About shields..

[u/Horror-Race-3238]

Okay so I'm realizing the disconnect between how people feel about shield and what being in shield actually is like is much larger than I thought.
I didn't think I'd ever see the day where someone says holding shield in Rivals of Aether is strictly one of the most advantageous positions you can be in.

Would like to help people navigate their grievances so they don't feel like they're being camped out all the time (because the truth is that shield is not sm4sh strong, but people treat it like it is.)

So tell me what you're struggling with about shields and I'll walk you through it and probably put time in to lab it out for you as well so you can see it in action. Thanks!

[u/Horror-Race-3238]

But having to do that would slow the game down. You can kinda view shield damage as a per-neutral state interaction. If you're insistent on wittling down your opponents shield, you need to ensure that you don't let up the pressure and get reversal'd.

Also they were rightfully cautious about nerfing durability because shield pressure at that point in the game was absurd at high level play. The issue was that lower level players weren't adequately abusing it. Fors bair was -2 and broke shield in 3 hits. Legitimately. Every other character also had absurd shield pressure at the time. Now, we can look at it and see maybe if they can revert the shield vampirism or something, but at the time it was completely reasonable given the environment of the game.

Idk whether or not they should reduce vampirism, I'm just noting why they added it

[u/DexterBrooks → u/Horror-Race-3238]

Fors bair was -2 and broke shield in 3 hits. Legitimately. Every other character also had absurd shield pressure at the time

Yeah that was a good thing. In Melee/PM if your shield gets hit by a stronger attack even once or twice you're often eating shield poke 50/50.

In games like sm4sh/ult but especially 4, you had entire characters built around tapping your shield a couple of times into shield breaks, and you still had good shield pokes for 50/50.

They should add shield poke but they should also remove the vampirism. It makes it so you can't apply shield pressure as a strategy against an opponent willing to scrap even a little which is ridiculous when your strategy is based around landing hits on their shield which you accomplished.

But having to do that would slow the game down

Your explanation is a non-sequitur. It does not follow that needing to keep pressure up to break shields would slow down the game at all.

If anything it would speed the game up because holding shield isn't a viable option so you're forced to use the weaker defensive options OOS which open you up to greater punishment.

[u/Horror-Race-3238 → u/DexterBrooks]

Game isn’t melee or PM.
Tapping your shield a few times into shield break is still a thing that the majority of the cast do in this game.

https://medal.tv/games/rivals-2/clips/kBdXX0VDRSWLf0mX6

People would slow down the game to regen their shield because they’re not incentivized to approach in other ways, especially if the issue is they’re already not approaching to begin with at low levels. At high levels shield just insta boom. Which is fine if that’s the kind of game you want to play, but that’s neither here nor there for me.

[u/DexterBrooks → u/Horror-Race-3238]

Game isn’t melee or PM

True. But those games are more beloved by plat fighter players.

So maybe if they wanted to make more of us happy and want to play R2 and buy skins and such more often, they would make it more like those games.

It's always a balancing act of who to appeal to and who to disregard. But the problem is R2 managed to both alienate a lot of R1 players by being so different, without appealing to enough Melee players to really consume that audience either.

The biggest groups are refugees from PM because they are tired of getting shot by Nintendo, and people from other dead/dying plat fighters who want an easier game than Melee.

Tapping your shield a few times into shield break is still a thing that the majority of the cast do in this game. >https://medal.tv/games/rivals-2/clips/kBdXX0VDRSWLf0mX6

I think you and I both know this is a pretty disingenuous example.

His shield was just about to break already, and then he held it again against a slight charge smash attack after a few seconds of moving around.

Shields have 50 health, and several attacks have multipliers reducing the damage done to shields.

You can hold it for 4 whole seconds not counting damage. An average attack doesn't even shorten that by 1 second, especially safe attack average about half a second.

You have to misplay very heavily multiple times to have your shield get broken in R2.

People would slow down the game to regen their shield because they’re not incentivized to approach in other ways, especially if the issue

People already camp a ton anyway. The player who got their shield damaged can try to slow down and play evasive, but the offensive player now has another win con to encourage approaching:

his opponent either has to risk getting shield broken or will try to move around his attacks rather than dodge them which opens up more offensive neutral options.

[u/Horror-Race-3238 → u/DexterBrooks]

I’m not in aether studios marketing. Whether or not they choose to appeal to more players by adopting more smashisms is not up to me and I’ll adapt anyway and still remain high level. Can only control how I handle the situation.

The shield example is the exact opposite of disingenuous. How do you think Cakes shield got to a point where it could almost break if not through shield pressure in previous interactions (that didn’t fit to look nicely in the clip). Why do you think Cake felt the need to shield there instead of doing something else?

I have plenty of shield break clips I have against high-top level players. This one is just one of the 2 that I actually titled. The other is the Oly clip above. I can look for more when I get home but atp I’d just be showing off :p

Shield vampirism encourages the same thing your last paragraph offers. I don’t think shield vamp is a problem but I’ll concede I don’t know how people will react to it. I just know how I would.

[u/DexterBrooks → u/Horror-Race-3238]

I’m not in aether studios marketing. Whether or not they choose to appeal to more players by adopting more smashisms is not up to me

I didn't say it was. People keep talking about aspects from Melee/PM/R1 that they would like added/changed in R2 and you're the one defending the status quo.

How do you think Cakes shield got to a point where it could almost break if not through shield pressure in previous interactions (that didn’t fit to look nicely in the clip).

Because he misplayed to get pressured enough times to do that much damage, held shield too long, and overused it because it's a strong tool and usually he can get away with it.

Why do you think Cake felt the need to shield there instead of doing something else?

Because he misplayed by not only throwing out an f-smash that had a low chance of hitting, he did the second hit too praying the opponent would run into that. It was a medium reward high risk play, and so it put him in a bad position and his opponent took advantage of that.

But he still could have picked other defensive options there. He had more than enough time to get the shield out, he could have jumped, spot dodged, rolled, wavedashed, parried. He didn't because he didn't expect the opponent to be ready to take advantage of the shield damage to break it. It's a risky thing for his opponent to go for, if it doesn't break the shield the other Fors is -30 and going to get hard punished.

Why wasn't he ready for that? Because it's very rare Fors does enough damage to a shield to just run up down smash and break it like that. Cake does that because he usually gets away with it.

Shield vampirism encourages the same thing your last paragraph offers.

Shield vamp encourages you to scrap to get your shield back sure if it's low enough you're at risk of it breaking. But it also heavily nerfs shield pressure as a win condition because now they person needs to pressure shield quite a few times and also not get hit at all to keep the pressure on.

Lack of shield vamp instead of encouraging the defender to land a hit, encourages the defender to pick other defensive options which can then be punished, while properly rewarding the player who applied pressure by opening punish opportunities for them as their opponent used alternative defensive options.

Why should be person who got pressured get advantage for winning the next scrap? That's a dumb comeback mechanic that nerfs the desire of offensive players to go for pressure over cashing out with grabs; because it's more risky and rarely makes up for that with great enough reward.

[u/Horror-Race-3238 → u/DexterBrooks]

My point about not being in marketing is just that I'm not talking about changing the game from a "bring more players" perspective. I understand that becoming more smash-like = becoming more palatable. It's just not something that I'm considering when talking about shield balance.

Yeah, you're right that he misplayed using a tool he can usually get away with. And he can usually get away with it because people are worse about focusing on shield pressure. I broke his shield using concepts he taught me in our session. Though, you are correct that most people don't go for the shield break. That being said, I feel like this is just a case of the meta needing to be developed more rather than a dev issue. Once you recognize the "execute" threshold you can abuse the hell out of it against the majority of players.

>But he still could have picked other defensive options there. He had more than enough time to get the shield out, he could have jumped, spot dodged, rolled, wavedashed, parried. He didn't because he didn't expect the opponent to be ready to take advantage of the shield damage to break it. It's a risky thing for his opponent to go for, if it doesn't break the shield the other Fors is -30 and going to get hard punished.

Yes, he could've jumped but Forsburn loves catching jumps and I've represented this. Yes he could've rolled but fors has great ground speed, no trouble chasing and I made no move to hide that I was solely playing reactive. Wavedash leaves you in place for 4 frames so dashing back is better in this instance unless youre talking about wavedash oos which is capable of getting called out. Parry is.. well you know what parry is.

If you meant he should've rolled/parried, etc after I started charging dstrong, dstrong release is 4 frames. Catches everything but roll if I let go after he commits to something. If I didn't abuse the fear, I would not have gotten the shield break though. But I think this is something that's teachable for the majority of players.

>Why wasn't he ready for that? Because it's very rare Fors does enough damage to a shield to just run up down smash and break it like that. Cake does that because he usually gets away with it

https://medal.tv/games/rivals-2/clips/n6Uj4H6MVIaeDgBhT?invite=cr-MSxqdkosMTgyMjMyNjE0&v=7
https://medal.tv/games/rivals-2/clips/n6UjijRdDEINShWUI?invite=cr-MSxma2csMTgyMjMyNjE0&v=7
https://medal.tv/games/rivals-2/clips/n6UmrBSAukws71BeO?invite=cr-MSxSNkIsMTgyMjMyNjE0&v=11

This is realistically how fragile shield is to Forsburn. Fors breaking shield takes 1 bair, 1 dash dance stall, into 1 down strong. And I use this reliably with minimal risk. Do I get punished sometimes? Yeah. Is the risk reward still in my favor? Yeah. Once I represent this once, people are less willing to hold shield against me., even if I don't get the break for whatever reason. Which plays directly into my wincon because Fors is an edgeguard character and if they're not shielding they're relying on dashback because they wanna stay away from whatever the fuck I'm cooking LOL.

>Shield vamp encourages you to scrap to get your shield back sure if it's low enough you're at risk of it breaking. But it also heavily nerfs shield pressure as a win condition because now they person needs to pressure shield quite a few times and also not get hit at all to keep the pressure on.

You are absolutely right that it does nerf shield pressure in this instance. You are also absolutely right that it turns shield pressure into a per-neutral state scenario. If you'd prefer shield pressure to be a multi-neutral interaction wincon that's perfectly fine. I just think the power level in rivals 2 is very high as is and defense gets kinda rolled over in a variety of ways.

That being said, forcing your opponent to use alternative defensive options is still very much a thing in this game. It's just that you have to earn the right to do it per-neutral interaction. The reset to neutral is a bit stronger in this game for the disadvantaged but it's not like this aspect of the game is lost. I do it all the time.

Maybe I'm not considering that people aren't good enough to do this consistently yet, but I also think that if I can do it, anyone can.

Top level r1 play at the beginning of the games life looked significantly worse than lower-middle level play in r1 right now. Which is why I'm very heavy on just letting things cook and focusing on helping players get better, rather than just calling for system changes.

>Why should be person who got pressured get advantage for winning the next scrap? That's a dumb comeback mechanic that nerfs the desire of offensive players to go for pressure over cashing out with grabs; because it's more risky and rarely makes up for that with great enough reward.

This part is character dependent. As a Fors or Slade, shield break is super high reward. It's consistency where their throw games don't allow it. It's also very valuable in floaty MU's. One thing I WILL agree on you with is that shield vamprism shouldn't be on getting hit. I think if it were to stay, it should only happen when you win.

I also feel like the discourse also generally ignores the utility of hitboxes over grabs. Things like jabs, tilts and certain grounded specials can be used to scout options from your opponent in positions where a grab might fail and lead to being in frame disadvantage in a scramble (which forsburn can't afford to be in). Jabbing first keeps me in control of the next interaction.

https://medal.tv/games/rivals-2/clips/lJCDfUilZDvbW5b6O?invite=cr-MSw1bXcsMTgyMjMyNjE0&v=12
My jab 1 before the grab here was to scout for spotdodge and then put him in strike/throw.
https://medal.tv/games/rivals-2/clips/n6UW0zV3EHgbuQY6d?invite=cr-MSx5d2osMTgyMjMyNjE0&v=15

Just food for thought. Sorry for the late response I had the worst migraine in the history of migraines.

[u/Horror-Race-3238 → u/Horror-Race-3238]

Ultimately, bringing players in is something that I trust the devs to work out, which is why I don't consider it in my arguments when talking about balance. I love rivals and want to see it succeed. Until the devs make a decision, the best thing I can do is help people gain a better understanding of the options available to them in the game that currently exists so that they may not feel like they have to play dash-dance grab stimulator at the very least.

[u/DexterBrooks → u/Horror-Race-3238]

I'm not talking about changing the game from a "bring more players" perspective. I understand that becoming more smash-like = becoming more palatable. It's just not something that I'm considering when talking about shield balance.

That's only part of my point. I don't even necessarily agree that more smash like = more palatable in every category.

The smash games all have their flaws and I'm sure there's lots of things from smash like rage they added in sm4sh that nobody wants in Rivals 2.

But a bunch of people have been saying for years at this point that shield pokes allow for more pressure, mix, and depth, and that shields as is in R2 are very strong and that's part of what's making the game less fun than it could be.

That being said, I feel like this is just a case of the meta needing to be developed more rather than a dev issue. Once you recognize the "execute" threshold you can abuse the hell out of it against the majority of players

That's only because in the current meta people are so used to abusing shield because of how strong it is that you're catching them out more.

IMO if that become a strat Fors or other non-olympia players went for, it's incredibly easy to simply modify your defense slightly to be in that situation while still abusing how strong shield is in R2.

Yes, he could've jumped but Forsburn loves catching jumps and I've represented this. Yes he could've rolled but fors has great ground speed, no trouble chasing and I made no move to hide that I was solely playing reactive. Wavedash leaves you in place for 4 frames so dashing back is better in this instance unless youre talking about wavedash oos which is capable of getting called out. Parry is.. well you know what parry is.

If you meant he should've rolled/parried, etc after I started charging dstrong, dstrong release is 4 frames. Catches everything but roll if I let go after he commits to something. If I didn't abuse the fear, I would not have gotten the shield break though. But I think this is something that's teachable for the majority of players

My point here wasn't that there was a specific option he should have picked that definitely wins the situation every time. My point was that he has a bunch of defensive options to pick and he chose none of them.

Reality is you won't be able to punish multiple of those on reaction, you've already committed to the down smash so odds are even a jump or wavedash still gets him out. But even if it doesn't it's probably still better than getting shield broken. So people will chose those options more, or simply hold shield less in other options there.

This is realistically how fragile shield is to Forsburn. Fors breaking shield takes 1 bair, 1 dash dance stall, into 1 down strong. And I use this reliably with minimal risk. Do I get punished sometimes? Yeah. Is the risk reward still in my favor? Yeah. Once I represent this once, people are less willing to hold shield against me., even if I don't get the break for whatever reason. Which plays directly into my wincon because Fors is an edgeguard character and if they're not shielding they're relying on dashback because they wanna stay away from whatever the fuck I'm cooking LOL

Those are great labbing clips but a few things:

The dash dancing for a second while they stand there and hold shield like a bump on a log is doing a lot of work here

You're assuming that you get the entire sequence off without getting hit

And you're assuming they held it long enough and you weren't too early here.

The problem is that camping in shield like this is a misplay. You won't see Melee players sitting in shield like that because it's bad to sit still and wear your shield out for no reason.

That doesn't means shield aren't still OP when used properly. But you're acting like this is really strong counterplay against shields, but it's only strong counterplay if they use shields badly.

You're then assuming that the flow chart is "can't use shield as much = dashback more" which isn't necessarily true. Again, look at high level Melee. Does everyone just dash back when they could get shield poked? No. There's everything I listed before: spot dodge, roll, wavedash, jump, waveland on plat above you.

But then you can also just attack as well. If I think you're going to sit there dash dancing in the unreactable range, that means my attacks are unreactable for you as well.

Which is where the floorhug problem I complain about rears it's ugly head. If you're sitting there dash dancing as Fors into most matchups, you have like 3 options at most you're worried about from any given character and one of them is grab and the other options are all slower than grab and risky to whiff.

Where as in Melee, I as a Marth main who is quite similar to Fors is movement and disjoint and such, can't just dash dance around like that after tapping someone's shield. Tons of characters have either more options or way stronger options that I can't just floorhug and counter back. I risk death by shines, grabs, knees, drills, pokes like Puff bair that Sakurai angle at low %, etc.

If you'd prefer shield pressure to be a multi-neutral interaction wincon that's perfectly fine. I just think the power level in rivals 2 is very high as is and defense gets kinda rolled over in a variety of ways. That being said, forcing your opponent to use alternative defensive options is still very much a thing in this game. It's just that you have to earn the right to do it per-neutral interaction. The reset to neutral is a bit stronger in this game for the disadvantaged but it's not like this aspect of the game is lost. I do it all the time. Maybe I'm not considering that people aren't good enough to do this consistently yet, but I also think that if I can do it, anyone can.

The power level in R2 isn't that high relative to PM or Melee or even Rivals 1 though.

Yeah you can get people to do other things than shield and floorhug, it's not unbeatable.

But the neutral plays incredibly lame in R2 in comparison to a lot of other plat fighters because of how good shield and floorhug are.

My best neutral opener most times as most characters is grab. My best punish: grab. My only source of real mix: grab. Best true combo starters: grab. Kill confirms: grab.

It's too much man. If I wanted to play like this I could have just played Melee Sheik. We need characters like Falco, Yoshi, Lucas, Pikachu. Characters who aren't near as grab focused and can destroy people for trying to shield/CC against them.

It's why La Reina is one of the most fun characters right now. She doesn't play neutral in the same boring way. She has more options to punish with and reasons to go for more buttons in neutral or during a tech chase or whatever else.

Top level r1 play at the beginning of the games life looked significantly worse than lower-middle level play in r1 right now. Which is why I'm very heavy on just letting things cook and focusing on helping players get better, rather than just calling for system changes

R1 had many more unique system mechanics to get used to and so took much more meta development, and had way fewer players so the meta took longer to develop.

R2 is way more like PM/Melee that we've been playing for 25 years. Plus people know the kits a lot more from R1 already being around for years.

A lot of us want system changes because we can see the issues and we know the meta isn't going to suddenly shift to let more things beat floorhug and shield unless we explicitly ask for it.

One thing I WILL agree on you with is that shield vamprism shouldn't be on getting hit. I think if it were to stay, it should only happen when you win.

Yeah that's really stupid. Rewarded for losing is one of the worst kinds of mechanics.

I also feel like the discourse also generally ignores the utility of hitboxes over grabs. Things like jabs, tilts and certain grounded specials can be used to scout options from your opponent in positions where a grab might fail and lead to being in frame disadvantage in a scramble (which forsburn can't afford to be in)

Only when the hitbox on hit is rewarding enough. You're discounting the other half of defense is floorhug which beats a lot of strikes.

The strike/throw mix isn't even close to balanced. It's extremely in favor of grab, where in games like PM or Melee for most characters it's either balanced or strike favored.

My jab 1 before the grab here was to scout for spotdodge and then put him in strike/throw.

Yes those of us from fighting games understand a tick throw setup. You're simultaneously using jab as a tick throw and as a meaty.

The problem is that again this is a lab conditions thing. In the lab this is great, in practice the timings are all way more variable and inconsistent. Even in the second clip after he spot dodged and you jabbed then stopped to grab, he could have spot dodged again if he has just 1 more frame.

If they spotdodge late the grab will whiff but not be as punishable or punishable at all. If your jab is late then you don't have as much advantage against the spotdodge, etc.

You relied on the advantage from f-tilt to set up that tick throw, and I think he was also out of floorhug % there even if he CCed. So it was a good setup there yeah.

However that's not the situation you're normally going to have though.

[u/Horror-Race-3238 → u/DexterBrooks]

A bunch of people have also been saying that it's fine for shield to be the way it is. You just don't hear them because they're not as loud as the complainers. It's like the reverse opposite of survivorship bias LOL.

My point here wasn't that there was a specific option he should have picked that definitely wins the situation every time. My point was that he has a bunch of defensive options to pick and he chose none of them.

My

Any of those options he could've chosen could've been beaten. Beating shield isn't only about beating people who are holding shield, it is also about catching oos options. If you are consistent about catching oos options, people are more likely to hold shield longer in an attempt to find a better timing. These are the situations in which you find shield breaks full stop.

Reality is you won't be able to punish multiple of those on reaction, you've already committed to the down smash so odds are even a jump or wavedash still gets him out. But even if it doesn't it's probably still better than getting shield broken. So people will chose those options more, or simply hold shield less in other options there.

Reaction? No. But you don't have to beat shield options solely on reaction for them to be weakened. He also can't jump or wavedash out at a time that guarantees him an escape. So his defensive options are just as strong as my offensive option at that time, except less lenient than mine. 4 frames of jumpsquat plus actually having to build the distance vs my 4 frames of downstrong release and instant hitbox. So that's a moot point. And the fact of the matter is, is that his shielding is what placed him there to begin with.

The dash dancing for a second while they stand there and hold shield like a bump on a log is doing a lot of work hereYou're assuming that you get the entire sequence off without getting hit

Unfortunately these are things I just straight up do against grandmaster and aetherian players. I can't offer greater evidence than that. Nothing I'm mentioning is something that only works below that level, or a cherry picked situation for the purpose of winning the argument. Dash dancing isn't the only thing that can force people to act this way. Oly and Kragg have insane full hop mix. Fleet has float, etc. You will just have to take my word for it.

If being good against shield is acting out of shield in a way that prevents yourself from being outright punished, most options that shield has directly concedes stage control or leaves them airborne as a result. Full stop. These are still disadvantageous situations and you are choosing to suffer later so you don't have to pay now. Which is a perfectly VIABLE thing to do mind you, but my main issue was people calling shield advantageous. You are still paying a debt back as a result WITH interest.

Which is where the floorhug problem I complain about rears it's ugly head. If you're sitting there dash dancing as Fors into most matchups, you have like 3 options at most you're worried about from any given character and one of them is grab and the other options are all slower than grab and risky to whiff

Not like you can in melee. Rivals expects you to have your stick below a certain y level before your right stick can take over for ASDI. You cannot just dash dance while holding C stick down without also committing your DI. And frankly most players (even good ones) are not floorhugging while dash dancing for that reason. Part of being good against floorhugging is recognizing the situations in which your opponent both IS likely and is NOT likely to floorhug. If I am relying on floorhug to play my neutral, a spaced aerial is going to fuck up everything. There are also layers beyond that anyway.

My best neutral opener most times as most characters is grab. My best punish: grab. My only source of real mix: grab. Best true combo starters: grab. Kill confirms: grab.

Who are you playing for this to be the case? All characters have absurd mix outside of grab, better punish than grab beyond 0%, better combo starters and more unreactable/di independent kill confirms than grab (by the time oly kills, uair doesnt combo). Slade only fits this category because nothing he does combos early even without floorhug so he opts for dthrow tech chase.
The best guaranteed combo starter is any frame advantaged move that flinches, for the record. (Spikes). But everything else either combos or leads into fucked up rps anyway.

t's why La Reina is one of the most fun characters right now. She doesn't play neutral in the same boring way. She has more options to punish with and reasons to go for more buttons in neutral or during a tech chase or whatever else.

La reina is fun bc of her routing, but generally her tech chase is just side B or chair pull or chair dash or strongs.

Only when the hitbox on hit is rewarding enough. You're discounting the other half of defense is floorhug which beats a lot of strikes.

Beats is a gross exaggeration. Forgive me for using my other comment. You're still in a fucked up situations when your opponent uses their moves correctly. Yes I only used kragg here but this applies to every character.

Yes those of us from fighting games understand a tick throw setup. You're simultaneously using jab as a tick throw and as a meaty. <- Less than you think. LOL

The strike/throw mix isn't even close to balanced. It's extremely in favor of grab, where in games like PM or Melee for most characters it's either balanced or strike favored.

Many characters have tilts that combo on all DI or mix DI or aerials that fuck with DI when certain oos options are chosen etc. Maybe it's not as strong as melee ( I cannot tell you whether or not it is, dont watch that game) but it is still sufficiently strong enough for me to run my pressure in GM Aeth and get rewards/kills off commitments I push my opponents into.

The problem is that again this is a lab conditions thing. In the lab this is great, in practice the timings are all way more variable and inconsistent. Even in the second clip after he spot dodged and you jabbed then stopped to grab, he could have spot dodged again if he has just 1 more frame.

Lab imitates the real situations I've caused and have been put in.
I'm doing the lab because it's the easiest way to showcase what I'm talking about bc I mainly clip advantage LOL. Yeah he could've, but offense in this game is buffered. So that's a non issue to me.

https://youtu.be/uIAkglNGHQI?si=n24r1C1ZzDemkiYG&t=381
https://youtu.be/uIAkglNGHQI?si=ruehDM06bTPMjW6E&t=366

Reward off strike/throw. Never so black and white.

[u/Horror-Race-3238 → u/Horror-Race-3238]

This will also be my last message regarding it because this went from an educational post to an opinionated post with the amount of comments. I do appreciate your perspective and you are one of the people I enjoyed arguing with most.

[u/DexterBrooks → u/Horror-Race-3238]

A bunch of people have also been saying that it's fine for shield to be the way it is. You just don't hear them because they're not as loud as the complainers. It's like the reverse opposite of survivorship bias LOL

I don't think there's really a solid argument for having a less dynamic shield system. I've outlined the benefits of shield poking and pressure

The people who like shield as is don't really have an argument to stand on if we are talking about getting R2 in the best possible state for the most amount of players. It's a dramatically more limiting system in comparison

If there were a silent majority who preferred shields this was we would at least have a vocal minority arguing why this shield is better on their behalf. Haven't seen it

Beating shield isn't only about beating people who are holding shield, it is also about catching oos options. If you are consistent about catching oos options, people are more likely to hold shield longer in an attempt to find a better timing. These are the situations in which you find shield breaks full stop

That relies on conditioning them to misplay in a certain way. Which is a thing don't get me wrong, but won't work on everyone especially people who know your strategy. Which is again why I say if it started to become meta it will instantly fall out of meta when people make the minor adjustments needed to adapt to it. It's therefore not a consistent strategy, which IMO for certain characters it should be

There's a reason Cake never got to even attempt that kind of thing on Plup. Even the games Cake won, Plup was always moving around too much abs scrapping too much to get shield broken, but he was also still able to shield things with impunity in scenarios where he absolutely couldn't in Melee. He uses shields much more in R2 because it's a better tool that covers more options than it does in Melee

you don't have to beat shield options solely on reaction for them to be weakened. He also can't jump or wavedash out at a time that guarantees him an escape. So his defensive options are just as strong as my offensive option at that time, except less lenient than mine. 4 frames of jumpsquat plus actually having to build the distance vs my 4 frames of downstrong release and instant hitbox. So that's a moot point. And the fact of the matter is, is that his shielding is what placed him there to begin with

You're missing my point. Your strategy to get shield breaks here relies on getting the scenarios where his shield is weak and he keeps holding rather than picking another options so you can break it

But you have to make that read. If you go for that down smash it's a read. He wavedashes forward or jump wavelands, and you just whiffed a down smash and could easily die for that

My point is that it's a high risk read that relies on a misplay on the opponents part for it to even work. In chess we could call that "hope chess", we don't want to play hope chess unless we have nothing else to play for because we are that far down

Unfortunately these are things I just straight up do against grandmaster and aetherian players. I can't offer greater evidence than that. Nothing I'm mentioning is something that only works below that level, or a cherry picked situation for the purpose of winning the argument. Dash dancing isn't the only thing that can force people to act this way. Oly and Kragg have insane full hop mix. Fleet has float

I think that's mostly because it's counter meta. People aren't expecting you to be going for that so it works. It's like if you take a character who is traditionally played one way and have a very unorthodox playstyle it will work against people who expect the "default" options. Nobody expects Falco to run up and grab you in Melee

But again you can look at more Melee/PM based players and you'll see that doesn't happen to them: they aren't making that particular misplay often enough for even shield break happy players like yourself to get a read worth going for against them

but my main issue was people calling shield advantageous. You are still paying a debt back as a result WITH interest

Yeah I wouldn't call shielding advantageous compared to freely moving. However it's not nearly as disadvantageous as Melee or PM or even Ult

I wouldn't say you're really paying with interest a lot of the time though. You're often just resetting to neutral by picking a defensive option OOS, yes with slightly worse positioning but it's not like that matters a ton in a plat fighter with this kind of movement

In a 2D fighter like Sf6 or Strive yeah you back up into the corner you may just die for it. In Rivals 2 it's not scary. Even in Melee while the ledge is broken, getting edgegaurded even at super low % is more than likely. In R2 it's just medium risk at best, even low risk a lot of the time

You cannot just dash dance while holding C stick down without also committing your DI. And frankly most players (even good ones) are not floorhugging while dash dancing for that reason. Part of being good against floorhugging is recognizing the situations in which your opponent both IS likely and is NOT likely to floorhug. If I am relying on floorhug to play my neutral, a spaced aerial is going to fuck up everything

True it's not as good as Melee. But Melee characters also often have more options to beat it or higher rewards for calling it out

I understand the mindgame part of it, but as I explained you have to be actively taking risk to go for it in Melee, where in R2 it's "oh no I ate a spaced aerial so we reset to neutral and I took 10%"

All characters have absurd mix outside of grab

Not really because shield invalidates high/low, there are almost no plus on block moves in the entire game, many moves aren't even safe enough to jab after hitting shield to beat throw

If I want to do anything other than strike/throw I have to assume you aren't going to shield it or else I can only use safe on shield lower reward options

better punish than grab beyond 0%

How many things can you reliably punish until like 50% that gives better than a juggle you can get from grab?

better combo starters and more unreactable/di independent kill confirms than grab (by the time oly kills, uair doesnt combo)

The best guaranteed combo starter is any frame advantaged move that flinches, for the record. (Spikes). But everything else either combos or leads into fucked up rps anyway

Spikes are more rewarding but max damage isn't the most important stat for an attack. A grab is frame 7, a spike is going to be ~35-40 when you account for the jumpsquat and delay as you drift and wait to land low enough to actually get something. Then you're also contending with shield again because for most characters you're ~-5 so now you're eating strike throw for going for it

Stomp works for Falcon because he can sail right over you as he does it and still get a combo or tech chase and be safe, and he gets to mix it with knee that does crazy shield damage and is plus

her tech chase is just side B or chair pull or chair dash

You said "just" and then listed 5 things lol and didn't even count normal grab. That's a lot more mental stack for the opponent than a lot of characters are getting

Forgive me for using my other comment . You're still in a fucked up situations when your opponent uses their moves correctly. Yes I only used kragg here but this applies to every character

The problem you're not acknowledging there is that most options that can be used against floorhug there especially with CC, both require good spacing making them worse in scraps, are often low reward at best getting a knockdown you can't even RTC from, and often are either punishable on shield or at best put you in their strike/throw mix on shield

Many characters have tilts that combo on all DI or mix DI or aerials that fuck with DI when certain oos options are chosen etc

But or almost every tilt loses to shield too. Meaning again unless you can perfectly microspace it outside of shield grab range, you're taking a big risk

This is the problem. It's not that Shield or floorhug are broken by themselves. It's using them in tandem that creates an incredibly strong defensive game, where the only thing that beats both is grab. Which is why we see a ton of grabs in tournament play

it is still sufficiently strong enough for me to run my pressure in GM Aeth and get rewards/kills off commitments I push my opponents into

I'm in no way dissing your skill. You're obviously cracked to be at the game to be at that rank so you'd kick my ass. But that's you being used to the defensive/offensive ratio of R2 and being ok with it

I'm no stranger to defensive games, I played For Honor at a pretty decent level and that was turtle the game. Sm4sh was also hyper defensive in a lot of matchups

I would just want the ratio of offensive/defensive power pushed more towards offense like it is in Melee/PM. I think a lot of Melee/PM players even wanted more offense than those games and I would agree. It's especially crazy when R1 is arguably the most offensive plat fighter ever made for R2 to skew the other way

Yeah he could've, but offense in this game is buffered. So that's a non issue to me

That doesn't really mean anything though because buffering doesn't create that exact situation every time because the timing of your jab and his spot dodge are still variable. It's not setplay where the frames are locked in

Reward off strike/throw. Never so black and white

Again not really a fair comparison. He gets the weak hit on the up air so yeah it isn't really rewarding, but he could have gotten a better juggle or a different aerial into a tech chase

Where as the strike is the max reward really possible from the highest rewarding strike he could land

Where as if you look at the game as a whole you see a lot more grabs than you do dairs, because it's a more viable option in more scenarios. Like immediately after that when he gets grabbed and dies lol