'The poke, or the jab?'

[Jaedrik]

Vanilla brawl may be overly defensive, I'm going to add more fuel to the fire, as I've not seen this at all here.

There are a few characters I like to call the 'boxer' characters. (I.E. Kirby, Cfalc. or anyone with a very fast first standard A-combo) With these people, a strategy you or others may imply (trying to be helpful here) is to set the shield button you don't use to attack. I call it poking, but... Anyways, You can do this with normal A, but it's slower into other moves then.
Imagine, if you where next to a link player who was about to hit you with his second smash combo (providing the first one was shielded). Would you like to A. Get hit B. Shield/Dodge C. Unshield quickly then tap the (I use the R button) attack button to standard combo him with the first shot, making your opponent flinch and be set up for another move/shield again?


Just throwing this one out there. Please excuse if this is common sense, or is a duplicate thread.

 

[ndayday]

Pretty common sense, but what do I know. Another thing you could do is jab with a character like C. Falcon and grab them out of the hitstun...however I'm almost completely positive a good player would DI out of it. But yes, jabs/pokes are good. I mean, look at Ike and Snake.

But really, if you were to perfect shield/shield a smash from a character like Link, I would probably grab them seeing as you can do a lot of them and most do decent damage.

 

[demodemo]

cool technique bro

 

[Royale]

I actually like to use Diddy's jab, shield grab, jab jab, throw. It works pretty well.

 

[Levitas]

Usually grab is safer and sets up for other things better than jab, though I suppose it varies among characters, like anything else.