Need help practicing sheik!!

[Papasmurf645]

so for the past two months I've been playing melee, and I main sheik. Since I don't have any people to play with all the time, only regularly, I have to practice by myself. So what I've been doing for a month is beating up on a LVL 1 fox. I practice my best options on him, such as downthrow tech chase(which really isn't a great thing to do since he's so predicatable) wavedash back into forward tilts, spacing my back airs, and trying to convert stuff ending in my fair. But I feel like I'm not getting any better at all. So if anyone has any tips for me that would Be great! Also I should be getting 20XX soon so I'm hoping that'll help me a lot

 

[ChivalRuse]

Have you tried installing netplay with a controller adapter? That is pretty helpful for practicing: www.smashladder.com

 

[Papasmurf645]

Have you tried installing netplay with a controller adapter? That is pretty helpful for practicing: www.smashladder.com

I have a Mac and netplay is very laggy on it. So in order for me to play netplay effectively I'd need to drop a couple hundred

 

[CursedKaiju]

practice against level 1 top 10 characters, practice against level 9 top 10 characters and use 20xx. Sheik boards might be helpful, since they give some good 'trials' to do. Also work on gimps.

 

[EmpireCrusher203]

wow, you and me are fricking twins lol. I've been playing for 6 months so I had to go through all of this.

Since I don't have 20xx I had to rely on old school techniques to practice. Here's what I did during my first two months

Wavedashing- In order to practice frame-perfect wavedashes you can go on 20xx and set an overlay for this. But if you are like me, you can instead go to your music settings in melee, and turn music all the way off. This way all you can hear is your character. Go to vs. mode, melee, and set another controller as a dummy. (if you don't have a second controller, use a lvl 1 CPU and hope it doesn't bother you). Don't ever use training mode. The C-stick is disabled in there. Now go to any stage and practice wavedashing. You'll know you executing it perfectly if you don't hear Sheik's airdodge grunt. It's very distinct and different from her jumping grunt. Basically, if you hear her jumping grunt, you did it perfectly. If you heard the airdodge grunt, you ****ed up. Alternatively, you can roll all the way to the ledge on FD and wavedash back. If you keep the clip, you do it correctly. If you didn't you will fall towards your doom.

L-cancelling- Go to VS. Mode, Melee, and turn Handicap to ON and Damage Ratio to 0.5. Now turn on a lvl 1 CPU Bowser with Handicap to 9, and your handicap to 1. Go to FD, and practice SHFFLing on thin air and on the Bowser. You will see that the two have difference timings. If you want an even bigger challenging, set the mode to Team, and make a team of three lvl 1 CPU Ice Climbers, with you on the other team. Go to Yoshi's Story. You will see that the timing changes depending on the number of Icies you hit.

Teching- This is only exception to the Training Mode rule. Go to Training Mode and enter Hyrule Temple. Go under the long floating platform and spawn several red shells. Hit the red shells, activating them. Now let the red shells hit you. They will send you up and soon your start to tumble down onto the platform. Now tech. Practice teching in place and tech rolling. For wall teching, go to Fourside. Stand on the right side of the tower and spawn a Motion Sensor bomb. Stand on the left side of the bomb, while touching it. Wait patiently for the bomb to explode and then you'll be launched toward the tower. Now tech.

Autocancel Fairs- VS. Mode, Melee, cpu lvl 1 Fox. Stand in front of Fox and practice your autocancel Fairs. You will know did it properly if you hit Fox AND autcanceled (shown by the circlular spike cloud on the ground, rather than the puffy smoke clouds). If you hit Fox and saw puffy smoke clouds, you fastfalled too early. If you completely miss Fox, you fastfalled too late

Techchasing- The simplest solution is to get a friend to help you. If not here is my solution. Plug in a controller and place on the floor, make this 2nd controller play as a Spacie or Capt. Falcon. Now go to FD and Down throw the dummy. He will fall into the no tech state (you can practice Jab resets here). Now using your 2nd controller, use your toes to tap left or right. Then follow the dummy. I know this is good for reaction practicing, but it still gives you the feel for it. This toe method can also help with practice DI followups.


You'll need to formulate a decent practice routine and practice daily to see any results. I personally use Kira's outline, shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0alnT4DiOco

Netplay and locals will help you tremendously with learning the game. I also have found Tafokint's series called Zero to Hero to be super helpful with helping my understanding of this game. And better yet, his first season focuses on Sheik! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1m4nMl9UuI

 

[Jageru]

This post is a bit dated, but if you're still interested, I've literally only started playing the game yesterday, and I'd love to have someone to play with occasionally. However, Op, if you still care, I would recommend investing in a computer that can effectively run SSBM emulation and playing people via netplay. It shouldn't take much to run SSBM through Dolphin. I'm down if you ever decide to do so.

 

[__Maza__]

I have a Mac and netplay is very laggy on it. So in order for me to play netplay effectively I'd need to drop a couple hundred

Can't you play netplay on Nintendont? A Wii is like 20x cheaper than a gaming computer

 

[Pauer]

Can't you play netplay on Nintendont? A Wii is like 20x cheaper than a gaming computer

no you can't.

I would advise OP to look into dual booting software like bootcamp so they can have both Windows and MacOS on their Computer. Heard it's pretty easy to set up. An unactivated version of Windows 10 will do just fine for playing Dolphin/FasterMelee (and almost everything else) - alternatively you can always pirate it or buy a Windows 10 license for less than 5$ on Ebay.

 

[Papasmurf645]

no you can't.

I would advise OP to look into dual booting software like bootcamp so they can have both Windows and MacOS on their Computer. Heard it's pretty easy to set up. An unactivated version of Windows 10 will do just fine for playing Dolphin/FasterMelee (and almost everything else) - alternatively you can always pirate it or buy a Windows 10 license for less than 5$ on Ebay.

I'm looking into buying a cheap gaming laptop on eBay for about 300 or 400 bucks, would this work? I'd just use the laptop for netplay

 

[Jageru]

I'm looking into buying a cheap gaming laptop on eBay for about 300 or 400 bucks, would this work? I'd just use the laptop for netplay

Well, it all depends on how powerful said laptop is. Laptops are almost always weaker per dollar than a desktop. Melee, while an old and small game, requires you to not only process the game, but also the emulation process, and that's where it can really strain your computer, because most emulation processes are very convoluted due to the archaic way old games were designed to run. While there aren't many benchmarks out there for Dolphin's emulation of Melee, I've found that a GPU with the caliber of a Radeon 7950 should run the game at a stable 60 FPS, as observed in this video. That's a pretty old and pricey GPU, however, you can pretty much match its performance with something like a GTX 1050ti. If you're set on a laptop, however, use this link here and compare its GPU with a reference card, like a GTX 1050ti, since we already know that it can run the game and the emulation. If it doesn't have a dedicated GPU, and instead has something like an APU, don't even consider it being able to run Melee.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

I highly recommend you spring for 20xx if you want to practice the punish game. If not, just watch videos and pay attention to tech animations and how they are covered at different percents. It will probably help more than giving yourself bad habits in vanilla melee.

After that, the #1 thing you should practice in your free time is movement and ledge tech. Your movement can be practiced no matter what and will influence all aspects of your game. Practice wavedashing different lengths from different positions, grabbing ledge quickly, wavelanding different lengths on different platforms from different positions, wavedashing into things oos, etc. Get your ledgedashes and shino stalls down... like really well down. Considering how much you will grab ledge a match and the punishment for messing that **** up, you will find it's well worth your time to master that stuff early.

And just a quick thought, a lot of newer players think they don't need to practice basic movement once they've learned to somewhat consistently execute most things. But if you miss a wavedash even once out of 50 times, how can you be expected to never mess it up in a match where your mind is on other things? You need to be insanely good at everything.

Not to mention, practicing movement is often also about practicing it for specific scenarios that you think you'll need it for. Like learning to waveland precisely on platforms will affect what kind of tech chases you can get. Being able to quickly turn around out of a walk will affect your neutral. You get the idea. Imo skipping basic movement is melee's equivalent of skipping leg day.

 

[Throwedgenji]

If you get netplay going let me know id love to play, im looking for people to play with over dolphin netplay, i cant get better playing computer

 

[Pauer]

Well, it all depends on how powerful said laptop is. Laptops are almost always weaker per dollar than a desktop. Melee, while an old and small game, requires you to not only process the game, but also the emulation process, and that's where it can really strain your computer, because most emulation processes are very convoluted due to the archaic way old games were designed to run. While there aren't many benchmarks out there for Dolphin's emulation of Melee, I've found that a GPU with the caliber of a Radeon 7950 should run the game at a stable 60 FPS, as observed in this video. That's a pretty old and pricey GPU, however, you can pretty much match its performance with something like a GTX 1050ti. If you're set on a laptop, however, use this link here and compare its GPU with a reference card, like a GTX 1050ti, since we already know that it can run the game and the emulation. If it doesn't have a dedicated GPU, and instead has something like an APU, don't even consider it being able to run Melee.

Dolphin performance is mainly determined by your CPU's single core performance. You don't need a good graphics card for just playing dolphin. If you want to heavily use enhancements like Anti-Aliasing and high Internal Resolution then you do need a decent graphics card - but it's not necessary. Integrated graphics are enough to play dolphin though, even with some enhancements.
The CPU on the other hand has to be decent. According to benchmarks, modern(6XXX, 7XXX) i5 Laptop CPUs should be sufficient for playing both dolphin and Faster Melee. Faster Melee requires more resources than standard dolphin.
One issue with Laptops is that there can be problems with CPU throttling due to power management. You will need to make sure that the laptop is set to high performance mode or something similar.

I'm looking into buying a cheap gaming laptop on eBay for about 300 or 400 bucks, would this work? I'd just use the laptop for netplay

For 400$, you should be able to buy an appropriate laptop. Since you said that you wanted a gaming laptop, you will want a decent graphics card as well.
With your budget, I would get a used Acer Aspire E5 with an i5, 8gb of RAM, 256gb SSD and a 940mx graphics card (configuration E5-575G-57D4, or an equal configuration). Might have to stretch that budget a little.


As I said above, the cheapest option would be dual booting that Mac computer. Though I understand it might not be an option for you if it is a shared family computer that you can't mess with too much or something similar.