ROOOOY!
Smash Master
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2006
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- 3,118
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- Lincolnshire, England.
- NNID
- Gengite
- 3DS FC
- 5456-0280-5804
Sonic has no horizontally moving projectile, no reflector to deal with projectiles, and no ridiculously long ranged moves. As such, Sonic has to approach in nearly every match-up he has, and now approaching has become one of the most fundamental parts of his game.
In this thread, we talk about what Sonic can use to approach, what the positives and negatives of it are, who it should be used against, that kind of thing. Past the approaches themselves, follow-ups should also be considered. Sonic has many options for approaching, so we'll work through them. This may take a while.
Ready? GO!
Spindash
Side-B (Hop) Advantages & Disadvantages at a glance:
+ Invincibility frames on release.
+ You can often FSJ them out of a hop.
+++ Shield cancellable on ground before full charge.
+ Several different options available from this, like VSDJ or Spinshot for example (to be covered later)
- Bad damage output (5%)
-This phase only has a temporary hitbox that goes away after you go under your starting height.
- Hop is slow moving, and so doesn't cover ground as quickly as Spincharge => SDR.
Spincharge
Ehh
Spin Dash Roll (SDR)
yayay.
In this thread, we talk about what Sonic can use to approach, what the positives and negatives of it are, who it should be used against, that kind of thing. Past the approaches themselves, follow-ups should also be considered. Sonic has many options for approaching, so we'll work through them. This may take a while.
Ready? GO!
Spindash
Side-B (Hop) Advantages & Disadvantages at a glance:
+ Invincibility frames on release.
+ You can often FSJ them out of a hop.
+++ Shield cancellable on ground before full charge.
+ Several different options available from this, like VSDJ or Spinshot for example (to be covered later)
- Bad damage output (5%)
-This phase only has a temporary hitbox that goes away after you go under your starting height.
- Hop is slow moving, and so doesn't cover ground as quickly as Spincharge => SDR.
- Whilst invincibility frames are present, you've got to remember to not to get too comfortable with them. Only the first 5 or 6 frames upon release have invincibility frames which really isn't a lot at all. Don't think you can barge through a Game & Watch weaving defensive aerials, when you're only invincible for a 10th of a second.
- Footstool Jumping is an obvious invitation to a jab lock opportunity, provided you can get down to the ground before your opponent reacts.
- Shield cancelling is seriously the best option here. It's priority is the main reason for this. As the hop progresses past it's invincibility frames, the hop's priority diminishes from decent near the start to it basically being beaten out by everything as it finishes for. As a direct approach, unless your opponent is spaced horribly, you're only going to be hitting them with the low priority part which is pretty easily counterable.
With shield cancelling it, you're generally a lot safer unless your opponent plans to grab you out of the SDR to follow the hop, and ends up grabbing your shield instead. This cancelling is the backbone of Sonic's 'bait & punish' game. Once your opponent reacts to the predicted SDR, you're free to run in and punish any lag that the move they used to try and outprioritize with whatever best fits the situation. You don't have to punish just attacks though, spotdodges are fairly punishable too.
- The bad damage that the hop gives is the reason for it's bad priority, as as we all should know grounded priority is down to the damage output of both attacks that are 'clashing'. This bad damage alone should put you off using it as a direct approach quite honestly.
- There is a small amount of time where Sonic's hop has no hitbox at all, just before it hits the ground. Kind of comparable to the SDR 'turn-around' state where Sonic can just be attacked out of it, but can't put any hurt on the opponent at all. Just another reason why this is a bad direct approach, I guess.
- The nature of Sonic's spindash and spincharge should indicate that they're not meant to be used as a direct approach, as as they both have low priority, they're going to be easily outprioritized by an opponent as he's got time to think and react accordingly. Basically, you've got to use these as punishers, and spincharge does that job better. It closes the gap quicker between you and your opponent by not slowing you down by doing a little hop to start with before going into an SDR (which they both turn into, which will be covered later). Spindash simply isn't fast enough to get into an SDR to go and punish, so spincharge is preferable in basically every situation.
- Footstool Jumping is an obvious invitation to a jab lock opportunity, provided you can get down to the ground before your opponent reacts.
- Shield cancelling is seriously the best option here. It's priority is the main reason for this. As the hop progresses past it's invincibility frames, the hop's priority diminishes from decent near the start to it basically being beaten out by everything as it finishes for. As a direct approach, unless your opponent is spaced horribly, you're only going to be hitting them with the low priority part which is pretty easily counterable.
With shield cancelling it, you're generally a lot safer unless your opponent plans to grab you out of the SDR to follow the hop, and ends up grabbing your shield instead. This cancelling is the backbone of Sonic's 'bait & punish' game. Once your opponent reacts to the predicted SDR, you're free to run in and punish any lag that the move they used to try and outprioritize with whatever best fits the situation. You don't have to punish just attacks though, spotdodges are fairly punishable too.
- The bad damage that the hop gives is the reason for it's bad priority, as as we all should know grounded priority is down to the damage output of both attacks that are 'clashing'. This bad damage alone should put you off using it as a direct approach quite honestly.
- There is a small amount of time where Sonic's hop has no hitbox at all, just before it hits the ground. Kind of comparable to the SDR 'turn-around' state where Sonic can just be attacked out of it, but can't put any hurt on the opponent at all. Just another reason why this is a bad direct approach, I guess.
- The nature of Sonic's spindash and spincharge should indicate that they're not meant to be used as a direct approach, as as they both have low priority, they're going to be easily outprioritized by an opponent as he's got time to think and react accordingly. Basically, you've got to use these as punishers, and spincharge does that job better. It closes the gap quicker between you and your opponent by not slowing you down by doing a little hop to start with before going into an SDR (which they both turn into, which will be covered later). Spindash simply isn't fast enough to get into an SDR to go and punish, so spincharge is preferable in basically every situation.
Direct Approach :
Punish Approach :
Punish Approach :
Spincharge
Ehh
Spin Dash Roll (SDR)
yayay.
