sheik is a fairly complex character once you start playing her correctly because her gameplay becomes much more linear but it's often hard to differentiate options since many of her choices are redundant with each other. once you start playing to the character's strengths better and differentiate her options, you should be able to expand your game play from there. i'll try to keep this simple:
- shiek's neutral game is missing a good dash and dashing jump. her ground speed is good but her dash is too short to use effectively for a dashdance. therefore, her entire neutral game becomes focused around using her ground position to cut off options from the opponent in a way that mimics a good dashdance. often this takes the very basic form of WD back in place of "dash away" from the dashdance. also, her approach options are very weak due to the lack of an aerial dash, so your "offense" usually means going up to the opponent and reacting defensively to them. sheik's entire game is focused around compensating for her lack of a neutral game into offensive options, because once you get past that the rest of the character is excellent.
- you therefore want to force the opponent to attack you in a way that is advantageous to you. you can do this several basic ways, and many more finessed ways once you are more experienced. easy ones including blatant needle and WD back spam, running up and blocking, or putting out well-spaced tilts when then opponent can't crouch them for whatever reason. these are meant to be low risk ways for you to engage your opponent (mimicking good positional advantage, since you don't actually have an advantage when you do these things from neutral)
- once you get some kind of conversion (usually a grab) you'll start your punishment in a way that feels like a flowchart but maximizes your output. unlike say marth with an undefined punishment game (repeated juggles) or fox where you simply re-engage the opponent from a point of positional advantage over and over again, sheik is different because when the opponent usually escapes your positional advantage, they simply reset to neutral either because that was the end of the punish or because you killed them. you will rarely finish your punish and have the match reset to where you still have some facet of positional advantage. for character with undefined punishment games, it's usually better to ignore the punishment flow chart and to simply re-adjust your punishment after you engage the opponent each time. instead for sheik, you cannot do this reliably, so you should stick to the flowchart and optimize your punishment game as much as possible. therefore, look for frame traps and set-ups from your throws regardless of how your opponent DIs them.
for a basic example, you are sheik and you grab an opponent by the edge. you almost always use down or back throw with sheik anyway, so in this case you just use whichever one gets the opponent off the stage, depending which way you are facing. if they DI out, you can edge guard them and throw needles, if they DI in you get a free sheik slap into the same set-up. no matter which way you were facing at the time you grabbed them, and no matter which way they DI, you still keep the advantage. therefore, these things can be factored into your flowchart for punishment.
- once you are able to finesse past sheik's mediocre neutral game into solid punishments, you can optimize your play from there. playing to this game plan should help you, since you can watch yourself play in videos, see that your neutral game or punishment game needs work, and then address the problem accordingly. hopefully this is just a good first step.
