Alright, this thread is getting off course, and its pissing me off. People ask for help in a matchup like I did, and all they get is some stupid vague nonsence that really doesnt help them in a practical setting, so Im going to change this.
any body that feels that they play with somebody or against a character often enough to create a full and thorough write up on a character should do so.
I expect to see these people working on, but not limited to:
Espy for snake, marth, samus, fox and falco
Speed for snake, lucario, wario, kirby, lucas, among others
Trent for snake, ddd.
Excel for luigi, olimar.
In the spirit of practicing what you preach, I will begin. and I expect you to follow my example.
I will start with San
san is the best ike in the country (probably the world) and I play with him a great deal and have taken a lot of time to investigate the character and read their boards and such, so I feel qualified to do this.
Character Behaviour- How does this character act against a Sonic, do they play defensive or try to counteract Sonics natural offense. How do they go about beating Sonic?
Ike is a character that relys on his obsurd power, his crazy range, and jabs. Ike will need to play defensive to beat sonic, because Ike trying to keep up with sonic is a bad and dumb ike, most likely dead too. Good Ikes may jab spindash. All ikes aerials have crazy range, and fair, nair, and bair (I think) all have transcendant priority so he will attempt to beat your moves with his, and kill him early to lessen the chances of him getting gayed somehow. sonics goal is to bait ikes moves, and than punish their ending lag. Many of ikes moves seem unpunishable, but for sonic, they are very assuredly not.
Commonly Used Moves- What moves are mostly likely to be in the 9 move queue. What do they spam and what do they need to survive?
~Jab
Ike jab is the best in the game, if you dont DI out of it, it sets up for almost every other move he has. The optimal way to SDI away from jabs is up and away.
Jab to down tilt at the ledge for super early kills which can kill sonic even with his spring if you arent careful starting at about 50-60%.
Jab up tilt is guaranteed and will kill around 120, maybe below.
jab f tilt will kill at like 100 at the ledge but can be jumped out of regardless of percent. If you DI out and jump away from ike, he will follow you with either an up smash, more jabs or a dash attack. If you try to jump forward over ike while he is jabbing you, he will try to hit you with a lagless Sh bair. Note that if he decided to simply do all three jabs to you, its almost impossible to SDI out of. A little used tech for ike is on a platform, to jab you and than buffer a turnaround, fall through the platform and bair you.
All three jabs have an ascending level of punishability on shield. jab 3, is medium difficulty, you can punish it with f tilt, down tilt, fair oos, or a running grab oos if you are fast about it, if you dont react fast enough, he will just jab you again. Good ikes know this and will be smart enough not to let jab 3 hit your shield. Jab 2 is hard but with good timing and reaction you can fair or maybe up air out of shield to hit him after jab2 hits your shield. Jab 1 is almost impossible to punish on regular shield. the best bet is to try and get away because Ike has too many mixups out of jab 1. but if he reads you he will hit you no matter what. if you roll behind ike, he will retreat a fair, do a turnaround jab, or in the case of a super hard read, turn around f smash. if you roll away, he can dash attack you. just mix it up tho, he cant cover all your options at once.
jab will clank with spindash and than they will jab again. his jab is 3 frames, and we dont have anything that fast with that kind of range to combat it, so in that situation powershield punish it with f tilt or fair.
dont ever spotdodge in close quarters against ike, he will hold the a button, and you will eat 16% percent. at least.
~nair
Their main approach will be with nair, because it has very good range, it comboes hard as balls and next to no lag. Its very hard (but still very possible) to punish.
-on hit.
like I said, nair is a massive combo starter for ike. at low percents, it comboes into jabs.
At low-mid percents it has that slight knockback where most people will airdodge into the ground on reaction and they punish this with more nairs or more jabs. basically a situation reset
the sword goes in basically a 300 degree arc, so it hits behind him as well, and if he hits you from behind, it comboes into bair at mid percents. and can kill with bad DI, watch out for this.
-on shield
Ikes nair has very little lag, so if it hits your shield you will only be able to hit him with the fastest of moves. up air oos is the only move i have seen success with for sonic for this. anything else, or even taking too long to up air will only get you jabbed
-on whiff
Ikes nair is usually used as a baiting move to get people to try to punish its non-existant lag. If you are too slow in your timing, ike will spotdodge or jab you. the only real way to get a guaranteed punish, is to dash attack him as soon as he hits the ground. From there you can get into some nasty followups on him.
~Spotdodge
Screw frame data, ikes spotdodge is semi broken. Its stupidly good. If you try to hold rapid jabs to beat his spotdodge, which works on everyone else, he can spotdodge and still get his jab out in between our jabs. (ps. if you try to jab him, and even if you hit, he can easily jab you inbetween getting hit by our jabs) he will use it to avoid any moves that hes not attempting to beat with jab. and you can buffer turnarounds during spot dodge so he can immediately punish attacks in either direction with his jab.
~fair
good Ikes no long approach with this move. but they will short hop it backwards to stuff any of your approaches.
If it hits your shield, its very hard to punish due to its deceiving lag and unless you are close enough to f tilt it out of shield or dash attack, youll probably get jabbed or spotdodge jabbed trying.
One of ikes tricks is when you are in the air, after a jab combo or fair hit is to full jump a fair after you, if you airdodge it, 8 times out of 10 you will airdodge right into ike, who can fast fall after his fair laglessly and jab your landing.
Dont try to roll behind his fair, it will hit you anyway.
~grab
Ike can combo into his grab from a jab.
most likely ike will go for back throw to dash attack. but ikes dont know the specifics on what percents it works at. (about 65-120 for sonic) so at times they may go for it before the % it works at, which will net you a free powershield if you just hold shield. its either a free grab, or if you are desperate/dairing, you can go for a powershield down smash, which SHOULD work.
fthrow is mainly used to bait a defensive reaction that they can punish, if you get fthrow, try counter attacking them with a fair. if you spotdodge or roll in youll get faired and if you hold shield, youll get regrabed, and if you roll back, youll probably get dash attacked.
~Aether
most Ikes will always aether to recover if possible because quickdraw is bad. you can spring/eat/airdodge through quick draw for a free kill on the ike far enough offstage.
Aether is very hard to work around. Be careful with it. If you make a mistake, you will eat 5-20% and possibly a jab combo.
you can beat aether with spring, but it wont knock him far enoguh to kill untill about 130 with good DI spring is easily the safest way to deal with aether.
if you want to be risky, you can:
attempt to bair ike after he teleports to the sword and is spinning around.
if the top of the aether is high enough above the ledge. sonic can run underneath the sword and grab the ledge before him.
note ike can only aether to the ledge 5 times in a row before he has to touch the stage, abuse this if possible.
~bair
Sh retreating bair is lagless and unpunishable on shield. it kills probably a bit earlier than our f smash. You can duck and avoid it. and you can dash attack it on whiff.
san likes to quickdraw to a platform and than fallthrough/run off the plat with a bair. avoid that. even with out ACing, it has very little lag, about the same as fair.
~ up smash
Dont airdodge into the ground, ikes body has a hitbox with this move, so trying to airdodge past it will never work.
~up air
watch out that you dont airdodge into this.
How to Win- How can Sonic overcome this character, what aspects of Sonics game should be emphasising and what should he try to avoid?
wtf, now I know why nobody ever does full write ups, Ive been doing this shiz for 2 hours and Im not even close to done.
sonic needs a very strong grasp on all of his ground options to beat a good ike. he has to be timing his dash attacks perfectly. they are a very strong asset to the matchup. most of ikes moves can only be punished by dash attack, and a big weakness to ike is that there is a certain air positioning (between the height of sonics SH and FH) where if you hit ike into it, (dash attack does this very well) that makes ike virutally defenseless. all of his aerials will take too long to come out, and then the only option is airdodging into the stage which is very very easily read and punished with grab, which can potential give you a situation reset.
punishing moves with spindash camping is also very important, use that alot.
ASC is a very good option against him, and even if he reads it and retreats a fair, many times you can shield cancel it before you get hit.
the biggest part of this matchup is what sonic does when ike is offstage.
when ike is falling to the stage, he has 2 options. try to fair, and try to airdodge through any gimping attempt you make.
what you do, is you jump at him but you fall below him and bair or nair him in his AD or fair lag. When he eventually gets to the postion he wants to be in (next to the ledge but far below the stage) you go into the process of beating aether using the above methods.
when ike is on the ledge try to goad him in to aethering back to the ledge and using up his five aethers. which really limits his options.
when ike has sonic on the ledge, be VERY careful, as that is a very dangerous position that you may be in more often than youd like due to back throw dash attack.
ike can crush any attempt sonic makes to get on stage. with fair and up smash. the trick is to bait the ike into whiffing a laggy attack so that you can ledge hop a spindash of some kind to hit him or get past him. just dont wait too long. cause ikes are not afraid to do run off dairs at people on the ledge and offstage.
Recommended Stages- What are the best stages for Sonic to play this character on? Simple!
Ban delfino, he has wall infinites, water camping with aether, and back throw dash attack kills stupid early on the walk offs.
avoid battlefield for the first neutral, ike traps people on platforms far too easily.
Avoid castle siege as well if possible. second stage is too good for ike. back throw dash attack will kill early. and statues lengthen the eruption hitbox, which will kill you at as low as 30 if you run in stupidly.
ps1 can be a good stage as long as you avoid the places and times on the map where ike can wall infinite you.
If possible counterpick norfair and time his balls off. there is almost nothing Ike can do to catch a sonic that is running away from him on norfair.
for the first neutral, try to go for FD or smashville, but on smashville, just watch out for back throw to f tilt on the moving plat.
Counter picking ike is pretty much a matter of personal preference.
I was planning to do this for pikachu and falco and lucario as well. but JESUS that took forever.
