Sheik (SSB4)


 * Sheik Appears on the Scene!

Sheik (, Sheik) is a playable character in Super Smash Bros. 4. Her return to the series was announced during a Super Smash Bros. Direct on April 8th, 2014. Jun Mizusawa reprises her role as Sheik's voice actor, albeit via recycled voice clips from Super Smash Bros. Brawl. She is now completely separated from, no longer being able to transform mid-match.

Sheik is ranked 4th out of 54 on the tier list, placing her at the top of the A tier and is her best placement in the series. This is a significant improvement over her mid-tier placement in Brawl, where she was ranked 25th out of 38. While not as dominant as in Brawl, the sheer effectiveness of Sheik's moveset saw her almost universally perceived as the best character in the early metagame of SSB4. Sheik's extremely fast frame data grants her an excellent neutral game and a potent combo game, which are supplemented by Needle Storm and her improved grab game, respectively. Her KO potential has also improved: up aerial now consists of multiple hits and concludes with a very strong hit, while her new down special move, Bouncing Fish, deals respectable damage and has high knockback scaling. Lastly, the combination of Sheik's much faster air speed, Bouncing Fish's horizontal travel distance, and the removal of edge-hogging have greatly improved her recovery.

Although she has outstanding strengths, Sheik nevertheless has noticeable weaknesses. Her overall low damage output offsets the very high knockback scaling of her smash attacks and up aerial, which results in her KO potential being unimpressive at best. When coupled with her lack of KO set-ups at high percentages, Sheik is forced to rely on hard reads to properly score a KO. While rage helps alleviate her KO potential, it also hampers her combo game. By extension, Sheik is unable to utilize rage more often than not, owing to her above average height and very light weight collectively rendering her endurance as unimpressive. Lastly, nerfs from game updates have further hindered her by decreasing her already light weight, worsening her forward aerial and grab game's combo potentials, and weakening up aerial and Bouncing Fish's KO potentials.

While Sheik's flaws and nerfs from game patches have resulted in her losing her status as the highest ranked character in SSB4, she is still widely considered to be a very viable character in competitive play.

Attributes
Sheik is a character that, as a ninja of sorts, fits the "hit-and-run" character archetype. One of Sheik's greatest strengths is her overall mobility, being among the best in the game both grounded and aerial, boasting the fifth fastest walking speed, eighth fastest running speed, above average traction, high air speed and air acceleration, and the tenth fastest falling speed. She also has high gravity, which makes her mobility better, but leaves her more vulnerable to vertical knockback. However, she is also the eleventh lightest character; when coupled with her gravity and tall height, these traits collectively make her very susceptible to combos. Her crouch is also very low, making her difficult to hit when doing so. Sheik can also wall cling and crawl.

Aside from her excellent mobility, another of Sheik's greatest strengths is her nearly-unrivaled frame data. Her moves have generally negligible amounts of startup and ending lag, making her extremely difficult to punish properly, and this is supplemented by the good range of her moveset. She also has an excellent projectile in Needle Storm, with the needles being fast, long-ranged (covers about half of Final Destination), possessing transcendent priority, and causing hitstun. Coupled with her range, her needles give her a strong camping ability. Overall, her mobility, projectile game, range and frame data all combined form her greatest strength: her outstanding neutral game. She can play both defensively, by pressuring and zoning from afar without much trouble, or aggressively, with her fast attack speed giving her an unpredictable approach. Sheik can poke and pressure her opponents with her aerials and tilts, all of which are safe options. If they choose to drop shield, they are wide open to these attacks. At the same time, holding shield presents her with an opportunity to grab and use her throw set-ups.

Sheik's excellent frame data, combined with the low power of many of her moves, gives her among the best combo abilities in the game. Her throws can easily lead into other attacks, with her forward and down throws being particularly effective at starting combos, as they can set up long chains of forward aerials, with her up aerial and Bouncing Fish being useful combo finishers. Her combos are not limited to her air game; all of her tilts can start and extend combos since they send opponents into the air, and can confirm into aerials; her forward tilt particularly, can chain into itself at lower percentages, and has reliable follow-ups all the way into KO percents as well. Down tilt, while not chaining into itself as effectively, has even lower power, giving her access to KO confirms as well. She also boasts an effective jab cancel that leads into her tilts. With proper spacing and timing, she can even perform pseudo-chain grabs.

All aspects of Sheik's moveset are solid overall. A sole few number of her aerial moves possess great versatility; forward aerial in particular, has little startup, decent ending lag, auto-cancels in a short hop fast fall, and has slightly disjointed range, making it an all-purpose move: it can be used to approach, pressure, combo and set up edge-guards. Neutral aerial is her fastest one, allowing her to break out of combos and finish or extend hers, notably into Bouncing Fish. Up aerial is her strongest one of her aerial moveset, and also sends opponents into a great angle for juggling, both of which give it good utility at both KOing and finishing combos. Her back aerial is her second strongest one, though due to its low damage output, it is overall best suited for edge-guarding and ending a combo. It also has the longest range of Sheik's aerials, and when fast-falled and sweetspotted (at the foot), it is even safer on shield than her forward aerial.

Outside of her Needle Storm, Sheik's special moveset also possesses good utility: her up special, Vanish, grants her invincibility and invisibility, making it hard for the opponent to predict where she will appear. It also has a hitbox on disappearance that is decently strong, and another one and a windbox when she reappears, making it nigh-impossible to punish. Meanwhile, her down special Bouncing Fish, is famous for being her primary KO move, being similar to Flip Jump on some regards: it deals good damage with high knockback scaling, has KO confirms on it from her neutral aerial (both clean and late), forward aerial and aerial Needle Storm, and is safe on shield if it hits. Both Vanish and Bouncing Fish also conform Sheik's last strength in her recovery, as they make it versatile and extendable, both of them and can be used in tandem with each other, and they are difficult and risky to intercept, as they both deal high knockback enough to interrupt an edge-guard. Combined with her wall jump, this makes Sheik hard to edge-guard or gimp, without disabling her midair jump, and enables her to reverse edge-guard effectively.

However, despite having immense strengths, Sheik still has notable flaws. The most notable of them is her frailty: despite her recovery being amazing, in a similar vein to, her on-stage endurance is fairly weak, succumbing to strong enough blows, whereas her above average height, high falling speed and gravity make her easy to combo. This is further compounded by her poor damage output overall: despite her strong damage racking ability, she requires very long strings of attacks to deal the same amount of damage that super-heavyweight characters such as and  can inflict in noticeably fewer hits. While the low damage and power on her moves grant her an awesome combo game, Sheik also struggles to secure her opponent's stock. She has a few moves with high knockback, but she has difficulty landing them; her up smash has a powerful first hit on her arms as she rises them, but it is hard to land outside of a read or confirm, and is hampered by its much weaker second hit as she lowers her arms. Her forward smash and her down smash are among the weakest smash attacks of their kind, and they have punishable ending lag as well. In the air, she is limited to using her up aerial or Bouncing Fish to KO, and even then they must be relatively close to the blast lines for maximum effectiveness, since her other aerial attacks do not KO until 200% or more, and are otherwise only useful for edge-guarding and gimping characters with particularly weak or linear recoveries. Furthermore, her overall below average grab game has no throws that can KO reliably, and her aforementioned forward and down throws have too much knockback for truly reliable KO set-ups. With all of this working against her, it is not uncommon for her opponents to survive in excess of 150%. Lastly, the introduction to rage hinders Sheik: without rage, she often has trouble KOing, though as her rage increases, her combo game is slowly hindered, which when combined with her poor damage output, it can make bringing an opponent to KO percents difficult. Besides, this also brings opponents to a high level enough of rage to KO Sheik herself with a strong enough move.

Other weaknesses include a few moves that have very low utility, despite Sheik's moveset versatility. These include her down aerial, which is the slowest of her aerial moveset, has the highest landing lag and is a stall-then-fall, which give it the lowest utility of Sheik's aerial moveset despite it meteor smashing on contact. Her smash attacks are difficult to land overall and, outside of up smash's sweet spot, have little KO power. Lastly, Burst Grenade has a slow explosion, renders Sheik helpless if performed while airborne, and has only situational usage on edge-guarding predictable recoveries (such as ) and extending the damage of a hard punish.

Sheik benefits a good amount from her custom moves. Penetrating Needles only shoots three needles instead of six and has less range, but it deals extra shield damage, granting her a new pressuring option. Gravity Grenade loses the suction effect, but the grenade can be thrown much farther and pulls enemies towards Sheik, allowing multiple follow-up opportunities. Pisces, while having a much more shallow flip, removing her forward throw combo, gains more horizontal distance, is faster, has little lag if the follow-up attack is not executed, and is significantly stronger, being able to KO 59% earlier than the default Bouncing Fish. Her other custom moves, like Paralyzing Needle and Abyss, are slightly riskier, yet more rewarding than Needle Storm and Vanish.

All in all, Sheik's strengths outweigh her weaknesses, to the point that she has some of the highest tournament representation of any character in SSB4. By extension, her playerbase includes the likes of, , and , who are considered to be among the best players in the world. However, Sheik's nerfs from 1.1.5 have slightly affected her standings and representation compared to other characters.

Changes from Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Sheik has been buffed significantly in the transition from Brawl to SSB4. The partial reversion to some of her attacks and the outright updating of others have restored many of her options that she lost in Brawl, while changes to gameplay mechanics also greatly benefit her restored strengths. For example, Sheik's grab game has regained much of its utility because of synchronization between such changes: her grabs and back throw have less ending lag, which grants the latter combo potential, whereas forward and down throws greatly benefit from both their altered angles and the changes to hitstun canceling. The removal of chain grabbing also heavily benefits her as she was previous extremely vulnerable to them.

Sheik's special moveset has also largely improved: Needle Storm has increased knockback and travels faster (although the move has seen various nerfs as well); Vanish's reappearance is safer thanks to it receiving a hitbox alongside its windbox; and her new special moves, Burst Grenade and Bouncing Fish, provide greater utility than Chain and Transform respectively. Sheik also benefits greatly from the changes to pivoting, which improves her grounded mobility, allows her to extend combos with her tilt attacks, and improves Needle Storm's mindgame potential. Although Sheik's KO potential is not as potent as it was in Melee, it has nevertheless improved, thanks to the increased knockback scaling on her smash attacks and up aerial, as well as the additions of Bouncing Fish, the changes to DI, the removal of momentum canceling and the introduction of the rage mechanic.

In addition to her moveset, Sheik mobility has also improved, as her walking, dashing, and most significantly her air speeds are much faster. While her dash speed saw a fairly standard increase to its speed which most returning veterans received, her air speed saw a much higher increase going from being fairly poor to being very high. It is especially useful in two ways: it now enables her aerial combo game to flow much more fluidly, which is especially evident with her forward aerial's altered properties, and it significantly improves her recovery alongside Bouncing Fish's horizontal travel distance, and the removal of edge-hogging.

However, Sheik also received a few nerfs, some of which are due to gameplay changes. The removal of DACUS significantly weakens her up smash's versatility while her up smash itself is slower and weaker. Sheik's forward tilt was also considerably nerfed as it was her most oppressive move in Brawl. Although it is still a very useful combo starter, its combo potential was nevertheless worsened due to its increased knockback and ending lag. On top of this, her already below average damage output has lowered even further, which forces players to rely on combos to rack up damage before attempting to score a KO. While most characters had their damage output nerfed, Sheik's was reduced even more than most returning veterans. Her overall frame data is also slightly worse although it still remains among the best in the game.

Despite rage alleviating Sheik's KO potential, it also offsets her combo game at medium to high percentages, and her unimpressive endurance means that she cannot utilize it as consistently or effectively as other characters while they can easily use rage to kill her even earlier. When combined with the fact that she does not have a powerful ladder combo, kill confirm at low percents or a move with extremely high set knockback, this makes her one of the characters who benefits the least from rage. Lastly, game updates have nerfed Sheik in certain ways, with update 1.1.5 most notably removing many of her 50/50 KO mix-ups.

Despite these noticeable flaws, Sheik's buffs significantly outweigh her nerfs and the new mechanics help her much more than they hinder her since they either alleviate or outright remove the main flaws she had in the previous game while further increasing her strengths. Because of this, she was regarded by many as the best character in the game especially after was nerfed significantly more than her in updates 1.0.6 and 1.0.8. Despite her former dominance, update 1.1.4 added and 1.1.5 nerfed Sheik significantly. As a result, Sheik's results dropped and she is no longer considered to be the best character in the game although she is still widely regarded as a top tier.

Ground attacks

 * Neutral attack:
 * Forward tilt:
 * Up tilt:
 * Down tilt:
 * Dash attack:
 * Forward smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Up tilt:
 * Down tilt:
 * Dash attack:
 * Forward smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Forward smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:

Aerial attacks

 * Neutral aerial:
 * Forward aerial:
 * Back aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Back aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Back aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:

Throws/other attacks

 * Pummel:
 * Forward throw:
 * Down throw:
 * Floor attack:
 * Edge attack:
 * Forward throw:
 * Down throw:
 * Floor attack:
 * Edge attack:
 * Floor attack:
 * Edge attack:
 * Floor attack:
 * Edge attack:
 * Edge attack:
 * Edge attack:
 * Edge attack:
 * Edge attack:
 * Edge attack:

Special moves

 * Needle Storm:
 * Burst Grenade:
 * Burst Grenade replaces Chain.
 * Vanish:
 * Bouncing Fish:
 * Light Arrow:
 * Burst Grenade replaces Chain.
 * Vanish:
 * Bouncing Fish:
 * Light Arrow:
 * Bouncing Fish:
 * Light Arrow:
 * Bouncing Fish:
 * Light Arrow:
 * Light Arrow:
 * Light Arrow:

Update history
Much like, Sheik initially started out as a much stronger character in earlier versions of the game, being one of the strongest characters in early versions of the game. As a result, Sheik has been nerfed significantly via game updates. Update 1.0.4 immediately gave Sheik some impactful nerfs, with Sheik receiving considerable power reductions to her forward aerial, up aerial and Bouncing Fish. These moves were some of her most effective KO options, as Sheik had numerous ways to combo into them and they could even lead into KO confirms at high enough percents. Naturally after their power reductions, the moves became more restrictive as KO confirms. Forward aerial's power reduction also made it a less potent combo tool at lower percents. In addition to Sheik having weaker KO power, Needle Storm received more ending lag on the ground, which not only made it a riskier camping tool but it also removed its ability to lead into comboes and KO confirms. Sheik now had to use the move in the air to land a KO confirm with a Bouncing Fish followup and as Bouncing Fish became weaker, the KO confirm became less potent overall.

The universal changes in 1.0.4 were not particularly beneficial to Sheik. The removal of LSI for moves which launched between 65°-115° considerably hindered Sheik's endurance, making her easier to combo as well as making her easier to KO vertically. While it did improve the consistency of Sheik's vertical launching combo moves (particularly her throws), it did not benefit Sheik's combo game as much as numerous other members of the cast, and some of Sheik's main followups out of her vertical launching moves were weakened (mainly forward and up aerials). Sheik also had very few vertical KO moves which benefitted from the technique with up aerial's power reduction being significant enough to make up aerial a weaker KO move even though it could no longer be LSIed.

Sheik was also hindered by the removal of DACUS as Sheik previously had one of the most effective DAUSes in the game. While very difficult to perform, Sheik's up smash was strong, her DACUS covered a large amount of distance and it had the potential to be a KO confirm out of moves such as neutral aerial and Needle Storm. With DACUS being removed, it significantly hindered the approach potential of Sheik's up smash and it largely removed the comboes and KO confirms Sheik could previously perform with a DACUS.

Update 1.0.6 noticeably decreased back aerial's damage, considerably reducing the move's KO potential. From updates 1.1.0 - 1.1.4, Sheik only received a few minor nerfs, with forward aerial received a slightly decrease to its power in 1.1.0 and with Sheik become slightly lighter in 1.1.4.

Update 1.1.5 however would give Sheik the most impactful nerfs she had received since 1.0.4. Some minor nerfs Sheik received were that she became noticeably lighter, hindering her endurance and her forward aerial received a range reduction. Sheik's Needle Storm received a significant reduction on its range, which considerably toned down its potentially oppressive camping potential but the most significant nerfs Sheik received were to her forward and down throws. In earlier versions of the game, the throws were both capable of leading into long lasting 50-50es into potential KOes which were very powerful. In 1.1.5 however, both throws received significantly more knockback which greatly weakened their 50-50 potential at higher percents, making them considerably less scary at higher percents. Sheik could no longer rely on her throws to lead into potential KOes, instead having to rely more on situational KO confirms, edgeuarding and raw KO moves to take stocks.

Overall, Sheik is significantly worse compared to how she was at the release of the game. Sheik is more fragile, being easier to combo and KO, her defensive game is weaker having a laggier and shorter range projectile and her damage racking and KO potential have noticeably decreased, making it significantly harder for her to score KOes, especially compared to the rest of the cast. Despite this, Sheik still remained one of the most potent characters in the game. Her incredible mobility and frame data were near untouched, her recovery remained strong and while her neutral game was weakened, it still remained among the best out of the entire cast. Sheik's nerfs mainly impacted her punish game but she still had the tools needed in order to win neutral and get her punish game going.

Sheik was very likely the best character in the game in early 3DS versions and while she did have a negative transition to the Wii U version, with Sheik receiving impactful nerfs combined with not benefitting from the game's universal changes, she still managed to remain a contender for the best character in the game. As time went on, things looked very good for Sheik, with other top tiers (mainly Diddy Kong) receiving more impactful nerfs than her, firmly making Sheik the best character in the game for a period of time but by 1.1.4, was added to the game, who ultimately took Sheik off of her pedestal and 1.1.5 was ultimately the final nail in the coffin for Sheik, giving her some impactful nerfs which firmly took her out of the discussion for the best character in the game. Despite all the nerfs Sheik received combined with the shift in the meta, Sheik still remained one of the strongest characters in the game, being considered as a top 5 or even a top 3 character by the later stages of the game's life.

 1.0.4

 1.0.6

 1.1.0

 1.1.1

 1.1.4

 1.1.5

Moveset
For a gallery of Sheik's hitboxes, see here.
 * Sheik can crawl, wall cling, and wall jump.

Most historically significant players
See also: Category:Sheik players (SSB4)


 * - One of the best Sheik players in Japan, especially towards the end of the game's competitive lifespan. He is one of two Sheik players to have won a major following Sheik's nerfs, winning.
 * - Co-mained Sheik with and was one of the best Sheik players on the United States East Coast and placing 7th at  and 9th at.
 * - The second-best player from Mexico, with notable singles placements including 9th at and 17th at . With his cousin, they were also considered the best doubles team in the world.
 * - The best Sheik player from the United States West Coast, co-maining her alongside and placing 7th at  and 9th at  and.
 * - One of the best solo-Sheik players of all time, as well as the best European player of all-time who was regularly ranked in the top 10 globally. Although he never won a major, he finished 2nd at many of them, including at and.
 * - One of the best Sheik player in Japan, co-maining her alongside . He is the only Japanese Sheik player who placed top 8 at multiple majors, placing 3rd at, 4th at and 5th at both  and.
 * - The best Sheik player in Japan during the early metagame, notably placing 9th at and . He dropped Sheik in favor of  in mid-2016.
 * - One of the best Sheik players in the United States, co-maining her alongside . He was one of the first people to defeat, doing so at while placing 2nd. He has also placed 5th at  and 9th at both  and.
 * - One of the best solo-Sheik players of all-time who was regularly ranked in the top 10 globally. He is one of two Sheik players to have won a major following Sheik's nerfs, winning.
 * - The all-time best player in the world who co-mained Sheik alongside for the first few years of the game's competitive lifespan, most notably using her during his 56 consecutive tournament win streak.

Tier placement and history
Sheik had always been perceived as a top-tier character since the game's release, which was eventually reflected in her ranking at the very top of the first official 4BR tier list, with the previous nerfs to and  paving the way for Sheik to be considered the near-indisputable best character in the game. Players noticed her fantastic frame data, the ability to control the neutral game by spacing effectively with her forward aerial and camp with Needle Storm, extensive combo game that allowed her to rack up damage quickly and efficiently, dominant offstage game, and reliable KO set-ups off of low-committal grab set-ups. This led most players to believe she lacked losing match-ups and had only a handful that were arguably even. As expected, Sheik's position was cemented by a stellar playerbase that included highly talented players such as, , , and , among others, all of whom achieved great results with the character on a consistent basis.

However, Sheik's overwhelming dominance took a blow with patches 1.1.4 and 1.1.5, which removed her most reliable KO set-ups, worsened her survivability, and weakened her camping ability. As a result, her most notable player, ZeRo, eventually dropped her, and others such as K9sbruce have been using secondaries more often. Despite her heavy nerfs, Sheik's neutral, combo, and offstage games are still among the best, allowing her to continue to gain strong results from players such as VoiD and Mr.R and remain a top-tier character, placing at 3rd on the second tier list and 4th on the third and fourth tier lists. However, the 4th tier list notably had Sheik drop into the A-tier due to her worse results compared to the top 3 at the time of the tier list's release.

2018 saw a new breath of fresh air for Sheik as dedicated mains managed to improve her results, including 's run to 3rd at, 's run to 2nd at , and most notably 's victory at and 's victory at , which remains the only two major victories for a Sheik player since her nerfs. Sheik's improving results were notably more impressive than Diddy Kong and, two characters generally agreed upon to be better than her but by then were not getting as far in-tournament without the use of a secondary. As a result, Sheik's true placement became debatable, with some top players such as and Mr.R believing that Sheik should be ranked slightly higher.

Solo Events

 * All-Star Battle: Melee: Sheik is one of the opponents fought in this event. All of the opponents debuted in Melee.
 * Aura Mastery: As ,the player must defeat an invisible Sheik and an invisible.
 * Identity Crisis: Sheik must defeat . After defeating her, the player must then defeat . If Sheik gets knocked out, then will appear.

Co-op Events

 * The Ultimate Battle: Two players select a character and must defeat the entire roster.

Trivia

 * Sheik is the first and currently only character to have her weight changed twice via updates.
 * This marks the final appearance of Sheik as a starter character.
 * Much like Zelda, due to her retaining the scrapped Twilight Princess-inspired design, this marks the only time Sheik reuses her design from a previous game.
 * This marks the final appearance of Jun Mizusawa as Sheik, who had voiced both her and Zelda since Melee.
 * Originally, Sheik was still going to turn into Zelda in this game and vice versa, but the two characters were split apart instead due to the limitations of the Nintendo 3DS. A similar issue was also the case for Samus and Zero Suit Samus when their Final Smash was concerned, and Pokémon Trainer, who was dropped in favor of his Charizard operating on its own.
 * This is the only game since her debut in Melee where her canonical design is not directly referenced in the game at all.
 * Sheik's Alt. trophy in the Nintendo 3DS version features blond eyebrows, whereas the alternate costume it's based on has gray eyebrows. Her headwear and scarf are also noticeably lighter in the trophy.