I have a lot of thoughts on the move as a Zetter main but am also willing to approach it objectively.
I think old shine knocking down midweights at like 100 was kind of wild, and I do not disagree that it needed a change. Shine up strong was, save for a precise Amsah tech, essentially a guaranteed kill at knockdown and up.
However - shine as it currently is doesn’t knock down until 170+. It has pretty darn low knockback even from around 130-150, which, in the event that someone does not floorhug it, makes it still pretty difficult execution wise to link into an up strong. This isn’t a bad thing - but I think that should someone mess up and not floorhug, getting the up strong shouldn’t still be too difficult. When you combine this with the fact that Shine was nerfed in the January patch to be slower to act out of, I think that the move is in a strange spot, where it’s still good but execution around it is more difficult on several accounts. You have less knockback to work with and less time to work with as well. I’ve also seen points when someone will miss floorhug and straight up be able to roll away or spotdodge from the follow up.
So what I’m proposing is basically to meet in the middle of old knockdown and new knockdown - counterplay would still exist at the early percent ranges that shine previously knocked down, but execution would be easier should someone mess up. I’ve heard this shine change described as a way to give more player agency against what has admittedly been one of the most consistent kill setups, but I think I hit maybe a fifth as many up strongs as I used to, which is pretty harsh. If I’m not comboing into a shine on an airborne opponent I almost never get shine up strong.
I don’t think changing shine to knock down at like 140 or so against a midweight is a bad idea - Zetter has other ways to take stocks at that point anyway and it’s just a matter of rewarding Zetter when his opponents mess up at lower 100s.