Where do you think Sonic stands as of today?

[Napilopez]

This may be a noobish thread, but I'm really curious as to the opinions of current Sonic mains about where Sonic stands amongst other brawl characters today. Does everyone still think he's low tier stuff, or that he's a generally sucky character, or ae some of you starting to have higher hopes for the blue blur?

As for me, personally the more and more I play Sonic the more comfortable I feel playing others, and the more I feel like Sonic is, as Izzy once put it "solid mid tier stuff". Now I don't really care about tiers, I play Sonic both because I'm a fanboy and because I love his playstyle, and would play him no matter how sucky he were. However, the more I play, the more match-ups don't really seem "unfair" or whatevs with Sonic. Of course, it might simply be match-ups becoming easier from experience, but I don't think so because I've always had good knowledge of match-ups. I have a pretty good falco and marth(altho admittedly not as good as my Sonic), characters generally considered to be "better" and I don't find playing with Sonic as being any more difficult. Maybe it has something to do with my playstyle, I mean I pwn with grounded spin dash combos, and I have a good feel for grounded spin dashes priority-wise.

Anyways what do you guys think? Sonic has been placing better in tournies, and I think there's alot of potential in Sonic that isn't used effectively(surf/grind, true pivots, shield cancelled-sideB, etccc).

How have your impressions of Sonic changed since you started playing brawl?

 

[KRDsonic]

I don't know all that much about sonic in brawl yet, but I know Mr. 3000 has been placing high in the tournaments where I live with Sonic, and he's ranked 8th best brawler in Texas, so that means sonic has some potential.

 

[TigerWoods]

I don't really main sonic....but I have friends who do....

Anyway all of Sonic's moves are easily beaten really, however I have seen some great mindgaming by Sonics. He seems like one of those characters that you REALLY need to work on, but has some potential.

 

[RixMaadi]

I always knew that Sonic had a constant mindgame with his speed. The opponent will always know that you can get right next to them in an instant. When people looked at Sonic's stats before, they were expecting a worst Captain Falcon, as Sonic had less knockback and did less damage. Yet, the extra speed does matter (along with nice aerials and recover), and the speed mindgames of Sonic might keep him at a decent ranking at time goes on, and I'm expecting him to probably get up to the bottom of middle tier and stay around there.

Even if he doesn't achieve a higher status than where he is, I just love playing around with his mobility in battles, being the fastest runner and probably having the best air height for a non-flying character.

 

[Umby]

Sonic is going to be low tier, and won't be moving higher than that any time soon after a tier list has been made official.

 

[aeghrur]

Sonic is going to be low tier, and won't be moving higher than that any time soon after a tier list has been made official.

Sigh... yeah... =(
He's gonna be low tier, but hey, we can show that sonic can win. =D

 

[Boxob]

He stands where he always has.

On top of the winning steak.

 

[pepin]

sonic started as a "good" char but after you have played with all of the characters you can see that he is not that great when brawl was out I thought he was gonna be a combo dude just like fox but he wasn't almost all of his attacks put the enemy in a situation he can counter attack, his speed is just for either running or chasing but not for aproaching. right now I think he is gonna be low tier he is not even mid

 

[ROOOOY!]

I am honestly getting less and less comfortable with Sonic.
Meh yes he's low tier.

 

[ShadowLink84]

indeed I am starting to have issues as well.
oddly enough my game against DDD improved @_@

Hmm not sure Sonic is rather confusion.

 

[Browny]

lolz i too am starting to have trouble, i cant beat my brothers wolf for the life of me. while at the same time i start winning like 90% of my sonic v mario/dedede matches against him which i used to lose often, so meh

 

[da K.I.D.]

Hes bad.

I believe after this last tourney, im ranked like 8th in rochester, and there are just certain matches he cant win add that to the fact that the more you play with people, the more they adapt to his speed, and the less effective it becomes. and your friends will adapt to your playstyle.
At this point, I play sonic because when i beat people with him there is no debating the fact that i am the better player at this point

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

I am honestly getting less and less comfortable with Sonic.
Meh yes he's low tier.

indeed I am starting to have issues as well.
oddly enough my game against DDD improved @_@

Hmm not sure Sonic is rather confusion.

You guys too? I don't know. Recently he's started to feel...... clunky....

 

[R4ZE]

... lol yea im gona say it again.

by even statistical rankings, sonic is mid-tier. but taking into consideration every aspect of brawl, and what a player is able to utilize as sonic, i think sonic is one of the better characters. atleast top 10.

A lot of people just dub sonic as a terrible character because he takes a very very long time to learn, and I honestly don't think any sonic player yet has the right to call themselves a "master" of the character.

 

[Umby]

Mid-tier means Sonic has to outdo People like Luigi, Peach, and Zelda, which Sonic isn't capable of doing as he stands now.

 

[R4ZE]

sonic is perfectly capable.

 

[Umby]

Not until his usmash gets a hitbox or power as nice as Zelda's.

 

[R4ZE]

there are plenty of rigged mves in this game. sonic can still work around them... **** u wanna talk about rigged moves? check out mk's dsmash, G&W's Dsmash. Zelda has plenty of punish delay on her attacks.

 

[Boxob]

Sonic's one of the best, I promise.

I said that early on and I stick by that. Top six for sure.

 

[darkNES386]

... which specific matchups have you guys frustrated with Sonic?

 

[ROOOOY!]

Do you mean which ones are difficult?
Or which ones you can frustrate your opponent with using Sonic?

For the first, Olimar. I just can't get behind his defenses at all.
And Toon Link to a certain extent, I just get frustrated with projectile spam so kinda subconciously give up.
For the latter, probably Falco and Sheik.

In terms of difficulty, Fox >> Falco.

I bet I'm the only person here who reckons Sonic vs Falco is neutral, yeah? xD

 

[IceDX]

In terms of difficulty, Fox >> Falco.

I bet I'm the only person here who reckons Sonic vs Falco is neutral, yeah? xD

No not really...... jej

 

[darkNES386]

I'm getting the idea that people are getting down about Sonic because they're running into match ups where they feel helpless ... despite all the knowledge and skill they have with Sonic.

I was wondering what specifically was bothering people.

 

[Tenki]

I'm just bothered by people who can read my moves. `.`;

See, my skill level is like
-------------------------[tenki]--------------------------|
but they're like
----------------------------------------------[here]------|

But of the good/decent players that I've played against recently, I've had trouble with Marth (arggghh @ low-lag moves) and to a lesser extent, Peach. Otherwise, the last people to destroy me were Vex K (Dedede) and AlphaZealot (Diddy), but those are matchups I still need more experience with and I haven't played with them in a long time..

 

[JayBee]

... lol yea im gona say it again.

by even statistical rankings, sonic is mid-tier. but taking into consideration every aspect of brawl, and what a player is able to utilize as sonic, i think sonic is one of the better characters. atleast top 10.

A lot of people just dub sonic as a terrible character because he takes a very very long time to learn, and I honestly don't think any sonic player yet has the right to call themselves a "master" of the character.

If I can play sonic consistantly since the game came out, and never have great success in tourneys, then pick metaknight, and win everytourney I main him with, and I dont' really practice him nearly as much, then that should reason enough to show that Sonic is low tier, at the best low mid tier. in a perfect world, in order for sonic not to win, he has to not play **** near perfect, and most people will just chose a better character and for the most part cheese you with projectile spamming, and camping, which when fully implemented, kills sonic easily. its really sad, but you have to play three times better than most players to keep it interesting. I started picking meta just for analyization purposes, and i shake my head when i see the ease of playing him, compared to sonic. it isn't even close.

Sonic will always be a fun character, but until they allow smash balls in regular tourneys, he will never, NEVER be past lower mid tier. that's just the truth.

EDIT: I'm not downing him because i hate him, hes my main, my favorite character, and the coolest comboer in the game. But its a simple strat to defend him. Be Rob, Be meta, Snake, Wolf, and its game.

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

If I can play sonic consistantly since the game came out, and never have great success in tourneys, then pick metaknight, and win everytourney I main him with, and I dont' really practice him nearly as much, then that should reason enough to show that Sonic is low tier, at the best low mid tier.

Being able to pick up and play a character has NOTHING to do with his tier position. I'm not saying your wrong overall but your reasoning is flawed.

 

[darkNES386]

Sadly Jaybee is correct. As Izzy has complained: Sonic takes a lot of "work" to win with. Sakurai really did not want to see Sonic become the melee Shiek/Fox in Brawl... yet ironically the character just mentioned is non-other than MK, Sakruai's own creation.

Sonic's final smash kick's MK's butt any day but that's irrelveant to us right now.

One can only hope that a year from now someone who focuses on Sonic can continue to bring up his skill.



Tenki also hit it on the dot with the whole skill level thing. It's frutrasting to lose to someone when you can anticipate their moves and yet you can't always pull off the right stuff to counter it.

 

[Tenki]

I think he meant ease of being able to pick up and win with a character. XD

Meh, it doesn't really matter for me though, since Sonic is the character I do the best with now `.`;

I'll just have to be considerably more skilled/knowledgeable than my opponent and I'll win.

which is a trait of most low-tier mainers `.`;

@DNES:
Actually, I'm more frustrated when they can read my moves constantly, because it points out just how predictable I play sometimes ;__;

 

[darkNES386]

Yeah, Tenki... that sucks too. I get predictable on recoveries sometimes. It's breaking the whole human tendency to fall into predictable habbits and tendencies that Sonic mains everywhere probably struggle with.

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

I'll just have to be considerably more skilled/knowledgeable than my opponent and I'll win.

which is a trait of most low-tier mainers `.`;

Well, I mained Melee Pikachu for 5 years. I HAD to be more skilled/knowledgeable to win but it was never a problem. After that long I knew EXACTLY how to use everything at my disposal to win. Sonic should HOPEFULLY not be any different.

Although I'd rather not have to wait two years to be able to win matches consistently.

 

[ROOOOY!]

The reason I'm getting fed up with Sonic is that I just can't seem to play as well as I used to, all the old tricks aren't working, even against different opponents so it's not a matter of getting predictable to a certain person. It's like I'm getting less skilled daily.
That and it's getting tiring playing Sonic. It's not fun. Constantly thinking and having to outplay total scrubs to win is starting to really get me bored. But yeah, everyone seems to be having that problem at the minute.
As a community, we seem to be in limbo at the moment. I and I'm sure other people seem to be at the midpoint of working with what we've got as a character, perfecting the main strengths of Sonic, and really looking for something special to boost Sonic's game. I know I'm on training everyday frantically trying to nail down something with Sonic, but I honestly think we've just about exhausted his full capabilites.

 

[darkNES386]

Sonic is a reactive character... notice how the best characters in Brawl at the moment have sure strategies that usually prevail. They don't have to change their gameplay much from opponent to opponent. I am in no way saying they don't take skill... but they don't have to adapt anywhere near as much as Sonic has to.

The only character Sonic can have his way with appears to be Captain Falcon because of his weaker priority and dependency on close range fighting.

 

[JayBee]

Being able to pick up and play a character has NOTHING to do with his tier position. I'm not saying your wrong overall but your reasoning is flawed.

uh, yes it does! in one way or another. Its called a learning curve, and sonic has got to have the highest learning curve in Smash history. This happens all the time, that when a fighting game comes out, the easiest characters to master get higher tiers first. Look at D3, we found chain grabbing early, and many thought that he was the best simply beacause of that. he not, and we know this but that aspect alone makes him better than anything sonic has at this point overall, even if you believe Sonic to have a 50/50 match with him (which I do).

When it all comes down to it, the tourneys dictate most of the tier positioning, and if they are filled with Metas/Snake/Rob/Falco/Marth then you got another thing coming if you think that just because your a better smasher, you can win in the tourney scene just as well as those characters. And let's say you are. odds are, if you face one of them in the first round and win, you will have to do it again throughout the tourney, so Sonic is at a big disadvantage and they have the higher percentage of usage in tourneys. there is a reason people don't play him that much in tourneys right now; they're not stupid. they want to win, and maining Sonic for that reason is currently unwise.

Now, if in the future, we find some awesome tech that brings sonic up a tier a two, more power to us. but guess what? how much longer would that take, this also is an indication of his lack of ability. Did you see that match that tenki linked where the meta player won simply because of spamming Shuttle Loop? IN A TOURNEY wtf (and don't say its because the opponent was a noob because even if he was, that doesn't change what happened) . When it gets close to that easy for Sonic, then we can consider it. It's not just someone is a noob, or they can't play smash, its just that thier complaining is a simplified version of what we knew all along, in the back of our heads, its just that a few of us have more experience/skill. that's all.

But a horrible character is a horrible character. I still love to play him, and will continue to do so. but as tenki said, i need to know more about Smash off the bat and I have to play way better than my opponent to win, simply put.

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

Learning curve doesn't have anything to do with it. Fox had a steep learning curve and Pikachu had a low learning curve. Fox was worlds better.

Ky Kiske is basically autoplay and he's trash tier. Eddie is hard as hell to play and he's one of the best in Guilty Gear.

It's what a character can do when played properly that determines tier position not what a noob can do with them.

 

[JayBee]

But this is not melee, and im not talking about guilty gear, brawl is completely different in that it is specifically geared towards low learning curves. I bet that if even M2K took sonic, he'd wouldn't do any better than us, and as a matter a fact he wouldn't even try, he'd say it was pointless to do so. Yeah, screw that and whatever, but see what every really good smasher, the top ten at least and you may not even find one sonic there most of the time, it proves hes very difficult to win with right now the way the game is played, even based on your comment, when "played properly"

btw, sonic's learning curve is worse that melee fox beaucse of the obvious reasons.

Also, Guity Gear has had several incarnations, and Ky was really solid at one point. they got new versions that changed the game. We got one version of Brawl, and if Sakurai has it his way, that's all we'll get.


and noobs dont win tourenys, they just exist to annoy the hell outta us for trying.

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

So what you're saying is that Brawl is the first fighting game in history to have its tiers depend on pickupandplayability rather than character ability.

M2K could easily do better than us. He would say it's pointless cause as it stands now Sonic sucks not because he's hard to use. If Sonic was the best no one would care about how hard he was to play. They would take the time to learn him.

 

[Tenki]

Look at D3, we found chain grabbing early, and many thought that he was the best simply beacause of that. he not, and we know this but that aspect alone makes him better than anything sonic has at this point overall, even if you believe Sonic to have a 50/50 match with him (which I do).
...

Now, if in the future, we find some awesome tech that brings sonic up a tier a two, more power to us. but guess what? how much longer would that take, this also is an indication of his lack of ability. Did you see that match that tenki linked where the meta player won simply because of spamming Shuttle Loop? IN A TOURNEY wtf (and don't say its because the opponent was a noob because even if he was, that doesn't change what happened) . When it gets close to that easy for Sonic, then we can consider it. It's not just someone is a noob, or they can't play smash, its just that thier complaining is a simplified version of what we knew all along, in the back of our heads, its just that a few of us have more experience/skill. that's all.

Dedede's rising/lagless B-air is such a pain in the butt.

lol I don't know if you caught it, but that guy was probably sandbagging thinking he'd get his round easily. In the last match (round 5), he didn't spam at all, and won the game in like 3 mins.

The only character Sonic can have his way with appears to be Captain Falcon because of his weaker priority and dependency on close range fighting.

lol

I frustrated a guy who was using Sonic while I was using Falcon because I jab-camped all of Sonic's ground approaches and U-aired his other ones xD

 

[JayBee]

can you do me a favor and link that match or the page that you linked it? I wanna see if anyone responded to my rant.

but he still won. theres no way any sonic can spam any move and get that far in A MATCH, let alone towards a tourney win. case and point.


and who was this lame sonic you speak of?

So what you're saying is that Brawl is the first fighting game in history to have its tiers depend on pickupandplayability rather than character ability.

M2K could easily do better than us. He would say it's pointless cause as it stands now Sonic sucks not because he's hard to use. If Sonic was the best no one would care about how hard he was to play. They would take the time to learn him.

A large portion of the high tiers can be summed up like that. if you take extremes and compare Sonic and MK, then yes. and i dont konw if its the first of its kind. i just said its purposefully designed on a casual player oriented system to do just that. how can u dispute this?

 

[Phoenix_Dark]

btw, sonic's learning curve is worse that melee fox beaucse of the obvious reasons.

lol

10 Melee AT's. er, char. D:

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

A large portion of the high tiers can be summed up like that. if you take extremes and compare Sonic and MK, then yes. and i dont konw if its the first of its kind. i just said its purposefully designed on a casual player oriented system to do just that. how can u dispute this?

I'm not. Don't forget we are early in the games life. Pick up and play characters CAN be OPed. Hence Shiek in Melee. Hence Akuma in SF. But it's their ABILITIES that make them so. Pick up and play characters just SEEM better because the game isn't fully defined yet. Captain Falcon was below Ganon at one point on the Melee list.

Who the hell knows? Maybe Sonic will get some ability like a Yoyo jacket that lets him have a constant high priority shield on. The future isn't clear. HOWEVER by CURRENT understanding of abilities Sonic is lower. My point is judging by pick up and playability merely effects impressions of characters not tier placement. Marth didn't really move up the tier list for 2 years. Before Ken people simply rolled and C sticked with Marth. If someone revolutionizes Sonics play he could shoot all the way up to high tier(lol) Just don't count on it.


tl:dr version

Tiers=potential