First things first, your reaction time due to genetics is almost certainly fast enough to tech chase. That’s all there is to it, people have far less variance in trained reaction time than they think. In fact, I’d say that every single person reading this has the reaction time to tech chase reliably right now. People tunnel in on reaction time tests but really most difference is due to outside forces or small sample size.
I'm going to avoid using scientific terminology and will often conflate different types of reaction time for the purpose of keeping the thread easy to understand. The message remains the same regardless and is far more digestible that way.
This is not to say you can’t and shouldn’t work on your trained reaction time. I’ll list a few ways below.
1.) Overall physical fitness. Diet and exercise can improve reaction time by roughly a frame usually which is a huge deal in the world of reaction time. This includes physically activity and diet the day preceding and of the test/event/tourney etc.
2.) Being well rested and completely alert and awake. If you’re fatigued in any way you will see a slow-down in reactions and any slowing of reactions basically means no reaction tech chasing.
3.) Minimizing variance in perceivable surroundings and removing all potential distractions. IMO this is a big argument for using headphones. You can effectively have a really similar environment no matter where you are playing the game if you are focused on the game and isolated the audio to be the same no matter what.
4.) There are a number of other ways to minimize reaction time. Caffeine, being well hydrated, meditation etc. You know them all probably but the one you might not know is chewing gum has been shown to improve reaction time in studies. Does this definitively prove that it does and is the sample size large enough to make a statement saying that? No, but I like chewing gum so I’m going to and pretend it’s for that reason regardless.
Now you might be thinking “Ok Ben, so my reaction time is good enough. Well guess what smarty pants I get shined out of all my tech chases so how do I improve that?”
There are a number of strategies and here are some
1.) Training until tech chasing is effectively second nature. This requires actually playing the game. You have to actually reaction tech chase and only reaction tech chase until the specific decision making is a natural response. This shouldn’t take as many hours as people reportedly spend on it but the key is to always go for the optimal and same reaction option. There should be no consideration while tech chasing of how you are going to do it, you should just react to it without thinking. This is really most important for falcon as I plan to tech chase tech rolls with stomps and knees but worth thinking about always, ie fox’s tech chasing falcon with usmash. Again, mostly relevant to falcon as you should be able to be frame perfect or within a frame or so of perfection if you want to consistently be successful with reaction stomping/kneeing. Which is completely doable, if you practice the movement enough to the point that you can naturally do it as someone else presses Z to grab tech in place. Tldr basically always go for the same tech chase unless the situations are clearly distinguishable from each other such as covering tech in place with an aerial as falcon in the corner. “The master has failed more than the novice has tried” is a good quote to keep in mind.
I will personally be using frame counter to minimize wasted frames and eventually become within a frame or so of frame perfect with jump back stomps and dash forward knee. At least, that’s the plan.
2.) Practice recognizing the differences in animations as early as possible. This is separate from actually training tech chasing in game like I said before imo, this is studying the animations frame by frame and real time. The earlier you are able to consistently differentiate between the tech animations the easier tech chasing is. I think being able to differentiate by frame 3 is going to be my goal personally as I think that’s the first frame I’ll be able to do it in practice against spacies in real time.
https://techchaseapp.herokuapp.com/ this seems to be good and I might start doing this a few minutes a day but the set up is weird and not perfect. In the future I will also be using the actual animations such as http://imgur.com/a/Onsab for Fox. I haven't found such an album for Falco yet
3.) Training with a metronome. Note: I stole this idea from how gravy once said to practice hax dashes. Basically, you want to make a decision by frame 19 but I’d like to practice being a frame faster so I’d try to react within 18 frames. You HAVE to do something by then or else you might as well read so at that time you do an action regardless of if you feel slow. Once one has done all the other speed increasing tricks I’ve written up you should be consistently actually fast enough and just trust yourself to react. Therefore, if you react within 18 frames, that’s 18/60 of a second from when they hit the ground to when you input something. ((18/60)^-1) * 60 (sorry I don’t remember proper notation but who cares) gives 200 so I’ll set a metronome at 200 bpm and I will train myself to act at that point every single time. This way, I will very very rarely act late enough to get punished for tech chasing. This is the main disadvantage of reaction tech chasing which is presumably possible to eliminate.
4.) React to movement. If the character model hasn’t moved at the previously referenced time I will simply grab. Note that missed tech is considered irrelevant to react to by me and is a separate category to cover imo as it’s so obvious but has to be covered in a specific manner (crouching on it when beneath proper %). So if no movement and no green flash, simply grab. Seems obvious, but this does improve reaction time by simplifying the most difficult reaction and, again, prevents being late when combined with the previous step.
5.) Make sure not to fox trot or dash up to tech in place or just randomly jc grab out of muscle memory as this loses frames basically always and often multiple. Yea, I’m guilty of this and it’s really stupid but realizing this would help anyone who hasn’t yet.
6.) If you are getting shined out of tech in often and you feel you are reacting well your controller prob just sucks at dash back jc grab or your form is bad and you’re losing like 7 frames due to that. Yes, it is stupid
Random notes:
Please ignore reaction time tests. Your reaction time is variable depending on so many factors and there are so many additional ones dependent on your particular set up and condition at that time.
Average simple reaction time is about .2 seconds or about 12 frames. Tech chasing will always be harder than a simple reaction time regardless of the tricks and practice but that's average.
Again, reaction time tests are ridiculous. Many will show the reaction time average as .28 seconds or something. The individuals using them are almost certainly going to be above average like gamers and such so you can see how absurdly off they can be since the average should be more than 30% faster than that if it were completely accurate and agreed with scientific studies.
TLDR
You can reaction tech chase, practice it a lot in several different ways and commit to it and you'll get it. Eat healthy and exercise. I like to chew gum
I'm going to avoid using scientific terminology and will often conflate different types of reaction time for the purpose of keeping the thread easy to understand. The message remains the same regardless and is far more digestible that way.
This is not to say you can’t and shouldn’t work on your trained reaction time. I’ll list a few ways below.
1.) Overall physical fitness. Diet and exercise can improve reaction time by roughly a frame usually which is a huge deal in the world of reaction time. This includes physically activity and diet the day preceding and of the test/event/tourney etc.
2.) Being well rested and completely alert and awake. If you’re fatigued in any way you will see a slow-down in reactions and any slowing of reactions basically means no reaction tech chasing.
3.) Minimizing variance in perceivable surroundings and removing all potential distractions. IMO this is a big argument for using headphones. You can effectively have a really similar environment no matter where you are playing the game if you are focused on the game and isolated the audio to be the same no matter what.
4.) There are a number of other ways to minimize reaction time. Caffeine, being well hydrated, meditation etc. You know them all probably but the one you might not know is chewing gum has been shown to improve reaction time in studies. Does this definitively prove that it does and is the sample size large enough to make a statement saying that? No, but I like chewing gum so I’m going to and pretend it’s for that reason regardless.
Now you might be thinking “Ok Ben, so my reaction time is good enough. Well guess what smarty pants I get shined out of all my tech chases so how do I improve that?”
There are a number of strategies and here are some
1.) Training until tech chasing is effectively second nature. This requires actually playing the game. You have to actually reaction tech chase and only reaction tech chase until the specific decision making is a natural response. This shouldn’t take as many hours as people reportedly spend on it but the key is to always go for the optimal and same reaction option. There should be no consideration while tech chasing of how you are going to do it, you should just react to it without thinking. This is really most important for falcon as I plan to tech chase tech rolls with stomps and knees but worth thinking about always, ie fox’s tech chasing falcon with usmash. Again, mostly relevant to falcon as you should be able to be frame perfect or within a frame or so of perfection if you want to consistently be successful with reaction stomping/kneeing. Which is completely doable, if you practice the movement enough to the point that you can naturally do it as someone else presses Z to grab tech in place. Tldr basically always go for the same tech chase unless the situations are clearly distinguishable from each other such as covering tech in place with an aerial as falcon in the corner. “The master has failed more than the novice has tried” is a good quote to keep in mind.
I will personally be using frame counter to minimize wasted frames and eventually become within a frame or so of frame perfect with jump back stomps and dash forward knee. At least, that’s the plan.
2.) Practice recognizing the differences in animations as early as possible. This is separate from actually training tech chasing in game like I said before imo, this is studying the animations frame by frame and real time. The earlier you are able to consistently differentiate between the tech animations the easier tech chasing is. I think being able to differentiate by frame 3 is going to be my goal personally as I think that’s the first frame I’ll be able to do it in practice against spacies in real time.
https://techchaseapp.herokuapp.com/ this seems to be good and I might start doing this a few minutes a day but the set up is weird and not perfect. In the future I will also be using the actual animations such as http://imgur.com/a/Onsab for Fox. I haven't found such an album for Falco yet
3.) Training with a metronome. Note: I stole this idea from how gravy once said to practice hax dashes. Basically, you want to make a decision by frame 19 but I’d like to practice being a frame faster so I’d try to react within 18 frames. You HAVE to do something by then or else you might as well read so at that time you do an action regardless of if you feel slow. Once one has done all the other speed increasing tricks I’ve written up you should be consistently actually fast enough and just trust yourself to react. Therefore, if you react within 18 frames, that’s 18/60 of a second from when they hit the ground to when you input something. ((18/60)^-1) * 60 (sorry I don’t remember proper notation but who cares) gives 200 so I’ll set a metronome at 200 bpm and I will train myself to act at that point every single time. This way, I will very very rarely act late enough to get punished for tech chasing. This is the main disadvantage of reaction tech chasing which is presumably possible to eliminate.
4.) React to movement. If the character model hasn’t moved at the previously referenced time I will simply grab. Note that missed tech is considered irrelevant to react to by me and is a separate category to cover imo as it’s so obvious but has to be covered in a specific manner (crouching on it when beneath proper %). So if no movement and no green flash, simply grab. Seems obvious, but this does improve reaction time by simplifying the most difficult reaction and, again, prevents being late when combined with the previous step.
5.) Make sure not to fox trot or dash up to tech in place or just randomly jc grab out of muscle memory as this loses frames basically always and often multiple. Yea, I’m guilty of this and it’s really stupid but realizing this would help anyone who hasn’t yet.
6.) If you are getting shined out of tech in often and you feel you are reacting well your controller prob just sucks at dash back jc grab or your form is bad and you’re losing like 7 frames due to that. Yes, it is stupid
Random notes:
Please ignore reaction time tests. Your reaction time is variable depending on so many factors and there are so many additional ones dependent on your particular set up and condition at that time.
Average simple reaction time is about .2 seconds or about 12 frames. Tech chasing will always be harder than a simple reaction time regardless of the tricks and practice but that's average.
Again, reaction time tests are ridiculous. Many will show the reaction time average as .28 seconds or something. The individuals using them are almost certainly going to be above average like gamers and such so you can see how absurdly off they can be since the average should be more than 30% faster than that if it were completely accurate and agreed with scientific studies.
TLDR
You can reaction tech chase, practice it a lot in several different ways and commit to it and you'll get it. Eat healthy and exercise. I like to chew gum
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