Idea: Shield Stun Improvement

[Team Giza]

I know. This ain't gonna happen and all but its just something that I would want from Brawl or another future Smash Bros game and I would like to hear others peoples thoughts on the subject.

I love Super Smash Bros Melee. Lets get that straight before coming into the topic. But one thing has always bothered me a bit more than anything else, the effectiveness of shield grabbing. I admit, I abuse the heck out of it and I do know the ways to get around being shield grabbed as well. But I think that shield grabbing should be changed in future installments of the series to add more depth to the game. In fact I think the shield shield should be fixed as a whole. Melee's shields I felt went away too fast but the shield grabbing more than made up for it. However I felt this took away from close range mix up opportunities. My ideas to fix this is pretty simple.

1. Make shields disappear slower as time goes by, as well as decrease the size change when getting hit by some attacks. This will make it so shields can be out for longer and be hit more times before breaking.

2. Increased shield stun from ground attacks. Most ground attacks in melee don't cause much shield stun, and were pretty much begging for a shield grab if you didn't know how to space perfectly and rush out if it got shielded. This would make it so ground poking mix ups would be possible as you try to knock out your opponents shield. Smash's traction system would ensure that you couldn't just continously poke at the opponent, cause you would be pushed away after around 3 ground attacks. Some attacks will need to be changed to add more traction on hit though.

3. Streamline Shield grabbing (and jump canceling the shield) into the game. Make it so shield grabbing takes up a few more frames then a normal grab and make it so there are conditions were you cannot jump out of the shield and when you can, or make it so jumping out of a shield has more frames before the jump activates.

4. Shield Stun Cancel (SSC): Pressing forward during a certain frame opening as an attack hits to cut the shield stun in half (or maybe even less). This can be done even when shielding towards the opponent, but its much tricker, since you would need to go back to the neutral position and then towards the opponent again as the attack hits. This isn't free though, its not like L-canceling or jump canceling, SSC would be too good it has to come at a price. What is that price? Your shield size will be cut by 1/3 of its current size when it is performed. At this price it might also be nice for you to be able to cancel the shield completely after performing this, so you could perform a tilt right out of a SSC without having to wait for the letting out of shield animation. Shield would also regenerate slightly slower.

That should do it for the basic idea, but I am gonna go a bit further just cause I really want Smash to continue to grow into a deeper game series.

5. Power Shield Stun: Power Shield Stun is not the stun you get when you perform the powershield. No its the stun that the opponent should get when you powershield them. Much like how in Third Strike when you parry it slows down the opponent, I think power shield should slow them down as well. This would make it so power shielding would have more uses once it is down. Shield grabbing a Falco after you powershield his dair would be much easier with this.

6. Power Shield Lag Cancel (PSLC): Not refering the Power Shield Stun the opponent recieves here, but the lag that the power shield animation has should be able to be cancel. It still will cost you the same amount of your shield as SSC would but this would be a lot more frame tight because of the frame tightness of Power Shielding itself. This makes power shielding more effective but still very hard to pull off.

7. Power Stun Cancel (PSC): Now this one refers to canceling out of the stun you get when your attack has been power shielded. Hit a shield trigger as soon as the stun starts to cut it in half. However it would cost you to have limited ablitiy to DI for 2-3 seconds after the PSC. This way if you PSC in the wrong situtation you will be in big trouble, but it allows to you avoid people to completely abuse power shielding on you.

Making an effect for these would be awesome too. Like a flash a color and little stars come out of you when you perform a PSLC and a colored glow (color of the shield) around the character as they SSC so that nobody can say these are a glitch would be nice too. BTW, I have thought this through with FFAs in mind, not just 1 on 1 matches... so don't attack me saying that I am pushing too hard for 1 on 1 competitive play.

I know the last parts probably went to far but that is what I would like in future Smash Bros games to make them less about spacing aerials and to add a mix up ground game as well as shield poking. Any thoughts?

 

[Star105]

well....... i see your point about shield grabbing because whenever i paly a cpu they keep abusing that shield grab. that should be changed a bit because it gets abused so much but it really isn't essential to the game though it is cheap if you constantly abuse it

 

[Takeshi245]

well....... i see your point about shield grabbing because whenever i paly a cpu they keep abusing that shield grab. that should be changed a bit because it gets abused so much but it really isn't essential to the game though it is cheap if you constantly abuse it

There are other ways to beat shieldgrabbing. Shielding grabbing is a good defense if someone does a laggy attack or doesn't L-cancel their attack. Spamming shield grabbing against a good opponent is liable for punishment. Just wanted to let you know.

 

[Takeshi245]

well....... i see your point about shield grabbing because whenever i paly a cpu they keep abusing that shield grab. that should be changed a bit because it gets abused so much but it really isn't essential to the game though it is cheap if you constantly abuse it

There are other ways to beat shieldgrabbing. Shielding grabbing is a good defense if someone does a laggy attack or doesn't L-cancel their attack. Spamming shield grabbing against a good opponent is liable for punishment. Just wanted to let you know.

 

[Takeshi245]

well....... i see your point about shield grabbing because whenever i paly a cpu they keep abusing that shield grab. that should be changed a bit because it gets abused so much but it really isn't essential to the game though it is cheap if you constantly abuse it

There are other ways to beat shieldgrabbing. Shielding grabbing is a good defense if someone does a laggy attack or doesn't L-cancel their attack. Spamming shield grabbing against a good opponent is liable for punishment. Just wanted to let you know. Oh, and Team Giza, good ideas.

:Didn't mean to triple post. Sorry!

 

[BigRick]

I like the things you pointed out Giza, and I'd really like to see increased shield stun on many moves, especially on characters like Bowser (he's supposed to be a powerhouse!). If there were more shield stun on short range ground attacks, they would probably get used more often.

Also, Melee is a very unbalanced game. There is some chars like Sheik that can safely poke shields while waiting to punish a roll or chars like Peach that get a free attack/grab mixup after a FC'd fair... but things like that are restricted to a very small amount of characters. You would see the tactics you're talking about much more often if the crappier characters weren't so crappy.

However, I don't like the new mechanics that you proposed, because I don't think they really add depth to the game. Unnerfed shieldgrabs, JC attacks and aerials out of shields are already used as ''reversals'' and does a good job at it.

Things like Shield Stun Cancel would only make it harder for players to counter attack an opponent if they don't practice, and that would restrict the amount of players that can play the game while employing all options.

Also, Increasing the effectiveness of powershielding will promote the learning of that very difficult technique... And if powershielding can be used often (like 30% of the time) it will greatly reduce the number of effective options that a player can use cause you must play as safe as possible. Powershielding has no risks, cause if you fail you will only end up shielding... this doesn't really add depth (This is also why I think that 3rd strike is not a very good game).

 

[Team Giza]

In 3rd Strike if you miss the parry you will get hit, cause you cannot activate parry and block at the same time. The only thing that is similar to what you say in 3rd Strike is the red parry where you parry out a block, its got a tight frame activation and is rarely used in a match besides its sounding good cause it opens with a stricter frame activation and it ends with a stricter time to perform a counter attack. Just thought you should know.

I'm not saying the normal shield grabbing should not be effective anymore. I just think it should be less effective then it was in Melee. So that slower ground characters would be able to preform ground attacks more often, and you that all characters would be able to better see the poking action.

The SSC does allow the opponent to continue his shield if he misses the timing. Yes it is difficult to pull off all the time, especially how it costs something. I am not saying that this is a movew you need to always pull off like L-canceling so I do not believe it would limit the player base. Yes it would take awhile to get the tactic down but melee had quite a bit of technical stuff as it is, you cannot say that all of that was somehow less difficult to learn the timing for then something like this. However, I feel a tactic with a in-game price would really add some more depth to the Smash Bros series.

Power Shielding has a very small frame opening and it does give you lag when you do it as well. The problem with Melee is many times when you actually got the timing right to power shield a phsyical attack it didn't matter since your opponent usually would attack you again before you could counter attack. Power Shielding always had to be activated at the specific time, if you missed the power shield you completely missed it, you usually don't get another chance to until the opponent seperates from you again and comes back. I am not saying to make it way over powered, I am just thinking that when you power shield you should have a better chance of grabbing the opponent then when you do the normal shield and not the other way around.