Honestly I don't know the answer. Werster claims her stats are better but I haven't seen anything to prove that one way or another. I should investigate at some point.

in case you want to look at my route for comparison:

3 walls, finish with 11 in power and 5 in control.

After Pam, 11/6. After Curt, 12/7.

The xp for this is really finnicky. You need to make sure you make NO MISTAKES on Pam or Curt so you get 2 level-ups from beating Curt.

With 12/7 for Beth, your power is maxed, meaning you will service ace her GUARANTEED (blue from right corner, orange from left corner). You can also do blue return aces from the right side, which saves a lot of time.

After Beth, just increase control while keeping power maxed. You will get guaranteed serve aces on Junior Bob, and then you can get serve aces on Brain/Joy/Varisty if you time it perfectly (it feels semi-random but yea).

The other cool thing about this is you will have power and control maxed by the time u get to island open, which is just a nice thing to have

Just saw this. Really interesting idea.

only problem I have with it is that without any points in control, you can't get guaranteed return aces on Junior class, which save a LOT of time (dont have to do dropshot, wait for return, smash). I'm gonna stick to 2-3 walls for now.

If you can get a competitive time doing your strat I'll def look into it though.

New discovery. Doing 3 walls and maxing out Power and keeping it maxed lets you service ace Beth for free. No timing required.

If you do this, you need to get max XP on Curt and Pam, or you wont have enough levels to get 12 power 7 control with 10-10-10 in power. If you can get 7 control, 11 power, you'll have 9-10-9 in power, in which case you can

vs. Beth: right side -> wide blue

if you get the perfect XP setup and get 10-10-10 in power, then you can do the aforementioned right side serve AND

vs. Beth: left side -> wide orange

I'm starting to do 3-wall runs because of this, because its such a guaranteed time-save on Beth, and im still not convinced that acing her is 100% based on timing.

Also, having a higher power stat makes your ball fly faster, saving little bits of time here and there. I saved about 30 seconds on each of the junior class because of this.

Ok. So these three specifically (Beth in Junior, Brian/Joy in Senior) have the most RANDOM occurrences where SOMETIMES you service ace them, sometimes they dive and hit your serve. And im serious when I say RANDOM.

I've tried the following:

• consistent positioning of serve (obvious)
• consistent timing of the serve from the throw
• consistent timing of the serve from opponent's swaying motion
• everything above combined

I have NO explanation for how to ace these guys, and being able to do it consistently would make a HUGE difference in this speedrun.

I also tried going for Wall 3 before doing these guys to have more points in serve. The only difference was that Beth was consistently aced from the right side. That was the ONLY improvement across all 3 of these guys.

Minor breakthrough: Acing Bob, the Varsity Singles guy I've found that its a lot easier to ace Bob if you start your serve the INSTANT you stop bouncing the ball. Don't change position. Get the EARLIEST possible NICE! serve, blue from the right, orange from the left. This is somehow pretty consistent, and I don't know why. Watch my 2:00:03 run if you want evidence; I saved tons of time on Bob because of this.

From this and general testing, I can guess that it's SOMEHOW based on timing, I just don't know how. If I use a save state and just hit the serve from some position with the same real-time timing, it works. If I wait a second and then do the exact same serve, it doesn't work.

So can we get some experimentation on this? I dunno where to go from here...

I think some return ace strats are actually slower than drop shot strats. i found that some lob strats guarantee return aces and im not sure if its more worth for a slow guarantee or a fast chance.

Yo. I'm reslived. Got into speedrunning with this game, and it looks like im not the only one suddenly playing this game again.

I wanna make a forum to share strats cuz it looks like we all do something different for every fight, so it'd be good for all of us to get better as a group. Idk if there is already an easy place for us to talk about stuff so if there is plz link me.

Something I'm bad at - Walls 1 & 2. Specifically 2. Any good strats for Wall 2 you guys have would be nice.

Something I'm good at and more people should do - Guaranteed Return Aces: works on everyone in Junior, and Joy in Senior.

Guaranteed Return Aces: I've only tested this using the 2-walls strategy, and right-handedness, so idk what the exact skillset floor is for every fight. The key to guaranteeing a return ace is returning from the right-side back line, and then smacking it right back where they served from. this gives the enemy enough time to run to the center, and you'll return it right as they try to change their acceleration back towards where they served.

Pam: Orange serve from the left -> fault

• Orange line follow-up -> charged slice right back towards the left side
• Purple cross follow-up -> charged slice right back towards the left side Purple serve from the left -> charged slice right back towards the left side Blue serve from the left, down line -> charged slice towards left side (also works without slicing and just charging a B-hit)

Curt: Orange serve from the left -> fault

• Orange line follow-up -> charged slice right back towards the left side
• Purple cross follow-up -> lob to the right side Purple serve from the left -> charged slice right back towards the left side Blue serve from the left, down line -> charged slice towards left side

Beth: unsure. Beth is weird.

Bob: Orange serve from the left -> charged slice right back towards the left side Purple serve from the left -> charged slice right back towards the left side Blue serve from the left, down line -> charged slice towards left side

Brian: doesnt always work

Joy: unsure about Joy, but I know I've gotten some of these. Def gonna research more. Orange serve from the left -> fault

• Orange line follow-up -> charged slice right back towards the left side
• Purple cross follow-up -> charged slice right back towards the left side