Sonic Discussion

[Deejay]

Going to go ahead and say that 99% of the reason why I bought this game was because of the hedgehog. That, and he was finally part of a really good game....

But honestly, the lag really fucking sucks online with a fast character like sonic. It's really really really hard to manipulate his move sets with his ridiculously small attack radius, coupled with the fact that his own body is his main weapon (you get launched no matter what if a player times his strikes right) makes playing this character competitively kinda hard.

Does anyone have any tips/pointers for playing with Sonic? I want him to be my main but it's really disheartening to hear that people can beat level 9's easy, and it's always a 50/50 shot with me, depending on who gets the last kill shot. (And Sonic's smashes suck btw. His Bair is really good but his Fsmash and Dsmash are worth 2 shits unless you hit from point blank.

Anyone have any good suggestions for playing with Sonic or just a light character in general? Brawl is my first game of the series, and it just feels like I'm missing something here.

Edit: Ah poop fuck, can a moderator please move this to the Brawl section please?

[Not Kuno]

Moved topic. No idea about sonic though. >.>

[izembo]

really from what ive seen i just play sonic for fun sometimes as speed chars are fun, but competitively he isnt really that grand especially with lag.

[Elcura]

Well, I've been playing Sonic for the past couple of days and here's what I can come up with. Don't be predictable and fall into a set pattern of attacking, I know that goes for pretty much every character in every fighting game ever but it's really really important with Sonic. His main strengths so far is off-stage fighting, he can pretty much go off-screen and still recover safely while hitting somebody. His Fsmash and Dsmash can K.O at 100-150%+, and with Sonics ability to combo decently and move quickly means that isn't hard. Fsmash funnily enough shouldn't be used as a killshot, though it can be. I use it when people least expect it and never assume it will K.O. Same with the Dsmash, if someone is hogging my space I use it to clear the area, if I happen to hit and knock them off then it's all good.

Homing Attack is your best and worst friend, you can actually edge guard incredible well with it, if you use it right you can cancel out a recovering opponents second jump and make them fall to their death, just drop down and do it somewhat close to them and you'll likely hit them, if not you can still jump and use his insane Up+B to recover. If you use it for attacking on stage, use it when people least expect it as well, you can't play mind games with Homing Attack and Spin Dash, because they look so different. Take advantage of the fact Homing rises you upwards a bit before launching and use that against projectiles. You can also use Homing Attack out of a Spin Dash for excellent results that most don't see coming.

Spin Dash is a good way to start a combo, but don't use it to do damage, just use it to set up an aerial combo using Uair, Bair or Fair, preferably Uair but whatever is most comfortable (I use Bair mostly). I use Spin Dash to approach most of the time unless I don't have space, you can also cancel the Down+B version and fake out opponents like that, or if you use Forward+B you can jump attack early and still retain enough ability to evade or go into a Homing Attack etc. Good for mind games, kinda.

Spring is great for recovery as you may have found out, but as Niv told me you can actually use the spring board to hurt people, it doesn't hurt a lot but if used under a ledge (say for instance if you're trying to gimp Ike's Aether) above the person recovering the spring will hit them and interrupt their recovery, usually killing them. You can also spring up and use Dair fairly well, but I haven't really found a good method/situation to use that.

You'll also want to stay away from Sonic's dashing attack. It's horribly predictable and hugely punishable (as level 9 CPU will teach you), but due to Sonic's insane ground speed you can easily use it to catch opponents off guard before an attack and definitely after an attack if there's enough lag. Sonic's Nair is good to use if an opponent is pressuring you in the air with constant attacks, since is has good coverage and decent priority but the damage sucks. Still, you don't use it for damage. It can also be good off-stage to gimp an opponent into dying.

The main way I play Sonic is to rake up some damage (Spin Dash combos and general Uair attacks) and try to get them off-stage (Back Throw is good for that). Afterwards I go off-stage and attack them while recovering, either with F/B/Nair or Homing Attack (depends). Every now and again I'll get a K.O using Uair or by getting a hit with Fsmash. But between those stages there's a lot of dancing around and playing with Sonic's speed. Suffice to say it's a character that takes a lot of getting used to and honestly I still make stupid mistakes that cost me dearly (accidental Dairs off-stage ).

Edit: Oh yeah, you can use the Up+B to chase opponents in the air and Uair them for an easy kill, but with DI that can be a little challenging.

[Deejay]

Thanks for the pointers, yeah I think Sonic's main problem is his lack of a good counter killshot. I can get people to 100% easy, but once I start looking to knock the guy out, I open up myself for a lot of counters/knock backs.

I also hate how Sonic gets like no priority on any of his attacks. His dashes always look strong but if the player isn't stupid they can/will knock me away. The CPU doesn't way too often, and it makes me want to chuck my controller through a wall sometimes. (haven't wanted to do that since i was 9)

One good move though is landing a flush spindash attack (downB) then adding in a Fair. You can get 25% if you land all the hits and it's a great move to use when a character is retreating or gets knocked back. It also knocks the character back pretty far if their % is a decent amount.

[Elcura]

Yeah, Sonic is one of those characters that starts off well, follows through well enough but can't finish for shit. Sometimes you'll get lucky and knock them off screen with a bair/fsmash but mostly you have to work your ass off for a kill that other chararcters can merely tilt their c-stick at. I think the biggest problem for most is conciously going for killshots. If you keep at what you were doing to get them at 100% and not focus on killshots you'll do a lot better. One of my biggest problems is when I get knocked out and the opponent is above 150% I go into KILLSHOT MODE and get my ass kicked instead of calmly going at them like I should be.

[Zetah]

Honestly, I think Sonic is one of the worst characters in the game at the moment. He's a little better than Yoshi or Donkey Kong, but that's about it really. He has the fastest running speed, but ALL of his attacks are average speed, and he can't short hop aerial very well, nor does he have a ton of options for killing like many other characters do. Metaknight, for example, still has better killing potential than Sonic has, and he even has a disjointed hitbox (and he CLEARLY attacks so much faster than Sonic). The only real perks about Sonic are his run to u-smash (which isn't very good), his running grab, and that's about it in my opinion. They just didn't think things through well when designing Sonic in contrast to the rest of the roster.

[Elcura]

I got the impression that Sonic was pretty much thrown together at rather a late stage to appease people. I remember thinking the entire time playing SSE "where is Sonic?" only to have him show up RIGHT at the end, where every other character in the game was shown, introduced and joined your party before The Great Maze. He isn't a great character, but he has potential to be deadly if played competently and carefully.

[Deejay]

I got the impression that Sonic was pretty much thrown together at rather a late stage to appease people. I remember thinking the entire time playing SSE "where is Sonic?" only to have him show up RIGHT at the end, where every other character in the game was shown, introduced and joined your party before The Great Maze. He isn't a great character, but he has potential to be deadly if played competently and carefully.

Yeah that's what I thought too. He kinda just hops in from no where in the final scene when you're least expecting it lol.

I think Nintendo deliberatly made Sonic not that good/hard to use so he wouldn't get whored out by fanboys. He has a lot of potential if you know how to use him, but with no "gimme" attacks besides the homing attack when edge-guarding, Sonic is pretty freaking tough to use compared to other characters.

I can get my ass handed to me with Sonic in one game, switch to Toon Link and win the match. Sometimes I have to do that when playing online just so people in the group don't think I suck THAT much lol.

[Meian]

Aerial Back+A is a pretty good finisher.

Also, heres a very nice video of a pro Sonic user.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7TqMgfUipY#
Love the way he uses triple jump like that to mess with the guy coming back to the ledge (like at 2:19)

Made me interested to try him a bit when I get a better router (WRTGC45 {I think} fails hardcore with Brawl -_- And no Buffalo routers can be sold at this time)

[Cheerios]

Yeah, Sonic is one of those characters that starts off well, follows through well enough but can't finish for shit.

I felt the same way about Mario

Aerial Back+A is a pretty good finisher.

Also, heres a very nice video of a pro Sonic user.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7TqMgfUipY#
Love the way he uses triple jump like that to mess with the guy coming back to the ledge (like at 2:19)

Made me interested to try him a bit when I get a better router (WRTGC45 {I think} fails hardcore with Brawl -_- And no Buffalo routers can be sold at this time)

Setting up a static IP and port forwarding helped my latency a ton in games.

[Zanz L. Barre The 3rd]

I like to think I'm ok with Sonic.

I find myself spamming the homing B attack and down aerial attack. On levels with platforms, you'll find yourself exploiting his up smash. One nice advantage Sonic has is that even after executing your Up+B jump, you're still welcome to use aerial attacks (as opposed to most others who are completely vulnerable).

[Deejay]

Aerial Back+A is a pretty good finisher.

Also, heres a very nice video of a pro Sonic user.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7TqMgfUipY#
Love the way he uses triple jump like that to mess with the guy coming back to the ledge (like at 2:19)

Made me interested to try him a bit when I get a better router (WRTGC45 {I think} fails hardcore with Brawl -_- And no Buffalo routers can be sold at this time)

Yeah I like the way this guy used his sonic. He took advantage of his speed to get in and out between hits. I guess that's kinda have to play sonic. Dash - attack - retreat - repeat.

He really fooled that Ike with his dash attacks, so it's hard to tell if that Sonic is really good with mind games or if that Ike just sucked.

[Elcura]

I got the impression that Sonic was pretty much thrown together at rather a late stage to appease people. I remember thinking the entire time playing SSE "where is Sonic?" only to have him show up RIGHT at the end, where every other character in the game was shown, introduced and joined your party before The Great Maze. He isn't a great character, but he has potential to be deadly if played competently and carefully.

Yeah that's what I thought too. He kinda just hops in from no where in the final scene when you're least expecting it lol.

I think Nintendo deliberatly made Sonic not that good/hard to use so he wouldn't get whored out by fanboys. He has a lot of potential if you know how to use him, but with no "gimme" attacks besides the homing attack when edge-guarding, Sonic is pretty freaking tough to use compared to other characters.

I can get my ass handed to me with Sonic in one game, switch to Toon Link and win the match. Sometimes I have to do that when playing online just so people in the group don't think I suck THAT much lol.

I guess Nintendo figured they didn't wanna make another Melee Fox lol

[Zanz L. Barre The 3rd]

Sorry to derail, but what's up with Melee Fox? I never got too into Melee as much as Brawl, but what was peculiar about Fox?

[Zetah]

Sorry to derail, but what's up with Melee Fox? I never got too into Melee as much as Brawl, but what was peculiar about Fox?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFkw08GoOmo

[Casey_]

Waveshine or whatever it's called is another "melee fox" summary

[nivlakian]

Sorry to derail, but what's up with Melee Fox? I never got too into Melee as much as Brawl, but what was peculiar about Fox?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFkw08GoOmo

An extended set of examples: http://youtube.com/watch?v=E0anyq2n0WM

[Marcicus]

those videos make fox seem really broken >_>

[Not Kuno]

Wow if a friend came over and played like that with fox I would punch them in the face. It's making me angry just watching how cheesy it is.