New Sheik Tech? Poof Pressure

[Captain Faceroll]

This is something I found out accidentally. Basically in PM you can grab the ledge after your up-b with sheik even if you're facing the wrong way. This is helpful for when you are up-b'ing to the ledge straight up but aren't actually facing it. In melee you have to do a reverse up-b which can be tricky and hard to do if you're in a pressure situation. PM removed that necessity so it's all fine and dandy.

Because of this change, amongst other things, there is something I've discovered with Sheik. Basically when shino stalling, instead of going straight up and down, you can actually do the first part of your up-b onto the stage, and then poof back to the ledge. It should be the same thing as a shino stall, except you're changing the angle. This probably doesn't have a ton of use, but it may catch your opponent off guard. The other thing is that it may force them to respect you at the ledge a little bit more. Before, someone with a sword could spam attacks at you and be safe, but with poof pressure they aren't so lucky.

Here is a video of me demonstrating what I'm talking about (I apologize in advance for the out-of-sync audio). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4vgg4PkVM8

Any thoughts on this? Is it useful at all, or is it just a random thing to practice by yourself?

I believe this should be invincible like normal shino stalling is if you time it correctly, but it's possible that there's a slight window of time where you are vulnerable. The reason for this is that in a normal shino stall you poof directly to the ledge grab position, but with this you poof near the ledge and then grab it. A subtle difference, but one that may make it less worthwhile.

What do you guys think?

Faceroll stall is also an appropriate name

 

[ECHOnce]

Being able to snap to the ledge while facing the wrong way at the end of a recovery move is something that was implemented universally across the PM roster - I'm presuming as a compromise between Melee and Brawl ledge mechanics.

I'm pretty sure I've seen at least M2K sneak some shino stall explosions past the edge in PM before, although I guess I didn't really think about how it's exclusive to PM. But even then, I haven't seen anyone else using it to reach as far on the stage as in your vid; it's definitely a safe offensive/mixup/pressure-relieving option to consider during stalls in the future. Good find.

 

[Captain Faceroll]

With more practice you could probably get more distance, this video was made with just ~20 minutes of playing around.

The difficulty of this technique also varies by stage. I tested this on every legal stage we have currently, and it worked on all of them. It is by far the hardest on lylat; you would need to practice a ton in order to get it every single time on this stage, so it's probably not worth it on this stage (just another reason to dislike lylat). It's also pretty hard on battlefield, it seems as though you have to wait a longer time in order to be able to actually go onto the stage, so you have to be more precise with your angle.

It seemed really easy on stages like warioware and greenhill zone, but it's possible that was because I had been practicing on other stages beforehand.

 

[Missile]

This is a very, very nice find, and you get the golden star for making it public first on these boards.

Thank you for this, it will help PM Sheik players to defend themselves better. With proper execution it'd be as immune as shino stalling. One more thing to practice.

How do you perform it specifically? Drop back, jump and up-b forward and poof diagonally backwards?

 

[ECHOnce]

EDIT: Just noticed your coined name for this lol. Poof Pressure. Idk why I find that so amusing. It's perfect.

How do you perform it specifically? Drop back, jump and up-b forward and poof diagonally backwards?

Haven't tried this myself yet, but if it works like other PM Up-B recoveries that can grab the ledge from behind the edge (e.g. Zelda's and others' I can't recall off the top of my head):

• Shino Stall towards the center of the stage.

• When choosing where to reappear, input direction away from the center of the stage (and maybe a bit downwards), so as to reappear just off-stage past the ledge.

• Immediately before reappearance (there's a short period of leeway to buffer the following input), which would normally have you facing away from the stage and SD'ing, press/hold the direction towards the stage. Sheik will instead reappear facing towards the stage and grab the ledge.

 

[Captain Faceroll]

How do you perform it specifically? Drop back, jump and up-b forward and poof diagonally backwards?

Pretty much.

1. You're on the ledge. Press down to drop away from the ledge
2. Immediately (this is important) up-b up and in towards the stage for as long as possible.
   
3. Right before you poof hold down and away (or whatever direction will make you towards the ledge) and there you go.
   
4. Make sure you don't hold this direction after the poof though, or else you won't grab the ledge.

More information:

The faster you up-b after dropping from the ledge the more distance you'll gain. This is also important not only because it lets you go farther, but you also need to go a certain distance so that you can actually live. If you don't go far enough you'll poof past the ledge and be too far away to grab it.

Stages like battlefield and lylat make it so you have to hold up for longer than you do on other stages. Normally you can pretty much move your stick directly left or right after your up-b and start gaining distance on them, but for lylat/battlefield you have to hold up in order to pass the lip of the stage first. And because you're holding up, you don't go as far as you do on the stage, and because of that you don't get as much distance... etc.

Try to not hold straight left or right, or else you might land on the stage before your poof goes off. You want to make sure you're getting the full distance out of your initial part of your up-b (the pre-poof).

 

[Captain Faceroll]

I just started testing how far away you can be on the stage and do a grounded up-b to ledge grab, and this seems to be about the distance for yoshi's island: brawl. http://i.imgur.com/PGGhr3D.png

I don't have a frame counter or anything, but this might be faster than running off and reverse needle canceling, or running/turning around and wavedashing. Idk if this technique is utilized by sheik players or not, but I've seen mewtwo/zelda players do it with their up-b's and I thought I'd look into it as well. I have work right now but afterwards I can do more testing.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

Great find, with the opponent having to back away more this means that you will get more opportunities for a needle charge.

 

[ECHOnce]

lso just considered another application of this version of Shino Stall. It's not often that you come across someone with good enough timing/experience that they risk trying to turnaround WD-off to steal the ledge and make you SD, but if you see them going for it while you're a Shino Stalling, you can teleport much further on stage and away from the edge than if you were to normally Shino Stalling (in which case you'd usually be in ledge get-up attack range).

I don't have a frame counter or anything, but this might be faster than running off and reverse needle canceling, or running/turning around and wavedashing. Idk if this technique is utilized by sheik players or not, but I've seen mewtwo/zelda players do it with their up-b's and I thought I'd look into it as well. I have work right now but afterwards I can do more testing.

Unless it covers a good, interruptible distance and is fairly quick on either startup or when it actually moves - both of which aren't the case for Sheik - teleporting to edgehog is pretty risky.

Sheik's tele has a set distance, whereas M2/Zelda's can be interrupted at any partial distance when grabbing the ledge, which simplifies things a lot; you don't have to waste time perfectly positioning yourself and second-guessing the risk of SD'ing (will also become a predictable behavior, with the constant running/WD'ing to position yourself and whatnot). If you're a moment too late and they get the ledge before you, or you go too far, you'll just SD instead. With the short but set length + long overall animation + extra time to position yourself, it's just really hard to time. Not only that, but it also gives way more time for opponents to consider their recovery options than with M2/Zelda teleports, and they may just end up avoiding the ledge altogether. Which might be what you want, but even if you were to bait this out of them while risking an SD, you probably wouldn't be able to punish them before their landing lag ends anyways.

Reverse Needle canceling and Tunaround Wavedash-off-edge are more viable options for reaching the edge asap. If you feel you have enough time to teleport edgehog, it'd probably be better to just attempt a needle gimp/charge needles in the meantime instead.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

Well it clearly is superior to the standard Shino stall because you have more options, becomes more important when people use pivot ledgegrab or RARWD.
For ledgegrabbing it is faster than the needle but slower than RARWD, it might be the best solution on sloped edges like YI and YS though, as far as I can tell on YS RARWD is still better but on YI the reverse Shino seems safer.
Also the invincibility on it might make it useful to grab the ledge, for example if a Link covers his recovery with a boomerang and you try to ledgehog his up-b while avoiding the boomerang.

 

[Mister the Wizard]

As a new Sheik player I find this super frikken legit.

 

[ECHOnce]

In addition to abusing the invincibility against recovery as Chesstiger pointed out, I just thought of a few more applications of aerial Up-B'ing to grab the ledge while on stage (each of the following are just little gimmicky tricks that'd probably only work once on the given person, but options are options nonetheless):

• If you're playing teams (and FFAs, I suppose), you might be able to get away with using an Up-B to approach and hit confused opponents before they have enough time to register what's going on, with all the chaos that happens in 4p matches. Of course, you could have done this already from before, but the risk of a full second of vulnerability isn't an issue now you have the ledge to retreat to

• Weird/awkward mix-up to confuse just really mess with opponents. You can condition them to believe that, if they're at kill %, you'll approach them with a F-air whenever they have their back close-to and facing the ledge. Your "go" sign to use this would be if they start shielding pre-emtively while you're still in the air. Instead of shielding your F-air, they'll notice something isn't going as planned, but in the splitsecond of confusion (trying to figure out what move you're using, or why you chose to), your invincibility would have kicked in they may drop the shield for a moment to try reach in some other way. Lots of ifs, but so long as you're confident in the read, there's minimal risk due to you being invincible for most of the entire approach (excluding the beginning), and the reward, although not super likely, could be big if they're high %s - a kill, or at least enough KB to follow-up with a ledge FH+MH aerial to kill. This is basically the same as the above example, except it requires more mindgame setup, since you won't be able to get away with as much in a more focused 1on1 setting. Not sure what the most efficient way to get enough horizontal distance so that you're invincible from the moment that you're within range of possibly being hit/grabbed...maybe Up-B'ing downwards towards the immediately after dropping through a platform would be the most confusing/effective? That'd be easy to condition with drop-through-platform F-airs. Maybe FH ledge jump --> Shield-drop through platform above nooby edge-guarder --> Up-B'ing down to hit confused noob and then right/left to maintain invincibility could become a legit mixup, albeit rare.

• Same as above, but in a more specific and effective conditioning situation. For get-up attacks, or any slow smashes with super armor, if they seem to use them somewhat frequent/loosely/carelessly, encouraging these habits by letting them hit you with it successfully a few times, if you feel like you can hold onto the stock still. Then, in the next instance where they get-up attack or slow super armor smash near a ledge, reverse the 'super-armor/invincibility into punish' mechanic on them by Up-B'ing towards them, either as a bait for another attack or once one has already been initiated, and they'll hit you during your invincibility(if you time it right). Then you punish with the following explosion and retreat to the ledge.

 

[Captain Faceroll]

Grounded up-b has 18 frames of start up time (in melee, idk about brawl frame data as I couldn't find any). 18 frames of not doing damage nor being invincible. Against good opponents it still gives them 10 frames to react and even grab, and shine or another move gives them even more time. It seems suuuper cheese, but you never know.

Has anyone here tried using the poof pressure yet on real opponents? I did against a marth earlier, but it was on netplay and pretty hard to do it consistently. It seems... really effective honestly. After my tournament wednesday I'll let you guys know how effective it worked on people who know how to play the game and people with no netplay lag.

 

[Deleted member]

this is brilliant, 10/10 will steal, big deal for this char.

i'll test it extensively later tonight.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

@Umbreon How do you always manage to find the threads where the metagame evolves :D

 

[Deleted member]

@Umbreon How do you always manage to find the threads where the metagame evolves :D

usually i'm the one pushing it but in this case i just happen to play sheik in pm

 

[Chesstiger2612]

I'm also working on always being where the action is (cutting out a bit tier list speculation for this, that thread will never lead to anything productive), but you are very consistent at it. gj

 

[Mister the Wizard]

Holy crap he has 13,798 posts. Holy crap.

 

[Deleted member]

yeah this is ridiculously good. i'll go into it more tonight.

edit:

[10:37:00 PM] Articanus: I don't want to see melee shiek with a tether
[10:37:09 PM] Max: PM sheik isn't melee sheik though
[10:37:16 PM] Max: they play quite differently
[10:37:25 PM] Max: in both neutral and punishment
[10:37:40 PM] Articanus: neutral is the same to me
[10:37:44 PM] Max: you can play pm sheik like melee sheik but its bad
[10:37:45 PM] Articanus: based off of sami using her
[10:37:54 PM] Max: no and i'll tell you why
[10:38:06 PM] Max: sheik has a few mechanical changes that alter her neutral significantly
[10:38:20 PM] Max: 1 is being able to waveland out of SH fair/bair
[10:38:38 PM] Max: 2 is the brawl shield mechanics that encourage running up and shielding more aggressively
[10:38:47 PM] Max: 3 is her needles losing their continuous hitbox
[10:39:08 PM] Max: and 4 is her crouch which is just ridiculous because you can move while significantly lowering her hurtbox
[10:39:31 PM] Max: thats also before having an armored boostgrab
[10:39:46 PM] Max: or dash pivot bair to stuff aerials better than nair ever could
[10:40:25 PM] Articanus: interesting
[10:40:43 PM] Max: the vanish pressure is a sweet bonus too but thats not really neutral game
[10:41:47 PM] Articanus: vanish pressure?
[10:44:41 PM] Max: oh, in this game you can still shino stall
[10:44:47 PM] Max: but you can also grab edges backwards
[10:45:00 PM] Max: so you can do vanish IN towards the stage, aiming 45 degrees back out to the edge
[10:45:08 PM] Max: and actually hit people on the stage while shino stalling
[10:45:20 PM] Articanus: oh i see
[10:45:23 PM] Articanus: cute
[10:45:25 PM] Max: however, the intangibility frames goes back to invincibiliy frames from the edge grab
[10:45:34 PM] Articanus: I do that maneuver with mewtwo
[10:45:35 PM] Max: which lets you do ledgedash boostgrab
[10:45:47 PM] Max: so you can do intangibility > invincibility > armor
[10:45:54 PM] Max: using an unpunishable hitbox into a grab
[10:45:57 PM] Max: its basically bull****
[10:46:09 PM] Articanus: but if you miss you just get hit
[10:46:10 PM] Articanus: lol
[10:46:15 PM] Max: meh
[10:46:16 PM] Max: practice
[10:46:19 PM] Max: /techskill
[10:46:26 PM] Articanus: #techskill
[10:46:33 PM] Max: i drop it maybe 1 in 20 and i still get it on the flubs sometimes anyway
[10:46:38 PM] Max: you have to respect sheik by the edge
[10:46:49 PM] Max: normally in melee you can pressure her at the edge and respect her off stage
[10:46:54 PM] Max: in PM you have to respect her at both
[10:47:05 PM] Max: you can't even go for **** like marth dtilt safely
[10:47:16 PM] Max: but hey thats why i want melee backthrow lmao
[10:47:19 PM] Max: yay for free kills
[10:47:36 PM] Articanus: lol

 

[DrinkingFood]

Brawl shield mechanics? But it's like 90% melee mechanics for shielding now, are you talking about pushback?

 

[Captain Faceroll]

Yeah, after testing this out more it's basically the same as shino stalling (as in the chances of sding are really low if you practice it)

I'm a little disappointed you said vanish pressure and not poof pressure though

 

[Captain Faceroll]

Also the grab armor thing doesn't exist like you think it does in pm. It's the same thing as in melee, but in melee you won't take damage at all. In this game you'll win with a grab and at least take damage, but in melee you'd win unscathed.

 

[Deleted member]

actually i knew that, but actually armoring a hit and taking damage gives you a visual idea of when you can expect it to work more reliably. hence, it "feels" safer, even if it's strictly inferior by the game data. idk about you guys but turning the data into intuitive response helps me play quite a bit.

 

[Captain Faceroll]

Oh yeah for sure. On topic though I used this in my matches last night at wdw, and it.. was just so good. Even if they attempt to take the ledge from you you're so far on the stage by then you can recover before they can punish. Also since no one has seen this before you get to see their astonished faces

 

[|~J~|]

hell yea, good stuff bro! changin' the meta for us sheik mains. i will most definitely be practicing this when i have the time. nice find

 

[KingsGambit27]

Wow this is amazing. I'm interested for some clarification on what Umbreon said though, there is armor on Sheik's boost grab? Where might I purchase such armour?

 

[Captain Faceroll]

Wow this is amazing. I'm interested for some clarification on what Umbreon said though, there is armor on Sheik's boost grab? Where might I purchase such armour?

See what I said earlier.

 

[KingsGambit27]

Also the grab armor thing doesn't exist like you think it does in pm. It's the same thing as in melee, but in melee you won't take damage at all. In this game you'll win with a grab and at least take damage, but in melee you'd win unscathed.

I assume you're talking about this. So Sheik's boost grab just has super armor on it for the duration of the grab? I don't think I'm understanding clearly. In the interest of not getting off topic, is there another thread where I can read up on this? Thanks.

 

[Captain Faceroll]

If you grab someone the exact frame they hit you, you'll take damage but no knockback, and they'll be in your grab.

In melee you grab them without taking damage, so in this game it can seem like you have "grab armor", but it's the same as it is in melee just now you take damage instead of winning completely

 

[Missile]

Old post but I've been using this in several variations and it's really useful for anti-edge guarding.

Mixing it up with shino stalling on an unexpecting opponent can get him off you, kill him at high percents, or set up a combo at mid percents on less floaty characters...

 

[Captain Faceroll]

Poof Pressure still works in 3.5, although it seems a bit harder to perform. No idea if this is actually true, or if it's simply because I haven't practiced it that much recently.

I can see this being more useful in 3.5 than before. With the fact that you can only grab the ledge 5 times for invincibility, you could use poof pressure to get people away from you so you can safely land if you're close to 5 grabs.

 

[EddyBearr]

It sounds really good, but I have so much trouble with shino stalling in PM.. makes me SD a lot and I don't know why.

 

[RedEyesWhiteSwaggin]

It sounds really good, but I have so much trouble with shino stalling in PM.. makes me SD a lot and I don't know why.

The only difficult part for me was learning when to stop holding down so that I grabbed the edge. I've seen some melee tutorials that say to keep holding down until you grab the ledge but I don't think that works in PM. To clarify, after I disappear from the up b, I stop holding down and put my stick to neutral or back to get ready for the next stall.


Also I swear you could do this in melee, you just couldn't be facing away from the ledge of course.

 

[foxygrandpa]

Poof Pressure still works in 3.5, although it seems a bit harder to perform. No idea if this is actually true, or if it's simply because I haven't practiced it that much recently.

I can see this being more useful in 3.5 than before. With the fact that you can only grab the ledge 5 times for invincibility, you could use poof pressure to get people away from you so you can safely land if you're close to 5 grabs.

Feels exactly the same to me.

 

[cisyphus]

Will try at earliest convenience. Might actually get me playing PM Sheik some more.

 

[Kaeldiar]

This no longer works, as of the 3.6 update *cries*

 

[DrinkingFood]

really? what changed?

 

[Kaeldiar]

really? what changed?

Mewtwo, Sheik, and Zelda can no longer "snap" to the ledge while being both invisible and facing away from the ledge. When you teleport, you face the direction you are moving (no way around this). Effectively, this means you can't snap to ledge from stage.

As a fun fact, other characters with omni-directional up-bs retain this power. Pikachu, Lucario, Fox, Falco, Wolf, Ness, and Lucas retain the ability to snap to ledge from stage. This really only matters for Pikachu and Lucario, as it's impractical for the others (Wolf might be able to abuse windbox, though), and it is impossible one of the PK kids. I forget which one, but I remember testing all of these when 3.6 came out

 

[DrinkingFood]

I'm not having any problems doing it in 3.6, it just seems a little slower and might have a vulnerable frame right before you snap to the edge, which hardly matters since you're putting a hitbox out where they'd be hitting you from anyway. I'm really lazy and don't feel like making a video to prove it; are you sure you aren't just doing it wrong? The sensitivity for it is a bit strict if you're not used to it.

EDIT: wait are you talking about snapping from the stage or what the OP is talking about? Poof pressure still works and just seems a little slower (she grabs edge right as she reappears, I dunno if it was always like that) but sheik could never do the snap to the edge from onstage as far as I know since her first bounce during up-b took her too high if done airborne and doing grounded didn't work period

 

[ECHOnce]

Poof pressure never changed. Only way for Sheik to grab the ledge backwards from before was to sweetspot at full distance. Zelda/M2 teles were the exceptions pre-3.6, Sheik wasn't among them.