Jus going to comment on this briefly before I turn in. First, Sheik's troubles in the MU seem very similar to Game & Watch's which makes me feel slightly better about my main.
DK's a character with a few very, very good (ppssibly overtuned) moves. UTilt and BAir can both be worked into combos and both kill while having a rather good speed-to-power ratio. UAir is similar, and while his throw combo isn't overwhelming it IS scary. You saw Larry just going after the grab around half the match it felt like (the other half was trying to return to neutral from disadvantage).
He's surprisingly hard to edgeguard unless you can force him low enough without his double jump because of the distance and horizontal protection Spinning Kong give him. He can occasionally have time to throw out a defensive aerial while recovering as well. FAir in particular can be frustrating thanks to its range and if the edgeguarder mistimes their attack, they can kiss their stock goodbye.
He's juggled really badly but his airspeed is excellent which helps somewhat. He's got massive, powerful hitboxes, too, which means that if he can force a trade while being juggled it'll probably be in his favor.
His ground game is just fast enough to put decent pressure on the opponent when he gets a hit in and his juggle game isn't too shabby, either.
Basically he's the most functional heavy thanks to his speed/power ratio and good mobility (Bowser's probably not far behind but his moves don't flow nearly as well as DK's).
Uhhhhhh.......Void simply approached the MU incorrectly. What makes DK good (outside of Ding Dongs which most of Lurr's games were null), are his tilts and damage racking. Killing isn't his strong suit so long as the opponent isn't doing anything crazy or predictable.
His aerial prowess is kinda average IMO. Yes he has a DECENT bair (it's decent cuz it really extends his hurt box, shallow size for a character that big, can be unsafe on hit even with sweet spot at low percents, low scaling prevents it from killing center stage) and a strong uair (not much to contend with here). The rest of his kit is held back by something dumb. Nair is frame 10, with low damage, 17 frames landing, puny hotboxes (uair hits FARTHER in front than Nair does.... Sakurai why tho), but can sometimes hit confirm. Fair does 16%, but hits frame 18 with 29 frames of landing lag and just horrid FAF. Dair is good tho with 16% and sets stuff up a lot, but is frame 14 with 18 frames (can't remember this one off hand) on landing. That stuff for dair don't bother me tho, its the good for nothing sour spot that sends opponents nowhere. His TOP airspeed is pretty good, bit that air acceleration is cheeks.
So yeah, them tilts. Well, I will be lying if I said DK don't have some good tilts. They all share a common trait tho, they miss up close. Only u tilt doubles as a kill move and combo tilt. Anyway, all DK needs is his Brawl ftilt/dtilt since it had range and spaced really well and hit a frame earlier. For ftilt especially, gaining 4 frames of extra lag made DK mains kinda drop it from their repitoire since it is already frame 9 and doesn't ever kill and unsafe on hit.
In fact, DK has so many moves unsafe on hit at low to mid percents. Jab 1, bair, dsmash, dtilt, dtilt, Nair, Hand Slap, SK, Headbutt.
His jab is average. I mean, it never kills, it kinda sets up at higher percent, it frame 5 and 25 FAF, and has somewhat shallow range, but eh what can you do?
His smashes are weird. All of them are so much weaker from Brawl it ain't even funny. Dsmash lost it's aerial hit box, gained a lot weaker sour spots, smaller hit boxes too. Usmash has slightly larger hit box, but it still is small and much weaker. The move has a scooping motion but doesn't scoop opponents from the ground leaving DK in an awkward position to hit grounded opponents. Fsmash is so weak cuz of the angle it sends people at and the hit boxes are still cheeks with the ability to miss pont blank.
But even with all these banes for DK, one asks, how is he still good? One word: flow.
The natural flow of some of DK's most notbale moves mean that racking or baiting damage is easy. Racking damage and having at least one option to kill with reliably is what makes characters good in this game. Lucky for DK, racking and killing come hand in hand.
Back to my statement about how Void approached the MU.....why was he trying to straight up fight DK? The easiest method to beat DK is passively play and make him recover on ledge. Even if you miss the edge guard, DK on ledge is the worst character. Ledge attack is so bad, ledge roll is so bad, ledge getup is the best of a bad situation, but is still so bad, ledge jump is OK. Having no true Fair means that getting up is gonna be a bad time. ZeRo has exploited this in the past with M2K at Pax Prime and here again at 2GG. Void could have easily dome the same.
2nd Larry Lurr
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