The changes were small in amount, but huge in magnitude. In 3.5, Sheik had a downthrow-backthrow DI mixup. If you DId either throw wrong, Sheik could follow up with an aerial or a regrab, depending on percent and how floaty or fast falling a character was. This is central to her game. It allowed her similar reward to NTSC downthrow, but it made it so both her and her opponent had to think. It's not easy to just get the opponent to DI wrong. You need to predict how they're going to DI, and make them think you'll throw a certain way but then throw the other way. You can do that through conditioning, mindgames, whatever, but the point was that it was an interesting mechanic that definitely nerfed her relative to NTSC Melee Sheik while at the same time allowing her to get similar benefit for thinking while you were playing.



Fast forward to 3.6. Her backthrow is back to melee, and her downthrow is slightly slower in execution but unchanged from PAL downthrow. Now that all of her throws, except for downthrow, are for positional advantage rather than following up, both you and your opponent always know which throw Sheik is going to use when you're not on the ledge. Sure, Sheik can still follow up if the other player DI's incorrectly, but now there's literally no reason that you should have incorrect DI, because you know what Sheik is going for 90% of the time. NTSC Sheik didn't have this problem, because even though it was the same option tree, at least her downthrow had benefit.



What this means is that unless you're on the ledge, there's basically no reason for Sheik to grab (since any opponent that knows the matchup will be able to react and DI correctly 90% of the time). This 100% changes the way that a character centered around starting something off grabs is fundamentally played. It would be like if Roy had his D-Tilt nerfed so that it didn't pop opponents up and start combos.



On a broader scale, I don't think balance nerfs should be changing the way that a character is played. If a 50/50 throw that requires reads, conditioning, and dumb luck to be successful is broken, make it require more precise DI, or give it more knockback growth so it doesn't work at higher percents, or something. They even could have done the changes they made with 3.6, but changed the downthrow to have a little more utility off of correct DI so her game would at least still be centered around getting grabs.



We're getting all of these mixed messages right now. We're hearing that "PM isn't Melee" and seeing Fox nerfed in a way that makes him fundamentally not Melee, but we're seeing the really fun, mental, and unique thing given to PM Sheik made more melee (without 75% of the NTSC benefit we're used to). I don't care about consistency of play style between Melee and PM. I just care about consistency of play style between PM versions, because that's the only way a well formulated meta for any character and counterplay for any character can be developed.



I have nothing but respect for the PMDT, but there's got to be a better way to nerf a grab character than to take away the reason to grab.



TLDR; Don't make a character centered around grab have a 75% useless grab game.