[Help Thread] How much would Full PLL improve my solve times?

[Chilabuster]

Hello, everyone!

Inb4/
I know, I know, F2L, Cross, and lookahead will boost my times the most. That being said, please read on

Here is a typical solve for me (42-47 sec)

Cross: 4-9 seconds, usually 6-7

F2L: learning F2L, finished at ~30 seconds with decent (for me) lookahead

OLL: 3-7 seconds
2 Look + Dot Cases

PLL: 3-8 seconds
Ua, Ub, Z, H, sort of A Perm/E Perm from the guide that came with my Shengshou
(R B’ R F2 R’ B R F2 R2 or how I do it: x R U’ R D2 R’ U R D2 R2)
After OLL, I look for headlights, set those facing me, then A/E Perm mentioned previously, repeat until I get a U, Z, or H then perform either of those 4 algs.


I know most of my improvement time will come from F2L, cross, and lookahead, but realistically, how much would learning full PLL improve my times? I have been meaning to learn Full PLL but haven’t really been all that motivated to.


Also, for a rather slow cross, learning F2L and only knowing 5 PLLs, are my solve times slow, fast, or about right for what I know? I averaged low 40 with LBL and learned to solve roughly 2 months ago.


Average of 100: 44.59
PB: 30.11 - wasted 5 sec with lockup, reversing 3 moves because wrong PLL, U & U’ turns and cube rotations trying to figure out what PLL. Almost sub 30 PB. It was a Ub :[
Top 5: 30.11 / 30.24 / 32.16 / 32.27 / 33.54
All set yesterday when I did average of 100

I hope all the information I listed is clear and not overwhelming in any form. Thank you for reading through this I appreciate all support and feedback.

 

[dskids]

A couple thoughts before answering your primary question. First off, I think the easiest improvement to PLL you could make right now is learn T perm and Y perm, so you can do a true 2-look PLL (T or Y will permute corners, then U, H, Z for edges). It sounds like the A/E perm you are using potentially requires multiple iterations, and wastes additional recognition time as you check to see if it gave you one of your desired edge perms after each iteration.

Now to answer your question, learning full PLL at your stage will probably slow you down quite a bit at first, as you are initially not used to analyzing all those different PLL cases. My recommendation if you want to dive in to full PLL would be to start out just doing PLL scrambles (use an app or cstimer to generate scrambles that preserve F2L and OLL), and just start learning to recognize each case. Then once you know what they all look like, start learning the algs.

Once you get all the recognition and algs down, you will save whatever amount of time it took you to recognize and execute one of your 2-look PLLs. Anywhere from 2-5 seconds depending on your speed?

 

[Chree]

Absolutely Learn Full PLL. Gotta emphasize the point dskids made, because he's absolutely right: your times will suffer for a little while. But keep drilling the algs, and spend some time figuring out how to recognize the cases. Full PLL quickly becomes essential to good times.

As a side note: I'm a little confused, because A Perm and E perm are 2 entirely different cases, and your post seems to conflate the two. So if you get to PLL and you do not see any headlights, are you doing A perm twice? Or E Perm once [x' (R U' R' D R U R' D')(R U R' D R U' R' D')]?

And @dskids: I agree that T and Y perm are a good combo for handling 2 Look PLL, but A and E also get the job done. You could also be True 2-Look with J and N. Or G and V. Obviously some combos are better than others, but all you need is 1 adjacent corners case and 1 opposite. During the brief time I did 2-Look PLL, I used A and E, thanks to Bob Burton: http://cubewhiz.com/2lookpll.php

I mean... either way... learn full PLL.

 

[Chilabuster]

I'm not sure if it's an A or E perm variation. The actual alg itself resembles an E Perm (to me anyway) a bit but I recognize it as an Ab perm setting headlights on front and the 2x1 bars on left and back. I use the A/E algorithm mentioned above with headlights facing me until I get to a perm I know (U, H, Z)

 

[Praetorian]

what you should do is learn Jb Perm (R U R' F') (R U R' U') (R' F R2) U' R'

and Y Perm F R U' R' U' (R U R' F') (R U R' U') (R' F R F')

whenever you do not see any headlights, perform the Y perm, when do you see headlights, perform J perm with the headlights on the left

this way your corners will be solved and you can get straight into any U Perm, H perm or Z perm

feel free to learn full PLL whenever you please, it'll help overall but you'll have to commit to learning each single one and memorizing each single one, which can decrease your times at first, but will get significantly better once they're memorized

your priority for learning new things in my opinion should be: Full PLL -> cross -> F2L cases -> Full OLL -> more F2L cases -> practice

if you have any questions about CFOP feel free to PM me i'll answer what I can

 

[dskids]

I'm not sure if it's an A or E perm variation. The actual alg itself resembles an E Perm (to me anyway) a bit but I recognize it as an Ab perm setting headlights on front and the 2x1 bars on left and back. I use the A/E algorithm mentioned above with headlights facing me until I get to a perm I know (U, H, Z)

Ah yeah, that's an Ab perm for sure. The way you execute it is actually the 3rd alg listed for Ab perm in the wiki. Also explains why it can take multiple iterations since A perm is a 3 iteration cycle just like U perm.

As Chree mentioned, there are several combinations of PLLs that are useful in a 2-look PLL scenario, but I still like Jb, T, and Y the best because they are easy to recognize, use R/U/F turns only, and are pretty trigger heavy so they are easy to memorize.

Good luck!

 

[mark49152]

Also explains why it can take multiple iterations since A perm is a 3 iteration cycle just like U perm.

It doesn't take multiple iterations to use an A perm to swap adjacent corners.

 

[PurpleBanana]

It doesn't take multiple iterations to use an A perm to swap adjacent corners.

Exactly. What's up with that?

 

[Chilabuster]

It doesn't take multiple iterations to use an A perm to swap adjacent corners.

From what I said, I perform the A perm until I get to a PLL I know. For example, after OLL, I'll get a G perm or N perm and don't know it so I perform an A twice if needed until I get to U, H, or Z. An example solve would probably help clarify.

 

[Chilabuster]

A couple thoughts before answering your primary question. First off, I think the easiest improvement to PLL you could make right now is learn T perm and Y perm, so you can do a true 2-look PLL (T or Y will permute corners, then U, H, Z for edges)

My first 2x2 came in last night so I had to learn T and Y for last layer so I can now scratch those off my list! Thank you. Now onto J and R perms.

 

[jaredye]

I average around a little less than 20s now and I spend 2-3 seconds on PLL on average, including recognition and AUF. The biggest gain is consistency. If you don't know all the algs you can get a few PBs, but your average will be really high. So even if you can't execute PLL algs very fast, after learning PLL your PLL time should be around 4 seconds consistently.

And quite frankly, I don't think you should care too much about your time at your stage. If you're afraid of getting bad time you will be unwilling to learn new things, which will hurt in the long run. I didn't try to time myself until I learned all OLL and PLL.

 

[JayT]

For me it probably saves about 3 seconds.

 

[Chilabuster]

First off, I think the easiest improvement to PLL you could make right now is learn T perm and Y perm, so you can do a true 2-look PLL (T or Y will permute corners, then U, H, Z for edges).

Once you get all the recognition and algs down, you will save whatever amount of time it took you to recognize and execute one of your 2-look PLLs. Anywhere from 2-5 seconds depending on your speed?

Thank you! My 2x2 came in last week so I had to learn both T and Y Perm so I had just learned them after reading your reply.

what you should do is learn Jb Perm (R U R' F') (R U R' U') (R' F R2) U' R'

and Y Perm F R U' R' U' (R U R' F') (R U R' U') (R' F R F')

whenever you do not see any headlights, perform the Y perm, when do you see headlights, perform J perm with the headlights on the left

this way your corners will be solved and you can get straight into any U Perm, H perm or Z perm

Again, thank you! As mentioned above, I learned T and Y Perm. I am currently learning Jb Perm and afterwards will probably go with the F Perm since it's basically T with a setup move and slight difference at the end.

Thanks to everyone who helped out. All the advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Joel2274]

Absolutely learn full PLL. I was averaging around 40 seconds before I knew it and when I finished, I chopped off 10 seconds went down to 30 seconds averages. Also, its not like a thing where your times wont improve until you finish all of the PLL algs, the more you know, the faster you will be. Also, don't rush into it. I just learned the fastest algs that all the big times cubers were using, but some of them just didn't work out for me and now I am having to go back a relearn some more PLLs cuz I didn't take the time to find the one that works for me.

 

[TheFearlessPro]

Need help with this too. atm i use f2l + 4lll average anywhere from 20-35 seconds. Quick breakdown on a solve
Cross-2.5 seconds
F2L-12-13 seconds
OLL-5 seconds (2 look oll but it sometimes is 8 seconds)
PLL- About seven seconds
Total solve-26 seconds
So where can I learn full PLL, and which ones can I learn first?