Improving tech skill

[Sonata]

Is it productive to improve tech skill by getting good at fox as well? Since the moveset is only slightly different and the timings are faster would it help or hinder performance?

 

[Ziodyne]

do what you wanna do

 

[AppleAppleAZ]

You don't need fox, if your techskill is on point with falco it will translate to all your characters. Especially platform movement.

If you really want to speed up, practice wavelands with a few characters you like playing. It allows you to move around without using shine to get to a certain height.

Some advice I could give is you should only focus on using techskill if you understand what you are doing. If you get super technical you can end up having too many options at one time and pick options that are less than ideal. As opposed to learning the best options and learning tech out of necessity.

 

[mooki]

You don't need fox, if your techskill is on point with falco it will translate to all your characters. Especially platform movement.

If you really want to speed up, practice wavelands with a few characters you like playing. It allows you to move around without using shine to get to a certain height.

Some advice I could give is you should only focus on using techskill if you understand what you are doing. If you get super technical you can end up having too many options at one time and pick options that are less than ideal. As opposed to learning the best options and learning tech out of necessity.

How do you learn what the best options are? Experience?

 

[AppleAppleAZ]

Consider the risk reward of doing each move.

1. Puts them into a bad position/damage and keeps you in a safe postion
2. Puts them into a postion to reset to neutral/damage and keeps you in a safe postion
3. No damage, resets to neutral
4. Damage/etc, but there is a chance you could get punished
5. Damage, puts you in a bad postion
6. No damage, puts you into a bad postion

^just some examples.

but yeah, the more you play the game the more you will recognize what to do in a situation. There are players that gamble a lot though, but sometimes it pays off.

 

[Marmalad3]

I agree that you don't really need fox. Practicing with your main is really the best way to develop it as far as I can tell.

 

[coolusername]

Consider the risk reward of doing each move.

1. Puts them into a bad position/damage and keeps you in a safe postion
2. Puts them into a postion to reset to neutral/damage and keeps you in a safe postion
3. No damage, resets to neutral
4. Damage/etc, but there is a chance you could get punished
5. Damage, puts you in a bad postion
6. No damage, puts you into a bad postion

^just some examples.

but yeah, the more you play the game the more you will recognize what to do in a situation. There are players that gamble a lot though, but sometimes it pays off.

Don't listen to this fraud. He's been exposed by dat MexRay. However, one thing that has helped me (the aforementioned fraud exposer known as MexRay) improve consistency with tech is to frequently exercise your hands whenever you can (using things like gyroscopic hand exercisers and the Gripmaster hand exerciser). It also makes learning new tech much easier because then the muscles you use to do tech will have been worked out and developed, and all you need to do is develop the muscle memory to do the aforementioned tech. And you'll be able to play melee better for longer periods of time since your hands will be conditioned by all the exercise you do. Also, another thing I've been meaning to test out is to play melee with some sort of hand gadget that adds resistance to my hand movements while playing melee in order to better work out the muscles I use while playing melee (instead of just doing general hand exercises). I was thinking about using finger weights, but those are expensive, so I might just settle for some weird rubber band contraption.

tl;dr find an way to exercise your hands.

As for practicing specific tech, just go online and search for it. Chances are someone has figured out how to do what you wanna do, and has posted a tutorial about it. If not, just look for frame data and see what you can come up with. Then practice it until you can do it 95% of the time by yourself. Then try to implement it into your play with other players in friendlies until you can do it 95% of the time in friendlies. Then do it in serious matches and expose frauds.

 

[Twilight Emblem]

How do you feel is the best way to learn tech skill? Do you just do it over and over until you "get it" and let your mind and muscles build up to just getting the tech down on their own or is it a good idea to break the tech down consciously to the problem areas of execution you're getting wrong and attempt to fix them?

Do you think players can mislearn a tech skill and create a bad habit that way in how they execute the skill?

 

[AppleAppleAZ]

How do you feel is the best way to learn tech skill? Do you just do it over and over until you "get it" and let your mind and muscles build up to just getting the tech down on their own or is it a good idea to break the tech down consciously to the problem areas of execution you're getting wrong and attempt to fix them?

Do you think players can mislearn a tech skill and create a bad habit that way in how they execute the skill?

Both work, and I don't believe there's a "wrong way" to learn as long as you can execute every time without a problem (Axe is one of the most technical players in the world and multishines with the control stick for example). There are some things that can be problematic that you might want to eventually re learn like: not pressing L all the way to L-Cancel, Waveshielding and shield dropping with the same button, using X/Y instead of the control stick to wavedash are some examples. I think you should be okay for the most part since you are learning one of the more technical characters anyway, assuming you are playing falco.

At first it might be better to break it down consciously, but once you have it semi down just drill it until it becomes a simple action and something you don't have to think about. like "I'm going to shield drop now" and then you do it without having to think "hit platform - shield - control stick over - rotate down"

Hope that helps! I'm a fraud though so what do I know right?

 

[slamjunk]

My 2cents:

I don't think there is any wrong way to learn, as long as you learn. Some methods may be slower for you than others, but the end result is what matters. Each player has their own style; like Westballz is a pressure monster while Zhu seems to have a more controlled style of play. I speculate that the style of play you adopt is a direct result of the type of practice you do on the character, the type of player you are, and the type of players you play against.

I've had people tell me to play Fox to practice tech, and people tell me to get used to the feel of my character and only play Falco.
While I think it's important to get your hands used to playing characters technically, I think it's even more important to get a feel for what you can and can't do on Falco.
I've been using this video as practice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb_B_2TEHBA
I heard Mango say in an interview that he believes that Melee is a personal journey; that it can't really be taught. There is a lot that can be said about that. I personally found that learning wavelanding and wavedashing with Mario/Doc, helped me learn the rhythm for Falco, I just had to speed up my hands to apply the timings to Falco. Though some players find that playing the most technical character in the game gives them better results with their otherwise slower main.

You are your own teacher. Give yourself assignments, be decisive and stay focused. Find out what works for you by trying everything.