Acceleration of Suguri 2/Sham

Introduction

(Under Construction)

Sham is AoS2's resident Summoner-type character; she's brought the robots and attacks she used in her home game along with her, and they do most of the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, they all have immense flaws in their design to the point where she functionally has no offense, and her defense leaves much to be desired. As a result, she is weaker than every character in the entire game by a large margin (barring Alte) and has no winning matchups. In fact, most of her matchup numbers go beyond 'bad' and tend to reach 'downright awful'.

Overview

Sham is a summoner type character that doesn't really do much fighting herself, and relies more on working with her drones to do that for her while backing them up with supportive fire. She is extremely defensive as a result of her non-existent offense; her attacks are all slow, inconsistent, and reliant on sluggish, destructible minions. While they do a decent job at protecting her in neutral, their aggro game is terrible. As a result, Sham struggles monumentally against characters who dont need to actually close in on her to hit her, and she tends to lose the second she reaches a significant HP disadvantage unless her opponent makes a careless mistake. Worse yet, her defense is ultimately let down by her incapability at building meter, causing most hypers to ruin her.

There's no mincing words; Sham is the worst character in the game. She has the second lowest tap-dash speed (equal to Mira's and only better than Kyoko's), the lowest meter gain, the highest meter feed, and no fast confirms. Unless you love the character or are curious as to why she is so powerless, you'd be better off not playing her. Do not expect any competitive success with her.

Difficulty: Hard

Sham's difficulty, to be blunt, just stems from her being the worst character in the game, having very little matchups in which she doesn't have a huge disadvantage. Her kit itself is relatively straightforward, or so it seems. But to actually utilize it without feeding your opponent unnecessary amounts of meter will take a lot of practice. This mixed with having to avoid getting hit more than anyone else (due to a utter lack of decent confirms) makes Sham very difficult to actually pull off.

Normal Moves

• Moves with a ★ are moves that require Sham to have a particular kind of robot summoned (either Sprites or Dwarves). They will replace their non-★ counterparts while Sham controls at least 1 of said robot.

Weapon A

Sprite Call (Can also be held)
Type	Energy	Shots
Beam	Primary: 20-100%	3 - 15
Damage	Meter Gain	Grazed Meter Gain
120x	?	?
Startup	Canceled Recovery	Full Recovery
13 (sprite summon), 24 (shots)	21-45	32-56
Sham summons a sprite at a random location within a ring surrounding her; holding down the button will summon more sprites if wA ammo is available (5 max), 6 frames apart each. Sprites have 200HP. Each sprite fires 3 sequential shots shortly after being summoned, before following Sham while travelling in randomised loop patterns around her, pausing to fire the same set of shots again every 3.3 seconds. After firing their 3rd set, they will continue following Sham in the same manner for another 3.3 seconds and then disappear. Significant meter disadvantage if grazed. Sham's dwA is replaced with an alternate move while she has at least one Sprite up.

Beam Ribbon
Type	Energy	Shots
Beam	Primary: 15-60%	24
Damage	Meter Gain	Grazed Meter Gain
120x	?	?
Startup	Canceled Recovery	Full Recovery
16 (wisps), 114 (bendy beams)	26	37
Can only be used when you control no Sprites. Sham fires out 4 wisps (2 frames apart each) which place themselves in random locations around her. About 1.6 seconds after being summoned, each wisp detonates into a 'flower' pattern made of 6 beams that curve inwards (the pattern is tilted based on the wisp's relative location to the opponent). They stick around until they hit the edge of the map, making them a decent delayed cover option. Harder for the opponent to graze than Sprite Call.

Sprite Release ★
Type	Energy	Shots
Direct	Primary: 0%	-
Damage	Meter Gain	Grazed Meter Gain
250x	?	0
Startup	Canceled Recovery	Full Recovery
11	21	32
Can only be used when you control at least one Sprite. Post-startup, Sham's sprites amplify their current loop movement before chasing the opponent, exploding if the opponent comes into contact with their hurtbox or if they are destroyed. They will chase the opponent in this state for a little over 4 seconds, although they will only genuinely try to run into the opponent during the last few frames of their existence; until then, they will repeatedly travel away in small loop patterns if they ever detect themselves getting too close. In other words, they are designed to only hit if the opponent dashes directly into them. Sometimes they will even deliberately loop outwards on startup if they detect that they are heading directly towards the opponent.

Resistant Sphere
Type	Energy	Shots
Direct	Primary: 50-100%	-
Damage	Meter Gain	Grazed Meter Gain
100 (burst)	?	0
Startup	Canceled Recovery	Full Recovery
11 (sphere), 21 (burst)	26	37
Sham expends all of her remaining wA ammo (minimum 50%) to summon a large sphere; it expands in size until frame 21, where it then has a single frame where opponents in contact with it will be damaged and knocked back. The sphere surrounds Sham as she moves and can push the opponent if she runs into them with it. Duration of the sphere is dependent on ammo expended; lowest is 61 frames (about 1 second), highest is 160 frames (about 2.6 seconds). The sphere does not interact with anything other than opponents and Star Breaker's tap wB (which will automatically stick to Sham if it hits the sphere).

Weapon B

Mysterious Cube
Type	Energy	Shots
Direct (Explosion)	Sub: 30%	7
Damage	Meter Gain	Grazed Meter Gain
250x	?	0
Startup	Canceled Recovery	Full Recovery
13	21	32
Sham summons an arc of 7 cubes at her front. The cubes become active on frame 33 (unless they overlap with the arena's edge, in which case they disappear), pushing the opponent away from their center as they slowly travel outwards. Cubes do not interact with other attacks; they only block opponents and Star Breaker's tap wB. Once a cube reaches the edge of the map, it will explode in a small radius.

Mysterious Cube (Held)
Type	Energy	Shots
Direct (Explosion)	Sub: 50%	12
Damage	Meter Gain	Grazed Meter Gain
250x	?	0
Startup	Canceled Recovery	Full Recovery
16	26	42
Sham summons a circle of 12 cubes. They become active on frame 36, and behave in the exact same way as cubes from the non-held version. Due to their tight clustering, it takes about half a second after becoming active for the opponent to be able to slip between them.

Dwarf Call

• Press SP + WB [Ballistic]
  • Damage: 135×n
  • Summons two larger bots that periodically fire 7 shots each. They will idle in place until firing the shots, then they will move to Sham's position and idle again. No more Dwarf bots can be summoned even if there's only one left on the field. If you use this move while a Dwarf is out, the Dwarf Tackle move will come out instead.

Dwarf Tackle

• Press SP + WB (With a Dwarf deployed) [Direct]
  • Damage: 60×n
  • Any idle Dwarf bots charge at the enemy, doing up to 4 hits each. They will move to Sham's position afterwards.

Hyper Attacks

Hyper A: Poly Sprite

• Execution: Hyper
  • Damage: 250×n
  • Like Sprite Release, this Hyper creates and sends out 11 Sprites to explode. Unlike Sprite Release, these explode after going a certain distance and may not reach your enemy.

Hyper B: Delta Sprite

• Execution: Dash + Hyper
  • Damage: 0
  • Sends out 3 triangular formations of Sprites. They slowly move towards your enemy. If they make contact, the enemy will be shocked momentarily, preventing her from dashing.

Hyper C: Bounding Sprite

• Execution: WB + Hyper
  • Damage: 250×n
  • A beefed up version of Mysterious Cube with different colored blocks added to make the formation tighter. The different colored blocks will prevent shots from going through them.

Hyper D: Dwarf Rush

• Execution: SP + Hyper
  • Damage: 40×n
  • 10 Dwarf bots are summoned and immediately charge at the enemy. Like Dwarf Tackle, each one can do up to three hits.

Accel Hyper: Arachne Call

• Execution: SP + WB + Hyper
  • Damage: 130×n (Explosions), 1040 (Plane explosion)
  • Sham sends out a large plane in the direction of the enemy. The planes causes explosions in front of it, and the plane itself explodes when it reaches the stage boundary. The plane itself is solid, so the enemy cannot dash through it. The plane does no damage before exploding.