Sonic Guide?

[TPR]

I've found most characters here have sort of a beginners guide as to how to play them. However Sonic does not. (As far as I can see)

As someone who is trying to pick up Sonic I would love to know some basic combos, general movement options, what moves are his best, how to recover properly, how to move around the stage and what not, and basically any other tech Sonic has.

Thanks in advance

 

[Designs]

New poster here.

I have had a decent run as of late with Sonic.

When you start the match, quickly use your down B (Spin attack) and begin riding your opponent. This is your bread and butter and the way to start a DBZ'esque combo chain. When you approach the top of your combo game out of Spin Attack, you can opt for an Up-Air to attempt a second combo chain followed by an up-B (Spring Jump) to potentially KO an opponent that is outside of stage (Bubbled Magnifier). If your opponent is being very cautions and you are not getting in as easy as you would like, rush hard and when they anticipate a D-Air, hit them with a Neutral B(Homing Attack) to knock them off guard. When you have them pushed to the ledge, try your Forward-B (Slide Spin) and take them off the stage. Pair this with multiple forward airs off the stage (or a well timed Nair) to gap them from recovery, get the momentum KO, or spike them. As basic damage dealing combos go, sonic's 1-2 jab is fairly decent to chain into other combos such as a grab or side-B. To go for the knockout, I always follow one of 5 things:

1. Short Hop to Back Air
2. Short Hop to Nair
3. Up Throw to Up-Air to Spring Jump to Up-Air
4. Forward Air post spin dash Combo Chain
5. Simple F-Smash or D-Smash at high percentage

Additional Tips for Sonic:

- Use his amazing Dash Dance game alongside Moonwalking. This is very easy with Sonic
- Apply Shield pressure on characters near ledge
- Take to the sky and chase post 50% for Up-Air combos
- Recover with Neutral B -> Neutral B -> Up-B
- Time your Side-B dashes to jump Cancel to Grab an oponnent.
- Forward throws are useless unless you are setting up a Nair or Fair
- Sonic's Gimp game is Proper.


Bad Matchups I have encountered for Sonic:

1. Zelda (Neutral B prevents many of Sonic's combos)
2. Ness (His PK Fire hurts Sonic's Ground game)
3. Falco (His stage game and hard hits make Sonic's hit and run strategy hard to execute)
4. C. Falcon ( A good Falcon can cancel much of Sonic's Air Play.


All in all, for most fighters Sonic can easily 3 stock someone not expecting him. Recently in a local tournament I decimated the first three matches as no one knows the timing it takes to stop Sonic as of yet. Wizzrobe has a great time of taking Sonic for a sprint on victory road and you can too. Play him like Falcon 64 combined with Sonic Brawl. This is the mindset I take and it has served me well as a solid counter-pick to Ike/Kirby/Mario/Link/MewTwo/Large Bodies.

 

[TPR]

New poster here.

I have had a decent run as of late with Sonic.

When you start the match, quickly use your down B (Spin attack) and begin riding your opponent. This is your bread and butter and the way to start a DBZ'esque combo chain. When you approach the top of your combo game out of Spin Attack, you can opt for an Up-Air to attempt a second combo chain followed by an up-B (Spring Jump) to potentially KO an opponent that is outside of stage (Bubbled Magnifier). If your opponent is being very cautions and you are not getting in as easy as you would like, rush hard and when they anticipate a D-Air, hit them with a Neutral B(Homing Attack) to knock them off guard. When you have them pushed to the ledge, try your Forward-B (Slide Spin) and take them off the stage. Pair this with multiple forward airs off the stage (or a well timed Nair) to gap them from recovery, get the momentum KO, or spike them. As basic damage dealing combos go, sonic's 1-2 jab is fairly decent to chain into other combos such as a grab or side-B. To go for the knockout, I always follow one of 5 things:

1. Short Hop to Back Air
2. Short Hop to Nair
3. Up Throw to Up-Air to Spring Jump to Up-Air
4. Forward Air post spin dash Combo Chain
5. Simple F-Smash or D-Smash at high percentage

Additional Tips for Sonic:

- Use his amazing Dash Dance game alongside Moonwalking. This is very easy with Sonic
- Apply Shield pressure on characters near ledge
- Take to the sky and chase post 50% for Up-Air combos
- Recover with Neutral B -> Neutral B -> Up-B
- Time your Side-B dashes to jump Cancel to Grab an oponnent.
- Forward throws are useless unless you are setting up a Nair or Fair
- Sonic's Gimp game is Proper.


Bad Matchups I have encountered for Sonic:

1. Zelda (Neutral B prevents many of Sonic's combos)
2. Ness (His PK Fire hurts Sonic's Ground game)
3. Falco (His stage game and hard hits make Sonic's hit and run strategy hard to execute)
4. C. Falcon ( A good Falcon can cancel much of Sonic's Air Play.


All in all, for most fighters Sonic can easily 3 stock someone not expecting him. Recently in a local tournament I decimated the first three matches as no one knows the timing it takes to stop Sonic as of yet. Wizzrobe has a great time of taking Sonic for a sprint on victory road and you can too. Play him like Falcon 64 combined with Sonic Brawl. This is the mindset I take and it has served me well as a solid counter-pick to Ike/Kirby/Mario/Link/MewTwo/Large Bodies.

I've tried what you said at the start comboing out of down B but I cant seem to get it down. Can you go into further detail on that? I don't know maybe im just pressing the wrong buttons or something but nothing happening when I hit them with it, no follow ups

 

[HK_Spadez]

is there a way to get into baseball slide with down B? or is that a side b only thing

 

[princess]

Sonic is a well-designed character (thanks P:M devs) so while there are guaranteed followups you can practice it's better to just be fluent w/ your many movement options and to remember what works generally against fast fallers, floaties, etc. Just the tip of the iceberg:

You have three primary options for movement: running/dash dancing, side-b, and down-b (and wavedashing, but you can't wavedash out of down-b anymore):

1) Sonic has the fastest run speed, and probably the best dash dance game
2) Side-b bounces if you hold b, floors otherwise and you can jump cancel it into a wavedash, grab, aerial, blast attack, etc. as well as hit a to do a slide kick; can also be ledge cancelled, so you can weave around platforms quickly i.e. Yoshi's, Battlefield, etc. or cancel off the ledge into blast/homing attack, aerial, etc. Also you can run off the ledge and side-b back towards it and HOLD b to grab ledge quickly
3) Down-b charge can be stopped in place/while moving by hitting l; if you get a hit confirm w/ the spin attack you can do a turnaround or jump to activate another hitbox (correct me if I'm wrong here not entirely sure how this mechanic works). After you jump you'll do a full hop and you can aerial, blast attack, etc. to continue your combo from there. You can also spin shot by hitting jump immediately after down-b and do a quick 45 degree leap that uses a jump (your best recovery option from afar, given you have your second jump)

There are a lot more advanced techs, matchup-specific combos, etc. I can delve into, but your best bet is to 1) read the hitbox/frame data thread and 2) watch videos of the best i.e. Wizzrobe, Darky, etc. (make sure it's P:M 3.0 though, Sonic was a different beast before)

Feel free to ask me anything specific (i.e. recovery, matchups, etc.) and I'll go into more detail if I can. I don't know everything but I'm pretty familiar w/ the most common matchups (i.e. spacies, Marth, etc.)

 

[HK_Spadez]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWOlBXAeRjo

at 1:49. How does he cancel side b into baseball slide so fast? Is it simply just side b -> A?

I always do a silly hop whenever i press side b when grounded

Edit: Nevermind i figured it out. I was holding side b so it did the hop.

 

[mtmaster]

I've found most characters here have sort of a beginners guide as to how to play them. However Sonic does not. (As far as I can see)

As someone who is trying to pick up Sonic I would love to know some basic combos, general movement options, what moves are his best, how to recover properly, how to move around the stage and what not, and basically any other tech Sonic has.

Thanks in advance

1)As far as recovery options are concerned you have his blast attack (neutral b+a), which allowing yous to slow your momentum down a little, and helps on getting back to the stage.

2)You also have his blast attack which is is his down B plus the jump button. In order to this though you have to have not have used your second jump already other wise he will just spindash normally and you might kill yourself instead depending on what angle you're at trying to recover.

3)His normal homing attack can be used to recover if your target is close enough for you to lock onto, and on the off chance that is not you can hit the stage and bounce off of it if its close enough, and then immediately jump or use your spring to recover.

4) Oh and don't for getting wall hopping that can save you if you happen to waste all your other options, but that's kind of a last resort type of thing.

Other things to keep in mind is that if you land the blast attack on someone you can act immediately right after it, which makes it useful for continuing or starting combos.