Of course it's as technical. If you try and play Smash to "blow off steam," you'd get absolutely destroyed. Again, Smash not being a fighter doesn't mean there's not as much technicality to it. The technicality just reserves itself to different areas which traditional fighters never need to think about. It's like saying that a hardcore PM player could "blow off steam" by playing MvC.

What is a PM player? Pokemon? if so are you kidding me?

Project M. It's a Smash Brawl mod made to play like Melee.

And don't try to down play the skill it takes to be proficient at competitive Pokemon, because the learning curve is far steeper than any fighting game, or Smash.

........Wow. 

...Wow, what exactly? There are over 800 unique Pokemon you have to be familiar with when you include formes and Megas, over 600 moves, 18 types, 25 natures, IVs, BP (EVs), 191 special abilities, over 150 held items of varying usefulness, STAB, stat buffs, stat debufs, status conditions, unique effects, a six character team limit, a four moveslot limit, switch ins, an entire metagame, and dosens of other complicated and more importantly abundant quirks you need to be 100% familiar with before you can even think about getting wins in competitive Pokemon battling.

No one is saying that fighting games aren't complex, but they don't even come close to Pokemon outside of being real time and having complex imputs. The biggest difficulty with getting into a fighting game is muscle memory and situational awareness. The biggest difficulty with getting into competitive Pokemon is everything I said above and situational awareness.

If the director of Super Smash bro's wanted the game to be anything that resembled a traditional fighter, he would do so at the risk of losing a consumerbase that would feel alienated because of the learning curve. This is precisely the reason why he made smash the way he did.

I hope you aren't seriously implying that Smash somehow requires less brain cells just because it isn't a fighting game. Comments like this are why Smash players get so defensive when you tell them it's not a fighting game. Playing Smash is just as technical and requires every bit as much "brain cells" as a fighting game does. It just so happens to not be a fighting games.

By the way, I've figured it out the overwhelming answer to this thread. Most of these people don't play fighting games because it's not Smash.

If smash fans would just accept that their game is the fucking babytown frolics of fighting games then there'd be far less vitriol in the communities.  There'd still be natural haughtiness from other fanbases and jealousy because smash sells better, but there wouldn't be this nonsense if smash fans would just go, "Look, it's fun, I like it and your opinion doesn't impede my enjoyment of it," and left it at that.