Alright, it's about time I actually made a post about tech chasing. I'm sure lots of people want one, especially because it's *not* just applicable to sheik. Most characters have an application for tech chasing. Without further ado, let's begin...
First, some frame data. Tech in place lasts 26 frames, and tech rolls last 40 frames. This does not change based on the character. Grab hits on frame 7, which means to hit tech in place you can grab at the latest by frame 19. The other limiting factor is human reaction time, and I don't think any player is realistically capable of reacting before frame 18 on a very consistent basis. So to grab tech in place you need to be positioned close enough to their landing, and input grab on frame 18 or 19. The tech rolls are easier to hit since they take longer, provided that your character has a way to close the gap; in sheik's case I can boost grab, with marth and fox I can just dash into a JC grab, with peach I can dash attack etc. As the 20gx guys have mentioned, as long as you react by the frame 18 I just mentioned, falcon can even knee/stomp the tech roll away and behind, respectively.
There are many ways to tech chase effectively, and my best guess is that the more of them you are aware of, the better. At the very least, it can't hurt. So let's start by looking at the animations:
All 3 of fox's tech animations in real time: http://imgur.com/a/Onsab
Fox's forward tech: http://imgur.com/gallery/sX7Ed
Fox's backwards tech: http://imgur.com/gallery/Qq6Pv/
Fox's tech in place: http://imgur.com/gallery/1E3eQ
Miss tech is such a different animation than the others that I don't think you need to study images to recognize it. The character has no tech animation and there is a big green flash. I won't go into detail about how to cover it, because it is fairly character specific (both in terms of the character tech chasing, and the character being tech chased). At a later time I might write about it, or I could answer individual questions about it if anyone has them.
Note that in these images there's two major things you can pay attention to: 1) the animation/physical contortion of fox's body 2) the white and yellow lines that signify the tech. Studying these can be useful, and I am fairly certain that I at the very least subconsciously am aware of both of them.
Outside of using the actual animations, the other important way to approach tech chasing is by learning the timing/rhythm of the tech chase. So the key here is that after they hit the ground, you make a decision on frame 18 of their tech. A huge factor is that when you are watching a character tech and you are reacting, you just check if their character model is still in the same place they landed. If their character model hasn't changed physical locations during your reaction window *and* you see a tech animation at all, you know they must have teched in place. If by the end of your reaction window you realize the character is no where near their initial landing spot, you know it must have been some sort of tech roll. If you keep this in mind, then the real trick to tech chasing is learning the timing for what frame you need to make a decision.
One way of testing this is to go into 20xx's develop mode, and press y+down on dpad to turn on the animation counter. When you grab a fox with sheik let's say, down throw him and let him tech. Press start on the frame you think you need to react and would normally input grab for tech in place; if you are pausing on the 18th or 19th frame of the tech, you've found the timing! (in 20xx, this will be displayed as 17 and 18 because the game starts counting from 0, not 1)
The goal is to be able to consistently react on the correct frame. In that sense, tech chasing is as much of a rhythmic challenge as it is a reactionary challenge. Something I've been considering lately after talking to Dizzkidboogie about wobbling is that music/a metronome could also be used to help with tech chasing! If you think of the frame they hit the ground as the first "beat" and frame 18 (the point in time you need to make a decision) as the second "beat" then that means there is a beat every 18 frames. 18/60 = 3/10, so a beat every 3/10 of a second, which is 10 beats every 3 seconds -->200 beats per minute (the same as wobbling, funnily enough).
For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgk8AfY1u40
Alternatively, music at 200 bpm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7pF6_PeamU
While tech chasing in 20xx, I experimented with having the metronome on during tech chasing. I discovered that the times I didn't grab the tech in place, I was clearly too slow with respect to the beat. When I focused harder on just matching the tempo no matter what, I found myself hitting the options more consistently. Of course there is some bias because I already know how to tech chase, but I can see this being a very useful tool for learning the rhythm of tech chasing. Of course, it is generally unlikely that the music/metronome's beat will match up perfectly with when the character hits the ground; ideally you have a good enough intrinsic sense of the beat that you can sort of mentally shift it appropriately.
So let's say you have the rhythm down, you recognize the animations, the whole shebang...is there anything else? Absolutely! It might depend on your character, but let's take sheik's down throw as an example. One of the things that takes attention away from purely focusing on the tech animations is their DI on the actual throw. The faster you react to the DI they did on the throw, the more time you can spend focusing on the actual tech reaction. If they DI away you should walk towards their landing, if they land in front of you directly you should do nothing, and if they are going to land behind you then you should turn around. With various slight DIs this can be ambiguous, but enough practice will help you recognize which side they will land on better and better. Improving your reaction to the DI on down throw as sheik is almost as important as being good at recognizing the techs; as I said, it takes up valuable mental focus for the reaction.
The last thing I will say is that my experience with tech chasing leads me to believe that discipline is one of the most important parts of this. People ask me how I got so good at it (even though I drop like half my tech chases in tournament LOL) or whether or not I would tech chase in a last stock situation where if I drop it I will die...the answer is yes, I will. The reason I'm better at it than everyone else is because I'm more committed to it; I'm willing to lose trying my best to do it, in hopes that I will eventually not mess it up. I've probably been tech in place shined more times than anyone in the entire history of the game, and that's not an exaggeration.
Have fun everyone, and happy tech chasing!
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Monday, September 21, 2015
HTC Throwdown and Smash Society
Sorry I haven't posted in forever... I keep meaning to, but I can't seem to find a topic I really want to talk about. With HTC just finishing I have a lot to say, even if it's not about the game itself. So I want to take some time to talk about that as honestly as I can. A lot of my thoughts might seem arrogant or might not make sense to a viewer, but they're my honest interpretation of the events. This will be a pretty long post, the first part focusing on various social aspects, and the second part focusing on the actual gameplay. I'll label them, so feel free to skip around.
EDIT: On second thought, I'm just going to make this into two posts. I'll make this the social one, and make a separate one just about how I felt about my gameplay later on.
First of all, what a crazy event! Props to the staff for efficiently running a huge (500?) man tournament in a single day; definitely unheard of in the tournament scene and that's absolutely amazing. Even though what I am about to say is a lot of negative stuff, let me be clear that what the TOs/staff accomplished here was nothing short of a miracle. Honestly, I did have a few personal complaints though, some about the tournament but more about the smash scene in general. First of all, I didn't get a VIP wristband despite HTC flying me out to the tournament .____. I mean I would totally understand if at some other tournament I didn't get one...I mean, who the fuck is druggedfox, right guys??? But when the ones throwing the tournament specifically paid for me to come, I feel like that's an inherent recognition of player skill. You could say it was an accident, but based on how I'm generally treated in the smash community it's unsurprising to me that this happened.
There's a ridiculous bias towards "top players" as well as an unfortunate social dynamic related to it. I talked to Jon (eBay, pgood falcon from Washington) about this a bit while at the tournament and he was so glad I pointed it out, wholeheartedly agreeing. People have known about me for years, but they have never acknowledged me. I don't mean acknowledged any sort of skill I may or may not have, I mean as a person. Prior to my performance at evo, do you think Leffen ever said hi to me as I passed by him? Do you think Shroomed ever stopped to have a conversation with me? I am *not* trying to put those specific players on blast; I was just giving examples to illustrate the concept. Note that these are situations where it would be considered fairly normal/expected for there to be some sort of social interaction; I'm not suggesting that they should arbitrarily go out of their way to do these things. I wouldn't mind this so much, if it wasn't for the fact that immediately following my evo performance...suddenly top level players *did* stop to talk to me. Even players I had never met would wave, say hello, strike up a conversation with me, etc. Obviously this is only a generalization and not true in every case by any means. A great example is s2j, who met me at Apex 2012 and talked to me a lot before ever playing me and knowing how good or not I was; I didn't see him again until we played at CEO 2015, and he acknowledged me and noted that he hadn't seen me in years, etc. Alternatively take Mango, who didn't talk to me before evo OR after evo LOOOL. But when we're both on stage, he'll take initiative to ask me questions or talk to me in a personable fashion.
Ignoring how smasher's treat each other and the VIP nonsense, let's look at seeding. The actual seeding used for the tournament, in my estimation, looked roughly like this:
1. Mango
2. Mew2king
3. Hungrybox
4. Leffen
5. Plup
6. Axe
7. PewPewU
8. Shroomed
9. Silent Wolf
10. Lucky
11. SFAT
12. MacD
13. S2j
14. Hugs
15. Colbol/Zhu
16. Wizzrobe
17. Druggedfox
18. Zhu/Colbol
I was told that Wizzy and I were supposed to be 15/16 (which means we wouldn't have to play round 1), and regardless of whether or not this was an honest mistake it really sucked. I'm good friends with Wizzy and teach him a lot of smash stuff, not to mention we are from Florida and Georgia and already play at some florida locals and various regionals. I can say with high certainty that such a regional/seeding consideration would not have been overlooked for someone in the top 8 seeds, for example.
This isn't the first negative experience I've had related (at least, imo) to my player skill. When I went to I'm Not Yelling there were various expectations of me as a player by the TOs/stream, but without any of the communication on their end that should have come along with it. I don't like being treated like less of a person because I'm perceived to be less of a player, but it's a consistent experience I have had in general.
Alright now let's talk about the crowd. I was so disappointed by the crowd at HTC, since the audience at a tournament is a huge part of the experience (for both the players and the audience). Never before have I seen so much emphasis on favoritism and regional bias, and so little love for GOOD GAMEPLAY. The crowd didn't make me play worse at HTC, it just made me sad (and it's not the first time I've experienced this, but it was the biggest offender for sure). Okay, I get it, I'm not from norcal, or even california. But when me vs colin happens and literally NOBODY cares even though it was one of the most insane sets of the tournament...it just makes me so sad. He almost 4 stocked me. One game I read his attempt to gimp me and killed him with a needle at 0%. We just absolutely fucked each other up. Crazy comebacks were made, there were ridiculous suicides/risky attempts off stage on both ends. In any other context, this would be the shit that gets people hype. People WANT to see the crazy stuff. Nobody cared and it was just so depressing. I could do the sickest sheik shit, never seen before, everyone's quiet. I got waveshine upsmashed by silent wolf/sfat? Crowd goes nuts. It's just so fucking lame, and it's not even a sheik problem. I saw colin do tons of hype shit and nobody cared. Nobody cares about good gameplay, they just want to see their guy win. It just disappoints me so much, because part of what makes me love this game so much is being able to share it with thousands of people who all experience the same thing I am. When I witness crowds like that, it just makes me question that experience entirely, and it's disgusting.
That pretty much wraps up everything I want to comment on. As far as my personal behavior, I sincerely regret not giving silent wolf a better handshake after losing to him to get 4th. I tried to remedy it at the time by giving him a real handshake, but that was still really bad of me and I hope he didn't take it badly. I didn't mean to be disrespectful with the first handshake...I just literally didn't have the heart/energy to give him a real handshake. I tried, and my hands just couldn't do it. Losing the way I did was a huge mix of emotions for me, ranging from disbelief to being upset that my tournament was over, combined with the all the pent up hype/adrenaline from playing 3 sets in a row that all went to game 5. I just couldn't handle it, and I hope that with more experience that doesn't happen to me anymore. Something I *don't* regret at all was popping off at the crowd after beating SFAT. It was 100% unrelated to SFAT and I think he knows that, but I sure was wondering where all the norcal chants went after I killed their hopes and dreams for the tourney. Seriously, I hated that crowd with a passion. Shoutouts to anyone in that crowd that cared more about good melee than they did about seeing me choke so their favorite player could win.
This article was honestly pretty negative, and I didn't start writing it with that intention. I wanted to make a couple side comments spawning from my conversation with Jon, and then focus on HTC from a gameplay perspective...but all the thoughts I didn't really realize I was having came out. Most smashers that I've met and hung out with are honestly awesome people, but there are a lot of social factors that create the issues I mentioned. I don't necessarily expect anything to change from anyone reading this, but if anyone cares about my thoughts then they'll find them here.
I'll hopefully bring you guys a much different post with my discussion of the gameplay at HTC! If not, then I'll at least make a post about something melee related ^__^
EDIT: On second thought, I'm just going to make this into two posts. I'll make this the social one, and make a separate one just about how I felt about my gameplay later on.
Social Stuff
First of all, what a crazy event! Props to the staff for efficiently running a huge (500?) man tournament in a single day; definitely unheard of in the tournament scene and that's absolutely amazing. Even though what I am about to say is a lot of negative stuff, let me be clear that what the TOs/staff accomplished here was nothing short of a miracle. Honestly, I did have a few personal complaints though, some about the tournament but more about the smash scene in general. First of all, I didn't get a VIP wristband despite HTC flying me out to the tournament .____. I mean I would totally understand if at some other tournament I didn't get one...I mean, who the fuck is druggedfox, right guys??? But when the ones throwing the tournament specifically paid for me to come, I feel like that's an inherent recognition of player skill. You could say it was an accident, but based on how I'm generally treated in the smash community it's unsurprising to me that this happened.
There's a ridiculous bias towards "top players" as well as an unfortunate social dynamic related to it. I talked to Jon (eBay, pgood falcon from Washington) about this a bit while at the tournament and he was so glad I pointed it out, wholeheartedly agreeing. People have known about me for years, but they have never acknowledged me. I don't mean acknowledged any sort of skill I may or may not have, I mean as a person. Prior to my performance at evo, do you think Leffen ever said hi to me as I passed by him? Do you think Shroomed ever stopped to have a conversation with me? I am *not* trying to put those specific players on blast; I was just giving examples to illustrate the concept. Note that these are situations where it would be considered fairly normal/expected for there to be some sort of social interaction; I'm not suggesting that they should arbitrarily go out of their way to do these things. I wouldn't mind this so much, if it wasn't for the fact that immediately following my evo performance...suddenly top level players *did* stop to talk to me. Even players I had never met would wave, say hello, strike up a conversation with me, etc. Obviously this is only a generalization and not true in every case by any means. A great example is s2j, who met me at Apex 2012 and talked to me a lot before ever playing me and knowing how good or not I was; I didn't see him again until we played at CEO 2015, and he acknowledged me and noted that he hadn't seen me in years, etc. Alternatively take Mango, who didn't talk to me before evo OR after evo LOOOL. But when we're both on stage, he'll take initiative to ask me questions or talk to me in a personable fashion.
Ignoring how smasher's treat each other and the VIP nonsense, let's look at seeding. The actual seeding used for the tournament, in my estimation, looked roughly like this:
1. Mango
2. Mew2king
3. Hungrybox
4. Leffen
5. Plup
6. Axe
7. PewPewU
8. Shroomed
9. Silent Wolf
10. Lucky
11. SFAT
12. MacD
13. S2j
14. Hugs
15. Colbol/Zhu
16. Wizzrobe
17. Druggedfox
18. Zhu/Colbol
I was told that Wizzy and I were supposed to be 15/16 (which means we wouldn't have to play round 1), and regardless of whether or not this was an honest mistake it really sucked. I'm good friends with Wizzy and teach him a lot of smash stuff, not to mention we are from Florida and Georgia and already play at some florida locals and various regionals. I can say with high certainty that such a regional/seeding consideration would not have been overlooked for someone in the top 8 seeds, for example.
This isn't the first negative experience I've had related (at least, imo) to my player skill. When I went to I'm Not Yelling there were various expectations of me as a player by the TOs/stream, but without any of the communication on their end that should have come along with it. I don't like being treated like less of a person because I'm perceived to be less of a player, but it's a consistent experience I have had in general.
Alright now let's talk about the crowd. I was so disappointed by the crowd at HTC, since the audience at a tournament is a huge part of the experience (for both the players and the audience). Never before have I seen so much emphasis on favoritism and regional bias, and so little love for GOOD GAMEPLAY. The crowd didn't make me play worse at HTC, it just made me sad (and it's not the first time I've experienced this, but it was the biggest offender for sure). Okay, I get it, I'm not from norcal, or even california. But when me vs colin happens and literally NOBODY cares even though it was one of the most insane sets of the tournament...it just makes me so sad. He almost 4 stocked me. One game I read his attempt to gimp me and killed him with a needle at 0%. We just absolutely fucked each other up. Crazy comebacks were made, there were ridiculous suicides/risky attempts off stage on both ends. In any other context, this would be the shit that gets people hype. People WANT to see the crazy stuff. Nobody cared and it was just so depressing. I could do the sickest sheik shit, never seen before, everyone's quiet. I got waveshine upsmashed by silent wolf/sfat? Crowd goes nuts. It's just so fucking lame, and it's not even a sheik problem. I saw colin do tons of hype shit and nobody cared. Nobody cares about good gameplay, they just want to see their guy win. It just disappoints me so much, because part of what makes me love this game so much is being able to share it with thousands of people who all experience the same thing I am. When I witness crowds like that, it just makes me question that experience entirely, and it's disgusting.
That pretty much wraps up everything I want to comment on. As far as my personal behavior, I sincerely regret not giving silent wolf a better handshake after losing to him to get 4th. I tried to remedy it at the time by giving him a real handshake, but that was still really bad of me and I hope he didn't take it badly. I didn't mean to be disrespectful with the first handshake...I just literally didn't have the heart/energy to give him a real handshake. I tried, and my hands just couldn't do it. Losing the way I did was a huge mix of emotions for me, ranging from disbelief to being upset that my tournament was over, combined with the all the pent up hype/adrenaline from playing 3 sets in a row that all went to game 5. I just couldn't handle it, and I hope that with more experience that doesn't happen to me anymore. Something I *don't* regret at all was popping off at the crowd after beating SFAT. It was 100% unrelated to SFAT and I think he knows that, but I sure was wondering where all the norcal chants went after I killed their hopes and dreams for the tourney. Seriously, I hated that crowd with a passion. Shoutouts to anyone in that crowd that cared more about good melee than they did about seeing me choke so their favorite player could win.
This article was honestly pretty negative, and I didn't start writing it with that intention. I wanted to make a couple side comments spawning from my conversation with Jon, and then focus on HTC from a gameplay perspective...but all the thoughts I didn't really realize I was having came out. Most smashers that I've met and hung out with are honestly awesome people, but there are a lot of social factors that create the issues I mentioned. I don't necessarily expect anything to change from anyone reading this, but if anyone cares about my thoughts then they'll find them here.
I'll hopefully bring you guys a much different post with my discussion of the gameplay at HTC! If not, then I'll at least make a post about something melee related ^__^
Friday, July 10, 2015
Sheik Shield Pressure
Shield pressure with sheik is so exciting and underdeveloped!! First I will explain why I think it is relevant/useful...why do I even need to talk about this? Non sheik players will benefit from this as well, since I talk about how to beat things that sheik players normally do.
Primarily for these two reasons (although there are others) I feel that exploring alternative forms of pressuring your opponent is beneficial. Additionally, sheik's aerial pressure options are actually really good, as opposed to just being useful for the aforementioned reasons.
I'm going to break down each aerial individually (roughly from worst to best), because they each have a use on shield.
- Ground moves on shield are so unsafe! Here is how most characters can punish your ground moves as a sheik player:
- Jab is shield grabbable at anything but *max* range, and the second jab is always CCable (well, ASDI down-able). I don't know how it isn't common yet, but as soon as someone sees a jab they can input shield grab and hold down. If sheik does a second jab it gets ASDI'd down into a grab, if she doesn't then she gets grabbed after the first time. No, jab-->spotdodge/dsmash/ftilt do not actually work if your opponent reacts effectively. At max range jab is a respectable tool to throw off your opponent's timing and still pressure them.
- Forward tilt, even when spaced, is directly punishable by: fox, falco, marth, falcon, jigglypuff, and maybe sheik (I forget if nair OoS punishes at max range). Fox can wavedash into shine, as can falco; jigglypuff can wavedash and rest you. Marth can fair out of shield or shield grab. Falcon can nair/upair (though both can be ASDI'd down, so it's actually not that bad an option against him). Even if they don't have a direct punish, if they react fast enough they are at advantage! For example in the sheik mirror, I frequently wavedash forward if someone ftilts my shield. If I do it fast enough, I'm at roughly 3-4 frames of advantage (and thus can force a mixup, if I so choose), and if they throw out another move after the ftilt I can CC grab them and kill them.
- Down tilt is punishable in the exact same ways as forward tilt, and is even more unsafe. Since you are crouching, it is slightly more effective vs. falcon than it otherwise would be, but otherwise it has all the same issues.
- Down smash, unless it gets all 3 hits on your shield, is punishable by WD grab with every single character. Unless you shield DI towards sheik, she'll pretty much never get all 3 hits on your shield, even when she does it in your face. Even if she gets all 3 hits, it is about as safe as ftilt (aka still wavedash rest-able and you're gonna die LOL).
- Uptilt is always punishable by shield grab in between the hits. If you get the second hit to hit their shield, I believe you are +2, which is admittedly pretty absurd. The biggest thing with this is that even if they react too slowly to punish in between the first and second hit, they can just ASDI down and punish the second hit. For example if you uptilt fox's shield, he can always just input shield grab on reaction (with no intention to punish the first hit) and simply hold down during the grab startup. He will then proceed to waveshine you across the entirety of FD (because you deserve it, for uptilting his shield) and probably kill you if he's any good, or at least get like 60 damage.
- Grab is a good counter to shield, but if that's your only counter to shield then it becomes fairly easy to both avoid and call you out on it. Generally speaking, if you only have one effective way of beating a situation, a good player can design a counter strategy that will have strictly neutral to positive expected value. Your grabs will also be scarier if you have an appropriate mixup with them, for your opponent to fear.
Primarily for these two reasons (although there are others) I feel that exploring alternative forms of pressuring your opponent is beneficial. Additionally, sheik's aerial pressure options are actually really good, as opposed to just being useful for the aforementioned reasons.
I'm going to break down each aerial individually (roughly from worst to best), because they each have a use on shield.
- Up air: Okay I lied, they don't all have a use. If you find yourself upairing someone's shield as sheik when they aren't above you, you should probably reset that match and try again >_>. It's her laggiest aerial (12 frames of lag, I believe), and pretty much does nothing lmao. I guess you can use it if you like being different.
- Down air: Surprisingly good imo. Despite being a move that looks like it would be extremely laggy, it only has 10 frames of lag. Now, this is a little too unsafe to be doing point blank on someone's shield, but its not nearly as criminal as upairing someone's shield. Dair is actually very big, and has very high reward if it hits. You can use it when you expect someone to roll towards you, and if it whiffs you've pretty much lost nothing. If you want to be more aggressive with it (and think they might whiff an attack/grab) you can always drift behind them and be fairly safe against most of the cast. It's easily big enough that you can even space outside of falco and fox's shine out of shield. I wouldn't recommend doing this often, but it's not useless for sure. High reward, good drift options, can be spaced effectively and not have horrendous frame disadvantage.
- Back air: Depending on the range, you can do weak bairs and dash before someone can shield grab you. This is definitely very spacing dependent if the opponent grabs as soon as possible, but situationally it is certainly usable. If you get a sweetspot bair on someone's shield (which will be rare) you will be anywhere from 0 to -2 (most likely) depending on how low you hit their shield. Since sheik outranges pretty much everyone, this is actually a pretty solid advantage given that you have a the space and time necessary to setup further pressure.
Before I continue, it is important to note that there is a way of doing aerials that sheik players currently do not do. It is generally standard to do your aerial first, and then fastfall during the startup frames of your aerial. The advantage to doing this is that you can actually start the aerial BEFORE sheik can actually fastfall, and then during the startup frames you will reach the point in your jump where you can fastfall. While this is optimal in certain situations for sure (when you want the aerial to be as soon as possible), it is not always. Sheik has a relatively high short hop, as well as fast aerials. This is a unique combination that allows her to short hop, input the fastfall, and then input the aerial as she is already fastfalling. This technique is very useful for doing aerials as low as possible on someone's shield, giving you the maximum possible frame advantage. It has other uses as well, but I want to focus on this particular use for now.
Relevant information regarding sheik's short hop and fastfall: The earliest possible frame for sheik to fastfall is frame 19 of her short hop. If you hold down starting on frame 16, it will buffer (so there is a 3 frame window, for frames 16, 17 and 18) your fastfall frame perfectly on the 19th frame.
Relevant information regarding sheik's short hop and fastfall: The earliest possible frame for sheik to fastfall is frame 19 of her short hop. If you hold down starting on frame 16, it will buffer (so there is a 3 frame window, for frames 16, 17 and 18) your fastfall frame perfectly on the 19th frame.
- Forward air: There are two ways to forward air on shield in terms of timing, and three ways in terms of spacing. As far as timing, you can either go for the auto cancel fair, or the lowest possible fair and l-cancel it. If fair is done at the lowest possible point relative to the ground, it is -1 on shield. The auto cancel is also -1 if done perfectly, but in practice I feel like it is generally -2 (since if you're going for the auto cancel, you usually want to do the fair as early as possible to cover the possibility of them preemptively moving). To execute a fair that results in maximum frame advantage, you can input fair and fastfall on frame 16 of your short hop as long as don't let go of down until frame 19 (which is when the fastfall will begin). In relation to spacing, you can either space your fair totally outside of shield grab range, in shield grab range but still somewhat spaced, or point blank. In the first two cases, you can always dash backwards before the opponent can shield grab. In the last case, you can dash through your opponent before a shield grab will hit you. Auto cancel fair is generally better, because it allows you to attack earlier with similar frame advantage; mixing up your timing, however, is often beneficial in order to create a different set of expectations for your opponent, particularly when combined with varying visual cues.
- Neutral air: If you use the technique where you fastfall into the nair, it is actually +0 on shield, which is incredible. This means that with port priority, you can actually grab your opponent before they can shield grab (because you have initiative as the aggressor, your timings should be better anyway, and port priority aside you should generally do all your actions more perfectly than your opponent will). Much like fair, you can also dash back before they can shield grab. After doing a delayed nair, sheik can also short hop (even point blank) over shield grab (even a marth height shield grab); this allows you to play reactively and potentially set up more pressure, or to go for a higher reward play which is still safe. For example, you can do a delayed nair-->SH setup, and react to what they do from there: if they whiff a grab, falling upair/nair/fair, but if they keep shielding reset your pressure with another delayed nair. If you want a higher reward, you can do a delayed nair-->SH dair (then drift behind them). Assuming they are out of ASDI down %, you can get a pretty juicy combo if they try to grab, while staying safe by drifting behind them (and depending on the character, actually pressuring them because they have mediocre options behind them). Even if your opponent doesn't just try to shield grab, the threat of delayed nair-->grab is pretty huge, since it will beat attempts to wavedash (a common higher level option vs. sheik, since most good players expect sheik to dash back after aerials to stay safe vs shield grab, they will either chase her down with a WD forward or escape with a WD back). Many fox players might even just full hop out of shield as soon as you hit their shield (and they all get destroyed by armada's upairs LOL), but if you just SH and prepare yourself to react, you are at an advantageous position below them.
I just listed some example uses, but there are, of course, more situations to consider. The tl;dr is that sheik's aerials (particularly fair, and especially nair) are actually quite effective if the opponent gives you enough setup time (which sheik can easily force!). Oh, and the rest of the tl;dr is that her ground moves are pretty much garbage on shield. I hope that, in particular, more sheik players mess around with fastfalling into an aerial rather than the other way around, and figuring out the many situations that it can be used in. I currently suspect that delay nair is probably an optimal combo tool in many situations, but I'll talk about that another time!
Thursday, July 9, 2015
CEO!
It's been a couple weeks since CEO now, but I still want to take the time to get my thoughts down about it. I still want to post shield pressure stuff and vs. falco stuff, so both of those will probably happen within a week or so. For now though, CEO!
So I got there a few days early, which allowed me to attend the Tuesday local, as well as getting friendlies throughout the week with various players. The local went decently for me, but not great: I played a bunch of randoms until Eikelmann, beat him by pretty large margins, then lost to wizzy 2-1 and played pretty mediocre. I went to losers, played pretty mediocrely vs captain crunch and pengie...just couldn't play how I do in friendlies. I went up against gahtzu next and 3-1'd him, I think with two 3 stocks? The game he won he 3 stocked me though, and it got me featured in his 90 second combo video LOL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s9ox6Si6Tc
I played a bit better but it was still not great (though I have learned to not let this negatively affect me). I come up on wizzy next, and I beat him 3-2. I'm glad I beat him, but I know I can play far, far better. I sorta rushed through all that to get to talking about loser's finals with hbox. God I was *sooooooooooo* motivated after losing to him 3-0. I never want to lose to hungrybox again, period. Every game we played was totally in my grasp, then I would misjudge a situation, or have a small mental lapse and just die...that matchup is something I need to brainstorm more. I've watched plup play it, and honestly there's a lot of stuff he does that works vs hbox that I don't want to do. Soft actually does a ton of sick stuff that hbox doesn't do and it changes the matchup drastically. Namely, every single tilt and smash attack is punishable on shield by REST. Ftilt, dtilt, and dsmash are all punishable by WD rest and it's actually pretty insane. Plup plays a game where he seems to go either full defense, or full offense (when he has an advantage) and pressure hbox, but so much of that pressure comes from potentially unsafe things. Not to say that he's not amazing at the matchup, beating hbox consistently now, but still. I've thought so much about it, but I need to keep working on it; I need a way to keep pressure on puff without resorting to doing unsafe things on her shield. I'm confident sheik wins, but executing it is definitely non trivial...especially if I want to win in a way that I can be happy about (i.e. not by dsmashing puff's shield).
Moving on, I stayed with harriet and got to play him, plup, abate, and tai in decently extended sessions. Playing harriet was lots of fun, and I like to think all our practice helped him beat chillin in winners pretty convincingly, but he probably coulda done that anyway to be honest. Playing plup went about as expected: pretty even, and our games look a lot different than most people's games. We have a fairly similar approach to the game at a fundamental level, and anytime I get to play him I feel like I can *actually* play melee for once. Playing tai was also super fun since I haven't seen/played that guy in forever; he'd improved a lot, and he did a lot of both good and creative things. That said, I had been working a lot on marth vs. sheik (ever since losing to the moon) and I think it really showed in how our games went. I mostly played falcon against abate and that honestly was fairly easy; falcon is just sooooooo easy to play vs. luigi. Abate is definitely really good, but I'm starting to realize more and more that all the luigi players are far too used to doing extremely punishable things that work vs most people. When I played blea later with falcon it went pretty much the same; they're both amazing players, but it is too easy to just rely on CC'ing their jabs and unsafe nairs, or attacking out of shield between double aerials. Like if luigi does a rising fair/dair/bair on my shield, as falcon I just nair OoS before the second aerial comes out and potentially death combo him, its great. I'd like to see more players keep the good luigi players honest, and see how it helps them improve!
CEO itself also went pretty mediocre for me, but again, it happens. I played a terrible set with milkman in winners semi's of our pool...he just played so badly, and I know he's way better than that. I go to play s2j on stream, I'm in control the entire first game, but I just don't close out any of the edgeguards and I end up suiciding at literally 0% and lose a last stock last hit game. I proceed to play terribly game 2, likely as a result of what happened game 1, and he honestly just dominates me. He definitely deserved to beat me, but I would like to play him again without being a total buster; I think it's pretty unlikely that I'll lose unless he plays notably better. I play milkman in the runback in loser's finals, and he plays far better which I was happy about; we had a dead even game 1 that he probably should have won, but I stepped it up game 2 and won very solidly. First round of bracket (loser's, since I lost in pools and its fgc style) I fight porkchops. Ever since I played zhu, even though I beat him, I worked a lot on cleaning up my vs. falco game; I had the right idea, but there were some rough spots. I'm pretty happy with 3 and 2 stocking porkchops, although its definitely a matchup he's not very familiar with, I definitely feel like I played it cleanly. I played wizzy afterwards, and lost 2-0 in last stock games. Game 2 was a little unfortunate, since SFAT got up from the setup next to me and blocked the screen long enough for me to get stomped at 0 (this led to a death combo, since its wizzy). I wasn't really salty, since I didn't particularly feel like I deserved to win anyway.
Outside of actual tournament matches, I did a 0 dollar MM with laudandus (we just agreed to play seriously) and won pretty solidly with chaingrabs. I did real MMs with darkrain (3-0 win), gahtzu (3-1 win), arc (3-0 and 3-2 wins), and colbol (3-1 win). I also played arc in about an hour of friendlies, and as I said with playing tai, my work vs marth definitely showed. Fuck marth though, that matchup is even or marth's favor LOL. Anyway, also got to play $mike (definite improvement from last time, dude is mad good) and frootloop(rusty tucan, bring him back to form!) in a decent number of friendlies which went well.
The last set of games I want to talk about is a friendly set I played with armada, which I was pretty happy about. I sat down to play him, and beat him in peach sheik in a last hit match on dreamland. Peach is my probably my worst matchup (see me 3 stocking macd, then getting dsmashed for 2 games straight Kappa) so I was actually really happy that I was able to play well (I don't care that much about the actual win, just that I played the matchup decently). It was just supposed to be a single game, but it turned into a set; he beat me in game 2 on FD which also went to last stock lsat hit. Game 3 he switched to fox and we got dreamland, though I'm not sure if it's because he got tired of peach vs. sheik or just because he wanted to try out his fox. I took the first 2 stocks without gimps, taking only 6%, and ended up winning the game pretty solidly (JV 2, though I had the JV 3 and was a buster on the edgeguard and got shined lmao). He immediately goes back to peach, and I guess we play a 3/5 now? He wins a last stock last hit game on yoshi's game 4, and then wins game 5 on battlefield, last stock and around 50% on him (not quite last hit, but still close). It was just a friendly set, but it still gives me confidence that if I can at least do decently in my worst matchup vs. armada, then I really just need to keep focusing on my tournament mentality and maintaining composure and everything else will work out from there.
Now it's time for evo, where I'll do the best I can, and move on from there! I'm super excited ^__^
So I got there a few days early, which allowed me to attend the Tuesday local, as well as getting friendlies throughout the week with various players. The local went decently for me, but not great: I played a bunch of randoms until Eikelmann, beat him by pretty large margins, then lost to wizzy 2-1 and played pretty mediocre. I went to losers, played pretty mediocrely vs captain crunch and pengie...just couldn't play how I do in friendlies. I went up against gahtzu next and 3-1'd him, I think with two 3 stocks? The game he won he 3 stocked me though, and it got me featured in his 90 second combo video LOL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s9ox6Si6Tc
I played a bit better but it was still not great (though I have learned to not let this negatively affect me). I come up on wizzy next, and I beat him 3-2. I'm glad I beat him, but I know I can play far, far better. I sorta rushed through all that to get to talking about loser's finals with hbox. God I was *sooooooooooo* motivated after losing to him 3-0. I never want to lose to hungrybox again, period. Every game we played was totally in my grasp, then I would misjudge a situation, or have a small mental lapse and just die...that matchup is something I need to brainstorm more. I've watched plup play it, and honestly there's a lot of stuff he does that works vs hbox that I don't want to do. Soft actually does a ton of sick stuff that hbox doesn't do and it changes the matchup drastically. Namely, every single tilt and smash attack is punishable on shield by REST. Ftilt, dtilt, and dsmash are all punishable by WD rest and it's actually pretty insane. Plup plays a game where he seems to go either full defense, or full offense (when he has an advantage) and pressure hbox, but so much of that pressure comes from potentially unsafe things. Not to say that he's not amazing at the matchup, beating hbox consistently now, but still. I've thought so much about it, but I need to keep working on it; I need a way to keep pressure on puff without resorting to doing unsafe things on her shield. I'm confident sheik wins, but executing it is definitely non trivial...especially if I want to win in a way that I can be happy about (i.e. not by dsmashing puff's shield).
Moving on, I stayed with harriet and got to play him, plup, abate, and tai in decently extended sessions. Playing harriet was lots of fun, and I like to think all our practice helped him beat chillin in winners pretty convincingly, but he probably coulda done that anyway to be honest. Playing plup went about as expected: pretty even, and our games look a lot different than most people's games. We have a fairly similar approach to the game at a fundamental level, and anytime I get to play him I feel like I can *actually* play melee for once. Playing tai was also super fun since I haven't seen/played that guy in forever; he'd improved a lot, and he did a lot of both good and creative things. That said, I had been working a lot on marth vs. sheik (ever since losing to the moon) and I think it really showed in how our games went. I mostly played falcon against abate and that honestly was fairly easy; falcon is just sooooooo easy to play vs. luigi. Abate is definitely really good, but I'm starting to realize more and more that all the luigi players are far too used to doing extremely punishable things that work vs most people. When I played blea later with falcon it went pretty much the same; they're both amazing players, but it is too easy to just rely on CC'ing their jabs and unsafe nairs, or attacking out of shield between double aerials. Like if luigi does a rising fair/dair/bair on my shield, as falcon I just nair OoS before the second aerial comes out and potentially death combo him, its great. I'd like to see more players keep the good luigi players honest, and see how it helps them improve!
CEO itself also went pretty mediocre for me, but again, it happens. I played a terrible set with milkman in winners semi's of our pool...he just played so badly, and I know he's way better than that. I go to play s2j on stream, I'm in control the entire first game, but I just don't close out any of the edgeguards and I end up suiciding at literally 0% and lose a last stock last hit game. I proceed to play terribly game 2, likely as a result of what happened game 1, and he honestly just dominates me. He definitely deserved to beat me, but I would like to play him again without being a total buster; I think it's pretty unlikely that I'll lose unless he plays notably better. I play milkman in the runback in loser's finals, and he plays far better which I was happy about; we had a dead even game 1 that he probably should have won, but I stepped it up game 2 and won very solidly. First round of bracket (loser's, since I lost in pools and its fgc style) I fight porkchops. Ever since I played zhu, even though I beat him, I worked a lot on cleaning up my vs. falco game; I had the right idea, but there were some rough spots. I'm pretty happy with 3 and 2 stocking porkchops, although its definitely a matchup he's not very familiar with, I definitely feel like I played it cleanly. I played wizzy afterwards, and lost 2-0 in last stock games. Game 2 was a little unfortunate, since SFAT got up from the setup next to me and blocked the screen long enough for me to get stomped at 0 (this led to a death combo, since its wizzy). I wasn't really salty, since I didn't particularly feel like I deserved to win anyway.
Outside of actual tournament matches, I did a 0 dollar MM with laudandus (we just agreed to play seriously) and won pretty solidly with chaingrabs. I did real MMs with darkrain (3-0 win), gahtzu (3-1 win), arc (3-0 and 3-2 wins), and colbol (3-1 win). I also played arc in about an hour of friendlies, and as I said with playing tai, my work vs marth definitely showed. Fuck marth though, that matchup is even or marth's favor LOL. Anyway, also got to play $mike (definite improvement from last time, dude is mad good) and frootloop(rusty tucan, bring him back to form!) in a decent number of friendlies which went well.
The last set of games I want to talk about is a friendly set I played with armada, which I was pretty happy about. I sat down to play him, and beat him in peach sheik in a last hit match on dreamland. Peach is my probably my worst matchup (see me 3 stocking macd, then getting dsmashed for 2 games straight Kappa) so I was actually really happy that I was able to play well (I don't care that much about the actual win, just that I played the matchup decently). It was just supposed to be a single game, but it turned into a set; he beat me in game 2 on FD which also went to last stock lsat hit. Game 3 he switched to fox and we got dreamland, though I'm not sure if it's because he got tired of peach vs. sheik or just because he wanted to try out his fox. I took the first 2 stocks without gimps, taking only 6%, and ended up winning the game pretty solidly (JV 2, though I had the JV 3 and was a buster on the edgeguard and got shined lmao). He immediately goes back to peach, and I guess we play a 3/5 now? He wins a last stock last hit game on yoshi's game 4, and then wins game 5 on battlefield, last stock and around 50% on him (not quite last hit, but still close). It was just a friendly set, but it still gives me confidence that if I can at least do decently in my worst matchup vs. armada, then I really just need to keep focusing on my tournament mentality and maintaining composure and everything else will work out from there.
Now it's time for evo, where I'll do the best I can, and move on from there! I'm super excited ^__^
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Sheik On Peach Action
I haven't abandoned the blog, I have just been playing a ton of melee! Later today, or maybe in the next couple days, I'm going to post a summary of the florida local/CEO for my own benefit (and if anyone is interested). For now though, I'm going to post a better arranged version of sheik dthrow on peach stuff. This will probably soon be followed up by some sheik vs. falco matchup ideas, and a sheik shield pressure post! I'm super excited to talk about shield pressure with sheik, but I've been holding off because I lost my capture card so I can't record examples...I'll probably make a post anyway, and trust that everyone can figure it out based on just text. Anyway, onto some sheik dthrowing peach:
If she times her DJ correctly she'll jump out, and if she buffers a float she can punish your whiffed grab with fair-->combo.
Of course this also means she's at risk of losing her DJ if you opt for something besides regrab, and slightly delay it to catch her jump.
I'm fairly sure dash attack doesn't combo on DI away, but again, it forces them to jump to avoid it. In practice I've had success with it, but peach players don't seem to know the counter strats out of dthrow very well.
Finally, you can always go for SH or FH fair. FH fair can be good, especially if you have some charge of needles; this is because after the fair hits peach, she is directly at the 45 degree angle below you. This allows you to pressure with falling needles or falling fair/nair. If you go for the SH, your goal should be to auto cancel as soon as possible and go for a mixup afterwards. Depending on her DI, you can go for an immediate grab with high likelihood of success (if she doesn't go into the ground immediately, but also isn't high enough to mash nair out). Otherwise you can DD bait, ftilt, or set up more SH pressure.
I shortly explain usage for ftilt/nair on slight DI away that is relevant for this DI as well, so reference that.
Dash SH upair does work, and while it won't true combo into anything it has its benefits. You can uptilt afterwards and it'll always hit her before she can jump/float out, though she can trade nair with this. More and more I'm realizing sheik has a lot of *almost* real combos in general, and I think option selecting an ASDI down with c stick at low % actually leads to great stuff. You can SH upair, auto cancel, uptilt then ASDI down; if she nairs it will trade with your uptilt and she'll be in normal stun, while you'll be able to move almost instantly because of the ASDI. Of course you can also just wait below her, DD grab or shieldgrab the nair, or even just crouch and wait/react (then throw out a move, react to her jumping, etc).
On even slighter DI, walk uptilt should combo, or at least hit her before a nair can startup. Again, the closer she is to you, the more viable ftilt is as an option. This includes being a decent option on DI behind. In general ftilt/nair can both be used for a similar purpose: if you can't true combo her, both are likely to put her high enough in the air to either be in an awkward position or land on a platform. This usage of ftilt/nair is also viable on full DI away.
DI Away
Chaingrab on DI away works, but is technically speaking port dependent. If sheik's port number is greater than the opponent's (4 being the greatest) then she has a true CG on peach which requires you to be frame perfect. I am not sure how long the CG goes, but I'd estimate 20-30%. If you are the lower port number peach has 1 frame to escape.If she times her DJ correctly she'll jump out, and if she buffers a float she can punish your whiffed grab with fair-->combo.
Of course this also means she's at risk of losing her DJ if you opt for something besides regrab, and slightly delay it to catch her jump.
I'm fairly sure dash attack doesn't combo on DI away, but again, it forces them to jump to avoid it. In practice I've had success with it, but peach players don't seem to know the counter strats out of dthrow very well.
Finally, you can always go for SH or FH fair. FH fair can be good, especially if you have some charge of needles; this is because after the fair hits peach, she is directly at the 45 degree angle below you. This allows you to pressure with falling needles or falling fair/nair. If you go for the SH, your goal should be to auto cancel as soon as possible and go for a mixup afterwards. Depending on her DI, you can go for an immediate grab with high likelihood of success (if she doesn't go into the ground immediately, but also isn't high enough to mash nair out). Otherwise you can DD bait, ftilt, or set up more SH pressure.
I shortly explain usage for ftilt/nair on slight DI away that is relevant for this DI as well, so reference that.
Slight DI away
On slight DI away ftilt isn't that bad, but it's not that great either. You can always go for the regrab and just ASDI down in case of her mashing nair out, but again if she acutally buffers float or DJs out then you'll get punished.Dash SH upair does work, and while it won't true combo into anything it has its benefits. You can uptilt afterwards and it'll always hit her before she can jump/float out, though she can trade nair with this. More and more I'm realizing sheik has a lot of *almost* real combos in general, and I think option selecting an ASDI down with c stick at low % actually leads to great stuff. You can SH upair, auto cancel, uptilt then ASDI down; if she nairs it will trade with your uptilt and she'll be in normal stun, while you'll be able to move almost instantly because of the ASDI. Of course you can also just wait below her, DD grab or shieldgrab the nair, or even just crouch and wait/react (then throw out a move, react to her jumping, etc).
On even slighter DI, walk uptilt should combo, or at least hit her before a nair can startup. Again, the closer she is to you, the more viable ftilt is as an option. This includes being a decent option on DI behind. In general ftilt/nair can both be used for a similar purpose: if you can't true combo her, both are likely to put her high enough in the air to either be in an awkward position or land on a platform. This usage of ftilt/nair is also viable on full DI away.
No DI and DI behind
On no DI and DI behind, uptilt is probably your best bet until you can start upairing (which becomes viable at pretty low % vs peach in particular). Make sure to turn around uptilt on the DI behind, and ideally mix up your uptilt timing as much as possible (this is the case in every matchup). The more delayed the uptilt, the better, but this makes your timing predictable insofar as the opponent using SDI to escape a followup. The best SDI to escape is SDI'ing upwards on the uptilt, but then that is mediocre DI vs. ftilt.Other stuff
Upsmash does not true combo off dthrow at any %, regardless of port as far as I can tell. At low % she can always nair out, at higher % she can DJ out. The fact that she has to DJ/float at higher % forces a mixup though. If she relies on jumping out, you can do delayed tilts or fairs to catch her out of a jump. If you fair peach out of a float/DJ at like 80 and she goes off stage, you probably get a guaranteed kill. If she refuses to jump, tipper upsmash kills at very low %.Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Optimizing defensive timings to deal with pressure
So in a recent conversation I was discussing how I manage to deal with a particular mixup, namely fox double shining vs. shine grabbing on my shield. The objection was that somehow I managed to roll every single time my opponent went for shine-grab, despite never getting hit by the double shine. At this point most people defer to the standard "your opponent is being predictable" as an explanation, but after thinking about it more I realized that this is a concept that I've almost never heard discussed even though it's pretty important in melee. If you are familiar with more traditional fighting games, this is similar (and in some situations, identical) to crouch teching.
The real answer isn't that I knew what my opponent would do, but rather that I had a specific defensive timing optimized to deal with that particular mixup. Let me explain: fox's shine is +2 on block, so a perfect double shine will hit on the opponent's second actionable frame (3 frames of jump squat, shine hits on the 4th frame, but fox has a 2 frame advantage). If you buffer a roll to avoid a shine grab, you will be hit by the shine; roll is not invincible until frame 4, so fox actually has 1 frame of leniency for hitting this. Shine-grab, on the other hand, does not hit until the opponent's sixth actionable frame (JC grab out of the shine takes 8 frames, and again, fox is +2). So if, instead of buffering the roll, you time it on your 3rd actionable frame (well, you input it on the frame before this, because the game will read it on the next possible frame), you can avoid the shine-grab while also avoiding all double shine timings which beat a buffered roll! I'll put some tables below showing why this is the case, if it isn't clear already. For reference, after fox shines a shield there are 3 frames of hitlag and 3 frames he has to wait in shine before he can do anything; the +2 on block already takes that into account, so all the tables will just start counting from fox's first actionable frame (aka the first frame he can jump out of shine, which is 2 frames before the opponent can move).
Hopefully the visuals help explain it a bit. Obviously varying degrees of perfection on each end greatly change the result. For example, if the fox isn't frame perfect shine-grabbing you can do a 3 frame delay before rolling to beat the shine-grab, which allows you to account for more potential double shine timings. This type of thinking isn't only useful vs fox and falco pressure! It can also be applied to other fairly common situations in melee; I'll give one more example, and beyond that I trust you to use this to brainstorm timings for various defensive situations.
Let's take the situation where sheik fairs your shield...what do you do? Well, consider it from sheik's side, for a moment. Unless she is already spaced outside of your grab range, she needs to account for an immediate shield grab somehow (unless she's willing to read that you won't shield grab immediately, a huge risk for her). So how can she beat someone who shield grabs her fair? She can buffer a roll or spotdodge, dash backwards after the fair, or throw out a move (jab or dsmash, for example). Given that she will generally take an action to stay safe after fair, you can time a WD OoS to account for all of those things! The trick is that you time the WD so that you don't get hit by an attack immediately after fair. I won't go through the trouble of making tables again, but if I recall correctly sheik's perfect fair is -2 (or sometthing like that) on block. So you take this into account, and delay your WD OoS so that you'd block her move right before trying to WD, but if she doesn't throw out a move you can escape before she can punish you. For example, most of the good sheiks in the current meta do a sequence along the lines of fair-->dash back-->dash back in-->grab (hypothetically, you may have missed a shield grab trying to punish her fair). I've seen a lot of players do things like a delayed shield grab to beat the sheik dashing back in, which is fine, but by employing the WD OoS at an optimized timing to account for her best options (dash back being probably her safest one) you're already gone by the time she dashes back towards you!
So if she throws out a move, you block it (although you attempted to input WD already, but shieldstun will prevent you from doing so) and punish it. If she tries to buffer a roll/spotdodge or dash back, you evade her before she can do anything to punish you. Her only way of countering this is by taking a meaningful risk (such as delaying her attack after the fair to catch your WD, but that makes her fair shield grabbable). I'm not saying that using this tactic is unbeatable for sheik, far from it. I am saying, however, that you force her to make a risky read to hit you, in a situation that's generally considered strong for sheik.
The essence of "optimizing" your defensive timings is that you take into account their strongest options that they need to use to avoid a standard response from you(i.e. sheik needs to account for an immediate shield grab from you after her fair). By assessing their strongest options, you can come up with a timing that simultaneously deals with many of their options, which will generally force them to take a risk if they want to call you out on it. This will be different for each character and situation of course, but developing a standardized option set in all these common situations can go a long way in improving your defensive gameplay.
The real answer isn't that I knew what my opponent would do, but rather that I had a specific defensive timing optimized to deal with that particular mixup. Let me explain: fox's shine is +2 on block, so a perfect double shine will hit on the opponent's second actionable frame (3 frames of jump squat, shine hits on the 4th frame, but fox has a 2 frame advantage). If you buffer a roll to avoid a shine grab, you will be hit by the shine; roll is not invincible until frame 4, so fox actually has 1 frame of leniency for hitting this. Shine-grab, on the other hand, does not hit until the opponent's sixth actionable frame (JC grab out of the shine takes 8 frames, and again, fox is +2). So if, instead of buffering the roll, you time it on your 3rd actionable frame (well, you input it on the frame before this, because the game will read it on the next possible frame), you can avoid the shine-grab while also avoiding all double shine timings which beat a buffered roll! I'll put some tables below showing why this is the case, if it isn't clear already. For reference, after fox shines a shield there are 3 frames of hitlag and 3 frames he has to wait in shine before he can do anything; the +2 on block already takes that into account, so all the tables will just start counting from fox's first actionable frame (aka the first frame he can jump out of shine, which is 2 frames before the opponent can move).
| Fox | Not fox |
|---|---|
| jump 1 | |
| jump 2 | |
| jump 3 | you can move now, roll 1 |
| shine | roll 2 (you get hit here) |
| roll 3 | |
| roll 4 (invincible, too bad you already got hit!) |
| Fox | Not fox |
|---|---|
| jump 1 | |
| jump 2 | |
| jump 3 | you can move now, delay 1 |
| shine | roll 1 (you get hit here) |
| roll 2 (you already got hit, don't die!!) |
| Fox | Not fox |
|---|---|
| jump 1 | |
| jump 2 | |
| jump 3 | you can move now, delay 1 |
| shine | delay 2 |
| roll 1 (nothing will happen because you're in shieldstun from the shine!) |
| Fox | Not fox |
|---|---|
| jump 1 | |
| grab 1 | |
| grab 2 | you can move now, delay 1 |
| grab 3 | delay 2 |
| grab 4 | roll 1 |
| grab 5 | roll 2 |
| grab 6 | roll 3 |
| grab 7 | roll 4 (you're invincible the frame the grab hits!) |
Hopefully the visuals help explain it a bit. Obviously varying degrees of perfection on each end greatly change the result. For example, if the fox isn't frame perfect shine-grabbing you can do a 3 frame delay before rolling to beat the shine-grab, which allows you to account for more potential double shine timings. This type of thinking isn't only useful vs fox and falco pressure! It can also be applied to other fairly common situations in melee; I'll give one more example, and beyond that I trust you to use this to brainstorm timings for various defensive situations.
Let's take the situation where sheik fairs your shield...what do you do? Well, consider it from sheik's side, for a moment. Unless she is already spaced outside of your grab range, she needs to account for an immediate shield grab somehow (unless she's willing to read that you won't shield grab immediately, a huge risk for her). So how can she beat someone who shield grabs her fair? She can buffer a roll or spotdodge, dash backwards after the fair, or throw out a move (jab or dsmash, for example). Given that she will generally take an action to stay safe after fair, you can time a WD OoS to account for all of those things! The trick is that you time the WD so that you don't get hit by an attack immediately after fair. I won't go through the trouble of making tables again, but if I recall correctly sheik's perfect fair is -2 (or sometthing like that) on block. So you take this into account, and delay your WD OoS so that you'd block her move right before trying to WD, but if she doesn't throw out a move you can escape before she can punish you. For example, most of the good sheiks in the current meta do a sequence along the lines of fair-->dash back-->dash back in-->grab (hypothetically, you may have missed a shield grab trying to punish her fair). I've seen a lot of players do things like a delayed shield grab to beat the sheik dashing back in, which is fine, but by employing the WD OoS at an optimized timing to account for her best options (dash back being probably her safest one) you're already gone by the time she dashes back towards you!
So if she throws out a move, you block it (although you attempted to input WD already, but shieldstun will prevent you from doing so) and punish it. If she tries to buffer a roll/spotdodge or dash back, you evade her before she can do anything to punish you. Her only way of countering this is by taking a meaningful risk (such as delaying her attack after the fair to catch your WD, but that makes her fair shield grabbable). I'm not saying that using this tactic is unbeatable for sheik, far from it. I am saying, however, that you force her to make a risky read to hit you, in a situation that's generally considered strong for sheik.
The essence of "optimizing" your defensive timings is that you take into account their strongest options that they need to use to avoid a standard response from you(i.e. sheik needs to account for an immediate shield grab from you after her fair). By assessing their strongest options, you can come up with a timing that simultaneously deals with many of their options, which will generally force them to take a risk if they want to call you out on it. This will be different for each character and situation of course, but developing a standardized option set in all these common situations can go a long way in improving your defensive gameplay.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
ASDI Down
Hey guys, sorry it's been a while since I've posted anything. I've been playing a *lot* of melee, and especially with my permanent switch to sheik I've had a lot to work on. I'm going to post a more interesting article somewhat soon, but for now I'm going to talk briefly about something not so interesting (but very important!).
So there are actually a million ways ASDI (automatic smash DI) down is useful, but I'm just going to talk about a specific situation. First, I'll just briefly say this can be performed either by holding down on the control stick or the c-stick (though the c-stick takes priority for ASDI, and allows you to DI normally with the control stick). Now, if your opponent ASDIs down while they're in a grounded state (after a missed tech, for example) they can tech your attack sometimes. Whether or not they can tech the attack depends on the attack, the opposing character, and the opposing character's percent damage. On the other hand, if they teched recently (so they can't tech again) then ASDI down will simply ground them.
I might make a future post about how to option select with ASDI down, or some situational uses for it. For now, here are some useful percents to know for the three fastfallers! I'll update this in the future with the statistics for other characters, but since this is most applicable during tech chasing I figured I'd research the fastfallers first.
Fox:
Up smash - 31
Down smash - 110
Forward tilt - 69
Up tilt - 73
Down tilt (tipper) - 84
Down tilt (non tipper) - 95
Down aerial - 57
Up aerial - 44
Dash attack - 51
Falco:
Up smash - 31
Down smash - 110
Forward tilt - 68
Up tilt - 74
Down tilt (tipper) - 84
Down tilt (non tipper) - 94
Down aerial - 57
Up aerial - 43
Dash attack - 50
Falcon:
So there are actually a million ways ASDI (automatic smash DI) down is useful, but I'm just going to talk about a specific situation. First, I'll just briefly say this can be performed either by holding down on the control stick or the c-stick (though the c-stick takes priority for ASDI, and allows you to DI normally with the control stick). Now, if your opponent ASDIs down while they're in a grounded state (after a missed tech, for example) they can tech your attack sometimes. Whether or not they can tech the attack depends on the attack, the opposing character, and the opposing character's percent damage. On the other hand, if they teched recently (so they can't tech again) then ASDI down will simply ground them.
I might make a future post about how to option select with ASDI down, or some situational uses for it. For now, here are some useful percents to know for the three fastfallers! I'll update this in the future with the statistics for other characters, but since this is most applicable during tech chasing I figured I'd research the fastfallers first.
Fox:
Up smash - 31
Down smash - 110
Forward tilt - 69
Up tilt - 73
Down tilt (tipper) - 84
Down tilt (non tipper) - 95
Down aerial - 57
Up aerial - 44
Dash attack - 51
Falco:
Up smash - 31
Down smash - 110
Forward tilt - 68
Up tilt - 74
Down tilt (tipper) - 84
Down tilt (non tipper) - 94
Down aerial - 57
Up aerial - 43
Dash attack - 50
Falcon:
Up smash - 35
Down smash - 124
Forward tilt - 76
Up tilt - 83
Down tilt (tipper) - 93
Down tilt (non tipper) - 105
Down aerial - 64
Up aerial - 49
Dash attack - 57
Marth: I am listing the % where the move knocks him down, as opposed to the % where it breaks ASDI down. This is the relevant information vs. marth, because usually you'll have him on a platform and need to know the % where he can't just hold down on your aerials.
Up aerial - 23
Down aerial - 28
Down smash - 124
Forward tilt - 76
Up tilt - 83
Down tilt (tipper) - 93
Down tilt (non tipper) - 105
Down aerial - 64
Up aerial - 49
Dash attack - 57
Marth: I am listing the % where the move knocks him down, as opposed to the % where it breaks ASDI down. This is the relevant information vs. marth, because usually you'll have him on a platform and need to know the % where he can't just hold down on your aerials.
Up aerial - 23
Down aerial - 28
To be clear, these numbers are all *before* the hit. For example, sheik's upsmash does 13% when it isn't stale. So by listing 31% for fox, what this really means is that he will be launched if the upsmash puts him at 44% after it hits. This means that if it's staled to 12%, you need to wait until fox is at 32%; it also means that if you charge it slightly, it will launch him starting at 30% (because it would do 14% after a slight charge).
In case the implications of this aren't totally clear, I'll give an example. If a falco misses a tech and you're waiting to react, then you see him start to roll it's pretty common for the sheik to dash attack. If falco is below 50 and ASDIs down and techs it, the sheik will get punished. Knowing these numbers is pretty important for that reason. Here's an example in a Kirbykaze vs Mango set:
In case the implications of this aren't totally clear, I'll give an example. If a falco misses a tech and you're waiting to react, then you see him start to roll it's pretty common for the sheik to dash attack. If falco is below 50 and ASDIs down and techs it, the sheik will get punished. Knowing these numbers is pretty important for that reason. Here's an example in a Kirbykaze vs Mango set:
Alright, well that's it for now! Nothing too crazy, but the numbers are pretty useful honestly. I'll make a (hopefully) pretty interesting post about dealing with pressure somewhat soon.
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