BBR Weekly Character Discussion #24: Sonic

Sonic...Sonic sonic sonic.

I must say while I love to play as him he just...does so poorly overall.
He has INCREDIBLE ground speed allowing him to punish so much more than other characters.
A dash shield grab that the IC's would kill to have, and some decent combos that work even up to higher percents.
The problem?
Lack of priority.
lack of range.
Lack of reliable KO setups.

Those three major issues are FATAL for a character in this game. Lack of priority means he cannot wall very well in comparison to other characters and thus have a more efficient method of timing out or forcing an approach.
Lack of range means he MUST get close to the opponent to do anything, including KO. While his cancels help make up for this issue in that they retain his options, they also add to his issues.
In terms of KO ability, Sonic has some of the lowest in the game. It isn't that his KO power sucks, its actually average, the issue is they take FOREVER to come out.
Dsmash=18 frames
Fsmash=17 frames
Bair=13 frames

His forward smash is so bad, that if you shield his Fsmash, you can counter it with your own Fsmash, as SONIC!
For all the time it takes for the attack to come out, he completely lacks the same power and range as some of the other slow smashes.

Sonic just cannot finish the opponent off, and it is part of why he is disadvantaged against much of the cast. He can space them, he can rack up damage, but he has nothing to KO them with outside of the opponent making an error.

ShadowLink84 said:

...but he has nothing to KO them with outside of the opponent making an error.

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That's how every character is in this game. The only way to beat someone in Brawl is to have the opponent make an error that lets you punish with a powerful move.

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Sonic. Alright. I'll try my best here.

Strengths

Speed
Sonic's ground speed is absolutely ludicrous. The properties of his ground speed allow him to weave in and out of his opponent's range, avoid projectiles, navigate the level, and punish many, many attacks that can go otherwise unpunished in several other match ups (Such as being able to punish something like Meta Knight's down smash from a distance). Even simple movements such as the foxtrot are viable with Sonic because of his ridiculous acceleration at the beginning of a dash attack, allowing him to pull off maneuvers such as stutter steps (to give his forward Smash a decent jump in ground coverage. It can be devastating as a spacing tool to dodge and immediately counter opponent attacks), and dash dancing. The dash dance in particular is incredible, since it allows him to retreat and retaliate in the same vein as a stutter step forward smash, but with a larger area to use and manipulate.

Another powerful, manipulative property of his speed is how it forces the opponent to act. Moving so quickly toward an enemy limits the amount of time they are given to react, and allows Sonic to, in his own way, "control" the opponents actions by just dashing (an example would be to dash toward someone such as Meta Knight, only to stop while they've already committed to an attack like the Mach Tornado, which you then capitalize on with your aforementioned ground speed).

Overall, Sonic's ground speed is just insane, and is easily one of, if not the most powerful tool in Sonic's arsenal.

His aerial speed isn't too shabby either, but it's more or less average in comparison. It gives him the mobility he needs to pressure players with aerials, but isn't incredible in any way.

His Spin Charge and Spin Dash both limit his options to a smaller set in terms of sheer numbers, but grant him an even faster ground speed when charged, and a faster (yet more committed) air speed, while at the same time, granting him a hitbox which allows him to chain attacks together, or retreat via jump canceling.

Mixups
Sonic almost (?) never has to commit to an approach. His Aerial Spin Charge, grounded Spin Dash cancels, and ground speed (foxtrotting and dash dancing in particular) all allow him to constantly keep the opponent guessing on which action he is about to take next. This makes Sonic very difficult to read, and boils down to analyzing the player habits behind the character, and punishing.

Damage Output
I wasn't entirely sure where to put this, but I figure that considering it a strength is fair, given the potential Sonic has while utilizing his spins.

Sonic's damage output is seemingly average, for the most part. No single attack Sonic has deals more than 20%, but his ability to set up combos, locks, and put pressure on an opponent is slightly above average, I would think.

Simple Spin Dash rolls into an aerial hit, followed by a fair, nair, or uair can deal well over 20% per combo. Furthermore, Aerial spin charges, when timed properly, can deal over 30%.

At 0%, Sonic's uthrow can combo into utilt, uair, or fair (depending on the opponents mass, weight, etc, etc), dealing anywhere from 20-25%.

Sonic's pummel is also quite powerful in comparison to other characters' damage-per-pummel. Sonic's pummel deals 3% at first (I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong, SL), then degenerates to 2% per pummel (rounded). Combined with his fairly speedy pummeling, and decent throw damage (uthrow does 12% and puts characters in a bad position vs. Sonic, while the others do anywhere from 6-9%), Sonic can rack up damages exceeding 20% with every single successful grab.

If done with poor DI, Sonic's footstool setups from spin dash and spin charges also allow him to constantly add up damage with every successful spin attack that connects (X showcases this constantly on the west coast).

In short, Sonic has methods at various opponent percentages that allow him to deal moderately high damages at all times.

Stage Exploits
Sonic really shines on levels that have plenty of running room (no surprise here). Platforms can be both a gift (Ice Climbers) and a curse (Marth/Meta Knight).

The one major exploit people should (but for some reason, still don't) know about is Sonic's Spin Dash abuse on multiple levels.

The properties of the initial hop in Sonic's Spin Dash (sideB) give him either invincibility or extraordinarily high levels of priority (SL, again, clarification would be appreciated here). For some odd reason, doing this technique on certain inclines in the game allow him to retain this property from his initial hop until the SD either clanks, Sonic turns around, jumps, or falls off of the level. This simple exploit allows Sonic to deal with a large variety of projectiles and character related problems that he has difficulty handling on his own (Falco's lasers, Snake's grenades, Meta Knight).

Yoshi's Island: Brawl and Pictochat are where this technique shines the best, but there are several other levels available for Sonic to abuse this technique on. Rainbow Cruise, Pokemon Stadium 1 & 2, and Brinstar, just to name a few.

This technique is incredibly useful to tackling harder match ups for Sonic, and makes winning via time outs much easier for Sonic to utilize during any time where he has the lead in a match. Above that, it gives Sonic (given that PictoChat is legal at the event) a guaranteed counter pick for almost every character in the cast.

On top of that, it forces the opponent to waste a strike prior to the first game on Yoshi's Island: Brawl.

You take what you can get at that point, I suppose.

Recovery
Sonic's recovery is incredible. His UpB is one of the highest reaching recovery moves, and the speed at which it shoots upward is perfect for recovery and elevated pressure on airborne opponents. Above that, Sonic is temporarily invincible during a portion of the UpB animation, which is easily exploited to avoid edge guards and UpB grab gimps on him. Using UpB also doesn't remove his ability to attack, which is one of the strongest aspects to the special move, since it allows him to attack would-be edge guarders, and potential KO opponents directly above him prior to an UpB approach.

His spins also allow him to recover without wasting any jumps, and help him cover great distances. His Homing Attack also does the same, but puts him at risk should the opponent abuse the properties of the attack.

Sonic also has a pretty decent ledge snap range.

His survivability is also above average, primarily because of his momentum cancel abilities. His Spin Dash and Aerial Spin Charge, after their initial start ups, completely cancel all backwards momentum, and propels him forward (sideB actually pulls him slightly back before launching him forward, so it's more dangerous to use in certain scenarios). This "bucket braking"-esque type momentum cancel allows him to live much longer than usual, especially on larger stages that give him the room to do so.

Sonic has plenty of options between his spins, second jump, and UpB to recover and attack while offstage or in the air.

Weaknesses

Range
Sonic relies so much on his ground speed for spacing because the range on pretty much every attack (aside from uair and bair) are downright atrocious. Almost every attack requires Sonic to get directly inside of every character's face, which puts him in a bad spot versus characters with faster/high priority jabs like Ike or Zero Suit Samus, characters who have easy OoS punishers (Olimar and Meta Knight), or characters who can kill you with disjoints at deadly percents (Snake @ 110%). It also makes approaching any character with disjointed hitboxes/long range difficult, such as Marth, Meta Knight, and Lucario.

The lack of a projectile (not including Spring) also forces him to approach his opponents whenever he is not leading in percent/stocks should they have one, and having projectiles halts Sonic's ability to navigate the level. Snake's grenades and Falco's lasers do this fairly well.

Sonic mainly has difficulties with getting in and damaging his opponents (which is why he relies on his mixups and ground speed to manipulate the enemy), and dealing with characters who can attack using primarily projectiles.

Attack Speed
ShadowLink went over this with Sonic's KO options (dsmash, bair, and fsmash), but the problem with Sonic's attack speed goes further than that.

Not counting his spin attacks (which have a downtime, but most Sonic's almost never allow that to happen via jump canceling), every single attack that Sonic has has some terrible down time that can be punished if not properly spaced (while some, no matter how well they are spaced, can be punished).

The cool down time on Sonic's ftilt, utilt, usmash, dtilt, uair, dair (when not auto canceled), jab3, and fair are all easily punishable, while the start up time is just terrible on his KO moves. This makes taking any committed action with Sonic's attacks a very risky game of rock-paper-scissors.

KO Options
I can't say much that ShadowLink hasn't already.

Sonic's ability to KO is hilariously bad. Not only does he ONLY have three options to KO (bair, fsmash, dsmash), but they're all slow, unreliable, easy to punish, and have very little to NO SETUPS.

Bair is the only KO option with potential setups. Spin Dash Roll to bair, uair (at high percents), and nair can all potentially KO opponents at high percents, but this requires the opponent to DI in a certain way, while requiring the Sonic to call the DI as early as possible, and punish with the appropriate aerial. None of these are guaranteed because it is entirely possible to DI and avoid all three potential setups.

The other two moves only land when, as ShadowLink said, the opponent makes a mistake.

Matchups

Sonic has difficulties with several characters from many of the higher tiers (Meta Knight, Falco, Lucario, Wario, Olimar, Snake, ICs, etc.). Despite this, Sonic has the tools necessary to deal with any one of these matches and more. There is very little general agreement to what character Sonic suffers the most to in tournament sets, but most Sonic mains agree on the fact that Sonic can reasonably win any match in a tournament setting.

Overall, Sonic doesn't really have any glaring advantages over many characters (with the exception being Samus, since he utterly DESTROYS her for some reason. Ganondorf, and Link are also easier match ups for him). For the lack of a proper word, Sonic only ever has a "slight" advantage on lower tier characters (55:45s with some 6:4s here and there), and clashes with many mid-tier character in even to slightly disadvantaged matchups in the opponent's favor, with a few slight advantaged ones in the form of Ness and possibly Bowser.

On the tiers beyond that, Sonic has a slight disadvantage versus many of the characters, while having one or two oddly even match ups (Pikachu, R.O.B., and potentially Marth).

Tournament Performance

There are several Sonic mains scattered throughout the nation that do as well as characters categorized as high as high tier:

X from Utah does significantly well against numerous players from the west coast, having beaten Tyrant and DSF several times, and even taking M2K to the fifth game of the 1st set in a Grand Finals. He is ranked #1 in his own state, and does well enough that I wouldn't doubt he'd be in the top 10 on the west coast.

I myself believe that I do moderately well down here in Texas. I usually grab anywhere from 4th-13th place in state-wide events, and as of the most recent update to the Texas PR, am ranked in the top 10 in Texas. I've also taken a set from Gnes, sets from Razer, and several other high profile players from the state.

Speed has had the best performance (in my opinion) on the East Coast, and I believe, last I checked, he was power ranked in his own region. He's done very well in the past, taking games off of Chu and Atomsk (I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong), and places consistently well in tournaments (I usually see him claim top 10 on occassion).

Goggles (da KID) also does almost as well as Speed, and is ranked in his region as well.

The Midwest had ithrowthings, who did moderately well (though I honestly don't know too much information about the Midwest Sonic placings in general) before he quit.

In short, there may be just a few, but there are Sonics from most of the regions who do fairly well in comparison to Sonic's other neighboring midtier characters, and even more than several characters well above him in the tier list.

Current Tier Placement and Future Potential

Honestly, I see Sonic moving up on the next tier list. His properties may be a little daunting, but he does have plenty of good attributes, and his above average (for a low mid tier character) tournament performance and average match ups, to me, say that Sonic deserves a bump up on the next tier list from his current position.

As for the distant future, I can't really say much. Sonic has the potential to move up, without a doubt, but for sure, Sonic's current overall tier placement is more or less cemented:

Because of Sonic's faults, Sonic will never leave mid-tier.

Overall

Sonic is a speedy, momentum based character who can handle most, if not all of the match ups in the game, and can be flexibly used defensively or offensively thanks to his mixups, but suffers from a lack of unreliable KO options, range, and attack speed which keeps him (as of this time) as a well-defined mid-tier character. This is supported by his manageable match ups overall, and his above average tournament performance from multiple regions.

I'd appreciate any help from anyone who would like to discuss several issues regarding Sonic, or if someone would like to correct me on any information that may be outdated or just outright incorrect.

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I hope I did this right.
._.

I feel Sonic could move up a small bit on the tier list, but he's pretty much settled into his "zone" on the list and will probably only fluctuate a small amount up or down on the list from here on out unless something incredibly game changing is discovered, or someone starts to take off with him to a level as yet unseen. A very large amount of his success already is a lot of the time just plan inexperience by opponents, and underestimation since he has such a bad reputation as a "joke" character. I feel like he's clearly not low tier material, but no better than mid tier. He feels very much like a middle of the road character when played to his full potential. I was using Sonic quite a lot for a while and utilizing much of the material from the Sonic boards to great success. What I found was great initial success, but this decreased steadily as people learned to fight him better. This has all the tell-tale marking of a Mid Tier to me.

Much of the time, I find fighting against Sonic to lean toward "Sonic does very well, unless the opponent does [insert thing here]" which usually requires a very simplistic and boring way of playing that shuts down several of his options. If he just had a single more reliable kill move, I would be all over Sonic as a break out character. It's pretty much the only thing keeping him from being really good.

Espy Kasrani said:

That's how every character is in this game. The only way to beat someone in Brawl is to have the opponent make an error that lets you punish with a powerful move.

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LOL NO.
not every character is the same in the game.
A character like Pit and Wario and Metaknight all have KO moves that are below reaction speed and require prediction.
Let alone that several characters have ways of guaranteeing KO's or ahve the ability to pressure the opponent and place them in a bad situation for a KO.
Sonic has NONE outside the footstool.
Zero, zip nadda.
At least DK can take a hit with Giant punch.
At least Lucario has his ******** Fsmash and Ftilt.
Snake is snake and kills with everything after 130% and tanks like no one's business.
hell even a garbage character like Luigi has an easier time killing.
Sonic can't even put the opponent in a situation where they MIGHT get killed.
What are you going to do? hit them with a aerial spindash at 180%?
Good luck with garbage range and priority.

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Espy Kasrani said:

Mixups
Sonic almost (?) never has to commit to an approach. His Aerial Spin Charge, grounded Spin Dash cancels, and ground speed (foxtrotting and dash dancing in particular) all allow him to constantly keep the opponent guessing on which action he is about to take next. This makes Sonic very difficult to read, and boils down to analyzing the player habits behind the character, and punishing.

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no you are correct.
None of Sonic's approaches cause him to commit.
Every single one of his approaches place him in a position where he can quickly escape punishment.
Fairing an opponents shield on block and then double jumping or springing is stupidly good at avoiding a reverse grab.
I think the only committed approach is his dash shield grab, and that you can OOS Uair/Side B

Personally I like it when someone shields the aerial down B, the hits keep them in shieldstun too long to escape.

Espy Kasrani said:

Sonic's pummel is also quite powerful in comparison to other characters' damage-per-pummel. Sonic's pummel deals 3% at first (I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong, SL), then degenerates to 2% per pummel (rounded). Combined with his fairly speedy pummeling, and decent throw damage (uthrow does 12% and puts characters in a bad position vs. Sonic, while the others do anywhere from 6-9%), Sonic can rack up damages exceeding 20% with every single successful grab.

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It stays at 3% for I think the first 3 hits.
Since remember there is the fresh bonus and then on the 3rd hit its begun to stale but still rounds up.
I think his pummel is around 5th in terms of damage to speed.
Fthrow is rather useful as well, i think it can hit both IC's at the same time and puts the opponent in nice position for the Uair.

Uair is somwhat decent for catching people who land, its where most of my spindashes land their hits, from people touching the ground since they are stuck for 3 frames helplessly (while Sonic and snake and Diddy have their cancels so they arent stuck)

by the way, I personally think Diddy vs Sonic on YI is 10-0 in Sonic's favor.
<_<
>_>

Sorry, thought i was funny.

ShadowLink84 said:

LOL NO.
not every character is the same in the game.
A character like Pit and Wario and Metaknight all have KO moves that are below reaction speed and require prediction.
Let alone that several characters have ways of guaranteeing KO's or ahve the ability to pressure the opponent and place them in a bad situation for a KO.
Sonic has NONE outside the footstool.
Zero, zip nadda.
At least DK can take a hit with Giant punch.
At least Lucario has his ******** Fsmash and Ftilt.
Snake is snake and kills with everything after 130% and tanks like no one's business.
hell even a garbage character like Luigi has an easier time killing.
Sonic can't even put the opponent in a situation where they MIGHT get killed.
What are you going to do? hit them with a aerial spindash at 180%?
Good luck with garbage range and priority.

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If you ever get hit in Brawl, it's because you made a mistake. So yes, in regards to the concept of netting a KO, every character is the same.

Wario's fsmash, Pit's fsmash/dsmash, Meta Knight's dsmash? Your fault for making the mistake of putting yourself in that terrible position.

Getting hit by Giant Punch? Should've shielded or spotdodged instead of challenging it.
KO'd by Lucario? You should avoided the setups.
Utilted by Snake? You should be aware of the disjointed range, and act accordingly to avoid it.

But yeah, the point wasn't directed at Sonic. More or less at the entire cast.
Getting hit in Brawl means you made a mistake. Sonic's KO options just require your opponent to make mistakes that are more difficult to induce.

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Sonic's pummel is seriously too good. I cringe whenever I see a Sonic who nets a grab, and refuses to pummel at least once when given the blatant opportunity to do so.

I'll even see Sonic's throw people above 150% without throwing out a single pummel.
An uthrow that deals 12% at 150% sounds nice, but you know what sounds better?

Two/three pummels and an upthrow, which turns 12% into 20-23%.

Bah lets not do the perfect brawl shtig or i'll bite you.
As for the pummels, it depends, You can only really start pummeling around 40% and at best, one or two pummels.

I think Shadowlink means that Sonic can only get a kill when the opponent makes a SERIOUS major error. Characters who are better can rely on minor mistakes or being a few frames off to get a kill, but Sonic relies on opponents flat out making huge mistakes or bad play for the kill. I think that's the distinction.

You can reasonably expect players at a mid to high level to make these kind of mistakes, but at high to top level you don't see players making those types of mistakes much.

Idle threats now, Shadowlink?

Agreed, Edreeses, which is what I noted in my previous post. Sonic just requires the opponent to make more mistakes than characters like Snake in order for him to land those crucial KO moves.

A serious major error or a strong read.


The thing is his options to do this either beat very few things on their own or are simply ridiculously punishable if your read is incorrect.



However, his other options are the opposite ridiculously safe unless read just about perfectly (except for MK).


TBH if I had a recomendation for the sonic metagame I think it would be "run away more", cause he's got a ton of mix-up potential in almost every situation due to his ability to force opponents to commit without committing himself, but he starts failing when players get to the end of first stock. At the same time, he shines at escaping traps due to his general speed, safety, and ability to force opponents to commit without committing himself. Granted he can still get read and lose his stock, but I think it overall puts him in a better position to avoid taking damage then a more agressive approach.

Espy Kasrani said:

Idle threats now, Shadowlink?

Agreed, Edreeses, which is what I noted in my previous post. Sonic just requires the opponent to make more mistakes than characters like Snake in order for him to land those crucial KO moves.

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Hell no, I said the same thing to goggles. He still owes me a steak.

I wish i had some sonic experience. I have literally ZERO sonics around here. Normally someone picks up a char that no one really know to lrn the MU but everyone hates sonic lol.

I saw X play last weekend, and I saw a lot of potential.

Holy ****ing ****, Espy. Amazing post. Best character summary yet. Unbiased, descriptive, informative, and backed by facts and amazing explanations. I <3 you so much. I'm just gonna say:


YEAH, WHAT ESPY SAID


'cause you're so freaking pro.

Not much to say about Sonic, but I will say that getting hit in Brawl doesn't mean "making a mistake."

Spotdodging when you see the start up of a Smash being charged I'll let you categorize as a mistake. Being baited, pressured, or read isn't a mistake though.

TheReflexWonder said:

I saw X play last weekend, and I saw a lot of potential.

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Can you detail some of the tactics/strategies/gimmicks X used that made you see potential?

TheMike said:

I was wondering... does Sonic have any solid advantage against a high tier or a common used character?

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I'd say his best matchups in the upper tiers are against Diddy Kong and ICs, and even then they probably aren't better than 50/50, or 55/45 in favor of the opponent. Sonic shines a lot better against lower-mid and low tier characters where characters have a lot of the same disadvantages but none of Sonic's speed. On the other hand, he doesn't have very few characters that he gets destroyed by either. His worst matchups are likely Marth and G&W, and MK depending on who the MK is (lol). He's not garbage, but his upper tier matchups leave much to be desired beyond the whole "OMG, I don't know how to play against this character" thing that a lot of characters in his tier position get.

Data time - a little late, but late is better than never.

First, I would like to caution that for characters as low as E tier, the sample size of serious players representing them is quite small. Drawing conclusions from this data alone may be dangerous, much more so than with higher tier characters.

As usual, the following graph takes tournament results as compiled by Ankoku (current as of the end of May, 2010), groups the results by character and player name, and shows on the Y-Axis how well the N-th best player (arranged on the X-Axis) of characters A, B, C... has been doing in tournaments over the course of 6 months.



I read somewhere a while back that regions go through Sonic phases, but before long Sonic's weaknesses override the gimmick factor and they start failing. Comparing the data for the six months prior to June with that from the six months prior to February, this theory is not exactly consistent with the data; Before there were Shugo and X doing quite well, but now it's Espy and X. X has remained on his perch, and Espy is not a complete newcomer to the scene, he's just started enjoying some more success over time.

Mind you, this isn't saying that Sonic's consistently doing great. After Espy and X, Sonic fits in with the other E tiers in in terms of tournament placement.

I think Sonic is slightly better than any of the other E tier characters, though not by much. While it is true that Sonic has very little that he can do unless the opponent blunders, he has one of the best toolsets in the game for causing the opponent to make a big mistake.

I think sonic is just under-represented. I cant think of any sonics in Fl other than xaltis, who uses falco now.

I dunno if I can agree with that. Seems to me that a lot of people sincerely try to play Sonic at some point or another. If a character has few mains because players who play as him eventually see a need to upgrade to a better character, can you still say that the former character is really being "under-represented" or not?

Sonic's ability to capitalize on grounded mistakes is amazing. If MK whiffs a tornado and fails to autocancel, it's a free grab from almost anywhere on FD. Which is pretty cool.

That said, I have played one pretty good Sonic (messiahfreak2000, not known throughout the land cause he's stuck in Bend, Oregon... but he once came in and started knocking down our entire PR one by one, lol) and I don't see enough pummels. Especially given this whole 3% shenanigans >.>;

That speed is also great for getting people to flinch and mess up. Given that Sonic almost never has to commit, he can change his plans halfway through the "approach" and react accordingly.

The problem I see with Sonic is low priority. I know as MK, I just faired and waited. if the sonic approached by air and used both jumps, I'd tornado at an appropriate time. You can space it to hit dair and if sonic uses up B to avoid it, the tornado can end before getting punished. The tornado, when properly autocancelled, is difficult to punish, even with Sonic's great ground speed.

I'm not really discounting the character, since there is evidence to show that a great sonic can handle a great MK... but my question is "how"? With such low priority, well timed (and cancelled) nados are hard to beat... so how is it done?

Espy's post kinda gives the rest of us less reason to post. Anyway...

Sonic is really just at that mid tier power level. He's not really a good character in any way as his weaknesses are probably overall more significant than his strengths, but he's not really bad either. He's able to handle every match-up in the game even if some are really tough and he is wanting for favorable ones among the higher tier characters, and while from what I've seen Sonic kinda gets stage screwed, other characters have that worse.

One thing he has going for him is that, if the Sonic player is better at reading his opponent than his opponent is at reading him, he's just going to wreck. Sonic's mobility is so high that keeping him out is ultimately more a matter of calculated risk than actual safety. Granted, Sonic is balanced out and balanced down to about mid tier thanks to the risk he has to take himself as he attacks and how much he has to hit before he finally kills, but it prevents really defensive styles from going too far on Sonic and forces his opponent to try to read him. With his mobility, Sonic can hit his opponent for doing pretty much anything at any time as long as the Sonic player knew it was coming. Having that kind of thing to strive for is something that I think should help actual Sonic mains in practice as his general tier gets fleshed out more as the game matures.

Espy and Shadowlink pretty much covered everything.

It was a nice read guys.

Yup, Espy and SL completely win this thread.

<3 you guys

1. Get percent lead
2. Stay in one spot
3. ????
4. GG

Espy and SL did get everything down. Good stuff.

IIRC, about the pummel bit, Sonic ranks second in the damage output/pummel speed ratio. The top spot goes to Lucas.

man...

SL have you completely forgotten that spindash - bair is a true combo to KO many characters WHO ARENT ALL CALLED WARIO and cant DI it hard enough?

Watch any of X's videos and then tell me he has absolutely no kill set ups. whenever an enemy jumps, they eventually have to land and just time it so spindash catches the landing lag frames and youre set... I'm not saying its easy or common to pull off, but it is reliable when it hits.

That's not much of a setup. That's more like capitalizing on an opponent's mistake.

I guess so, still, theres countless situations where the enemy can make a mistake which is punishable by spindash, something as simple as falco doing an SHDL is punishable by spindash when you can hit him before he even lands. It's not so much Sonic setting up something as it is the opponent doing anything which isnt standing still being punishable by it. When Sonic has a % lead this can turn things considerably in his favour :/

Sonic can punish mistakes from like a mile away, which is what makes him so difficult to fight.

Pierce]Not much to say about Sonic said:

I was wondering... does Sonic have any solid advantage against a high tier or a common used character?

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Nope. Sonic has nothing greater than 50:50 against common/high tier characters. At least not definitively.

gallax said:

I think sonic is just under-represented. I cant think of any sonics in Fl other than xaltis, who uses falco now.

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I disagree with that, actually. Sonic actually has quite the representation in tournaments. Moreso than most of the characters he's surrounded by on the tier list, at least.
There ARE, however, dry spots scattered throughout the nation. Florida and the Mid-West happen to be two of those spots.

Most of the Sonics are located on the East Coast.

Tuen said:

I'm not really discounting the character, since there is evidence to show that a great sonic can handle a great MK... but my question is "how"? With such low priority, well timed (and cancelled) nados are hard to beat... so how is it done?

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Actually, any tornado (even auto-canceled ones) is punishable by Sonic.
The key to overcoming a good Meta Knight is pretty much in his ground speed. A good Sonic needs to utilize and milk that property for all that it's worth in order to evade, predict, and punish the Meta Knight for absolutely every move that he does.

In other words, the Meta Knight needs to constantly make major errors/predictable reactions to Sonic's movements in order for Sonic to successfully rack up damage and KO the opponent.

The difference here when compared to someone like, say, Samus, is that the margin for error, and the intensity of the punishment for any possible errors is different. With Samus, the margin for error is higher, since she has weak punishers for Sonic's attacks, while the intensity for error is tiny since all Samus can really do is add up damage and not kill until ridiculous percentages.

Meta Knight, however, has very little lag punishable openings in his moves, which means the margin for error is tiny, while the intensity for each error is grave. This is not because he deals harsh damage for insane knockback, but more because getting caught in any move from Meta Knight puts Sonic in a terrible spot against him.

The only place Sonic can reliably be in order to have any success against Meta Knight is on the ground. Without that ground speed, this match up is absolutely terrible.

That was a great read.

I'm detracting my former statement elsewhere (I think I said it in the tourney results thread lol) about Sonic vs. Falco being 55:45. If you don't have Yoshi's Island or Pictochat, those lasers just easily shut you down. It's rough but winnable.

Thanks, everyone. That was an amazing start by ShadowLink and a great summarization by Espy.

ShadowLink84 said:

I think his pummel is around 5th in terms of damage to speed.

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To elaborate on what Espy said earlier, Sonics damage output from a grab is actually very high. Last I checked he has the 4th best DPS from a pummel (popo and nana, white pikmin, lucas, sonic) iirc and considering IC's never pummel, its rare to grab with a white and lucas' grab being quite poor, Sonic will often be seeing a great benefit from this. Of course its small by itself, but add it to his high damaging uthrow and ability to punish many things with a dashgrab and youve got a rather potent damage wracker that people will often ignore.

His average damage output per grab is right up there with the best of the game imo. Id only put it below DDD, Falco, Snake, IC, MK and maybe bowser. Characters like Wario and pikachu might be able to do a fair amount of damage from a single grab but its not easy to get grabs with them and are strongly dependant on location of the grab and % enemy is on etc.

Espy Kasrani said:

Actually, any tornado (even auto-canceled ones) is punishable by Sonic.
The key to overcoming a good Meta Knight is pretty much in his ground speed. A good Sonic needs to utilize and milk that property for all that it's worth in order to evade, predict, and punish the Meta Knight for absolutely every move that he does.

In other words, the Meta Knight needs to constantly make major errors/predictable reactions to Sonic's movements in order for Sonic to successfully rack up damage and KO the opponent.

The difference here when compared to someone like, say, Samus, is that the margin for error, and the intensity of the punishment for any possible errors is different. With Samus, the margin for error is higher, since she has weak punishers for Sonic's attacks, while the intensity for error is tiny since all Samus can really do is add up damage and not kill until ridiculous percentages.

Meta Knight, however, has very little lag punishable openings in his moves, which means the margin for error is tiny, while the intensity for each error is grave. This is not because he deals harsh damage for insane knockback, but more because getting caught in any move from Meta Knight puts Sonic in a terrible spot against him.

The only place Sonic can reliably be in order to have any success against Meta Knight is on the ground. Without that ground speed, this match up is absolutely terrible.

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Sounds reasonable. That speed, by the way, is why I tend to "space" an entire stage away like it were 2 body lengths away. Sonic can always leave you guessing as to when he's going to approach, and he has a large variety of fake-outs to use when shielding, dashing or jumping.

Also, I reviewed the video (i'll post it online at some point...) of my match with the aforementioned sonic, and the autocancelled tornados worked because he tried to punish with fsmash. Heheh. I'm sure there are better options for that kind of situation.

To add to some general comments about the character, I've seen his damage output at maximum efficiency, and it can get pretty crazy. I've seen sonic get the approach in on MK (he flinched when he did some cancelled move... sorry, I'm not too familiar with all of sonic's moves) and by the time sonic reset their position, MK took 65%. It was pretty impressive!

Imo, Brawl is a game where there's an extremely heavy emphasis on reading your opponent and punishing to secure a win due to the lack of combos/hitstun

And Sonic punishes very well. That and his recovery are what makes him viable imo. He's got excellent speed and unlike nearly every other character in the lower end of the tier list, has good vertical recovery that prevents people getting stupid low kills and gimps on him

Priority is an issue for Sonic, as is lack of disjoints (although F Smash seems to enjoy messing with my head by being longer than I'm sure its supposed to be)

His recovery, whilst good, is very dodgy imo. If you see Sonic curling into a spindash, there's a very big chance he's going to Spinshot which leaves him unable to do anything until its finished. His Up + B doesn't ledge snap like G&W's and whilst its got invincibility frames whilst he's springing up, Sonic still has to try and land back onstage without taking a hit. Combined with poor priority/lack of range and disjoints on his aerials, this doesn't bode well. You've always got the threat of being grab released out of your Up + B as well

What I'm saying is something I'm sure lots of Sonic's will disagree with but once you figure out Sonic's recovery options, you can make it very tricky for Sonic to recover safely. I have always had trouble recovering with Sonic despite his recovery being so good


People just aren't campy enough in Brawl. When I'm fighting Sonic I essentially try to create a wall of priority to force him to react to when approaching. When I'm using Sonic, I try to get a couple of hits in and then dance around my opponents until I see an opening and take it from there. Or just run away if the stage allows me to xD

Sonic is definitly a tournament viable character though, as proven by the excellent players he has, because he has a good punishment game and good recovery (and surprisingly good survivability/momentum cancelling for such an average weighing character)

He's not 'brilliant' by any stretch but his flaws don't render him unviable - they just mean you have to work harder to win

Rickerdy-doo-da-day said:

His recovery, whilst good, is very dodgy imo. If you see Sonic curling into a spindash, there's a very big chance he's going to Spinshot which leaves him unable to do anything until its finished.

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When Sonic spinshots, he can do anything out of it immediately except double jump, although he will lose a bit of momentum.

I agree with your view on his recovery. It's great in sheer distance, but no ledge snap while gaining vertical height is pretty bad. That being said, Sonic can DI to avoid having to recover low, and he's got spinshot, spring, and a pretty decent Fast fall speed to return on the ground. If he springs, he's really limited though.

Rickerdy-doo-da-day said:

What I'm saying is something I'm sure lots of Sonic's will disagree with but once you figure out Sonic's recovery options, you can make it very tricky for Sonic to recover safely. I have always had trouble recovering with Sonic despite his recovery being so good

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I agree that it can be hard for Sonic to land, but Sonic shouldn't be getting gimped offstage as long as he had a double jump. And even if he doesn't, spring still gets massive distance.

Espy and SL pretty much said everything. And yes Espy, side -b i believe is in invincible. It goes thru naners, lasers, and MKs aerials. A tad hard to time, but it works.

As far as Im concerned the only things that can really boost this character better side b usage and spin dash land camping.

With Sonic's spin dash, he becomes the best land camper in the game. Every1 suffers from at least 2 frames of landing lag ( +1 to shield) except Snake, Diddy, and Sonic with their shenanigans. The speed of sonics spindash allows him to space himself out of danger and punish the landing at the proper timing. Simple technique, that in my opinion isnt abused as much as it should be. Also KID found a footstool tech ( ive done a bit of testing on it) that potentially guarantees any aerial including a nair for a jab lock.

Lastly going off what Espys was saying, Sonic's real issue is killing; no doubt about that. His lack of priority is something that can be dealt with because of his ridiculous mix ups, ground speed, and his shield cancel ability that enables him to battle disjoints by shielding during any point of his dash. However that is a problem I do believe will be amended somewhat in the future as more people pay attention to frame data.

As slow as Sonic's Fsmash is, if done OoS as soon as possible alot of frame data showcase that there are quite a bit of moves for every character that have at least 27 frames of cooldown.

ex:

MK- ledgehopped SL can get fsmashed or baired
- nado can be directly countered by fsmash and dsmash or simply punished in its cool down

Now of course this is one character, but my point is this. As people become more aware of frame data and better at PS'ing ( well America; Japan is so much better than us at this) Sonic is one character that will gain great boost from this. Oh and things like ledgehopped uair frame advantage and second hit uair ff frame advantage, are things that could potentially give this character more solid kill setups.

Lastly and I dont know how my fellow Sonics feel about this, but we also have an edge guarding game that is in dire need of exploring. Despite the fact like falco ( granted its a stage spike) can hit marth at the end of his Up B recovery with spring everytime, it is not done. Despite the fact that we have a myriad of mixups OFFSTAGE while the majority of the cast has virtually none, we usually shy away from abusing those things. Especially certain dumb knockbacks like tipper dtilt, soft hit nair and dair "spike"

To recap:

I virtually concur with everything Espy has stated. However interms of future placement I believe these three things specifically will boost the character.

1. The Gimp potential of Sonic that few really flesh out
2. PS'ing ( no duh its good for everyone; however he benefits far more that most characters do)
3. actual testing of a few key frame traps


EDIT: Sonics DEFINITELY need to pummel more (thank u Espy). Especially at high percentages, coupled with our great grab game, we enable ourselves to use fair, nair, uair, utilt as actual kill moves by gaining better damage racking setups despite the percentage of the opponent. We gotta play our character kinda like falco in the fact that we just continue to rack damage then throw them off and aerial.

UpB does not gimp Marth unless they DI into the stage, Bam.
I have a local Marth, and I've pummeled him with so many springs that he's learned how to manage with it.

It's fairly easy for Marth to recover against a spring spamming Sonic.