I've been using rar shad bair a lot post patch. It's safer than shff bair across long distances (i.e. approaching). It's hard to explain, but you can't run at someone and shff bair because you are too vulnerable before the bair. You can rar shad bair though because of the air dodge, and combined with a running approach it's really nice. It gets Samus into her best range, midrange, applies shield pressure, etc. You can always bomb away after the shad if you feel like the bair isn't gonna work right. Either way, we need to start using some form of bair thing in the neutral post patch because it's so effective.
I've just been experimenting with dumb stuff a lot today, and I tried playing a bunch of matches without using grab or missiles. I doubt it's better, but my mentality was that a) grab sucks in the neutral already, and b) missiles aren't the best and the time spent missiling could be used to position Samus at midrange. I also kinda think missiles work more to relieve the pressure on the opponent than increase it because it gives them too much breathing room. In the end I used grabs to punish missed techs and landings only, but I never used it in the neutral. Missiles I never used. I did pretty well actually--I beat a really good random Mega Man on FG. He seemed like a tourney player.
This is crazy theorycraft, but I was also kind of thinking that maybe Samus should just focus on shield pressure only as a counter to shields instead of using grab as a counter to shields like every other character. Samus' grab is terrible (I've been noticing it more lately) but our shield pressure game is great, so even if we don't break shields, we can pressure them enough to where they're negated in neutral.
Edit: Also I'm incredibly frustrated right now because every time I read any kind of viability thread I see people spewing crap about Samus. "I have literally never seen jab, usmash, dash attack, or fair connect and LOL samus mains think she isn't the worst character lol". That's the most recent. I wish we could do more about people who give their opinion of Samus without knowing anything about her. Why does it happen to Samus and not other characters like WFT, Bowser, DDD, Ganon... Every time I ague like 5 people all saying the same false statements pile on me. Part of the reason I play low tiers in games is because I like seeing people's opinions progress from "that character sucks" to "this character has things going for her", but people's opinions of Samus are getting worse even as she gets buffed and her meta progresses, as opposed to characters with stagnant meta that don't get buffed never being considered anything but high low tier or low mid tier.
How can people still think that Samus is the worst. It makes me feel even worse when i remember ZELDA is in this game. Arghhh
