Pad vs Stick vs Leverless

Pad is extremely fast, just as fast as the most experienced leverless user for many inputs. You also have quick and simple access to 8 buttons spread across multiple fingers.

The first issue is getting a reliable motion input on a D-pad requires you to give up some speed and practice them slowly.

The second issue with pad is no great ones exist for fighting games in Feb 2025, every one is a compromise. The original purpose of this website before it got sidetracked into a general input trainer was to compare D-pads and find the best pad, which for me are:

• Xbox Series X|S - The best D-pad and good build quality, but has analog triggers. This is the only D-pad that is tactile with a true full contact pivot point. It's also annoyingly loud and clicky.
• Betop C3 - Extremely cheap on AliExpress, but also extremely cheap build quality. A sort of mushy and slow D-pad that is fun to use. No access to L3/R3 buttons.
• 8bitdo M30 - Great build quality, but non uniform button shapes and a D-pad that is a bit too sensitive on diagonals.

Many pros, like Punk, Mena and Broski use a PS5 controller, which I find very difficult. So just learning how to deal with it™ and use whatever you have is also an option.

Reliable D-pad Diagonals

A diagonal requires triggering two cardinal switches. To trigger one cardinal direction you might need to only rotate the pad 2 degrees, but to trigger two you need to push it 2.8 degrees into the corner.

This is a 40% greater distance. You can't just apply even pressure in a circle to get a diagonal, you must push it extra far into corners.

This may require intentionally slowing down your movements to ensure you hit the corners, or finding a hand techique that works for you.

Speed is only necessary sometimes. A Street Fighter AA DP or SA on reaction requires speed. A combo does not. For a combo to succeed you need accuracy. If you would prefer to not drop combos all the time stick is for you. For me, this slowness is a feature, as I have a tendancy to rush inputs in actual game.

Errors in combos compound. If you require four motion inputs for a combo, and you are only 90% accurate with each, you will only successfully do the combo 65% of the time. If you want to be 95% accurate on a combo you need to be 98.8% accurate with your inputs.

In the beginning, stick is harder for very simple things like just moving right without accidentally jumping, and easier for complex motions like 360s. But it's also easier to learn the simple things on stick than learn the complex things on other devices.

Training Stick Diagonals

A diagonal requires triggering two cardinal switches. To trigger one cardinal direction you might need to push the stick 7 degrees, but to trigger two you need to push it 9.8 degrees into the corner. This is a 40% increase in how far you need to push it. The range of stick motion is not a circle, but a square.

Stick switches have deadzones that add a 'stickiness' to inputs and make it easier to hit diagonals in passing. So depending on your stick it may be slightly less strict for actual motion inputs and may be why you feel like you hit diagonals more than you should given their tiny activation area.

In order to get diagonals in the beginning, either ride the gate on a circular/octagonal stick or adjust your motions so they always hit the corner of a square gate:

Quarter Circle	Half Circle

Your movements will become more efficient with practice.

If you need a recommendation for levers, my favorite are:

• Crown CWL-309-MJ-NEW-Helpme-KMS-ST30. My favorite lever and the basis of the Open309 project. I use a 309 with a 3D printed squircle collar.
• Seimitsu SELS-70X-S. My favorite Japanese style. You will need the SE plate to use in a sanwa mount.

Levers are highly subjective to your personal tastes (both of these have non-rotating levers), but these ones are the ones that scored the best for me.

Stick Tricks

There are advanced techniques that make some stick inputs faster than any other device.

• Fast dash. The idea is to hit the stick with two parts of your hand in succession. E.g. you can dash right by first pushing with your thumb, and then with your palm. You can also do something similar to the heel toe techique drummers do, to effectively double your input speed by first using your wrist muscle and then arm.
• Fast left->right or right->left inputs. You can achieve a perfect two frame motion by doing a similar technique to the fast dash, except you rotate your wrist to push it in both directions in succession very quickly.

These are unnecessary, very difficult to practice in both directions, and mostly for sweatlords.

Modding

The only thing more fun than using a stick is modding it, and you will go down a rabbit hole of replacing springs/grommets and buttons. The Open309 project readme goes over how to tune a stick in excruciating detail.

Leverless is deceptive because the first couple days will feel much more intuitive and natural than stick, but that simple approach will hold you back because it has a speed cap.

It feels faster than it is because you are limited by the speed of your fingers, not the device. But your fingers will never get faster than they are on day one. The speed limit is the number of 'steps' you have to perform for a motion. Each step lasts ~4 frames so a four step quarter-circle input like this has 3 gaps, will take ~13 frames:

1. Press Down
2. Press Left or Right
3. Release Down
4. Press Attack (only first frame is counted)

In contrast, a stick or pad quarter-circle can be done in a single step, that is more complex physically, but simpler mentally. A fast pad or stick quarter-circle motion will be ~6 frames.

Importance of SOCD

In case this is your first introduction to leverless, SOCD means Simultaneous Opposite Cardinal Directions which means you can press left+right or up+down to get a neutral. This means you can make some input sequences all presses. This is the only way to use leverless to have an advantage, otherwise it is slower than other devices and the inputs are more complex to do.

Try to see how fast you can double tap a button. This is likely at least 8 frames because your muscles need to activate three times to press, depress, and press. SOCD motions remove this limitation.

The SOCD quarter-circle looks like:

1. Press Down
2. Press Left or Right
3. Press Up (right thumb)
4. Press Attack

You can form a chord shape with your fingers where simply placing your hand down will perform all of these in under 5 frames, like a sort of physical macro. To do these reliably still takes a lot of practice to ensure consistency in both directions, but you may as well practice the SOCD shortcut instead of the 'intuitive' way, which also takes a lot of practice.

It is easier to press up with your right thumb, as it minimizes the feeling of the differences between the left/right motions, and makes it easier to press attack and up on the same frame.

The SF walking DP shortcut is exactly the same as a quarter-circle motion with the first two buttons switched:

1. Press Left or Right
2. Press Down
3. Press Up (right thumb)
4. Press Attack

Even Dash inputs will be slower than other devices unless SOCD dash is used, which is:

1. Press Direction
2. Flick Opposite Direction

SOCD shortcuts are brain melting and unintuitive, it can be very difficult to try and learn every shortcut at and fighting games at the same time. I personally had to re-learn leverless after using it for years incorrectly. There are many gotchas and exceptions that have to be learned, like how to do a double quarter circle vs a single quarter circle.

Here are some videos by Chris_F going over leverless inputs:

• DPs
• Quarter Circles

Not everything can be SOCD-ed

Some motions are harder to do on leverless than other devices:

• Triple Dash. Used for Tekken. You can double flick the back button but it's an awkward and slow motion.
• Half Circles. Fast rolling your fingers can cause you to miss the down input some of the time. A reliable half circle forward requires flicking back and then an SOCD quarter circle forward shortcut. It's an awkward action that is slightly slower than other devices, and this assumes a lenient input processor that does not need all diagonals.
• Back Neutral Forward. This mostly applies to Tekken, as it requires a middle neutral input which is very difficult to achieve reliably. It has the same issues as half circles, fast movements will skip the neutral some of the time. A reliable back neutral forward requires flicking back and pressing forwards, another awkward and slow input.
• 360s + 720s. This is a complex input, with the best solution I've seen is to slide one finger across the buttons and press up+attack with your right hand.
• Wave Dash. This requires manual timing of the neutral as it's easy to mash down after right if you are in a hurry.

Some games suit leverless better others

Virtua Fighter motions are heavily based on dashes, crouch dashes, half circles, back forward and back down forward motions. These are almost perfectly what leverless is not good at.

Tekken contains triple dashes and inputs that require neutrals. If you play a character that does not need these then you may be fine, but otherwise it can be a limiting factor. SOCD shortcuts do exist for KBDs.

Street Fighter is nearly perfectly designed for use on a leverless controller. The one major thing a leverless can do that others cannot is a 3 frame DP. This also happens to be a very important move to do on reaction in Street Fighter.