How to Pick Your Main in Smash Bros. Next: A Character Learning Roadmap for Every Playstyle

Don't Start with Tier Lists

Every time a new Smash game drops, the same thing happens. Everyone rushes to Twitter and Reddit asking who's top tier, as if picking S-tier automatically makes you good at the game. Spoiler: it doesn't. I've lost to plenty of Ganondorf players while using characters ranked 20 spots higher on some YouTuber's spreadsheet.

Tier lists measure how characters perform at the absolute highest level of play with optimized everything. They have almost nothing to do with how you'll perform as a new or intermediate player. A low-tier character you actually understand will beat a top-tier you picked up five minutes ago. Every time.

The better approach: play through Classic Mode or whatever single-player content the new game ships with, and just try characters that look interesting. Not ones that look strong. Ones that look fun. If a character's design or moveset makes you grin when you land a hit, that's a better starting point than any tier placement. Trust me on this, I wasted my first six months of Smash chasing tier lists before I realized I just play better with mid-tiers that suit my tempo.

Character Archetypes That Actually Mean Something

Smash characters fall into broad playstyle buckets, and knowing which bucket you prefer saves a lot of time. Here's how I think about it after way too many hours across every Smash game since Melee.

Rushdown characters want to be in your face constantly. Think Fox, Pikachu, Sheik. Fast movement, quick attacks, lots of pressure. But they're light, so you die early if you mess up. Great if you have good reactions and like setting the pace. Terrible if you panic under pressure and start mashing buttons. And a lot of people do exactly that.

Zoners control space with projectiles and force the opponent to approach on your terms. Samus, Link, Snake, Mega Man. You're not running in. You're making them navigate through a wall of stuff that hurts, and honestly there's something satisfying about watching a rushdown player tilt because they can't get in. Patient players thrive here. Aggressive players get bored within three matches.

Sword fighters rely on spacing. Marth, Ike, Cloud, Sephiroth. Hit with the tip of the blade for max damage and safety. The reach advantage is real, but you get punished hard for whiffing. Spacing is learnable but takes time, and you'll lose a lot online while you develop the feel for it.

Heavies hit like trucks and survive forever but get combo'd mercilessly. Bowser, DK, King K. Rool. You'll lose neutral more often but only need a few good reads to take stocks. Playing heavy teaches you patience, because whiffing a smash attack means eating a full combo that you just have to sit through.

And then there's the weirdos, characters with unique mechanics that don't fit neatly into any bucket. Olimar and his Pikmin management. Ice Climbers and desync combos. Pokemon Trainer and stance switching. Steve and his building. Rosalina and Luma. Pokemon Trainer and, wait, I already said that. You get the idea. These take extra learning but reward creativity more than any other archetype.

Try one or two characters from each bucket that seem appealing. Do three matches with each. Not training mode, actual matches against people. Pay attention to whether you're having fun, not whether you're winning. The character where time flies and losses don't feel frustrating, that's your candidate. That's the one.

The Training Routine I Actually Use

Once you've picked someone, spend actual time in training mode. I know, training mode is boring. But ten focused minutes beats two hours of mindless online matches, and I've tested this enough to be confident about it.

Start with movement. Dash dancing, short hop fast fall aerials, wavelanding on platforms if that's in the game. Just move around the stage for three minutes. Sounds dumb, but if you can't put your character exactly where you want them, nothing else matters. Absolutely nothing.

Then do bread-and-butter combos. Every character has a few basic strings, down-throw into aerial, up-tilt into up-air, that kind of thing. Find the most reliable one and do it until you hit it ten times in a row without dropping it. Not ten total. Ten consecutive. If you drop the eighth one, start over. This is tedious but it builds the kind of consistency that wins close games when your hands are shaking and you can't think straight.

Next, practice ledge trapping for five minutes. Set the CPU to recover and practice hitting them as they get up from ledge. This is where most kills happen in real matches, but nobody practices it. Stand at roll distance, react to their option, and punish. Rinse, repeat, get bored, keep doing it anyway.

Last, review one area you messed up in your last session. If you got edgeguarded hard, practice recovering from different angles. If you kept missing techs, practice teching. Fix one weakness per session. After two weeks you'll have patched 14 problems, and suddenly you're a noticeably different player.

Learning Matchups Without Going Insane

There are going to be, what, 70 or 80 characters in this game. Maybe more if they go bigger than Ultimate. You cannot lab every matchup. Don't try. Instead, learn your character's gameplan so well that you can adapt it to any opponent. Know your best out-of-shield option, like literally which move comes out fastest when you drop shield. Know your fastest grounded move for breaking pressure. Know which moves kill and at roughly what percent near the ledge.

When you lose to a specific character online, save the replay. Watch it once. Find the three interactions that cost you the most. Was their character doing something you didn't know how to answer? Look up that one specific situation, not the whole matchup. Just that one scenario. Then go lab it for five minutes. That's it.

This is way more efficient than studying the ROB matchup for three hours. Your goal isn't encyclopedic knowledge of every interaction. It's having answers for the situations you actually encounter. Different mindset entirely.

And look, sometimes you pick wrong. I've main-swapped four times across different Smash games. Sometimes the character you thought fit doesn't click after 20 hours. That's fine. Switch. The skills transfer more than you'd think. Spacing, movement, defensive habits, those carry over regardless of who you're playing. Teh time wasn't wasted, even if it feels like it was. You were learning fundamentals the whole time without realizing it.