Sheik is easy to play.

[MookieRah]

Of course most of the people on the boards knew this already, but just exactly how easy is Sheik to play?

My old crew dismantled about a year ago, and since then I've been trying to build up a group in Starkville (where I attend college). There are a few players and they have gotten consistently better. One in particular, Robert, is improving insanely fast and is already giving me some insanely close matches as well as taking away some wins.

To get to the point of the thread though, I decided I should pick up Sheik so they could learn how to fight against her when tournaments come. Honestly in my entire smash career I don't think I have spent more than 10 hours playing Sheik. That sounds like a decent amount, but keep in mind I've been playing since 2002. I've never really given her too much of a chance since I have gotten good at the game, so I decided to just go ahead and do it for a change.

I played 7 matches with Sheik yesterday. I started out playing D, whom is a so so Marth player. I then moved onto playing Robert, and topped it off playing D one last time. In the time it took to come back around to D I 3 stocked him, when I had started I barely beat him.

Check it out for yourselves:

Match 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrxI0uFDQyI MRah(Sheik) vs D(Marth)

Match 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3V0OpjthNc MRah(Sheik) vs D(Marth)

Match 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewv1-TERc0g MRah(Sheik) vs Robert(Marth)

Match 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAgoi4Ju4BQ MRah(Sheik) vs Robert(Marth)

Match 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=952FFTQeEXY MRah(Sheik) vs Robert(CF)

Match 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoipPi0N6BE MRah(Sheik) vs Robert(CF)

Match 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn5gVRpJJ3U MRah(Sheik) vs D(Marth)

 

[Vegard]

That was some boring matches... And did you really get that much better from the first to the last match?

 

[MookieRah]

I like how i posted this about 5 minutes ago and you somehow had time to watch enough to really gather much of anything.

I'm not attesting these to be super awesome hardcore entertaining vids, and yes, there is a big difference between the first and last match.

 

[Cactuar]

<3 MookieRah

 

[Drephen]

gayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

 

[ErciChewman]

I watched the first and last match, and there really wasn't a big difference in your abilities as sheik, the marth player just isn't very good at playing against sheik, whiffing dash attacks a lot is a bad idea. No offense, I agree sheik is fairly easy to learn, she's top tier for a reason, but you only three stocked that last match because he got edge hogged at medium damage twice, plus that stage is one of Marths worst stages, being a Marth player, I frequently strike that stage. You're clearly more experienced than the other guy and it's your smart decision making that won you the match, not your technical skill with the character, keep working on it though. And tell that marth player to stay on the **** stage, marth is screwed off the stage against sheik.

 

[Rapid_Assassin]

LOL the first match has a lot of similarities with a Sheik that I pulled out of my ***, only better...

 

[SLAYERCoLdKiLr]

Shiek is quite possibly the easiest character to play, sorry to say in those videos it doesnt really show how easy it is. You're better than the marth, but still need some better combos.

 

[nublet06]

yeah i understand the idea of this thread, but all it really seemed to do is make me think the people you are playing suck. and i dont think thats what you intended.

 

[h1roshi]

ugh..i couldnt even watch more then 3 of those vids. i really didnt see much improvement at all. pretty weak vids. i didnt see how easy it is to play as sheik by watching these vids...peace

-hiroshi

 

[thatsmybutta]

but youre like... not good

 

[Vall3y]

considering you are better than him, and they have no experience vs sheik, and sheik is very good versus marth and falcon, there is nothing wrong with these results

 

[audreyh]

but both his opponents (and yes i watched the later matches) were horrendous. You should've just played DK and said DK is easy to play.

 

[__HARM__]

wow this is horrible, first of that marth doesnt even know what d.i. is and most of those combos dont actually work. Seriously this is why the boards are getting gay.

 

[SLAYERCoLdKiLr]

wow this is horrible, first of that marth doesnt even know what d.i. is and most of those combos dont actually work. Seriously this is why the boards are getting gay.

You're pretty gay btw. Thats my opinion though. Actually im probably not alone. Go ask your mom and pa, i bet they agree with me.

 

[__HARM__]

You're pretty gay btw. Thats my opinion though. Actually im probably not alone. Go ask your mom and pa, i bet they agree with me.

I think my little sister could come up with better insults, nice try though.

 

[offcell]

HARM, if you were even paying attention to the vids, that Marth was DI'ing...just not every hit.

considering you are better than him, and they have no experience vs sheik, and sheik is very good versus marth and falcon, there is nothing wrong with these results

I noticed that too. They aren't using Marth's other moves in the right place. Whenever that Marth hit you with a dash att., he should have followed up with a nicely timed fmash in the other direction. Or just an utilt. They just need to play more to gain more experience of what to do in certain situations. BTW, tell D sidestepping is his friend against a grab-happy Sheik.

 

[theONEjanitor]

i agree with most of the posts here.
once you study and practice more and just learn all the crazy **** that sheik can do, you'll probably have a pretty nice sheik though
play it against someone who's good so we can see

 

[__HARM__]

Ok if drephen said this is gay trust me it is. Theres no point in randomly trying to make a stupid claim like shiek is easy when you can't even back it up. I play shiek as a second because she is very useful in matchups that are poor for samus. If you play a good marth there is only about 3 or 4 two hit combos you can do to him.

 

[Somebody]

You're pretty gay btw. Thats my opinion though. Actually im probably not alone. Go ask your mom and pa, i bet they agree with me.

BURN!!!

No but seriously. Even if his opponents weren't that good or didn't know how to fight a sheik she still is really easy to play. Everyone has used her and she has a poop load of combos that are perfectly set up into a fair. She is a noob character if someone who doesnt use advanced techs is using her and she is really good for advanced players as well, but That doesnt mean sheik players suck.

I personally dont think marth is very hard to use either because of his insane range. You can seriously do alright in a match if you just fsmash a butt load. This thread just says some characters are easier to use than others if you already have a good handle on the game.

 

[DippnDots]

I like how someone who joined January 2007th is talking about why the boards are gay now.


(Not trying to diss your or anything, HARM, you probably are someone who's had multiple accounts, unbeknownst to me. I was just trying to point out some irony)

 

[pdk]

gay is gay is gay; doesn't matter how long the gayness has been going on if it's going on now with no signs of stopping

and is sheik as easy to play as shorts are comfortable and easy to wear?! it's a mystery for the ages

 

[Zankoku]

I personally dont think marth is very hard to use either because of his insane range. You can seriously do alright in a match if you just fsmash a butt load. This thread just says some characters are easier to use than others if you already have a good handle on the game.

Not everyone can play like Drephen and just win.

 

[D20]

I see were this thread was trying to go, but the experiment was completely flawed.

1. MookieRah, you have been playing the game for about 4 years... although you claim to have only put about 10 hours into playing Sheik, you have played against enough Sheik players to completely understand how Sheik wins. It isn't like you've been sheltered from Sheik your whole life.

2. Also, your competition isn't exactly pro quality. You said yourself that you picked Sheik up to give your opponents practice... meaning they don't know how to fight against Sheiks yet. On top of that, the Marth match up is already in favor of Sheik (at least moderately). All that said, you should be winning these matches.

What has this proved? That a highly skilled player can randomly pick up Sheik to beat lesser skilled players? I think we already knew that. It isn't like you have to go out and learn waveshining, double missile cancels, or short hop double fairs to have a grasp of Sheik's tech game.

Oh, and anyone who still thinks Marth is easy to use has no idea what they're talking about. We can all joke about Marth walking around and flicking the c-stick to win, but the truth is that Marth needs to be precise and patient. In addition, spacing is all. It takes a high level of skill and focus to space correctly, and that is Marth's biggest advantage. Pro quality players abuse Marth's range to achieve nearly perfect spacing. I wish I had time to write an essay about that...

 

[MookieRah]

Whoa whoa, before anyone gets any wrong ideas, I'm not saying that Sheik players suck by any means. The point of the thread is that anyone who is experienced with the game and is smart could pick her up insanely fast.

For the rest who have claimed to watch the vids. Do you base everything purely on how well someone combos? I can see how it would look like I didn't get much better if you wanted crazy combos by the 7th vid, but you guys really need to understand that combos aren't the only thing that you can gauge skill by. If I had a cube that wasn't broken or the money to get a Wii at the moment I can take a day and learn most of her basic combos and setups.

I think the biggest problem with the vids is just that they are just too overwhelmingly boring for most people to endure. Most people probably just looked at the 1st and last vid, went eww, and just didn't watch it closely. I would go through and type out what all I learned, but I think it would be a wasted effort.

[Edit]D20 made a good post so I'm going to address it :-P[/edit]
1. Actually I knew a handful of things going in, like you said I've played A LOT of sheiks so I had the general idea. I also recently went through looking at Marth vids out of boredom and a lot of them had CJ in them, so I saw a few of the cool things he did. If you look in the video you'll see I was trying to do the aerial needles into grab setup that CJ abuses a lot, and by the 7th match I pretty much have it down. The thing is, I think more of it came from watching CJs vids than anything else. I didn't go through all of my previous fights in my head. If anything, someone who is smart and decently technical watched some videos of some good sheiks, they could pick up sheik retardedly fast too. I think it's been proven that you don't have to play the game for years to be really good, you just have to have the right mindset and the right competition.

2. Yeah, I pretty much can't argue that point. They played another sheik a little bit, Joel (another Starkville resident) but nothing that they could really learn much there. I would argue the Marth vs Sheik matchup, but in this case it definitely favors the Sheik by a good bit. I'm still not sure why Robert went Marth on me the first few matches either, cause he mains CF, and honestly his CF is way better than his Marth.

On your last point, it really isn't that hard for an experience player to pick up Marth either. I went from Mewtwo to Marth and got pretty **** good with him in a few weeks.

The thing is with Marth and Sheik, it's the "technical" game that is easy to pick up on, to really play them well you have to use your brain a bit more. That's why awesome Marth and Sheik players are awesome, cause most of their play relies on their ability to make the best judgements. They can't spam tech and do well at all (not to say all it takes to be a champion fox/falco is to spam tech, but you can rely more on tech WAY WAY more than Marth or Sheik).

I'm gonna try to borrow a cube or something and work up on Sheik combos. I'll also drill all the Starkville guys with Sheik untill they learn how to play against her, I'll also tell them all the things they could do to **** in my cereal mid match. I'll try to see if I can get JC to play some matches too, he was the best from my previous crew, whom recently quit playing. I wish I could do more to prove the point of this thread, but yeah, Mississippi sucks :-P.

 

[cF=)]

Mookie, why did you let Mewtwo down

I had the patience to listen through half of the vids (meaning I started up with the first one and skipped 1 out of 2) and yes, I can see some kind of evolution. IMO, it's hard to play sheik when you've been conditionned to speedy characters like Fox or Falcon, so just try to ameliorate your overall game speed.

Maybe you should also try to use more combo starters, like Dair or Nair->Ftilt, because it'll really help when your opponents will catch up with your grabby style. One more thing, for god's sake, stop using Fsmash to throw people off stage. The Dsmash is more powerfull, harder to DI out of, and has less lagtime (or at least, it's harder to punish).

Post more vids, I'll be happy to critique.

 

[Drephen]

sheik technically is easy yes, her "automatic" combos, her various tricks, and being able to grab someone.

but applying this to pro level tournies is the hard part, you cant just grab dash attack the whole time and expect to win

that why people stopped playing sheik, remember 2004? Everyone played shiek then, and in the past 2-3 years everyone switched to fox and falco. The reason? Cause they started losing cause those "automatic combos" stopped working.

so i guess it means on what your def on shiek being "easy" is.

 

[Somebody]

Oh, and anyone who still thinks Marth is easy to use has no idea what they're talking about. We can all joke about Marth walking around and flicking the c-stick to win, but the truth is that Marth needs to be precise and patient. In addition, spacing is all. It takes a high level of skill and focus to space correctly, and that is Marth's biggest advantage. Pro quality players abuse Marth's range to achieve nearly perfect spacing. I wish I had time to write an essay about that...

Wasnt trying to make that sound like marth players can just flick the c-stick and win. Most people wouldnt expect someone to fsmash so much eveytime they approach or something, and I do actually know how to use him and how to space. Its just that characters like marth and sheik are so good that they can be abused to give you that extra edge.

I think some people in this thread are talking about casual play and competitve play at the same time. Marth and sheik in tournament play dont have much of an advantage over anyone else since any match really is based on the skill of the players. If its just casual play and you feel like screwing around then the better character will usually win.

 

[MookieRah]

so i guess it means on what your def on shiek being "easy" is.

Sorry to be vague on that point, I thought I addressed it on my last post, but you might have been in mid post while typing that up.

Sheik is easy to pick up and learn her basic tech skill and figuring out her mechanics. If you are already a smart player then that means you could pick her up and do well quite fast. I'm too lazy to type it again, but the rest of it can be summed up here:

The thing is with Marth and Sheik, it's the "technical" game that is easy to pick up on, to really play them well you have to use your brain a bit more. That's why awesome Marth and Sheik players are awesome, cause most of their play relies on their ability to make the best judgements. They can't spam tech and do well at all (not to say all it takes to be a champion fox/falco is to spam tech, but you can rely more on tech WAY WAY more than Marth or Sheik).

Maybe you should also try to use more combo starters, like Dair or Nair->Ftilt, because it'll really help when your opponents will catch up with your grabby style. One more thing, for god's sake, stop using Fsmash to throw people off stage. The Dsmash is more powerfull, harder to DI out of, and has less lagtime (or at least, it's harder to punish).

Thanks for actually critiquing. Yeah, I'll whean myself off that fsmash and downsmash more. I'll also throw in some more of those tilts.

 

[HoChiMinhTrail]

first of all, drephen and mookie are the only good players to have posted in this thread..... rest of you noobs keep silent and learn the game.... when u say the boards are getting gay..... what the you suck kid so dont even begin to speak as if you are anything at this game.


drew stanton = own

 

[Stryk9]

this thread is assuming we need a video tutorial to show how easy sheik is to technically play.


Yes shes easy, her combos are easy and she has very very few drawbacks in speed and range and priority, but i agree with drephen that at high lvls, this same ease of basic use seperates the good sheiks from the bad. Because everyone knows the automatic combos, they know what to expect often enough, and thus being unpredictable with sheik is that much harder but also more effective. So its all relative as you approach meta game level

 

[MookieRah]

this thread is assuming we need a video tutorial to show how easy sheik is to technically play.

It's not so much that I think it was needed moreso than I thought it was at least a bit interesting. I guess I'm weird for liking videos like this in general.

@Hotchi: <3, thanks XD, although it's ok you don't have to get mad at them. I made a lot of mistakes when I made this thread that deserves me to be flamed. For starters I didn't make it apparent that this was not entirely serious (while it isn't entirely a joke) and that this isn't an insult to Sheik players.

I think I should sleep on my random ideas that come to me late at night before I set out and actually do it XD.

 

[Eggz]

Ok if drephen said this is gay trust me it is. Theres no point in randomly trying to make a stupid claim like shiek is easy when you can't even back it up. I play shiek as a second because she is very useful in matchups that are poor for samus. If you play a good marth there is only about 3 or 4 two hit combos you can do to him.

Uhhh do you have any idea how ******** and terrible Drephen's opinions and tastes are? LOL

And are you also implying that shiek isn't easy to learn?

 

[DippnDots]

Uhhh do you have any idea how ******** and terrible Drephen's opinions and tastes are? LOL

quoted for truth, Drephen doesn't consider Yoshi a character.

On a serious note this thread is pretty useless. It's already obvious that a lot of people who play sheik as beginners think they're bad *** until they goto their first tournament and get ***** by people who don't suck. It's then they realize that Sheik is really good against NOOBS, but you still have to actually have some sort of skill to win in tournaments with Sheik.

On my closing note:
Drephen, I love your cape.

 

[Mouf_From_Da_Souf]

when your shiek is godawful to begin wit, of course ur gonna get better wit a few gamez, u had alot to improve on

i watched tha first and last vid and found it hard to keep tha torrent of diarrhea from escaping my bowelz. ya tha sheik and marth were that bad

if i picked up yoshi for tha first time and played 7 matchez wit em by tha 7th id prolly be alot better than tha first too, this thread is awful, ur sheik makez me wanna doo doo and u really didnt even make any kinda point u just posted sum terrible vidz.

 

[JUST A PIECE OF MEAT!!]

you're both terrible, go back to retirement plz

 

[D20]

I feel the need to say a couple more things. So, I guess I will attempt to explain why Sheik is seemingly easy to pick up.

Ok, what is Super Smash all about (at the highest levels of play)? Well, tech skill isn't an issue because all the players are capable of performing the advanced moves. That leaves us with mindgames, spacing, and tactics (see Wobbles' Four Aspects of Melee). However something else governs who wins and loses... How a player maximizes gains and minimizes losses.

Sheik is the perfect example of a character that can maximize the gains and minimizes the losses based solely on her nature, and not the player's mindgames, spacing, and tactics. She maximizes gains in that she can easily punish a missed attack or grab because of her lightning fast speed... especially in the dash attack. It just so happens that the dash attack can set her up for many of her combos (regardless of the opponent's percentage). In addition, her combos are easy to see, unlike a character such as Mario. An inexperienced player (in terms of using Sheik) can pick up the maximized combos much more quickly. I'd struggle to pull off one of Mario's maximized combos, let alone a fairly decent one.

She minimizes losses in the same way she maximizes gains. Simply put, she has more room for error than most characters. Between her small amount of lag on her moves and her large grab range, she doesn't have to be so precise. The lone exception to this is her up-b lag.

So, I have to agree that Sheik is fairly easy to pick up for a highly skilled player, but that won't translate to tournament success. It might, however, allow you to steal a game on your opponent's counter pick. Whatever the case, I think MookieRah made it clear that Sheik can provide a very quick (and dirty) fix to gaps in your game (if you stuggle with certain matches), even if his method wasn't perfect.

 

[Drephen]

first of all, drephen and mookie are the only good players to have posted in this thread..... rest of you noobs keep silent and learn the game.... when u say the boards are getting gay..... what the you suck kid so dont even begin to speak as if you are anything at this game.


brady quinn = own

pretty sure this applies to Eggz also

 

[ZoSo]

first of all, drephen and mookie are the only good players to have posted in this thread..... rest of you noobs keep silent and learn the game.... when u say the boards are getting gay..... what the you suck kid so dont even begin to speak as if you are anything at this game.


drew stanton = own

Cactuar.

QED.

This thread makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

 

[MookieRah]

So, I have to agree that Sheik is fairly easy to pick up for a highly skilled player, but that won't translate to tournament success. It might, however, allow you to steal a game on your opponent's counter pick. Whatever the case, I think MookieRah made it clear that Sheik can provide a very quick (and dirty) fix to gaps in your game (if you stuggle with certain matches), even if his method wasn't perfect.

Yay, pretty much what I wanted people to get from this thread! Basically, I'm just trying to say that if you are good there is almost no reason not to pick her up as a secondary. It wouldn't take that long to get good with a few matchups that you might have a harder time with otherwise. I know a LOT of people that are great that won't touch her for various reasons, hell I was one of them till the other day, but honestly, why the hell not have her in reserve?

One thing I've learned from all this, never ever beat around the bush and hope people understand something without spilling it out blatantly. Although, I think it's funny how so many random people flamed me and called me a noob. It definitely caused WAAAAAAY more of a stir than I thought it would.

One thing for sure, Drephen is awesome XD. And no, that isn't sarcasm, he's just too **** good.

On a different note, I got to play some matches with JC today. I threw in a little bit of sheik. His doc/mario ***** me, but I did pretty **** good versus his everything else. Almost as good as my Marth even O_o. I bet nobody in here even knows of JC though, so I'll just link a video of him against Darkrain in a team match. Sadly the only vids of him on youtube are of team matches, otherwise I would just post a normal match. These are fun to watch, and hey, have you ever seen a SICK Fox/Ness team? No, you probably haven't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar6U9TUFTA8