Powershield (PS)
The powershield technique consists of two sub-phenomena that both have
their own merits over the normal shield:
1. Powershield-projectile, from now on abbreviated as
PSP.
2. Powershield-attack, from now on abbreviated as
PSA.
Equally,
SP is simply shield against projectiles and
SA is shield against attacks.
Both are only available for digital shoulder button inputs—in other words, you need to fully depress the L or R triggers, beyond the click sound / tactile feedback. “
Digital press” of either L or R will be abbreviated as “
DP”, opposed to “
AP” (
analog press).
Analog inputs alone can never trigger powershield effects.
In general, PSP happens when an incoming projectile connects with your powershield sphere (
PSS, see image below) during the first two frames of shielding. For PSA, it’s the first four frames, and the entire shield bubble works.
However, by transitioning between analog and digital shield inputs or combining them in some way, different frame windows, PSS sizes and PS behaviors are possible.
1. Analog→digital transition powershield (
ADT-PS), first described
in the ssbwiki article, section 2.1
2. Digital→analog transition powershield (
DAT-PS),
recently described as “light powershield”, apparently discovered by @
The Phenom.
3. Z+digital powershield (
Z-PS),
recently discovered by @
T
tauKhan
. (So far also called lightpowershield, but I think Z-PS is better to avoid ambiguity. I’m open for term discussion, though.)
PS type→ |
Normal PS |
ADT-PS |
DAT-PS |
Z-PS
|
PSP window after DP |
1-2 |
1-2 |
1-2 |
1-2
|
PSA window after DP |
1-4 |
3-4 |
1-4 |
1-4
|
SP downtime after DP |
none |
none |
none |
none
|
SA downtime after DP |
none |
1-2 |
none |
none
|
PSS size |
smallest |
huge (initial PSP) |
huge |
huge
|
PSS size increase at frame |
never |
never |
3 |
1
|
PSS size decrease at frame |
never |
3 |
never |
never
|
PSA shield stun |
lowest |
inexistent (you get hit) |
highest |
highest |
Normal powershield (
N-PS) happens when you transition from one frame of not pressing L/R/Z at all to pressing L or R down to digital level at the next.
ADT-PS happens when you transition from analog shield to digital shield after the first frame of shielding. This usually happens when you don’t depress the shoulder triggers quickly enough and is, due to its drawbacks, an input you want to avoid in general. By either slightly depressing the triggers when plugging in your controller or resetting
or modifying your controller physically, you can lower the analog distance you need to pass in less than one frame, which helps avoiding ADT-shields.
DAT-PS increases the range you can PSA from, but as described in the reddit thread, the benefit is only notable and feasible if you modify your controller
and soft-modify the threshold for one of the triggers.
Z-PS drastically increases the frame window and range for both PSP and PSA. The Z input shield size (largest possible lightshield) takes priority over the L/R inputs when the game determines your shield size. At the same time, the DP is still required for activating the
GuardReflect animation, and Z must be pressed on the very same frame. However, pressing Z will cause a grab unless the A input responsible for that is already active.
Thus, the necessary inputs for Z-PS are:
1. Keeping A pressed
(can be done during wavedash lag, during the frames 1-3 of a dash that was not done out of turn if the stick is not held forward and during RunBrake , and these are just a few examples)
2. Pressing DP and Z at the same frame
There also used to be a subtype called "ADT-Z-PS" here, but
T
tauKhan
informed me that it was redundant and the same thing as ADT-PS, which I confirmed with a test, so I deleted this entry from the table.
PSS size increase (for DAT-PS and Z-PS) diagram:
This is Marth, by the way.
You powershield an attack when the first of your collision bubbles it connects with is the inner powershield sphere. The dramatic PSS size increase you can see above enables you to powershield any attack that would have, with normal PS, connected with one of your collision bubbles outside of the PSS. For Marth, this means that he can powershield attacks aiming at his feet or his head only with Z-PS, not with N-PS.
Powershield stun and knockback comparison
Incoming attack: Falco’s shine. Shielded by Marth with all kinds of shields. Pushback amounts are not 100% precise and only approximations (from measuring visual distance), see Magus420’s post.
Shield type |
N-PS |
Z-PS |
Digital shield |
Strongest analog shield |
lightest analog shield |
Z shield
|
Shield hitlag |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5
|
Shield stun |
5 |
11 |
5 |
5 |
11 |
11
|
Pushback |
130 |
490 |
44 |
44 |
236 |
222
|
Pushback % of digital shield |
295% |
1114% |
100% |
100% |
536% |
504% |
Visual pushback comparison:
Hitlag is counted as [iterations of
GuardDamage 0 ].
Hitstun counts all frames of
GuardDamage beyond that.
Pushback is not measured in in-game units as it ideally should be, but in pixels from an arbitrary camera position.
Applications
For PSA, you usually want to do an N-PS so that you receive the least amount of shield stun. If your N-PS does not protect against the incoming attack properly (due to small shield size from shield damage, for example), Z-PS and, to a lesser degree, DAT-PS are the safer choice.
For PSP, you do not receive any shield stun, so Z-PS is the most effective type of powershield for reflecting projectiles, however also the most impractical and difficult to input (as you need to hold down A followed by hitting L/R and Z at the same frame).
In most situations, Z-PS increases the frame window for reflecting a projectile by 1. Additionally, it enables you to PSP when you would not have been able to do so at all with N-PS.
Example 1: Z-PS against Falco’s highest short hop laser (SHL)
If Falco shoots a laser like this, he will not even hit Marth if he keeps standing:
In this situation, Marth’s best choice would easily be to dash towards Falco and jump-cancel grab (JC grab) him. However, I will use this to showcase how absurdly large the Z-PS PSS is—Falco’s lasers are very easy to place at a certain height and work well for demonstrating this.
If Marth tries to PSP this laser with N-PS, this happens:
Embed is deprecated, but can still be viewed through archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150215220050/http://gfycat.com/FilthyImperfectGarpike
(Slow these down or frame advance after pausing them with the controls at the bottom right.)
As you can see, the laser goes way above Marth’s shield.
With Z-PS, it works perfectly:
Embed is deprecated, but can still be viewed through archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150218000549/http://gfycat.com/CalmPoliticalConch
Example 2: Z-PS against Falco’s lowest SHL
Marth has a weird shield that doesn’t follow his body initially. This enables him to easily powershield lasers by crouching under them if they are being shot at medium height, but makes low lasers very hard for him to reflect.
See this comparison of his digital shield out of crouch with Falco’s:
Falco’s lowest SHLs are at the same height as a crouching Marth’s head. Most of the time, it is not even possible for Marth to N-PS these lasers from a crouch—they hit either his head or the outer shield ring before they can touch the inner powershield sphere.
Due to the high traveling speed of lasers, the distance between Marth and Falco determines the exact frame window for the powershield input. Why, you ask? Because PSP requires an incoming projectile to connect with your PSS before connecting with your outer shield ring or your hurtbox on the frames before. When the width of your hurtbox + your outer shield ring at a given laser height exceed the distance the laser moves in one frame, it is impossible to reflect it. If the sum of hurtbox width and outer ring width is 1/8th less than the laser’s Δx, it’s only possible in approximately every 8th case of random spacing to reflect it—and I’m
assuming frame perfection here.
What are the practical implications of this, you ask? Simply put, Marth cannot expect to powershield low Falco lasers out of crouch by doing a normal powershield. Most of the time, it’s a 0-frame window.
Still, to cover those cases where Falco shoots higher lasers, crouching PS provides a strong benefit for Marth, so ideally he’d find a way to PS the lowest lasers as well. Which is precisely what Z-PS enables him to do.
This is what happens if Marth tries to N-PS from a crouch:
Embed is deprecated, but can still be viewed through archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150215220225/http://gfycat.com/PowerfulPeskyAchillestang
By going for Z-PS instead, the frame window for the PS input increases from 0 to 1:
Embed is deprecated, but can still be viewed through archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150215220407/http://gfycat.com:80/WelldocumentedHoarseDuiker
For reference, standing N-PS is a one-frame window as well:
Embed is deprecated, but can still be viewed through archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150215220035/http://gfycat.com/BoringImpureIndianpalmsquirrel
And standing Z-PS is a two-frame window:
Gfycat is permanently down, sadly this one was not archived
http://gfycat.com/LeadingHandsomeBernesemountaindog
Note that there are a few imperfections in the Z-PS gfycats: the in-game frame counter is off by one or two frames and some inputs might be off by one frame. I had to transition from develop mode’s frame advance to Dolphin’s frame advance and back, and because of Dolphin’s two frames delay, it was hard working with that precisely.
Setups
Dash: during a dash that is
not done from a dashdance, you can hold A during the first 4 frames (while having the control stick at a neutral position). This was found by @
schmooblidon
and is the fastest A buffer for Z-PS.
Wavedash: you can start holding A at any time of the 10 frames landing lag.
Follow-up posts
Magus on technical data and comparisons between shield types:
http://smashboards.com/posts/18521148