Grabbing in Melee.

[DongleDude]

Whenever I play Melee when I go for a grab sometimes it’d light shield instead of grab. I don’t really know why this happens and how to find the rhythm of doing one or the other on purpose. I just want to know “How can I do a grab with no chance of doing a Light Shield”

 

[Pauer]

You are grabbing too early. Remember that when z is pressed, you do a lightshield. That means that you press Z too early for the grab to come out.
To practice the proper timings, give yourself a lot of time until the Z-Press and gradually speed up the timing in practice.

 

[Applebutter61]

Basically, the z-button works like this; the initial press tell the game to 'grab', and every frame of input after that tell the game to 'light shield'. If you press the z-button while still in the endlag of another action, the inital z input is not performed, and thus you light shield because you are still holding the button by the time you are back to actionable frames.