The Official SBR-B Brawl Tier List v2.0

[bigman40]

They're right to tell us to get more tourney results. Slowly, but surely, we're moving Yoshi up in the rankings. Us being able to move him up in the tourney rankings with such little representation is pretty remarkable imo. There's only like 4-5 of us that are placing (and soon, I'm gonna get in also. Which considering my first tourney [I placed 13th/40] he'll get some more good rep).

 

[tehbestevar]

Yeah I know, you guys went down instead of up... I actually like Yoshi!

It's just I don't want to take the time to learn another character who shares a high learning curve like Sonic.

Okay fun edit:



Well, that just pretty much sums it up.

I'll spare you since you were on the same boat as I a couple of months back, but to simply put it.

Wi-Fi, even as lagless can be, is still not a good indication of matchup experience.

You could've played random people, but defenitely not the pros.

People will either go with who is higher on the tier list, or who they feel is most comfortable to their playstyle of preference.

It's easy to say that, but if we could get you and the best Marth in the U.S. together... I am almost certain the results would be dramatic.

Thats why I mentioned im still working on my Ike so what if the best Ike fought the best Marth

And thanks for sparing me I cant argue for anything

 

[Deleted member]

Is there any socal SBR memebers, if not thatd be sad considering socal is perhaps the most smash happy region and one of the best.

 

[CaliburChamp]

Screw this tier list. I believe in my own tier list which I think it's much better, and I encourage other's to not go by this one. If your smart enough, or experienced enough you can theorize your own tier list.

 

[ShadowLink84]

Besides the fact that he handles like Wario on crack and has absolutely dreadful priority? And all his B-moves are essentially the same? Half of his game seems to be mindgaming the opponent into accidentally running into one of the attacks Sonic mains just throw out. Which is hard, considering how bad a character he is; I have to give you guys props for that.

How are his specials all the same?
The behavior and mechanics involving his B moves are different and frankly, making such a statement is silly.

His worst B move is his homing attack which is rather disappointing (I demand it be a frame 1 move).
As for his priority, it is far from what everyone declares it to be, his priority is better than it is believe to be.

Sonic's Uair has a good amount of disjointedness to it, allowing it to outprioritize the great majority of Dairs that are not disjointed and has incredible range as well.
Fair has a disjoint during the beginning and ending frames and comes out on frame 4.
bair has good priority and breaks through a good number of attacks.
Dair is poor
Nair has decent priority during the initial attack frames (where it has strong knockback).

Ground move is based on damage and you can see that not many attacks break them and they have good range.

Sonic's priority overall is a bit below but far from what people make it out to be.

I admit I don't know much about Sonic's matchups, or the character as a whole, but I do still think he doesn't deserve to be above Bowser for obvious reasons.[/COLOR]

Alot of your reasons are outdated.

The main reason Sonic sucks is primarily, lack of reliable killing moves.
all his kill moves are above 12 frames in startup time with very, very, very few setups that are incredibly situational.

his aerial mobility is also sluggish (not to be confuse with speed) so his aerial games aren't as sexy as they could be.
he is also placed in situations where he just can't smack the opponent away like other characters can and he cannot open up holes in defenses like MK or Marth and plays riskily.

 

[-Mars-]

I'm really tired of all this Sonic talk, all we ever do is talk about this sorry character on these tier list threads.

There are far more interesting storylines we could be discussing right now.

I could easily see ZSS rising above every character in D tier by the time it's said and done. Claw and Snakee have shown how good she is in high level play. She has an excellent spacing tool, a large number of disjoints, legitimate combos, the paralyzer, 1 frame jab..............you can go on and on with her positives. I think the only real thing that holds her back is not having that powerful KO move, but she really is one of the better characters in the game.

Wario continues to remain high even with all of his grab-release issues.....shows you how high everyone's opinion of him is. It's a shame he doesn't have more good players picking him up.

The decline of G&W. Now that most people have him figured out and know the matchup inside and out....you realize he's not THAT good. Horrible tournament placings and a decline in players will probably guarantee another drop next tier list.

Falco possibly better than Snake? It's actually debatable now. Even with characters being able to tech his chaingrab to spike....he still moved up. Arguably has the best defensive game in Brawl and shuts down a lot of characters entire games. The ability to take half a stock every time and then tech chase for another 20%........wow. His KO power isn't even really an issue.

Diddy. Pretty self-explanatory...how far does everyone feel he can go?

It will also be interesting to see where Luigi ends up. He's definitely going to need more people to pick him up and if the DDD infinite remains unbanned he won't move up. You take away DDD though and Luigi is a dangerous character. He has range issues and struggles against most of the A tier but with the ability to kill at around 60 on every character keeps him in every matchup.

What do you guys think?

 

[da K.I.D.]

............Hmm..... I have a scheme to get the Sonic mains to stop complaining.......

Move Sonic out of F tier.... but don't put him in E tier.... Give him his own tier, and call it Steak Tier.

They'll be too busy lol'ing to ever gripe about his placement again...

This is all we're asking for, even if steak tier was below all the other tiers, we wouldn't care less. Is that too much to ask for?

dude this is wayyyyy too true.
you could make up characters, you could put him lower than, geno, ridley, krystal and megaman on the tier list, if you put him in steak tier..

I dont see Sonic improving beyond where he is and personally I dont want him to because I am sick of the all fast characters dominating(exept for Snake who is moderate speed) I want to see someone who is not all Speed get high on the list

EDIT: why is Falco so much better than Fox I always thought Fox was better

1. snake has incredibly quick moves, but his movement speed is terrible
2. King Dedede says high
@edit: because falco can chaingrab people and his lasers stun.

also about sonic.
This is NOT SBR bashing, and because I just reallised that this is turning into a huge WoT, im going to try to incorporate every Sonic mains arguement into this one post so that all the sonic mains can stop bothering people, the talk about sonic in this thread can stop and everyone else can see all of our arguments together.

Also please note that this is only reasoning to get sonic out of low tier, I nor any other respectable sonic main believes that he should be any higher than one of the last 2-3 spots in mid tier
That being said:

Everyone just seems to "feel" that hes a bad character.
All the facts state otherwise
he has had consistent mid to high tier tourney placings since the game came out.
his recovery is something like 5th best in the game.
he is 19th/18th in weight out of 39 characters with one of the top 5 momentum cancels in the game.
He has disjoints on almost half of his attacks.
pretty much anything he ever does can be either cancelled into a shield (which makes for some really goofy p-shielding situations) or timing altered, and sometimes both.
hes in the upper half of the game when it comes to tech chasing.
he has mulitple jab lock setups.
And for the record, he has more flat out killing power than Falco.

But still people just "feel" that he is a bad character, the majority of the time with either misinformed, flawed or contradictory reasoning.
Ive seen people in the same post make claims that there is metaphorically a thousand sonics at every tourney and he cant help but place at tourneys, and than say that he places well because people dont use him enough to know the matchup because he is such an odd character. That is just ignorant AFAIC.

the facts are that he is short and he doesnt have a sword so therefore he doesnt have all that much range, and like somebody pointed out before, he really doesnt have anything broken or semi broken to spam like a z air or a pivot grab. But that just means you actually have to use all his moves to win, which is very very odd for a character in brawl, but that still doesnt make him bad

Id like to reemphasise Sonics tourney results for just a moment.

Whenever a SBR or mod talks about somebodys placement in the tier list, they usually say, "If you dont like where your character is, get out to tournaments and get him some placings." At the time when this state was FIRST made, (like 7+ months ago) us sonic mains (along with the peachs and olimars) took that to heart, and decided that we were going to get to work, make our character better, and get some placings in tournaments. Because the way the system works is that we are supposed to get tourney results up so that people out side of our respective boards can see how good our character is, since instead of our opinions and possibilities of what the character is capable of, we will have cold hard facts that prove that whatever character is better than what the people who made the list initially believed.

We accomplished this, and we actually did it better than any other board. If I am correct, Sonics tournament ranking in ankokus thread never got to single digit spots above his tier placement at the time. This means that for a solid 6 MONTHS (the current tourney ranking list is absolutely meaningless in my eyes due to the low amount of data) sonic had tourney rankings that were consistently 10 or more spots above his tier position. That was supposed to be cold hard facts that not only is sonic better than what people thought, he was A LOT better than he was ever given credit for.

Id also like to reference another comment that was made. Somebody said that sonic isnt good because it takes more work to win with him. I dont believe that that determines whether a character can truly be seen as "good" or not. The vast majority of the time, if you saw a top level fox player in melee, he was working harder than the guy who played marth or shiek... hell, M2K switched to marth initially cus his controller was broken...

So just because it takes time to learn the character doesnt really have any bearing on whether the character is good or not. Just because you can learn D3 in a week and MK in a weekend but it takes you 2 months to learn to do everything the right way with sonic, thats not what makes D3 or MK better characters. What matters is the end result because if it takes forever to learn a character but than once you do you beat everybody else out there, than obviously that character that took all the work to learn is a better character.

Now I'm not saying that sonic will beat everybody out there. but you have to put him in this situation, "How does he fair when played at the top of his metagame? (which to an extent includes all the feints, cancels and mindgames he is capable of [which are undoubtably at a higher peak than the vast majority of characters in this game])" and when you think about it like that. sonic really is a better character than a good chunk of the characters above him.

The gist of the justification arguments for his tier placing now and before (which for all intents and purposes is the same) seem to be just well constructed johns. Like how theres a ton of fans him playing him even though theres just as many playing him as any other low tier character. Or how the sonics are just winning on lack of matchup experience since nobody plays him, even though that doesnt help any of the other bad characters get tourney results. Or that Sonic just has better people playing him than other characters, which also isnt true because there is no one nationally known sonic main that everybody knows. Sure there are some names that get thrown around (Malcom, Blue, Mr. 3000) but its mostly just in an "oh I heard that guy actually plays sonic" way as opposed to a "watch out, that guy is really good" kind of way.

There also the case of sonic's hit and run playstyle not being all that fun for the other player, which can lead to the thought that he is a bad character, using his speed and manuverability to cover up the fact that hes bad... I've had this experience many a time, even hearing it from people who truly like sonic as a character dispite the fact that they dispise him in this game. to quote myself from the sonic board thread about this subject,

They also really hate sonics playstyle, every one i play says they cant stand sonic just because he basically doesnt sit there and get hit like every other character in the game...

but to that I ask, isnt that what good characters do? cover up their flaws and play to their strengths? and if sonic really can do that effectively, doesnt that make him a better character?

So I would like to conclude by saying that I (and many other respected members of the community *points to his own sig*) really do think, and have good reason to think that sonic is a better character than what this tier list reflects.

With all of this said, I am hereby revoking the rights of all sonic mainers to post anything in this topic regarding sonic after this post.

 

[Kinzer]

I think Sonic mains have the best mindgames, if we are this annoying.

Also why complain that we talk about a character, what's stopping you people from bringing up another subject? If anybody intelligent is reading this thread, they will reply to you and give their two-cents.

Stop putting the blame on us, sue us for actually trying to make our character look better than people give him credit for... Unlike some people who I have yet to see in this thread argue why Fox got the ****.

Edit: I just happen to post after K.I.D.... okay whatever, I got my point across.

 

[da K.I.D.]

Why is it that fox took such a dive, according to his mainers, i woulda thought he was the second coming...lol

 

[tedward2000]

Captain Falcon in Tiger Tier.
good stuff
-t2

 

[YagamiLight]

Why is it that fox took such a dive, according to his mainers, i woulda thought he was the second coming...lol

To be super honest with you, the reason Fox probably didn't sink lower is because his infallible counters are all either obscure (Sheik) or relatively uncommon (Pikachu, ZSS). If any of those sees the light of top tier, expect Fox to go down down down.

Although to be fair has to deal with and everyone still thinks DK is some sort of uber character. Go figure.

Anyways, even Fox mainers admit that Brawl Fox isn't too hot. He's pretty simple at the core, to tell the truth.

 

[Deathcarter]

The decline of G&W. Now that most people have him figured out and know the matchup inside and out....you realize he's not THAT good. Horrible tournament placings and a decline in players will probably guarantee another drop next tier list.


What do you guys think?

Yes, lets PLEASE get off of Sonic. Hell, I thought about posting how Samus is better than him. Anyhow, the G&W story is an interesting one at that. One I would like to discuss.

He may be great, but he is very one-dimensional. There is simply not much to his game. For one thing, he may have godly moves, but none of his moves are adaptable in a way he can use against his opponent. Bair is just a commited approach, a great one, but that is all it can be used for.

Falco can use his lasers to inflict damage, but he can also use them to bog down an opponent to run down the timer, or use them for setups.

Snake's ftilt may be a damage racker, but it can also be used for fakeouts. Don't even get me started on his grenades.

Meta Knight's Shuttle Loop does make him commited, but it can be used for a lot of things like punishing, defense, heck, he can use a reverse shuttle loop to get behind an ledgeguarding opponent and instantly have the advantage.

Diddy has bananas, Marth's moves have different properties depending on spacing, and DDD......DDD does not have any truly adaptive move, but his grab range, Dthrow, and bair are almost broken. No other character has a move as good as DDD's.

When you add those things together, you have a very good character, but a one-dimensional one. Predictibality with your moves is VERY detrimental against adaptative opponents like the ones in high-level competetive play. That is my take on it.

The bold is pretty much the most important part of my post.

 

[Kinzer]

Yes, lets PLEASE get off of Sonic. Hell, I thought about posting how Samus is better than him. Anyhow, the G&W story is an interesting one at that. One I would like to discuss.

He may be great, but he is very one-dimensional. There is simply not much to his game. For one thing, he may have godly moves, but none of his moves are adaptable in a way he can use against his opponent. Bair is just a commited approach, a great one, but that is all it can be used for.

God you're tempting me... but whatever...

I won't say it. Then again, just before I hit the post button, I thought "fanboyism", and then I nodded.

I find that ironic, for a 2-D character.

 

[Fletch]

He may be great, but he is very one-dimensional.

Don't you mean two-dimensional?

Sorry I had to.

EDIT: ****it Kinzer, you caught it first.

 

[da K.I.D.]

i see where you are coming from about GAW being a straight forward character, but I would have said hes a two-dimensional character, just for the lul-factor.

EDIT: eff me...

 

[Kinzer]

I am replying to this thread at the speed of sound..

I'm sorry K.I.D., I shouldn't even be posting.

 

[-Mars-]

Why is it that fox took such a dive, according to his mainers, i woulda thought he was the second coming...lol

Don't exaggerate things. You were trying to say Sonic was better than Fox and that was all we were discussing a few days ago. Never did I say he was some God character or something........

Edit: also lol at Kinzer and Da Kid posting the same joke without realizing it

 

[Trillion]

Why does the SBR waste so much time making a poorly constructed, meaningless, uninformed tierlist based on popularity and the opinion of uninformed and unqualified people when it could be doing something productive?

 

[Metro Knight]

Sonic is so... sonic.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/472-Sonic-Unleashed

 

[Emblem Lord]

Because the ignorant masses demand it.

Go figure.

 

[Lex Crunch]

Poor Ganny. No one to back him up and whine about how he needs to be higher. I would if I cared.

 

[da K.I.D.]

Don't exaggerate things. You were trying to say Sonic was better than Fox and that was all we were discussing a few days ago. Never did I say he was some God character or something........

Edit: also lol at Kinzer and Da Kid posting the same joke without realizing it

lol i know, im just messin...

Why does the SBR waste so much time making a poorly constructed, meaningless, uninformed tierlist based on popularity and the opinion of uninformed and unqualified people when it could be doing something productive?

shut the hell up, you dont know what youre talking about.

Spoiler

the SBR NEVER does anything productive...

but seriously, dont talk.

Sonic is so... sonic.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/472-Sonic-Unleashed

too good

I am replying to this thread at the speed of sound..

I'm sorry K.I.D., I shouldn't even be posting.

as long as its about something else i dont care, anything about sonic from here on out should be infracted for spam.

Because the ignorant masses demand it.

Go figure.

EL is amazing

 

[EdreesesPieces]

Is there any socal SBR memebers, if not thatd be sad considering socal is perhaps the most smash happy region and one of the best.

Hiiii =)

10socals

 

[Gimpyfish62]

i sort of represent socal still in some way i hope haha

 

[SwastikaPyle]

Poor Falcon.

:[

Heh, LuigiKing will be sad. Now Zelda is one spot lower. LOSER!

 

[NinjaFoxX]

i actually hoped Yoshi would go up, even if a little,as for fox, the plunge was expected, and ICs, well... though they would keep their place...


oh well, better luck this summer =(

 

[Sean²]

I think I might cry.

The game I love so much is slowly transforming into an easier 3rd Strike.

 

[Titanium Dragon]

Argh, have two windows posted and posted this to the wrong one.

 

[colored blind]

Considering the Sheik/Zelda thing is a viable option now, I'm surprised there isn't an entry yet. Glad to see Marth, Diddy, and Olimar where they to be. I can see G&W moving a bit lower as his game stagnates. ZSS will probably go up a bit more as people play her.

The first half of the tier list seems pretty accurate to me. The other half doesn't, because I guess no one really cared except Yoshi/Sonic/CF mains. I don't mean it offensively, but I think that's pretty much the vibe I've gotten from wasting my time reading ALL of this thread.

 

[Titanium Dragon]

Sonic is currently 10th in the tournament rankings. He has actually shown a consistent increase in his rankings since August, so this placing doesn't really surprise me that much (though I do admit it is higher than expected).

Firstly, these are not the best of rankings due to the limited sample size, as has been pointed out previously.

Secondly, though, that's always the problem with tournament rankings - they don't necessarily reflect that which is best. There are three major things which influence tournament rankings:

1) How good something actually is.
2) How popular something actually is.
3) Metagames.

This is a well-known problem in, say, Magic, wherein the most popular deck is not always the best deck. You have to consider who plays the decks, how many people total played the decks, ect. So if, say, some random deck contributes a quarter of the T8s, but makes up about a third of the metagame, that deck is very likely worse than a deck which gets only 10% of the T8s but only consists of about 2% of tournament attendees (though actual experience with both decks is required to tell for certain; sometimes its simply that a certain type of deck/specific deck is favored by more skilled players, which ALSO biases the results - its not so much that the deck is "better" but that competitive Magic players enjoy playing certain types of decks more than others, and random Magic players have differing tendencies as well; a deck which has a very complicated combo is very likely to be underrepresented because a lot of people cannot play it properly, whereas a simple but mediocre and cheap aggro deck is likely to be quite popular).

The tier lists are an attempt to pull the chaff from the wheat, so to speak, something which requires a skilled player to do because only they are capable of understanding what is going on. And even then, you have to watch out.

This tier list says "Sonic is vastly overrepresented in tournaments as compared to how good he is". Maybe this is because Sonic players play in weak metas. Maybe its because Sonic fanboys are numerous. Who knows?

I think there is a huge biased towards Yoshi. Its just not fair.

So a possible Metaknight counter, chaingrab on a handful of the cast and the ability to wavedash and waveland very well not good enough for at least E?

Only if you actually beat someone. Having an even matchup with MK is okay, but you could just play the mirror there.

I think the real issue is the lack of evidence that Yoshi is capable of being very good in general. Having just one unusually good matchup isn't enough to be well ranked.

 

[InfamousLegato]

Allow me to first take a moment to laugh at the glaring contrast between Olimar mains and Sonic mains

Olimar mains : "Well it's cool he moved up... We just don't want more people using him"

Sonic mains : "MAKE SONIC HIGHER! RECOGNIZE HIS GREATNESS"

I dunno why anyone is mad. Tier lists show 2 things.

1. How consistent a character is in tournaments
2. How likely they are to appear in tournaments

So Sonic isn't high tier? Big deal. He can be just as good as anyone else. Ithrowthings really made me respect Sonic after he whooped my Olimar at Final Smash 08 a couple weeks ago. Sonic's lower tier ranking and my lack of experience fighting a GOOD Sonic player left me unprepared for the match up. Also his skill was quite impressive ^_^;;

Rule of fighting games : Some characters are just better than others.

This doesn't mean a fight between a Meta Knight and a Sonic is an auto win for Meta Knight, just means the Sonic player better be more skilled and able to take down a character who's higher ranked for several reasons.

Tier lists don't determine who you can and can't use in a tournament. They determine who you're more likely to play against and who's more likely to advance. Lower tier means more of a surprise but it also means you have to be exceedingly better than your opponent to overcome your character's shortcomings and the ability to exploit whatever weaknesses your opponent's character has.

Basically, stop worrying about where your main placed on the tier list. It doesn't make who you use any more or less good than they were before.

 

[Jimnymebob]

Poor Ganny. No one to back him up and whine about how he needs to be higher. I would if I cared.

Ganny is too slow- make him higher.

There- I said it

Anyway, is this just my computer, or did this site just go down?

 

[Psychoace]

I'm just gonna chill in my corner over here for a bit there's to much pointless **** going on to discuss anything right now.

 

[aznfreak13]

NOOOO!!! Captain Hotdog still last...

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

GaW isn't as good as most people thought. I'm just glad people are realizing this. If you avoid getting into any of his setups he's pretty punishable/readable.

 

[TP]

Poor Ganny. No one to back him up and whine about how he needs to be higher. I would if I cared.

I don't think there's a single Ganon main who thinks he should be above where he is now, and many feel he should be lower. We are NOT complaining.

 

[Bowser King]

NOOOO!!! Captain Hotdog still last...

First Captain fail and now captain hotdog..

What kind of names are you people giving him >_>

-Bowser King

 

[DarkISDA]

Already a date for the next tier? What the hell. This is crazy! Anyway, this list seems pretty accurate, great job.

Side Note: No Lucario went down and Toon Link didn't move D: *cries*

 

[Jimnymebob]

First Captain fail and now captain hotdog..

What kind of names are you people giving him >_>

-Bowser King

Facial Pant Con

Anagrams are too good

 

[Tenki]

Repost of: "The Case Why Sonic Mains Should Just stfu and Leave this Thread"

Sonic is currently 10th in the tournament rankings. He has actually shown a consistent increase in his rankings since August, so this placing doesn't really surprise me that much (though I do admit it is higher than expected).

I'll address this later on in this post.

if you don't know the matchup it makes a character better in all areas?

wtf?

"okay guys lemme tell you, roy is so so good. no one knows how to play against him. that's why."

You misunderstand. We're not saying that Sonic is good but noone knows his matchup.

We're saying that Sonic is doing really, REALLY well in tournaments because noone knows the Sonic matchup. And as long as you all continue to be ignorant, refuse to learn the matchup, and think the way you do, we'll continue to do do well.

I'm a bit surprised that the next version of the tier list is out already. I expected an update on the SBR recommended rule list for Brawl.

Check the "SBR thread" sticky thing. June 5th is the next tier list/ruleset update.

things

D:
If you had only seen the post that I'm about to copy-paste.

This tier list says "Sonic is vastly overrepresented in tournaments as compared to how good he is". Maybe this is because Sonic players play in weak metas. Maybe its because Sonic fanboys are numerous. Who knows?

We had to shoot down this BS so many times. There are at MOST, 3 competent Sonic mains per REGION. In December, some of them went to their first offline tournaments and ended up placing top 8. I believe in one tourney, two of them placed top 8, so Sonic got a relatively high amount of points for that.

But if you look at the list, there are 11 tournament placings for Sonic where other characters in B-rank have 19-20 placings. Popularity my ***. stfu.

And because a bunch of people missed this...

-----------------------------------------------------------
Original post:
http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=6286460#post6286460

To the people who either keep arguing or feel like arguing about Sonic's placement:

Surprisingly enough to you people who are familiar with me, I may argue against Sonic going "mid-tier":

Millions of Sonic players? - the Myth and Reality of Success through Matchups
Like I mentioned earlier, some of those Sonics who placed in December did so in pretty much their first offline tournaments. These people were pretty much "wifi-players", and I myself pretty much did the same. I took first in my first two tournaments, one of which used SBR-ruleset, though it wasn't a monetary prize (30+man tourney, prize was 30$ giftcard to gamestop + Spore lol), but they were never was officially reported due to the nature of the tourneys. (I'm not sure if anyone wants to use that as a case for anything about wifi players lol, but I'll leave it at that).

But here's the thing:

People don't know the Sonic matchup.

We laugh at all the scrubwads who claim to outprioritize and outrange all of Sonic's moves in matchup discussions, when all you're talking about is spindash, after playing some guy who doesn't even know **** about playing Sonic. If we asked you how you did against Sonic's B-air, spaced U-air, or tilts, I'm sure you'd have nothing to say about those moves, because you most likely don't know about them as you haven't seen them. As such, noone bothers to learn the Sonic matchup, and if they don't play online, a large majority of these people never will, unless the tourneys are weekly and the Sonic main goes there often. And even if you play a Sonic player online, it'll be hard to get an idea of what moves are punishable with what, and even harder to get an idea of just how extensive Sonic's punishment and spacing game is - but at least you'll get a general idea of their move tendencies, like jumping aerials out of spindash, spin-cancelling, or 'finished' ("autocancelled") D-airs out of spring, just to name some low level moves.

There aren't millions, let alone tens (2 digit) of Sonic players in tournaments, and you'd be lucky to find more than 2 knowledgable Sonic main in a state, let alone in a tourney. When I won my first tourney, it was ezpz, except for HtH's Samus towards the end, since I didn't know the Samus matchup. When I won my second tourney, I either outclassed players, or they didn't know the matchup. The prospective winner for that tournament constantly talked about how I was "turning into a ball and [he didn't] know what [ I ] was going to do", since he didn't really know what I was doing with all the spin cancels. At the finals, the guy I played against told me to stop using Sonic, and I asked him, "why? he suuuuuuucks and you're using snaaaaaake", he retorted "**** I don't know how to play against Sonic".

But that's exactly it. Throw that "millions of Sonic players" BS out the window and look at it for what you have:

You have a competitively-unpopular character with various mobility, cancellable attacks, and feinting (fake-out) ability.

It can be very difficult to tell the difference between what portion of the "I don't know what you're doing" is player or character-based because of that.

The tournament placings?
Sonics won.

The end.

But as ROOOOY! stated earlier, about half of the Sonic mains who placed in tourneys only placed once.

Either this means that they've only been to one tourney, or people knew what to do next time they played. I haven't gone through the trouble of pinpointing who these Sonic mains were, nor their specific tournament history, but that in itself continues to hint towards the matchup issue.

They placed once, which means that they ravaged them with a character they didn't know to play against.

Did they return and fail to place next time? Was it just a one-shot tournament?

Also, that one tournament where there were like 3 Sonic mains? That brought a 'low-tier' version of the 'Falco points ****' that happened, when two Falcos placed high in a large tourney lol.

Moveset issues?
So it comes down to this:
How do people do against Sonic's tilts and spaced aerials?
How punishable IS Sonic, and to what extent can people punish him?

We may not really have an answer to that yet.

But the main issue I wanted to bring up is the D-throw thing that popped up in Tactical discussion not too long ago.

Alot of people take it as a joke, and thus don't know just what the extent of the damage is (and even though I know what its extent is, I won't spoil it for ya ), but I still get an alarming amount of June-style followups after D-throw.

So really, quit making a big deal about it. If Sonic mains go to more tournaments and prove my statement wrong (that Sonic can/will place even after people learn the matchups), then maybe he DOES warrant a rise. But at the moment, I really believe that, aside from ___X___, who just consistently places...2nd (lol) in Utah tourneys, we might just be getting by because people don't know how to fight Sonic.

You won't warrant a rise in the tier ranking through past results, because for all they know, you did so in tournaments with bad players, or you just ***** everyone who didn't know the matchup. It'll only happen if people learn the matchup and you are still able to do well.