Sheik (SSBM)

Sheik (, Sheik) is a starter character in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Announced at E3 2001, she transforms from by using her down special move (Transform), and can transform back. By holding the "A" button at the stage loading screen, Zelda will automatically transform into Sheik at the start of a match.

Jun Mizusawa reprises her role as Sheik from Ocarina of Time in the game.

Sheik currently ranks 5th on the tier list, in the top of A tier. One of Sheik's greatest strengths is her formidable punish game. Sheik's down throw is one of the best combo starters in Melee, as it can chaingrab many middleweight characters and create tech chases on fastfallers. Her forward tilt, dash attack, and down smash are all excellent at racking up damage, and multiple down throw chain grabs or tech chases can quickly apply high amounts of damage against opponents. Sheik possesses a fast dashing speed and great frame data on her attacks, with many extended hitboxes on moves such as her down smash, up tilt, and back aerial, which make her extremely difficult to break through defensively. Sheik's attacks also have great reach, especially her forward aerial, back aerial, forward tilt, and down smash. Sheik also possesses great finishing moves, including her up aerial, back aerial, and forward aerial, and her down throw, forward tilt and dash attack can all easily set up into one of her KO moves. Her forward aerial is notorious as one of the deadliest edgeguarding tools in the game, as it sends opponents at a horizontal angle that is extremely hard for many characters to recover from.

Sheik's primary weakness, however, is her short and heavily exploitable recovery. Her primary recovery move, Vanish, travels an extremely short distance and lacks a hitbox when she reappears, providing her with virtually zero protection as she returns to the stage, and Sheik receives a large amount of landing lag upon landing on the stage. As a result, her recovery is easily edgehogged, and if she lands on the stage, her opponents can freely land a large hit on her. If Sheik is forced to recover with her up special on stage, skilled opponents can continuously hit her back offstage and repeat until she gets KOed or self-destructs. Sheik also has trouble dealing with crouch canceling, as none of her moves besides a grab can break through crouch canceling at low percents. Combined with her slow horizontal air speed, this limits her ability to find openings in the neutral game, especially against characters such as and the. Sheik's punish game can also be unreliable, especially against fastfallers, because her down throw tech chase requires her to correctly predict her opponent's actions, which can limit her damage output if she incorrectly reads the opponents' tech patterns. This is especially so in the PAL version of Melee, as her down throw sends opponents diagonally rather than vertically, making it even more difficult for Sheik to land a strong punish in this version of the game.

Attributes
Sheik is a very agile fighter, possessing a fast dash, high falling speed, good jumping prowess, and very quick, combo-friendly attacks. While only a small portion of her moveset can reliably KO to compensate for her speed, such options are very reliable combo finishers at most percentages, greatly offsetting her power loss. Sheik, however, has poor air speed (tied for 5th worst among the cast) and a rather high short hop. As a result of having high traction and a high falling speed, Sheik has a rather short, but fast, wavedash.

Sheik's main strength is her edgeguarding ability, which is among the best in the game. While she lacks a spike like, or even a meteor smash, Sheik's good jumping prowess and fast, powerful aerials give her amazing options off the edge. Sheik's forward aerial is among the most feared in the game, due to its fast startup, high knockback scaling, semi-spike angle, and its ability to autocancel itself if used correctly, and is her main pressuring and edgeguarding tool, while also being an outstanding combo finisher. Her back aerial is slightly weaker (but still very powerful if sweetspotted) with a more diagonal angle, but has more reach and is safer to use, allowing for it to be used as a potent edgeguarding option as well. Sheik also has one of the best projectiles in the game, Needle Storm, which aids in her edgeguarding; the needles are quick to charge, can travel quickly when thrown, and can cut through or stop most other projectiles in the game, allowing Sheik to neutralize projectiles from characters who rely on them to cover their recovery, such as. Needles also have high hitstun and low knockback, making them excellent for intercepting recoveries, especially more linear options such as Fire Fox. In addition, Needles travel in a diagonal downward path when thrown from the air, presenting the edgeguarder with more options. Sheik also has the means to force edgeguarding situations very easily, possessing a back throw that sets up edgeguards on fastfallers, and the speed to effectively corner opponents once they're close to the ledge.

Sheik is also notable for having among the best punishing abilities in the game. Her tilts, dash attack, and up smash all come out quickly and all send the opponents straight into the air, giving Sheik guaranteed aerial followup options, especially at lower percentages. Aside from the aforementioned forward and back aerials, Sheik's other aerials also possess amazing utility for punishing, despite her low air speed. Her neutral aerial is a quick sex kick that serves as a potent out of shield option that can dispel the opponent's shield pressure; her up aerial is a combo extender at lower percentages that can reliably KO at higher percentages, especially near the ceiling; her down aerial, while possessing the slowest startup out of all of her aerials, sends opponents upwards with a great deal of hitstun, allowing followups into her aforementioned up, back, or forward aerials, or even a sweetspotted up smash. Due to their low lag and high power, most are of relatively low-risk to use off the edge. Sheik's aforementioned Needle Storm also aids in her punishing game; when used in midair, the needles travel diagonally downwards, allowing them to hit grounded opponents. Due to the fact that Needle Storm has no landing lag after being used in midair, Sheik can use the hitstun or shield stun from her needles to immediately grab or attack the opponent upon landing. This is further compounded (in NTSC only) with Sheik's excellent down throw, which boasts a chain grab on many characters in the game at lower to mid-percentages, including and, and sets up tech chasing situations on fastfallers such as Fox, , and Falcon. Skilled Sheik players can convert a single down throw into potential stock losses for the foe by utilizing either chain grabbing or tech-chasing until the opponent is at combo-friendly percentages, where they will use Sheik's launching options to begin nearly inescapable combos that result in a KO or a fatal edgeguarding situation.

Sheik's neutral game, however, is merely average at best, especially compared with other top tiers. Due to her high short hop, Sheik suffers from a poor SHFFL, which impairs some elements of her aerial approach. Sheik also possesses a short dash-dance, forcing her to rely on her short wavedash to adjust her spacing. While Needle Storm has no landing lag when used in midair, it does have significant ending lag when used on the ground; however, Sheik's needles will only travel straight if she throws them while grounded, impairing her ability to approach with her projectile from afar. Sheik usually struggles in approaching opponents who are at low percent, as they can use crouch cancelling to make her tilts, dash attack, jab and aerials unsafe, forcing her to rely on grabs or her downsmash. Sheik also lacks universal disjoint, causing her to have a very small and concentrated "threat zone" where she can create openings by threatening the opponent with a forward aerial, her tilts, or an aerial Needle Storm into a grab. As such, high-level Sheik players will often look for openings to close distance and go into that "threat zone," a spacing where Sheik can threaten the opponent with her outstanding punish game. This is easier to do against characters with even worse neutral games, particularly low- and bottom-tier characters, as they lack the means to zone Sheik out of that ideal area. However, other top-tier characters have the tools to keep Sheik out, whether it be through projectiles or disjoint, and can similarly harshly punish Sheik if she unsafely attempts to close this distance.

One of Sheik's more universal weaknesses is her exploitable recovery. Despite her high midair jump and fast aerial attacks that can aggravate edgeguarders, Vanish does not give significant vertical or horizontal distance, and when she reappears, there is no offensive hitbox, allowing easy edgeguarding. Additionally, Sheik is horizontally locked after performing Vanish, disallowing her from drifting back to the stage from afar. In some situations where Sheik cannot recover at all, Sheik may be forced to utilize Transform and use 's superior recovery to try and safely get back onstage and retransform. If Zelda does not quickly retransform back, the opponent can send her back offstage and repeat the cycle or even outright KO her. A common strategy is to DI upwards and use Zelda's superior air speed and lower falling speed to drift back to stage, or in worst case scenarios, use Farore's Wind to recover. Further compounding these recovery flaws are Sheik's fast falling speed and low air. Sheik can wall jump, but its use is situational, dependent on the stage, and is shorter than most others due to Sheik's fast falling speed. Sheik's low air speed compounded with her fast falling speed also makes her very easy to combo herself, especially against characters with reliable launching throws or attacks such as, Falco, and.

Overall, Sheik is a versatile character with the tools to combat every fighter in Melee. She is a very punish- and control-based character, relying on her excellent comboing abilities to rack up damage and force edgeguarding situations where she can intercept the foe for quick edgeguarding KOs. However, against most other top tiers, Sheik must play with the utmost caution and precision to create those same openings and succeed.

Version history
Like other characters, Sheik has received some changes in the PAL version of Melee, which nerfed her overall. This is due primarily to the changes to her down throw, which caused Sheik to lose her chaingrab, some tech-chasing options, and several KO setups. Along with the nerfs to her finishers, Sheik generally has a much harder time KOing characters that she had no trouble KOing in the NTSC version, such as and, resulting in much poorer matchups against them.

PAL

Moveset
For a gallery of Sheik's hitboxes, see here.

Most historically significant players

 * See also: Category:Sheik players (SSBM)


 * - Best player in the Netherlands and one of the best players in Europe. Placed 1st at, 5th at , 7th at , and 33rd at . Has taken sets off , , and.
 * - Formerly one of the best Sheik players in the world as well as best player in Japan. Placed 1st at, 2nd at , and 7th at.
 * - One of the best Sheik players in the world. Placed 9th at, 17th at , and 25th at . Has wins over , , and.
 * - Known for his strong tech chasing with Sheik and was ranked 18th on the 2015 SSBMRank. Placed 4th at, 9th at , and 17th at with wins over , , and . Switched to Fox.
 * - Best Sheik player in SoCal. Placed 1st at, 3rd at and 9th at . Has wins on , , and.
 * - Formerly a triple-main of Sheik, Marth, and Fox, he became one of the best Sheik players in the world in 2013 after focusing on her, being ranked 13th on the 2013 SSBMRank, and by far the best in Europe. Placed 2nd at and 3rd at, and went undefeated in European tournaments between those events. Internationally, he placed 7th at  and 9th at . Has wins over , , and  with Sheik. Later switched to Fox as his primary main and slowly phased out his other characters, including Sheik.
 * - The best solo Sheik player in the world post-pandemic. Placed 1st at, 2nd at , , and , 4th at , and 5th at.
 * - One of the best players from 2006-2008; triple-mained Sheik, Marth and Fox before retiring. Placed 2nd at, 4th at , 7th at , and 17th at with wins over , , and.
 * - The best Sheik player in Canada. Placed 3rd at, 9th at and  with wins over , , and . Ranked 29th on the 2017 SSBMRank.
 * - One of the best Sheik players in the world prior to his hiatus and one of the Five Gods. Usually plays her for a matchup advantage and has used her to beat, , and.
 * - The best Sheik player in Spain. Placed 5th at, , and . Has wins on , , and . Has been permanently banned from tournament play.
 * - One of the two best Sheik players in the world. Placed 1st at, 2nd at , 3rd at . Has beaten all Five Gods with Sheik.
 * - One of the best Sheik players in the world. Placed 5th at, 7th at , 9th at , 17th at . Has wins over , , and.
 * - One of the best Sheik players in the world. Placed 4th at, 13th at , and 17th at . Has wins over , , and.
 * - One of the most improved players in the world, thus became one of the best Sheik players in the world. Placed 2nd at, 5th at , and 7th at and . Has taken a set off , , and.

Tier placement and history
Sheik has always been a high/top tier character, as her long-ranged aerial attacks, amazing punish game, and strong edgeguarding capabilities, has led her seeing widespread use in all levels of play. For the first five years of the Melee's competitive life, Sheik was considered the best character in the game, ranking at the top of every tier list up until the eighth (July 2006). Her down throw chain grabbing ability was considered especially powerful in the early metagame, and her ease of use allowed Sheik mains to succeed consistently, especially since counterplay to her options had not yet been popularized. In fact, at some points, players believed Sheik was so good that they contemplated banning her, although such a ban was never carried out. However, over time, competitive players slowly adapted to Sheik's weaknesses, leading to growing matchup problems that would still be present in the modern metagame.

Sheik's dominance as a character was faltered with the discovery of the incredible potential of Fox and Falco. With these characters now perceived as having much higher skill caps while still being good against relevant top tiers, they took the top two spots while Sheik dropped to third place. With these developments in place and the growing skill of the playerbase, players soon found that Fox had an advantage over Sheik, as did the, both of which were growing in prevalence in the metagame. Soon after, and  took  to the next level, and demonstrated that it, too, was a very poor matchup for Sheik and possibly her worst, largely due to Jigglypuff's ability to exploit Sheik's laggy recovery by landing Rest KOs at extremely low percents. With three bad matchups and the meta being more adapted against its strengths, Sheik was no longer considered even a contender for the best in the game. Other top-tiered characters started improving their Sheik matchups as well (most notably Marth and Peach), causing less of an incentive for players to pick up Sheik just to deal with those characters. Due to this, and opinions on Marth improving further due to his better matchups against Fox and Falco, Sheik dropped to 4th in the twelfth tier list, and further to 5th on the thirteenth and current tier list due to the rise of Jigglypuff.

Despite being considered one of the best characters in the game, Sheik was well known in the Melee community for her lack of success as a solo main. Prior to 2023, solo Sheik had won only a single major level American tournament ('s victory at ), and had never won a supermajor, even behind lower-tiered characters such as, , and. This was largely due several factors: the first being that her most prominent top level players, and, switched to other characters in certain matchups, particularly against Hungrybox's Jigglypuff; as a result, her metagame advancements stagnated compared to those of the other top tiers. Most Melee community members believed that winning a supermajor as solo Sheik required a lucky bracket that avoided running into Hungrybox (the #1 ranked player from 2017 to 2019), as well as extremely optimized play versus the multitude of Fox players that was considered unfeasible at the time.

However, perceptions of Sheik's competitive viability were completely revived following the rise of, who burst onto the world stage in 2022. His breakout performance came at, where he defeated Plup and , two Fox players who were known for hardly ever losing sets to Sheik, en route to a 2nd place finish, only falling to , the number one ranked player, in grand finals. Jmook became a consistent tournament threat throughout the rest of 2022, boasting strong records against almost all the other top ten players, and continued to develop solo Sheik even against her most difficult matchups. Many believed that his first tournament victory, and solo Sheik's first supermajor win, was coming in a matter of time. Jmook pushed Sheik's defensive and punish game to never before seen levels. He became well known for utilizing Sheik's incredible crouch canceling abilities, Needle Storm edgeguards, and landing grabs at significantly higher rates than other Sheik players. In particular, Jmook was the first player to truly optimize Sheik's reaction tech chasing versus the space animals, being able to consistently convert zero-to-deaths vs. Fox and Falco and off of a single grab. With these advancements, many players began to rethink the Sheik-Fox matchup, arguing that Jmook's unforgiving punish game vs. Fox was enough to tilt the matchup more in Sheik's favor. Jmook finally won his first major at, nine months after his breakout performance, becoming the third solo Sheik player to win a major, the first ever solo Sheik to win a supermajor, and the only solo Sheik to win a major in the modern era. He then won his second major at two months later.

Although Sheik's perceived competitive viability has continued to rise, she is still considered a step below the other top tiers. While her viability has been aided by the relative scarcity of Ice Climbers players following the wobbling ban, her extremely difficult matchup vs. Jigglypuff is what holds her back from the highest tiers. Hungrybox still maintains a lopsided record over Jmook, and Jmook has been able to dodge Hungrybox through both his major victories so far. As such, it remains to be seen whether Sheik mains will be able to overcome their challenges in the Jigglypuff matchup. Sheik still remains popular as a secondary character, especially among spacie mains, as many Fox and Falco players (most notably ) have started using her as a counterpick against Marth; she is also known for excelling against mid-tiers like and  that other top tiers, in particular Marth, can struggle with.

PAL viability
Like several other characters who would coincidentally become known to be top-tiered, Sheik was nerfed in the PAL version of Melee. Her up aerial was weakened, making it more of a juggling move than a KO move, and her down throw, which boasted a chaingrab on much of the cast in NTSC and gave Sheik follow-up options, now has a much more horizontal launch angle, removing those guaranteed chaingrabs and follow-ups. These changes make some of Sheik's winning matchups in NTSC much harder. For example, in NTSC, Sheik could KO Marth,, and sometimes reliably with down throw to forward or up aerial. In PAL, however, not only does down throw send those characters too far at KO percentages, up aerial is no longer a reliable KO move until much higher percents. Sheik must, however, still deal with Marth's range and more effective neutral game and Peach's edgeguarding and Vegetable projectiles.

Despite these nerfs, there were initially more Sheik professionals in PAL regions than in NTSC regions, namely, , and others. Due to Sheik's nerfs, they adopted an even more defensive playstyle using primarily Needle Storm and forward aerial camping to find openings. These PAL Sheik players were very successful at that stage of the metagame, even moreso than NTSC Sheik players, arguably because they developed stronger fundamentals (with less of a reliance on grabs) to overcome their more difficult punish game. For nearly 5 years (March 2010 - March 2015), Sheik was ranked 2nd on the PAL tier list, higher than she was in NTSC during that time span. However, Sheik's shortcomings over other top-tiered characters became increasingly prevalent as the technical ceiling of Melee increased, and she is now ranked 5th on the PAL tier list instead. However, she still retains her powerful air game, punish game, and excellent combo ability despite her down throw nerf.

In
Like and, Sheik does not appear as an opponent in the game's Classic Mode. However, Sheik can be fought if the opponent is and transforms into Sheik. Despite this, Sheik does have an introduction image for the "Now Loading..." screen between matches in the game's files.

In Adventure Mode
Sheik's sole appearance in the Adventure Mode is in the second portion of Stage 3, the Underground Maze. The player has to fight against Zelda on the Temple stage; Sheik can be fought if Zelda transforms.

In All-Star Mode
In All-Star Mode, Zelda/Sheik and her allies are fought on the Temple stage.

In Event Matches
Sheik is featured in the following event matches:
 * Event 9: Hide 'n' Sheik: The player is pitted against two Zeldas on Great Bay; to win, however, players have to wait for Zelda to transform into Sheik and then KO them. Upon getting KO'd as Sheik, the CPU will be removed from the game; KOs against Zelda, however, merely cause her to respawn as normal.
 * Event 15: Girl Power: The player, with two stocks, has to fight against, and Zelda, all of whom also have two stocks; the player, however, is tiny, and must KO all three, who are on the same team. Friendly fire is turned on in the match, easing it slightly for the player.
 * Event 20: All-Star Match 2: Zelda/Sheik is the third opponent the player must fight in this series of staged battles. Their character battles her on the Temple stage, and the player's character has 2 stock while Zelda/Sheik has 1. With a timer of four minutes, the player must defeat her and the other four characters with the overall time and life they have:, , , and.
 * Event 29: Triforce Gathering: The player plays as Link with Zelda as their partner, both of whom have one stock. They face on the Temple stage, who has two stock. Clearing the event allows the player to unlock Ganondorf.
 * Event 44: Mewtwo Strikes!: In this event, the player is initially placed on Battlefield, against Zelda. After fifteen seconds, however, Mewtwo appears on stage and will fight the player. The player's goal is to KO Mewtwo; while Zelda can be attacked, KOing her will result in failure.

Ending images
Sheik and Zelda share ending images for the one-player modes, as well as the same cinematic; clearing the mode with one also gives the player both of their trophies.

Trophies
In addition to the normal trophy about Sheik as a character, there are two trophies about her as a fighter, unlocked alongside Zelda's trophies by completing the Adventure and All-Star modes respectively with Zelda or Sheik on any difficulty:

Trivia

 * In Melee, Sheik ends up sending opponents flying vertically with the Home-Run Bat. As a result, she needs to transform into Zelda to use the Home-Run Bat properly in the Home-Run Contest.
 * Sheik's appearance in Melee marked the first time the character was playable in any game.
 * Sheik is the only playable character in Melee to not appear on the character selection screen.
 * As shares a character selection screen portrait with  in Brawl, and Smash 4 onwards splits  and  into separate characters, this marks the only time Sheik does not appear on the character selection screen.
 * All the unplayable characters have their name erroneously default to Sheik in the results screen.
 * In the Japanese version of Melee, Sheik is the only Legend of Zelda series character to speak (albeit only one phrase) outside of mainly various shouts and grunts like the other characters who represent the same series in-game. She shares this trait with, coincidentally, in Ultimate.
 * Sheik and are the only characters to have been ranked 1st on the tier list for a Smash game that have lost the position in a later tier list. This also happened to her in Smash 4.
 * Sheik's white costume changes her skin tone to a very pale color, as opposed to all of her other swaps which have a darker skin tone.
 * This is the only Smash game where Sheik uses her canonical design. Brawl and Smash 4 based her design off of unused concept art for Twilight Princess (which is the basis for Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf in those games), while Ultimate uses a completely original design based on the Stealth Armor set from Breath of the Wild (which is the basis for Link's design in Ultimate), although retaining her braid.
 * Because of this, Brawl had her canonical design appear as a sticker, while Ultimate has this appear as a spirit. This leaves SSB4 as the only game where Sheik's canonical design is not directly referenced.
 * Tuesday, February 22, 2022 was declared Sheik Day by the community, due to the "tu" noise Sheik provides every time she jumps (and wavedashes).