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

[Hungry Headcrab]

Hungry Headcrab I know it's DDD but I'm almost certain you would've been better off banning FD and letting Big D take your to Delfino. Actually being able to do anything on the stage is more important than preventing DDD from living forever, and he can still live a long time on FD due to it's wide blastzones.

Heh, Big D told me the same thing. Trust me when I say a lesson was learned.

 

[Kulty]

Hi guys,

I want to know theMUs as Ganondorf. Apparently,mains appear to struggle against these characters primarly. I just wonder how Ganondorf does against these characters. I know that Diddy and Fox are hard for Ganon, but how about Roy and Samus?

 

[Nevermind]

Hi guys,

I want to know theMUs as Ganondorf. Apparently,mains appear to struggle against these characters primarly. I just wonder how Ganondorf does against these characters. I know that Diddy and Fox are hard for Ganon, but how about Roy and Samus?

Diddy, Fox, and Roy win against Ganon due to their ability to play non-committal in neutral and punish him much harder and more consistently than he does to them (barring a grab on Ganon's end). Samus, on the other hand, is widely considered to lose against Ganon because of the ease with which Ganon deals with missiles and the relatively early percents at which he's able to kill her compared to the rest of the cast. I wouldn't pick up Ganon specifically to cover the first three matchups, but they're definitely doable if you're already playing him. Ganon seems like a solid enough counter-pick to Samus, though, as evidenced by Junebug's success against ESAM at TO11.

 

[Taytertot]

Hi guys,

I want to know theMUs as Ganondorf. Apparently,mains appear to struggle against these characters primarly. I just wonder how Ganondorf does against these characters. I know that Diddy and Fox are hard for Ganon, but how about Roy and Samus?

ganon can win the roy mu. some people consider ganon vs roy even though id say that its slightly in roy's favor. but ganon can touch of death roy if roy messes up in neutral. ganon has to be really patient and not commit to anything that might give roy a free chance to get in because roy can also touch of death ganon. id imagine that CCing would be pretty strong for ganon in the roy mu since roy's neutral attacks are all pretty low knockback though ganon might not be able to CC roy's dtilt but idk on that. roy can also mix it up with a grab, and hes got an amazing grab game.

 

[Chief Hotsuin]

l need advice on . No, l won't get a secondary just for the match-up.

First, l know l need to work on avoiding the pillars, but l want to know how l can get the Falco off of me and keep him off with more than fear.

Then, after they start to laser camp, how would l approach? Or do l just cape every laser that they dare shoot?

 

[CORY]

caping sucks outside of just niche situations, especially something like falco lasers. learn to powershield and use that (so, walk forward, ps, keep walking, etc...) and use float to stall over lasers a bit.

to get out of pillars, get good at sdi. so, basically, sdi away from falco constantly as he pillars you. if he gets on your shield, there's no easy way out, you'll hav to school of hard knocks it a bit and learn his patterns. focus on mixing up your oos options (and shield s/di helps a lot, too) so he can't just keep doing the same stuff to you over and over. we have really good rolls and spot dodges, especially for someone in our size and weight class, so keep that in mind and use it to your advantage. mix in random upb oos, especially if he crosses you up and thinks he can do lazy shield pressure.

if you're talking about keeping him off you in neutral, there's not much you can do about that. if he wants to approach with lasers and you can't get on a platform to keep him off step, you'll just have to learn to move in odd ways to keep their spacing less than perfect and use that to your advantage.

falco is one of ganon's worst matchups just due to his sheer stage control. you'll probably have to grind out A LOT of matches to get used to it. maybe play him some so you can get an idea about what he does and can't do in neutral/shield pressure situations.

 

[Chief Hotsuin]

sdi away from falco constantly as he pillars you.

Does it matter whether l'm trying to go forward or behind him, or is it just a mix-up situation on my part?

Essentially, you're telling me all l can really do is git gud. That's why l'm playing Ganon in the first place. Good thing l've seen so many Falcos on Anther's.

What would be Falco's best stage on Ganon?

 

[CORY]

your text color is really hard to read ;x you're lucky i like you : p

i'm not sure if it actually matters, but i was watching lunchables do some critiques of people's match videos and he said to di away, because falco doesn't have a large horizontal attack range. like, if you sdi shine, when he jump cancels and jumps forward it doesn't go as far forward, and when you sdi dair away, same issue. so, if you sdi consistently away, he'll be forced to make suboptimal conversions. if you sdi behind him, i'm assuming it won't affect him as much until much later into the punish,

but i'm really not sure, tbh. i just parrot sdi away because i need a lot more practice in that matchup and lunchables is a really good player and i trust his advice overall ;x

as for stages, i'm really not sure. he probably really likes fd because he can control the match pace much more strongly, even if you can uthrow chain him super easily. his stage control is probably stronger than your extended punish on that stage. otherwise, he'd probably prefer a stage with a similar aspect to that, so maybe sv or ghz (for the times their platform is out of the way of the main stage). i don't know much of what he wants in general for stages, though. you can probably look around the falco boards and see if they have any good info on it.

 

[Chief Hotsuin]

your text color is really hard to read ;x you're lucky i like you : p

What do you mean, exactly? l'm seeing a light grey (which l've just changed to white) on my Onyx background. ls there something l'm not getting?

Sample text

Sample Text

You guessed it, Sample text

Do l even need to say it?

drgg

Please tell me l'm not going to get reported for this.

Am l making a difference?

 

[Bazkip]

I've heard DI/SDI behind Falco on Shine makes it harder for him to follow up

 

[Chief Hotsuin]

I've heard DI/SDI behind Falco on Shine makes it harder for him to follow up

l guess that would make sense, since his legs sprout forward with the dair. lf the Falco is smart enough to turn around in shine before jumping, though, it'd be meaningless.

 

[CORY]

It's black to me, and I use the pm theme, so I can't see your stuff unless I highlight it : (

Nothing wrong with it, I'm just whining : p you won't be getting in any trouble at all.

 

[Bazkip]

l guess that would make sense, since his legs sprout forward with the dair. lf the Falco is smart enough to turn around in shine before jumping, though, it'd be meaningless.

That's the point though, you make them have to do additional things to get you, thus making it more likely that they mess up. Don't think there's actually any getting out of it, so making it more difficult is the best you can get.

 

[Chief Hotsuin]

It's black to me, and I use the pm theme, so I can't see your stuff unless I highlight it : (

Nothing wrong with it, I'm just whining : p you won't be getting in any trouble at all.

Weird. l remember another person complaining about this. And it still seems white on the PM skin.

That's the point though, you make them have to do additional things to get you, thus making it more likely that they mess up. Don't think there's actually any getting out of it, so making it more difficult is the best you can get.

Good point there.

 

[Taytertot]

does wiz kick clank with falco laser or does it just power through it? that could be a mixup option if falco's getting too greedy with laser approaches, if it out-prioritizes laser.

 

[CORY]

Laser is transcendent. Nothing clanks it.

 

[CORY]

But, oh god, I wish we could clank lasers... So bad...

 

[Taytertot]

damn that is very disappointing to hear. i didnt even realize that it was transcendent (too OP). lasers would be hard enough to clank with anyway since they move so fast. well ive got nothin then cause ganon doesnt have armor to just tank through them with.

 

[Bazkip]

Sword taunt has armour though

Sword taunt through lasers new meta

 

[Taytertot]

hahaha please throw up a video when you get the sword taunt armor on a laser and get a kill.

 

[Squints~.~]

I'm pretty confident that Falco is stuck if he gets caught trying to side-b on stage with a grounded wiz kick. Depending on positioning, here is generally what happens: Falco and Ganon both end up offstage with Ganon closer to ledge, able to side-b and grab on. If the Falco is even with the ledge, they will typically side-b into the invincible Ganon and die. If they're lower or mixing up and up-b recover, assuming they weren't already high enough percent to be too far from ledge, you're in an amazing edgeguard position. Sorry I don't have video of this but I'll work on it and see what I can find.

 

[Bazkip]

But why is Falco recovering on stage with sideB if you're just chilling on stage

 

[Squints~.~]

But why is Falco recovering on stage with sideB if you're just chilling on stage

I see a lot of Falco's using side-b to grab ledge, drop down DJ side-b on stage to clear some room or attack if you're positioned close to ledge. It doesn't happen too often but I've seen it quite a few times, very possibly just a nooby Falco thing but something I thought worth noting.

 

[Bazkip]

I see a lot of Falco's using side-b to grab ledge, drop down DJ side-b on stage to clear some room or attack if you're positioned close to ledge. It doesn't happen too often but I've seen it quite a few times, very possibly just a nooby Falco thing but something I thought worth noting.

Pretty sure it's mostly a scrub tactic. Maybe it sees the occasional use at high level play as a mixup, but not terribly often.

 

[Squints~.~]

Makes sense, the endlag is pretty bad considering it's Falco. I think it's still a nice counter we have in case you notice someone opting for it

 

[Bazkip]

Yo what

I was almost certain that MU was unwinnable at high level
Hungry Headcrab teach me your secrets

 

[CORY]

who does cloudburst play?

 

[Bazkip]

who does cloudburst play?

 

[CORY]

;x that seems such a **** matchup. i'm assuming this is crazy because cloudburst is a good player, as well?

 

[Bazkip]

;x that seems such a **** matchup. i'm assuming this is crazy because cloudburst is a good player, as well?

He's one of the known Squirtle players and is ranked 7th in AZ. Not aware of any notable results at big tournies, only thing I was able to pull up was him getting 4th in his pool at Paragon LA. There's a bunch of vids of him on AZPM if you want to check those out.
So...nothing amazing, but decent at least.

 

[CORY]

ranked in az probably makes him a solid player, if nothing else : o

 

[Bazkip]

ranked in az probably makes him a solid player, if nothing else : o

No he's a Squirtle main, so he'd be liquid at best

 

[Hungry Headcrab]

Yo what

I was almost certain that MU was unwinnable at high level
Hungry Headcrab teach me your secrets

Neutral is crazy hard, but almost kind of sort of but not really managable if you stay safe and are aware of Squirtle's options. Wiz Kick outright beats Water Gun and Withdraw, so I always try and stay at that tantalizing range where those seem like good options when they're actually more unsafe than they appear. If Cloudburst had respected that a little more it would have been much harder to win. The match up becomes way more difficult if you're stuck relying on spacing fairs and bairs and hoping he runs into them, which can certainly be the case if the Squirtle respects and plays around our specials correctly.

Also, Squirtle's tech roll sucks so capitalizing on Flame Choke becomes stupidly important in making the match up tolerable.

 

[Kneato]

Matchup from 's Perspective (+3 has Ganon winning)

+3:
+2:
+1:
0:
-1:
-2:

-3:

What do you guys think? Anything wildly inaccurate?

Not my opinion. This is for updating the (outdated) community matchup chart.

 

[CORY]

at low levels, marth looks even, but i don't think it really is. however, most of my marth experience is from someone who really outclasses me, so my opinion is mostly from his pov. namely, marth has no real reason to let ganon do anything due to his speed (both grounded movement and attack wise) and range. should probably be -1, but that's probably not til much higher? and it might still be even, i just haven't seen it. i'm going by "on paper" for a lot of the thought process.

i also don't think zelda's even, from personal experience. she's good at forcing you to approach and making it really awkward in the process, and her floatiness lets her get out of combos really easily, so you can't push your staggered punish game the way we like. then fair and bair : / i really feel like she should be -1, since she kinda stops us from doing what we like and actively forces us to do things we don't. then she can also kill really well with her toes and her recovery has enough going on for us to not be able to edgeguard and gimp the way we usually like to : /

i feel like ddd is slightly advantaged, but that's mostly because if he ever gets us offstage, it's gg. but he has to get to that point first and it's probably rather even, otherwise. no real contention with that placement, just my thoughts.

people with more experience in those matchups, though, feel free to out rank me on those, though : o

 

[Afro-Alchemist]

How do you guys feel about the Zero Suit Samus matchup? There is this one guy that mains her in my city's weeklies that I can have a hard time getting close to her when we are fighting. I would like to know how you people deal with her.

 

[CORY]

she falls into that "moves fast enough to ignore you" category : / in my experience, you'll have to choke her out of stage space and then try to punish her attempts to regain it.

that part's easier if she tries to do so aggressively (i.e., you've pushed her to the edge of, say, smashville, and the platform's on the other side, so she can't try to jump and mixup with dj/downb to get center stage again), since we have (usually) have the range advantage and can power through a lot of stuff with our damage. her neutral and sideb do a lot for her, though, in forcing us to react and respect her own range, so your mileage may vary in that regard.

she at least falls into combos decently, though. if you get her offstage and can force the tether, be ready to use ledge drop-dj-uair to at least punish most of her options (if she di's forward, you'll just hit her and at best get to repeat at the other side of the stage. if you catch her di-ing back, she's probably dead). if you can hard call her on di back after the tether hop, you can also do ledge drop-dj-bair and probably outright kill her.

if she's on her toes, this isn't easy, as she can do timing mixups before even trying to tether with dj, walljump, and downb. but you should be able to on reaction ledge drop uair to the tether reel ( Bazkip i think you did some labbing on this? am i misremembering?)

 

[Bazkip]

Forced tether hop animation is 50 frames long. When landing on stage they don't have to spend the whole animation airborne, but it's still some 30-40 frames depending on character, and then there's also 30 frames of landing lag. So yeah, there's time to react to their drift. On drift back, best option is ledgehop bair. On drift forwards you can do...pretty much anything. Best options are probably up angled fsmash if they're at kill percents, otherwise grab/dtilt/Flame Choke to start a combo.

What I spent some time labing was to see what options we have to cover all drift options, as that should allow for high consistency of punishing tethers due to only needing to react to the pull in. Of course there's the very obvious solution in uair, but that's a weak punish on drift in. What I came up with was ledgehop bair to cover the fade back, and then grabbing them if they drifted in (and then dthrow bair/uair/fair). The punish window is large enough that this can be done easily.
One of the problems with this is that the landing animations of Lucas, Toon Link and ZSS are low enough that Ganon's grab can miss if you grab at the wrong time. It can also whiff on Link/Samus if you're not quite close enough. Ivy's landing animation is very upright, so there's no worry there. While this is annoying, like I said the window to grab is very lenient, you don't need to grab right away. So you can simply wait past this point in their animation and then grab them. If you're really worried I supposed you could also dtilt.
Another problem is that dthrow is not particularly potent on Samus, the only aerial you're able to get past mid percents is uair, and that'll usually be the mid hit that won't send her particularly far, and then eventually we lose the ability to even land that. I think dthrow upB works until fairly late percents, so that's a pretty good option.

Other potential options for coverage that I haven't tested but should probably work out are a properly timed Flame Choke (possibly the best option against Samus, since AFC > Wiz Foot is a thing on her, or techase Wiz Foot if you get ground FC), or doing a short ledgedash then turnaround ftilt for fadeback or whatever you want for drift in.

Oh, couple things I forgot to mention/just occurred to me.
There's another problem with the ledgehop bair grab, in that you might end up getting a reverse bair on slight drift in, which is a weak punish.

Also best course of action against Samus is likely reacting to the drift, ledgehop bair fadeback or jump on stage pivot grab fthrow (since throw knockback ignores weight) on drift in.
Edit: Wait no up-angled fsmash still probably better for killing here cause Samus is somewhat vulnerable to vertical KO's due to her floatiness and our fthrow isn't really that strong.

TBH react to drift ledgehop bair on fade back or [some action that's I've detailed already] on fade in is probably the best overall tactic for all forced tether hop punishes. I just wanted to be lazy lmao.

 

[Afro-Alchemist]

Hmmmm, I seeeee. Thanks CORY and Bazkip. I knew I needed to seriously up my ledgeguard game against her, I've mainly been just going for the uairs on forced tether hop, haha. The person I play against prefers to play it more safe, so unfortunately it isn't very easy for me to choke her out of stage space as much as I would like. But I will just have to work on it. Thank youuuu.

 

[Mechaglacier]

Could you guys help me with the Ganon-Mew2 MU plz?