Teching in Smash Ultimate can help you live longer and often lead to exciting moments and tournaments. Teching is when you press the shield button within 11 frames or around 1/5 of a second before hitting a surface when you’re in the tumble animation. This can be either a wall, a platform, or the ground. When landing on the ground, it is almost always preferable to tech compared to missing the attack because missing it will cause your character to bounce on the ground, leaving you vulnerable to attacks for a brief time. It is also usually preferable to tech off the wall as you will often get sent very deep or even to the blast zone 1 getting hit against it.
Now, you might think to spam the shield button when you’re expecting the tech, but there is a 40 frame cooldown afterward that doesn’t allow you to tech, meaning you’re generally only going to get one chance to get the timing right after getting hit. Be careful if you’re late to tech, as you’ll sometimes buffer an air dodge, which will put you in a good amount of lag, and you may not be able to recover from it if you’re off the stage.
In Smash 4, it was a little complicated about when you could and couldn’t tech, which often led to some confusion. Fortunately, in Smash Ultimate, it’s a little more clear. First, if you are grounded and get hit by a spiking move, you can’t tech at all. In Smash 4, you were unable to tech footstools, but you can now. But something new to Ultimate is that you were unable to tech if you are blasted at too high of a speed.
Knowing about untouchables is very important because you can now get guaranteed kills from stage biking your opponent when they’re at high percent. When it Smash 4, your opponent had a chance to live. Launch speed influencer (LSI) is also important to know about. Holding down when getting hit by a move that sends you more horizontally will decrease the launch speed a little bit, reducing the launch speed will help to make more situations tackle when at high percent.
You can also tech out of a weak hit as long as your character is in the tumble animation. Sometimes if you get hit by a weak move under the stage, you can recover by sort of air dodging upwards, which will actually cause your character to tech and do a tech wall jump if you’re holding up. This can help you live in situations you normally wouldn’t have been able to.
It’s best to practice the timing by practicing them in real games. It becomes second nature with a bit of practice, and it’s even easier to do now than it was in Smash 4 as you have an extra three frames to Tek. You can try and practice with your friend or rigged up some kind of way of tacking using items and stages with walls.
Incorporating teching into your play may be a bit more difficult, but with patience and practice, it can be done. Try to focus on it when playing with your friends or playing online. Thank you for reading, and I hope you found these tips and tricks helpful.