to my sleepy state again and get destroyed some more. So I had to take a break, during that break I got into VR. VR forced me to get more sleep because some games I couldn't play since some VR games are very relaxing. So now I've been getting proper sleep, and things that took me weeks or months to try to do earlier, were now easily learned within a few hours/days depending on what it was. I did practice with Lucario for a while, but it was maining practicing short hops, but slowly overtime had a bad sleep schedule so I had to fix it again. Now it's fixed and I'm trying to do smash again.

Struggling with a sleep schedule now because it's hard to find time for smash, but starting 2021 I'm going on a strict schedule that'll allow me to squeeze in 45 minutes of Smash everyday. Planning on maining Fox for 20th anniversary of playing Smash and I feel bad for not giving him more love because he was the biggest character that drew me to smash (and Nintendo) because of how he is portrayed in 64+Melee, and he was originally going to be my first main. Now I have the reaction time to play him, and I'm not dealing with constant perfect blocking CPUs. Also Fox just so happens to seem to be very helpful with trying to speed up my inputs since he's so fast. Especially with short hops which after trying to play with them previously, I'm getting close to doing them reliably.

After 2021 I'm going back to looking for a main. At this time I'm thinking 1 month per character. Though I don't know if that's too much, or if I should go bi-weekly, or even weekly.

Though still a couple weeks before 2021 so I might ditch Fox yet again for one of these others:
Mario - Very basic character. Anything he can do can probably be applied to most of the cast. Perhaps Doc instead for less inputs that are more deliberate, also Doc will have extra motivation to speed up using any general techniques available. Little worried they might be too bland and basic, though on the flip side that might make it easier to focus on the more important things that can be applied to everyone.
Links - BOTW Link can be surprisingly fast due to his nair and 90% fast fall speed. Also playing him will cause me to be very used to zair-drops as other characters that use zair drop combos don't seem to be as good for learning inputs. Young Link loses the ability to zair drop and trades it for faster speed overall. Might be a good trade since zair drop stuff is rather niche outside of characters that can spawn items and might be good to only learn that when doing matchup stuff. Toon Link seems too projectile heavy, so it'll be harder to use the more general tech that everyone uses.
Pichu - Very combo intense so inputs will definitely get better. Unfortunately for some reason Pichu has a slower fast fall than other characters, so hopefully that doesn't let me be lazy about short hops. Pichu being so light and hurting itself will make me consider my options more as well. I prefer Pichu over Pikachu, even though Pikachu is a heck of a lot easier due to Pika's range. If I play them I will have to restrict myself from thunderbolt spam and quick attack shenanigans to improve since they can absolutely nullify some things that characters that makes them unique.
Captain Falcon - What better way to practice inputs than with the face of smash? He seems like a versatile character, or at least it feels that way when watching Fatality play him.
Ice Climbers - Inputs are what I need to practice more than anything. Ice Climbers are nuts with inputs, so they'd probably make learning new characters feel like a cakewalk. Though I'm not sure if they could use general tech as much because I don't know if the heavy emphasis on de-syncs will allow for that.
Sheik - A very rewarding character for good inputs. However if I were to consistently do bad with this character I would judge myself more harshly than any other character since I view Sheik as a character that rewards good play more than most characters. With that said, she's always fun to play, even if I'm losing.
Marth - I've come a long way since my Melee days, I could make Marth much better now. Only problem is that Marth doesn't seem all that input intensive, I don't see much to learn from him. Roy could teach me to be a bit more aggressive, but still I'm not sure if they are good to learn or not.
Pits - Similar to the Mario situation. However my knowledge on Pits is more limited because I don't see them as much.... With that said Dark Pit is currently the first and only character I have in Elite Smash... Good sleep, and healthy diet does wonders for making it feel like you have cheats on. Hopefully I can stick to that in 2021
Zero Suit Samus - Definitely gets plenty of use of b-reverse tech. I don't know her that well but I assume she'd help with inputs because she's so fast.
Sonic - The fastest, but b-reverse is much more specific to use compared to ZSS.
Lucario - A slowish character, but he benefits more from b-reverse tech than most characters. He needs to short hop because he's too floaty and slow to keep up otherwise. So playing him would always be forcing me to improve my speed that could be applied to other characters, since faster characters can get away with not doing options that speed them up more. Also aura makes me focus for the whole match since while it can be a comeback, the opponent can easily destroy you before the aura gets high enough to do anything in Ultimate.
Wolf - Like Fox, very basic, but can be hard to master. However, it can probably be harder to try to improve with Wolf because he is such an easy character to pick up since he's so good.
Greninja - Feels kinda like Sheik where they are fast and a lot of inputs, but everything is much more deliberate due to the startup of moves being much slower.
- Inputs? Ryu, Ken and Terry are all about that. Ken seems like hard mode, Terry seems like easy mode, and Ryu seems like a nice in-between. Though playing Ryu or Ken will probably give a much stronger sense of control due to the many inputs and because they have a bigger emphasis on light and heavy attacks. Question is, will this control help at learning other characters?
Inkling - Fast character = good inputs? They might have a bit more cheesiness compared to other characters here though. I haven't played with them enough, so I feel like I'm missing something when I fight Inkling players because it feels like they aren't doing something to speed up the character.
Ridley - I know he's a big body with laggy moves, but he does have an emphasis on spacing like Marth, and he can still do b-reverse stuff (Though not sure how useful it is with him right now) and make use of general tech to improve speed. Also I was on the Ridley hype train for years. Was surprised to see him added into the game so perfectly... Minus up+B, but I understand why it is the way it is. When I was picking up Ridley it drove me nuts though because of the few times I've played Fox in the past.
Joker - Seems like a good character for learning inputs. Also he has 90% fast fall speed like Link which is a plus. Though he is top tier and I've had a pretty easy time winning with him, especially if I want to bait the opponent so they trigger arsene. So it could be hard to stay focused on learning to improve with him.