Why is Shiek so hard...

[Naf2pro]

Just picked her up for my secondary (ike main) and man I just keep getting destroyed...

Now I understand I'm not gonna get good with her in a few minutes, but is there any kind of method that can help me understand her more and not freeze up or get confused in-game?

 

[TCL | Harp & Dagger]

If you need help, you should go to the sheik help thread rather than making a new thread. There's plenty of resources on the sub, check out her frame data and what each move does and is good for. Find her combos (few good ones are fair strings, ftilt strings, ftilt>fair, fair>bouncing fish, there's plenty), get comfortable with them. Learn how to control bouncing fish and vanish well. Learn some AT's with needles if you want. Plenty of people are willing to help you.

 

[Sean de Lure]

This should go in the Q&A thread, but i'll throw some stuff in anyway
1. sheik has one of the shortest jumpsquats in the game; 4 frames compared to ike's 7 (not sure if thats the jumpsquat length or the frame airborne), get used to her shorthop, its a must for playing sheik
2. accept that you will have trouble killing sometimes. you will sometimes need to be much more defensive/patient depending on your playstyle, MU, your percent, and your opponent's percent
3. understanding when to stop strings. sometimes continuing strings is a good thing, more damage. but when your opponent is going further away, you don't want to overextend and chase them and end up being punished
4. understand how her combo game works, you can just screw around with the training dummy to see what basic ones are, and you can also look around on the thread for others
5. get down tech skill. do this after you can do the first 4, or at least understand them while playing, theres a large list somewhere around, shouldn't be too hard to find, think it's stickied

other notes:
BF is amazing, but don't spam it (I generally don't use it unless its confirmed or I feel really good about it)
learn how far you can recover from, BF 2nd jump and vanish lets you recover from the very corners of the blast zone
you can extend BF, get used to it
gernade puts you in helplessness, don't screw up extending BF offstage (in general too)
needles are gdlk
go offstage hard to get gimps/stagespikes, but remember you want to recover after murdering someone
good luck :]

(BF is bouncing fish, gernade is side b)

 

[BlastHappyNinja]

I second (third?) what was said above. But I'll throw some of my two cents in here anyways.

Sheik is very combo heavy. What makes her good generally comes from her ability to gimp, string together combos beautifully, and to an extent, her camp game. You're going to be relying heavily on gimps since she lacks a great deal of kill power. You should check some of the stickied posts for more detail, but that's the bareback basis of it.

 

[Ritronaut]

Also let me point out it is probably going to be very difficult for you to play sheik for the first couple of weeks. You main ike, pretty much the exact opposite of sheik. Ike Kills easily but in exchange for that he is slow with slow, hard hitting attacks. Sheik on the other hand, is fast, with a small but very quick damage output who has trouble killing, and is very agile. Practice a lot in training mode, it sure helped me get better at sheik.

 

[Sean de Lure]

ike kills easily if they roll a lot, dont know the MU, or dont move, generally ike still has to work a decent amount for his kills

 

[BlastHappyNinja]

ike kills easily if they roll a lot, dont know the MU, or dont move, generally ike still has to work a decent amount for his kills

Not to mention that Ike is extremely gimpable. He's also going to be relatively easy to outdo in the neutral game, but when you build his rage up, you're going to want to watch out. His range still gets me sometimes. In a way it's like Falcon where it's a weird matchup. Sheik easily overthrows him in the neutral but the more you build up his rage, the closer you are to death if that Falcon can get some good momentum going.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

fight lvl 3's with 99 stock.

 

[Davregis]

I am a Charizard main who is switching to Sheik to play someone I'll win with vs characters like Sheik.
I'm really feeling TC right now, haha

 

[Naf2pro]

Ahh sorry about that guys, will remember for future references!

Also yes I'm still barely improving by like tiny bits with shiek...for some reason I can't perfect short hop fairs with her. Which is weird since I do it perfectly with Ike...

Anyways, thanks everyone for the help!

 

[Zankoku]

Ike has a longer jump startup, while Sheik is tied with a few others for having the fastest jump in the game. You must release jump before the character leaves the ground to get a short hop, which is why it's harder with Sheik and, say, almost impossible not to short hop with Bowser.

That said, it's still a fairly practicable timing window, since it's an entire frame longer than the short hop window for Sheik (and Samus, and Fox) in Melee.

 

[phantom man]

I have a new-found love for Shiek. And personally, I learned her really easily, that might be because I one of my mains are Sonic. So what I'm trying to say is that you might have an easier time learning Shiek if you are used to faster characters. Some examples are, as I said before, but also and .


I hope this made sense to anyone.

 

[Skydra]

First thing to do is to just practice against a training dummy or low-level bot (it doesn't really matter) to learn how stupid good her frame data and lack of significant endlag is.

Learn her grab combos (often guaranteed) and aerial combos. Dthrow and Fthrow get guaranteed setups at many percents, and even more with bad DI. Fair is essentially lagless, so fastfall fair combos into itself at low percents. Depending on the stage and your opponents DI, you can get a lot of aerial combos. Nair, Bair, and Fair combo into many grounded attacks (tilts, dashattack). You'll eventually learn that her Dair sucks, and you should only use it if your opponent uses a very punishable move where Dair is your only guaranteed punish. Otherwise, people are often ready for you to throw out your laggy-ass Dair.

Don't be afraid to camp with your needles. Charging them can also be used as a bait, but canceling the charge has a bit of lag, so be careful with that.

Up-air and Bouncing Fish are her best KO options other than smashes, though they still KO pretty late. Sheik has many safe offstage options if you're in the position to edgeguard, so just practice them.

Sweetspot upsmash is very powerful. Look for your opponent to airdodge or use a punishable aerial move, and try to hit at the very tip of the upsmash and you can KO much earlier than with anything else Sheik has (other than offstage options).

You can still do well with Sheik without using her ATs, but there's a lot to learn if you want to step up your game. I'm not the person to tell you about those, but there's tons of guides on these boards.

 

[Naf2pro]

Mastering Shiek will definitely be one of my greatest feats

 

[Zankoku]

Don't be afraid to camp with your needles. Charging them can also be used as a bait, but canceling the charge has a bit of lag, so be careful with that.

http://smashboards.com/threads/new-sheik-tech-instant-needle-cancels.402777/

????

 

[Skydra]

http://smashboards.com/threads/new-sheik-tech-instant-needle-cancels.402777/

????

>Charging them can also be used as bait

The "instant needle cancel" is a method of stopping your movement and using an attack by using the unique properties of the STARTUP of the needles. You can't do this when your in the charging animation, not the startup animation, which is what I was referring to.

Sorry, I realized now what you mean