Sonic General Discussion/Social thread

[GabPR]

Ill just tell you what I think I know judging form the links I have played, so this may or may not be of use to you. Most links I have played like to try and zone me out with their projectiles so you might need to practice power shielding, since most of them probably prefer a more neutral game compared to a heads up approach. Approaching may be the hardest part since link has a wide array of options to keep you at bay, but for the most part I try and predict when they will throw a projectile and in which direction so I can dodge it or power shield and go in on them. When they draw their bomb I believe Sonic is fast enough to get to them and punish if you react quickly and your close enough (usually after they throw boomerang or when in the air using bomb jump since they feel safer that way, anything else may lead to an easy punish). For when your recovering you will want to watch out for grounded up b, arrow or dair . If the link knows the match up then also watch out when you do homing attack during recovery, since they might just jump and dair at you or up b. I have not covered everything, but Is there anything else that you would like to know? Hope it helps.

 

[StriderAaron360]

Ill just tell you what I think I know judging form the links I have played, so this may or may not be of use to you. Most links I have played like to try and zone me out with their projectiles so you might need to practice power shielding, since most of them probably prefer a more neutral game compared to a heads up approach. Approaching may be the hardest part since link has a wide array of options to keep you at bay, but for the most part I try and predict when they will throw a projectile and in which direction so I can dodge it or power shield and go in on them. When they draw their bomb I believe Sonic is fast enough to get to them and punish if you react quickly and your close enough (usually after they throw boomerang or when in the air using bomb jump since they feel safer that way, anything else may lead to an easy punish). For when your recovering you will want to watch out for grounded up b, arrow or dair . If the link knows the match up then also watch out when you do homing attack during recovery, since they might just jump and dair at you or up b. I have not covered everything, but Is there anything else that you would like to know? Hope it helps.

Yes, this helps! I have a question about Side-B, though. Can it go through Link's boomerang? I was playing a Sonic yesterday with Mewtwo and he did side-B through my baby shadow ball projectiles, which can clank with Link's boomerang.

 

[DireDrop]

I've found that baiting out projectile attacks and punishing them with homing attack can work well. I feel like Sonic needs his horizontal space, but Link does a good job of taking that away from him with his bag of stuff to throw. It's frustrating.

 

[StriderAaron360]

I'm testing in the training room right now. I found that Sonic's Utilt can clank out boomerang nicely. Ftilt and jab can as well, but Utilt seems much more consistent. The hitbox for it is like a quick shield in front of Sonic.

 

[GabPR]

Try out Fair to stop projectiles, if im not mistaken it may be able to go through many projectiles (except bombs of course). If this works then short hop fair from a distance can be used to cancel links presure with projectiles. Let me know how it works out!

 

[StriderAaron360]

Fair takes a little time to set up, but dair is working very nicely! The hitbox comes out instantly pretty much.

 

[DireDrop]

How are people using Sonic's throws? I find myself only ever using Dthrow and Uthrow. That seems lame, but I'm not sure what to use Bthrow and Fthrow for except getting people off the stage.

 

[Espy Rose]

I KO'd someone with a fthrow once because they thought I'd uthrow.
Fthrow sends em pretty far at higher percents.

 

[DireDrop]

I have another question. How are people punishing tether recoveries? Specifically, when you've got them in a position where you're on the ledge and they HAVE to tether recover. Their character ends up jumping over you. There's got to be a way to punish that, but I'm having trouble figuring it out.

 

[Nazo]

I have another question. How are people punishing tether recoveries? Specifically, when you've got them in a position where you're on the ledge and they HAVE to tether recover. Their character ends up jumping over you. There's got to be a way to punish that, but I'm having trouble figuring it out.

When you grab the ledge vs. a tether character, and they pull themselves up, they're stuck in a super-vulnerable ledgejump (they can't attack out of it). You can just jump from the ledge and Uair them and combo them from there, it's fairly easy.

 

[Nguz95]

How did you do at Xanadu?

 

[Virum]

Shoutouts to Nazo for getting to Losers finals at Xanadu. I can pretty safely say that everyone was hyped watching and I felt like I learnt new tech each match. Good show sir!

 

[GabPR]

Was there a streaml/videos of the matches? if so it would be awesome if the links where posted.

 

[Nguz95]

You can check the twitch archive here: http://www.twitch.tv/vgbootcamp/b/493518202
I'm not sure where Nazo shows up, but I know it's toward the middle and the end.
VGBootcamp will post most, if not all, of the matches on their Youtube Channel pretty soon, so when that happens you can watch the matches there.

 

[Nazo]

Thank you,

I placed 3rd.

My cousin and I were like the last ones to show up to the tournament, I barely made it in time for sign-ups. I didn't play any of my early matches on stream because I wanted to save that for the top players. Everyone at Xanadu was good though and I had fun; the most fun I've had at a PM tournament thus far.

 

[Espy Rose]

When my video didn't lag, what I saw was really damn good.
No more spring dair though please.

I don't wanna feel like it's 2008 again.

 

[Nazo]

Yea, I usually only spring dair if I'm getting combo'd or juggled; it doesn't seem to do much harm. But I admit I was going a little overboard with it sometimes, mostly out of fear.

 

[Nguz95]

ROB's big honking hotboxes are pretty scary. He has a significant disjoint on many of his moves, so a low-range character like Sonic has to be careful when playing him.

Espy, I've never seen a Brawl Sonic play, how do they (or you, specifically) get back after using spring to recover? Or, how do you get out of a combo?

 

[Espy Rose]

Yea, I usually only spring dair if I'm getting combo'd or juggled; it doesn't seem to do much harm. But I admit I was going a little overboard with it sometimes, mostly out of fear.

Yeah. It's good for breaking strings and the like. I'm mostly referring to you vs. GIMR since it was unforced half of the time. Luckily GIMR didn't bother punishing it half as often as he should've.

It mostly happened anytime you were above him, even if you weren't in immediate danger. Just gotta calm down a bit when that situation occurs. It probably showed up often in the Jcaeser match too, but I kinda didn't analyze that one as hard.

How come Battlefield was your pick for game five? I think that's really the only thing I was curious about. I felt like Dreamland or Yoshi's Story would've been really effective picks.

Espy, I've never seen a Brawl Sonic play, how do they (or you, specifically) get back after using spring to recover? Or, how do you get out of a combo?

Well, forgetting the fact that Brawl Sonic's spring gave more horizontal movement after the animation, he could air dodge out of it, and that it had invincibility on the center of the animation, half of the time, spring was just relatively safe.

Since those three characteristics were removed in P:M, as well as the nerf on the vertical height, I tend to linger more towards landing with spaced bair as a means of avoiding any collateral.

Combos didn't exist too much in Brawl either. Airdodging, fair, and spring were really just effective for most traps and strings that Sonic fell into. DownB, sideB, uair1, and nair were also optional choices, depending on your situation and character.

Plus, Sonic's spins in Brawl were so much more effective. The removed invincibility on sideB allowed Sonic a means of which to travel through hitboxes if he was on or offstage, and the ability to indefinitely charge AND move downB while it was charging gave Sonic more space to work with. Not to mention that spinshot was far easier to do. The cherry on top is Sonic's seemingly slower air speed. He was one of the fastest characters as far as air movement was concerned in Brawl. In this game, it doesn't feel like it.

P:M Sonic's got it real bad as far as recovery goes. It confuses me when people say his recovery is good. In comparison to Brawl's, it's hilariously one dimensional and so far removed from Brawl's that it's just... bad.

In a nutshell though, Sonic had a ton of options in Brawl for recovery. He only really has three in P:M, and none of them are relatively safe in comparison.

Spring is still probably one of the most effective combo breakers Sonic has though. Unless P:M screwed with its startup speed, you're off the spring by frame 4.

 

[GabPR]

Just curious, which 3 recovery options are the ones you speak off?

 

[Nazo]

Yeah. It's good for breaking strings and the like. I'm mostly referring to you vs. GIMR since it was unforced half of the time. Luckily GIMR didn't bother punishing it half as often as he should've.

It mostly happened anytime you were above him, even if you weren't in immediate danger. Just gotta calm down a bit when that situation occurs. It probably showed up often in the Jcaeser match too, but I kinda didn't analyze that one as hard.

How come Battlefield was your pick for game five? I think that's really the only thing I was curious about. I felt like Dreamland or Yoshi's Story would've been really effective picks.

I was actually using spring dair against GimR because I knew he wouldn't punish me lol, I was also trying to be annoying. But I'll definitely tone down my usage of spring dair.

I chose battlefield because I felt like I was out of other comfortable options. I didn't want to go dreamland because I knew that JCz's intention was for me to choose that stage, it was a bait. I also noticed from our previous rounds that majority of my kills came from ceiling KOs, so although Dreamland would help me live longer I knew it would do the same for him; I just wanted to finish him off as quickly as possible. Yoshi's story would've been a better pick; I was just unsure at the time because I didn't really want to have to deal with close quarters combat. I also lacked experience on the second row of stages.

I was aware that battlefield wasn't a very advantageous choice, but I knew we'd be on equal grounds if I chose BF instead of risk choosing a stage that I might unknowingly put myself at a disadvantage on. But now that I think about it, I could have definitely timed him out on Dreamland (worst case scenario).


Also Nguz, I'm a brawl player as well lol; though Espy's input from a brawl player's perspective is definitely more informed.

 

[Espy Rose]

Ah I see. Not gonna say much about the choice myself. I prefer comfort over on-papers advantages too, so I can dig it.

And that was the second thought of mine when watching vs. GiMR. It's a good strat though. No reason not to abuse it when they give your moves too much respect. Plus, I just like watching Sonic vs. Marth. It's so ridiculously fun when you're not off the ledge.

Either way though, it was a good show. I didn't even consider trying JC Grabs from a sideB, so i learned something new myself.

@GabPR: The big three I mean are:

- Spring [UpB]
- Spins [downb/sideb/spinshot]
- Homing Attack {neutralB]

Realistically, that's all Sonic had in Brawl too. I could count airdodging for this list as well, but Brawl airdodge is just infinitely more powerful and useful for recovery than P:Ms. Not to mention that, reiterating, Sonic can't airdodge out of spring in the mod, and upB tends to be used the most because of obvious reasons.

The difference is that there's far more variants in Brawl within these four sets for Sonic, so it stands to reason that his recovery is just that much more versatile. Cancelling spins with shield, roll, or jumps were also huge for his mixup game off of the ledge.

P:M streamlined his recovery, and whether it was intentional or not, it got nerfed because of that.
That goes without mentioning the direct nerfs I noted in my above post as well.

Edit: Momentum cancelling is also gone in P:M, and that was Sonic's greatest tool for living so long in Brawl.

 

[GabPR]

Oh ok, still I think Sonic's recovery is fine as it is now in PM. He still covers a lot of distance when recovering and I believe mixing those 3 options is very versatile to get back on stage. I haven't played a lot of Brawl Sonic or Brawl itself so I can't comment on how good edge guarding is there, compared to PM.

 

[Espy Rose]

By all means, it's a good recovery as far as P:M is concerned.
It's just that... comparing it to the greatness that it once was is kinda depressing. It was so good.

 

[DireDrop]

By all means, it's a good recovery as far as P:M is concerned.
It's just that... comparing it to the greatness that it once was is kinda depressing. It was so good.

It was very good. But it also seemed like it was the only good thing he had. That and a bunch of weird fake-out options. It seems to me that he's much better off with his current tool set than he ever was in Brawl.

 

[Espy Rose]

Agree to disagree here. I think if they just drag and dropped his moveset over (with a bit of a buff to his smashes), he'd be better than he is now.

People don't understand how powerful the spin fake outs really are.

 

[DireDrop]

I believe I read somewhere that the PMBR decided that moves should be a commitment, which is why no one can "fast" fall dair anymore, and why none of our spin moves are cancel-able.

 

[Nazo]

Yea, when project M first rolled around, they already attempted to drag and drop his brawl moveset over with Melee physics. He was good of course... very, very good... too good to be exact. His brawl moveset was so good that it proved toxic for a melee environment, and thus had to be removed.

 

[DireDrop]

Yea, when project M first rolled around, they already attempted to drag and drop his brawl moveset over with Melee physics. He was good of course... very, very good... too good to be exact. His brawl moveset was so good that it proved toxic for a melee environment, and thus had to be removed.

I remember 2.0 Sonic... side B -> wavedash -> side B -> wavedash -> side B...

That was so much fun.

 

[Espy Rose]

I pin that solely on their incessant need to add in Melee's airdodge.

 

[Virum]

Well yeah, Melee's airdodge is one of if not the most key engine features. It had such a large dictation on how characters move and interact and is such a huge part of how Melee functions that omitting it would ruin so many things for so many characters.

Sonic's cancels were pretty silly in Brawl as they were, but are outright toxic in PM due to, of course, all the engine changes and honestly we'd rather make a character a bit worse in some areas for the same of creating a playstyle that doesn't have a negative impact on the overall metagame. And Sonic is still pretty viable as he is (more so comparatively to Brawl Sonic).

Though honestly Espy I like of agree with you about Sonic's Brawl recovery. That **** as cray

 

[Espy Rose]

Sonic better be more viable in Project M. You goons have had and will continue to have as many patches as you see fit to make him that way. It'd be totally embarrassing otherwise.

Damn shame that the BR collectively feels that way about the air-dodge. I find Melee's version completely overblown in value and asinine overall.

 

[Neptune Shiranui]

Momentum cancelling is gone? It feels like it hasn't to me. Anyways, love those sets Nazo did at this week's Xanadu you did really well against JCaesar! Sonic's recovery may not be as good as it was in Brawl but he still has many options. I also see Sonic staying pretty much the same as he is in 3.0.

 

[Espy Rose]

Momentum Cancel doesn't exist in P:M. The increase in hitstun made it null and void.

 

[Kally Wally]

Technically, momentum cancelling exists, but you have to find some way to cheat on hitstun. For instance...

Re: Melee vs. Brawl air dodge, PM the only Smash that I've played for any appreciable length of time, so I'm well accustomed to more limited/risky air dodges. I've seen suggestions for an air dodge with no direction to be Brawl-style, but still restricted by hitstun/tumble. I'm neutral to that idea, personally - it would be nice for Brawl players, but it would also be a pretty radical change to make this late into things. It could potentially slow down a game that's already arguably slower than Melee (more viable characters have good recoveries and defensive options) which many people, myself included, don't perceive as as good thing.

Just curious, what's asinine and overblown about Melee air dodge, in your opinion?

 

[StriderAaron360]

Can someone list some uses for hard side-B?

 

[DireDrop]

Can someone list some uses for hard side-B?

What is "hard" side B?

 

[Nazo]

I'm sure he means:
Soft Side-B = tap B button
Hard Side-B = Hold B button

 

[Solharath]

Hard sideB is good against spacies if you're quick about it. Pop them straight up, double jump than IMMEDIATELY cancel with a waveland. Pivot utilt and then tap sideB to do the mean stuff to them.

Although honestly guys can we talk about hopefully removing Sonic's current USmash in favor of replacing it with either Brawl's version or, more hopefully, the triple kick utilt? Seriously, taking Sonic's Brawl utilt and putting it over his current USmash would be much preferable and useful than what we have now.

Seriously that USmash is trash and serves no purpose.

Also I'm in the camp that ftilt needs to be buffed back to 2.5. Yes, it was might bit ridiculous on paper, but it gave Sonic a quicker move that could be feared alongside Falco's Dtilt, Marth's Utilt, Fox's.... Fox. It punished non-sweetspots and gave him a move that wasn't CC-able until absurd percentages. Really it's dumbfounding how Sonic lacks a punishing DSmash for CC. The man is all about dem legs.

Although that's sort of wishful thinking, I still posit that it's no more 'broken' or 'toxic' than Fox's Usmash, and the mantra for this game seemed to be 'bringing everyone up to the Melee Top Tier level." Sonic isn't there yet. In fact I think he's quite a ways away from there, lacking in many of the options that makes Sheik or Mario fluid in high level, especially when nabbing the kill. I dunno, I'm drinking right now but Sonic does not seem to really be in all that better position than 2.6 left him in. He can kill now, which is nice, but as soon as someone latches onto how to fight Sonic it becomes an uphill battle for the hedgehog regardless of who is controlling whom or what style is put forward. He just loses his danger factor.

At least that's what I've gathered from who I've fought. But it seemed like when Game 5 hit for Nazo vs. JCaeser, I know by the second stock that JCaeser had an understanding of Sonic that MapMark didn't teach him previous, and he shut down Sonic as a character, no matter how well Nazo played. It was noticeable and palpable. At least from my end.

 

[DireDrop]

Although honestly guys can we talk about hopefully removing Sonic's current USmash in favor of replacing it with either Brawl's version or, more hopefully, the triple kick utilt? Seriously, taking Sonic's Brawl utilt and putting it over his current USmash would be much preferable and useful than what we have now.

Seriously that USmash is trash and serves no purpose.

Also I'm in the camp that ftilt needs to be buffed back to 2.5. Yes, it was might bit ridiculous on paper, but it gave Sonic a quicker move that could be feared alongside Falco's Dtilt, Marth's Utilt, Fox's.... Fox. It punished non-sweetspots and gave him a move that wasn't CC-able until absurd percentages. Really it's dumbfounding how Sonic lacks a punishing DSmash for CC. The man is all about dem legs.

Although that's sort of wishful thinking, I still posit that it's no more 'broken' or 'toxic' than Fox's Usmash, and the mantra for this game seemed to be 'bringing everyone up to the Melee Top Tier level." Sonic isn't there yet. In fact I think he's quite a ways away from there, lacking in many of the options that makes Sheik or Mario fluid in high level, especially when nabbing the kill. I dunno, I'm drinking right now but Sonic does not seem to really be in all that better position than 2.6 left him in. He can kill now, which is nice, but as soon as someone latches onto how to fight Sonic it becomes an uphill battle for the hedgehog regardless of who is controlling whom or what style is put forward. He just loses his danger factor.

At least that's what I've gathered from who I've fought. But it seemed like when Game 5 hit for Nazo vs. JCaeser, I know by the second stock that JCaeser had an understanding of Sonic that MapMark didn't teach him previous, and he shut down Sonic as a character, no matter how well Nazo played. It was noticeable and palpable. At least from my end.

I don't think there's much to talk about. Those are brilliant ideas and I wish both of them would be implemented. It's just a matter of seeing if the PMBR decides they like them too.

Edit: Ok I should do a real response. I thought the reason Ftilt got nerfed was because it was too good an edge guarding tool. I don't think it would be an issue if it's still possible to sweet spot the ledge against it. Heck, that sort of tight timing is part of what makes the ledge game exciting. As long as that issue isn't a problem (maybe it never was?) I think it would be a great change to his move set.

As for his USmash, how is it currently different from the Brawl USmash? I like the idea of giving him his Brawl Utilt much better. It has more uses and it looks cooler IMO.