No replay :r. Shortly after that I won (lol b-throw stage spike on safety capsule) and was like "I'M THE BEST" and did a victory lap irl and then forgot about the replay.
Oh and about that Sheik match-up. I don't feel like writing a full summary right now. Short version instead. You can't play this match-up normally. You HAVE to abuse all her weaknesses or you will get ruined. She has 3 weaknesses.
1. Obvious enough, she's bad at killing and she's also really light. You'll take about 90% really quickly, and it's hard to do anything about it. Just try and tack on any damage you can during the first 90%. Hit them with an aerial up-b, down-b, try to trade anything, fastfall u-air out of combos, etc. Make sure you don't get hit by a u-smash no matter what though, it'll always tipper vs DK and that kills at around 150%, which is earlier than we should die. Or at earlier %, you can get about 30% off of the two hits in her u-smash and that suuuucks. Watch for oppurtunities to hit with a d-smash around 100%. She's pretty weak getting off the edge, though she can do some fancy tricks like drop > double jump > wall jump > b-air or b-reverse needle charge cancel. You won't get many giant punches here. Headbutt is a very good way to get your kills, Sheiks want to punish your landing lag, and you can dodge their grab/d-smash and punish with headbutt's float. It sounds ridiculous but it's so hard to get the hit on Sheik, and headbutt is relatively low risk, you just have to try it sometimes. Pay attention to roll/spot-dodge habits!
2. Recovery. If you're holding onto the ledge, she has to up-b onto the stage; her side-b and up-b's second part will not grab the ledge if you edgehog. Some Sheiks (read: Judo) are really good at canceling the lag, but it's still possible to mess them up/catch their lag off it. A get-up jumped side-b/edgehopped giant punch/get-up + f-tilt are free damage/kills off their lag, watch for them. When you try to recover, a good Sheik will either throw needles or run off and slap you in the nose (f-air beats our up-b). Recover high onto platforms if you need to, just mix it up a lot.
3. This is the secret one! Sheik is really fast. At running and jumping vertically. However, her airspeed is horrendous. This means that she can't move diagonally, only in straight lines. USE THIS. Sheik is going to try and stay grounded unless you're in a juggle position, in which case she'll shoot up and down really quick. In a neutral position, you know she's going to stay grounded. Don't even bother using f-tilt, it's punishable (Sheik is so good at punishing) even when you think you spaced it. Use d-tilt and down-b instead. She's not going to be jumping over them the majority of the time, especially if you're below 90%. She wants that f-tilt bad. If you can get a quick d-tilt d-tilt down-b off, that's a third of their stock, percent-wise. They're devastating, and pretty low risk. Occasionally you might take a b-air to the face or something because of a bad d-tilt/down-b, but it's a lot easier to land than f-tilt or grabs.
Stupid stuff to watch out for. Chain. Don't be stupid around Sheik's chain! A SH chain can take you up to 100+ in a matter of seconds, and you can't shield out of it if done perfectly. If you get hit on the backside, you'll have to move all the way to the front to get out. It's also a pretty mean edgeguard if they get it out in time. If they're not spaced well, get-up attack it. Otherwise you'll need to do something fancy like edgehop up-b over it. Don't try and challenge it from the front, it hits too often. If a Sheik chain-jackets (putting a hitbox of another move onto the chain's tipper hitbox), clank it. Don't bother trying to get through it. Otherwise for chain, just down-b it or punch it from behind. Chain is really hard for a Sheik to use perfectly, though so you may be able to grab/d-tilt/even d-smash out of it. Vanish. This move is almost entirely invincible on start-up, don't think you can hit a Sheik before she teleports away. F-tilt, if the sheik messes up, you can up-b out of this. You should be trying to up-b while you DI anyways, it does good damage even if it's only the first hit.
When you get thrown! This one is super important. At lower percents it doesn't matter so much, this is more for higher percents. I recommend mostly DI-ing away from all of Sheiks throws. All of her throws hit straight up with weak knockback. If you go straight up at a higher percent, this WILL combo into a b-air and f-air and you'll be like "wtf" and die. If you DI away, she has no real follow-up but you might have to recover from an odd position if you go offstage. If you do go up, for whatever reason (mix-up or bad DI), fastfall b-air. Airdodging will just get you n-air'd after you dodge the f-air/b-air.
Sheik's good on a lot of stages. Yoshi's if not banned. Lylat is good otherwise, you can make it really hard for her to lagless her up-b this way, and we work better on tilts than she does (her needles doesn't follow the ground like our down-b does). If you're good at it, Rainbow is another great choice. Her airspeed is crippling here (just don't stand directly above her) and she can't juggle nearly as well on the moving stage, it takes a while for her to get us to 90% lol. Also can mess up her recovery on the second phase. Ban FD/Halberd, whatever your preference is.
So like I was going to write a short version and this kinda is, but lol didn't expect this much. Um other stuff I kinda forgot. If she f-tilts/jabs your shield, roll. Dash attack is all she'll get you with for rolling and it's much better to get dash attacked than f-tilt'd/jab'd/grab'd. Even though Sheik combos the crap out of DK for the first 90% and is hard to hit, this match-up is still our favor, at least even. 55:45 in my perspective. Maybe more for us though, Judo happens to be really good at the DK match-up so maybe it's skewed. Idk 55:45 sounds good.
I'll copy paste this whenever a Sheik match-up thread/question etc. rolls around. But here it is!
