Shoulders Role in Bench Press

Do the shoulders play a role more towards lock out or off your chest when you bench press?

I generally thought the shoulders helped you get it off the chest and triceps help you lock it out. However personally I use alot of leg drive to assist in getting it off the chest. But im relatively new been training for a year so anyone feel free to correct me.

Shoulders/chest/legs off the chest and triceps to lockout. But they all play a role throughout the whole movement.

I ask this because my weakness was always off my chest. As I switched to the westside method from 531 I stopped SOHP as a main lift. I chose SOHP as a ME lift one day and it fell 15 pounds. Now whenever I do closegrip bench press as assistance work I feel it in my shoulders just as much as triceps. When I retested my 1 rep max for bench it stayed the same and my weakness was still off my chest. I am thinking shoulders might be my weak point. Has anyone had this occur to them?

I get a lot more with off the chest work with DE work (form and speed) and lat and chest work. I find inverted rows and chins and pull overs to be very helpful for my lats so far, but there are plenty of people with different effective favorites. For chest, I find pause benches and db benching to be the most useful. I’d do ulta-wides, but those are shoulder-murder for me.