(timestamp: 2:46)

a scenario every spacie has been in a million times: you’re on your last stock, at high percent. a sheik gets a grab – not a dash attack or an ftilt, a grab. so now it’s up to you to figure out how to survive.

armada here gets grabbed in literally the exact center of the stage so there’s no uthrow mixups that plup can do. plup dthrows and armada DIs away successfully (which is important because if he doesn’t, it means plup can do dthrow –> dsmash or dthrow –> ftilt). i’ll note that, in general, at high percents like this, spacies tend to like to tech a direction and rarely tech in place and almost never missed tech – i think this has to do with some panic button that many people have in common. anywho, armada DIs away. plup clearly isn’t looking for any regrabs here, so him dashing towards armada means two things at this angle:

he’s going for a dash attack, to set up for a fair he’s going for dsmash

what happens is: plup gets the dsmash mixup, armada has poor survival DI (which matters – good DI on this dsmash means armada still has a chance), and dies. now i’m not entirely sure what armada was going for here as his DI option is pretty terrible. i don’t doubt he had some master plan, but i can’t really figure it out. my best guess is that he was trying to amsah tech the dsmash, but that’s also like impossible, or maybe cc either option, but there’s no way he would have had time to do that. obviously he wasn’t DI-ing to survive the dsmash. it’s possible he was combo DI-ing for dash attack – but this is actually terrible DI as it sets him up perfectly to get faired after the dash attack.

you may believe that there’s just a mixup on dash attack vs dsmash, but in reality the DI is somewhat similar. holding up and in lets you adequately DI the dsmash so that you’ll live it, and if you get the slight in DI then you’ll make it hard for the sheik to get the fair followup off of the dash attack. fox can also try no DI – which would land him more or less right on top of the top plat (maybe some slight DI one way or the other is needed) giving another shot at life, but this means you’re dying to dsmash. holding hard in means that the sheik usually has to settle with hitting you with a sweetspot bair, which at this percent on dreamland is totally livable, though the DI on dsmash won’t be the best (though i believe armada would still have a recovery mixup so he would live).

either way – the BAD DI here in every scenario is the one armada did. even if plup went for a dash attack, armada would have drifted right in front of him, and your cousin who’s the “best on their block” could have hit the fair afterwards. DI-ing behind on sheik dash attack at this percent is way better, and sometimes no DI is as well.

for a general flowchart on this, i would try to figure out a DI such that you land on any possible platforms if the sheik chooses to dash attack, while still trying to maximize your good DI on a possible dsmash.

note: if the sheik instead does run up –> crouch –> ftilt, then this hard covers the DI in, and instead DI down and away is a much better option – this is sort of another possibility for why armada did the DI that he did is he thought plup might go for this. however, this is a rare site as most sheiks don’t go for this option (i can’t remember ever seeing it being used to techchase in this way, especially against fox who’s pretty easy to catch on tech in/away with dsmash or dash attack). so for the sheik mains out there, i think it might be good to grind this option as it hard covers the dsmash DI, and vice versa. both of these options are also unreactable so it would create a true 50-50 (with good DI on dsmash being a more desirable option to the sheik player than good DI on the ftilt).