Okey, so as we all know, Sonic is considered a top tier in Smash 4, even after all his nerfs. This is good and all, but it seems like the general consensus of Sonic as a character is misinterpreted by the community. Reasons for this include mass of misinformation from top players and the Sonic community having not fully committed to explaining the character in full detail (Ixis has been working on guide for the past 6-7 months, 4000 words in and not finished) and I'll try to bridge that gap as much as I can while explaining MUs which are troublesome. Hopefully this will spark somekind of meaningful discussion on this thread.
So to start off, MUs.
The MUs that are considered to be of a disadvantage for Sonic in the current metagame are Fox, Megaman, Cloud and ZSS (to lesser extent now thanks to the nerfs) along with Ike and Yoshi depending on which Sonic main you ask. All of theses characters have one thing in common:
they either make Sonic commit first or possess options which allows them to beat Spindash with great reward.
Megaman has his pellets which beats it at any range along with granting him stage control, forcing Sonic into shield.
ZSS has nair and her tether grab and we all know her punish game, while not as potent, is still a force to be reckoned with. Fox has pure mobility + DA which sets up perfectly for his superb juggle game. Cloud has his amazing aerial disjoints and Down-B, forcing to approach.
There are also MUs which Sonic doesn't lose per se, but are really hard to if he doesn't play outside his comfort zone. These are the likes of TL, Wii Fit. Basically, characters that forces Sonic to approach. Sonic in his design can't act first in any situation. He always has to wait for the opponent to react first and find any opening in which he can land a SpinDash. I usually draw parallels with Boss Fights in classic Sonic games (Genesis Era). In these fights, go in head on vs them usually resulted in instant death as your moves would just lose to theirs.
So how did you beat them???
You waited for them to act first, and punished them on their endlag with your speed.
That's how Sonic plays in essence, by acting second in every neutral situation. It's emphasized in how his hitboxes work. Most of them are small and attached close to his body, meaning that losing trades is a given most of the time. This is also why most Sonic matches take a long time. He has to respect all of characters options and take his time racking up damage.
I have some quotes from my convo with Ixis to bring my point forth better.
"Sonic matches don't go slow because Sonic's just don't want to approach (except Manny), they go slow because the opponent learns that so much of their neutral actions get punished easily; going aggressive against Sonic in neutral is generally a bad idea so they're inclined to stay grounded and shield and bait a lot and play safe, and Sonic has to play against that game because he can't just up and beat shield like Sheik or Diddy who have amazing dash-grabs"
"Yup, and it's why playing Sonic can seem like a struggle against good or bad characters, because we still have to play around their options, whereas other top tiers can just shut them down completely"
And at last, Sonic's neutral game.
It's all an illusion. An extremely cleaver illusion which most people have just accepted and not bothered to find counterplay to.
"We can cover that ground quickly, but we can't get through shield at the same time, since our dash-grab is terrible and everything else is unsafe. That right there is the core problem with Sonic. Because we can't hit shield with advancing aerials or beat shield with anything on the ground except standing grab, we don't really have a choice but to play neutral and coax them into a sub-neutral state that we can actually beat"
"Not exactly "off of neutral" but to a less desirable state of neutral, like getting them to whiff a poke or short hop too close. Things like that we can punish if we're ready. The difference between other characters and Sonic, is that wheras small actions like those are generally safe against most, it's little stuff like that which Sonic can actually punish quite hard because of SD/SC"
What Ixis means here is that, while Sonic is amazing ground speed and spindash covers a lot of ground for moving hitbox, shielding SpinDash or SpinCharge puts Sonic in an awful situation. as he only has two options: jump or go pass you. By jumping, Sonic goes into an aerial state, which is bad as his aerials are horrible for covering below him.
That means he either has to spring or just fall and hope for the best. Now most people think "just spring and you get away for free". That would be case if Spring sent you so high so you have to stay in the air even longer, making it even more difficult to land because of the lack of landing options. But " just dair and you're fine!". Dair has no disjoint and is extremely predictable if you see what direction Sonic is facing after the spring and will be punished by competent players.
Essentially, he always sent to disadvantage if spindash doesn't connect during every commitment to it.
Here's where Wrath's playstyle comes in.
Wrath is smart player in the fact one significant trait that most of the Smash 4 community shares: We have no idea of how Spindash works and therefore see SpinDash Shield Canceling as some godlike option which requires no commitment and always him to pressure from across the stage for free. That's simply incorrect and I have presented conunterplay to that strat multiple times in this thread. Walk up shield is the key. Don't let Sonic get any breathing room. By walking up to him from across the stage, you're mentally pressuring to release SpinDash or he'll eat a punish sooner or later.
I wrote this on a whim, so the structure might be inconsistent.
If you have any questions, free to ask me or
@Camalange or
@Ixisnaugus (Refer to these two first though, they are more knowledgeable than me)
Thanks for reading and I hope this sparks somekind of discussion!
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