Hey, do you mind taking a look at my sonic match up video? Need advice on that as well:
https://smashboards.com/threads/so-i-def-have-a-sonic-problem.452449/#post-21895861
This is still less about matchup problems and more about fundamental mistakes.
(disclaimer again im not totally confident in my sonic matchup knowledge but hopefully this should help)
- You constantly charge smash attacks and hope sonic will run into it. This is bad because sonic can charge spin dash infinitely, so he can just wait until you throw out the smash attack and whiff punish. Even if he does release spin dash, you have to time it correctly, but he can also just jump over you. Do something like sh nair (short hop neutral air), which has a lingering hitbox and can interrupt his jump depending on how close you are. Since it has a lingering hitbox, you don't have to time it.
- Again, smash attacks are bad at low percents. It doesn't combo into anything (low reward), it has a ton of endlag (high risk), and it stales your kill moves. Do combo starters instead, or moves that are safe in general (e.g. RAR bair). I suggest looking into mario's moveset and figuring out which moves have better risk/reward, so that you know what moves to use before going into a match. Might sound hard, but it's not as hard as you think: dthrow can combo, but it doesn't have much endlag, while fsmash can't combo and has lots of endlag, for example.
- You have a habit of airdodging into the ground. This is bad because airdodge has a lot of landing lag, and you should only do it if you're sure he'll try to attack you (though even this can be frame trapped by some characters).
- You also do landing f-air every now and then, which I already explained is bad. If you have to do a landing aerial, do literally any of the other ones, which either have less endlag or can actually combo (e.g. uair).
- Shielding sonic's spin dash is fine since you can potentially punish what he does afterwards (e.g. if he jumps after spin dash, try to figure out what he does to land, and punish it. On one part he does a landing f-air, which I think is unsafe on shield). At 3:35, you could've anti-air'd him with usmash, but didn't do anything and got hit by f-air.
- The sonic also had really bad habits every now and then. He rolled a lot around the middle of the match, which you could've easily punished (literally by standing still, waiting for him to roll into you, and using usmash on reaction. You did do this later on, though). Plus, he also uses lots of fsmash. At 3:17, you were at the PERFECT position for a grab OoS, but decided to roll away instead.
- You use a lot of cape for no reason in neutral. Cape doesn't deal any real hitstun, so if the opponent does something like dsmash, you're gonna get hit. Generally it won't benefit you much (afaik anyway) -- maaaaybe if you caped him while he did his fsmash, he'd be vulnerable, but it might trade (and fsmash for a cape isn't a very good trade)
- Seriously stop running into his fsmash, at least jump over it or something
- Your recovery needs work. Getting to the ledge will usually be the safest option, and NEVER use your double jump unless you need to. At 3:46 you decide to burn your double jump AND go for the risky option of using f-air on the opponent. Think about that for a second. 1) By burning your double jump, you won't be able to recovery easily if you get thrown offstage again (which ended up getting you killed, as you can see), 2) f-air is unsafe on shield, so if he blocked it, you could've gotten punished (high risk), and 3) afaik f-air doesn't have many followups and wouldn't kill, so there's no reason to use it there (low reward). You could've just drifted towards the ledge and used Up B, which would've been a lot safer.
A lot of this is similar to what I've said before, so work on all of these before you ask for my help again.
Instead of thinking "my opponent is in front of me, so I'll use f-air," THINK about what mario's f-air is used for. Since it's unsafe, generally you should be using it for spikes offstage, NOT for hitting the opponents onstage while landing.
Also keep in mind risk/reward, at least to a basic degree. Fsmash is risky but has little reward at low percents (that's because its purpose is to kill the opponent), while dthrow is less risky but has lots of reward at low percents (because its purpose is to combo the opponent and build up damage on them).
Also, a pattern between a lot of your opponents is that they NEVER grab. Grab beats shield, shield beats attack, attack beats grab, BUT if they never grab, then you can literally shield everything they do, and, depending on the move, punish it out of shield.
Make sure you watch the opponent. You'll see that he does a ton of punishable things -- learn how to whiff punish, and, more importantly, how to punish out of shield.
I recommend watching the videos NINTENDO Galaxy gave you in the sonic thread, if you haven't already. And again, until you fix these mistakes, there's no point in asking me for help again since I've already gone over most of them.