Social Shulk Social : Starting to feel it!

[Starfall11]

As others have been saying here, Shulk is hard to get used to. Most of the new characters have been pretty easy to use, but Shulk's not.

Unrelated: I got a home run contest of 4208 ft with Shulk :D! GSP of 983851

I had to comment on this, because the first thing I did when I got the game was go into homerun contest and compete with my friends for a record. I quickly upped the record to 3k, and my friends gave up. Buster and Smash make his home-run potential godly.

Here are some notes about my playstyle with Shulk:

- I've gotten good at switching Monado Arts extremely fast. I can cancel and switch to another art in about 1.5 seconds or so. Possibly faster. Just takes good memory and rhythm.

- I abuse SH Nair all the time. It's a great defensive option to prevent people from approaching you. It's also great on offense as long as you're careful of getting shield grabbed. This can be accomplished by hitting at max range.

- Speed is amazing for pivot grabs, but sometimes it can be difficult to grab people who dodge a lot. Very useful 1 vs 1, but less so in FFA's.

- Jump is amazing for gimping off-stage as everyone has mentioned. I suggest abusing Fair multiple times. This is deadly against Little Mac and anyone with poor recovery. I sucked at carrying people offstage with Fair until just recently. Think I'll practice this up in training mode. And it reminds me of old melee Marth/current Lucina. Great potential for juggling offstage.

- Grabs are a very important aspect of Shulk's neutral game. When people get too close, it's best to shield grab and pivot grab. A lot of his tilts have excellent range, but long startup, so you'll get hit out of it if you attempt them too close.

Overall, I'm still learning a lot, but can manage about a 55-60% win rate online. I wish I could find a way to post my replays. But outside of phone recording devices, does anyone have tips?

 

[Wintropy]

So I tried Shulk out.

He's weird and endearing and I'm not sure what to think of him just yet.

Monado Arts are all kinds of fun, though I haven't yet gotten to grips with switching them in time and figuring out what they all do. Took a while to experiment with them and figure out the effects and defects of each mode change.

Opponent!Shulk is mean. He keeps using Vision on me and countering all of my moves.

 

[Mahie]

Sup guys!

I've been playing some smash 4, and so far I can confidently say that I will be maining Shulk.

Really interesting character, the fastest and the slowest in the game, lightest and heaviest, weakest and strongest. How can that not make you want to play him?

Either way, I got 3rd at a tournament last week-end, losing against a Ness and a DK player. I'll have to study those and then bring the Monado arts all the way to the top.

Cheers!

 

[Berserker.]

I think we'll all get 100% used to Shulk by.... let's say next week.

I'm inconsistent with switching to jump

I don't know why but I decided to lol around with lv 9 CPU's. They feel dumber but they're way more defensive. Any CPU with a counter somehow manages to counter me 3/4 the time. Also, spacing is a bit difficult since well... AI.

 

[AFeralFurry]

I'm still getting used to Shulk, but I like him.

Doesn't stop me from Backslashing to my doom 3 times, though.

 

[Bittersweet]

I think everyone backslashes to their doom at least once. It's just part of the Shulk Experience.

 

[erico9001]

I already think I'm a lot better with Shulk.

I had to comment on this, because the first thing I did when I got the game was go into homerun contest and compete with my friends for a record. I quickly upped the record to 3k, and my friends gave up. Buster and Smash make his home-run potential godly.

Here are some notes about my playstyle with Shulk:

- I've gotten good at switching Monado Arts extremely fast. I can cancel and switch to another art in about 1.5 seconds or so. Possibly faster. Just takes good memory and rhythm.

- I abuse SH Nair all the time. It's a great defensive option to prevent people from approaching you. It's also great on offense as long as you're careful of getting shield grabbed. This can be accomplished by hitting at max range.

- Speed is amazing for pivot grabs, but sometimes it can be difficult to grab people who dodge a lot. Very useful 1 vs 1, but less so in FFA's.

- Jump is amazing for gimping off-stage as everyone has mentioned. I suggest abusing Fair multiple times. This is deadly against Little Mac and anyone with poor recovery. I sucked at carrying people offstage with Fair until just recently. Think I'll practice this up in training mode. And it reminds me of old melee Marth/current Lucina. Great potential for juggling offstage.

- Grabs are a very important aspect of Shulk's neutral game. When people get too close, it's best to shield grab and pivot grab. A lot of his tilts have excellent range, but long startup, so you'll get hit out of it if you attempt them too close.

Overall, I'm still learning a lot, but can manage about a 55-60% win rate online. I wish I could find a way to post my replays. But outside of phone recording devices, does anyone have tips?

Yeah definitely. Nair is great for both def and offense depending on the situation. I agree with abusing fair... I do that a lot, especially against Little Mac. I haven't really been grabbing when using Monado Speed, so I should try that more often.

I know for some of these moves that the damage sweetspot is the metal part of the sword, but I don't think it's usually worth sacrificing the range to try to hit it.

I don't think people have discussed this much- I have been getting a lot of KOs with Shulk's up air. It's pretty powerful, especially combined with monado smash.

Let's see... as for other options for replays I know that the file saves to the sd card and that it won't be a video file. If anything, you may be able to upload the file to the internet and have other people insert it onto their sd cards. I'm going to try to find it on the sd card. They could then view it from their game's replay section I would think.

I found the location of the files that are created when you save replays. I noticed one file was added each time I did a new replay, so I thought deleting it might get rid of the replay. It did not. I am certain that file was related to the replays, but some other files is probably changed when you do replay. I'll reply when I have some more info.
-
Okay I'm back with more info.
In addition to adding the one file, in this case "00000033" it also edits the previous file "00000032" and also the file "00000003"

"00000003" appears to be always altered whenever a replay is done. The file before the file that was added will be edited too.
I tried taking a look at the 00000003 file in notepad since it seems to be the most important, but all the coding or information is in japanese.

It looks like you can't transfer replays from one person to another in this manner... at least right now.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Up smash down air, ftilt and Fsmash are .y bread and butter. Especially downward tilted fsmash.
I miss up airs all the damn time.
I dash attack so rarely that when I do its a kill. Got a kill with a pivot ftilt in speed. Felt nice.

 

[Deathcarter]

Jump is my absolute favorite Monado art. The added aerial mobility is absolutely fantastic for me as I prefer to use nair for approaching with the much better recovery + gimping potential is a big fat cherry on top of the delicious Shulk cake.

 

[S.F.L.R_9]

I've been using Jump at around 90 - 120% to up throw into a u-air which is actually a really efficient and flashy KO andonethatmakesyouropponentsrage

 

[zippy3214]

I've been using Jump at around 90 - 120% to up throw into a u-air which is actually a really efficient and flashy KO andonethatmakesyouropponentsrage

My favorite KO is either a vision or jump and knock them away, and then use insane recovery. Also, don't use vision against anything that does multiple hits and is active, Shulk will dodge the hit that activated the vision and then run right into the fire. Makes fighting Ness more difficult.

 

[KingofPhantoms]

Have yet to improve on my work with the Monado Arts, but I've gotten decent with Shulk's general moveset aside from that. Still, gonna need to work on those Monado Arts. Very situation and strategical move, I'll honestly probably have an easier time getting the hang of it once I can get online and battle against actual people.

Training with CPUs is a pain for me...they're not hard or anything, but that's just it. I find it hard to improve with something that cannot put up much of a fight.

 

[erico9001]

I've been using Jump at around 90 - 120% to up throw into a u-air which is actually a really efficient and flashy KO andonethatmakesyouropponentsrage

Oo nice strategy. I just tried that out in practice mode and it works well! I was trying that earlier but without jump and my issue was I was too low to get the sweetspot.

My favorite KO is either a vision or jump and knock them away, and then use insane recovery. Also, don't use vision against anything that does multiple hits and is active, Shulk will dodge the hit that activated the vision and then run right into the fire. Makes fighting Ness more difficult.

I was doing that against some Foxes and it worked well, so maybe it depends.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

All the projectile spam is serious starting to irk me.
Sheik,Greninja, Yoshi, link, Rosaluma, robin, Pits mad irritating.
Especially pit and Rosaluma I'm not finding edgeguarding to be useful at all with their recoveries. Better off trying to KO.

/Frustrated.

 

[Bonren]

HEY GUYS! All I can say is I am in love with how Shulk came out in this game, and I have been having some massive success with him too!
200 games played with a 75% win rate

I do agree that he takes some getting used to due to the fact that pretty much all of his moves have lag and can be punished, but he can adapt to so many situations it just feels so great!

I'M REALLY FEELING IT.

 

[erico9001]

All the projectile spam is serious starting to irk me.
Sheik,Greninja, Yoshi, link, Rosaluma, robin, Pits mad irritating.
Especially pit and Rosaluma I'm not finding edgeguarding to be useful at all with their recoveries. Better off trying to KO.

/Frustrated.

I think I've seen someone bring up how Shulk's bad against projectile users.

@Card just brought up in the metagame discussion thread that backslash can jump over Robin's arcfire. I've used it myself to jump over some of Mario's fireballs... I do not know what other projectiles it works for though.

Umm I'm not totally sure about this, but I think Monado Jump might be good against projectile users.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Nair out prioritizes the mother load problem is I'm about to reach 500 games online. There is legit a heap of projectile nonsense and its getting stale.
I've got to stop using n-air off ledge the animation is crazy long.

 

[spiderfreak1011]

Well, ive been playing the game for a bit, Shulk's Third Vision Counter Custom (the Strong One) does sooo much damage. I had Buster(Decisive Monado Arts custom mind you), and countered a Bowser's side smash, it did freaking 45% damage in one shot. @_@ I was also fighting one of my friends who was using ZSS and kept using her dash attack, so i countered in twice in a row(he used it again) and the both counters managed to do enough damage to kill her, she was only at 30% or so to start with.

 

[GuyWithTheFace]

You know something hit me today. Playing Shulk is ridiculously like playing Xenoblade. In Xenoblade, timing was everything. You couldn't just spam random arts, and that's how Shulk works too. Not only with his arts, but his standard attacks require a lot of thought too. It's actually really impressive. When I play Shulk I have to think just like I'm playing Xenoblade.

He's not a JRPG character turned into a fighter for Smash Bros, like Ness or Robin. He stays true to his roots. Playing Shulk is like playing a JRPG in the middle of a fighting game, and I love it!!

 

[link2702]

alright fellow shulk mains, got a question, does anyone here have an idea on the best way to handle rosalina and a hardcore camping greninja?

two matches last night in for glory I ran into this situation. both players knew what they were doing, and were clearly tournament players prior in either brawl or melee(most likely brawl) just like myself .Yet I couldn't find a decent opening on either of em.

rosalina's luma was a pain to try and deal with, getting close to her is near impossible, and shulks slower moves made it hard to find an opening.

Greninja's shurikens forced me to approach, yet his strong reach made it hard for me to reach back.

I eventually had to go sonic on the greninja, I was able to pull a kill on greninja then and proceed to stall the match till time on him(payback fro camping hard) but i couldn't pull that off as shulk.....

 

[Deleted member]

All the projectile spam is serious starting to irk me.
Sheik,Greninja, Yoshi, link, Rosaluma, robin, Pits mad irritating.
Especially pit and Rosaluma I'm not finding edgeguarding to be useful at all with their recoveries. Better off trying to KO.

/Frustrated.

I fought against a Sheik in For Glory as Shulk and yeah... I can feel your pain. Looks like a big weakness for Shulk will be projectile users or characters with good edge-guarding.

 

[S.F.L.R_9]

alright fellow shulk mains, got a question, does anyone here have an idea on the best way to handle rosalina and a hardcore camping greninja?

two matches last night in for glory I ran into this situation. both players knew what they were doing, and were clearly tournament players prior in either brawl or melee(most likely brawl) just like myself .Yet I couldn't find a decent opening on either of em.

rosalina's luma was a pain to try and deal with, getting close to her is near impossible, and shulks slower moves made it hard to find an opening.

Obviously use your own judgement, but I found speed made both these characters so much easier, and I was able to just rush them down with nair. Jump helps too, as you can get from one end of the stage to the other super quick and pivot grab/tilt/whatever. Vision is really good for Rosalina too since it can hit both her and her luma at the same time. When her luma is killed, rush in with speed,jump,buster, or smash depending on what you see fit and do as much damage as possible.

 

[link2702]

Obviously use your own judgement, but I found speed made both these characters so much easier, and I was able to just rush them down with nair. Jump helps too, as you can get from one end of the stage to the other super quick and pivot grab/tilt/whatever. Vision is really good for Rosalina too since it can hit both her and her luma at the same time. When her luma is killed, rush in with speed,jump,buster, or smash depending on what you see fit and do as much damage as possible.

problem is speed gives you the traction of luigi so it was hard to pull things off consistently. I was able to take out the grenija with sonic, but shulk's traction under speed kept screwing me over.

I guess I just need to get more used to speed, jump, buster, and smash are what I usually have best results with...

 

[Vinylic.]

I lost 5 times in a row with shulk.

He really takes time to get used to. I hope someone finds a way to make this character a lot easier to play, but right now. I'm using him like how I play ike recently, and it's giving me better results, but only time will tell if it is the most effective.

 

[GuyWithTheFace]

Obviously use your own judgement, but I found speed made both these characters so much easier, and I was able to just rush them down with nair. Jump helps too, as you can get from one end of the stage to the other super quick and pivot grab/tilt/whatever. Vision is really good for Rosalina too since it can hit both her and her luma at the same time. When her luma is killed, rush in with speed,jump,buster, or smash depending on what you see fit and do as much damage as possible.

Speed and Jump are definitely good for those characters. I personally use Jump a lot when facing a Rosalina and Speed more when facing a Greninja. For Rosalina, just activate Jump and get in there with bair or nair. If she's about to send Luma out, Vision should be your go to.

I played against a pretty good Geninja earlier on Omega Gerudo Valley. I used Speed and kept using Vision on every Water Shuriken, so we ended up just rushing each other down and trying to hit each other as we rushed past. We also tried to use our respective counters on each other a bunch. With the music and the setting it felt like a really cool old western/samurai movie, but with frog ninjas and laser blades. Still, it was hella tight.

I won.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

I vision shadow sneak. I vision shurikens. I have mad beef with balloon fight omega, you can't see shadow sneak on it. Every other stage "I see your shadow"...on balloon fight omega "WTF when did he Side-B!"
Shulks Nair is stupidly good on stage, it's a shame our jab doesn't come out faster.

 

[Meta651]

Like the majority has posted, I think I'm starting to understand more Shulk, the Nair is amazing to rack damage and covers a lot, Fair is excellent for spacing and with MSh I can get some good kills but I'm having some troubles to set up the kill, the majority being reads or a dashed Usmash with Monado Speed. Also I have some troubles against Sheiks, you guys got some tips?

 

[DraginHikari]

Actually had a pretty decent streak of games into For Glory mode today... though I hit a brick wall with a Little Mac player who I beat once and then his tactics changed where he was rolling and darting around constantly moving so even when I had speed up, it would often come down to luck whether I actually hit the target or not. Countering Little Mac I find hard because his attacks come out so quickly.

Not quite sure yet how to deal with that situation.

 

[Deleted member]

I started to play as Shulk better and defeated some level 9s with ease once I started to play Shulk like I was playing Xenoblade. I had to think, "Which Monado Art should I use for this situation?" You can't simply spam his moves and Monado Arts willy-nilly; you need to be methodical like Shulk is in given situations. Hopefully I can easily apply this over when I am fighting as Shulk in For Glory.
I've also seen some people say Shulk is the worst character in the game... even though he is far from that title.

Actually had a pretty decent streak of games into For Glory mode today... though I hit a brick wall with a Little Mac player who I beat once and then his tactics changed where he was rolling and darting around constantly moving so even when I had speed up, it would often come down to luck whether I actually hit the target or not. Countering Little Mac I find hard because his attacks come out so quickly.

Not quite sure yet how to deal with that situation.

I encountered a Little Mac main myself. Though he was a bit mediocre. I handled the situation by using Speed to rush in on Little Mac. I used Shulk's nair and up tilt to at least start juggling Little Mac and to keep him airborne. I used Shulk's Visions when necessary; it can work wonders against Little Mac since he is incredibly powerful anyway.
The key to beating Little Mac is to at least counter him in his own rushing game. Just rush in and start juggling him since he is a very weak air fighter and Shulk has many options to exploit that weakness.

 

[LordTakeo]

Gotta say, Shulk was feeling really clunky at first, but when you get used to him... he's quite good. I f*** love his Monado jump art, just feels pretty good.
21/38 is the ratio I'm currently in, hope that I can master him sometime, since he's one of the few characters I'm planning to main.

 

[Zephil]

New game, new main.

Sup guys! Fellow Xenoblade fan and most probably official Shulk main.

Hope to be an active part of this group and make Shulk a smash beast!

 

[BluB]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=470eWmco2SI
This happendend today in a for glory match. I was kinda surprised.

 

[Hokori]

New game, new main.

Sup guys! Fellow Xenoblade fan and most probably official Shulk main.

Hope to be an active part of this group and make Shulk a smash beast!

Warm welcome to you, friend!

I'd like to think that we have an awesome group hanging around these parts, so I'm sure you'll enjoy your time around here with us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=470eWmco2SI
This happendend today in a for glory match. I was kinda surprised.

At 3%?! Lmao. The salt had to be pretty real for that Bowser player.

 

[Berserker.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=470eWmco2SI
This happendend today in a for glory match. I was kinda surprised.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Lol I did the same with a regular vision bowser hits so hard he's his own worst enemy.

 

[LordTakeo]

Can't even quote links yet. q.q

Oh well, that is one damn good argument to play shulk.
for the bowser.

New game, new main.

Sup guys! Fellow Xenoblade fan and most probably official Shulk main.

Hope to be an active part of this group and make Shulk a smash beast!

Aaaand welcome fellow Xenoblade fan!

 

[Berserker.]

Once I get Bowser to 40% to 60% (To be safe), I instantly switch to Smash and just wait there for a counter. Countering anything from Bowser is fatal for him.

 

[Zephil]

That was crazy!! And it was normal Shulk!

People will need to be really careful of Vision.

 

[Dihan]

Hey everyone! I'm a long-time lurker of Smash Boards and, being dismayed about the state of Zelda yet again, I'm picking up a new character to main. As I'm a huge fan of Xenoblade, that had to be Shulk! I've learnt a lot from r

 

[BluePikmin11]

I still don't know how to switch modes properly.