haha literary ducks, too good tristan, i had to read that sentence twice lmao
here is the list of reliable sheik approaches
- (rar'd) spaced bair
now some other ideas
after rar'd bair gets old (and trust me, it will get old) it will eventually be powershielded and even countered if your opponent has gay moves like MK dsmash
at this point psyche your opponent out with fullhop fast fall ****, and at this point it can be any aerial, but i usually sitll use bair. the goal is to get your opponent to time their shields wrong, (people will rarely hold their shield the whole time)
depending on the matchups, you can approach with fast falled nair, i think this works against olimar or something. i think fullhopped rising nair works too, but you have to DI away in case it get shielded
DA works too, but very situational. basically, if your opponent sees it coming, you are going to get punished. you can use a little DA at medium distances between your opponent, and spaced correctly you can go past their shield if they happen to shield it. (but they can turn around and grab since this move has like bleh cooldown)
don't do dacus unless you want to kill, or do it once in every couple of matches as a surprise, and hope you get the twohit usmash. otherwise it is not really worth it.
i am surprised ankoku didn't mention this, but running shield to downsmash seems to work, but not as a conventional approach, maybe more of an inbetween hits kind of thing.
all in all, all of her aerials work in every situation, and if you can manage to get off an fair then so be it, and ftilt away, but you just need to make sure you understand all of your options at all times. never underestimate the power of dashgrab
as for being aggressive or not, I play aggressively, but it depends on the matchup. any character that can easily powershield and counter a bair is (probably a really bad matchup for sheik) not a character you want to approach (eg metaknight). these matchups you HAVE to force approaches (with needles).
Some matchups like Ganon, doesn't matter if you approach or not, since they are going to get ***** either way. some characters like zss, is better if you are aggressive since sheik's defensive options are pretty meh against the side B, and its best to stay within close range of a zss. Some characters like Pikachu, it doesn't really matter. Just understand your matchup, and choose whether to be aggressive or not.