Floating to the Top v3.6: The Ganondorf Match Up Thread

[X0dus]

How is the DDD vs. Ganon match-up? And what should I do as Ganon?

 

[CORY]

well, i know you should never get grabbed ;x

that just leads to being thrown offstage and much general unhappiness : (

 

[X0dus]

well, i know you should never get grabbed ;x

that just leads to being thrown offstage and much general unhappiness : (

I play Heysuess on a consistent basis as Ike, and for a short time as Marth. I learned that a long time ago.

 

[Bazkip]

Grab him and don't stop down throwing.

 

[Bazkip]

What stages do you guys take spacies to? I've thought about this a bunch and I haven't really come to any conclusions.

Spaces are supposed to "die easily", whereas we have good survivability, so taking them to small stages might negate one of their weaknesses and our strengths. On the flipside, taking them to large stages gives them plenty of room to laser camp us. Seems like a lose/lose.

However there's also the fact that outside of Falco, spacies having a bad recovery is a big ****ing lie. They have a ton of options and covering all of them can prove difficult. Meanwhile they have no difficulty edeguarding us. Fox's Shine spike and Falco's dair completely trivializes our survivability, idk if Wolf has anything that totally demolishes us but between bair and dair he can definitely make it hard for us to get back. They're also all capable of killing us outright. So maybe we should just stick to small stages?

Wide stages with plenty of platforms (Lylat, Distant) could possibly still work against Falco cause he does die pretty early, and the platforms help us avoid lasers. FD could work against Fox/Wolf since their lasers don't pin us down and we can chaingrab them to infinity. Actually Dreamlands platforms are probably too high to get them out of chaingrabs, but still offer us a respite from lasers, might actually be a good choice against all three...

 

[Taytertot]

What stages do you guys take spacies to? I've thought about this a bunch and I haven't really come to any conclusions.

Spaces are supposed to "die easily", whereas we have good survivability, so taking them to small stages might negate one of their weaknesses and our strengths. On the flipside, taking them to large stages gives them plenty of room to laser camp us. Seems like a lose/lose.

However there's also the fact that outside of Falco, spacies having a bad recovery is a big ****ing lie. They have a ton of options and covering all of them can prove difficult. Meanwhile they have no difficulty edeguarding us. Fox's Shine spike and Falco's dair completely trivializes our survivability, idk if Wolf has anything that totally demolishes us but between bair and dair he can definitely make it hard for us to get back. They're also all capable of killing us outright. So maybe we should just stick to small stages?

Wide stages with plenty of platforms (Lylat, Distant) could possibly still work against Falco cause he does die pretty early, and the platforms help us avoid lasers. FD could work against Fox/Wolf since their lasers don't pin us down and we can chaingrab them to infinity. Actually Dreamlands platforms are probably too high to get them out of chaingrabs, but still offer us a respite from lasers, might actually be a good choice against all three...

thats a good question. id imagine that since their ability to gimp us is pretty high, picking stages with long horizontal blast zones doesnt seem like it would help us in any way. While they may be able to die early off the sides as is due to being light, i dont think having them die even earlier due to short horizontal blast zones is a bad thing (this allows us much more opportunity to catch up if the spacie gets ahead in stocks). Which leans towards picking small stages.
For fox id say a stage with short horizontal blast zones and high vertical ones is ideal because all of the spacies have relatively good vertical survivability so we wont being killing off the top much anyway whereas fox has stupid good vertical kill options and decent horizontal ones.
id say falco is either going to be getting kills with dair (which isnt effected too much by stage choice, though i suppose a short stage makes it easier for falco to carry us to the ledge for the dair setup) or i guess bair and possibly fsmash/dsmash, while his upward kill options arent nearly as reliable for him. But we also dont want to give falco a lot of room to zone with so maybe a short stage with longer horizontal blast zones since we can kill him early off the side anyway and that somewhat negates his horizontal kills since we have much more kill power and weight to work with.
Wolf id say is somewhat similar though hes maybe a bit more likely to kill off the side then falco or fox since sideB and bair are very stong kill options. his usmash and fair do have vertical kill potential but they are not nearly as easily applicable to the amount of situations that he'll be putting us in as his sideB bair dsmash or fsmash. He also has better vertical survivability from what i understand so that makes it really tough to decide.

 

[Yallo42]

I play against a dedede main a lot, so here are some tips I have about it:
-Tip of Fair is safe on shield
-easy down throw chaingrab to about 50%
-You can usually hit with both hits of Nair
-If you stay just out of range of Dededes F tilt, you can get a guaranteed punish with grounded Flame Choke
-If you get an aerial flame choke and they don't DI away, you can grab
-Down throw at 50% can combo into aerial flame choke (maybe)
-If dedede recovers low, you can Dair his up B on reaction
-Dair on waddle dees sends them straight up and takes a long time for them to fall back down. If you do this to two waddles at once, dedede won't be able to use them for a while
-Dash attack beats inhale if you hit with the first hitbox, the late hitbox will deal damage but you will still be sucked in. Try to start the attack at the edge of the windbox
-Wizard foot goes through waddles and beats waddle dashing. Use it if they are waddle dashing to approach you
-Dair combos into grab at low percents

 

[bubbaking]

Hey guys. I've been using a lot of Ganon recently, especially against Yoshi and Zelda on small stages. He's a ton of fun.

I personally think Ganon:DDD is close to even. Ganon gets to CG DDD kinda hard, and after that, all his dthrows lead into fair or bair. Additionally, Ganon's a little faster than DDD, he has much greater platform mobility, and his moves have a bit less lag. He's also pretty good at edgeguarding him. On the other hand, DDD gets to edgeguard Ganon for free and his moves are much larger.

 

[Electric Tuba]

I don't like ganon against Dedede, but I haven't played the match enough to really discuss usefully.

He's really good at keeping us out, and we can't quite do the same thing because of waddle dee junk.

 

[Yallo42]

Hey guys. I've been using a lot of Ganon recently, especially against Yoshi and Zelda on small stages. He's a ton of fun.

I personally think Ganon:DDD is close to even. Ganon gets to CG DDD kinda hard, and after that, all his dthrows lead into fair or bair. Additionally, Ganon's a little faster than DDD, he has much greater platform mobility, and his moves have a bit less lag. He's also pretty good at edgeguarding him. On the other hand, DDD gets to edgeguard Ganon for free and his moves are much larger.

Yeah I also think it's an even MU. Like you said, DDD's moves have a lot more range (he has the largest regular grab range, and Ganon has one of the shortest) so he can really outspace us. Also if he sends you offstage you're basically dead. But Ganon's combos on dedede are insane. You can go from one grab to 50% to fair/bair to edgeguard to KO.
But how do you beat Zelda? I can't edgeguard fayore's wind, Ganon can't combo her well, and Zelda's F Smash seems nearly impossible to punish. And how do you beat Din's fire?

 

[bubbaking]

I don't like ganon against Dedede, but I haven't played the match enough to really discuss usefully.

He's really good at keeping us out, and we can't quite do the same thing because of waddle dee junk.

Wizard's Foot, DA, and nair all go through Waddles, and therefore Waddle Dashes, pretty well.

But how do you beat Zelda? I can't edgeguard fayore's wind, Ganon can't combo her well, and Zelda's F Smash seems nearly impossible to punish. And how do you beat Din's fire?

Well, I only like the MU on small stages with plats (YS, WW, and FoD) because there isn't really enough room for her to put out Din's safely and we still have our platform mobility. In general, you beat Zelda by maintaining a close mid-range position. Close enough that you can threaten her with things like fair and sideB mix-ups, but just far enough way that you don't get caught by all of her BS smashes and kicks. If you end up too close, then you kind of have to go for the dodge/jab/grab mix-up immediately. Small stages also let us kill her fairly fast, and recovery isn't such an issue for us.

Edgeguarding Zelda is difficult, but it can be done if you are aware of your options depending on Zelda's position. If Zelda lets herself get too close before she Farore's, like while drifting during the placement of a cover Din's for instance, then you can hit her out of Farore's startup with a quick move. It's easiest with bair and uair, but if you're preemptive enough, you can even catch her with fair. These moves will go through Din's, so you can still hit her if she tries to place the fireball right in front of herself. However, if she did it far enough away, then you have to play the guessing game. 4 out of 5 times, she will just go for the ledge, which you have to just give up unless you preemptively hog it (in which case, you may be in a kinda bad position if she actually goes for the stage). However, if Zelda goes for the stage, Ganon is one of the few characters who can easily knock her out of the explosion with several moves. A lot of the time, if Zelda teleports onto the stage while you're on the stage, then she's gunning for you in order to knock you away or force you into your shield (it's really difficult to punish the Farore's explosion if she hits the back of your shield). A preemptive fade-back fair, full jump dair, or retreating bair will knock her out of that. If you really have the hard read, you can even hit her with fsmash or usmash. Uncharged works, but charging it up kills her really early. Keep this in mind for onstage teleports as well; it will keep Zelda honest so she doesn't bully you onstage when she's also bothering you with Din's placements.

Zelda is pretty hard to combo by 90% of the cast, but Ganon actually is one of the ones that has an easier time comboing her (and other floaties). Off dthrow, uair is always guaranteed. If she DIs to either side, bair is always guaranteed. If she DIs to the front, fair is practically guaranteed up to high %'s. At low %'s, nair is pretty much guaranteed. At low %'s without optimal DI, Ganon can string together nairs and uairs. Aerial sideB combos into jab on everyone, but on floaties like Zelda, you can also combo it into Wizard's Foot or DA.

Zelda's fsmash pretty much is impossible to punish. So is her dsmash, and her usmash also has low lag once the hitbox is gone. That's just Zelda. Her moves have decent range, obnoxious hitboxes, and really low lag after the last effective hitbox. However, Ganon can actually counter those moves, since his own moves have good reach and single, very hard hits. If you fair at her fsmash, you will take some small, arbitrary amount of damage (like, 1%) while slugging her with a full punch. However, if that smash hits your shield, then you should just back off (she's probably gonna just fsmash again).

Dealing with Din's is very annoying, especially when it interrupts you during something you thought you had going. I just like to disarm it immediately if I have the space. Quick moves like nair, uair, and bair get the job done. However, after placing Din's close to you, some Zeldas like to teleport in immediately while they have stage control. That's when I start to full jump dair on reaction to the teleport. If she doesn't actually go in but stays in place, then I'm safe. However, Zelda can teleport partway (or past me) and cancel it for a punish of this strategy. In all honesty, if Zelda has too much space, she has too many teleport mix-ups, plus she can always just place the Din's between us and refuse to approach. For this reason, I much prefer small stages. This MU is practically impossible, IMO, on large ones.

Hope this helped.

 

[Bazkip]

@ bubbaking covered most of it so I'm just gonna touch on a few things he missed.

For edgeguarding, you can grab the ledge to force them to go for the stage, and then waveland onto the stage after they disappear. This will likely put you in position to be able to punish the ending.

Floaties can be grabbed following an aerial flame choke, this is probably one of our best follow ups.

While somewhat difficult to combo, there's no need to try to go for extended strings. Zelda has relatively poor options when above people, dair is her only move that puts a hitbox below her and it's slow. Her options come down to airdodge, Farore's and Nayru's which can all be read and punished on landing. You can also just smack her out of Nayru's with an uair if you're below her, you'll probably trade but whatever that's just 1-3%. So just have some patience, don't overextend yourself into a lightning kick, and you'll be in charge of Hyrule in no time

Din's gets removed if it hits shield so that's a way of dealing with them without committing to an attack.

 

[Bazkip]

Random Magus knowledge drop on the ZSS matchup

Ganon CGs her 0-78, but you can land on the platform at 59+ (his CG only lasts that long without any platforms because his grab reaches high).

 

[Taytertot]

against zelda when she's recovering with upB, if you grab ledge preemptively and then just wait for her to teleport on stage you should be able to ledge drop DJ flame choke her as long as you know the timing of when she reappears and catch her just after the explosion. That usually works for me and it allows you to punish her without having to space something like nair right after the explosion which could easily just open you up instead but sideB can be started while out of range from the explosion and should get her if you start it as the explosion comes out.

If youre having difficulty getting reads on where shes going to teleport to id recommend using attacks that force her offstage so that she doesnt have an option about which direction to go. this allows you to just time a punish and finish off the stock. Personally i like ftilt for that cause it sends her at a low angle which will usually forces her to pick either straight sideways or diagonally to get back depending on what percent shes at and how she DIs

 

[Omar_25]

How do I eviscerate Lucas?

 

[Yallo42]

How do I eviscerate Lucas?

I don't have much experience in that matchup, but volley is probably useful for reflecting pk freeze and f tilt d tilt and wizard foot should be good if their spacing is bad. Also if you're edgeguarding always grab the ledge so they can't use the snake, and punishing pk thunder shouldn't be too hard.

 

[Electric Tuba]

Don't get hit, edgeguard ruthlessly. Fair will beat PKT2 clean if you space it well, and if he's in tether range grab ledge.
Also don't tech in place, tech in one direction or another out of combos. Won't work every time, but will work much more than in place.

 

[Taytertot]

id imagine lucas has a pretty rough combo game on ganon. but as its been said we outrange him solidly. i could be wrong but i feel like SH retreating nair will be useful in neutral to contest any space that the lucas player might want to invade since it can cover both lucas's aerial and grounded approach options fairly well, though you'll need to watch out for PK freeze cause that starts a lot of lucas combos and might hit ganon out of nair. i feel like itd definitely be a read heavy MU for ganon.
it might not be that unlike the falco MU in neutral for ganon if that helps since they both fall fast, combo hard (though their combos are very different), play a projectile based neutral and are light weight

 

[Electric Tuba]

Also, if you're on the ground and he throws PK freeze you can wiz kick through it and usually hit lucas too if you're in range. Do not attempt if you're too far to hit him, lol

 

[bubbaking]

Lucas gets hit super hard by the CG, and many Lucas players are overconfident in their shield pressure. If you are aware of which aerials are unsafe, then you can shieldgrab him on reaction. For instance, fair is unsafe unless he does it really late. When he's offstage, reverse uair covers a lot of his options. Also, our spot-dodge is good enough to 'parry' some things, like PKF, in certain situations.

 

[Yallo42]

For instance, fair is unsafe unless he does it really late.

I think Lucas' DJC Fair is safe on shield

 

[bubbaking]

Yeah, but that's technically a late fair. "Late" simply means he's doing it close to the ground while descending to cut the air lag and transfer it to landing lag. DJC simply lets Lucas circumvent the vulnerable time he would normally have to spend rising and then falling to get to the late fair.

Another potentially unsafe move that comes to mind is dair. If Lucas lands in a weird way between the hits and he doesn't drift behind us, his dair is actually pretty unsafe. It's similar to how Fox's drill is very unsafe if he lands in between the hits and doesn't drift behind his opponent.

 

[GlowingOrangeOoze]

Hopefully this goes without saying, but SDI is pivotal in escaping his combos. If you have bad DI you will be zero-to-death'd pretty consistently. I've faced only about two good Lucases in tourney, and by god they were some of the hardest-won sets of my life. As far as the neutral goes, all I can say is that Freeze is rough, and you've gotta expect it and be prepared to deal with it. Reflects and clanks are both effective as long as your auto cancels are on point.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

So I have question. What do Dorf's matchups aginst Marth, Roy, and other disjoint heavy characters (like maybe Mewtwo/Ivysaur)? Marth is a decent mu in melee apparently.

 

[CORY]

marth and roy feel volatiley 50/50, to me. roy is probably slightly better than marth, against us, but i don't think we outright lose (mostly because roy wants to get closer than marth, which means the spacing he wants isn't the same as ours, so it's harder to scare or bait him into bad decisions). ike feels a bit rougher, because he has more marth like spacing, but is also a bit stronger overall and has burst movement options that can be difficult for us to shut down.

ivy i feel is miserable, once the ivy gets used to ganon. bair and well placed razor leaves tend to just make ganon sad when trying to approach and she can space around the dtilt range that's really useful for ganon to keep people in. the upside is that she feels like a really great combo weight for us once we get that hit, and tethers were hit hella hard, so you can really do a number if you can force the tether hop off the ledge, but the combo of projectile and strong disjoint feels like it's solidly in ivy's favor.

mewtwo is similar, in that he has a solid projectile to force us to do stuff, but the rest of his gameplan is less about disjoint (the tail isn't that disjointed, iirc) and more about mobility and then having a few options that can match our range (namely bair, and his dtilt is super super good, even if it's not as ranged as our own). he can force you into a bad position really well and can escape combos if you overcommit on just a set of staggered hits, making it difficult to build up percent as easily as you would want. i'm also relatively unversed in this matchup and the main m2 players locally are actually a tier or two higher, skill wise, than i am, so i can't say for certain. i also think a lot of people are still sleeping on 3.5 mewtwo. he's not balls out busted anymore, but you don't need to be balls out busted to still be a really strong character, and more pertinently, the things he seems to like doing are problematic for ganon to deal with.

 

[Bazkip]

Roy is Marth who doesn't struggle to kill, the matchup is definitely significantly worse.

Should be more manageable in 3.6, at least.

 

[CORY]

i feel like it's less his struggle to kill once you survive the danger zone, and more that his functional range is close in. with marth, you can bait out a lot of stuff and hope he messes up, because we live in similar ranges and marth doesn't have any real reason to press in closer to you, to try and play like a fox or something, for example. roy wants to get in closer, so it's harder to mess up his spacing with minor movement jukes, and then he still has the outer edge of his sword to keep you from totally disrespecting his max range.

the killing aspect isn't nonexistent, it just seems less of a deal breaker to me.

#allimo

 

[Yallo42]

How do you beat kirby and jigglypuff?

 

[CORY]

I beat Kirby by keeping him at the edge of dtilt range. Jiggs, I pray to catch them on a bad jump in with a fair and then hope I can dacus or some **** to kill at 50 ><

 

[bubbaking]

Yeah, against Jiggs, you kinda have to space safe moves but then bait her into coming out of her shield against something. I like to full hop dair above her (which will catch her if she tries to jump) and then DJ bair directly at her. If she's ever in the air above you, uair is godly. If you have her scared in shield, then wavelands in to grab are great.

Kirby is pretty bad, since he can duck under everything, and it's really hard to keep him out without retreating. I don't actually have much for you about this MU.

 

[Yallo42]

Tips for link? How do you get through his projectiles? Also how do you pressure him? Getting grabs seems really hard because of link's disjointed attacks and boomerang. I think ganon usually wins in the air, but link likes to stay on the ground. I feel like this MU is strongly in Link's favor.

 

[CORY]

boomerang can at least be aerial'd through or clanked out, especially if you can get him on a read. bombs are the real issue. try to stay close enough that he can never feel comfortable pulling a bomb out, which is easier said than done, since he has a sword, as you mentioned.

you can still outspace him, just slightly, with tilts, but those are typically not safe against link (whereas, against most other characters, they are : /). on the flipside, your jab becomes very safe on him, since it's something like... -9 or 10 on shield, (maybe lower if you can get good at the crouch trick to shave a few frames off the end lag) and his grab is just slow enough that if you're right on him, he can't grab you until you get far enough back to safely spot dodge or roll the grab. if you can get behind him, it's even better, because his only offensive options are oos bair or upb, and if you're close enough, you beat both with jab, and at slightly further distances, you can just shield upb and punish (and probably shield bair to punish, as well).

if you can get a hit, link is a great combo weight for us, which is nice. he falls into chaingrabs FOR EVER. and then you can dthrow into all kinds of aerial nastiness, in general. he's also right at the point where it's feasible to catch him with a standing grab out of aerial flame choke (you have a frame of leniency, which is a pretty big deal).

i'm not sure that link really likes to stay on the ground. his jab is great, as is utilt, but he also has a top tier sex kick, along with bair for great comboing setups, and the uair and dair hitboxes stay out a long time, allowing him to cover several options relatively decently. then, you want to be mobile when pulling bombs and chucking rangs, so you end up with a character that short hops around a lot throwing things at you for a lot of the game. he's not super mobile, but against ganon, he can move enough and cover himself as he does it well enough to make it a huge pain.

he's also not super easy to edgeguard, which kills one of our big strengths. like, he's not incredibly difficult to cover, as far as options go, but he has a couple useful options, can extend his recovery with agt and bomb jumps, and has decent hitbox coverage on upb, making it more difficult to just float into him and throw a uair in the most likely path.

i agree with you on the matchup favoring link, but that's almost entirely because he can cover several zones safely with boomerang+bomb, making it very difficult for you to start working your way in on him. especially the bomb ;x

i guess the tl;dr is: don't let him get a bomb. if he shields, jab is almost entirely free pressure. chain grab for days once you get it set up. don't depend on dtilt zoning, you get grabbed for that.

 

[Yallo42]

I didn't know jab was safe on his shield, and what 's the crouch trick? Do you use flame choke and wiz kick vs link? Should I try to reflect his projectiles? For edgeguarding, I usually scare him into recovering onto the stage, then I punish.

 

[CORY]

the crouch trick is holding down and back (not quite the diagonal notch behind, slightly above, iirc. might be slightly below). it'll make you crouch, but you can then jab, rather than do dtilt.

the trick with it is that ganon's jab has an iasa that occurs about 3 frames earlier than the normal ending frame, but you can't do jab out of that iasa. but, you can crouch out of it, and you can cancel the crouch into a jab, so on and on. on another note, this lets you crouch cancel into your frame 3 jab, so go on and get at it. it's kind of great >: D

and i just went to double check frame data. link's grab starts on frame 11. our jab hits frame 3 and deals 7 damage on the first active frame, which means it has 5 frames of shieldstun (7+4 divided by 2, then rounded down to the nearest whole number, always). the iasa is on frame 19, which means we should be... -11? hrmmm... so maybe jab isn't safe on shield vs link? i know i've jabbed a lot of good links out of shield grabs by just jab spamming their shield, so they might be off a few frames on it, then. i'll have to investigate this more, later...

i put flame choke and wizkick in the same group i do with most characters: only use it for punishes and reads/mixups. if you think link is going to throw out a rang and he's within wizkick range, step on that gas. if the rang has staled down, you should be able to beat it out (fresh rang vs fresh wizkick will clank at the rang's closer sweetspot fresh).

 

[Bazkip]

and i just went to double check frame data. link's grab starts on frame 11. our jab hits frame 3 and deals 7 damage on the first active frame, which means it has 5 frames of shieldstun (7+4 divided by 2, then rounded down to the nearest whole number, always). the iasa is on frame 19, which means we should be... -11? hrmmm... so maybe jab isn't safe on shield vs link? i know i've jabbed a lot of good links out of shield grabs by just jab spamming their shield, so they might be off a few frames on it, then. i'll have to investigate this more, later...

If only we had a frame data thread with information like that...

Jab's -10 on shield.

 

[CORY]

does it have shield advantage? i went into it to find my frame data to start with...

oh damn! thank you based @ Sartron ! i never noticed it because it was at the very end of all the data! does it use the iasa or the full endlag, though...

 

[Sartron]

does it have shield advantage? i went into it to find my frame data to start with...

oh damn! thank you based @ Sartron ! i never noticed it because it was at the very end of all the data! does it use the iasa or the full endlag, though...

All the advantages use IASA if the move has one. If not, it uses the actual move duration.

 

[CORY]

All the advantages use IASA if the move has one. If not, it uses the actual move duration.

that service, tho : O i was expecting a reply later today, probably while i was at work. truly based, sartron.

alright, cool. this is good to know : D

 

[Bazkip]

@ Sartron confirmed based and @ CORY confirmed blind.

 

[GlowingOrangeOoze]

Jabbing shields is fun. I like the glass-like sound shields make when struck. My group has come to know my jab-jab-jabing of people's shields as "tappin dat glass". Occasionally associated with shouts of "KNOCK KNOCK"