Alright shield pressure post; disagree and don't take anything from it if you think I'm wrong. If you wanna try some stuff out, awesome; hopefully it helps out ^_^
Approaching the shield:
1) I'm tired of seeing people spamming overshoot+early aerial combination when attacking a shield (this includes myself >_>). Yes, it's safe... no you don't really accomplish anything 90% of the time. A good player will *immediately* either punish or WD OoS in the *opposite* direction that you're going. It can be a pretty cool tactic to use to see if they'll let you get away with it; if they won't, a lot of the time you can bait their OoS attack and punish that. This still isn't a reliable option that really beats all that much; you can use it to abuse your opponent as a player, but you should be trying to find things that are a lot more solid overall. You can use this, don't get me wrong, just be more aware of how you're using it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIZh0KGPq80#t=1m19s
He does the early aerial go behind shield thing. He probably could have done something better after going behind the shield, but regardless it's a good example to prove a point. A lot of the time if you overshoot your shine will whiff if you do it so that's not even safe. You can immediately uptilt but a lot of characters (like marth) will just WD OoS away and instantly **** you (for marth, he can just tipper fsmash you); additionally, if they just stay in shield they can punish the uptilt on shield (unless they're bad like falcon... well, even he can reverse up-b OoS but that's only good if falco isn't at low %).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIZh0KGPq80#t=1m45s .... >______>
Anyway, you don't really get anything big out of doing this unless it's on falcon/ganon, and even then you could probably doing something more productive.
Another thing with this is that 80% of the time (arbitrary number, but the % is pretty dang high) in a position like that your oppponent has *already* committed to shielding, so you can probably get away with delaying your aerial more so that it's actually useful (waveshining behind their shield, doing a second aerial without a shine in between, whatever you want). If you're doing the early aerial to stop them from hitting you OoS before you get to them, that's fine. If you're doing this two and three times and your opponent keeps sitting there shielding... just take advantage of it and delay more.
2) Alright, that rant's over. Next thing I want to talk about is nair vs dair. First of all, nair has less lag so it's going to be harder to punish on shield (I think 2 frames less). Second of all, you want to be taking into account the horizontal range on each of them (not just when actually pressuring, but when actually *approaching*).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_zRBQu1y-c
Look at the very first nair mango does. Yes I realize it has nothing to do with shielding, and yes I realize over could have faired earlier. Despite both of those things, the idea of the range on the nair coming in handy is the same, and you can apply the same concept to when your approaches. If you're fighting sheik, for example, the fact that she can SH early OoS and try to intercept your approach is huge. If sheik is SHing in place or retreating OoS then fairing, the range on nair can be very, very useful for stuffing her fair. If you dair, even though it has more priority, you'll probably just get outranged horizontally and lose. On the other hand, because dair has way more priority, if you think something like ftilt is coming and you want to stuff it, you want to be abusing the priority on your dair rather than the range on nair (nair has no chance of outranging her ftilt, dair can stuff it as its coming out because it comes out from bottom to top and because falco's downair is stupid).
3) I don't have much to go in depth with on this one. All I really have to say is that people should start doing their initial aerials in ways that can't be shield grabbed/punished more often. For example, if you're coming down from a platform on battlefield with a dair on their shield, pull back the slightest bit. Don't come down retreating, because then it makes it obvious what you're going for; initially hit their shield so that you're sort of barely touching it then near the end hold a bit back. Things like that are really easy to abuse, trickier than things like the mango pull back nair trick, and put you incredible positions.
Think of how other characters play. Marth and sheik don't just fair right into your shield; falco doesn't have to either. Just because you have a broken shine doesn't mean you should be on top of your opponent 24/7; spacing around your opponent's shield generally puts you in a better position than dairing in such a way that your only safe option is shine because of the many more options you gain.
Once you've hit their shield:
1) The most underused thing (and I've already brought this up in the thread before) is abusing SPACING rather than thinking about frame data or other things when it comes to shield pressure. The grab box is a circle, so there are weak points on the circle. People usually think of this as pretty obvious horizontally, but not really vertically. For example, if I told someone to stay out of shield grab range, their first thought is that they should be spaced far enough away horizontally (like after a retreating nair on shield) that they can't be grabbed. Well, you can also achieve this vertically by SHing to positions where the vertical part of the grab hitbox isn't as high.
This allows you to delay your aerials more while still maintaining a position you can't be grabbed in. People don't really do this, and it's incredibly important. Here's a good example of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_jot4iR6DU#t=6m36s
Pay attention right when mango double lasers from the ledge. It's not because of some timing trick; it's a spacing thing. His first shine was in a position such that he could jump into a range that ganon simply *could not* grab.
He does a similar one almost immediately afterwards at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_jot4iR6DU#t=6m40s
Note that he jumps *over* ganon's grab, but he does this by jumping *into* him. He simply jumps into a position that is outside of ganon's grab range. Someone like fox couldn't do this because his SH doesn't go as high, and his shine has a tiny bit less shieldstun.
Tl;dr: You can be out of shield grab range both vertically and horizontally, learn to abuse the vertical.
2) Shine grab. Yeah it's awesome. It's honestly a very good way to condition your opponent, just be aware that often you lose pressure by going for it (if they roll out or something). The big thing with shine grabbing imo is being aware of why you're doing it. For example, if your opponent's shield is pretty low there's probably a lot of things you could be doing to try keep it low and give you lots of pressure/stray hits that would lead to things preferable to grabbing them. On the other hand if you're fighting someone with good OoS options and they have a pretty full shield, doing a shine grab immediately isn't such a bad idea.
The most important thing here is to be aware of how your opponent begins to avoid your shine grabs. If they're not doing anything about it then just shine grab everytime you hit their shield, get free damage/combos and get a free win. When they do avoid it, what are they doing? Are they buffering a roll/spotdodge? Are they nairing OoS? (I think sheik can do this). As soon as you observe what they're doing to avoid it, you can start getting free punishes that are stronger than grabs, and you'll be really abusing falco's pressure correctly.
3) Immediate aerials. Alright, two main uses here: 1) shield poking, 2) cover any of their immediate OoS options while being safe. I think people do 2 a lot, but rarely 1. More or less, if you think your opponent is going to try to move/attack/do something immediately after you shine their shield, just do a retreating nair/dair. Once again, take into account the spacing; if you're spaced a bit further back, you can probably retreating nair more effectively. On the other hand if you're super close up, retreating dair could stuff their options better, as well as giving you a stronger follow up (I've done things like retreating dair --> hit, dtilt before, it's decently good). It's a pretty good option to open with just because it gives you the chance to see how your opponent reacts to the situation. If you're fighting people who are good, the whole gimmick of baiting a grab really shouldn't be working often enough for that to be your main use for it; it'll probably do really well vs more mediocre players, but your goal shouldn't really be to bait grabs with this. It should be more to stuff fox upsmash OoS etc. That said, anything's possible if you condition them well enough, so even vs good players you *could* use it to bait a grab or something, but whatever that's less likely; I figure I had to say that just before everybody jumped at the statement and was like "jfeiojfioafa you can do it on good players too!" >_>
The other use for immediate aerial is honestly pretty good *and* pretty underused. On a lot of characters whose shields are worse (lol marth) you can do retreating nairs to hit their head and it'll shield poke quite a bit of the time (you can also shield poke with dair, but it's harder to do while retreating). Just start becoming more aware of the situation, and you'll learn when you can and can't shield poke with it. It's also pretty good to learn to use timings so that they're not *quite* immediate, but still more or less impossible to punish.
Use tiny delays and such to your advantage to achieve a better effect without risking anything. For example if you wait just a tiny bit longer before doing the "immediate" nair, you'll be higher in the air and have a better chance of shield poking. Dair is also pretty good for shield poking, but in a different way; it's harder to do if you do an immediate+retreating dair, but it's pretty good if you're directly on top of them and such.
4) Multishines. I like using them a lot for a bit of extra shield decay on their part; think like, I've already landed 2 iterations of pressure and their shield is getting pretty low, so a double shine-->immediate aerial will probably poke, where as a single shine-->aerial might be less guaranteed. Just be aware that more and more people are shield DI'ing nowadays, and if your first shine isn't really close to them you have a pretty high chance of missing the second shine and just getting grabbed as the shine whiffs. That said, you probably don't want to be double shining in general if your first shine is spaced decently far from them.
This sort of leads to a tangent of: you're not just randomly mixing up your options, but rather you need to be aware of the situation and exactly what will and won't work. A lot of the time I'll find myself watching someone double shine and think to myself "that was a terrible double shine" and it's pretty obvious that they were just throwing it in there without really understanding that, for example, if your initial shine is spaced you probably shouldn't be doing a second one.
Additionally, if you double shine perfectly your opponent will only have 2 frames in which they are not in shieldstun. This is where actually leaving the ground after your first shine comes in handy (and probably wavelanding onto a platform or something). That way you leave a gap in shield stun for your opponent to do whatever they want; it's a frame trap, and it works pretty damn well if you use it sparingly. If you do this, try not to waveland directly above your opponent because that'll just get you *****; if possible, try to waveland in a way that makes you harder to hit, or just shield and then find a way to punish/get back into a good position (shield drop, immediate WD OoS off the platform, w/e). If you notice they're consistently buffering various things out of your pressure, grounded shine might be the way to go to catch them out of it.
Hmm I randomly burned out so... that's it I guess. There's a lot more stuff to talk about, but maybe that can come later. (after PP comes gets back and starts posting, maybe =P)
