Shields: Everything you need to know about them

[Sangoku]

Glad you liked it =).

Little update: almost every attacks' powers are determined and I made some nice tables!

 

[Linkshot]

Probably posted somewhere but "Shield Damage" is a value on hitboxes that only affects hitting shields. Basically, damage dealt to a shield is Regular Damage + Shield Damage.

I'm not a pro at 64 or anything, but I know Smash's general mechanics fairly well due to modding communities. Apparently shield damage has been around since the beginning!

 

[Sangoku]

Oh really? That's interesting if it's true. I will have to check if there aren't attacks weaker on shields than on opponent though.

What about the fact that most attack does the same damage on shield and opponent? This means most attacks don't have any shield damage (according to your definition)?

Thanks for bringing new info!

 

[SheerMadness]

How can you quantify what % a move does on a shield???

Just curious. Does gameshark tell you or something?

 

[firo]

Sheer, check my post a couple of pages back about memory addresses. Basically you can view your shield hp and how much it goes down when it is attacked.

 

[Sangoku]

Yeah that's the best method to watch attacks' power on shield. However you could also determine that like I did at the beginning by hitting once the shield, then counting the number of natural reduction before it breaks and subtract it to 55.

Okay I just finished Jiggs so we have all the powers now. Next step is shieldstun and shieldbreaks yay! I want the help of everyone concerning the latter. Let's do it char by char, so we begin with Luigi. What are all the shieldbreaks you know? And try to give a grade for difficulty and specificity with stars (out of 5)

I'll start with the easiest one: short hop dair uair, land and upb. I would say difficulty is * and specificity is * or maybe ** since I'm not sure it works against every character (especially little ones).

 

[asianaussie]

List the ones ant-d did on youtube and any variants of them you can see.

7 people viewing o.o

looks like advertising as a featured thread pays off

 

[SheerMadness]

Listing all the theoretically possible shield breaks seems kind of pointless.

The only ones I've seen in matches are:

- Kirby uptilts
- Mario dairs to upairs
- Yoshi djc variations
- Ness djc variations
- Fox's shine strings
- Luigi dair/uair/upb

Can't really think of any more multiple move shield breakers people do in matches consistently. I'm sure I forgot one or two though. Plus there are the 1 move shield breakers like Samus' up b and Yoshi's dair.

 

[ciaza]

And Samus UPSMASH.

.

 

[jimmyjoe]

And Samus UPSMASH.

.

So where would this work, a specific level's platform, and does it have to be a tall/wide character?

 

[ciaza]

Works when they shield on a platform like the 2 lower ones on DL.

e.g: click me!

 

[Sangoku]

asianaussie: what does "advertising as a featured thread" mean? Does this refer to me asking for participation?

Sheermadness: do you think listing more shieldbreaks is useless? Of course, frame perfect ones and so on might be useless but I thought we could wider a bit our shieldbreak range. But if others also think only writing the really usefull ones is better, that's how I might do.

ciaza: I don't think that works against really slippy characters like luigi or jigglypuff, but I haven't tried so I might be wrong.

 

[asianaussie]

Your thread is featured on the top of the new default skin lol

Sheer, are you really going to care if, say, link's u-air does 3% less on shield than on a person (obviously dumb)? Theory is theory.

 

[The Star King]

List the ones ant-d did on youtube and any variants of them you can see.

Jpleal10 (House) did them NOOB. /House fan

Works when they shield on a platform like the 2 lower ones on DL.

e.g: click me!

Also works against a wall. I think bair -> usmash works, not completely sure if the stun from the bair is enough, though, since the start-up for U-Smash is pretty big.

- Mario dairs to upairs

Real men do dair nair usmash.

 

[asianaussie]

brb quitting smash for being really bad at this game

how can i not remember house being the one doing them >_>

and yeah d-air > n-air is more boss

 

[Sangoku]

Yeah Jpleal10 has a lot of vids showing shieldbreaks. I thought antd had too after asianaussie said that lol. I will have to ask for his permission on posting his stuff there. Does he have a smashboards account so I can pm him?

Oh and I didn't know about that featured thing

Spoiler

as real men use revolution

. How are the threads in that list chosen?

 

[Strong Badam]

shieldstun is most likely based on the attack's damage. get me some damages & shieldstun values and I might be able to figure out the formula.
as someone said, shield damage is the move's damage % + an attribute of the hitbox.

 

[ballin4life]

Another one I've seen here and there is Falcon uairs when the opponent is on a platform. I don't think it's a guaranteed shield break but I've seen it happen several times (also if they let go of shield they get uair -> upbed haha)

 

[Sangoku]

Strong Bad: are you sure of what you are saying? I feel samus full charged shot gives a lot of shieldstun (often enough to run and grab) while it's not that powerful (compared to jigglypuff's neutral b for example). I'll still give you all the data once I get them though.
Concerning shield damage, I still find it weird that most moves get 0 as the "attribute of the hitbox" but even if you're right it doesn't change much as we can't a priori know what moves get this hitbox "bonus".

ballin: yeah I've also wondered if it was a real shieldbreak. I think some variations of short hop double uairs is a shieldbreak though (seen it in Jpleal10's vids).

 

[ballin4life]

The Jpleal ones need to be like frame perfect though

 

[TANK64]

Another one I've seen here and there is Falcon uairs when the opponent is on a platform. I don't think it's a guaranteed shield break but I've seen it happen several times (also if they let go of shield they get uair -> upbed haha)

Just about to post this lol. and IT IS guaranteed (at least if you let go of shield). If you do the first Uair (attacker on stage) on their shield on a platform, then you just have to jump and do 2 more. One Uair on the way up, and one on the way down (Fastfall). The 4th hit can be any Uair or move you can get out (upsmash). Pretty sure I didn't miss anything . If anyone can add to this cool- or find out it is not legit I will praise you and signature those praises for 1 month. I'm in a betting mood .

 

[Linkshot]

Shield Stun is pretty much exactly the same as hitstun, except Shields use their own internal modifier. In short, it's based on damage + knockback.

And no, it is impossible for a move to do less on shield than on a person (the minimum shield damage value is 0)

As an example, Marth's Shield Breaker (fully charged) in Melee and Brawl has 60 Shield Damage, which combined with normal damage, instantly breaks shields (they have 70 HP in Brawl). But his fSmash has 0 Shield Damage, so the damage the shield takes is exactly the same as the damage the person would take.

These mechanics have always been the same throughout Smash. The only difference between games is the hitstun and shieldstun modifiers decreased as time went on.

I'm pretty sure there are data junkies out there that have the raw values of each hitbox. You've just gotta ask around.

 

[jimmyjoe]

Thanks Ciaza.

brb quitting smash for being really bad at this game

how can i not remember house being the one doing them >_>

and yeah d-air > n-air is more boss

First the items thing and now this!? You're falling apart mate

 

[Sangoku]

ballin: okay I didn't know lol. I might not include frames perfect ones.

tank: that's nice, I didn't know. I believe you when you say it is guaranteed but I will check it anyway =P. Not for the "reward", but just so we're settled.

Linkshot: let's decompose everything as I'm a bit dumb. I'll try to reword what you said, tell me if I'm wrong in any part.

Shield Stun is based on Hitstun. That I can agree (meaning that I don't know, but it doesn't seam too far fetched).

Hitstun is based on damage AND knockback. That seems a bit strange with Jiggly's neutral b. I feel it gives more hitstun than it should with its knockback and it's not incredibly powerful in terms of damage either. But let's assume it's true, then shield stun depends on damage and knockback. This seems more correct than just saying shield stun depends on damage which disturbed me in Strong Bad's post.

What is an "internal modifier"? I mean is it something we could see/quantify with a cheat engine?

Concerning the "data junkies" that's the main problem. We only had AntD AFAIK and I don't think we have anything concerning hitstun and knockback (how would we find info about those?).

Anyway thanks for helping clarifying all this as it was still really obscure for me.

Strong Bad: if what I said above is correct and shield stun is based on these two factors, how would you find a formula including only damage?

 

[The Star King]

Strong Bad: are you sure of what you are saying? I feel samus full charged shot gives a lot of shieldstun (often enough to run and grab) while it's not that powerful (compared to jigglypuff's neutral b for example).

Wut? Puff's neutral B does like 13% damage, while Samus's fully charged neutral B does twice that, 26%. You're probably thinking of shield damage, but I'm pretty sure Strong Bad was talking about normal % damage. Thinking about it, it would make sense to me.

I could see knockback being a factor, too, I suppose. Who knows?

JPleal10 on Smashboards is "House".

 

[Sangoku]

Yeah this would make sense with the chain: shieldstun -> hitstun -> damage (normal % damage) & knockback. Which means there is no direct link between shieldstun and shield damage.

Still I don't see how we could ignore the factor knockback (as you pointed out).

I don't know if I should be glad that brawl and melee players come to see this thread or if I should be ashamed given my poor job compared to some proper frame researches with actual formula and such lol.

edit: oh and thanks for the name, I'll try to PM him.

 

[Linkshot]

The internal modifier is something only found by ripping apart the data and organising it, really.

All I remember is that 64 has the highest Shield Stun out of all Smash iterations.

Asking a few Brawl modding people and they're not sure. Somebody chimed in with Damage*1.2 but I'm not sure if he was trolling, so it's worth testing (meaning a 10-damage move would have 12 frames of Shield Stun)

 

[Sangoku]

It doesn't work. At least not with regular damages. Luigi's dsmash has a power of 17% and does 41 frames of shieldstun. Assuming I counted wrong (lol) and it was 42, it would give a *2 multiplier, which doesn't work with other moves such as luigi's upb (25% on opponent and more than 55 frames of shieldstun). I'll test more values to see if I can get a formula but I really doubt it (especially if it also includes the knockback of the attack).

 

[Incendia]

11 down b's for fox to shield break eh? Anyone ever pull that off in a matchup?

 

[asianaussie]

I think a couple of Europeans do it with moderate consistency.

Dunno if there are videos of it, but it's proven to be possible.

 

[Sangoku]

Maddy (german player) can do that pretty consistently. I don't think there is any video of it. I might have a krec file where he does that on me... He plays on keyboard, don't know if that changes anything.

And ballin4life did it on console with controller.

 

[SheerMadness]

My friend did it to me on console and he doesn't even play ssb64 lol...

Actually he did it on the wii vc with a gamecube controller but still.

 

[Sangoku]

Does he play melee? I don't understand why almost nobody can pull that off. I mean, it is difficult but not that much either with some training. I can sometimes do 3-4, but I'll try to train more.

 

[TANK64]

^^he is a Melee player (redonkulously technical one too). Still- I find it funny that you would think that after all the crazy stuff people can do consistently, people would be training to master a legit fox shield break lol. Only Maddy is known for pulling it off regularly (keyboard probably makes it eaisier). It's crazy. I think it's more of not thinking about. I, for one, have never even tried it. But I'm sure I, and many others, could if they tried.

Damnit, now I have to play fox again -___-

*runs to try it*

 

[SheerMadness]

Actually it was Garbanzo, Tankito. Yes he is a melee player also, Sangoku.

Not Colin.

He was the first person to ever break my shield with shines. Maddy did it to me like a year later online.

 

[TANK64]

^^I know it was Garb -____-. I would have said Rizidizidonkulous if I was referring to Colin.
Duu

I think Garbanzo is exceptionally technical if that was what you were referring to. Like pretty much popularizing the shinehog thing in Melee to the point where I've heard people call it the "Garb thing." But yea, the kid isn't exactly a slow button presser lol.

(still haven't practiced shine break...)

 

[Sangoku]

I didn't understand your post tank. Do you mean it's weird that I think it's not that hard? Or on the contrary are you saying it's not so hard, but people just don't try to master it?

Well I say it's not that hard, because with almost no training and without being a good player I can already chain some.

edit: reread it more carefully and I think I get it lol. You're saying people just don't try? But why wouldn't they? It's not a new technique anymore so even if you don't think of it, you just hear about it and try.

edit 2: I made a quick video of my shines performance, it's uploading. You can see I could chain 6 without trying for too long and my general techskill isn't good (check the other vids if you think I'm good lol). They are not done on a shield (too complicated), but trust me, they're fast enough.

edit 3: here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB3lqqlLWlk

 

[TANK64]

I'm agreeing with you that I don't understand why almost no one pulls it off. I followed that by saying it doesn't seem "easy," but easy enough to do in a match. You would think people would be trying, but then I haven't even thought to try myself. That combined with the fact that it is nothing new makes this more weird. If every fox threatened to break shields at any moment, I imagine that would be an easy combo set up. Couldn't hurt right? Might make him... better? IDK, I'm not sure if it would really change much because of all the other options fox has, but just something to think about.

In other words, Foxes need to get up on this!
Besides the usefulness/uselessness of a technique never stopped me from learning it. =)

 

[The Star King]

Only Maddy is known for pulling it off regularly (keyboard probably makes it eaisier).

Keyboard might actually make it harder, IMO. It's hard to explain why, but I think it's harder to pull off a consistent timing with two fingers timing it vs one finger sliding. Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time with it.

Anyways, Maddy uses macros apparently, so I don't really trust him.

EDIT: omg I just realized I can use a finger sliding method with my keyboard setup WOW LOL. Maybe I'll try to practice it and see if it works better. A fox that could consistently shield break would be too gud.

 

[asianaussie]

If I focus on doing shine cancels I can do it, I just need the rhythm between spacebar and the C button in my head. I suck at Fox though :|

My keyboard setup is so bad it's almost legit lol