- Lol, unless you're on For Glory or something, why would you even let him go to FD in the first place? Yes, he is a beast there, but it doesn't mean much when I can always ban it. Only reason I would ever go to FD with him is to counterpick with badass stage music xD
- Abuse combo meat attributes? I'd agree if he even had many combos in the first place: Dtilt > Ftilt, Dash Attack> Dash Attack, Utilt > Utilt/Ftilt, Fair > Jab, & Dtilt > KO Punch and that's it; Little Mac in general barely has any combos at all and not all of these are even guaranteed. Its not like I lack combo potential myself either: Dthrow > Bair/Uair still works here. Still gotta beware Dtilt > KO Punch though, can really give hi a comeback i you don't play cautiously.
- Shorthopped and Falling Uair works great against Mac: doesn't care about his ftilt since it nudges him forward, places him airborne for juggling, and can even catch him rolling if you see it coming.
- Onstage, lemons & metal blades still mess with most of his stuff at midrange besides his armored smashes.
- Grab him, throw him offstage with Bthrow and its an easy gimp. Yes a lot of characters can do it, but its still a large advantage that should not be ignored, and Mega Man is very good at getting grabs with good usage of LS, and MBs along with having a pretty good grab at that. Not only that, but I find it even easier to screw with his recovery with him than most other characters. Leafstool, Z-Drop Metal Blade if he recovers low, lemon his double jump if possible, and he should almost never recover high since he's easy to hit out of sideb and even if you don't gimp him you can still grab him from its landing lag and just throw him off again and attempt a gimp again.
Yeah, still don't think Mac wins this, not buyin it. I'm well aware of his strengths against me: Better close range abilities, super speed, superior frame data, and the KO Punch; but these don't change that we still have scary edgeguards against him, poke with lemons and MBs, and have pretty good ways of setting up said edgeguards and we're real good at getting grabs. He does force Mega Man to play more cautiously, but overall there's just no way in hell this is a bad matchup. No way.
Bair and Fair landing lag I'll give u that.
Whether its an approach or not, stick a Crash Bomber and it still forces a reaction for you to capitalize on and make a hole in their defense:
1. Stop what they're doing and use a defensive move, while they're distracted I get time to move in and punish it
2. Try to rush you down instead and attempt t give it back to you
3. Ignore it and continue what they were initially doing, taking the damage outright.
Leaf Shield is a high priority projectile that will easily eat through many others and can sometimes allow you to counter camp when combined with MB in your hand, shot leaf first and then MB after. Also still gives a rotating hitbox just by moving and sometimes dash up shield is a good option with it, and is even easier with Plant Barrier due to its bigger hitboxes. Not a great approach, yes, but still something to work with, and can still oppose camping with its priority. And again with Skull Barrier you still get a good option against opposing projectiles, arguably the best in the game.
Diagonal MB from a fullhop is also an option; if they shield you can get a grab, and if it hits you can combo into Shoryuken or Usmash for more damage or a kill.
Yeah his approaches aren't great, but when lemons cancel out plenty of opposing projectiles how many are there thatheavily outcamp us or shut down lemon zoning anyway? Sheik Pac-Man, Rosalina, Olimar, Toon Lonk, ROB (only because of fully charged lasers), Falco, and maybe Mewtwo or Palutena; but that's about it.
Sorry for the late reply (been having a busy day), but here goes:
Sonic has two major weaknesses: Approaching and Landing back on the Ground, Even though he's the fastest thing alive and the game's quickest character, Sonic in general has trouble dealing with zoning characters with and does not have any safe approach options to backup his sanic speed, defining approach as a way moving into an advantaged position over your opponent. And when I say zoning characters, I mean GOOD zoners with GOOD walls, not someone with bad projectiles like
,
, or
. If he's up against one of these guys, then yeah Sanis is 2fast like many people complain, but against a good player with a good character with a good wall can make approaching hell for him. If you have troubles dealing with him, improve your lemon play, smart lemoning will give him a hard time.He does not have a projectile of his own to counter-camp us, no reflector, his dash attack has huge endlag and no disjoint (and only does a mere 6% even if you're hit by it), and none of his aerials are safe on shield at all. He can use homing attack to catch you offguard and go over lemons, but it has bad priority and a decent amount of startup: If you can react to it quick enough you can either spotdodge it and punish with Fair, or you can just pop out Usmash to hit him out of it. He can powershield and run through lemons, but if you shoot 1-2 lemons instead of 3 at a time its harder for him to punish it and even when he gets in he still lacks an approach like Sheik's Fair.. He can poke with Ftilt, Jab, and Dtilt with some safety; but these aren't really approaches, they're pokes, and as such he still isn't necessarily in an advantage even if he hits with them. He can spindash or spin charge and it does a whopping amount of damage if he lands it, but the spin itself has low priority and is not safe on shield. Lemons and Leaf Shield can also mess with it and make it hard to even utilize the spindash at all, and the bulk of his damage comes from that in most of his matchups The spin itself isn't as great as many claim it is, its the various mixups and ATs he has out of it that make the move amazing: Spinshots, Shield-Canceled Spins, Instant Spin Dash Jumps; etc. Sonic has a lot of options out of his spins to keep you guessing on what he's going to do, and if you guess wrong he's going to punish you very easily, but none of these options are safe and you can easily punish them if you know what option he's going for.. I think a lot of people complain about Sonic because its a lot easier to get punishes with him than any other character, the moment you make a mistake, he's so fast he can run over to you and do his thing and net a lot more damage faster than other characters. The trouble though (for him) is that his whole approach game is basically "Rely on my opponent to make a mistake" and "Try to make him mess up". The spindash is like his only real form of approach and he's almost always putting himself at risk when doing it, and I think Mega Man's strong lemon zoning puts him at even bigger risk than usual and we don't have to respect his options as much as other characters do. Its like Falcon and Greninja: We win neutral, but his higher damage output and better kill moves give him a larger advantaged state. But while Sonic is a better character than both of em when compared generally, I think he has a harder time against us since I feel we have an even better neutral here and he can't really deal with projectiles as well as either of them (Greninja at least, has 2 aerials safe on block to poke with and can poke back with his own projectile).
Imo, the matchup is 45:55 at worst, would personally call it 55:45 slightly in Mega Man's favor. Its not a fun matchup on either side honestly; Sonic's spin combos deal much better damage than anything we can do, has better close range abilities, stronger killing moves and overall has a bigger advantaged game, if you make too many mistakes its game over for you due to his speed. But while he has the mobility to get in on us, he doesn't have any approaches to compliment it and he's not really built for rushdown like Sheik, he has to play a heavy bait and punish game and rely on you making mistakes for him to capitalize on. He may win advantage, but its pretty hard for him to even get one in the first place due to his horrible approach options, and if you don't make enough mistakes for him to punish, you should make hell for him to get in. Sonic resets to neutral a lot n his gameplay, and I think we easily win the neutral so its gonna be just as painful for him is not more than you. With custom moves, the matchup doesn't change much either, as Sonic gains very little from customs compared to other characters and none in particular are drastically improved or that effective against us. His Burning Spindash originally had invincbility on startup and could work against projectiles, but two patches ago that was taken away and the move is basically worthless now. One other weakness Sonic has is that his landing options from the air are complete ***: his aerials do a very very poor job or protecting him while airborne and his options against a opponents directly below him are incredibly bad. All he can do is Spring to Dair (which deprives him of all his other specials and moves him in a telegraphed trajectory), Homing Attack (which has bad priority and you can hit him out of it with Usmash), and Nair and Bair (both of which are easy to shieldgrab). Anytime you catch Sonic airborne, by all means do your best to stay underneath him and don't give him a chance to touch the ground, harass him with Uair, Danger Wrap, Shieldgrab, Usmash or Fsmash and try to keep him in the air as long as you can, he'll hate it. Its a long, boring matchup regardless of whose side you're on, but if you play patient and stay calm it should slightly be in your favor, I feel.
TL;DR: Not entirely Mega Man specific But here's this pretty useful guide to fighting Sonic in general if you gut 10 mnutes to spare, and its very highly accurate. In the comments below, even 6WX himself agrees that many characters can put work on him including us
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfXfpU1OX7c3
In my overall personal opinion, Mega Man does fine against the fair majority of the roster and has few truly great and few truly terrible matchups, and I stand by the opinion that the only characters that really threaten him are Sheik and Falcon. I do think he has a few other bad or potential bad MUs here and there (Fox, Greninja, Meta Knight, Rosalina, Pit, etc.), but I don't think any of them get any worse than 40:60 and while they are tough, they're not so tough where a secondary becomes almost mandatory to win. Definitely not top tier material, but I think he's upper mid tier at worst and is good enough a character already, while he's very difficult to master I think he can live without a secondary and I still stand by this opinion. Granted, I do personally 2nd
and have various pocket characters (that I'm trying to get rid of), but its more because I get bored just playing Mega Man all the time than anything else.
