Please learn to angle shield

[A2ZOMG]

This is important for all characters, but for Mario, it's a matter of life or death that you learn to angle shield properly. Mario's shield radius is very small and leaves his head and feet open to be poked pretty easily.

By learning to properly angle your shield upwards, you immediately make the G&W, Marth, and Metaknight matchup better for you by about 5 points, and get an edge in the Mario ditto (since not very many Mario mains angle shield correctly at the moment anyway). As an added bonus, angling shield upwards is a good way to get yourself ready to buffer either an Up-smash out of shield (if you are holding the control stick all the way up, press jump + attack to Up-smash instead of using tap jump) or a SH U-air out of shield, the latter of which is an oos option that is for all intents and purposes mostly superior to N-air out of shield in terms of safety and damage.

And I don't think I should have to explain the benefits of angling shield downwards when standing on a platform. Especially in the above four matchups I mentioned.

 

[JuxtaposeX]

Woo! GO A2Z! for doing his best to try to advance Mario's metagame!!
I only angle my shield upwards against nado, and I see how that helps, but how does it help against GnW and Marth?

Nice researcher title, btw.

 

[A2ZOMG]

G&W and Marth (and Metaknight for that matter) have good aerial spacers that are annoyingly good at shieldpoking Mario. It's essential to angle shield against them since shield your most important approach in those matchups.

 

[hippiedude92]

been doing this for quite a while now

esp vs tornado

 

[A2ZOMG]

Everyone angles shield on reaction vs the Tornado. But very few players actually do it on habit against aerial spacers that normally have an easy time shield poking Mario. It's not quite as simple to properly apply angling shield against Marth's F-air or G&W's B-air on reaction since those have much less startup than the Tornado. That is why I'm making a point that Mario mains should be able to deliberately angle shield for the purpose of blocking spacers.

 

[mars16]

Vedy good vedy vedy good

I thought the Sheild Moving was for show, really

 

[DtJ XeroXen]

I'll do it! If not only just for the fun of angling my shield.

 

[Juushichi]

It also helps quite a bit with annoying Bairs like Wolf's, D3's and especially Kirby's. I've slowly gotten into the habit of tilting my sheild down for MK's Dsmash. It helps a ton.

 

[Coolwhip]

A2Z=too good.

 

[Naisora]

This is interesting. Ill test this out in real time soon.... Thanks for the help A2Z.

 

[SKidd]

Frame data for Mario shield angling please