I just fought the strongest player in my region and lost! I would appreciate any advice.

[Shadow Light Master]

SLM (Sheik) VS Falco (Cloud)

I know the video is a bit small, so feel free to ignore this if you want.

I went to my second tournament at a Pokemon Festival today and I was blessed to fight who many consider to be the strongest player in my region. I got bodied, but I was lucky enough to have a friend to record the match. I would appreciate any advice!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRFnvXUcU20&feature=youtu.be

EDIT: Here's a video where I play a Fox that's way better than me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mSTtL68awI&t=43s

 

[Plunder]

Overall you just need to be more proactive instead of reactive, and be less predictable (that comes with time and experience).

Specifically:

Way too many unsafe D-smashes and dash attacks

You need to space your moves a bit better (wavedashes help, in time it will be natural) and go in for AC Fairs into grabs and tilts

more tilts to stop advances and start combos if they confirm

more boost grabs

As of right now you seem to neglect needles and SH/FH AC Needles into other stuff, but it was an aggressive Falco after all. You never applied enough counter pressure to allow time to use them, you have to use that diagonal offensive space to limit Falco's approaches and control neutral a bit.

more smart shielding and doing well timed options out of shield like nair, etc

When you are on a platform and they are below you need to either, Shield, WD off of it, Shield drop Nair/Bair/etc, or jump off it and prepare something

 

[Shadow Light Master]

Overall you just need to be more proactive instead of reactive, and be less predictable (that comes with time and experience).

Specifically:

Way too many unsafe D-smashes and dash attacks

You need to space your moves a bit better (wavedashes help, in time it will be natural) and go in for AC Fairs into grabs and tilts

more tilts to stop advances and start combos if they confirm

more boost grabs

As of right now you seem to neglect needles and SH/FH AC Needles into other stuff, but it was an aggressive Falco after all. You never applied enough counter pressure to allow time to use them, you have to use that diagonal offensive space to limit Falco's approaches and control neutral a bit.

more smart shielding and doing well timed options out of shield like nair, etc

When you are on a platform and they are below you need to either, Shield, WD off of it, Shield drop Nair/Bair/etc, or jump off it and prepare something

Thank you so much! I have some questions.

- What is an AC fair? I know it probably stands for Auto-Cancel Fair, but how do I do it? And how do I grab from it?

- What is a boost grab?

I haven't been shorthopping because I use the control stick to jump... I guess I'll switch to Y. I can wavedash the easiest with it.

Also, should I wavedash and shield with different buttons?

 

[Plunder]

Yea Auto Cancel Fair, it's what makes Sheik sort of broken she can AC Fair into grab/tilts.
> Land a SH FF Fair close to the ground as you hit them and then immediately grab or tilt, if you timed it right you should only have 4 frames of normal jump land lag before the ground attack comes out.

As I said her needles also AC from the air which can lead into grabs and combos.

Boost grab is unique to Sheik she can cancel a dash attack into a grab giving her extraordinary grab range. Dash > Dash attack > grab input.

For the rest you'll have to figure it out on your own to find what's comfortable. I use L for cancels, R for wavedashes, and Hold L to normally shield......then while holding L I can Jump and use R for OoS Wave Dashes if I need to.

I would focus on 1 or 2 things at a time to not get overwhelmed. For instance go into a Falco MU just try to do Boost grabs into Down throw tech chases into Up smash or tilt enders and also work on solid Bair edgeguards.

Just watch KK, Plup, or M2K on slo mo and analyze what they do and why

 

[Dolla Pills]

Some habits I noticed/ some advice-

You didn't vary your approaches, you pretty much just ran in and dash attacked or stood still and down smashed. You want to use dash dancing and platform movement as well as different offensive and defensive mix ups to play the neutral

You look like you always DI up and in which makes you very easy to combo. Combo DI away to get out of combos better

When you are falling to the ground you just go straight and always throw out a fair, that's very easy to bait and punish. You can land and shield or dash away or waveland, and try to drift in the air to not make it so easy to predict where you will fall

You shouldn't be rolling in neutral or any time you're not being pressured because it gives up control and options. Use dash dancing and wave dashing to space instead

Please don't up smash in the middle of the stage for no reason

You need to work on your follow ups: sometimes you would get a hit that you could convert hard off of but you got at most one hit and then went for a read when you could've reacted. This can be worked on vs CPU's to some extent, especially if you have the hack pack

You need to work on your tech skill, I saw a lot of missed things (missed L cancels in particular) that you got punished for

Not sure if you know how to boost grab and JC grab but that would be helpful

The best way to deal with an aggressive Falco is to stuff their approach, so stuff like well placed aerials, ftilts, needles, and grabs will help a lot. You can also shield and nair out of shield or WD OOS to something else

And to answer the questions you asked in the second post-

An auto cancel is a period of time at the very beginning and towards the ending of an animation for a move where if you land you will not have any extra lag. So if you AC fair you will be able to act after the 4 or so frames of landing lag you get when you land. You can look up the Sheik frame data for exact frame counts, but in practice you can just try throwing out early fairs and immediately holding L or R, and if your shield comes up nearly instantly then the fair was auto cancelled. So you can practice with that to figure out the timings.

A boost grab is a dash attack cancelled into a grab, performed by dash attacking with A then pressing Z immediately afterwards. With Sheik you will get a slight boost in speed when you do this so it can be useful for tech chases and whatnot.

You definitely need to short hop, and Sheik has the hardest short hop to perform (along with Fox and Samus), so it would probably be beneficial to use Y or X if you are willing to learn. It's not completely necessary though.

Sorry for the long post

EDIT:
Oops I got ninja'd, thank you typing on mobile

 

[Shadow Light Master]

Yea Auto Cancel Fair, it's what makes Sheik sort of broken she can AC Fair into grab/tilts.
> Land a SH FF Fair close to the ground as you hit them and then immediately grab or tilt, if you timed it right you should only have 4 frames of normal jump land lag before the ground attack comes out.

As I said her needles also AC from the air which can lead into grabs and combos.
Boost grab is unique to Sheik she can cancel a dash attack into a grab giving her extraordinary grab range. Dash > Dash attack > grab input.

For the rest you'll have to figure it out on your own to find what's comfortable. I use L for cancels, R for wavedashes, and Hold L to normally shield......then while holding L I can Jump and use R for OoS Wave Dashes if I need to.

I would focus on 1 or 2 things at a time to not get overwhelmed. For instance go into a Falco MU just try to do Boost grabs into Down throw tech chases into Up smash or tilt enders and also work on solid Bair edgeguards.

Just watch KK, Plup, or M2K on slo mo and analyze what they do and why

How do I watch a match in slow motion? I've been meaning to do this!

 

[Dolla Pills]

The gear symbol in the bottom right of the video window (I don't think it's on mobile though)

 

[Shadow Light Master]

Thanks for all the advice guys! I've updated the OP to include a match where I fight the 2nd strongest opponent I've met, a Fox... if I could get any feedback on that too, that would be nice. It probably features similar mistakes.

 

[zero sum]

i'm not really in a position to talk about your mistakes rn but one important thing is that you should probably not have a tag on when you play sheik. having one telegraphs your recovery since the tag follows you wherever you go

 

[Dolla Pills]

Okay, a couple of things-

Sheik has a lot of options when on the ledge, you can watch literally any M2K Sheik match to get ideas on what you could be doing (DJ aerials, ledge dashes, Shino stall), because right now you ledge hop every time which is probably the easiest option to react to and punish

I saw some platform movement on Yoshi's which got you a few openings. Not sure if this match was after you read the advice but if so that's already some improvement. To use it better though you will need to get consistent at wave landing which will give you make everything much smoother and faster

Your movement on the ground definitely needs work. You typically are either standing still and throwing out moves, dashing towards your opponent, or rolling unnecessarily. Try dash dancing and wavedashing (and again you can look up top Sheiks to see what they use to move, and I'd assume the Sheik boards will also be your friend)

I saw one small combo on Fountain where you managed to hit Fox with an up smash so that he fell to the top platform. In this scenario, he can either tech or not tech, and then tech/get up in place or roll (or get up attack). The timing of your full hop back air probably would've only covered the non tech options, so look at that moment again to think about what else you could've done, and there are probably some Sheik guides on punishing that you can read too. But this will also come naturally over time

Overall though I would practice one thing at a time. By the way your playing, I'm guessing it's been maybe a couple months since you started getting serious about Melee (and the prime reason I say that is because I see you dash dancing and wavedashing in between stocks but not during the match which is what I used to do), or maybe you are just nervous when playing these people. Anyway, you want to spend some time with your tech to make sure it's consistent and you can fully utilize it in a match. What I suggest you work on right now is movement. Stuff like dash dancing, wave dashing, wave landing, and ledge options because that's the main reason you are getting overwhelmed and not starting an offense of your own