Official Ask Anyone Frame Things Thread

[squirrels4ev]

There is no special property to Link’s ledge grab apart from its shorter animation. If another character has already grabbed the ledge, Link cannot grab it, even if it’s only been 1 frame.

Just to clarify, when you say grabbed the ledge, is that when a character enters CliffCatch?

 

[Kadano]

Just to clarify, when you say grabbed the ledge, is that when a character enters CliffCatch?

Yes.

 

[dude it's raining]

I would check this myself, but I don't have a GC/Wii, and my graphics card is malfunctioning for dolphin.
I'm trying to list accurate frame data about all kinds of ways of platform dropping.
I've studied the Shai dropping guide, as well as play/paused my way through this video, but things just aren't adding up.

Is there lag after a normal platform drop before you are actionable? I'm pretty sure shield dropping leaves you actionable frame 1, but is that an advantage over normal platform dropping?

EDIT: I found Kadano's post here, which implies that you are actionable frame 1 from a normal platform drop.

EDIT2: Another question: Is there frame data for item catching? Magus's post here has expired images (it would be cool to know what they included), and he mentions that aerial item catching is frame 1, but Peach's ground item catch has 1 frame lag, and Gdorf's has 2. I don't think this is in m2k's info dump. I'd also like to know how long the animations take before actionability.
I also have a Q about PM: Is there an image of the hitbox (or whatever it is) that determines footstool range?

 

[tauKhan]

@ Kadano , @ schmooblidon
How long is the animation that happens when you slide off a platform backwards in shield, before you go into tumble? Is any action possible during it? (I've only managed to ff at the very beginning of the animation so far)

 

[schmooblidon]

@ Kadano , @ schmooblidon
How long is the animation that happens when you slide off a platform backwards in shield, before you go into tumble? Is any action possible during it? (I've only managed to ff at the very beginning of the animation so far)

Named Missfoot, it's 26 frames long. You cannot perform anything other than fastfall in this state. If you land within those 26 frames, you will just get an Impact Land. On frame 27+, you go into DamageFall (tumble) and landing while in this state will cause a knockdown (tech-able). You can however aerial, doublejump, zair or just tap a direction to cancel it.

 

[tauKhan]

Named Missfoot, it's 26 frames long. You cannot perform anything other than fastfall in this state. If you land within those 26 frames, you will just get an Impact Land. On frame 27+, you go into DamageFall (tumble) and landing while in this state will cause a knockdown (tech-able). You can however aerial, doublejump, zair or just tap a direction to cancel it.

You can't cancel missfoot right? Also I was able to ff right at the start, have you looked into it?

 

[schmooblidon]

You can only cancel it by grabbing the ledge (or getting hit obvsly). I dunno what you mean, you can fastfall on missfoot frame 3 or later, it doesn't change the frame length of it though.

 

[tauKhan]

hmm later? I tried ffing and could only ff at the very beginning, not at the middle. That's why I brought it up. And yeah it doesn't change the frame length, knew that already.

Edit: you're right, it's possible to ff during the missfoot.

 

[schmooblidon]

Well at least for me I can fastfall whenever, even in tumble. It's a lot easier to notice with floaties like samus.

Anyone know what's goin on here with sheiks lightshield

http://gfycat.com/FortunateGrimyBluetickcoonhound

I can't reproduce it at all. Please tell me it's just a glitch, so I can stop losing sleep.

 

[dude it's raining]

Well at least for me I can fastfall whenever, even in tumble. It's a lot easier to notice with floaties like samus.

Anyone know what's goin on here with sheiks lightshield

http://gfycat.com/FortunateGrimyBluetickcoonhound

I can't reproduce it at all. Please tell me it's just a glitch, so I can stop losing sleep.

It looks like Sheik might've edge canceled the bair into a light shield, so maybe the edge cancel did weird stuff to the ECB?

 

[tauKhan]

@ schmooblidon @ Kadano ,
I think I found a way to enlarge powershield reflect: while holding a pressing digital r + z made me able to ps higher lasers than I could via just pressing shield. Normally when lightshielding the graphics of ps reflect appear bigger (At least what I think is the ps bubble), but it doesn't work. However it seems it can be activated by digital shield press simultaneously. Could you look into this?

Edit: @ Kadano don't just like this , I wanna know if this actually works, my testing methods are unreliable.

Edit2: Okay I think this works, I can lightps falco lasers with dk while facing towards them
Btw that clip you posted @ schmooblidon was the inspiration, didn't figure out how that happened, but got something out of it.

Edit3:

Also, I was / am busy watching Apex and had a couple of friends come over to watch the stream and play some Melee; why are you expecting so much from me at times like these … of course I was gonna reply to stuff like this.

I'm so sorry that I pressured you to reply quickly, I just got too hyped, and the uncertainty was killing me. Guess I should trust in myself. I realize there was no hurry. Huge thanks for the reply though.

 

[schmooblidon]

@ schmooblidon @ Kadano ,
I think I found a way to enlarge powershield reflect: while holding a pressing digital r + z made me able to ps higher lasers than I could via just pressing shield. Normally when lightshielding the graphics of ps reflect appear bigger (At least what I think is the ps bubble), but it doesn't work. However it seems it can be activated by digital shield press simultaneously. Could you look into this?

Edit: @ Kadano don't just like this , I wanna know if this actually works, my testing methods are unreliable.

Edit2: Okay I think this works, I can lightps falco lasers with dk while facing towards them
Btw that clip you posted @ schmooblidon was the inspiration, didn't figure out how that happened, but got something out of it.

Holy ****. There was the light powershield tech discovered a few months ago, but it only had a large powershield on frames 3+, which doesn't reflect projectiles.

This is super hard to test for me, as I don't have dolphin to use frame advance, and melee own frame advance uses Z. But I reflect lasers with DK too.

I have managed to pause it on frame 1 of GuardReflect and it being as big as a lightshield. Still unsure of the specific inputs.

 

[tauKhan]

There was the light powershield tech discovered a few months ago, but it only had a large powershield on frames 3+, which doesn't reflect projectiles.
I have managed to pause it on frame 1 of GuardReflect and it being as big as a lightshield. Still unsure of the specific inputs.

Really, didn't hear about that, link? I'm interested. Also for me it looks like the ps bubble scales proportionally similarly to z-shield / full shield.

 

[schmooblidon]

https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/2rkczd/light_powershield_possibly_new_technique/

I have a sneaky suspicion that it's extending the powershield projectile window, but probably not. Really wish I could use dolphin atm, constantly grabbing is doing my head in.

edit: I did the lightshield mod where you only shield with a hard press, and I can't seem to reflect projectiles. Turned it back to default and I could do them again. Making me think it has something to do with pressing R's lightshield at some point.

edit2: waiiiit a second. you can powershield them with a standard full press. It is just spacing... have I just been bull****ting this whole time.

 

[tauKhan]

edit2: waiiiit a second. you can powershield them with a standard full press. It is just spacing... have I just been bull****ting this whole time.

I went to fod, rolled to edge with fox, rolled to another one with dk, held a with dk. Tried to ps standing lasers by pausing when laser was close to shield. When I pause buffered z+R, I got ps every time, while I only managed once to ps with only R, something must be different. Also I think I managed to light ps reflect a laser with only L by trigger tricking L to a certain depth and pressing the L in a certain way. I'm not sure how, and I was really inconsistent, but it seems possible to me.

 

[Kadano]

@ dude it's raining

Platform drops

”N→” = control stick to the right, “C” = C-stick to the south east notch (down and right)
“⇒” = next frame / afterwards
Wait = idle waiting animation, Guard = shield, Landing = impact landing animation, LandingAir = AttackAir landing lag
Frames are counted starting with the first actionable one at which inputs are entered and including Pass 0 (the first frame after which you are airborne and actionable again)

	Standard drop	Shield drop (easy, straight down)	Shield drop (perfect/TAS, straight down)	Isai drop	Shai drop 1=4	Shai drop 2	Shai drop 3
Inputs:	N↓¹	L/R/Z+N↓²	L/R/Z+N↓³	N→(walk)⇒N↓	N↓⇒L/R/Z+N↓	N⇒L/R/Z+N	N→⇒L/R/Z+N
From Wait :	4 frames	5 frames	2 frames	5 frames	5 frames	5 frames	6 frames
From Guard:	19 frames	5 frames	1 frame	20 frames	20 frames	20 frames	21 frames
From Landing :	29 frames	2 frames	2 frames	5 frames	2 frames	2 frames	2 frames
From LandingAir :	4 frames	2 frames	2 frames	5 frames	2 frames	2 frames	2 frames

Lag from grounded attacks should always have the same lag amounts as LandingAir.

Z-Powershield

@ T tauKhan Amazing find! I can confirm the A+Z+R huge powershielding. Both for physical attacks and projectiles. For a Peach standing in Wait and trying to poweshield Falco’s standing laser, I got a frame window of 3 for the normal powershield and 4 for the “superpowershield”. That was at a random position, I think it might provide considerably more benefit in other situations. Especially for Marth, he might be able to overcome his shield bubble misalignment bug by using this.

I believe this works because Z is the first input the game checks for when determining shield bubble size. For example, when you hold Z and lightshield, pressing L/R to different levels (even digital) does not alter shield bubble size. Because of this, I believe that holding down A to avoid grabbing is necessary to get the large powershield without grabbing. I also tried to use digital R and slight L/R analog levels with Dolphin TAS input (doing so is impossible with vanilla GCCs due to the L/R potentiometers being connected to the triggers), but this did not cause large powershields.

Also, I was / am busy watching Apex and had a couple of friends come over to watch the stream and play some Melee; why are you expecting so much from me at times like these … of course I was gonna reply to stuff like this.

@ schmooblidon you don’t use Dolphin? How do you pipe the frames from Gamecube / Wii to the gfycats you post? Do you capture your session and screencap the individual frames? (Slightly offtopic but I think this is interesting for many people who read this thread.)

I don’t have anything on the Sheik megashield yet. I will fiddle with it when I have more time, it takes probably very long to replicate. Just one wild guess: It seems obvious that the rising platform was the cause, but the Jigglypuff being in shield might have something to do with it as well. Maybe the collision detection for Samus’ fair somehow added Jigglypuff’s shield health to Sheik’s?

[hr][/hr]

¹The crouch area in this control stick input-output diagram triggers a standard platform drop:

²After angling the shield downwards for 4 frames, the shield drop area on frames 5-6 will include the entire former blue “spot dodge” zone as well as the red “shield drop” zone in the lower diagram. Upper is for frames 5-6 of angling, lower is for 1-4.

³Perfect shield drops use the tiny red zone you can see in the diagram above (labeled “shield drop”).

 

[schmooblidon]

Awesome post dude. New tech hype!

I do use dolphin, but my motherboard died the other day and my backup laptop is complete ass.

 

[Ganreizu]

Wow. Absolutely groundbreaking new tech, and it's so fitting that it was discovered during the event with the highest level of melee gameplay ever. 10 more years!

Some questions about lightps:

Do you have to do Z -> R quickly similar to jump cancel grab or do you just hold A -> Z and then press R to powershield? If i'm holding A does that mean i'm forced to throw out a move before i do this?

 

[Malart]

Hey just want to point out that if you hit z on the same frame as R or L, frame one after shield comes out, you get the full lightshield with the GuardReflect. 'A' actually isn't needed. Yay ( ^_^)

 

[Malart]

Also, just wanna say, this is amazing. You can powershield stuff a bazillion light years away. CF can powershield falco (and probably Peach) D-smash on platform from underneath on battlefield lols. Mango did predict that powershielding would be the next big thing.

 

[Malart]

Also, to elaborate, I should add that I reset the controller with the trigger I'm using held almost all the way down. I go to a full shield, then let up just a little bit. That ensures that when I push the trigger down, the shield comes out immediately before the full press, letting me time the 'z' input much easier.

 

[tauKhan]

Wow. Absolutely groundbreaking new tech, and it's so fitting that it was discovered during the event with the highest level of melee gameplay ever. 10 more years!

Some questions about lightps:

Do you have to do Z -> R quickly similar to jump cancel grab or do you just hold A -> Z and then press R to powershield? If i'm holding A does that mean i'm forced to throw out a move before i do this?

I believe you have to press z +R on the same frame for this to work for reflecting projectiles, on frame 2 of lightshield only physical ps can be activated. The timing feels pretty hard for me to get actually, because R/L are triggers and z is a button. You can usually hold a after actions, and lags, such as landing, wd, aerials, etc. but it feels a bit limiting to me.

@ Malart Of course a isn't really necessary, but if you want to actually time these from wait or dash, and not just do out of lags, you have to be holding a or you'll grab.

 

[hectohertz]

@ dude it's raining

Platform drops

”N→” = control stick to the right, “C” = C-stick to the south east notch (down and right)
“⇒” = next frame / afterwards
Wait = idle waiting animation, Guard = shield, Landing = impact landing animation, LandingAir = AttackAir landing lag
Frames are counted starting with the first actionable one at which inputs are entered and including Pass 0 (the first frame after which you are airborne and actionable again)

|Standard drop|Shield drop (easy)|Shield drop (perfect)|Isai drop| Shai drop 1=4 | Shai drop 2 | Shai drop 3
Inputs:|N↓¹|L/R/Z+N↓²|L/R/Z+N↓³|N→(walk)⇒N↓|N↓⇒L/R/Z+N↓|N⇒L/R/Z+N|N→⇒L/R/Z+N
From Wait :|4 frames|5 frames| 2 frames |5 frames|5 frames|5 frames|6 frames
From Guard :|19 frames|5 frames| 1 frame |20 frames|20 frames|20 frames|21 frames
From Landing :|29 frames| 2 frames | 2 frames |5 frames| 2 frames | 2 frames | 2 frames
From LandingAir :|4 frames| 2 frames | 2 frames |5 frames| 2 frames | 2 frames | 2 frames

Lag from grounded attacks should always have the same lag amounts as LandingAir.

Lightpowershield

@ T tauKhan Amazing find! I can confirm the A+Z+R huge powershielding. Both for physical attacks and projectiles. For a Peach standing in Wait and trying to poweshield Falco’s standing laser, I got a frame window of 3 for the normal powershield and 4 for the “superpowershield”. That was at a random position, I think it might provide considerably more benefit in other situations. Especially for Marth, he might be able to overcome his shield bubble misalignment bug by using this.

I believe this works because Z is the first input the game checks for when determining shield bubble size. For example, when you hold Z and lightshield, pressing L/R to different levels (even digital) does not alter shield bubble size. Because of this, I believe that holding down A to avoid grabbing is necessary to get the large powershield without grabbing. I also tried to use digital R and slight L/R analog levels with Dolphin TAS input (doing so is impossible with vanilla GCCs due to the L/R potentiometers being connected to the triggers), but this did not cause large powershields.

Also, I was / am busy watching Apex and had a couple of friends come over to watch the stream and play some Melee; why are you expecting so much from me at times like these … of course I was gonna reply to stuff like this.

@ schmooblidon you don’t use Dolphin? How do you pipe the frames from Gamecube / Wii to the gfycats you post? Do you capture your session and screencap the individual frames? (Slightly offtopic but I think this is interesting for many people who read this thread.)

I don’t have anything on the Sheik megashield yet. I will fiddle with it when I have more time, it takes probably very long to replicate. Just one wild guess: It seems obvious that the rising platform was the cause, but the Jigglypuff being in shield might have something to do with it as well. Maybe the collision detection for Samus’ fair somehow added Jigglypuff’s shield health to Sheik’s?

¹The crouch area in this control stick input-output diagram triggers a standard platform drop:

²After angling the shield downwards for 4 frames, the shield drop area on the fifth frame will include the entire blue “spot dodge” zone as well as the red “shield drop” zone in this diagram (I’ll create a proper one sometime soon):

³Perfect shield drops use the tiny red zone you can see in the diagram above (labeled “shield drop”).

congrats guys. this is gamechanging. new technology after all these years. excited to play with this soon :D

powerlightshielding? superpowershield? kadano-shielding?

 

[tauKhan]

powerlightshielding? superpowershield? kadano-shielding?

It would be named after me, but no names please just lightpowershield, lps or zPs. Let's be more sensible than that.
@ Malart I too find easier to lps by tricker tricking and holding R almost fully pressed before lpsing.

Also I must admit that I smiled a bit when @Armada called powershielding as the answer to falcos in the interview within 36 hours of the finding of the lps, probably having no idea about it.

 

[Bones0]

This is cool and all, but as a Falco main I think everyone should just dismiss this as something that's too hard to ever be applicable. Just like shield dropping and pivots. It's okay if someone digs this stuff up a few years from now, I'm just trying to buy myself some time. Thanks.

 

[Vestboy_Myst]

@ dude it's raining

Platform drops

”N→” = control stick to the right, “C” = C-stick to the south east notch (down and right)
“⇒” = next frame / afterwards
Wait = idle waiting animation, Guard = shield, Landing = impact landing animation, LandingAir = AttackAir landing lag
Frames are counted starting with the first actionable one at which inputs are entered and including Pass 0 (the first frame after which you are airborne and actionable again)

|Standard drop|Shield drop (easy)|Shield drop (perfect)|Isai drop| Shai drop 1=4 | Shai drop 2 | Shai drop 3
Inputs:|N↓¹|L/R/Z+N↓²|L/R/Z+N↓³|N→(walk)⇒N↓|N↓⇒L/R/Z+N↓|N⇒L/R/Z+N|N→⇒L/R/Z+N
From Wait :|4 frames|5 frames| 2 frames |5 frames|5 frames|5 frames|6 frames
From Guard :|19 frames|5 frames| 1 frame |20 frames|20 frames|20 frames|21 frames
From Landing :|29 frames| 2 frames | 2 frames |5 frames| 2 frames | 2 frames | 2 frames
From LandingAir :|4 frames| 2 frames | 2 frames |5 frames| 2 frames | 2 frames | 2 frames

Lag from grounded attacks should always have the same lag amounts as LandingAir.

Lightpowershield

@ T tauKhan Amazing find! I can confirm the A+Z+R huge powershielding. Both for physical attacks and projectiles. For a Peach standing in Wait and trying to poweshield Falco’s standing laser, I got a frame window of 3 for the normal powershield and 4 for the “superpowershield”. That was at a random position, I think it might provide considerably more benefit in other situations. Especially for Marth, he might be able to overcome his shield bubble misalignment bug by using this.

I believe this works because Z is the first input the game checks for when determining shield bubble size. For example, when you hold Z and lightshield, pressing L/R to different levels (even digital) does not alter shield bubble size. Because of this, I believe that holding down A to avoid grabbing is necessary to get the large powershield without grabbing. I also tried to use digital R and slight L/R analog levels with Dolphin TAS input (doing so is impossible with vanilla GCCs due to the L/R potentiometers being connected to the triggers), but this did not cause large powershields.

Also, I was / am busy watching Apex and had a couple of friends come over to watch the stream and play some Melee; why are you expecting so much from me at times like these … of course I was gonna reply to stuff like this.

@ schmooblidon you don’t use Dolphin? How do you pipe the frames from Gamecube / Wii to the gfycats you post? Do you capture your session and screencap the individual frames? (Slightly offtopic but I think this is interesting for many people who read this thread.)

I don’t have anything on the Sheik megashield yet. I will fiddle with it when I have more time, it takes probably very long to replicate. Just one wild guess: It seems obvious that the rising platform was the cause, but the Jigglypuff being in shield might have something to do with it as well. Maybe the collision detection for Samus’ fair somehow added Jigglypuff’s shield health to Sheik’s?

¹The crouch area in this control stick input-output diagram triggers a standard platform drop:

²After angling the shield downwards for 4 frames, the shield drop area on the fifth frame will include the entire blue “spot dodge” zone as well as the red “shield drop” zone in this diagram (I’ll create a proper one sometime soon):

³Perfect shield drops use the tiny red zone you can see in the diagram above (labeled “shield drop”).

very interesting find, thank you for the work on this

 

[Kadano]

Powershield (PS)
The powershield technique consists of two sub-phenomena that both have their own merits over the normal shield:
1. Powershield-projectile, from now on abbreviated as PSP.
2. Powershield-attack, from now on abbreviated as PSA.
Equally, SP is simply shield against projectiles and SA is shield against attacks.

Both are only available for digital shoulder button inputs—in other words, you need to fully depress the L or R triggers, beyond the click sound / tactile feedback. “Digital press” of either L or R will be abbreviated as “DP”, opposed to “AP” (analog press).
Analog inputs alone can never trigger powershield effects.
In general, PSP happens when an incoming projectile connects with your powershield sphere (PSS, see image below) during the first two frames of shielding. For PSA, it’s the first four frames, and the entire shield bubble works.

However, by transitioning between analog and digital shield inputs or combining them in some way, different frame windows, PSS sizes and PS behaviors are possible.

1. Analog→digital transition powershield (ADT-PS), first described in the ssbwiki article, section 2.1
2. Digital→analog transition powershield (DAT-PS), recently described as “light powershield”, apparently discovered by @The Phenom.
3. Z+digital powershield (Z-PS), recently discovered by @ T tauKhan . (So far also called lightpowershield, but I think Z-PS is better to avoid ambiguity. I’m open for term discussion, though.)

PS type→	Normal PS	ADT-PS	DAT-PS	Z-PS
PSP window after DP	1-2	1-2	1-2	1-2
PSA window after DP	1-4	3-4	1-4	1-4
SP downtime after DP	none	none	none	none
SA downtime after DP	none	1-2	none	none
PSS size	smallest	huge (initial PSP)	huge	huge
PSS size increase at frame	never	never	3	1
PSS size decrease at frame	never	3	never	never
PSA shield stun	lowest	inexistent (you get hit)	highest	highest

Normal powershield (N-PS) happens when you transition from one frame of not pressing L/R/Z at all to pressing L or R down to digital level at the next.

ADT-PS happens when you transition from analog shield to digital shield after the first frame of shielding. This usually happens when you don’t depress the shoulder triggers quickly enough and is, due to its drawbacks, an input you want to avoid in general. By either slightly depressing the triggers when plugging in your controller or resetting or modifying your controller physically, you can lower the analog distance you need to pass in less than one frame, which helps avoiding ADT-shields.

DAT-PS increases the range you can PSA from, but as described in the reddit thread, the benefit is only notable and feasible if you modify your controller and soft-modify the threshold for one of the triggers.

Z-PS drastically increases the frame window and range for both PSP and PSA. The Z input shield size (largest possible lightshield) takes priority over the L/R inputs when the game determines your shield size. At the same time, the DP is still required for activating the GuardReflect animation, and Z must be pressed on the very same frame. However, pressing Z will cause a grab unless the A input responsible for that is already active.
Thus, the necessary inputs for Z-PS are:
1. Keeping A pressed (can be done during wavedash lag, during the frames 1-3 of a dash that was not done out of turn if the stick is not held forward and during RunBrake , and these are just a few examples)
2. Pressing DP and Z at the same frame

There also used to be a subtype called "ADT-Z-PS" here, but T tauKhan informed me that it was redundant and the same thing as ADT-PS, which I confirmed with a test, so I deleted this entry from the table.

PSS size increase (for DAT-PS and Z-PS) diagram:

This is Marth, by the way.
You powershield an attack when the first of your collision bubbles it connects with is the inner powershield sphere. The dramatic PSS size increase you can see above enables you to powershield any attack that would have, with normal PS, connected with one of your collision bubbles outside of the PSS. For Marth, this means that he can powershield attacks aiming at his feet or his head only with Z-PS, not with N-PS.

Powershield stun and knockback comparison

Incoming attack: Falco’s shine. Shielded by Marth with all kinds of shields. Pushback amounts are not 100% precise and only approximations (from measuring visual distance), see Magus420’s post.

Shield type	N-PS	Z-PS	Digital shield	Strongest analog shield	lightest analog shield	Z shield
Shield hitlag	5	5	5	5	5	5
Shield stun	5	11	5	5	11	11
Pushback	130	490	44	44	236	222
Pushback % of digital shield	295%	1114%	100%	100%	536%	504%

Visual pushback comparison:

Hitlag is counted as [iterations of GuardDamage 0 ].
Hitstun counts all frames of GuardDamage beyond that.
Pushback is not measured in in-game units as it ideally should be, but in pixels from an arbitrary camera position.

Applications
For PSA, you usually want to do an N-PS so that you receive the least amount of shield stun. If your N-PS does not protect against the incoming attack properly (due to small shield size from shield damage, for example), Z-PS and, to a lesser degree, DAT-PS are the safer choice.
For PSP, you do not receive any shield stun, so Z-PS is the most effective type of powershield for reflecting projectiles, however also the most impractical and difficult to input (as you need to hold down A followed by hitting L/R and Z at the same frame).
In most situations, Z-PS increases the frame window for reflecting a projectile by 1. Additionally, it enables you to PSP when you would not have been able to do so at all with N-PS.

Example 1: Z-PS against Falco’s highest short hop laser (SHL)
If Falco shoots a laser like this, he will not even hit Marth if he keeps standing:

In this situation, Marth’s best choice would easily be to dash towards Falco and jump-cancel grab (JC grab) him. However, I will use this to showcase how absurdly large the Z-PS PSS is—Falco’s lasers are very easy to place at a certain height and work well for demonstrating this.

If Marth tries to PSP this laser with N-PS, this happens:
Embed is deprecated, but can still be viewed through archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20150215220050/http://gfycat.com/FilthyImperfectGarpike
(Slow these down or frame advance after pausing them with the controls at the bottom right.)
As you can see, the laser goes way above Marth’s shield.

With Z-PS, it works perfectly:
Embed is deprecated, but can still be viewed through archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20150218000549/http://gfycat.com/CalmPoliticalConch

Example 2: Z-PS against Falco’s lowest SHL
Marth has a weird shield that doesn’t follow his body initially. This enables him to easily powershield lasers by crouching under them if they are being shot at medium height, but makes low lasers very hard for him to reflect.
See this comparison of his digital shield out of crouch with Falco’s:

Falco’s lowest SHLs are at the same height as a crouching Marth’s head. Most of the time, it is not even possible for Marth to N-PS these lasers from a crouch—they hit either his head or the outer shield ring before they can touch the inner powershield sphere.

Due to the high traveling speed of lasers, the distance between Marth and Falco determines the exact frame window for the powershield input. Why, you ask? Because PSP requires an incoming projectile to connect with your PSS before connecting with your outer shield ring or your hurtbox on the frames before. When the width of your hurtbox + your outer shield ring at a given laser height exceed the distance the laser moves in one frame, it is impossible to reflect it. If the sum of hurtbox width and outer ring width is 1/8th less than the laser’s Δx, it’s only possible in approximately every 8th case of random spacing to reflect it—and I’m assuming frame perfection here.

What are the practical implications of this, you ask? Simply put, Marth cannot expect to powershield low Falco lasers out of crouch by doing a normal powershield. Most of the time, it’s a 0-frame window.

Still, to cover those cases where Falco shoots higher lasers, crouching PS provides a strong benefit for Marth, so ideally he’d find a way to PS the lowest lasers as well. Which is precisely what Z-PS enables him to do.

This is what happens if Marth tries to N-PS from a crouch:
Embed is deprecated, but can still be viewed through archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20150215220225/http://gfycat.com/PowerfulPeskyAchillestang

By going for Z-PS instead, the frame window for the PS input increases from 0 to 1:
Embed is deprecated, but can still be viewed through archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20150215220407/http://gfycat.com:80/WelldocumentedHoarseDuiker

For reference, standing N-PS is a one-frame window as well:
Embed is deprecated, but can still be viewed through archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20150215220035/http://gfycat.com/BoringImpureIndianpalmsquirrel

And standing Z-PS is a two-frame window:
Gfycat is permanently down, sadly this one was not archived
http://gfycat.com/LeadingHandsomeBernesemountaindog



Note that there are a few imperfections in the Z-PS gfycats: the in-game frame counter is off by one or two frames and some inputs might be off by one frame. I had to transition from develop mode’s frame advance to Dolphin’s frame advance and back, and because of Dolphin’s two frames delay, it was hard working with that precisely.

Setups
Dash: during a dash that is not done from a dashdance, you can hold A during the first 4 frames (while having the control stick at a neutral position). This was found by @ schmooblidon and is the fastest A buffer for Z-PS.
Wavedash: you can start holding A at any time of the 10 frames landing lag.

Follow-up posts
Magus on technical data and comparisons between shield types: http://smashboards.com/posts/18521148

Spoiler: Magus post

On the shield stun and pushback stuff:

Variable Shield Input
Digital/Max Analog = 1
Z Shield = 0.35
Min Analog = 0.30714 (43/140)
Shield Stun = {[floor(Damage) * (Analog Effect + 0.3)] * 1.5} + 2
-- Analog Effect = 0.65 * {1 - [(Analog Shield - 0.3) / 0.7]}
--- Yoshi is unaffected by shield stun
--- NOTE: Due to the way the game calculates the animation speed for the 20 frame stun animation [(Animation Frames + 0.1) / ShieldStun], it causes the actual resulting stun time to be 1 less than calculated shieldstun if:
20.1 / ShieldStun * floor{ShieldStun} >= 20
On full 1.00 shield input that happens with damages of 20,29,40, 49, 58, and 60 for example.

Spoiler

80092DA0:  C084028C    lfs    f4,652(r4)    # f4=1.5
80092DA4:  EC421828    fsubs    f2,f2,f3    # f2=Damage (floored). last step of an int->float cast
80092DA8:  C0040290    lfs    f0,656(r4)    # f0=2
80092DAC:  807D0028    lwz    r3,40(r29)
80092DB0:  EC220072    fmuls    f1,f2,f1    # f1=0.3 on hard shield
80092DB4:  EFE4007A    fmadds    f31,f4,f1,f0

Analog  f1
-----------------
0.30714 0.943367
0.35    0.903571
0.50    0.764285
0.65    0.625
1.00    0.300

Defender Shield KB = {[floor(Damage) * (Defender Analog Effect + 0.09)] + 0.4} * X
-- Defender Analog Effect = 0.195 * {1 - [(Analog Shield - 0.3) / 0.7]}
-- X = 0.6 for Normal, 1 for Powershield
--- Maximum = 2
Defender (Yoshi) Shield KB = (floor(Damage) * Defender Analog Effect) + 0.4
-- Defender Analog Effect = 0.3 * {1 - [(Analog Shield - 0.3) / 0.7]}
--- Maximum = n/a
Attacker Shield KB = (floor(Damage) * Attacker Analog Effect) + 0.02
-- Attacker Analog Effect = (Analog Shield - 0.3) * 0.1]
--- Maximum = n/a

Spoiler

Min Shield (0.307143)

Damage  Defendr Attackr
-------------------------
01      0.40981 0.0207143
02      0.57961 0.0214286
03      0.74942 0.0221429

Defender Shield KB = (Damage * 0.169806) + 0.24
Attacker Shield KB = (Damage * 0.0007143) + 0.02

Z Shield (0.35)

Damage  Defendr Attackr
-------------------------
01      0.40264 0.025
02      0.56529 0.030
03      0.72793 0.035
04      0.89057 0.040
05      1.05321 0.045

Defender Shield KB = (Damage * 0.162644) + 0.24
Attacker Shield KB = (Damage * 0.005) + 0.02

Lightish Shield (0.50)

Damage  Defendr Attackr
-------------------------
01      0.37757 0.04
02      0.51514 0.06
03      0.65271 0.08

Defender Shield KB = (Damage * 0.137571) + 0.24
Attacker Shield KB = (Damage * 0.02) + 0.02

Half Shield (0.65)

Damage  Defendr Attackr
-------------------------
01      0.3525  0.055
02      0.4650  0.09
03      0.5775  0.125

Defender Shield KB = (Damage * 0.1125) + 0.24
Attacker Shield KB = (Damage * 0.035) + 0.02

Hard Shield (1.0)

Damage  Defendr Attackr
-------------------------
01      0.294   0.090
02      0.348   0.160
03      0.402   0.230
04      0.456   0.300
05      0.510   0.370
06      0.564   0.440
07      0.618   0.510
08      0.672   0.580
09      0.726   0.650
10      0.780   0.720
11      0.834   0.790
12      0.888   0.860
13      0.942   0.930
14      0.996   1.000
15      1.050   1.070
16      1.104   1.140
17      1.158   1.210
18      1.212   1.280
19      1.266   1.350
20      1.320   1.420
21      1.374   1.490
22      1.428   1.560
23      1.482   1.630
24      1.536   1.700
...
50      2.000   3.520

Defender Shield KB = (Damage * 0.054) + 0.24
Attacker Shield KB = (Damage * 0.07) + 0.02

Power Shield (1.0)

Damage  Defendr Attackr
-------------------------
01      0.490   0.090
02      0.580   0.160
03      0.670   0.230
04      0.760   0.300
05      0.850   0.370
06      0.940   0.440
07      1.030   0.510
08      1.120   0.580
09      1.210   0.650
10      1.300   0.720
11      1.390   0.790
12      1.480   0.860
13      1.570   0.930
14      1.660   1.000
15      1.750   1.070
16      1.840   1.140
17      1.930   1.210
18      2.000   1.280
19      2.000   1.350
20      2.000   1.420
21      2.000   1.490
22      2.000   1.560
23      2.000   1.630
24      2.000   1.700
...
50      2.000   3.520

Defender Shield KB = (Damage * 0.09) + 0.4
Attacker Shield KB = (Damage * 0.07) + 0.02

Yoshi (0.307143)

Damage  Defendr Attackr
-------------------------
01      0.69694 0.0207143
02      0.99388 0.0214286
03      1.29082 0.0221429
...
50      15.2469 0.0557142

Defender (Yoshi) Shield KB = (Damage * 0.296939) + 0.4
Attacker Shield KB = (Damage * 0.0007143) + 0.02

Yoshi (1.0)

Damage  Defendr Attackr
-------------------------
01      0.400   0.090
02      0.400   0.160
03      0.400   0.230
...
50      0.400   3.520

Defender (Yoshi) Shield KB = (Damage * 0) + 0.4
Attacker Shield KB = (Damage * 0.07) + 0.02

 

[Blitzus]

So the idea is that by holding the a button, Shielding and then pressing the Z button, you get an all round superior powershield?

 

[Vestboy_Myst]

Powershield (PS)
The powershield technique consists of two sub-phenomena that both have their own merits over the normal shield:
1. Powershield-projectile, from now on abbreviated as PSP.
2. Powershield-attack, from now on abbreviated as PSA.
Equally, SP is simply shield against projectiles and SA is shield against attacks.

Both are only available for digital shoulder button inputs—in other words, you need to fully depress the L or R triggers, beyond the click sound / tactile feedback. “Digital press” of either L or R will be abbreviated as “DP”, opposed to “AP” (analog press).
Analog inputs alone can never trigger powershield effects.
In general, PSP happens when an incoming projectile connects with your powershield sphere (PSS, see image below) during the first two frames of shielding. For PSA, it’s the first four frames.

However, by transitioning between analog and digital shield inputs or combining them in some way, different frame windows, PSS sizes and PS behaviors are possible.

1. Analog→digital transition powershield (ADT-PS), first described in the ssbwiki article, section 2.1
2. Digital→analog transition powershield (DAT-PS), recently described as “light powershield”, apparently discovered by @The Phenom.
3. Z+digital powershield (Z-PS), recently discovered by @ T tauKhan . (So far also called lightpowershield, but I think Z-PS is better to avoid ambiguity. I’m open for term discussion, though.)

PS type|Normal PS|ADT-PS|DAT-PS|Z-PS
PSP window after DP|1-2|1-2|1-2|1-2
PSA window after DP|1-4| 3-4 |1-4|1-4
SP downtime after DP|none|none|none|none
SA downtime after DP|none| 1-2 |none|none
PSS size|smallest|smallest| huge | huge
PSS size increase at frame| never | never | 3 | 1
PSA shield stun| lowest | lowest | highest | highest

Normal powershield (N-PS) happens when you transition from one frame of not pressing L/R/Z at all to pressing L or R down to digital level at the next.

ADT-PS happens when you transition from analog shield to digital shield after the first frame of shielding. This usually happens when you don’t depress the shoulder triggers quickly enough and, due to its drawbacks, an input you want to avoid in general. By either slightly depressing the triggers when plugging in your controller or resetting or modifying your controller physically, you can lower the analog distance you need to pass in less than one frame, which helps avoiding ADT-shields.

DAT-PS increases the range you can PSA from, but as described in the reddit thread, the benefit is only notable and feasible if you modify your controller and soft-modify the threshold for one of the triggers.

Z-PS drastically increases the frame window and range for both PSP and PSA. The Z input shield size (largest possible lightshield) takes priority over the L/R inputs when the game determines your shield size. At the same time, the DP is still required for activating the GuardReflect animation, and Z must be pressed on the very same frame. However, pressing Z will cause a grab unless the A input responsible for that is already active.
Thus, the necessary inputs for Z-PS are:
1. Keeping A pressed
2. Pressing DP and Z at the same frame

PSS size increase (for DAT-PS and Z-PS) diagram:

(This is Marth, by the way.)

Applications
For PSA, you usually want to do a N-PS so that you receive the least amount of shield stun. If your N-PS PSS does not protect against the incoming attack properly (due to small shield size from shield damage, for example), Z-PS and DAT-PS are the safer choice.
For PSP, you do not receive any shield stun, so Z-PS is the most effective type of powershield for reflecting projectiles.
In most situations, Z-PS increases the frame window for reflecting a projectile by 1. Additionally, it enables you to PSP when you would not have been able to do so at all with N-PS.

Example 1: Z-PS against Falco’s highest short hop laser (SHL)
If Falco shoots a laser like this, he will not even hit Marth if he keeps standing:

In this situation, Marth’s best choice would easily be to dash towards Falco and jump-cancel grab (JC grab) him. However, I will use this to showcase how absurdly large the Z-PS PSS is—Falco’s lasers are very easy to place at a certain hight and work well for demonstrating this.

If Marth tries to PSP this laser with N-PS, this happens:

http://gfycat.com/FilthyImperfectGarpike
(Slow these down or frame advance after pausing them with the controls at the bottom right.)
As you can see, the laser goes way above Marth’s shield.

With Z-PS, it works perfectly:

http://gfycat.com/CalmPoliticalConch

Example 2: Z-PS against Falco’s lowest SHL
Marth has a weird shield that doesn’t follow his body initially. This enables him to easily powershield lasers by crouching under them if they are being shot at medium height, but makes low lasers very hard for him to reflect.
See this comparison of his digital shield out of crouch with Falco’s:

Falco’s lowest SHLs are at the same height as a crouching Marth’s head. Most of the time, it is not even possible for Marth to N-PS these lasers from a crouch—they hit either his head or the outer shield ring before they can touch the inner powershield sphere.

Due to the high traveling speed of lasers, the distance between Marth and Falco determines the exact frame window for the powershield input. Why, you ask? Because PSP requires an incoming projectile to connect with your PSS before connecting with your outer shield ring or your hurtbox on the frames before. When the width of your hurtbox + your outer shield ring at a given laser height exceed the distance the laser moves in one frame, it is impossible to reflect it. If the sum of hurtbox width and outer ring width is 1/8th less than the laser’s Δx, it’s only possible in approximately every 8th case of random spacing to reflect it—and I’m assuming frame perfection here.

What are the practical implications of this, you ask? Simply put, Marth cannot expect to powershield low Falco lasers out of crouch by doing a normal powershield. Most of the time, it’s a 0-frame window.

Still, to cover those cases where Falco shoots higher lasers, crouching PS provides a strong benefit for Marth, so ideally he’d find a way to PS the lowest lasers as well. Which is precisely what Z-PS enables him to do.

This is what happens if Marth tries to N-PS from a crouch:

http://gfycat.com/PowerfulPeskyAchillestang

By going for Z-PS instead, the frame window for the PS input increases from 0 to 1:

http://gfycat.com/WelldocumentedHoarseDuiker

For reference, standing N-PS is a one-frame window as well:

http://gfycat.com/BoringImpureIndianpalmsquirrel

And standing Z-PS is a two-frame window:

http://gfycat.com/LeadingHandsomeBernesemountaindog



Note that there are a few imperfections in the Z-PS gfycats: the in-game frame counter is off by one or two frames and some inputs might be off by one frame. I had to transition from develop mode’s frame advance to Dolphin’s frame advance and back, and because of Dolphin’s two frames delay, it was hard working with that precisely.

incredibly thorough as always and scientific in your methods, A++ work.
this could be a decent game changer in certain mus

 

[flwns]

amazing work

 

[Limeee]

@ Kadano how does it affect yoshi?

 

[tauKhan]

@ Kadano Excellent work! And you just got liked by the god himself Magus420 . I feel zps could be very useful for chars that have poor shields, like pikachu, dk etc, and the fact that you can ps with smaller shields is huge. I've always felt that if I miss first ps or maybe two, it becomes very hard for the next ones. It also feels useful vs slow projectiles.

Should we make a separate thread for this?

 

[Strong Badam]

my brain is melting

 

[DrinkingFood]

Light shields in PM when

 

[tauKhan]

It's amazing how this wasn't found in 14 years by even when there are so many players around searching new things using even debug/dolphin and other tools. When you observe the first frames of light shield you can clearly see the ps bubbles. Since the activation depends on the full click, I though what if I just try to do light shield and digital simultaneuosly. This was just before apex pools started, got more hyped about this than the pools lol.

 

[Gentlefox]

Crazy stuff dude. I never would have figured that one out since you can't use Z in debug mode, and I do my testing on a Wii.

Shame (or salvation for Falco) about the requirement of holding A down though.

And if you can believe it, I have even MORE insane shield stuff coming soon, but further testing is needed first.

 

[flwns]

accidental duped post

 

[tauKhan]

Not really, z is needed to get lightshield + digital shield on the 1st frame, and this causes grab unless holding a. I can't think of any states you can get to in neutral that allow shielding but not attackin or grabbing.

 

[Sebovich]

Is the timing for the inputs of the z-ps similar to jc grab or boost grab?

 

[tauKhan]

No, to reflect projectiles you need to z + R/L on the same frame, not consequently like with jc grab.
I agree that zps is probably the best name, because of the existentence of the DAT-PS.