I think you get spooked by Spin dash. Once sonic starts charging spin dash, he can jump or let loose, its commitment. So what can you do about that? Hydrant will place you in the air, Trampoline the same,
Nothing reliable. If I place a hydrant and he's charging spin dash, he can:
1) release, jump out of the roll and fair me before I can do anything. See @1:37
2) release and spin dash roll + then spin dash jump into the hydrant, most likely launching it and hitting me.
3)shield cancel it if it's not fully charged
4) roll right through it and out of range for me to do anything afterwards
If I use trampoline, unless I grab a ledge, he will release the spin dash, jump over the trampoline, and then homing attack or Nair me. If I grab the ledge, I'm safe, but then I have to deal with getting up, and that's where he gets most of his KOs on me from.
but, whats stopping you from dash > shield.
That doesn't accomplish anything. Me sitting in shield isn't applying any pressure to him, so he can keep charging until I do something. I definitely can't grab. If I do a SH or FH aerial, he can punish me. If I roll, same deal. Side step, same deal.
He cant grab, and you can shield fast enough to react, then its becomes learning what he does afterwards.
Like I said, he can wait while I'm shielding and then punish whatever I do next. When I try to punish him for spindashing my shield, he has enough mixups to avoid getting hit most of the time. Up B OOS on spin dash roll worked for me once or twice. Then, as you saw in the video, I got hit, even though the trampoline clearly came out. I think when Sonic jumps out of the spin dash roll affects whether or not Up B OOS will hit him.
He seemed to alternate between homing attack and fair. Both are punishable after they come out.
Maybe I could react to homing attack's launch offline. Maybe. You're right, the stuff he does is punishable...well, some of it. Like @ around 1:28, he hits my shield with spindash, jumps, and then Double jumps back, getting away scott free. @1:48, he does a very quick HA and hits me. If I expect that one and go to punish it, but he does anything else, I get hit instead. @2:35 ish, if he would've hit my shield, he keeps going with the jump, out of range of any punish for me. I can't cover everything he can do.
You can't aerially chase Sonic really effectively, Spring is a weak hydrant, and if he homing attacks you eat it trying to follow up a Spin dash. You also seemed horribly gimped when he had your fruit, his pattern didnt change, so this sonic loves his spin dashing. It clanks with ftilt, or fruit. Practice timing clanks, then buffering either shield or hydrant, because it is normally a grab follow up, or tilt from sonic. Neither of which will break hydrant.
I can't chase him in the air, and I can't keep up on the ground either :\
When he had my fruit, it didn't change much tbh. It's pretty hard to land hits on him with them anyway.
The problem with clanking with spindash with ftilt (tight window btw) is that Sonic's CQC is better, and we can't grab. Every time I've clanked with him, if he's right in my face, I lose the jab war. If we're any farther, his Ftilt wins. At any given time, he can mix in shield and then punish my strikes. I lose CQC more often than not with him.
Both of the options you describe after clanking keep me on the defensive. I'm at Sonic's mercy to not make a read, or else I get hit. If I start using hydrant, he'll start throwing out Fsmashes or Fairs. If I shield, he'll start grabbing or he'll run away and wait for me to do something, then punish. Yes, they're good mixups to throw out, but neither of them involve hitting Sonic.
