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Trouble Playing Against Shiek... As Anybody

Gutei

Smash Cadet
Joined
Mar 22, 2015
Messages
62
Location
Western PA, USA
Hi all. New guy here, old time Smasher.

So I have this cousin who only plays Shiek. And he's not too good, but I cannot beat him for the life of me, even with all of my practicing and success in other areas. I can only imaging that I would fail against most other Shiek players as well. Even playing Brawl/Sm4sh, I suck against Shiek and I can't even begin fathoming how to play against him/her (lore specific or not).

What would you recommend doing? Just reading up on the guides? Or sucking it up and learning how to play the character myself?

Thanks all. It's greatly appreciated.
 

Stride

Smash Ace
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Messages
680
Location
North-west England (near Manchester/Liverpool)
What in particular are you struggling with? Are you having trouble edgeguarding him? Is he heavily zoning/shutting down your approach options with needles/spaced aerials/whatever? Are you unable to deal with Shino stalling? Do you not know how to DI a particular move?

Reading guides, watching videos, and playing the character yourself will all help, but if you want more specific advice you need to either post a video of yourself playing against a Sheik or be specific as to which areas need improving (preferably both). Otherwise the answers you'll get will be very general since whoever is giving them will have to just guess at what you might be doing wrong.

I'm assuming you have all your tech down? I mean, you can always improve your overall consistency/control/precision so you should regularly be practicing it, but you shouldn't be unable to consistently boost grab or shield drop, for example.

When you say your cousin is "not too good", what do you mean?
 
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Gutei

Smash Cadet
Joined
Mar 22, 2015
Messages
62
Location
Western PA, USA
"Not too good" as in basically casual. Doesn't understand the advanced mechanics, AT's, etc. Granted - I'm basically a scrub, but I can hold my own and wipe pretty much every casual I've come across... It's just Melee Shiek is infuriating. Perhaps I'm just rusty after not playing for a while, but the speed is just hard to keep up with for me.

Granted, I've yet to play a serious spacie player, so I may be underestimating speed for artificial skill.
 

Stride

Smash Ace
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Messages
680
Location
North-west England (near Manchester/Liverpool)
"Not too good" as in basically casual. Doesn't understand the advanced mechanics, AT's, etc. Granted - I'm basically a scrub, but I can hold my own and wipe pretty much every casual I've come across... It's just Melee Shiek is infuriating. Perhaps I'm just rusty after not playing for a while, but the speed is just hard to keep up with for me.

Granted, I've yet to play a serious spacie player, so I may be underestimating speed for artificial skill.
So, what are you falling for? How is he beating you? You really need to post a video or give specifics.

If he's "basically casual" I'd assume it's things like dash attack/forward tilt spam and lots of shieldgrabs, with minimal movement and edgeguarding. Is that accurate?

To me it really doesn't sound like you just don't know the Sheik matchup. Sheik just happens to be good at exploiting some of the common bad habits that low-level players have (Peach does similarly).
 
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Gutei

Smash Cadet
Joined
Mar 22, 2015
Messages
62
Location
Western PA, USA
Lots of dash attacks, and actually no tilts (I don't think he even remembers me teaching him about those). He grabs sometimes. Honestly, lots of dash attacks, dsmashes, and fairs. Lots and lots of fairs.

Yeah, I tend to play Link and Puff against the lower level players so I don't get crap habits on Marth/Falco, but even when I play Marth against him I get caught up most times. We probably go 50/50, but it goes significantly more in my favor when I play Falco.

I don't think I shield enough, honestly.
 

Scroll

Smash Ace
Premium
Joined
Jun 15, 2014
Messages
559
Depending on what char you play you can CC Sheik's DA to fairly high percents. By simply holding down you can punish Sheik with anything you want. By the time you're above CC percent you will have to shield or DD outside of Sheik's emediate range.
And remember Sheik's Fair sends you sideways and down (semi spike), so if you want to stand any chance surviving it above medium percents you will need to DI it upwards
 

Stride

Smash Ace
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Messages
680
Location
North-west England (near Manchester/Liverpool)
Lots of dash attacks, and actually no tilts (I don't think he even remembers me teaching him about those). He grabs sometimes. Honestly, lots of dash attacks, dsmashes, and fairs. Lots and lots of fairs.

Yeah, I tend to play Link and Puff against the lower level players so I don't get crap habits on Marth/Falco, but even when I play Marth against him I get caught up most times. We probably go 50/50, but it goes significantly more in my favor when I play Falco.

I don't think I shield enough, honestly.
Being able to play against bad players is an important skill; play your main against them. You will develop bad habits if you just play mindlessly and make tons of fundamental errors because you know you can win anyway just from better punishes or whatever, but that's irrelevant because that's not what you're supposed to do. What you should be doing is actively watching for their (obvious) poor decisions and then adjusting to them. Playing pocket characters won't stop you developing bad habits; it will just give you less appropriate practice, and worse, give you excuses to play badly and therefore build bad habits.

If you're a "good" player but you still lose to things like this then there are obviously gaping holes in your game that just happen to go unexploited sometimes (and therefore you're not as good as you think). Playing bad players who can beat you teaches you how to beat that kind of player (which is important), but also how to be aware of your own bad habits and how to fix them.

Look for patterns and exploit them: maybe he always shield grabs if you poke his shield, maybe he always recovers the same way, maybe he always down smashes if you approach him by the ledge, etc. Once you notice the action and the situation it occurs in, you can deliberately create that situation and then respond correctly to counter him (because you know exactly what he's going to do). This requires awareness during the game; if you're having trouble with maintaining it then force yourself to take a breather between stocks/games and make sure you're still thinking.

You said you don't shield enough. You know you don't shield enough, so next time you play, go into the game with the intention of shielding more and make sure to keep it in your mind. Develop an understanding of which situations you should and shouldn't be shielding in. Build good habits; pick a thing or two at a time to focus on and actively incorporate.

This thing I wrote is relevant (start from the third paragraph for the immediately pertinent part, but the rest of the post/thread is relevant too): http://smashboards.com/threads/fast-play-bait-play.392518/#post-18646250

I'm assuming he's not L-cancelling, short hopping, or properly spacing his fairs; so shieldgrab them. If he's spamming fair then he's going to be in the air a lot; intercept him by doing something like hitting him out of the air or dash dancing away and then grabbing his landing. Recognise that by being in the air he changes which options are available to him (limiting some and opening up others) and adjust your strategies accordingly; if he's in the air he loses the ability to grab and shield, and his ability to cover certain areas of stage (no dash-dance, no potential hitboxes below him besides down air, etc.). Think about what this means and what you should do about it. There are many people/resources that explain the specifics of this concept better than I can.

If he doesn't use tilts and rarely grabs then he can't really start any combos on you; you shouldn't be getting beaten from just single hits, so ask yourself what it is that's making it so effective.

Things that are OP against casual players
• Shieldgrabbing; without proper spacing and L-cancelling (in the case of aerials) many attacks are free to shieldgrab.
• Crouch-cancelling; they have no awareness of the percentages it works at and will use crouch-cancellable moves indistriminately. In general you should pretty much always do it for as long as it prevents you leaving the ground when you get hit.
• Dash-dancing; they get scared/baited into committing really easily. Dash in and out and wait for them to roll or swing at you or use a panic defensive option, then punish reactively.
• Spaced moves on shield; without wavedash out of shield or consistent immediate aerials out of shield, it's impossible to punish most moves from outside of shieldgrab range.

If he's not DIing (I assume he wouldn't be, or at least not consciously/consistently) then things like forward throw chain grab to forward smash with Marth will work consistently. You have to be aware of when your opponent lacks the requisite skill/knowledge that lets them deal with gimmicks like this (or when they are able to counter you but you can still catch them by surprise); you should use them as appropriate, but also remember why they're working and don't make them a crutch/habit.
 
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Scroll

Smash Ace
Premium
Joined
Jun 15, 2014
Messages
559
Oh and I have to say that as a Sheik main what I fear the most is being pushed off the stage and getting edge hogged. UpB's landing lag is so huge that I am opting for airdodging onto stage every time its possible.
 

Eric8344

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jan 21, 2015
Messages
3
I'm having a lot of trouble Di'ing sheik's f-tilt as both falcon and sheik. Should I be di'ing down and away or some other direction? Also in the sheik ditto at low percents if I get down thrown it seems like the opponent has free u-tilt to f-tilt. Once again, not sure which way to DI both u-tilt and f-tilt.
 
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