is the most nerfed character by far in smash 4 (that truly affected the character). if we just look at what was nerfed since launch.
1.0.4
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Forward aerial damage reduced (sweetspot: 6.8% → 5.5%, sourspot: 6% → 4.8%).
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Up aerial hits one less time, resulting in 1% less total damage (8% → 7%).
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Up aerial's last hit has reduced knockback scaling: 155 → 138
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Bouncing Fish has reduced knockback: 30 base/100 scaling → 26/90
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Needle Storm has slightly more ending lag.
1.0.6
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Back aerial's damage and knockback significantly decreased: 11/10% → 8/7%
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Down tilt damage: 7.5% → 5%
1.1.0
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Forward aerial deals less damage (5.5%/4.8% → 5.0%/4.3%), but with knockback compensated on the sweetspot (125 → 132).
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Forward aerial sourspot hitbox now takes priority over the sweetspot, effectively making the sweetspot smaller
1.1.4
Vanish's disappearing hitbox has slightly less knockback scaling (104 → 102) and is smaller (14u → 13u).
1.1.5
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Weight decreased: 85 → 81.
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Forward throw has more knockback growth: 65 → 79.
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Sheik's forward throw now sends opponents tumbling at 0%, reducing its combo ability.
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Forward throw's angle has been altered: 70° → 72°.
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Down throw's angle has been altered: 80° → 77°.
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Down throw has more knockback growth: 75 → 90.
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Forward aerial has less range: def hitboxZ pos 3.5 → 2.5, hitboxZ pos 3.5 → 2.5.
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Needle Storm has reduced range.
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Down smash's knockback growth increased: 155 → 165.
A lot of these nerfs were unnecessary for her and when you just compound it to 1.1.5 kinda killed what made Sheik a viable tourney pick in Smash 4 at top level play. The only patches that I truly agree with was 1.0.4 and parts of 1.1.5. Sheik should have gotten every Nerf in 1.0.4, as she was would be extremely overturned (lol at people saying sheik design was lack suppose to be trouble killing when clearly the character had much much more KO power at the start with uair, bair, bouncing fish, and damage per hit) heading over to the WII U version. What was overturned on sheik was not her kill-setups or grab 50/50's as you have characters that can clearly kill ( even etc...) but it was the fact that her neutral was extremely potent on the entire cast, especially for non top-tier characters. Before this patch a lot of characters were having -2's or -3's against her and certainly much more when taken account at top level. Nerfing sheik fair (although they nerfed the damage twice already lol) and needles were exactly what she needed and the dev team got it right this patch and I would have been completely fine with it as these were the main things people complained about and vanish. What was overbearing was the fact she had the an oppressive neutral; shutting down many characters in neutral alone while also having above-average killing options then most of the cast only being over topped by other top tiers. The dev team then decided to nuke her with another nerf to uair again (wtf), decrease her weight (okay O_O) and then mess up her throw game ( -__-), while slightly buffing her worst smash attack in killing power . We are now left with a worse neutral (that's fine, she was over-tuned in neutral so that Nerf was justified), less surviability (again I'm fine with this), but completely removing her grab kill-set ups were completely unjustified since she they made her have no reliable ways of netting the stock while also being easier to kill as well. I'm sorry but this is a total recipe for disaster and I wouldn't at all surprised if died out at top level play, wouldn't be surprised either if Zero, Void, Mr.R drops games and or lose playing her either, or you know Void having to put in significantly more effort and work to get the kill as opposed to a etc...and still lose anyway. Getting killed at around 80 (due to rage) while not being able to kill back is not fun at all and just puts unnecessary stress on the player while we have characters like and other powerhouses running around is just plain out bad no matter how you put it. Gutting characters like and initially
- (this character is just
now legit looking good in my eyes now, Guess the dev team realized that just placing nerfs on a character for the sake of nering is a bad idea... oh wait then we have Sheik situation so IDK) without
properly compensating them is not good IMO as it gives little incentive to lab further when there are clearly better characters with better options if your view point is like me, playing characters that I like not just because of the character but also because they're good. Also if you notice nearly all top players play only good characters, ZeRo only plays the best characters while Nairo initially played the Pits, Zelda, Robin before playing Zero Suit. Anti only plays top tiers, Dabuz dropped Olimar entirely as secondary stating that "Olimar is useless in this Meta". Abadango switched from Wario, and Pac-man to playing Meta knight and having a secondary Rosa. Even other top players only dabble with other top tiers (9B switching from Ryu -> Bayo) and Komorikiri switching from (Sonic -> Cloud), so having more good characters is a good thing.
Just to be clear I am not calling this patch a bad patch, I absolutely love this patch and I'm main Sheik
. I love the idea of characters like
becoming more better through patching,
however I do not agree with just blatant nerfing of characters without compensation if you are going to nerf them knowing they'll become much worse in doing so. Also it's hard trying to explain that previous sentence since there is a ton of depth in nerfing characters. Nerfing characters in the right areas shouldn't require compensation, but nerfing characters in the wrong areas or even taking away the option that made them competitive should be avoided unless compensation is given,
or in the case of a degenerative core design (a.k.a MK) compensation should be given.. In sheik case, all she needed was nerfs to fair, needles, vanish (maybe) and no compensation would be needed but they also made her easier to kill while struggling to kill (in a game with rage) at the same time. This is a kill-confirm meta, characters live and die based on how easy it is for them to net stocks. I am not trying to blame the dev's either, but people seems to have this idea that nerfing tourney viable characters regardless of the extent the nerf had on them is a good thing just because your character was buffed, it's not even certain if the buffed characters are able to compete with the other top tiers which most of them i'm sure cannot in fact the only 2 characters that I can see being consistent in tourney is Mew-two and Greninja and even then it took a multiple patches to get them to where they're at while it only takes 1 patch to make a character inconsistent or
objectively bad and hence underwhelming. Then there's the argument of nerfing all top tiers and buffing lower tiers which I am not even going to bother with.
Tl;dr -> Nerf over-tuned characters appropriately while giving compensation
if needed while avoiding nerfing the good characters just for he sake of nerfing them and finally buff the characters that need tuning. It's much easier to gutt a character then to make a character a consistent tourney threat.
