Out of shield

Out of shield, abbreviated as OoS, refers to any reliable move or technique that can be used while shielding. These moves tend to be extremely quick and are an effective way to hit someone who is pressuring the player's shield. The slower a character's moveset, the less viable his or her OoS game is. Most moves that come out in 7 frames or less are technically OoS moves. The more shield stun a game has, the more difficult it is to OoS. It is easiest to OoS in Brawl for two reasons: first, the shield stun is lower than in other games; second, because it takes only 7 frames for a player to drop a shield before they can use another move, perfect shielding has laxer timing. Conversely, it is the hardest to use OoS techniques in Smash 64 because of its high shield stun. Moves that have high ending lag or very little range are easy to punish with OoS.

Examples of OoS moves

• All non–tether-based grabs are technically OoS moves. This is simply known as shield grabbing. King Dedede is well known for his shield grabbing properties due to his exceptional grabs, and Snake can easily forward tilt out of shield due its great range and having a start-up of only 4 frames, or dash attack out of shield if he's too far from the opponent. Ganondorf, however, suffers from a terrible lack of range in his shield grab, and his fastest move (jab) is too slow to reliably punish out of shield. Sheik has a pseudo chain grab against fast fallers by down throwing and then tap resetting, shielding, and re-grabbing afterward in Melee. This is an example of incorporating OoS techniques. This property is also one of the reasons why many characters struggle with the Ice Climbers as they do not have enough range to avoid grabs.
• Wavedashing
• Dashing (usually called shield dashing)
• Jumping
• Rolling (which also allows glide tossing)
• Marth's Dolphin Slash and reverse Dolphin Slash
• Fox's Reflector
• Falco's Reflector (Melee only)
• Bowser's Whirling Fortress
• Donkey Kong's Spinning Kong (Melee and Brawl mostly)
• Quick shield-dropped moves in Brawl like many jabs and tilts.
• Jump-canceled up smash (often c-stick up before the character leaves the ground)
• Power Shield Canceling

Trivia

• Yoshi is the only character in Melee and Brawl that cannot use the out of shield technique.