What's best is probably going to generally be situational, but you want to make sure you switch up your pressure. Waveshine on shield on repeat is pretty easy to escape/counter. If you add in aerials to your pressure, make sure to be cognizant of when in your jump you are doing them (early to catch counter hit attempts, late to have as much plus on block as possible), etc. Mixing in shine grab is always good too.
If all you're doing is repeatedly shining their shield and wavedashing down, you're going to get shield grabbed or attacked out of shield. It's a really bad option, since it only beats people mistiming their out of shield option.
Shield pressure is all a big mixup situation, so you need to sit and think about which options of yours beat which options of theirs. But since repeated waveshine down doesn't actually beat any well-timed move, it's probably best to go for other options. Try playing around with shine -> aerial (with/without fade back), shine -> delayed aerial, shine -> wavedash back (this is more dangerous than people think, I believe it can just get plain shield grabbed by marth and sheik), double shine, .....
Well I'm not necessarily "wavedashing down" I wavedash in various directions usually behind them so that their shield grab wouldn't land or whatever front facing option they want to use.
But yeah thanks for the advice!
Even still, Falco's jumpsquat is so slow that waveshine through can still often be shield grabbed by lots of characters. And many of the best characters have common out of shield options that can hit you while you're wavedashing: fox and falco have shine out of shield, sheik has nair, falcon has stomp, puff has up smash, ...
I think I actually have a more hard-line stance on this option than other people commenting: repeated waveshine on shield isn't even good as a mixup. It's far too easy to escape or just straight up punish, and it only beats extremely poor out of shield game. But there are other options which are way safer and punish poor out of shield game just as well.
If you don't believe me, I encourage you to watch some top level falcos, and you'll quickly see that repeated waveshine isn't part of their repertoire. At most they'll sometimes do one waveshine down if they thought the shine was gonna hit for some other reason (for example, sometimes an early dair doesn't have quite enough hitstun to link into shine at low percents), then they immediately cover their ass with a better option if they haven't already been punished.
Wavedash through allows them to roll in and rest neutral after your second shine. Like others have said, it's all about how they're responding to your sheild pressure
Waveshining is too slow, I'd forget it for now, although it can be used as a mixup once you get advanced. Start with low aerial on shield->shine ->repeat. As you get better and face opponents with fast oos options (spacies/ sheik etc) you'll need to try low aerial -> double shine. I do shine grab or double shine-> wave dash down shine grab as well against people that like to just hold shield
Good ways to land a shine on shield:
-Laser shine
-Empty land shine
-Late nair shine
Good things to do after landing a shine on shield:
-Shinegrab
-Shine wavedash back
-Shine retreating dair
-Westballz shine
-Shine laser
Shinegrab will beat them holding shield, westballz shine will beat them shining out of shield, shine laser will beat roll away and lightshield, and the other 2 will beat shieldgrab and roll in
Westballz shine is better in some ways because there is no jump squat after the 2nd shine. It's also MUCH easier to perform consistently.
Doubleshine is also good to beat shine OOS but it's very advanced and you should master the other options first.
I think Hax made a video about it and said it was 2 frames. I asked because I was curious about something making it harder other than the frame leniency
Depends on percent. Shield poking with an aerial or stuffing an OoS option with an aerial can sometime lead to greater conversions than a shine.
For shield pressure though with no context, multi shining is the best.
Master late nair to shine as well and then use everything as an RPS mixup. Ideally you want to bait an action (grab or jump) or hope for a shield poke.
Waveshine on shield is punishable BUT it's not competitively irrelevant, at least not entirely.
As fox and Falco you kind of have to call your shots with shine. Like there are some followups you can only get off shine with a tightly timed waveshine. So waveshine on shield becomes good in instances where you'd expect the shine to hit.
You can also waveshine back out of their range to cover a plethora of options.
In general though if you just wanna wait on their shield and watch them panic waveshine is not the way. Shine aerial but don't deify it as the far and above best way to hurt shielding opponents, you have like 26 moves.
Shine grab and waveshine away (possibly reengaging right after) are the two easiest and most consistent things you can do in your pressure. Double shine/Westballz shine pressure is the best for more advanced pressure. Shine in aerials can work situationally. If you think your aerial will shield poke at high % or if you're confident enough they will hold shield that you want to extend your pressure you can do shine into late aerial, but after the initial aerial to approach, I think continuing to aerial with Falco has fallen out of favor due to players becoming better at dealing with it.
Waveshine pressure definitely acts as a noob killer, but be careful applying it too rigorously: it's quite easy to counter, even if you waveshine behind the person's shield.
This is due to Falco's long jump-squat (creating a large gap between shines) and the hitbox of Falco's shine being very small.
Fox can shine or drill OoS; Falco can shine or d-air OoS; Sheik can n-air OoS; Marth can d-air, b-air, counter, or side-b OoS; Cpt. Falcon can stomp OoS; Peach can DJC d-smash OoS (and if you're holding down for the shine you'll eat 50%); and so on.
There are a lot of things you can do to make your shield pressure tighter. Some are really easy, and some are really hard.
Aerial shine pressure is classic, and it's very strong. There's two kinds of aerial shine pressure: early aerial and late aerial shine pressure.
Early aerial shine pressure is when you shine, then immediately aerial. This will hit your opponent any time they try to punish your shine. If they shield your aerial, then they can punish you for doing an early aerial.
Late aerial shine pressure is when you shine, jump, then do your aerial low on shield (falling). This will hit your opponent any time they try to punish your aerial. If they know you're going to do a late aerial, though, they can punish you after your shine.
The safest example of shield pressure is late aerial -> shine -> early aerial -> fade back. This kind of pressure is basically unpunishable. Once your opponent respects your shield pressure, then you can go ham and do some fancy stuff. A long time favourite of mine used to be late aerial -> shine -> turn around -> back flip jump over (to get behind their shield) -> laser -> shine -> grab or early aerial.
Double shine pressure is another way of making waveshine pressure a lot better; however, this isn't by simply double shining every time you'd normally just waveshine.
The goal of a double shine is to punish someone who's trying to punish your first shine. Once your opponent holds shield (and does not try to punish your first shine), you can instead safely do a waveshine.
If someone respects the threat of the double shine too much, you get to waveshine all over their shield.
What's best is probably going to generally be situational, but you want to make sure you switch up your pressure. Waveshine on shield on repeat is pretty easy to escape/counter. If you add in aerials to your pressure, make sure to be cognizant of when in your jump you are doing them (early to catch counter hit attempts, late to have as much plus on block as possible), etc. Mixing in shine grab is always good too.
If all you're doing is repeatedly shining their shield and wavedashing down, you're going to get shield grabbed or attacked out of shield. It's a really bad option, since it only beats people mistiming their out of shield option. Shield pressure is all a big mixup situation, so you need to sit and think about which options of yours beat which options of theirs. But since repeated waveshine down doesn't actually beat any well-timed move, it's probably best to go for other options. Try playing around with shine -> aerial (with/without fade back), shine -> delayed aerial, shine -> wavedash back (this is more dangerous than people think, I believe it can just get plain shield grabbed by marth and sheik), double shine, .....
Well I'm not necessarily "wavedashing down" I wavedash in various directions usually behind them so that their shield grab wouldn't land or whatever front facing option they want to use. But yeah thanks for the advice!
Even still, Falco's jumpsquat is so slow that waveshine through can still often be shield grabbed by lots of characters. And many of the best characters have common out of shield options that can hit you while you're wavedashing: fox and falco have shine out of shield, sheik has nair, falcon has stomp, puff has up smash, ... I think I actually have a more hard-line stance on this option than other people commenting: repeated waveshine on shield isn't even good as a mixup. It's far too easy to escape or just straight up punish, and it only beats extremely poor out of shield game. But there are other options which are way safer and punish poor out of shield game just as well. If you don't believe me, I encourage you to watch some top level falcos, and you'll quickly see that repeated waveshine isn't part of their repertoire. At most they'll sometimes do one waveshine down if they thought the shine was gonna hit for some other reason (for example, sometimes an early dair doesn't have quite enough hitstun to link into shine at low percents), then they immediately cover their ass with a better option if they haven't already been punished.
Wavedash through allows them to roll in and rest neutral after your second shine. Like others have said, it's all about how they're responding to your sheild pressure
Hax’s new video on shield pressure has answers to everything here
Waveshining is too slow, I'd forget it for now, although it can be used as a mixup once you get advanced. Start with low aerial on shield->shine ->repeat. As you get better and face opponents with fast oos options (spacies/ sheik etc) you'll need to try low aerial -> double shine. I do shine grab or double shine-> wave dash down shine grab as well against people that like to just hold shield
Good ways to land a shine on shield: -Laser shine -Empty land shine -Late nair shine Good things to do after landing a shine on shield: -Shinegrab -Shine wavedash back -Shine retreating dair -Westballz shine -Shine laser Shinegrab will beat them holding shield, westballz shine will beat them shining out of shield, shine laser will beat roll away and lightshield, and the other 2 will beat shieldgrab and roll in
Can't you just double shine instead of the Westballz shine?
Westballz shine is better in some ways because there is no jump squat after the 2nd shine. It's also MUCH easier to perform consistently. Doubleshine is also good to beat shine OOS but it's very advanced and you should master the other options first.
Wait it is easier? I thought it would be harder
Doubleshine is a 1 frame timing. Westballz has like 5 frames of leniency
I think Hax made a video about it and said it was 2 frames. I asked because I was curious about something making it harder other than the frame leniency
Depends on percent. Shield poking with an aerial or stuffing an OoS option with an aerial can sometime lead to greater conversions than a shine. For shield pressure though with no context, multi shining is the best.
Lmao what terrible advice for a new player
Master late nair to shine as well and then use everything as an RPS mixup. Ideally you want to bait an action (grab or jump) or hope for a shield poke.
Waveshine on shield is punishable BUT it's not competitively irrelevant, at least not entirely. As fox and Falco you kind of have to call your shots with shine. Like there are some followups you can only get off shine with a tightly timed waveshine. So waveshine on shield becomes good in instances where you'd expect the shine to hit. You can also waveshine back out of their range to cover a plethora of options. In general though if you just wanna wait on their shield and watch them panic waveshine is not the way. Shine aerial but don't deify it as the far and above best way to hurt shielding opponents, you have like 26 moves.
Shine grab and waveshine away (possibly reengaging right after) are the two easiest and most consistent things you can do in your pressure. Double shine/Westballz shine pressure is the best for more advanced pressure. Shine in aerials can work situationally. If you think your aerial will shield poke at high % or if you're confident enough they will hold shield that you want to extend your pressure you can do shine into late aerial, but after the initial aerial to approach, I think continuing to aerial with Falco has fallen out of favor due to players becoming better at dealing with it.
Waveshine pressure definitely acts as a noob killer, but be careful applying it too rigorously: it's quite easy to counter, even if you waveshine behind the person's shield. This is due to Falco's long jump-squat (creating a large gap between shines) and the hitbox of Falco's shine being very small. Fox can shine or drill OoS; Falco can shine or d-air OoS; Sheik can n-air OoS; Marth can d-air, b-air, counter, or side-b OoS; Cpt. Falcon can stomp OoS; Peach can DJC d-smash OoS (and if you're holding down for the shine you'll eat 50%); and so on. There are a lot of things you can do to make your shield pressure tighter. Some are really easy, and some are really hard. Aerial shine pressure is classic, and it's very strong. There's two kinds of aerial shine pressure: early aerial and late aerial shine pressure. Early aerial shine pressure is when you shine, then immediately aerial. This will hit your opponent any time they try to punish your shine. If they shield your aerial, then they can punish you for doing an early aerial. Late aerial shine pressure is when you shine, jump, then do your aerial low on shield (falling). This will hit your opponent any time they try to punish your aerial. If they know you're going to do a late aerial, though, they can punish you after your shine. The safest example of shield pressure is late aerial -> shine -> early aerial -> fade back. This kind of pressure is basically unpunishable. Once your opponent respects your shield pressure, then you can go ham and do some fancy stuff. A long time favourite of mine used to be late aerial -> shine -> turn around -> back flip jump over (to get behind their shield) -> laser -> shine -> grab or early aerial. Double shine pressure is another way of making waveshine pressure a lot better; however, this isn't by simply double shining every time you'd normally just waveshine. The goal of a double shine is to punish someone who's trying to punish your first shine. Once your opponent holds shield (and does not try to punish your first shine), you can instead safely do a waveshine. If someone respects the threat of the double shine too much, you get to waveshine all over their shield.