Meta Knight Shield Pressure

[Avro-Arrow]

Hey y'all, I'm no Meta Knight main but I have been researching him recently and what I've noticed is that his shield pressure is really weak. Either it just hasn't been developed yet, or he just goes negative on shield in general, or you guys just suck ... jk.

I looked at the frame data and a couple moves stood out to me, namely, nair and fair were decent on shield (nair being -1 or -2 or -5 when l-cancelled depending on the hitbox, and fair being -6 l-cancelled regardless of hitbox). D-tilt was pretty mediocre. I probably should have looked at dair, uair and bair but I just wanted to put this thread up and get a discussion going.

Honestly, MK's moves in general on shield kinda suck outside of nair from what I saw. He gets shield grabbed a lot in the games I've seen.

So, if he can't get good advantage outside of committing to an aerial, how does he not only establish, but maintain shield pressure? Discuss

 

[Narelex]

MK's not really a shield pressure based character.

Against characters with mediocre range OOS, spaced Dtilts can be alright. Fair is actually his worst aerial on shield, Bair and Dair are safer. RAR Backair or platform drop Dair are fairly decent.

Generally though due to his average air stats I've found it much better to utilize your Dash dance game.

Shield pressure just isn't MK's gameplan In the same way that it isn't Marth's. It's not really where his strengths lie. it's much more lucrative to bait out a sloppy OOS option so you can punish or make them stay in shield long enough to grab them.

 

[Lawn Chair]

if people are on plats you can do safe pressure against people who bad OoS options, Uair, uair nair is my personal fav.

 

[MegaAmoonguss]

MK isn't so much a shield pressure character like Fox or Falco as he is someone to bait you in shield and outplay you in shield. If you can constantly apply pressure with nairs and dash out, they will eventually get scared into shield, and predicting this gets you a free grab.

I also like poking shield with a well spaced d-tilt, because most OoS options can't punish its range, and if you manage to get a shield poke or they let go of shield accidentally, it's really good for you.

 

[Lawn Chair]

Also its pretty low level to think you can only pressure by attacking. Standing just outside of their effective range just as effective.

 

[MegaAmoonguss]

Also its pretty low level to think you can only pressure by attacking. Standing just outside of their effective range just as effective.

Very true, this is pretty much just the type of stuff MK does to pressure you. Just tries to get in your head and make you wait so that he can react to the next thing you do and easily punish.

 

[Avro-Arrow]

Lawn Chair Well it's not like I didn't have anything in mind when I set up the thread. I just wanted to hear your ideas before I just blabbed on about it myself. Yeah, I know it's the easy answer, but I was talking about it with @_Chrome the night I made this thread while we/I analyzed some MK videos on Youtube, including Strong Bad, Infinity, Plup, and Narelex actually among others like Pineapple Tommy. I saw a lot of botched shield pressure in general (not saying any one player was bad at it) where MKs would try and land dtilts/aerials on shield and either mis-space them or get shield grabbed for hitting shield too high. That, and I saw a lot of automatic dtilts on shield without even trying to dash away (like Sheik for example) or go for grab or any other mix up for that matter.

So it would sound really nooby of me to make this thread and not include any of my own ideas but I thought it was better to set up an open discussion and get attention to the issue/ideas flowing about shield pressure instead of just throwing something out there and case closed. Having threads like these where open discussion is encouraged gets you guys thinking about it so that we don't get ten years down the line and shield pressure is still a conundrum for many mid/low level players like it is with Sheik in Melee.

 

[Taytertot]

while attacking shield itself might not be a particular strength, he does have sheik tier dthrow tech chases which would be way too strong if he could also be super safe on shield.

 

[Zoma]

ITT: Misinformation

Every single aerial but forward air is safe on shield if you use ftilt or, usually more preferable, dash away afterwards. +0 (dair, bair), -1 (best nair), and -2 (nair, uair) on shield are all effectively a frame advantage for Meta Knight.

You have 4-6 frames before the fastest characters (Kirby, Sheik, Meta Knight, presumably others) can hit you with a nair, and 5-7 before any character can grab you. Even against Fox's shine OOS, you have a 2-4 frame advantage. The only exception is against characters with fast upBs (3 or 4 frames), such as Samus or GnW, since they don't have to go through jumpsquat.

Also, don't try to ftilt Bowser.