What nerfs, if any, do you find acceptable for Sheik?

[Rubiss]

First and foremost I want to stress that this is not meant to be a thread attacking the character nor the players who use the character. I really don't want this to turn uncivil and overly heated. This thread is not designed to bring hate to Sheik, nor am I trying to rally people together and make Sheik players feel bad for playing a good character. Please keep any discussion in this thread positive.

There are a lot of complaints about Sheik and many players are upset about how much better she is than a majority of the cast. While a lot of the complaints are likely from upset players and sore losers who don't know the match-up, nor do they fully understand Sheik, I think there are some players with legitimate concerns.

Nerfs can be seen as a touchy subject. Just look at what happened to Greninja in 1.0.4. (for those who don't know, Greninja lost an few ATs, got more startup and end lag on his Water Shurikens, had Hydropump's pushback and hitbox reduced, Fair had reduced knockback and upsmash got much more endlag and had its sour spot nerfed in damage).

Now I am sure that any rational player would not want to severely gut Sheik like Greninja, but I was wondering what the Sheik board's community thought about nerfs, more specifically what are acceptable, logical nerfs. I understand that bias will likely come into play. No one wants their main nerfed. This is simply a hypothetical.

What nerfs do you think Sheik should get, if any?

I don't main Sheik. My only knowledge of the character comes from Melee and Brawl when I casually played Zelda. However, from what I've been reading online, a lot of people seem to think that Sheik's needles and recovery are some of her biggest "issues".

I main Greninja, so I will say this right off the bat. I am biased towards Sheik. She is my worst match-up, but I will try and be objective.

• I don't like vanish. I dislike that when Sheik reappears, there is a windbox that often hinders my punishment. Sheik is able to safely recovery to the ledge and even the ground (in my experience. Could be wrong about the ground part). If I had to suggest a nerf here, I would say that vanish should not have a windbox at all.

• Needles are amazing. Almost too amazing. Sheik can charge them and can hold them. She excels at camping and from what I understand (again, this may be coming from salty, biased players) Sheik is able to needle camp a lot of cast with ease, including those who excel at zoning. To me, this is wrong. Sheik is a combo-heavy rushdown-type character. Why is she also one of the best zoning characters? Now I am not trying to project any Greninja frustration here, but considering how hard Greninja's water shurikens were nerfed (which has since been buffed, but not as much as it once was), I would suggest that Sheik's needle startup and ending could use some extra frames.I want to suggest 3 frames but I really don't know what is optimal here. Some people think that needles should have no knockback. That might be a bit much, but is it better than having less lag on the projectile itself?

• Bouncing Fish is incredible. It can not only be angled, but it also allows Sheik to bounce off of her opponent (including shields), safely at that. Some people say that bouncing fish should put Sheik into free-fall. I think that's a bit much. That would greatly nerf her recovery and make it too risky to use off-stage. That move would effectively be trash. I think bouncing fish should not bounce off shield. It should be punishable. Now you might say, "Why not spot-dodge?" and that is a legitimate counter to bouncing fish. I am on the fence about this. I just feel that bouncing fish is a bit too good. Something needs to change there.

That's pretty much all of the nerfs I personally think Sheik could stand for. They may be uninformed nerfs. They are completely based off of my own experience, which is facing the character with one that does poorly against it. My opinions are a combination of my own and what I generally read online.

What do you guys think?

 

[_Tree]

Appreciate the decent write-up, but as you can imagine these boards have discussed this subject in length (whether we wanted to or not). Your proposed changes are what others commonly put forward as well. This would be better asked in the Social thread.