How do you play neutral against a grab-happy Sheik?

[L33thal]

One matchup that I really struggle with is against certain playstyles of Sheik. A lot of Sheiks that I play do a lot of: run up shield to make you mis-space d-tilts and aerials so they can shieldgrab you, wavedash back to grab mis-spaced moves, and/or they'll needle to make you approach.

How do you play neutral against these playstyles? I feel like if I try to d-tilt, Sheik will move slightly forward and shield to make me d-tilt too close. I noticed that in PPMD vs. Plup at the Summit, PP did a lot of rising fair at a spacing slightly closer than a perfect tipper and I've been wondering about that for some time. If Sheik shields the first fair, how would the followups work? Does Marth just wait to do a late second fair and crossup dash or just fast fall and crossup pivot grab?

Any thoughts?

 

[FE_Hector]

I haven't played the MU in a while, but Sheik's effective range is decreased a ton when she shields. (For more on effective range, look at season 1 of Tafo's Zero to Hero series). Spaced fairs and super well spaced dtilts should be relatively safe. A quick note for the spaced fairs, though, you won't want to run up and fair them just because your aerial drift will make you really easy to hit.

I mean... Marth's shield pressure isn't too good, so it's definitely a difficult situation to deal with. One thing that I would recommend a TON is paying attention to how they set themselves up for running up and shielding. Once you identify how they're setting you up for it, just run up and JC grab when they're going to put up their shield. A well-spaced JC grab should easily beat out her grab.

If you're having trouble setting this up, try to bait them a bit. DD right near them and see how they react. If you've already gotten a few grabs, start DDing near them again and see how they react. For example, they might try to WD forwards and grab you early, in which case you can just WD back too and punish them for whiffing. If they WD back OoS, you could simply opt to run a little bit farther forwards before JC grabbing and just call them out for their choice.

Obviously the neutral is way more than this 1-dimensional approach, but for what you've described, quick adjustments to get in easy grabs should work pretty well.

Random other thought: If you get them to think that you're going to start grabbing a lot, THAT is when you start mixing it up. Maybe you SH fair uair to get them, maybe you dtilt into a relatively easy grab. If you're playing super mindgames, you might even straight up not punish them to keep them guessing. The number of options you have is crazy. Heck, you could even get a callout monster tipper.