How often do you go for shield breaks, HFtilt in particular? It is so good, but I really think its more of a hard read option than anything, and I dont see it used much in tournament.
Please keep the content coming! maybe something especific to matchups or good stage tips for ryu.
Thanks for the vid ideas!
Sheildbreaks can be more commonplace then you'd think but it is difficult to understand high level players shield habits within a 2/3 game set. There's many different situations but here's a general 50/50 gist for most players. At high percent (when shoryuken would kill), if you tilt someones shield they have 2 real options, let go of shield and risk getting hit (this includes rolling which ryu would catch as well as grab which shory would punish) or holding sheild and wait for shory to come out.
I have talked to Venom about this in person where we both said the same thing at the same time about our observations of general player habits
Low level -> Will drop shield most of the time so commit to the shoryuken
High level -> Will hold shield and respect shory so go for Hftilt
Mid level -> 50/50 - understand your opponent and gage how they might respond
Besides the easy tilt to Hftilt setup, there are many more setups to be employed and discovered still such as the following
-Shaku hover → pivot Hftilt
-Crossup Fair → Hftilt
-Crossup Nair → Hftilt
-B-air → b-reverse TSRK
-FA1 DC Forward → utilt1 x2 → TSRK
-FA2 DC Forward → TSRK
-DD1/DD2 → TSRK/Dash Attack
-Late spaced Fair → dtilt1 x2 → tatsu
-huptilt -> FA1
-hdtilt -> FA1
-ldtilt -> huptilt -> TSRK
Recently, I find the best shieldbreaks come in making your opponent think they have a healthy shield. Say if I was to land soft fair on a shield. Their shield is certainly not healthy. A Hftilt, FA, or another soft fair would break it easily so give them space and bait a shield in some way specific to them. Such is the case in
this video where I bair James shield and then realize his approaching with shield habit which yields me a Hftilt shield break
So no, sheildbreaks are not just hard reads but rather the most solid way to make up for Ryu's bad grab game. With how many moves Ryu has that can do hefty shield damage, this will definitely be commonplace in the meta even at high level.