I have a question for Pac Man mains. Throughout this thread, I've heard the general sentiment that Pac Man has a difficult time with Rosalina, though it's only 40:60, while maintaining 45:55 or better with the rest of the cast. On the other hand, I've also seen the general sentiment that Pac Man is not a top 10 character.
How can this be the case? A matchup spread that good is indicative of a top 5, or even top 3 character, yet I haven't seen anyone put Pac Man remotely close to there. One 40:60 matchup, which is perfectly winnable, against a top tier character doesn't suddenly exempt a character from top 3/5/10 status. In addition, from my browsing of this thread, he seems to have even matchups or advantages against some top tiers, and also doesn't struggle against any mid or low tiers. Could a Pac Man main please explain why he isn't top 10/5/3 with such a good matchup spread?
Well, our worst matchup is actually sonic, but to answer your question, it's because he doesn't outright beat that many top tiers. He goes even with many, and goes 45:55 with others, but the only ones strongly in his favor are luigi, Captain falcon, and maaaaybe brawler.
From the matchup discussion in the Pac-Man thread, and my own independent research, he has all the tools needed to be a threat. Unfortunately, he is held back by the lack of a good grab (unblockable trampoline does help this a lot however) and a killing problem because of his slow smash attacks outside of usmash (but the horizontal range on that is poor)
However,
A Pac-Man with the stock lead is incredibly hard to win against because of his defense options and string nuetral game. With a frame one eject button (trampoline), frame 3 combo breaker/kill move (Nair), and stupid good Anti-juggle tool (Hydrant)
It is very hard to keep him in disadvantage. Zage is correct about his nuetral being incredible, and his advantage state isn't bad either because of how much you can get off of one fruit toss.
Just look at the galaxian death combos and z drop shenanigans/traps.
Pac-Man would have trouble against people who can bypass his traps and stay in his face, but his versatility and expansive toolbox is what stops him from being a sitting duck (hunt) when someone ruins his initial game plan. He can slow, or speed up the game state.
Hell, I advocate not having a singular game plan with Pac-Man since he has enough tools to allow great freedom to the player. Just be creative and follow your intuition.
So rush down is getting you down? Let's see how they like an on stage trampoline + hydrant to make any approach a chore. Projectile campers ruining your day? Use Side B to absorb that wall and use your exceptional frame data to rush them down.
The one character that ignores nearly all of Pac-Man's options is sonic. Fast enough to
run through the hydrant, spin dash clanks with almost every fruit, too fast to set up consistent traps in nuetral, spin dash sometimes hit us when we Up B out of shield, his ground game is superior, too fast to risk whiffing our terrible grab...
It's pretty bad. Many Pac-Mains and I actually don't feel that rosa is all that hard anymore (possibly 50:50 or 55:45 in our favor of played right)
It's sonic that's the issue. We're trying to find a way to minimize the difficulty of that matchup, and it may require ledge camping with the trampoline and hydrant to run out the time.
I feel that he can only go up with customs (because they patch up his minor killing problem and strengthen his nuetral + advantage states even more)
But for now, I think that he's top 15.
