I've been reading this topic since yesterday, and by pure coincidence my friend who plays Sheik went to play at my house yesterday night too.
Well, point is, I can't win against him anymore, it's very sad but true. Up until now, I was somewhat even when he played Sheik, but yesterday I think I've hit some kind of barrier, where he got a tiny better and I just can't cope with it. It went to the point where he had 5 lives left one time (we play 15 lives games).
Problem is... I'm doing everything right here! I mean, I think (almost sure here) that I have quite a bit more technical skill than him. Everything I do is L-Canceled, I started using Wavedash decently to land some random F-smashes and such... I have also a decent recovery game (when comparing both of us that is).
This character is so cheesy that even HIM admitted it to be so. For christ's sake, that fair is just unfair (pun intended). He can consistently kill me at 80-90% + edgeguarding, but I can't land a killing hit even after 120%! That "thing" is so freaking fast it's not even funny, it makes my Marth look like a turtle in comparison... what's up with Sheik's recovery times? There MUST be something amiss here. He can just roll and spotdodge forever and I have what, a single frame to hit him? He also always end up rolling behind me and I don't know what to do, and always end up using over B to hit him (really bad choice I know). If I try anything else, he just grabs me, since all of my other hits are slower than that. I tryed facing backwards and grabbing him myself, but I fo]ind it too hard to get it right, as I always end up running instead of just turning around. The same thing happens when utilting... I tend to either get an up-smash or a U-air.
My basic idea now is to try and grab him as much as possible at low %s, and *try* to land a decent combo with utilts and such, but this has also come to a point where I can't land more than 1 or 2 utilts, and anything else I try to do is worthless as he manages to DI out of my range all the time. This is all good, but then *I* can't DI out of his downthrow, and I occasionally end up getting him MORE than once... he generally gets an upsmash out of it and I just can't do anything about it. I was so frustrated yesterday that I started mashing every button in hopes that something happened, but even then I can't do **** against that.
Double fairs are also impossible to land somehow (it seems...), and all the time it took to get the timing right was needless in this case, as it serves no purpose. I have accostumed myself to approach him with SHFFL nairs but even those get me open to a grab or anything he throws at me. Also, there is something else that bothers me which is that he sometimes gets TWO HITS out of his up-smash! How can this be? That way, he takes as much as 50% in a fraction of seconds, while it takes me a good chunk of hits to get to that.
What should I do better here? I think I just CAN'T win against him anymore if I keep up with this style of play, and it is really discouraging to see I DO have better skill than him, but I still get beaten by extremely cheap "always-hits" combos that even a 3 year old can assemble.
...maybe if I secretly buy the PAL version I would surprise him
But seriously, I need urgent advice here.
(sorry for the long post)