puff thoughts 8/12

Vs. Puff
Modular.
Puff either stays low to the ground and tries to whiff punish you + prevent you from coming in. This loses to Sheik playing from unconventional angles that are accessed by FJ, DJ, platforms, etc. (Shroomed) and also being confident enough to stay close, just outside her range and whiff punishing (Druggedfox). Sheik can also bait this by retreating empty jumps, crouch -> wavedash, etc.
To beat unconventional stuff, Puff has to leverage the fact that she can determine the pace of the match through her superior bair and try to attack you from farther away using bair. You can use a more grounded movement style to get under this and pick better spots for close engagements (more Druggedfox). In essence, once you’ve convinced her to “back off”, you’re good to hug the ground so that way you can take risks with shield and SH, but you need to convince her to back off first.
From afar, needles are strong. Rising needles as disrupt so long as you have multiple is good. Microsituations like her trying to beat your platform stuff are disrupted well by diagonal charge -> horizontal throw since she has to get above the horizontal plane then come down to attack plat camping.
Run crouch/ASDI down is strong vs Puff. In general, crouch is strong vs misspaced moves.
Wavelanding off the edges of platforms is super nice and makes it tricky for her to determine where you’ll be because in that same motion, you could choose to waveland onto the platform and wait, or just drop through, or go to the top. This goes for neutral and also for corner trap situations, where Puff needs space.
Speaking of corner traps, whether she’s facing forward or backward in the air at any time is imperative as to how you decide to trap her. If she’s grounded you need to make sure to be wary of the fact that turn is 1f on the ground.

In this MU split second converts are ultra important. Jab fair, fair to fair, ftilt to fair at any percent, dtilt to fair, dtilt uair, ftilt uair while running, getting her after she’s hit by weak nair OOS, etc. Additionally, being able to rapidly change the direction you’re facing so you can use different hitboxes is super super useful. Last but not least, you need to be able to vary backflip, neutral jump (no fast fall, fastfall) and forward jump. Microsituations up close are determined by how far she has to drift.

Movement + ranges: The farther she is from you the more ability she has to vary her momentum, but the more susceptible she is to your zoning with bair (if she’s hovering at >⅓ FD away in the air, extremely easy to bair -- good way to beat brainless zoners). If she’s close, she has to commit to a certain space, but is much better at following up.

Things I need to solve:
-- If she commits to crouching a lot with a lead? First thoughts: percentage is key (controls whether or not I can dsmash, dash attack). It’s also better to represent grounded movement at that point in an attempt to trick her to get out of crouch? Need to ask Graham to crouch with leads. Charging needles could work too…
-- How to cover her landing with nair more effectively outside of crouch.
-- Recovery patterns
-- Utility of RC stuff, learning pivot bair
-- Understanding the extent of her movement at different ranges and how you can influence her movement with your dash/jump/double jump/run/walk/shield etc.

Stages
DL - this is OK for Sheik, losing due to Puff survivability but not terrible. Key is that Jiggs is bad at getting to the top plat so if you’re on there and she’s on the ground, she has a weak mixup/has to trick you into coming down. If you’re on there and she’s already in the air you need to be careful but shield drop is super reliable against this (but she might also be able to bait that). Aside from that normal strats is OK, the plats being high is actually good for you if you’re on the ground because it’s harder to fight your bair.
BF - where every match is likely to start. Side platform lengths are good, top plat is just low enough for her to be able to counter well. The lack of a wall to tech and the weird edge means that edgeguarding is quite a bit more straightforward. Platform heights are conducive to your back air zoning.
FD - she can’t protect herself with platforms which is important, but it’s also the case that if either character gets in the air before the other it’s very challenging to deal with on defense. In general more grounded style does better here, if only because the person who commits to strong zoning first will be moved around.
YS - worst stage for Puff. She has a really hard time dealing with all of Sheik’s angles due to plat heights, has the least survivability on this stage, due to blast zone edgeguarding interactions are worse for her, and in general has a more difficult time zoning well. However,  her edgeguard and juggle gain more potency on this stage due to small size.
FoD - medium-sized stage. Unclear whether it’s better for Sheik or Puff, depends on transformation stuff. When there’s no side plats you can leverage the presence of the top plat as Sheik as a way to get her to be back farther since you can escape and be exposed to low-depth mixup. With side plats keeping the ground is best, of course...platform heights never go terribly high so it’s roughly similar to Yoshi’s in that sense.
PS - feel uncertain about this stage but it’s just as bi8g as FD and has disparate platforms. The transformations aren’t amazing for either character, lol.