A Good Training Program

[hectohertz]

I've seen videos going over things to practice with falcon, fox, falco, even puff.

but other than a pretty old video by captain jack, i haven't seen much on sheik. anyone have any recommendations on a good set of things to drill, or a link to a video.

 

[t3h Icy]

Learn to be swift with Needles.

 

[Teczer0]

The trickiest things to do with sheik are Shino stalling (just timings), needle turnarounds, low needles, and low nairs.

Just practice those. Sheik is a character that you need to play other people with to understand what makes her good.

 

[Mr Wizzrobe]

Never, ever, EVER play with CPU's to practice. Warm-up your techskill for like, 20 minutes a day, and the rest of your training should be with other people.

 

[Veetaak]

Never, ever, EVER play with CPU's to practice. Warm-up your techskill for like, 20 minutes a day, and the rest of your training should be with other people.

I for one gain alot by playing by myself and I play about 40min a day for about 15-20 min each session. As long as you don't develop bad habbits and try to do stuff that actually works on real players. I don't know how much tech skill there is to Sheik and how much you can actually gain by playing by yourself but there is plenty of stuff for me that I can improve on with my Falco by playing by myself.

 

[Mr Wizzrobe]

I for one gain alot by playing by myself and I play about 40min a day for about 15-20 min each session. As long as you don't develop bad habbits and try to do stuff that actually works on real players. I don't know how much tech skill there is to Sheik and how much you can actually gain by playing by yourself but there is plenty of stuff for me that I can improve on with my Falco by playing by myself.

Falco is a very technical character, with his metagame focusing heavily on pressure and combos. His combos are much more technical than Sheik's, and thus you gain much more by practicing them by yourself against lvl 7 CPUs.

Sheik on the other hand, is a character that focuses primarily on spacing and reading comprehension. The techskill required to play Sheik is very minimal, and her combos are stupid easy to pull off. You cannot practice spacing and reading comprehension vs. a CPU, because they're way too predictable, and you'll develop bad habits that will come back to haunt you when it comes time to face an actual opponent.

 

[hectohertz]

The trickiest things to do with sheik are Shino stalling (just timings), needle turnarounds, low needles, and low nairs.

Just practice those. Sheik is a character that you need to play other people with to understand what makes her good.

will do. can you explain what low needles are though? and by low nairs, do you mean nairs as soon as possible, or nairs at the last moment?

 

[Teczer0]

Low nairs/needles are just really moves done at the last moment.

So you get the full benefit of the shield stun. They're somewhat situational and most for mixups but they help if you know it.

 

[Van.]

but of course getting a nair OoS to come out low enough to hit a standing fox is also important.

 

[Teczer0]

Its more useful vs Falco anyway =3

Fox seems to in and out to be using nair OOS often.

 

[hectohertz]

@teczero: any good methods for practicing autocancel aerials? i'm having trouble distinguishing them for shffls

 

[Teczer0]

Best way to tell if you're doing an autocancel aerial right is looking at sheik as she lands.

If you AC an aerial she will have the same landing animation as if you just jumped and landed. If you're confused about the difference go to training mode pick peach and do a FC aerial as apposed to a shffl'd aerial. You'll see that she lands in a different way, the idea is the same.

All AC aerials for sheik are quite specific when it comes to timing. For Nair its fairly easy, all you have to do is just do a SH nair and not FF it. If you did it fast enough it should just AC on its own.

Fair I don't usually do so I might be wrong, but I think its ACed if you do a SHFF fair and you start the fair at the apex of the jump. Could be wrong though.

 

[Jolteon]

Dairing under small platforms (PS).

 

[KirbyKaze]

You're all stupid and practice stupid things

You should learn useful stuff

Like how to dash after SH Fairing

Or how to SH Fair at all for that matter

 

[Teczer0]

You're all stupid and practice stupid things

You should learn useful stuff

Like how to dash after SH Fairing

Or how to SH Fair at all for that matter

How do I SH fair like you

 

[hectohertz]

@kk, do you autocancel your sh fairs

 

[hectohertz]

@tec0: i can see a clear difference the ac and l-cancel with peach, but i'm having a really hard time determining things with sheik. should i be watching a specific part of her body. any tricks?

 

[Riddlebox]

How do I SH fair like you

hit standing kirby with it when you FF autocancel it

then you too can be as good as me

which isn't very good

oh yeah this is dave i'm just drunk and on riddlebox's account

also, what's more important is knowing WHY you're sh fairing a certain way not so much being able to maximize your hitbox magic protection shenanigans

but maximizing your hitbox magic protection shenanigans is useful too

 

[Mr Wizzrobe]

@tec0: i can see a clear difference the ac and l-cancel with peach, but i'm having a really hard time determining things with sheik. should i be watching a specific part of her body. any tricks?

This is going to sound stupid, but look at the dust on the ground.

There's more with an L-Cancel, and there's none with an Auto-Cancel.

 

[Teczer0]

This is going to sound stupid, but look at the dust on the ground.

There's more with an L-Cancel, and there's none with an Auto-Cancel.

LOL

This is a pretty good way of telling it though although it sounds silly. You can also try to dash immediately out of it, if you AC it, it should feel like you can run immediately after the aerial. Don't L-cancel if you're gonna do this so you can tell the difference.

 

[darkatma]

Sheik's fair autocancels very easily. Basically anytime before the apex of her short hop is easy, and even at the apex is fine if you just fastfall a split second later.

I find retreating or spaced fairs to be incredibly important. For example, you can practice sh fairing so that falcon or ganon can't shield grab (by being just far enough away) so that you can just dtilt or ftilt them after. Retreating fairs i do on approach so that sheik moves her body away and then slaps after their attack. This works surprisingly well on fox's upsmash: you can dodge the entire hitbox and then slap him.

Against characters like marth you can practice fairing past them, which is slightly trickier and requires you to be close. This is useful because marth's grab range *****, but can't grab you from behind as well.

Also my biggest problem with both my mains is dashing as soon as the lag ends from my attacks.



I feel like understanding sheik's attacks is important..
-For example, Sheik's bair I see as the most often misused attack. a sh rising bair can only hit someone on the ground with the weak part, but it will go through fox's shffl nair approach. A falling bair is dangerous against a lot of characters that have high priority attacks that can hit between sheik's legs, such as peach's dash attack or fox's upsmash. So against these characters, it is imperative to throw out the bair later so that they can't catch your leg as you fall. If they're in the air, rising bair works pretty well. Also, the weak part of bair is dangerously easy to cc.
-Weak bair can also be used in combos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE1O-m7Jt2c&t=1m43s
^ Rising reverse weak bair to falling fair
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UngjR_bTTQ&t=3m1s
^ Weak bair to dash attack. You can see this is hard to tech because they've already hit tech anticipating landing before the bair... kinda situational.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwi17ImItR4&t=5m8s
^ stupid combo that works on falcons...

 

[KirbyKaze]

FJ rising Bair is better than SH rising Bair for beating Fox SHFFLs in a lot of situations. Mostly because you can action out of it on your way down and do more (like DJ waveland, falling aerial, etc.), whereas SH rising Bair strategies have this bigass chunk of time where you can only be in one place, with no hitbox, and no real aerial drift to move you anywhere because Sheik jumps through laundry detergent instead of air.

SH rising Bair is great vs reckless Peach Fairs though.

 

[hectohertz]

This is going to sound stupid, but look at the dust on the ground.

There's more with an L-Cancel, and there's none with an Auto-Cancel.

as "stupid" as this might be, this actually worked for me. The autocancel dirt is very angular, while the l-cancel dirt is round and puffy


thanks guys

 

[joejoe22802]

Is the autocancel fair spam faster than the SH FF LC spam? If so, by how many frames? and does that even make a difference

 

[stelzig]

Wow, I was just starting to think more about autocancel Fairs myself (like a few minutes before reading your post...). Looked up some frame data and it looks like a perfect autocancelled Fair gives exactly the same amount of frames where you're open as if you l-cancel while the hitbox is still out - need 4 frames in the air (after the hitbox is gone) before landing for autocancel and l-cancel gives 8 frames lag instead of 4 =L
That should also mean that it's actually slightly slower than l-cancelled Fair spam. But it may be easier for the opponent to see the opening and time his punish, idk.

I can see how it should be alot better when you actually hit though.

 

[joejoe22802]

1) Why would AC be better than LC if you actually hit?

Also I'm really confused about reading frame data. I'm not quite clear on how you came to your conclusions.

Basically I'm working with
Forward Air

Total: 33
Hit: 5-7
Auto cancel: <4 11>
Landlag: 16
L canceled: 8

and

Jump

Airborne on frame 4

Air time: 50
Earliest FF: 26
FF air time: 37

SH air time: 38
Earliest FF: 20
SH FF air time: 27

2nd jump earliest FF: 27

So I'm not really sure how to read the numbers after AC. You explained the 4 but I don't really know about the 11.

I'm just adding the jump time and air time to get what I thought was 31 frames for AC.
Correct me cause im probably wrong.

As for L- Cancel, wouldn't you have to aerial earlier if you wanted to have the same amount of time between jumps?

 

[stelzig]

1) It's better when hitting (people and shields) because the lag you receive when you land is always 4 during an autocancel. If you hit a target at the same point without autocancelling, the stun on your target will still be the same, but you will now have 8 frames of landing lag.

2) Well, I might not understand framedata correctly either... As I understand it you have 4 frames of lag when landing no matter what. This is the lag you also have during an autocancel. Fair has a hitbox from frame 5-7 and autocancels on frame 11, thus your hitbox will be gone for at least 4 frames (or might be 3 if it's actually cancelled on frame 11...). 4+4=8 frames.
The Fair has 16 frames of landing lag and this is halved by the l-cancel. 16/2 = 8 frames.


The reason I said slower was because I figured you'd fastfall later, but obviously you can just start the Fair earlier.

The frame data for being airborn and such shouldn't really matter considering it should be the same for both, you only need the data for your attack.

Edit: I suppose an L-cancel Fair that hits just before you land would be the same as an autocancelled Fair. Though autocancelling a Fairs hitbox that low on target to begin with is quite improbable. (Wait... Actually impossible since you needed the 3/4 frames without hitbox to autocancel at all)

Edit2: I see I should probably read your post a little more thoroughly before replying. The <4 11> means that you can autocancel before frame 4 of the animation and after frame 11.

 

[KirbyKaze]

My understanding is that 4 / 11 means on frame 4, or before it, and frame 11, or after it. Just because of how SDM writes his frame data. But I could be mistaken.

 

[KirbyKaze]

If I'm reading this correctly, in a perfect world you could hit with frame 6 or 7 of the fair (reasonable), and land on frame 11 of the fair animation. This would get you the autocancel, and the net amount of lag would be 4-5 frames for the fair, plus another 4 for landing. So 9 or 8 frames of landing lag.

Compared to lowest point fair, this is the same, or one frame laggier than doing the lowest fair. But the lowest fair also hits much later in the jump itself, so it's more susceptible to actions out of shield. Doing your actions at a middle point is important.

In terms of shield stun, you're at -1 or -2 at full power (assuming my memory is working correctly).

I think knowing how to space, time, and pressure with AC fairs should be something second nature to us at this point because it's extremely useful and leads to a lot of pressure mixups. It's a big part of her pressure. It's sort of like doing a middle aerial with Fox but without the extra lag at the end (which would be why you'd do the late aerial). The low aerial still has some advantages (length and shield-poking, namely).

 

[Strong Badam]

fair auto-cancels frame 11?!
what the **** this character is broken