Ness also slides faster and he slides further before 30 frames, basically he slides further before Marth can act.
I got a video of Marth grabbing exactly 1 frame after his shield's first frame so he grabs on 7 instead of 6, this is about how fast you can get it if you are holding R and mashing A. Ness escapes. I used to have an example where it happened on frame 30... but I guess I lost that one.
Also if you want to talk about pressing Z to time it, it's impossible. For some reason when pummeling you can cut the grab release motions on both characters. I got Marth to recover on 26 and Ness on 36. It seems to be some weird mechanism where the pummel must finish up to a certain point. So you'll press Z to early and end up shielding or jabbing or too late and end up missing Ness without him EIDIing. I recall this when I was testing it with bum randomly he would jab or shield using the same timing he was before. There is no way to spot this either.
I got a video of Marth grabbing exactly 1 frame after his shield's first frame so he grabs on 7 instead of 6, this is about how fast you can get it if you are holding R and mashing A. Ness escapes. I used to have an example where it happened on frame 30... but I guess I lost that one.
Also if you want to talk about pressing Z to time it, it's impossible. For some reason when pummeling you can cut the grab release motions on both characters. I got Marth to recover on 26 and Ness on 36. It seems to be some weird mechanism where the pummel must finish up to a certain point. So you'll press Z to early and end up shielding or jabbing or too late and end up missing Ness without him EIDIing. I recall this when I was testing it with bum randomly he would jab or shield using the same timing he was before. There is no way to spot this either.