So I wanted to really get better at shaders, so I spent most of today watching video tutorials on basic non-metal and metal shaders - and then found out soon after that blender released a version of itself that rendered most of what I just watched pointless and useless - because it included its own super-shader node that has just about everything you'll need ever. I'd say it looks pretty fucken good, after testing it out.
Shaders and lightning always felt like my two biggest weak points in my renders, so hopefully this'll be a big step towards fixing that