Yo, here's a vid of me fighting a Sheik from a tourney last Sunday. I'd appreciate comments and criticisms. Warning, the commentary is pretty **** by Pooch.
http://www.twitch.tv/jackkenney/c/4890785
I only watched set one but picked up on a lot of bad habits that you have, so I'll do my best to help you. You're a very solid player with a few major flaws away from becoming a very strong one.
Your biggest flaw is a lack of a dash dance game. You did a lot of approaching in this matchup, which honestly is the last thing you want to do. Sheik's f-tilt is the perfect anti-air for falcon's nair and knee, making it really hard to approach. Plus it leads into grab, which will probably lead to you dying. You ran into so many attacks because your approach game is too predictable. You shffl an aerial pretty much every time. Mix it up with more grabs, run up shields, and dash dances to change your timing on approaches. This'll help you be less predictable, while still keeping your generally aggressive game plan.
Your punish game also had some big holes in it. A lot of the time, you would hit with a nair, and follow up with a randomly placed stomp. Everytime you hit with a nair, it should be like getting a grab (aka death for sheik). Always follow up a nair on a grounded sheik with a grab, or an up air into a running grab if you hit the sheik in midair (or more up airs depending on di). There were also times that stomps or raptor boosts led into nothing. Try and kill sheik off of any opening. Dash dancing should help your punish game, as it'll do two things for you: First, it'll lead into your opponent missing more often, and you getting more grabs. Second, it'll help your nairs. Many of your nairs only hit with the first hit because you're not really spacing the nairs. You're too desperate to land the hit, so you don't think of the follow up. Dash dance so that you can make micro adjustments to the spacing. Always space so that the tip of your toes hit, so you avoid crouch cancel down smash / down tilt / grab, and so you get your best punishes.
One really bad habit you had in recovering was always double jumping asap. At low percents, you can sometimes get away with double jump kneeing on stage, but it shouldn't be your go to option. Di down and away on most throws, and then sweetspot the ledge with a dj. If you get bad di, then avoid a hit, and fast fall untill you can dj sweet spot, so that you don't have to use Falcon's awful up b.
Other notes:
Learn to do the sdi on a no tech trick. Basically, sheik has a guaranteed regrab on falcon's tech during down throw. Throw sheik a curveball by not teching. They'll usually jab this to regrab you, but if you sdi up, you can dj out of the tech chase, and get away. You always teched, and as a result, the sheik player kept regrabbing you.
More jabs on shield. You got shieldgrabbed a couple of times because of bad spacing, but also because you didn't gentelman the shield. It can be unsafe at times, but it's better than nothing most of the time.
Wavedash OOS more, and aerial out of your shield less.
I also didn't like the FD stage selection. That works very well against sheiks when you can 0-death them, but as I said earlier, there were flaws in the punish game. Plus, sheik can do the same to falcon, making it a risky Counterpick for even the best falcons.
Don't jump so much. You have less defensive options out of a jump than you do on the ground. You can't shield or change direction very well, and you'll usually get dash dance grabbed. If you do jump, make sure you won't get hit, or that your approach will hit.
When you dash danced the most, it was in the game on FD. It led to a few opportunities that made the difference in the game, more so than the stage selection.
To do list: Watch plenty of hax vs m2k, copy his style (or add some of his style if you don't want to play that defensively)
You have great movement, reads, and tech skill. You can moonwalk all the way across fd, but had a few tech skill errors (mostly l cancel errors on shield), but that happens to everyone. Just add more patience, and defensive play. I didn't see many edge-guarding opportunities, but that falcon punch was pretty ****ing awesome. I hope this helped in some way and you don't see this as a scathing criticism. I just wanted to point out what I saw the sheik player exploiting. Good job on Grand Finals, keep up the hard work, and keep repping Falcon!
