Shield Poking.

[KayLo!]

Hooray, finally moving this from the Project Database to its own thread.

Goals of this Project:

- To clearly identify attacks and attack combinations well suited for poking
- To find when certain moves will poke on each character
- To compare shield poke vulnerability between characters
- To accurately measure the benefit of shield tilting​

Current Objective:
To find at which frame of (untilted) shield decay MK's dtilt will poke on each character.

I'll be working almost exclusively for Pikachu and Zelda, but since people showed interest in the subject, I opened this up so that others can feel free to join in for their own characters. I'll add more to the OP and set up a Google Docs spreadsheet soon.

Suggestions are much appreciated! Second post will be reserved for useful resources.

 

[KayLo!]

Resources:

*Shield life:

Shields have a lifespan of 177 frames (shieldbreak will occur on 178, this is the same for all characters). Every point of damage reduces this by 2.5 frames, not accounting for shield-damage multipliers on moves like Marth's neutral-b.

*Veril's time-frame converter:

Spoiler

OK, time to share something kinda boring but really useful.

Counting frames is incredibly tedious and a waste of time. If you're collecting data that requires frame-advance rather than PSA (say you're finding shield or hitstun data) its a lot easier if you give a frame value to the clock timer. What I like to do to make things easiest for me is to have the initial input frames for whatever I'm testing occur on the x:00 mark.

So I made this little chart for easy conversions:

Time	Frame			
x:00	0			
98	1		48	31
96	2		46	32
95	3		45	33
93	4		43	34
91	5		41	35
90	6		40	36
88	7		38	37
86	8		36	38
85	9		35	39
83	10		33	40
81	11		31	41
80	12		30	42
78	13		28	43
76	14		26	44
75	15		25	45
73	16		23	46
71	17		21	47
70	18		20	48
68	19		18	49
66	20		16	50
65	21		15	51
63	22		13	52
61	23		11	53
60	24		10	54
58	25		8	55
56	26		6	56
55	27		5	57
53	28		3	58
51	29		1	59
50	30		x+1:00	60

Ex. lets say I'm finding throw data.

I'll grab Lucario (with his weight mod of 0) at the desired % with the character in question. Let the timer run down to the xx:00 mark (seconds:milliseconds), and input the throw on that frame. I than have a point of reference and can really easily gather the rest of the data by buffering shield to determine the IASA, alternating jump and tap-jump to determine the escape frame, watching the damage marker to determine release frame... and I can play with DI or teching etc etc etc... you see how this is way easier than counting frames when you're doing close to a thousand tests minimum.

*Grid texture for futuristic custom stage parts: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=M5JWEAC5

*Degrees of shield pressure:

Spoiler

Degrees of Pressure: block traps and forced Yomi

Because most shield comboing moves have landing frame based advantages, one frame can make a huge difference in the kind of pressure a move exerts on the shield. *Note: Brawl doesn't have shield combos. It does have a few shield-drop frame traps however. Lucas's nair, Peach's fair, MK's f-tilt.

Shield comboing: 2 or more hits that actually lock the person in shieldstun, making escape impossible. The advantage from the linking move must be greater than the startup from the followup.

Shield drop combo: startup of the followup < The advantage vs. OOSDL options is < the startup + 7 (assuming no faster jump-canceled option exists, character dependent obv)

Locked in shield: when executed perfectly yield a positive advantage on block. Many SHFFl aerials to buffered jab can do this in B+ (Lucas autocancel nair to d-tilt for example).

Blockstring: none of the OOS options or shield drop options beat out a given move so the player will either suffer a hit to the shield or be affected.

Forced Yomi to ___: only certain OOS options are actual possible vs. a set of pressuring moves. These are the most interesting to look at imo.

 

[KayLo!]

I would start with something nice, like seeing at what shield life (every shield lasts 361 frames) each character's untilted shield gets poked by MK's Dtilt.

Luxor, where did you get this number? I meant to ask before. Shield life is 177 frames, not 361.

 

[Luxor]

That's the Bbox number, I think I heard someone else say it once too. I'll double check it in frame advance, it's more than likely I'm completely ********. 6 seconds sounds way too long, now that I think about it.

 

[thexsunrosered]

I'm actually really interested in this. I believe I understand everything correctly, and if do I'll try to do some testing tonight

 

[KayLo!]

That's the Bbox number, I think I heard someone else say it once too. I'll double check it in frame advance, it's more than likely I'm completely ********. 6 seconds sounds way too long, now that I think about it.

I already checked it in frame advance, plus I'm sure Veril double checked himself. It's definitely 177 frames.

The shield damage "formula" (not much of a formula really) is under resources btw.... kinda easy to miss, so I'm pointing it out just in case.

 

[T-block]

It's easier to think of shield as having "health".

A full shield has 70 health, and loses 0.4 health for every frame that it's out. It gains 0.1 health for every frame it's not out.

Frame 1: Input shield
Frame 2: Shield appears
Frame 3: Depletion begins

After 175 frames, the shield has lost 175*0.4 = 70 health, so shieldbreak occurs on the 178th frame. This way, instead of every point of damage taking off 2.5 frames, each point takes off 2.5*0.4 = 1 health.

 

[KayLo!]

I'm not so sure about adding more units into the mix, but that's a useful way to think about it I guess.

 

[T-block]

It's not too much more complicated. I think it'll simplify things eventually, since if you're looking at things like how many d-tilts from MK a fresh shield can handle, you don't have to multiply the damage by 2.5.

But either way really... =P

 

[thexsunrosered]

I'll start from the bottom of the CSS, so I'll begin with lucas I guess and work my way back

 

[The Cape]

Wait? Kaylo is running a project?

*runs*

And anyway because of Sheild SDI and sheild movement this seems to be EXTREMELY subjective and therefore does not feel like it would be worth the time and input.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Sheild SDI wouldn't have that much impact if a move pokes, it's just the shield movement, which not all players even do. And it's not just to find pokes, it's to find when a move will poke. That said, make sure the d-tilt is perfectly spaced.

I support this project.

 

[thexsunrosered]

perfectly spaced is the key phrase.

On a perfectly spaced Mk dtilt, initiated at 108 frames into a shielding lucas, the attack poked on frame 111 of shield life.

that being said, I couldn't get it to happen again as hard as I tried, though I am 100% sure that the frames were correct. To get a meh spaced dtilt to poke, you have to wait to initiate the attack until at least frame 115 and hitting on frame 118. It was kinda frustrating >.>

 

[KayLo!]

It's definitely time consuming, which is why I only planned to do it for the two characters I play. =X

I'm going to be pretty busy preparing for MLG over the next two days, but when I get back, I'll get on top of making a spreadsheet and whatnot (unless someone wants to do that while I'm gone). In the meantime, make sure to post your results here so that people don't waste time testing the same thing.

EDIT: To help with spacing, I suggest using the custom stage grid texture (goes over futuristic stage parts). The lines make it much easier to get the same spacing each time. Here's the .pac file: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=M5JWEAC5

I'll add it under Resources as well.

 

[saviorslegacy]

GAH!!!
I can't get the numbers to turn out for me.