Shields: Everything you need to know about them

Hello everyone.

The purpose of this thread is to gather all the information we need to know about shields. I don’t think I have already seen any thread dedicated to shields yet and I don’t know if the Backroom is making its own, but as it is a rather tedious and long subject to investigate on I don’t think most people want to spend too much time doing it. That’s why I decided to open my mupen64 and try to discover some stuff.

This thread is mostly orientated in frame data, but I’m obviously less experienced and talented than our great AntD, even though he was part of a well-known conspiracy.

/!\ For now it is still under construction /!\

1 Introduction
2 Shield's Properies
...2.1 Generalities
...2.2 Shields are draining over time
...2.3 Shield's recovery
3 Attack Specific
4 Shieldbreak
...4.1 How to shieldbreak
...4.2 Recovery from shieldbreak
5 Escaping Shieldbreak
6 Special Shield: Fox's shine
7 Requests / To Come
8 Credits

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1 Introduction

As you all know the shield comes out by pressing the z trigger and its purpose is to protect from the opponent’s attacks. It however doesn’t work for grabs (including: Captain Falcon’s upB, Kirby's neutral B and Yoshi's neutral B). The shield can have several colours depending on who is using it. Player 1 will have a red shield, player 2 a green shield, player 3 a blue shield and player 4 a gray shield.

2 Shield’s Properties

2.1 Generalities
If you keep holding your shield you will see it’s getting smaller and smaller even if nobody hits in it. Indeed the shield has a certain “stamina” and breaks if you hold it too long. This process is accelerated by opponents hitting your shield. This was obviously put into place to prevent shielding abuses. All shields are equal. I think it is important to emphasize on that point (which is only true to a certain extent). Indeed, Jigglypuff’s shield may seem bigger than Captain Falcon’s, which it is but its stamina isn’t bigger. So you can already forget reasoning like “Jigglypuff has a better shield to compensate the punishment she gets if it breaks”. The only exception is Yoshi. His shield doesn’t get smaller, but only darker and takes 5 frames to come out, while the others’ take 2 and during these 3 frames of lag you are actually parrying. This means Yoshi’s shield has a better stamina than others, by 3 frames. So I guess we can really conclude all shields are equal as a good approximation.
Now when your shield has been reduced in size (either after being attacked, or after some time) it won't cover the full body of your character. This means you can get attacked even if you're shielding. You can prevent that by tilting the stick in a direction resulting in orientating your shield. Again Yoshi's shield is the exception as his never gets smaller: his shield always provide a full body protection. Here is a table with the complete values:

2.2 Shields are draining over time
Now let’s try to determine the total “stamina” of a shield. The smallest unit of shield reduction is by letting it drain. It takes 880 frames (which is about 14.67 seconds) to break “naturally” and every one unit is taken away each 16 frames (about 0.267 seconds). Here we can introduce a new unit that I called Health Point in obvious reference to RPGs. Therefore the shield has 55 HP and loses 1 HP every 16 frames.

2.3 Shields’ recovery

If each time your shield was weakened you had to live with it until your next stock, it wouldn’t be fun and the shield wouldn’t be of a great use. That’s why the shield is recovering when you don’t use it.

The first HP recovered follows a strange rule. Basically each player has a counter variable that keeps track of the frame count for shield recovery. By default, the value starts at 10 when you start the match. When your shield health is below 55, it then starts subtracting the frame counter by 1 each frame (while you're not holding the shield button). Lets say that you start shielding while the counter was at 4, as soon as you let go of the shield button, it will start subtracting from where you left off. So the counter will go to 3 in the next frame. When the counter reaches 0, you recover 1 shield HP and the counter goes back to 10. This means that the first shield HP actually takes 1-10 frames, depending on where you left off. The second HP recovered comes after the 10th frame. Then it’s once again one more HP each 10 frames.

Last thing to mention in this section is that hitting or getting hit doesn’t help recovering your shield. The only important factor is the time you’re playing without it.


3 Attack Specific

Here I tried to look at each attacks specifically to see the effect of attacks on the shield. Concerning the power an attack has on the shield, I gave the number of HP drained but I also introduced another unit: the Number Needed to Break (or NNB) which might be more convenient to use (as one of the purpose of attacking a shield is to shieldbreak). These numbers only refer to the actual attack strength on the shield and does not include any time drain reduction. The number in brackets is staled moves, as it also affects the power a move has on the shield. However a move doesn’t get staled when hitting the shield only, it has to be already staled (after having hit the enemy) then attack the shield. I tried to define the shieldstun (SS) of each attack too, but the way I counted was rather subjective. When you hit a shield the first frame you’re hitting it, it becomes silver. I then counted the number of frames since the silver frame until the disappearance of the shield. I could also have counted the number of frames after the shield reduction (as the shield gets reduced after having been hit), but I think it’s more precise the way I did it. Note that while you're in shieldstun your shield doesn't get the time drain reduction.

/!\ under construction: I’ve only started doing it /!\

NNB= Number Needed to Break ; Power in HP ; SS= ShieldStun

Luigi

Mario

Donkey Kong

Link

Samus

Captain Falcon

Ness

Yoshi

Kirby

Fox

Pikachu

Jigglypuff

4 Shieldbreak
...4.1 How to shieldbreak

/!\under construction/!\
...4.2 Recovery from shieldbreak

So your shield has been broken and your character is dazing. Now how do you recover? It takes 546 frames (=9.1 seconds) since you touch the ground to recover. Counting the time after the character touches the ground and not right after shieldbreak is important, since the recovering time is actually starting when you touch the ground and not before. This means that if you land on a platform when your shield gets broken, it will take a couple of frames less. This also mean that if Jigglypuff gets her shield broken under the **** tent of Hyrule, it will take more time than others since she's "flying" against the roof of the tent.

This amount of time (546 frames) is reduced when you already have damages. In fact the number of frame is reduced by the exact percentage you have. Imagine you have 95 % when your shield is broken. Then it will take 546-95=450 frames to recover. This rule applies until you have 400 %. Beyond that point, the reduction is always 400 frames.

Now you actually can accelerate this process by button mashing. Indeed. Each time you input a button 4 frames are reduced from the initial 546 frames (assuming you're at 0 %). The buttons that can be used for that purpose are: A, B, R, Z or tilting the joystick. Concerning the latter fully tilting it will have the same result as pushing another button. If you tilt half way, half the frames are reduced (2 instead of 4). Other buttons don't work (L or C). Finally, note that pushing multiple buttons at the same time won't help in the recovery process. Two inputs at the same time have the same impact as one.

When you finally recover from your shieldbreak, your shield has 30 HP. This is independent of the time you took to recover, always 30 HP.

5 Escaping Shieldbreak




6 Special Shield: Fox's shine

The shine is Fox's special "shield". It comes out by pressing down B. The first frame is an attack, then it has the property of reflecting projectiles. Even though it comes out really quickly, when you leave the buttons, the shine still stays for a long time, long enough to get punished by your opponent. That's why we use another feature to use it efficiently: the shine is automatically cancelled when you land somewhere (ground or platform). The trick is then to jump and immediately shine after, so that your jump is cancelled by the shine, which is itself cancelled by the landing. In theory, you need to shine 3 frames after jumping, which is really short. If you use a standard nintendo 64 controller (which you should >=(), a common technique is to slide with your right thumb from left c to b while holding down. Be carefull though, this is to use the attacking function of the shine. If you want to reflect a projectile and you're not precise enough to time it perfectly, you might want to make your shine a bit longer on purpose (by sliding slower for example).

When you reflect a projectile, the latter will then hit your opponent (if it touches him obviously), which is nice. And even nicer, the projectile gains in power! Both the percentage and the knockback are affected. The increase in strength follows the following formula: multiply the initial percentage by 1.8, round off to the greater integer (in other words apply the ceiling function).

In the same way the shield can get broken, the shine has also a certain amount of HP. Fortunately, the shine's HPs recover automatically after each attack. This means that the only way to break it is to hit it with a projectile powerfull enough to break in one hit. This can also be obtained with two Fox shining back a projectile until it gets strong enough. The number of HP of the shine seems also to be 55 (thanks to The Star King for the researches), but we don't seem to be able to confirm it. We know it is between 49 and 56, so it's highly probable that 55 is the right number.

There is a special case where the shine won't reflect the projectile, here's the description (if it's too confused, just tell me and I might try to make a video of it):
if fox one reflects a projectile on fox two and fox two reflects it back, fox one has a 15 frames animation (of the first reflection) during which the projectile re-reflected by fox two won't be reflected again.
Concretely, have from the left to right: orange fox, blue fox, blue samus (team battle with teams attacks off). If samus shoots, the shot will be reflected by orange fox to the right (as usual), then by blue fox to the left and orange fox won't reflect it again if it comes within those 15 frames (the shot will just go through him). On the 16th frame, the shot is reflected. However, the reflection goes in the direction the shot is on the exact 16th frame. Which means that if the shot has travelled enough distance to get to the left half of the shine, the shot will be "reflected" in the same direction as it was going initially. The power increases as normally (multiply by 1.8, apply the ceiling function), but the direction doesn't change. Orange fox turns arond (to face left), as if someone had shot from his left.

This non-reflection phenomenon only occurs when the same projectile as the one reflected by the first fox comes again. It is either possible when another fox (in our example, blue fox) reflects the projectile back on the first one. Or with a red shell getting back on Fox by hitting a wall. However if you have two projectile coming within a short interval (say shorter than 15, doesn't matter exactly), both will get reflected. Even if they come from the same direction (that was tested with two Samus' shots of different height so they don't get anihilated when the first is reflected).

Easily put, this just means that a projectile that has been reflected cannot be reflected again by the same Fox, during the first 15 frames.



7 Requests / To Come

So as I don't have time to work on the thread for now, I decided to make this section so I'll be sure not to miss something. I basically made a list of what things are to come next, based on people suggestions.

- Finishing the frame data table

- Figuring out how the first HP recovers >_>

- Shieldbreaks (examples, how difficult and how situational they are)

- Shield deflection



8 Credits

This guide was initially started by me and then Blue Yoshi joined me. And a few years later, Madao, our savior joined me as well!

Thanks also to the following contributors:

-Blade689
-th3kuzinator
-Johnny_C13
-Firo (who provided a better and more formal method to compute the HP loss)
-Tambor (who taught me the TAS basics)
For the requests:
-Chariot9999
-battlecow
-The Star King
-DMoogle


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As you can see, this is far from being finished but I thought I'd post what I did already. The next update will probably not be before the 10th of June as I frankly don't have time until then. If you have any suggestions, comments or tips feel free to share them! Also if there are confused parts, english mistakes or things you want me to investigate on don't hesitate!

I'd like to note that yoshi's shield is the only shield in the game that provides full body protection the whole time. While other shield shrink in size, his never gets smaller. Might seem obvious, but still a factor to note.

Great thread idea btw, I'll keep checking up on this.

Great thread. Haven't read it all, but so far I like what I see.
This thread is mad overdue.
Should be added to the index when perfected.

I have another question for this thread. When you are calculating the amount of health it takes away from a shield, are you including the drain from stun time? Or, does the constant drain stop while it is being hit or stunned out?

Great idea, nice start.

Is the "area" of the shield just the image of it? Like a circle?

So would that mean if a hitbox of an attack touches a character not covered by the "circular" shield they get hit?

Great guide

And sorry, being a grammar person, but "The only exception is Yoshi. His shield doesn’t can smaller" in section 2.1. Not that it matters (it's obvious what you're saying), but someone will mention it at some point lol.

B Link said:

Is the "area" of the shield just the image of it? Like a circle?

So would that mean if a hitbox of an attack touches a character not covered by the "circular" shield they get hit?

Click to expand...

Yeah, you can be hit while you have yoru shield up if it isn't covering your whole body. But, someone can roll their shield in front, up & down. So, if someone shields high, and u d-tilt, you'll still hit them as if they didn't have their shield active.

Great thread! Maybe you could also add the time you are shieldbreak-stunned? If it varies with % or controller spamming or character difference or whatnot.

I'll do some testing on my own and try to add to this great idea once I get my N64 back. I'm at school atm but I'm heading home in a week so I'll grab my 64 then.

Interesting that a laser does 7% to a shield when it does 6% on characters. I guess there are more B-moves that do extra damage than I thought; the only ones I suspected of doing so were Puff's Pound and Samus's Screw Attack.

Prediction: all A moves will deal the same percentage on shields as they do on characters.

I definitely believe Jigglypuff's pound move on a shield does more damage than usual. I think it's evident by the huge decrease in shield size lol.

Also good to note that Kirby's inhale (N-B) has the properties of a grab.

th3kuzinator said:

Also good to note that Kirby's inhale (N-B) has the properties of a grab.

Click to expand...

That, and Capt Falcon's B up.


Oh, and how does the reflector acts on a shield? Can't seem to remember...

Yeah but the doug hug was already mentioned in the OP.

Oooops! You're right... Well then, Yoshi's neutral B Can't forget that! XD

Really good idea! I think s2j has some really good videos on edge shielding, dash shielding and attacks that have garentueed grabs on shield. You might want to include those

Blade689 said:

I'd like to note that yoshi's shield is the only shield in the game that provides full body protection the whole time. While other shield shrink in size, his never gets smaller. Might seem obvious, but still a factor to note.

Great thread idea btw, I'll keep checking up on this.

Click to expand...

How could I possibly forgot to mention that >_> Thanks, I added it.

Blade689 said:

I have another question for this thread. When you are calculating the amount of health it takes away from a shield, are you including the drain from stun time? Or, does the constant drain stop while it is being hit or stunned out?

Click to expand...

Indeed the natural drain stops during the shield stun maybe I should add this too. So basically yeah I just counted the HP taken away by the attack and not the time draining.

Edit: added it =).

Blue Yoshi said:

Great guide

And sorry, being a grammar person, but "The only exception is Yoshi. His shield doesn’t can smaller" in section 2.1. Not that it matters (it's obvious what you're saying), but someone will mention it at some point lol.

Click to expand...

Don't be sorry =) Thanks, I changed it. If you see other english mistakes don't hesitate ^^.

Blade689 said:

Yeah, you can be hit while you have yoru shield up if it isn't covering your whole body. But, someone can roll their shield in front, up & down. So, if someone shields high, and u d-tilt, you'll still hit them as if they didn't have their shield active.

Click to expand...

I should have mentioned that too, I'm going to add that as soon as possible.

Edit: added that too.

Johnny_C13 said:

Great thread! Maybe you could also add the time you are shieldbreak-stunned? If it varies with % or controller spamming or character difference or whatnot.

I'll do some testing on my own and try to add to this great idea once I get my N64 back. I'm at school atm but I'm heading home in a week so I'll grab my 64 then.

Click to expand...

That was indeed one of my field of investigation concerning shieldbreak. I haven't had time to try that yet though.

th3kuzinator said:

Also good to note that Kirby's inhale (N-B) has the properties of a grab.

Click to expand...

Johnny_C13 said:

Oooops! You're right... Well then, Yoshi's neutral B Can't forget that! XD

Click to expand...

Thanks both, added it.

SSBPete said:

Really good idea! I think s2j has some really good videos on edge shielding, dash shielding and attacks that have garentueed grabs on shield. You might want to include those

Click to expand...

Indeed I remember that vid. I will PM him to have his permission then I'll try to add a section like "what to do on shields". I shall also add a section "what to do with shields" like shield platform dropping, dash shield (as mentioned by s2j), drop cancelling and so on.

The Star King said:

Interesting that a laser does 7% to a shield when it does 6% on characters. I guess there are more B-moves that do extra damage than I thought; the only ones I suspected of doing so were Puff's Pound and Samus's Screw Attack.

Prediction: all A moves will deal the same percentage on shields as they do on characters.

Click to expand...

I was also surprised by how powerful the laser is. However I would have expected better power by samus' charged shot. In the end (if I collect enough data), I'll try to establish links (if there are any) between the attacks' power on opponents and on shield.

Added a credit section too. Thanks to all for your comments! Oh and also if there is a part you doubt just say it and I will check it again (for example "are you sure being attacked doesn't increase shield's recovery?")

Something which I think would be very useful for shieldbreak purposes is if you not only put how much shield stun a move makes, but also the frame advantage afterwards. For example, if character A's F-smash does 30 frames of shield stun, but ends on the 20th frame of shield stun, then the attacker has a 10 frame advantage. Most ground attacks should each have a single result, but for air attacks, it may be harder due to the variance of when the attack could end (e.g. different landing times), but for ground attacks, this could be very useful.

Also, I may be completely wrong, but I heard from someone that angled tilts (and maybe therefore smashes) have different amounts of shield stun (e.g. I think Falcon's F-tilt combos only if you angle it up).

Hope this helps.



Edit: If you want, I can help you with this. I'll have to learn how to TAS (I've been wanting to for a while, just been too lazy to learn), but afterwards, I can help out.

That might be a good idea. I initially thought about giving the attack duration time so you could compare it to shieldstun and see what could connect, but as AntD had already written a whole frame data thread I thought it was useless. However I don't think AntD's tables take hitlag into account (obviously an attack lasts longer on something than in the air) so it might indeed be good to measure that too.

I didn't have any idea about angled tilts, but I'll try to figure that out. It will however probably be long as you have a big range of possible angles =/.

Concerning your help, it would be great if you could =D. However I wouldn't be able to help you much with TAS, first because I'm still a noob TASer and second because as I said I don't have much time during the week. I could still manage to send you my mupen file during the week so you can discover it on your own and I could tell you the basics (don't expect much, really) during the weekend.

Tell me if you're interested and thanks for the offer ^^.

Blue Yoshi said:

Also, I may be completely wrong, but I heard from someone that angled tilts (and maybe therefore smashes) have different amounts of shield stun (e.g. I think Falcon's F-tilt combos only if you angle it up).

Click to expand...

I can say with a high amount of certainty that this statment is true. Up-angled tilts and smashes have more hitstun on shields then regular-angled or down-angled tilts and smashes.

I will have to test that to be sure and to understand how the angle actually affects the shieldstun.

Thanks for the video link ciaza. Concerning the shieldbreak section I had the idea of listing all possible shield breaks of every character and give a difficulty rank (like one star * being the easiest and five stars ***** the hardest) as well as a specificity rank (for example fox reflecting a charged shot and usmashing would have five stars ***** and Yoshi's DJC nair would have one star *) so we could easily see which ones are situational/easy and so on.

What do you guys think about that?

Also it would be good if I could put a link to a video showing each shieldbreak. Those videos by JPleal look really good I should ask him for permission of using them.

edit: what tank said. Yoshi's nair shouldn't be one star at all, I'm dumb.

If Yoshi Nairs are one star, then what the hell is Kirby Utilts!? lol Nair should be 3 for average difficulty =P.
I like the star idea though, and what Blue Yoshi said about frame advantage on ground attacks is such a good idea.

/Jealous of new players who will have everything explained that we had to figure out over time.

Oh well, the youth are our future. I remember when I had to walk up hill, bare foot, in the snow just to get to the top of the tent.

ciaza: Yeah I know about my data aren't well presented that way, I said I would try to find a way to make some nice-looking table ^^.

Tank: my example was indeed really bad -_- I didn't think much when I said Yoshi's nair, it is obviously not that easy at all. One star should be kirby utilts against a wall lol.

Just what I was looking for, great work.

Seems I was somehow off by 20 frames.

The shield recovery part is most helpful.

*EDIT* Brawl 64 seems to now have everything about shields except for shield damage and stun now, except for one thing. After a shield break, is the shield fully recovered, or does it only have a set amount of HP restored?

Supreme Dirt said:

After a shield break, is the shield fully recovered, or does it only have a set amount of HP restored?

Click to expand...

if its jigglypuff, the world may never know. lol.

Supreme Dirt said:

*EDIT* Brawl 64 seems to now have everything about shields except for shield damage and stun now, except for one thing. After a shield break, is the shield fully recovered, or does it only have a set amount of HP restored?

Click to expand...

What did you mean by that?

I haven't checked that yet, but I would say it is only partially restored. I'll verify that as soon as I can though. Thanks for pointing that out.

Blade689 said:

if its jigglypuff, the world may never know. lol.

Click to expand...

I can simply break jigglypuff's shield under the **** tent in hyrule so she doesn't die.

I mean exactly what I say. The only things I have left to do when it comes to shields for Brawl 64 is shieldstun (which I just have to pull out frame advance in both games, adjust the multiplier), shield damage, which needs to be done on a move-by-move basis, and "shield reset", or how much HP the shield recovers after being broken. Interestingly, I was able to just directly port the shield stuff without any major work.

I just don't get what you mean by Brawl 64 =/.

Add some info about releasing the shield. The shield stays for a few more frames if you release Z in comparison to shieldjumping/rolling/upsmashing out of shield. So you should do one of the last three if trying to escape a shieldbreaker combo.
I don't know the exact frame data and will leave that to you

Good idea Tambor, thanks =).

I've also discovered some interesting stuff about shieldbreak recovery. Not enough to update my first post though. I really shouldn't do this during the week =S.

Brawl 64 is a project I started in January.

No videos up yet, I want to get one or two characters matching their 64 incarnations first.

TANK64 said:

Oh well, the youth are our future. I remember when I had to walk up hill, bare foot, in the snow just to get to the top of the tent.

Last edited by TANK64; Today at 10:06 AM. Reason: Both Ways!

Click to expand...

Damn, you walked up hill both ways? Must have been MC Escher's backyard or something

Tambor said:

Add some info about releasing the shield. The shield stays for a few more frames if you release Z in comparison to shieldjumping/rolling/upsmashing out of shield. So you should do one of the last three if trying to escape a shieldbreaker combo.

Click to expand...

What about grabbing?

I'm very interested in helping out with this. Makes me feel like I'm actually doing something useful for the community again lol. I am slightly more busy than I was hoping (job search reasons...), but I'll help out any chance I get filling in the blanks in the data

Supreme Dirt said:

Brawl 64 is a project I started in January.

No videos up yet, I want to get one or two characters matching their 64 incarnations first.

Click to expand...

Wasn't aware of this =o. Would that work on dolphin too? It might be fun trying it but I don't want to buy a wii just for that lol.

Blue Yoshi said:

I'm very interested in helping out with this. Makes me feel like I'm actually doing something useful for the community again lol. I am slightly more busy than I was hoping (job search reasons...), but I'll help out any chance I get filling in the blanks in the data

Click to expand...

PMed you =).

Yeah, I know about the tent trick with jiggy, I was just trying to make one of those old blow pop comerical jokes. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a jiggypuff's shield? 1, 2, Ah, 3... the world may never know.


There should be a section explaining that you have to fast fall to make air attacks fast enough to link to the ground shield breakers. Like, maybe a short review on Z-cancling or something to note like that. Seems like its not important for experienced players, but new people reading your guide will try some of your shield breakers (when you post them) and get pissed that they don't work/can't master them. Also, you should have a section of stand-alone, 1 hit shield breakers.

To add to the whole "escaping shield breakers idea" you should talk about rolling your shield up or down to take the hit, instead of the shield breaker. Often, I roll my shield forward if someone is trying to break me from behind, to expose my back and just take the hit.

like: the f-smash on a fan, Samus's Up+B (especially in the tent), and yoshi's d-air. idk if more exist, but thats a list of 3 =). -sorry for the including of items, i just figured the fan might want to be metioned in a shield breaking thread.

samus' upsmash is a shield breaker

Blade689 and SSBPete: took note of both comments thanks.

Little update in the recovering from shieldbreak section (4.2) =).

Hope you'll learn something.

Sangoku said:

Blade689 and SSBPete: took note of both comments thanks.

Little update in the recovering from shieldbreak section (4.2) =).

Hope you'll learn something.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure Pete is correct. Did you at least test it?

If he is correct, that means it does 55 damage to the shield as opposed to 50% normally, meaning my prediction is incorrect :/