1. How does sheik punish people that aerial her shield and land behind her? With falco I could just bair, but sheiks bair doesn't seem to hit people on the ground behind her.
2. What are the applications for aerial needles? I watched some of plup and he would needle in the air and then grab. Is this guaranteed? It seems slow to me. What else can be done? And how many needles do you need?
3. I heard auto cancel fairs were good, but I can't seem to do them successfully in games. When sheik jumps in the air, she jumps pretty high and doesn't have much aerial drift, so it seems like a very telegraphed option and the opponent can just dash back and punish it. What am I missing here?
4. How does sheik get off the ledge? it seems like people can just stand near the edge and fsmash on reaction as soon as I waveland on stage, roll on stage, normal getup, or whatever.
5. When tech chasing fast fallers, what should sheik be doing vs missed tech at percents where jab no longer works?
If anyone can answer any of these it'd be greatly appreciated!
1. you can't punish people who aerial your shield unless the move is -6 or beyond. Nair OOS is the go to punish and it hits behind as well depending on how close they are. Bair OOS is also decent if you can sweet spot the kick so that they can't crouch cancel it as easily and get knocked back. The Bair OOS needs to be pretty fast and isn't always guaranteed to hit at some spacings on the sweet spot. Most of the time wavedashing OOS or even rolling can work at lower levels.
2. Aerial needle -> grab is guaranteed if the needles hit, and IIRC on shield as well. They also control center stage when thrown from the platforms and allow you to stop approaches. You can use them to edge guard at certain angles, or even to make it back on stage at certain falling heights. The aerial needle setup is with a fully charged stack, because throwing one needle puts you in a backswing animation where you can't act and no hitbox is coming out. The trick is to throw a mid-max charged stack of needles as you are falling down so that you continuously have a hitbox as you are descending. You can charge anywhere from 3-max needles and it can work at falling height.
3. AC Fair is a different setup depending on if you are going for air to air or air to ground. You have to delay the timing of your fair (frame 19 I believe) and then fast fall immediately for the optimal timing (-2 on shield). The reason AC fair is good is that even though Sheik has a high jump height, her jump overall is not slow. AC Fair covers a lot of space in front of you, has high aerial priority (it will beat many moves in possible trade situations), and if you do it fast it really is fast. There's a lot to talk about on this topic, but refer to this for now:
https://smashboards.com/threads/different-types-of-ac-fair.430869/
4. Nair or Fair onto the ledge are predictable options but essential for your mixup. Perfect waveland onto the stage is invincible after refreshing with shino stalling. Triangle jump to the edge -> shield is good for people camping a roll/waveland on as it positions you right on the edge of the stage making it hard to punish. Perfect waveland does allow you to shield immediately after so with a little luck and good timing or fakeouts with shino stalling you can just roll center stage or spot dodge or just shield to bait things out. Other thing is that you can fully charged needles onto the stage, bair onto the stage, or in some cases use a double poof. There are many, many ledge options but there is a very basic mixup between fair from ledge / shino stall / triangle jump / perfect waveland that should be good enough.
5. It depends. If you think they will ASDI it, then you can use upsmash as a read or even dair. Downsmash also works or dash back dash attack depending. If you don't think they will ASDI jab still "works" it just leads into another tech chase situation. I see most Sheiks opt for dash dance dash attack or downsmash, with upsmash being the best read option.
