Character Competitive Impressions

[DunnoBro]

Glad you guys liked the ganon, I actually think ganon has way more potential than I expressed in customs. I was a decent ganon in brawl/brawl minus but my sm4sh ganon is very for glory/friendly and was never used in tournament before.

And I pretty much won every much I did with dark fist reliance and my opponents not respecting it. (I got destroyed by manondorf's brother in pools game 1 because he just knew how to respect me. I had to run it back with DHD and still just barely won)

I can't even fully enjoy watching my matches because of how scrubby I looked throwing dairs out trying to land against seagull joe.

I'm hoping to lab it out with Manondorf, who's a wayy better core ganondorf than me who just doesn't know how to use dark fist. (Which is understandable, you have to play like an absolute idiot with it first to understand the practical applications, and Manondorf doesn't play that way.)

I probably won't use him again in tournament since he's so unpolished and I still haven't finished getting the timings down for the zigzag techs. I won't reveal too much, but there were tons of messed up death combos, and the zigzag stage spike on Seagull was 100% intentional, and is a very consistent and easy set-up. (That was the only match I even made a conscious effort to use it)

 

[Radical Larry]

Warlock Punch has every necessity of Blade, you know. People think Blade is better because it has (little) faster speed and range. But that's just it; it has less damage output, even at the tip, and a reverse Warlock Punch can also break shields, just like Blade.

But Warlock Punch is an OHKO move near the ledge, and an OHKO move in the air when reversed. Blade can't do that, because it's got less damage, which means less knockback and knockback growth. If you pull out one Warlock Punch, you'll KO your opponent. But with Blade, you'd have to pull out at least 5 at the tip for a KO.

IMO, Ganondorf's best movesets would be:

N-Spec: Warlock Punch
F-Spec: Flame Choke / Flame Wave / Flame Chain
U-Spec: Dark Dive / Dark Fists
D-Spec: Wizard's Foot / Wizard's Dropkick

Warlock Punch does everything Blade does but better (save speed and range), any of the Flame Moves work, Dark Dive is amazing for recovery and stage-spike setups (it has an absurd grabbing range, on top of that), Dark Fists is great for very early KOs and stopping edge-guarding, Wizard's Foot is great because it's another meteor attack for Ganondorf, and can KO opponents really early, and Wizard's Dropkick is great for recovery and throw setups.

 

[Luco]

Warlock Punch has every necessity of Blade, you know. People think Blade is better because it has (little) faster speed and range. But that's just it; it has less damage output, even at the tip, and a reverse Warlock Punch can also break shields, just like Blade.

But Warlock Punch is an OHKO move near the ledge, and an OHKO move in the air when reversed. Blade can't do that, because it's got less damage, which means less knockback and knockback growth. If you pull out one Warlock Punch, you'll KO your opponent. But with Blade, you'd have to pull out at least 5 at the tip for a KO.

IMO, Ganondorf's best movesets would be:

N-Spec: Warlock Punch
F-Spec: Flame Choke / Flame Wave / Flame Chain
U-Spec: Dark Dive / Dark Fists
D-Spec: Wizard's Foot / Wizard's Dropkick

Warlock Punch does everything Blade does but better (save speed and range), any of the Flame Moves work, Dark Dive is amazing for recovery and stage-spike setups (it has an absurd grabbing range, on top of that), Dark Fists is great for very early KOs and stopping edge-guarding, Wizard's Foot is great because it's another meteor attack for Ganondorf, and can KO opponents really early, and Wizard's Dropkick is great for recovery and throw setups.

But, wasn't it just the other day you were talking about the merits of blade?

I just can't buy that at higher levels of play, Warlock Punch will be effective in any real way whatsoever with the possible exception of punishing up off a shield break. If any of the variants are quick enough/long enough to have a decent use other than a library card's worth of reads then I'd take them in a heartbeat tbh.

 

[DunnoBro]

Honestly I think thrust might be the only true competitively relevant version since while matchup specific/situational, there are more competitive situations ganondorf can and does need to turn around to utilize dropkick.

There's also the fact it does cover area fairly well and can be used for frame traps. While it doesn't kill, the fact ganon only needs to get certain characters to 40-70% before dark fist becomes a valid threat gives it some slight utility too.

The OHKO status of default is only really relevant in the puff and maybe custom DK matchup (rest punish and alleged super armor abuse of grounded punch being pulled up by cyclone) so whatever sets are deemed best for those matchups should be the only ones with it.

Then, maybe some with doubles in mind.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Punch is probably best vs. heavyweights and definitely best vs. Jigglypuff. Blade has uses against Villager and Rosa(you need all the help you can get in these MUs). Thrust I have yet to see utilized effectively as an attack, though the turning around thing is definitely desirable against things like Sonic's Bthrow.

 

[adom4]

Warlock punch has a good use against Charizard, if you predict a rock smash (especially from above) warlock punch will tank the entire move & hit him hard.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

The way I see it, Ganondorf has enough kill power to not miss the strength of Punch. And between Blade and Thrust, I prefer Blade just so he can use the damn sword for once. (It also has pretty big range, which is nice.)

So yeah, not exactly the most objective of preferences, but whatever.

 

[Blobface]

I honestly prefer Warlock Punch over the other customs just for the sake of having a big scary death punch ready if I land a shield break (Ganon's U-smash is very good at this. It almost 2HKO's a full shield and is safe on block). It's not like you'll get a shield break every match, but having a damaged shield against Ganon is scary. If your shield has less than 18 or so hp, Ganon gets a free dash attack. If you shield, your shield breaks. If you spot dodge or roll, you get hit by it anyway because it has such a big long lasting hitbox, and it's not like you can out power Ganon's dash attack.

I'd really like to see shield damage pressure implemented more (Avg Joe uses this a lot). Heavies in particular can threaten actual shield breaks, and I'm pretty sure everyone can at least get some shield pokes.

(I honestly don't know where this whole "shields regen too fast" thing came from. They have 50 hp, deplete at a rate of 7.7 per sec, regen at 3.8 per sec, and take full damage from attacks + bonus shield damage. If you land 24 damage on a shield, it takes over 6 seconds to fully recover from it.)

 

[DunnoBro]

Ganon doesn't have much good or safe shield pressure like DK, though. His moves just do a lot of shield damage.

The reason DK can shield break reliably is because in addition to high shield damage like ganon, he has better poking tools with bair, and super high shield damage specials like side and down special which can trap for shield breaks or just free damage in proper situations, ignorant to shield size to begin with.

Ganon has none of those, he just has to go ham on your shield and somehow not get punished.

He also absolutely does NOT have trouble killing, he does have trouble recovering and returning to neutral.

And, Ganon has a command grab, a very good one so conditioning opponents to NOT shield seems very contradictory.

Furthermore, people generally don't overcommit to shield while low in percent (the percents WP will kill before a charged ledge walkoff charged fsmash) due to many variables, momentum needed to be gained quickly, grabs being strongest universally at low % (including v ganon), and general player inclination to go ham while they're not losing.

 

[GeneralLedge]

The way I see it, Ganondorf has enough kill power to not miss the strength of Punch. And between Blade and Thrust, I prefer Blade just so he can use the damn sword for once. (It also has pretty big range, which is nice.)

So yeah, not exactly the most objective of preferences, but whatever.

Lest we forget, Ganon's sword smashes shields like teensy little baubles if hit with the tip.

Smashing shields with that much disjoint is crazy. Utilt probably hits hard enough to punish it very well without Warlock Punch.

 

[bc1910]

I'd really like to see shield damage pressure implemented more (Avg Joe uses this a lot). Heavies in particular can threaten actual shield breaks, and I'm pretty sure everyone can at least get some shield pokes.

I've seen you mention this before and I meant to say something then. You don't see shield damage pressure because most characters don't deal huge amounts of shield damage with normals like Ganon and other heavies. Also they don't have relatively safe shield pressure moves like Ganon's Usmash that also deal a ton of shield damage.

Shield damage pressure is something that your main and a few others can do. Use it well, but don't expect others to use it, because they can't. I'm sure you'll come back at me with a list of characters that can utilise this but that list isn't very extensive. The majority of the cast can't pressure shields with damage like Ganon because most attacks don't really deal much shield damage and aren't safe on block.

Lots of characters have one or two moves that deal a lot of shield damage (ROB's rotor arm, Jigglypuff's Pound etc) but these moves don't allow shield damage pressure because they have crappy range and are really unsafe on block. Ganon can get away with not breaking a shield in one hit because a few of his high shield damage moves are relatively safe on block. Most characters just can't get away with it.

 

[Poxnixles]

Glad you guys liked the ganon, I actually think ganon has way more potential than I expressed in customs. I was a decent ganon in brawl/brawl minus but my sm4sh ganon is very for glory/friendly and was never used in tournament before.

And I pretty much won every much I did with dark fist reliance and my opponents not respecting it. (I got destroyed by manondorf's brother in pools game 1 because he just knew how to respect me. I had to run it back with DHD and still just barely won)

I can't even fully enjoy watching my matches because of how scrubby I looked throwing dairs out trying to land against seagull joe.

I'm hoping to lab it out with Manondorf, who's a wayy better core ganondorf than me who just doesn't know how to use dark fist. (Which is understandable, you have to play like an absolute idiot with it first to understand the practical applications, and Manondorf doesn't play that way.)

I probably won't use him again in tournament since he's so unpolished and I still haven't finished getting the timings down for the zigzag techs. I won't reveal too much, but there were tons of messed up death combos, and the zigzag stage spike on Seagull was 100% intentional, and is a very consistent and easy set-up. (That was the only match I even made a conscious effort to use it)

Anyone have a link to this Ganon-banning?

 

[Ikes]

people at least have enough of a semblance of how works to know they are high tier, but they all have some form of high-level rep. literally the only rep i can think of for is serynder lol

Speaking of , I started using his burying bike, and while it limits his horizontal recovery, as a projectile it is a much better spacing and zoning tool cause of its increased gravity. It's also great for ending stocks at high percents since burial lasts so long.

I'm enjoying it a lot more than stock bike and it still does grant extra jumps, at the cost of horizontal distance.

What are considered the best Wario customs though?

 

[Spinosaurus]

What are considered the best Wario customs though?

Rose Waft and Speeding Bike are the go tos, but all his waft and bike options are great and depend on player preference and matchup. Gives Wario loads if flexibility in a customs environment. His Bite and Corkscrew options outside of the defaults are incredibly niche though.

I stick with 1112 personally. Rose Waft's range and damage is a godsend and fixes Wario biggest issue. (Damage output) It's also a really potent gimp move.

 

[GeneralLedge]

I've always wondered, is Wario's Garlic Breath any good at any niche situations? It shieldbreak-esque stuns victims at super-close range after the lengthy startup, which seems crazy good, but I wonder if Wario can really capitalize off of it.

 

[RonNewcomb]

Captain Awesome had to change style once Vinnie started using gravity grenade.. basically (Will messaged him that coaching )

Color me naive cause I don't main Sheik, but I would have thought Penetrating Needles would have been the no-brainer choice vs. Villager, seeing the entire purpose of the custom projectile is to go through other projectiles. Am I missing something?

Also, I can't decide if I'm thrilled or angry that a Captain Falcon main is complaining about customs Villager. My main Link's 3 worst matchups saturate tourneys to the point that Link mains end up playing their secondary character more than their main. And a Falcon main complains about a MU so hard he *almost* considers playing his secondary? Srsly? Um, cry me a river, you poor thing?

 

[Nu~]

Rose Waft and Speeding Bike are the go tos, but all his waft and bike options are great and depend on player preference and matchup. Gives Wario loads if flexibility in a customs environment. His Bite and Corkscrew options outside of the defaults are incredibly niche though.

I stick with 1112 personally. Rose Waft's range and damage is a godsend and fixes Wario biggest issue. (Damage output) It's also a really potent gimp move.

What's the disadvantage of that move?
(Rose Waft)

 

[Spinosaurus]

I've always wondered, is Wario's Garlic Breath any good at any niche situations? It shieldbreak-esque stuns victims at super-close range after the lengthy startup, which seems crazy good, but I wonder if Wario can really capitalize off of it.

If you mash you can get out of the stun before Wario could hit you with an FSmash. The move has a long start up and end lag. Think of it as a Sing with better range but you won't get anything out of it. Ever. Unless the opponent doesn't know you can just mash and escape regardless of their percent.

What's the disadvantage of that move?
(Rose Waft)

Doesn't kill at like 40%. Still a really good kill move though (Around 100% near the ledge) and it charges faster to boot.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Re: Villager: so we have a strategy which is obnoxious and hard to beat. It's not, however, winning tournaments. At all. Have we seen a customs villager win a tournament yet? Seriously. What's going on here?

 

[RedBeefBaron]

Rose Waft and Speeding Bike are the go tos, but all his waft and bike options are great and depend on player preference and matchup. Gives Wario loads if flexibility in a customs environment. His Bite and Corkscrew options outside of the defaults are incredibly niche though.

I stick with 1112 personally. Rose Waft's range and damage is a godsend and fixes Wario biggest issue. (Damage output) It's also a really potent gimp move.

Good god. I wish i played wario and knew about what kind of setups could take advantage of that godly range. Seems like any moderately bad air dodge could be punished with that, is there a way to combo into it?

 

[Spinosaurus]

Good god. I wish i played wario and knew about what kind of setups could take advantage of that godly range. Seems like any moderately bad air dodge could be punished with that, is there a way to combo into it?

The sourspot hit of NAir can combo into it at certain percents, but otherwise no. On the other hand, you can set up a bike in the ledge by ledge crashing it and then waft it to make the hitbox linger.

 

[GeneralLedge]

Re: Villager: so we have a strategy which is obnoxious and hard to beat. It's not, however, winning tournaments. At all. Have we seen a customs villager win a tournament yet? Seriously. What's going on here?

Spectators are bored by it, and want it banned. The conversation is really just reasons not to start a banning spree.

That's it, really.

 

[RedBeefBaron]

Re: Villager: so we have a strategy which is obnoxious and hard to beat. It's not, however, winning tournaments. At all. Have we seen a customs villager win a tournament yet? Seriously. What's going on here?

Seems like it might be more of a player counterpick than anything? I'm hoping that people who learn the matchup can deal with custom villager, I'd really hate to see a character like that get to the point where it defines the meta.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Spectators are bored by it, and want it banned. The conversation is really just reasons not to start a banning spree.

That's it, really.

Well obviously. But like, where's the cognitive dissonance? "This is so broken it needs to be banned!" "This has been tried several times and has never won a tournament!" These two do not fit together.

 

[Blobface]

Re: Villager: so we have a strategy which is obnoxious and hard to beat. It's not, however, winning tournaments. At all. Have we seen a customs villager win a tournament yet? Seriously. What's going on here?

CaptAwsum recently made it to grand finals with custom Villager, though he still lost to Vinnie.

With that said, as I mentioned before, after the camping strategy started falling, he fought Vinnie for real and still held his own against him. Simply put, he won most of his matches because he implemented the camping strategy and outplayed people. He just outplayed people in the most rage-inducing way imaginable.

Just because someone uses this strategy doesn't mean they're bad at the game, but unfortunately, I'm pretty sure people will think it's just an overly effective scrub strategy, and thus assume that anyone that uses it is only using it as a crutch.

 

[thehard]

Has anyone noted that Smash Attack #7 didn't have many of the usual faces in attendance, including Will, Dabuz, and John Numbers? There's no question your late-tournament results would have been different had they been a factor.

Can we talk about just who CaptAwesum beat? Shadow Man, Bandit, Ribs, and MikeKirby (and Vinnie, but he won in the end so...). I don't believe, minus MikeKirby, that any of these players had custom Villager experience beforehand. Nor did they ever place notably beforehand, minus MikeKirby. He seems to be the only anomaly in the rankings (or rather, anomalous in the outcome of his match with Capt, as he placed 3rd). He went 1-2 with CaptAwesum; I'll have to watch the VODs soon to see what went wrong.

I earnestly believe all 4 players would be able to beat CaptAwesum were they ever to meet again in bracket with their newfound experience in this MU.

Would not be surprised if his mindset coming into the tournament was "bunch of randoms, let's see how far I can get with this setup".

 

[GeneralLedge]

Well obviously. But like, where's the cognitive dissonance? "This is so broken it needs to be banned!" "This has been tried several times and has never won a tournament!" These two do not fit together.

They do in the minds of the spectators who ignore point B in favor of point A being a more potent argument. (Which makes up about 50% of the community if polls are to be believed. Not that all of them are this admirably ignorant, but...)

It seems to me that when it comes to statement potency, people will favor and spread the most outstanding argument until it is thrust forward and trusted as fact. The less potent "noes" are ignored, because they're less potent, and therefore untrustworthy.

I need to bang my head against something every time I read similar scenarios that shouldn't be as tact as they are. I can't even remember the details from heavy skullbash's limelight.

 

[Zelder]

If you want a picture of the future of Smash4, imagine a Villager, camping under the ledge - forever.

 

[GeneralLedge]

If you want a picture of the future of Smash4, imagine a Villager, camping under the ledge - forever.

Two villagers on opposite ledges. The winner is the player who gets the most (least?) hatemail from twitch.

 

[thehard]

Sorry, the future of Smash 4 is reserved for Wind Kong. And custom Pika infinites/HSB. And Luma Warp. And default Sheik. And default Luigi. And default Rosalina. And default Sonic. Any more "X will ruin the game" I should know about?

Doomsday-saying gets us nowhere. Be constructive. Sometimes I almost think some of us want self-fulfilling prophecies.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Garlic Breath can be a pretty solid edgeguarding option against characters who find it difficult to sweetspot (Little Mac, Shulk?), given its large horizontal disjoint, but it has too much startup and endlag to be generally useful, IMO. Can't really use it offstage and it's easy to punish on a whiff. Not enough stun to make something big happen if you're close enough to a grounded opponent to stun them, and it's too slow to reliably trap ledge options like the other two Neutral-Bs.

Just found another quirk with Mac/Mario Bros. Up-B (and only them, as far as I can tell). They can grab the ledge immediately after the first hitbox comes out if they're at the right height on start-up. Normally they have to wait a decent bit before they can grab the ledge on the way up, so it's a little mix-up exclusive to them they can do at the same time they would otherwise have to keep moving down or just snap to the ledge.

This is useful for two reasons: Opponents who are attempting to punish a second ledge grab can get hit by the rather large hitbox immediately before your ledge grab. This is obviously dependent on what their punish is, but, that's still nice. Also, this means that under these circumstances, Little Mac has a nice option to avoid the single frame of ledge snap vulnerability, given the big hitbox and Frame 1 invincibility on Up-B.

Also-also, doing a Mac Forward-B from underneath the lip, facing away from the stage, seems to do a really good job of catching people on the ledge snap vulnerability frame (and, yes, you grab the ledge immediately afterward). It also has the added bonus of letting you swing whenever you want, it's active on Frame 1 from when you activate the punch, and lingers for five frames. Pretty effing good.

 

[Zelder]

I see you're not a fan on 1984, haha.

 

[thehard]

I see you're not a fan on 1984, haha.

I guess that slipped past me in a moment of angst.

 

[Radical Larry]

But, wasn't it just the other day you were talking about the merits of blade?

I just can't buy that at higher levels of play, Warlock Punch will be effective in any real way whatsoever with the possible exception of punishing up off a shield break. If any of the variants are quick enough/long enough to have a decent use other than a library card's worth of reads then I'd take them in a heartbeat tbh.

Yes, but the Punch is far better than the Blade due to the fact it does everything it can (except range and speed), but better. It's an attack that isn't a library card's worth of reads, it is the National Library of Reading the opponent. It takes one flip-up from the opponent, a broken shield or a laggy attack that misses (or phantom hits) for this to really work.

It's able to break shields by itself, it has OHKO potential, it has the immense damage and much more.
Blade is just a small nerf of the Punch. By giving range and (very little) more speed, you sacrifice KO power and OHKO Potential, as well as damage output.

 

[LiteralGrill]

I dunno if this got discussed, but Zero talked about who he thinks are the top 5 characters right now.

 

[Hippieslayer]

I probably won't use him again in tournament since he's so unpolished and I still haven't finished getting the timings down for the zigzag techs. I won't reveal too much, but there were tons of messed up death combos, and the zigzag stage spike on Seagull was 100% intentional, and is a very consistent and easy set-up. (That was the only match I even made a conscious effort to use it)

I saw you go for and miss a lot of stuff with DHD, honestly that didn't take away the hype for me, that stuff has got to be really hard. When I watched Ninjalinks video of DHD's customs the Zig Zag can really stood out as the one move that could really help the character, I was able to think of a ton of stuff you could do with it, but I hadn't ever really seen anyone try to do those things before I watched you play, and you did lots of things I hadn't thought of as well. Looking forward to seeing more. Aren't you like the best DHD in the US at least? I have a hard time seeing MVD's ditto stand up to you right now. Brood is sick of course, but without customs he's working with limited tools.

 

[Pyr]

I dunno if this got discussed, but Zero talked about who he thinks are the top 5 characters right now.

Spoilers:

Sheik, Rosa, Luigi, Ness (iirc), Diddy in that order. These are the characters listed in Zero's video. This is not my list.

 

[Lavani]

Just found another quirk with Mac/Mario Bros. Up-B (and only them, as far as I can tell). They can grab the ledge immediately after the first hitbox comes out if they're at the right height on start-up. Normally they have to wait a decent bit before they can grab the ledge on the way up, so it's a little mix-up exclusive to them they can do at the same time they would otherwise have to keep moving down or just snap to the ledge.

Just want to add that Shulk can do this too. His upB lacks invincibility, but considering he doesn't snap until the animation's over otherwise it saves him quite a bit of vulnerable time.

 

[Hippieslayer]

Jump Glide is a bad move.
Seriously, AeroLink dies once per set because of 's fall speed. OTOH, Warp would let him recover in most of the scenarios where Jump Glide is successful. Its approach/cross-up gimmicks also don't work against competent mid-range spacing (as Bwett was saying earlier on commentary).

I feel like Aerolink is still experimenting with his Palutena though, a lot of the stuff he does is kinda stupid but he's still in the process of feeling her out. He also does get a lot of mileage of out Jump Glide which he wouldnt get out of warp. Still you may be right.

 

[Luco]

I think what @ DunnoBro was referring to was that he was going to stop using Ganon so he could perfect his DHD, but I could be wrong.

It certainly says something that I met a sibling of one of my flatmates (who travelled halfway across the world to see us), and when I found out he knew a little bit about the competitive meta and pressed him on it, your name came up specifically for DHD.