I definitely didn't know this, I have some habits to break it seems....crap....does this apply to wavelands, wd's, etc?
Airdodges only work when you press the full click, so there is no way around it.
Bones, do you (or alot of players) not press the trigger all the way when L canceling? This has always sounded so out of my league lol.
I actually started doing it a few months ago, and I still have a lot of issues with it. Ironically, I originally started changing because I wanted to be able to L-cancel for ledge cancels so that if I missed the ledge (either over or undershooting it) I would still get an L-cancel. Usually when you see someone accidentally ledge cancel, they will L-cancel and it will make them airdodge. They will light press for the normal L-cancel timing, and by the time they go all the way down for the hard press, they've already slid off so the hard press makes them airdodge. A similar thing happens if you try to shield drop, where you will do the actual drop as you light press, and if you continue to press all the way, you will airdodge after dropping through.
Ledge cancels aside, I think it's a pretty important thing to get the hang of. Even with not being able to do it 100%, I still notice it saving me in situations where I normally would just be incapable of teching. It also has the nice benefit of not working the **** out of your trigger. I actually broke the rubber in my L-button because I had pressed it a hundred times a match for 8 years. I'm sure it's broken even sooner for other people who press the button harder, so only using light press greatly reduces the number of times it actually gets pressed in.
What's the advantage of not pressing the trigger in all the way? speed perhaps? I can't be the only player who has been making this mistake, it's gonna be a difficult fix
The speed is not changed. What usually happens (or at least what happens to me) is people learn to L-cancel as they land. The reason is they believe the hard click is what makes them L-cancel, so they practice and practice and associate the click with the aerial already landing. I know I used to read that you had to L-cancel before landing, and I was confused because I always felt like I pressed the click in as I was on the ground to end the lag. What I didn't realize was that by timing my full click with landing, I was also timing my light press with being right above the ground. If I had a controller without a spring in it, I would have missed every L-cancel because my actual L-cancel input would not being registering until I'm already on the ground.
The benefit of only light pressing is that you do not waste your tech. When you press L or R in all the way so that they click, the game will make sure you tech anything with the next 20 frames. To prevent people from spamming the triggers to get every tech, they made it so you have to wait 20 frames after the 20 frame tech window before pressing it again. If you click a trigger and click it again 39 frames later, the game makes you wait another 40 frames before you can attempt another tech. Also keep in mind that 20 frames is 1/3rd of a second (40 is 2/3rd), which is a pretty large amount of time in a game like Melee.
The way this backfires is that you will waste a tech attempt trying to L-cancel with an unnecessary full click, and then you will get knocked down a little bit later and not being able to tech because it is within that 40 frame window. Let's say you SHFFL an aerial onto a Doc's shield and he usmashes OoS. If you clicked for the L-cancel, you will tech in the next 20 frames. However, if you DI onto a platform and won't reach it until frame 21, then it's impossible for you to tech. You would have to wait until frame 40, and even if you are technically able to tech (<-- lol), you will have an extremely small window to time it if you land during frames 40-45 after the original L-cancel attempt.
If you've played a Fox that shines OoS a lot, you will notice that when you full click L-cancels, you will frequently hit their shield, get shined, and immediately tech. If you light press your L-cancels instead, you would have to realize you got shined OoS and press L/R in the rest of the way in order to tech the shine. This is one of the times I think it would actually be beneficial to full click L-cancels. My goal is to be able to choose which type of L-cancel I do. I may want to full-click when attacking Fox's shield or in other situations where I will probably want to ASDI down and tech. In fact, I would say getting hit by most OoS options I would prefer a full click. However, depending on the character's options OoS, I may opt for a light press so that I can tech moves that don't make me hit the ground until later. Doc's usmash, Falcon's stomp, Marth's shield grab to uthrow, Puff's uthrow, and many other moves all have a bad timing for full clicked L-cancels. They all tend to make you land in that 20-40 time frame. So basically, if a move will knock you to the ground super fast, full click is better. If you don't think you'll get hit OoS at all or by any moves that knock you over soon, then you're better off light pressing.
If you're just starting out, this is all probably way too complicated to worry about for how little it will matter. In fact, this is the type of stuff I obsess over that other players way better than me don't even care about, so I'm probably just being OCD to even care. For the time being, I would just recommend learning to light press since it's the best overall, and the better you get at shield pressuring, the less often you'll be getting tagged constantly by shine OoS, nair OoS (Sheik's comes to mind), shield grabs, etc.
Something you can take from this is that tech timings are very important. You should never spam when you are unsure of when you will need to tech, and most importantly, ALWAYS TECH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. There are very few situations where attempting to tech early is worse because the only time teching late is good is if you happen to get knocked down by another move within 20 frames (that'd be like you falling to the ground from Fox's usmash, and then he shines you right before you land or something janky). Most new players (and consequently most players in general because these are deeply ingrained habits) tech right before they land because they don't want to miss THAT tech, but as you get more comfortable with the tech window of 20 frames, you will want to move towards teching earlier. A common thing I see is spacies players missing techs during Marth's chain grab. They will L-cancel right as they come down into Marth's arms hoping he will miss, but then if he fthrows really quick they will miss the tech on that throw because they just attempted one. If they had inputted the tech when they were up above his head, that tech input would allow them to tech whiffed chaingrabs, but it would also allow them enough time to attempt a second tech if the Marth regrabs and immediately throws them to the ground.
I'M TRYING TO STUDY FOR MIDTERMS, GOD DAMNIT! I JUST WROTE A ****ING WALL OF TEXT ABOUT L-CANCELLING AND TECHING... WHY IS THIS GAME SO COMPLEX I'M THINKING ABOUT POINTLESS **** 24/7?!?!
