How to improve my neutral?

[LovinMitts]

So a few days ago, I attended a tournament. I was expecting to do really well after having practiced for weeks straight. This was my first tournament in months (I've been busy) and since it was a smaller tournament, I expected to do pretty well. I was confident, ya know?

I did absolutely awful. Turns out my confidence totally misplaced. Here's why:

• I assumed almost everyone there would play spacies, so most of my practice consisted of techchasing. I was sent to losers in round 1 by a Marth and in round 3, I lost to a Ganon 2-1.
• I had serious nerves. Understandable, I wasn't used to the pressure after so many months off.
• Here's the biggest issue here: My neutral is godawful.

I lost neutral to GANON. How does that even happen? Sheik should never lose neutral to a ganondorf.

Turns out, I play way too defensively in the wrong matchups. I'm so used to playing spacies, where I can't win neutral, that I've learned to do the same in every matchup.

Now what I'm asking here is for tips as far as matchup knowledge, training, and anything else that can be useful for me (and other Sheiks) to improve their neutral. Characters like Marth, Falcon, Ganon, and maybe even other Sheiks would be awesome. If you have any neutral advice for spacies as well, that'd be great.


TL;DR - I'm only used to playing defensively against spacies, how do I improve my neutral?

 

[Flippy Flippersen]

You have to play defensive as sheik in a lot of situations. So I don't think that is your problem, your problem is probably that you aren't being actively defensive and are instead just trying to react to the opponents offense after it already happened.
Even if your whole goal is to make your opponent approach poorly and then just punish him for messing up you can't just stand still and hope, you have to move and throw out the right moves at the right time. autocanceled fair or spaced bair are great moves to throw out to stuff people that don't respect your character and just try to run in. (if you just occasionally throw out those fair and bairs and aren't too stationary you already shouldn't even come close to losing to ganon at least)

Another thing a lot of sheiks do is just spam ftilt cause it has a good hitbox despite that good characters can just cc punish it till about 40~50% ish (same goes for her other tilts which I felt I needed to state cause I met a sheik who spammed dtilt cause the player heard ftilt was punishable and dtilt still had a good hitbox) Also until 50%ish any time you feel it's smart to throw out a dash attack throw out a boost grab instead since it has roughly the same hitbox but not the cc problem. (this only goes for neutral it tends to not work that well in combos.

Needles are also amazing. If you have a few charged shorthop needle or just falling of a platform with them can lead into grab which is amazing. Not to mention they can do up to 18% which is an amazing amount for a character who's biggest weakness is racking up early damage. Outside of marth I recommend strongly against standing needles though. (and against marth it's generally still not preferable it's just that since he's generally grounded he can't really punish it like spacies falcon or even sheik would)

Lastly your endgoal against any character that isn't puff peach samus or ics is a grab. (of course if they mess up and offer you a free grab feel free to take it against them as well since it still does decent damage and a very small combo in ntsc be wary of puffs crouch though) Generally speaking both you and your opponent know this is your endgoal. Which generally means predictable grabs will only net you a free punish on your sheik. The safest way to get a grab is by knocking your opponent down and tech chasing them. At 25~35 ish fair will start knocking down certain characters and you can techchase off of that. at 40~50 tilts open up and they tend to either lead into grab itself or fair.

tldr move around a lot and spam safe bairs/fairs rather than tilts knock down your opponent and get a grab off of it. I'm not the #1 supersheik so if someone smarter than me corrects me on something you should prolly take their word for it. I also don't feel like discussing matchup specific things if you don't have a specific character you want me to discuss so I won't.

 

[Scroll]

deleted. I regret posting what I said. It was not on topic.
I might come back and edit this post again if I have anything to add to what Flippy already said.

 

[hologram summer]

1) if you're far away charge needles

2) if you're close, look for a grab always

3) if you want to keep them out, turn around and bair

4) look for grabs

5) grab them

6) down throw

 

[hologram summer]

literally it may help sometimes if you just like forget about tilting completely. i would say most sheiks at a certain level get tilts based on luck.

 

[gunster]

just something that somehow worked for me:

I used to be awful at neutral when I first started learning the game and played sheik. I spent a week relaxing and trying out other characters (specifically spacies + marth). After about a week, I came back to Sheik and my neutral somehow got much better. It may be because I had to learn to deal with faster movement with fox and spacing from Marth, but try playing other characters just for a bit and come back to sheik.

 

[Salmon]

just something that somehow worked for me:

I used to be awful at neutral when I first started learning the game and played sheik. I spent a week relaxing and trying out other characters (specifically spacies + marth). After about a week, I came back to Sheik and my neutral somehow got much better. It may be because I had to learn to deal with faster movement with fox and spacing from Marth, but try playing other characters just for a bit and come back to sheik.

To add onto that, playing other characters teaches you their limits and what tools they have to approach/punish/kill you etc etc. Understanding the approach options in neutral of the other character much more deeply allows you as a Sheik to react better, since you know that a Ganondorf will dash dance and look for a dair opening, wait with needles and get ready to WD back out of the dair and go for the grab. So I guess that's how your neutral got better! G gunster

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Just read this
http://sonichurricane.com/?page_id=1702

This will help you out far more than all other stuff.

 

[hologram summer]

Just read this
http://sonichurricane.com/?page_id=1702

This will help you out far more than all other stuff.

I have to say, being a fighting game player long before being a smash player, a lot of these concepts apply in theory but not in practice. I've read this guide like 90 times when I was learning to play 2DFs but Smash is honestly different. If you want to talk more about what is applicable and what isn't I would love to provide my thoughts. In general the main thing that's definitely translatable is positioning yourself in a space where the opponents moves cannot hit hit you but not too far that you can't punish them if they try.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

I have to say, being a fighting game player long before being a smash player, a lot of these concepts apply in theory but not in practice. I've read this guide like 90 times when I was learning to play 2DFs but Smash is honestly different. If you want to talk more about what is applicable and what isn't I would love to provide my thoughts. In general the main thing that's definitely translatable is positioning yourself in a space where the opponents moves cannot hit hit you but not too far that you can't punish them if they try.

I personally see it as examples of finding small things in your fighting game to create a solid game plan. While the specific tactic in this handbook best applied to street fighter, the level of footsies and patience and situation-awareness is universal to all fighting games.