Shield Breaker

Shield Breaker
	; Lucina's Shield Breaker in SSB4.
User	Marth; Lucina
Universe	Fire Emblem

This page refers to one of Marth and Lucina's attacks. For the hitbox property that allows fast shield breaking, see shield damage. For information regarding combos that break shields, see shield break combo.

“	Thrust your sword forward to break shields.	”
—Smash for 3DS's foldout

The Shield Breaker (シールドブレイカー, Shield Breaker) is Marth and Lucina's neutral special move.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee, it is functionally similar to Roy's Flare Blade, being useful for edgeguarding, platform tech chases, and extending aerial combos outside the reach of Marth's normal aerials. Compared to Flare Blade, Shield Breaker does not deliver as much damage and knockback and lacks an explosion effect, but charges much faster and does not deal any recoil to Marth when released at full charge. True to its name, it deals high shield damage, and will break any shield when fully charged. Despite being able to break any normal shield, however, it may be perfect shielded without any penalty to the receiver.

In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the move has had a change in animation. Instead of an overhead vertical slash with a large arc area, it has become a single powerful stab. The style used now is much more in kind with Marth's battle animations in the Fire Emblem games. Although Brawl's Shield Breaker charges and releases faster and is easier to sweetspot, it is slower, weaker, and the animation change nerfed both its horizontal and vertical reach, thus removing much of the edgeguarding ability it had in Melee.

In Super Smash Bros. 4, Shield Breaker's shield damage was dramatically increased; additionally, due to shields no longer taking reduced damage from attacks, an uncharged Shield Breaker can instantly shatter a full shield, making Smash 4's Shield Breaker the most potent incarnation of the move. Perfect shields still prevent the move from doing any shield damage, however. Additionally, an uncharged aerial Shield Breaker now sends Marth forward a small distance, which increases his recovery potential. Despite these useful buffs, Shield Breaker in Smash 4 suffers from the universal nerf of Marth's sword range, making it much harder to land the move without reading the opponent's choices due to the Falchion's drastically reduced range. It is, however, still a useful tool for mindgames and against players who predictably put up their shields often.

The move was also given to Lucina. Her version of the move inflicts the same amount of damage regardless of whether the opponent is hit by the tip of her sword or not. She also has a different pose when charging and using the move, being highly exaggerated compared to Marth's charging stance.

Reverse Shield Breaker

In Brawl, most neutral special moves can be reversed by tapping the control stick in the opposite direction a few frames after the neutral special move has been activated. Marth's Shield Breaker can be reversed with no increase to damage or knockback and has no reverse animation; this makes reversing only useful if it is used to attack an enemy who has moved behind Marth. It is interesting to note that when Marth activates a reverse Shield Breaker during his running animation, he will turn around and slide forward slightly while charging or releasing the attack. This is probably because the running momentum has switched direction with Marth since there is no animation for the reverse Shield Breaker and pushed him forward as if he didn't turn around at all.

Customization

Special Move customization was added in Super Smash Bros. 4. Both characters have the same variations:

Storm Thrust: Creates a gust of wind that forces opponents back.
Dashing Assault: Dashes forward, but deals less damage.
1. In Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, this variation is a Challenge unlock for Marth, only obtainable by clearing The Falchion's Seal event on normal or hard difficulty.

Stages

In Brawl, Shield Breaker has stages of damage and knockback; the stages change when the attack is charged until it reaches the last stage then the attack will commence. There are four stages in total with Shield Breaker, stages 1-3 are during the charging process, these stages always do the same damage even if the attack is tipped, tipping these stages will only increase knockback. Stage 4 is when the move is fully charged, this attack has multiple hitboxes which get stronger to the tip of the sword. The stages on can be determined by listening to the "clack" sounds Shield Breaker makes, stage two commences on the third "clack" and stage three can be performed by predicting the fifth "clack". Stage three is difficult to perform because there are only a few frames before the shield breaker is fully charged, attacking in these frames will let the player use this attack. Stage four is when the attack is fully charged, this attack is the strongest in both knockback and damage (unlike most chargeable moves, which have the penultimate stage as the strongest).

Stage	Damage	KO percent (base)	KO percent (tip)
Stage 1	8%	216%	184%
Stage 2	13%	136%	115%
Stage 3	18%	94%	78%
Stage 4	18%-24%	68%	50%

Origin

The move's ability to break shields is based on Marth's weapon of choice within the Fire Emblem series: the Rapier, a weapon unique to him in his games. In addition to the attack's animation in Brawl emulating his standard attack animation, the Rapier had the added benefit of being able to gain a damage bonus when used on armoured enemies (along with foes on horseback), such as knights.