Smashboards

To elaborate further, this game gives a lot of chars the mobility/frame data/creative grab jank to sort of circumvent shield, and positioning is INCREDIBLY strong in this game thanks to Rage. This makes people scared to shield/act out of shield and it creates a very weird dynamic.

Held together by very thin glue, but together nonetheless.

I should also note that I think the patch that upped the shieldstun probably saved the **** out of this game tbh. Shield was even more ridiculous than it is now! Blocking will always be the best option in fighting games but the nature of what it takes to block perfectly against a game full of really fast burst options that challenge block (even with low grab reward) make it a lot more tame

Yeah that patch was great, but they also reduced shield push at the same time IIRC.
And yeah, the best characters circumvent having to deal with shield (Sonic's mobility/ability to side b cancel), rather than actually having things which beat shield. Only exception is high grab rewards, which due to shields being so good couple together into dangerous characters no matter what's wrong with them.

Yup! It's that very thin glue that holds this game together....somehow! You'd think it would fall apart but it's....starkly in contrast to what it seems! I genuinely do think the 6f of masked input lag really help circumvent shield being really dumb too, 8f in SFV makes Ken super godly.

I think as this game goes on people will start to apply more deep MU knowledge. Bowser and DK get a lot weaker when you stop sitting in shield and start exercising mobility options tbh, whereas some chars are weaker when you do the opposite.

Metagame stuff blahblahblah.

I genuinely do believe that only specific chars (Pac-Man comes to mind) actually totally lose to shield. I think the strength of positioning + the jank of Rage and the general meta direction dictates that no matter how bad your throws are, ppl are scared of moves that can just murder them due to rage and other circumstances.

I think Pac's been silently developing well as of late, but iono, maybe.

And although certain factors of shields were nerfed from Brawl, I still think Brawl's dynamism of defense play were a lot more sane.

I can't attest to Brawl's in detailed scope but I think Smash 4's end up fine as a result of its mechanics. After all, this isn't a discussion about Brawl specifically, perse! My main point is that shield will never dominate even when it should. On paper it's ridiculous but it all changes when you throw in the dynamicism of movement, burst options, and the general flow of Smash.

Because in Brawl, only one other defensive option was good, and it wasn't even overtly strong on all bar 5 characters. In this game all the defensive options are very strong. Allowing shield to give a player too many options compared to not shielding.

I guess I just haven't seen it as much as I'm not a Brawl player going into Smash 4, but they're very different entities and work entirely different for different reasons. I think if we were talking release date Smash 4 however I'd probably be saying "Yeah this is awful." They could patch in about 3-4f less shieldstun on everything and destroy this game

I can't claim it as any opinion but my own but how neutral works and how grabs work + Rage and general mechanics will always make shield a strong, not omnipotent option. It's probably the most akin to blocking in an actual fighting game, because there are chars with poor normals and blockstrings in traditional fighters as well, sadly.