@tristan
I'm doubting ftilt is safe of sheild. try dash grabing or dtilting OOS with D3. he can't sheild grab but he may be able to punish a different way. (similar to how we can punish snakes ftilts and MK's dsmash with our dash attack but often times not with a sheild grab.) Keep this in mind for other moves as well. He can definitely punish Usmash with another OOS option.
I've been saying this for about a year but yeah. pretty much everything sheik has is very safe on sheild especially retreating aerials. thats my main argument against IC. "you can space bair, fair, ftilt, and even nair on D3's sheild why can't we do that comfortably on ICs?"
If you don't mind try looking at needles advantage at varying distances.. I can see sheik maybe getting a small advantage out of needles from a medium distances compared to very close on the exact frame their hit boxes appear. These could lead to guaranteed dash attacks or at least dash grabs at some distances.
All that said, TristWin, numbers are hip and all, but don't make them your whole game. you have to change and adapt as the game does. It's good to know your options but you don't want to fool yourself into believing something is always safe. This game just doesn't work like that.
@Ankoku/Rathy (Rathy's "melee piviot more so")
yeah... it's kinda hip. not so much with sheik. during the turning animation for the dash dance I think you enter a standing/idle state. so you can probably do any move right there. smash attacks are the easiest to input since you can buffer those in with the C-stick. You can also do over B moves for the same reason.
You can't really buffer tilts or jab in there because you are holding a direction, often smashing to run the other way even, that isn't true with "true pivioting" where you do a full fox trot and cancel that into idle.
Going back a bit. sheik isn't going to get huge advantages from this. her smash attacks have very low horizontal range especially when you consider how far she moves from her starting position. so in that regard it isn't very practical. Fsmash is an exception, but I always feel like it's significant start up time coupled with it's easy-to-punish-on-shield-osity again makes it a risk not really worth taking.
On the other hand I do this constantly with zelda's fsmash and dins, mario's fsmash, falcon's raptor boost, gdorf's fsmash/flame choke, even peach's peach bomber/fsmash. Their attacks are relatively safe on shield have great range and it a fast way to literally beat things that would have other wise been well spaced. It's even more true when you compare their walk speeds to their walking speeds.
with characters like sheik you just have better options. pivot needles, pivot grab, just running period, or walk to turn around jab, tilt, or dash attack.
