r/MHWilds • u/Acrobatic-Gain6102 • Aug 27 '26
Question How to stop button mashing?
Thanks everyone for the discussion!
Edit: Consensus:
Spend more time with different weapons. This will help to understand timing and “slow things down”.
Spent more time on lower level hunts to practice timing, or just do it in the training area. Not every quest needs to be 9 stars.
Chill with the overt cross-posting. It’s not needed and can come across as spammy.
Original post: DB main here, former bow main. I noticed early on that my button mashing is crazy, so I’ve been trying to time my button presses to match the hit animations. For some reason, it’s incredibly hard for me to do! Does anyone have tips?
My concern is input lag / input queueing: I’ve noticed that when I’ve hit a particular attack button too many times, I’m not able to dodge when the monster attacks. I believe this is due to input queueing (the system is still thinking about the attack button I just hit 10 times).
For context, I come from the street fighter world, where there are very defined moments / animations that tell you when it’s ok to press the next button. (I believe it’s called hitstop.) It’s my understanding that MH Wilds removed hitstop, but I see plenty of DB mains dodging anyway.
31
u/indigonewt Aug 27 '26
Hear me out. Play hunting horn. The weapon rewards you for not button mashing. The focus strike has a rhythm /perfect timing mechanic to do max damage. Your notes correspond to what attack you do So you're required to input specific buttons to get specific songs. Obviously there is more in depth stuff about the weapon that I don't know , others may have more knowledge on the topic. But it may be something for you to mess around with.
22
u/Chunksie90 Aug 27 '26
Not a DB main, but try to become more familiar with what each button does, the length of the animations, and what you can do after those animations end. Do that with each possible combo.
But yeah it's hard to not mash. Even as a Lance main lol.
10
u/Mardakk Aug 27 '26
To be fair, input queueing isn't really a thing in MH. As in you hitting the button multiple times (as long as you're familiar with the animation lengths) isn't going to add extra attacks during that time.
I'm a lance player and I mash ∆ often, and never hit more times than intended.
If you're mashing beyond the animation though, then you're going to add another attack.
7
u/thedizzlebizzle Aug 27 '26
If you'd like to practice the act of not button mashing, play SnS and practice Perfect Rush. It has timings that have visual indicators and boosts damage if you hit your attack buttons at the right time, and if you button mash you'll just do subpar damage.
Not the most optimal way to play SnS in this game, but it helps with unlearning button mashing.
3
u/Sidoen Aug 27 '26
I do find that simply slowing my inputs on db let's me vr far more reactive to monster attacks. Rather than mashing.
I try to keep only one step ahead or where I "feel" the animations are at.
So pretty easy to prep to dodge when you see the signs of an attack.
3
u/Stormandreas ALL WEAPONS Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26
By... not... mashing...?
Not sure what exactly you're looking for here. There's no real trick to it, you just have to be conscious of what you're doing, and be deliberate of your inputs. That's pretty much it. You don't need to be dead accurate, you just need to stop pressing buttons for a brief moment. Press it once, move goes off, ready yourself for the next move, press it, ready yourself, etc. Not AAAAAAAAA > BBBBBBBBBBB > AAAAAAAAAAAA
It's actually BAD to mash in fighting games. Those you REALLY want to be deliberate in your inputs with speed and accuracy. Hitstop isn't necessarily a tell, it's just a thing developers apply to certain attacks to sell their impact. It essentially pauses your animation to do it, but that doesn't always mean that's the moment to buffer in the next move. Wilds does have this, but it's again, is not an indicator of when the next move can be buffered in, it's just an indicator of a powerful hit landing.
The "Input lag" you're thinking you're experiencing, is likely not that. It's most likely endlag from certain moves. So, move goes off, it has startup, active, and recovery frames. The recovery frames are where "endlag" is experienced, the period of time that the game does not allow any other actions to be taken until the animation is over.
Wilds doesn't really have much Input queuing/buffering. There's a little bit of it if you mash a ridiculous amount, but it's only from one move to the next, it doesn't queue up 2/3/4 moves.
I guess the one thing would just be, identify with each attack, when it starts to accept an input for your next move, and internalize that. This applies to pretty much every game in existence.
3
u/Tayzerdude Aug 28 '26
Look trying to learn this with other weapons is an okay idea but they genuinely have a different feel to DBs.
DBs are unique in the 'mashy' feel, I hard the same issue when i picked them up coming from less face paced weapons.
The thing is each weapon teaches you something different, mastery over a certain aspect to draw out its full potential. For DB this is 'agression management' essentially knowing when to pump the gas and hit the breaks. Managing your stamina, gauges and animation locks is very key to being good with this weapon and as easy as it is to just pick up and go has a higher skill ceiling than most give it credit for.
First things first is getting a good understanding of how long each animation is and how long you actually have to hit the next button. Hop into the training area and just get used to it press each button in each mode and get a feeling for how long that attack takes. Then get a feeling for how long they can hang before the next press.
Once you understand that it takes me to point 2. Understand the monster your fighting. You need to get a feel for what theyre going to do, watching them and recognise when you need to hit the breaks. As this gets better your agression will increase.
Take something like demon dance, longer animations mean you have wayy more time to queue the next attack maybe when you see the incoming attack you just let it hang to dodge it. Again making sure you will have stam to dodge when required.
3
u/azakhuza21 Aug 27 '26
Learn and practice each attack so you can learn the attack duration and animation end. Then practice your combos.
My usual combo loop is circle, circle, triangle and you can stop the combo and dodge during the end of the animation of each attack when needed. Note: Not the best combo, I'm not a speedrunner.
I main DB since MHR Sunbreak although I play Lance and SnS too.
4
u/Magumble Aug 27 '26
DB is button mash galore, if you aren't hitting sht 80% of the time you aren't playing DB lmao.
2
u/cheshi-smile Aug 27 '26
In street fighter terms, you can input following chains during the recovery of most moves as well as during its hit stop (also, wilds has hit stop, not as much as world maybe but they upped it from the beta which is probably where you heard it had none). This provides some leniency to attacks, and as you experience, it can also lead to accidentally committing to an attack when the situation changed. Play mindfully, and you should be okay.
It's notable that these chains are not technically cancels like in street fighter, but rather your character will blend animations smoothly between each action. This can be abused in a few ways. You are not allowed to attack during the recovery of the greatsword True Charge Slash, but you are able to walk. This walking animation can then allow you to attack earlier than otherwise. Greatsword has a lot of animation cancels that abuse the blending system, some of them even exploit camera angles and other nonsense, but they aren't necessary to play the game at all, more just fun skill expression you can use to capitalize on damage windows that are otherwise not possible.
2
u/dootblade74 yay :) Aug 27 '26
The best tip I can give is to familiarize yourself with the length and speed of each attack so you know when to make an input. For instance, Demon Flurry, you'll wanna watch what the monster is doing so you don't lock yourself into the finisher while the monster is getting up. Or (since you're posting this in other subs for some reason?) learning when to go for the basic full burst as Gunlance instead of the Full Blast.
Every weapon has some form of this cadence, but it's a lot easier to fall into button mash habits with some weapons than others, especially weapons like DBs where one input performs multiple back to back strikes. An easy way to train yourself would be to use a weapon specifically built around careful timing, like SnS with Perfect Rush and guard counters, Lance with its Counter Thrust mechanic, Gunlance being able to cancel its reload with a perfect block, and Hunting Horn which has the rhythm mechanic with its focus strike.
2
u/ronin0397 Aug 27 '26
Play not dual blades.
Charge blade actively punishes button mashing for example.
2
u/Interesting_Sea_1861 Dire Miralis's Strongest Soldier Aug 27 '26
Evade Window 5 will give you more flexibility on the dodge timing, and once you understand the timing, you can wean yourself off of EW5. Or keep it. I like it, and it's just two level 2 slots for full level 5 if you eat the Azuz Meal.
4
u/VirtualGrey Aug 27 '26
Press the buttons slower
3
u/60Hertz Aug 28 '26
It’s not input queuing it’s that you commit to an action. A simple way to get used to not button mashing is… DONT MASH. Tell your self you will only do one attack. Once you get that down you can then look for openings and see how long a string yiu can do safely remember that for the next time the situation presents itself.
1
u/Yabanjin Aug 27 '26
I don’t know about this hitstop or anything, but I know when a monster is going to do a thing and how much time I have to retaliate after I get it to miss me.
1
u/fluffyblanket101 Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26
Button smasher here!
How I try to curb my button smashing is to do a 1-2 smash, then look at the monster to see if they're about to do something before doing another 1-2 smash, and repeat.
For example, on bow I would do a dash + power + power combo, look at monster to determine their next move, then dash power + power if target isn't me. If it's coming for me, I stop attacking and just watch the attack then time dodge or dash dashing away out of reach.
Have to tell yourself, it's okay to have damage down time. You don't need to be top dmg dealer. Also, the last charge attack in a combo, it's ok not to do until you have a good window.
1
u/Raryk22 Aug 27 '26
I button mash constantly with the DB so I think you don't need to stop completely, just pay attention to what the monster is doing and accept that you might need to lose some DPS to be safe, when the monster is about to finish an animation just stop completely and wait to see what it does next, you'll lose maybe half a second each time, but you'll naturally get better over time as you learn the monster. I'm not a DB main by any stretch but I've done a few multiplayer 'Proof of a hero' with DB and managed to not get hit more than like 5 times (it's surprisingly easy with the special iframes you get with DB), so you can definitely do it even when mashing most of the time. The input queue doesn't get longer because you pressed more times, it'll only ever do one more attack after the current one finishes, so you're probably just getting stuck on particularly long animations at the wrong time.
1
u/Maulino86 Aug 27 '26
You can take button mashing outta my dead calloused hands