L-canceling: Difference between revisions

L-canceling is not present in ''Brawl''. It was removed because, like [[wavedash]]ing, [[Masahiro Sakurai]] felt it made the gap between beginner players and advanced players too large. The lack of L-canceling acts as an indirect [[nerf]] to characters that have aerial attacks with heavier landing lag and/or low jumps (most notably {{SSBB|Ganondorf}}). To compensate for the removal of L cancelling, a lot more aerials can be auto canceled in a short hop due to a combination of universally lower fall speeds and decreased auto-cancel windows. Every character in the game is capable of short hop auto cancelling at least one of their aerials. Multiple characters also suffer from less landing lag from their aerials to partially compensate with some examples including {{SSBB|Peach}}, {{SSBB|Kirby}} and {{SSBB|Samus}}.

L-canceling continues to be absent from ''[[Super Smash Bros. 4]]''. However, [[equipment]] may have the Smooth Lander effect, which automatically provides a similar result. Depending on the number of times the effect is stacked, landing lag from aerials can be cut to 0.7x, 0.6x, or even 0.5x as in ''Melee''. While some characters had their landing lag from their aerials reduced from ''Brawl'' (most notably {{SSB4|Ganondorf}}), most other characters had their landing lag increased overall. In addition to this, the auto-cancel window on multiple aerials was also increased meaning that less aerials could be auto cancelled in a short hop with very few aerials gaining the ability to auto cancel. A character both these changes affected was {{SSB4|Meta Knight}} who went from being able to auto cancel all of his aerials in a short hop to just his up and down aerials which is further exacerbated with the increased landing lag on all his aerials although he wasn't the only character this affected.  

L-canceling is once again absent in ''Ultimate''. However, the landing lag of many aerial attacks has been further reduced from ''Smash 4'', lasting almost half as long overall and even rivaling or in some cases (such as with {{SSBU|Young Link}}) surpassing their L-canceled variants from ''Melee''. Despite this, some aerials still have more landing lag than their ''Melee'' L-canceled counterparts or even their ''Brawl'' counterparts (with {{SSBU|Samus}} being a prominent example of this).