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Official Sheik Match Video Critiquing Thread

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Smash Ace
Joined
Jun 15, 2014
Messages
559
Things I noticed that you probably don't want to be doing
- Tons of rolls. I have the same issue but I feel I'm getting a lot more comfortable at wavedashing out of my shield and into an option.
- You seem to miss a lot of your techs, and when you do hit them a lot of them seemed to end up in a tech roll in. For example, Fox down threw you and you rolled inward and he up-smashed you for it.
- Get consistent at short hopping. The way I practice it was use 20XX's "Red flash on failed L cancel," and then practice short hop fast falling to dream land's music on the top platform where wispy can't move you. Then, you can practice doing short hop fast fall auto cancel fairs. If you flash red you timed it badly and you didn't auto cancel. Then I just practiced moving forwards/backwards with my short hop and doing auto cancel fairs along to dream land's stage music.
- You go for ledge dashes but they are a little too slow. You end up air dodging on stage. I am also working on getting used to doing 1-however many shino stalls into attempting an invincible ledge dash, and I'm getting a lot better at safely getting back on the stage.
hah thats awesome. I didn't know of that AC Fair practice method.
Btw you should be practicing rising Fairs as well as later AC Fairs.
And if you like doing Fairs in neutral, practice on covering your landing with a dash away or an Ftilt.
Also a frame perfect late Lcanceled Fair Ftilt is frame neutral on shield.
 

Dariencove

Smash Rookie
Joined
Mar 25, 2008
Messages
22
Location
Naperville, IL
hah thats awesome. I didn't know of that AC Fair practice method.
Btw you should be practicing rising Fairs as well as later AC Fairs.
And if you like doing Fairs in neutral, practice on covering your landing with a dash away or an Ftilt.
Also a frame perfect late Lcanceled Fair Ftilt is frame neutral on shield.
Another thing is once you get used to practicing ac sh fair you can try doing it vs 20xx marth that is set to shield grab. If you do it right you can dash and make the shield grab whiff, or alternatively jab. I thought it was -1 and not 0, though, because I never seem to be able to grab marth out of his own shield grab.

Edit: can't read, thought u meant AC fair being neutral not l-cancel fair from really low. I remember reading somewhere sh ff THEN l cancelled nair as low as possible is 0 or +1 or something really good but I'm still not used to trying those out. I really like to avoid being in the air as much as possible if I can help it.
 
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thundrio

Smash Cadet
Joined
Aug 15, 2010
Messages
27
If I could get someone to critique this match against a Peach I would really appreciate it. I feel like I played pretty good this set for me, I didn't really make any major mistakes (in the past I have gotten wrecked by This's dsmash). The two things I think I need to work on most against Peach are edgeguarding, and knowing what to do off a grab at various percents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYmciGt-P38
 

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Smash Ace
Joined
Jun 15, 2014
Messages
559
Hi Drum, I'll help you out man!
So you are walking really slow all the way up to Luigi and Ftilting him.
While this seems very strong right now, he can easily be tought a few tricks to beat out this - such as simply crouching. When he crouches he will not be knocked anywhere by your Ftilts and so you need to advance your tactics as well.
In fact I will encourage you to teach him this as soon as you can.
Make him crouch - try and Ftilt him. He will be able to use his downsmash emediatly.
You can do the same!! let him attack you and simply hold down. You can emadiatly use your downsmash too.

I gotto say you already have a good understanding of Sheik combo game. Get them into the air and Forward Air or Upair them.
One of the easiest ways to get Luigi and other so-called floaties (chars that float in the air more than others) into the air so you can jump and Forward Air them, is to grab them and Down Throw.
As soon as you have done the Down Throw jump and Fair them. Extremely powerful and cheap.
Do this as many times as you can during a match! 30 times is not enough!!!! (j/k, but just keep doing them)
Fair is easily Sheik's best move.

Aside from that I want to teach you one cool technique you can use right away.
When ever you Run real fast across the stage you can Crouch (hold down) and when you stand up again you can run the opposit direction without turning around slowly and be forced to run slowly.
This might seem weird, but it works! trust me! And try for youself.
Might take a bit of practice - but I hope you are prepared to practice, bc you will need patience if you want to become good at this game.

I hope that helps you! Please report back soon =)
 
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Locke426

Smash Rookie
Joined
Nov 30, 2005
Messages
10
Location
CFL
I've been around the scene for a long time but started training competitively about 2 months ago. Here are 2 recent videos of me playing tournament sets. My local scene has set up an "amateur" league where matches are commentated by veteran players who give us advice and suggestions for when we watch it later. I'd love to get additional viewpoints. Feel free to agree with, disagree with, or ignore entirely the commentary when critiquing me. Keep in mind I'm relatively new to playing seriously so I'm not hitting L-cancels consistently, etc, but feel free to call it like you see it. Honest words will only motivate me, not discourage. Thanks in advance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MdQalNOm08 - vs a Samus. I win 2-0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq_uylCB3Ig - vs a Marth. I lose 0-2

I feel that my level of play was about the same in both matches. The Marth player was just a more skilled opponent than the Samus. Thanks again.
 

snapcaster

Smash Rookie
Joined
Aug 16, 2014
Messages
21
Hey guys I finally got a clip, I would love to hear your critic of my sheik. Match was pretty damn sloppy, I flubbed a bunch of edgeguards I feel like I'd normally hit and I made a lot way too commital options in neutral like down smash and nair that were just unnecessary. Anyways, thanks for any feedback ^^.

 

Sleepy Driz

Smash Cadet
Joined
Jul 24, 2014
Messages
62
Location
Gainesville, FL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr208MmnGyI

Hey everyone, I'm looking to get a match critique of a recent set I played at our local weekly at school. I don't actually main Sheik but I decided to try to see how I'd do against this Marth main who's very comfortable in the spacies matchup. My Sheik was pretty rusty at this point so I missed a couple of easy conversions like forward smash coming out instead of fair. Regardless, I'm looking to get feedback on neutral game/punishes/anything you can think of, really. Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks!
 

Eonn

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Mar 26, 2015
Messages
131
Location
Ontario, Canada
NNID
SirEon
I'm the white Sheik in all the videos. My tech chases are awful so I end up going for quite a few reads. Sorry about the quality of the videos, I'm looking forward to the critiques!

[Set vs Falco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftlGLC9oSSY)

[Match vs Fox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D8r4MU1Yzo)

[Netplay Falco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E73RiozT-mA)

P.S. If it's not a problem, could the critiquer's point to a couple specific moments in the videos as examples of where I screwed up or could have done something different?
 
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snapcaster

Smash Rookie
Joined
Aug 16, 2014
Messages
21
Grab ledge bair marth for edgeguards and waveland on platform tech chase after throws. Also you cut off so many easy combos with a simple fair at lower percent when you can juggle marth much harder with weak bair into platform ftilt/strong upair into platform land into medium up air into platform land etc. Your neutral is really bad against marth too and you just jump throwing out a lot of fairs which a good marth would never let you back down on the ground. Sheik dash dance and staying grounded is essential in this matchup, and better utilization of boost grab so you can get some better mixups when marth is dash dancing in the corner. So many meh followups on freebies of his, ftilt is really not a great option in this matchup if you can freely get a grab/dash attack/instant upair/upsmash/uptilt. Ftilt really is at its worst in this matchup in general. Also never ftilt off of a grab, if you are, something on your marth combo grab tree is wrong.

Maybe I'll go more into it this weekend.
 
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Chaxi_Raxi

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jan 12, 2015
Messages
2
hello friends!
hoping to get some criticism on these two matches I played at a weekly last week.
Set vs Falco
Set vs Peach
lots of spaghetti because of playing on stream, but overall I feel I played better than normal for me
I look forward to hear what you all have to say ^^
 

BasicallyRyan

Smash Cadet
Joined
Feb 2, 2015
Messages
32
Location
Pennsylvania
Hey guys. Relatively new smash player in general her. I went to a smash local today and I've never been so embarrassed in my life. (I played against two foxes and since my knowledge of smash di is extremely minimal I got wave shined to death which lead 3/4 games ending in 4 stocks) Sadly none of my games were on stream I do have two games from a few days ago, one is a local with a bunch of friends the other is at the same local a week earlier. I'd love to hear what I primarily have to work on because right now I'm lost beyond belief thinking there was nothing I could've done. Anyway here are the clips:
Local with Friends (Sorry for very asshole commentator, one of my good friends): (I use the tag ryknoxasaurus hence my in game tag is RYK)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEB8yF14-2c

Local Tournament:
http://www.twitch.tv/bros_calamity/v/32525341
(My game starts at 1:56:35)
 

Scroll

Smash Ace
Joined
Jun 15, 2014
Messages
559
Hey guys. Relatively new smash player in general her. I went to a smash local today and I've never been so embarrassed in my life. (I played against two foxes and since my knowledge of smash di is extremely minimal I got wave shined to death which lead 3/4 games ending in 4 stocks) Sadly none of my games were on stream I do have two games from a few days ago, one is a local with a bunch of friends the other is at the same local a week earlier. I'd love to hear what I primarily have to work on because right now I'm lost beyond belief thinking there was nothing I could've done. Anyway here are the clips:
Local with Friends (Sorry for very ******* commentator, one of my good friends): (I use the tag ryknoxasaurus hence my in game tag is RYK)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEB8yF14-2c

Local Tournament:
http://www.twitch.tv/bros_calamity/v/32525341
(My game starts at 1:56:35)
Hi Ryan,

I'll help you out my dude.

What I saw both of you do is basically walking up to close range and throwing out any unsafe option at the first given chance.
Dash Attack, Ftilt, Fsmash.

I'll give you an exercise to practice when playing friends, that will help you become more patient. Because the one thing that I am missing to see the most right now is to see you being patient and punishing AKA earning grabs and other punishes.

Every time you feel the urge to walk forward, either shoot a needle or charge up 2+ needles instead.
What you wanna do before you can do that though is to have enough room behind you that you can WD backwards without getting to the Ledge.
What the needles will do is to annoy the opponent and make them come to you.
This will put you in advantage. NOW all of sheiks good options come available and you can beat most of anything the opponent will throw at you.
All you gotto do is to study how to beat common approaches of the given character.
By beat I dont neccesarily mean outright beating the exchange, but rather knowing the answer to them, being Shielding grabbing or CC'ing, WD Back, Ftilt, etc.

Don't expect the following example to work 100% of the time but,
Let's say the match just started.
You play Sheik ditto.
You do what I say and charge 2-3 needles and shoot them. Then shoot another.
The opponent get's impatient already! And runs at you full speed.
We could expect a Dash Attack.

The best thing you can do here is to simply hold down as you get hit. Then grab him and downthrow chain grab him.
Here is how to grab out of crouch. As you are holding Down, simply press R+A.
Shielding out of Crouch will make you stand up in 1 frame.
Don't release Down and press Z. You will need to wait a long time and the grab might not be guaranteed anymore.

I hope that was helpful.
 

Fluzzarn

Smash Rookie
Joined
Mar 7, 2014
Messages
1
Finally getting around to posting my, uh, attempts at playing Sheik and failing pretty badly against Spacies and just general. At my weekly I usually end up 3-4 stocking newer players and then the same happening to me when I hit someone who is better than me. Part of it is I don't know the "proper" way to handle a spacie who is a better player than me in terms of mechanics. The two VODS are a week apart from each other.

hhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSFqctzKDYc

https://www.twitch.tv/vermontmelee/v/57477108?t=01h14m53s
 

hologram summer

Smash Cadet
Joined
Sep 21, 2015
Messages
41
Location
RVA
Finally getting around to posting my, uh, attempts at playing Sheik and failing pretty badly against Spacies and just general. At my weekly I usually end up 3-4 stocking newer players and then the same happening to me when I hit someone who is better than me. Part of it is I don't know the "proper" way to handle a spacie who is a better player than me in terms of mechanics. The two VODS are a week apart from each other.

hhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSFqctzKDYc

https://www.twitch.tv/vermontmelee/v/57477108?t=01h14m53s
I watched both videos through all the way. It looks like you need to practice fundamentals. It looks like you don't have a good grip over your character yet, meaning your movement is sloppy/inefficient, you don't have real punishes, and you don't recover or edge guard well. You identified the problem yourself: You can't beat a spacie player that is better than you in terms of mechanics really. At the level you are playing at, good mechanics is exactly what will win games, so leveling up your mechanics is going to go a long way.

I'll critique your Sheik specific play below but you should definitely read this guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/SSBM/comments/2jc3gb/nmws_guide_to_getting_good_at_melee/

The most important point is that tech skill is the foundation for good play. You missed L-cancels a lot, rolled a lot, did running turnaround instead of dash/wave dash back, didn't sweet spot up-b, don't JC grab, etc. These are really basic things that will improve your play immensely.

To illuminate this more, I'll give you some specific timestamps from the first game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSFqctzKDYc)

0:35 - you daired with no purpose, did not l-cancel it. your opponent was above you.
0:46 - got battlefielded, which should pretty much never happen to sheik since her up-b allows you to drift.
0:55 - no sweetspot on your up-b
1:05 - no sweetspot again on your up-b and you get knocked off

Now you're down two stocks, both because of tech flubs.

1:15 the start of a sequence where you roll about 4-5 times. If you stopped rolling after every attack it would have been really easy to grab fox!
1:30 failed waveland onto stage causes you to take a hard punish.
1:44 up-b onto stage again when your opponent didn't challenge the edge at all. luckily you didn't get punished but you were at kill percent.
1:53 up-b onto stage again when your opponent didn't challenge. no punish again.
2:04 good grab but it looks like you didn't really know what to do after you threw
2:33 you start to look like you're doing something but you don't really have a plan.
3:02 you die because you missed your chance to up-b earlier.

So first game analysis: you got 3 stocked, and you lost arguably every single one of your stocks to tech errors. your opponent didn't outplay you by a huge margin - you kind of played yourself. To be fair, it doesn't seem like you know exactly when you can do what and when you can't on stage. You definitely need more experience playing the game in general for that.

I also skimmed through your vs. Mario game and the same things apply.

My recommendation:
Please don't take this the wrong way but you really need to play CPUs with focused tech skill practice. And I really mean that. Practice things like wavedashing across the stage and grabbing a CPU. Practice dash dancing and then grabbing a CPU. Practice L-cancelling. Practice sweet spotting your up-b. Practice comboing Fox, Marth, Mario, and getting a sense of what moves lead into another.

Another possible recommendation:
Try learning one sheik "trick" every couple weeks or so. Start with this video for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GobMNLBSMR4 and try just executing it on a CPU or something and incorporate it into your play.

A list of some Sheik "tricks"
- Boost Grab
- Nair out of shield (Nair OOS)
- AC Fair
- Reverse Needle
- Shino Stall
- Platform waveland aerial
- Instant upair

Just by attempting to do these you'll get better at tech skill, and by watching / learning about them you'll transitively learn the game because people will talk about when they'll apply in a game. This may be a good kickoff point in learning how to play better.

Probably the best recommendation:
Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGLubkPnETU
Ask yourself what's going on, what KirbyKaze is even doing. Ask yourself what things he's doing that you should be doing. Watch the first stock over and over again 0:10. What did KK do? Can you do that? If not, how would you learn how to do that?

I could even break it down for you slightly.

1.
KK dash attacks his opponent at low percent and fox is knocked down.
What does he do after this? -> He waits.
What happens? -> Fox rolls
How does he respond? -> He goes to grab Fox again after rolling.
What could I learn from this? At low percent, maybe the best thing to do after dash attacking Fox at low percent is to wait and react.
Will this work? -> Try it, see it done by other good players, verify it works well.

2.
KK just down threw Fox at after pummeling once 34%
What does he do after this? -> He waits.
What happens? -> Fox does a tech roll
How does he respond? -> He tech-chases Fox
What could I learn from this? -> (Successful) Tech chasing means waiting first and then reacting to Fox's tech options. Pummeling is a good way to build up percent at ~30%.
Will this work? -> Tech chasing is done by Sheiks at every level to build up percent. It worked because KK reacted in time but it might not work if I don't.

Skipping forward to the third tech chase

3. KK just tech chased with dash attack instead of grab at 52%
What does he do after this? -> up-tilt, up-tilt, dash attack ,fair, charge needles ,in that order.
What happens? -> At first, fox gets popped up by the up-tilt. After the second up-tilt, Fox gets sent to KK's right. KK then ddash attacks to his right to catch him. Fox pops straight up and KK fairs him and secures a kill off of the side at 102%
How does he respond? -> He combos the Fox off of the dash attack tech chase
What could I learn from this? -> Tech chasing with dash attack is a good way to start a combo. Up-tilt after dash attack works. If the first up-tilt doesn't send them anywhere, a second one works. If they get sent away, I can follow up with dash attack which will pop them up and fair them.
Will this work? -> It just did, but there are situations where it might not. For example, there is DI to take into account. Maybe I could look at more videos of Sheik tech chasing Fox with dash attack to see what else could work.

This is a silly over-exaggerated way of looking at videos, especially since a lot of the knowledge already exists. There are also other questions you could ask, but keep in mind that implementing anything you want to execute requires you to have the skill to do it, so mastering that first is crucial.
 

Rollic

Smash Rookie
Joined
Mar 26, 2015
Messages
3
Location
Sydney, Australia
Hey guys, i recently had a set with my regions no.1 player (peach player RJ/RAINBOW) and i was wondering if anyone could give me a hand critiquing my play?
This is in PAL btw.
I made a few key input errors and my Lbutton sometimes is a little sticky (thats why there is so many rolls in the game) so try and overlook a few of the execution mistakes.

I had alot of trouble getting kills at high percent as my opponent knew to CC my jab, and PAL dthrow only combos into fair if my opponent DI's poorly.
The few kills i got were off uairs, fair reads and dsmashes.
The only other strong way to kill i can think of is with:
-bair: this would seem to only come in to play when edgeguarding because comboing peach into the strong hitbox seems almost impossible lol
-up smash: would be very situational and would have to be a combo finisher or a follow up to a dtilt or jab
-needles: seems like a good option to open up opportunities when edge guarding. During the set i stole the peaches float with needles but couldnt quite capitalise enough off it.
Does anyone have anymore ideas worth testing out next time i play against a peach?

After watching the replay a few times i feel as though i gained a lot of mileage from dtilt at mid-high percents so ill probably use them more.

Also, next time i play against a peach ill try to throw off stage more to see i can get more out off having her off stage rather than in a tech/chase situation.

Any critique at all is very much appreciated, both for the matchup and for any of my habits

https://www.twitch.tv/phibzy/v/74381077 (set starts at 37:00)
 

GroupofOrder303

Smash Rookie
Joined
Oct 17, 2016
Messages
3
Hey guys I played a few sets on stream at my local weekly and I'd appreciate it if you took at look at them and gave me some tips. My region's scene is pretty new and I started playing in May of this year.

In my first match I play a falcon who's given me some trouble in the past.
https://www.twitch.tv/wyosc/v/95181374.

and in the second match I play a pretty aggro peach who I've traded sets with for the past few weeks. This week I won 3-1 but each game was close and I know we both made a lot of mistakes.
https://www.twitch.tv/wyosc/v/95181374.
 

Yung_Aaron

Smash Rookie
Joined
Sep 11, 2016
Messages
2

jakerdou

Smash Rookie
Joined
Dec 22, 2014
Messages
1
Hey, I've recently got back into competitive melee. I'm a Sheik main and I've really enjoyed trying to get better at the game. Falco has been a particularly hard matchup for me. Can anyone give me some tips based on these matches?
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Q41Fd17AivAeEy-AuifxrzqnKTKVt50O?usp=share_link
I think I played pretty well in these games, but came up a bit short. If someone could maybe suggest what might be some of the most important things my gameplay is missing? Also btw I'm Silver 3.
Thanks!
 
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