The more I play him, the lower he goes in my mind.
I feel like 1 or 2 years from now, DDD won't even be able to get hits in.
I started with him in high, then top of mid, now I think he might actually be low.
He has a losing matchup against any character with a projectile that reflects gordo. That's just not a good place to be.
The more I play him, the more I'm enclined to disagree with the last sentence.
Not only do the large viable stage list allows us to freely use gordos in a lot of situations, Gordo itself isn't the end all-be all of our game. Also, characters like Samus, WFT, Link/Tink, Olimar I don't think outright beat us, the former two being most likely winning MUs for us.
None of the tier lists are very legitimate right now though. Japan plays by their own rules. US is even more reactionary to popular opinion, so this is what we have to go on. At the very least it's showing us the popularity amongst enthusiasts, who watch some tournaments and have a decent idea who's kicking butt and who's not.
This tier list is pure bandwagoning from what people see at a tournament. They know that some characters are good, but they have no idea what is bad, or what else is good. Only reason DDD is this low is because nobody knows what one can do, since very few players represent him.
Also, DK last spot? When he won against M2K's Diddy recently?
Ganondorf 44th?
Link 9th?
Come on.
He is reliant on reads, but the more speedy characters can really dance circles around DDD, especially short hoppers that hit that corner deadzone where only your upsmash can reach. Buffed rolls/dodging further nullifies your chance of punishing malpositioning and with DDD a whiff means trouble. Since the changes have incentivized campy play this magnifies Gordo's projectile inferiority. DDD's then forced to be a rushdown character but has minimal tools equipped to do that.
As for aerials, he has disjointed hitboxes and you'd think that would be great priority, but bair and dair in practice don't outpriotitze much.
I don't really play DDD as a rushdown character per se. Granted he needs to approach in most of his matchups, but rushing with a slow character like him doesn't apply correct pressure.
And you're right bair and dair are rough to effectively use. That's why we have UAir, which pretty much beats anything that tries to challenge it. And spaced fair is extremely potent.
Bair is harder to space correctly, but it actually covers a great quarter circle behind TripleD.
To be clear, the character clearly isn't in the higher tiers. Issue is that he's having very polarized matchups, demolishing half of the cast, and getting demolished by the other. Probably realistically places him in the mid/lower-mid end of the tier list. But he's not garbage by any means (no character really is, anyway).