Guide to how to combo in Smash Bros Ultimate

Comboing in any fighting game is one of the key techniques that elevates you from a button masher to an actual contender. What about a party-style platformer that often eschews the more competitive aspects though? How to combo in Smash Bros Ultimate is surprisingly simple. It’s one of the key ways to get better at fighting games.

On the surface, how to combo in Smash Bros Ultimate is basically the same as any other game. Perform move inputs one after another, in a way that doesn’t allow the opposing character to escape from your attack. Executing it is more difficult. Smash Bros has a more accessible control scheme that can make combos a more difficult technique to pull off. Once you understand the basic principles though, you can pull off the easiest combos in Smash Ultimate and the hardest in the exact same way.

How to Combo in Smash Bros Ultimate

A combo is in essence a combination of moves. In practise it means a chain of attacks that enemies can’t break out of. When we talk about how to combo in Smash Bros Ultimate, we don’t really mean the attacks that hit more than once. Although, these are a type of combo (more commonly known as natural combos). Instead, it’s chaining together different parts of a character’s moveset to keep them locked in taking damage.

Comboing in Smash Bros Ultimate comes down to executing the moves with the right timing. You’ll need to be able to move from one move to another without leaving a gap for your enemy to escape. If the moves have varying hitboxes and timing with animations in and out, that needs accounting for too. Once you know how the theory is performed, the chain of attacks you need to input, then how to combo in Smash Bros Ultimate is down to practise.

Head into the training mode, and attempt the combo. Smash Bros tracks combos and will tell you when you’ve left your enemy out of hitstun. You’ll need to keep repeating the moves until you’ve got them chaining together into a real combo. It’s easiest to make use of the slowdown feature to get the hang of this at first. Play at a lower speed, get the timing down, and then increase it. With enough practice, you should be able to pull it off in the live game.

How to combo in Smash Bros Ultimate training mode is easy, but what about pulling it off in live matches?

Moving from Training to Live Games

In live games, there’s a lot more to think about than training. For a start, you need to have the right intro for your combo. This is watching for an opening where your opponent will be in proper spacing. Then, you’ve just got to go for it.

Like a few other mechanics in Smash Bros, this kind of comes down to practice. You might be more prone to mistakes at first.

With enough experience, you should be able to learn how to combo in Smash Bros Ultimate in live games. The best Smash Bros players make it look easy, but it can be tricky.

The easiest combos in Smash Bros Ultimate are fairly well-known by a lot of players, so you might have trouble getting set-up up for them! Even some of the harder but more famous combos can be avoided quickly. The Luigi 0-to-death combo became much harder to pull off just because of how well-known the plunger starting move had become. The lesser-played Smash Bros characters aren’t as well known though.

How to combo in Smash Bros Ultimate really comes down to putting the practice in. You can take steps to make better use of your time though. Use all the tools in training mood, and analyse where you’re making mistakes with your combo, you should be able to get chaining moves together pretty quickly.