Sonic may not be the best character in vBrawl (in Brawl+ and Brawl-, that's another story!
), but the basic thing that any body who dares to main him could say? You don't try to spin all over the place. You use Sonic's speed, range and array of attacks to your advantage in a fashion that allows him to "hit and away", frustrating the opposition because a good Sonic should rarely be cornered, much less actually be hit. I at least believe Sonic controlled well, in that game.
Being a fighting game, is requires a bit of a learning curve to use him like that. As in said, the homing attack was a simple and direct option which felt comfortable from the start.
Incorrect statement in my eyes, and I'll tell you why.
The notion that Sonic that has been doing more than ever is NOT what's inherently wrong. It's actually based on the notion that Sega has been forcing Sonic to wear so many hats, with no real rhyme+reason to go along with it.
Pretty much every "gimmicky" thing that Sonic has had in his games from these last few years, from the extra play-styles/characters in the Adventures, the "Teams" in Heroes, to the Werehog and Sword-wielding in his most recent offerings, has NOT been given the kind of quality control that it could have been. And that is where the problem lies. Nothing is giving the time it needs to truly develop, and Sega is just as quick to force the team to focus on some new gimmick for a new game.
Case in point: they were quoted on saying that "we'd be seeing more of the Werehog". Well...here are, with yet another Sonic release, and the Werehog has yet to be seen (and likely won't be) in Sonic Colors, which focuses on yet ANOTHER set of gimmicks.
Of course the quality control in Sega sucks. And of course Sega prefers to quickly make the team work on a completely different game rather than actually explore the underlying problem. Mostly because Sonic Team is pretty much ran like a sweatshop of Sonic games, and there's no quality control to speak of, so they'd rather make constant new types of Sonic games so they don't manage to get a bad rep from their previous failed gameplay mechanics.
...it doesn't mean those mechanics WORKED TO BEGIN WITH. Let me give you an example. What was tried to do with Shadow. Collection of items, and a selection of which enemies to kill. Why didn't this work? Because they made it in linear Sonic levels, levels which don't work with those kinds of mechanics in the first place. Levels that are supposed to get you to speed by them, not pick berries along the way to grandma's. Black Knight? They tried to adapt melee mechanics in a game where you're always speeding forward. That doesn't help, because fighting isn't something you do while constantly running. They could try and adapt a feature such as fire a gun while running, like in many arcade shooters, they could try and make it so you can attack while speeding by, but focusing a game on sword attacks that you do while constantly running is just stupid, because as worked as that feature can be, it just doesn't work in a gameplay perspective. They'd have to retool the whole game. Examples like Sonic 06 are kinda different. Aside from the horrible sidecharacters you played as (although Blaze was good), the game COULD have been good, if it had better level design, and if they fixed the bugs, and added better graphics. The BASIS of the game is good, the main problem was everything else.
Again, I think the main thing is that it's a challenge unto itself to ascertain just how "difficult" it would be, until it was placed in the hands of a more competent development team with a decent amount of dev. time to its credit. Even Sonic Team was capable of some definite good ideas, such as the "Bounce" ability that Sonic had in SA2/Battle. In my opinion, it was a good answer to Mario's "Butt Stomp", as well as an ability that guaranteed how Sonic would move in a 3D space: straight up, straight down, unless there was other DI from the user. You can't get too much more precise than that, and control of Sonic remained firmly in your hands, and not trusted to the lock-on attributes predetermined by the game itself.
That's a basic ability that could have been honed over games, and served to develop Sonic's own moveset that much more. But...wouldn't you know? It was taken away, and later replaced with other things by the very next game... 
The bounce ability was good, and yes, it could have been vastly improved. But in no way it could have replaced the homing attack. You gotta see, Sonic games were NEVER about fighting enemies. They're about when to know when to spin so you don't lose any rings when you collide with this or that guy. Since all enemies except bosses can traditionally go down with a single blow. And since enemies with spiky backs and such can't be taken out with the attack. In works in a gameplay perspective, so why get rid of it? It doesn't make the game harder or easier, just... playable.