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

[CORY]

haha, the only lucas i really play a lot of is ruin's : p and it's been a while since i've gotten to play against him, actually. he's the one who told me that lucas' magnet is grabbable if they commit to it, but that's all he really knew, since this was right after 3.5.

 

[Electric Tuba]

Yeah, he's worked his tech back up again so that his combos and pressure are really good (not like 3.02, just because of changes). If they sit in magnet, I think you're right about grabbing him or maybe even nairing out of shield. He's also a lot easier to edgeguard because of tether nerfs! Hooray

 

[Bazkip]

One day all Ganon mains will autocancel everything and we'll be unstoppable

 

[ImpossiblyRood]

One of my casual friends picked up sonic and it got me curious: how do we handle that matchup?

I figure it'd be somewhat similar - if less dynamic - to the falcon matchup. You both can snub one another's recoveries (for the most part), ganon's lackluster speed puts him at a disadvantage in neutral, etc.

 

[Drunkinsnail]

For what it is worth, Ganon beats Game and Watch fairly handily.

I personally feel like G&W beats Ganon. Meat is rough barrier that hitstuns like a freakin falco laser. His combo game is monstrous and as with most matchups, you are food for it. He's got way more mobility than you and his edgeguards are practically free. I'd love to hear where people see Ganon having the advantage though. I just saw that and thought I'd comment cuz I've got some decent xp in that mu. =O

 

[ImpossiblyRood]

I personally feel like G&W beats Ganon. Meat is rough barrier that hitstuns like a freakin falco laser. His combo game is monstrous and as with most matchups, you are food for it. He's got way more mobility than you and his edgeguards are practically free. I'd love to hear where people see Ganon having the advantage though. I just saw that and thought I'd comment cuz I've got some decent xp in that mu. =O

I don't really believe that, not after 3.5. Bacon moves fairly slowly and in a predictable arch and is easily cleared by a nair. Since he can only get two hard-hitting meats out before the Minimeat™ starts a-flyin, so G'dubs' mobility-limiting game is far more... limited... than before. Bacon may stop momentum like a Falco laser, but it is far more managable. Other than that, G'dubs has a decent combo game on Ganon, but not enough to really put G'dubs at a distinct advantage. This is mostly because his combo game on Ganon is basically as strong as anyone else's and unless you get suckered into a grab or a dtilt, you should be fairly capable of outspacing him.

Tat's just how I've experienced the matchup so far, anyway.

 

[MerzA]

In 3.0.2 I felt that Ganon could hold his own against Captain Falcon and that the matchup was around even, however now that the game engine has been tuned a little closer to Melee's, I'm starting to see that Falcon does hold an advantage over Ganon, even with the new tools we've been given.

I play against a lot of Captain Falcons. I stomp the ones that are bad, and get absolutely wrecked by the ones that are good. Falcon's Shffl Nair literally combos into itself on Ganon at low % to the point where there's literally nothing else I can do besides buffer a roll when I'm getting nair spammed.

Falcon's Up-throw->Knee is essentially guaranteed above 50% regardless of DI. If the Falcon is good, he'll be able to get the knee on reaction to your DI no matter what.

DI'ing in on any of Falcon's combos will lead to a lot of followups, and outward DI on the ledge can lead to some dirty edgeguards. Your combo DI in this matchup needs to constantly be on point if you want to compete against top Falcon mains.

Some things we can do well against Falcon is keep him in the air with Rising Nairs, like we can do vs all fast fallers. His tech roll is also ass, so if you can force tech-chases then you have a good chance at being able to punish on reaction. Float helps bait getup attacks, and allows you to put yourself near Falcon without committing - but Falcon can travel anywhere across the stage extremely quickly so empty floating can get you killed easily.

Another strategy I've heard mentioned is space yourself at the edge of Falcon's shffl Nair range, then use your own AC Nairs on reaction to punish his. I have yet to test this, but I know from experience that Falcon's nair out-prioritizes almost all of Ganon's aerials. I'll try out this strategy and post back what I think about it soon.

The way I usually deal with Falcon in the neutral is to DD at the edge of his Shffl Nair range and try to bait him to approach with SH Bair Wavelands, or Full Hop double bairs. I play an extremely aggressive Ganondorf usually, so this matchup is one of my worst ones. I'm friends with a few other Ganon mains who have experienced more tournament success than I have, and their playstyles are much more patient and punish heavy than mine, so maybe my problems are on more of a fundamental level.

TL;DR - Ganon vs Falcon is 40/60 in Falcon's favor - IMO.


Here's a video of me playing against Champaign's top Melee player - MattR

Here's a video (from the same tourney) of my buddy Demia playing against Matt R

Note: These videos were taken around the time 3.5 was released so neither Demia or myself were too experienced with floating. I also had not begun incorporating SH Bair Wavelands into my game yet, only FH Double Bairs (which I was constantly being punished for lol). I also did not use Nair OOS nearly as much as I do now.

 

[Electric Tuba]

Can't watch those videos now, but a quick note on falcon: His greatest strength by far on characters who don't have great approach options and are kind of slow (like Ganon) is his ability to just dash dance and bait out a grab. His insane combo game is a close second great strength, but be very careful of smart falcons that just wait for a chance to get a grab, because when they do it's gonna hurt real bad.

 

[Taytertot]

To extend off of electric tuba's thoughts Id say that because ganon is a very laggy character, falcon can just wait and bait almost any of ganons moves and run in to punish. As you stated about your own style, its very aggressive and while that aggression can catch people off guard and lead to some great reads its also very unsafe because ganons moveset and speed dont compliment aggression. As far as that video goes id say that falcon player opened you up mostly from you over-extending/over-committing, which ganon cant do successfully vs. fast, combo oriented characters like cpt. falcon. I hope that didnt come off as offensive because im not trying to hate on you, just tryin to give you some advice. But id agree that falcon most likely has the advantage vs ganon simply because falcon can just dodge and run around until the ganon player slips up, so it forces the ganon player to play close to perfectly in order to win.

 

[MerzA]

To extend off of electric tuba's thoughts Id say that because ganon is a very laggy character, falcon can just wait and bait almost any of ganons moves and run in to punish. As you stated about your own style, its very aggressive and while that aggression can catch people off guard and lead to some great reads its also very unsafe because ganons moveset and speed dont compliment aggression. As far as that video goes id say that falcon player opened you up mostly from you over-extending/over-committing, which ganon cant do successfully vs. fast, combo oriented characters like cpt. falcon. I hope that didnt come off as offensive because im not trying to hate on you, just tryin to give you some advice. But id agree that falcon most likely has the advantage vs ganon simply because falcon can just dodge and run around until the ganon player slips up, so it forces the ganon player to play close to perfectly in order to win.

Don't worry about offending me lol, I got wrecked so obviously I need to work on my game and harsh criticism is a really good motivator imo. I played against Demia's falcon yesterday (he plays a really good falcon, which may be a reason why he's more comfortable in the Ganon falcon matchup) and I tried out just sitting at the end of falcons dash dance range and just punishing his nair approach with nairs of my own and it worked really well. I think this is the strat that Ganons need to exploit to gain an edge in the matchup because falcons that aren't expecting this can begin to second guess their approaches and by then they're already getting PUNCHED

 

[Electric Tuba]

Played a bunch of friendly doubles games last night... double ganon is absolutely insane

Seriously, if you have another ganon main near you go do it. Aside from complete maximum style, you can cover huge amounts of space (including every option on techs!) with the two of you and good awareness lets things like Ganon 1 fairs someone off stage and Ganon 2 stomps them into oblivion

Still a little hype from 12 hours ago

 

[TheFatHen]

Does anyone have any advice on the ganon v lucario MU. Not really sure what are good stages or how to approach the character.

 

[Taytertot]

Does anyone have any advice on the ganon v lucario MU. Not really sure what are good stages or how to approach the character.

Dont know how ganon should approach it specifically but from what ive heard about lucario as a character, he has difficulty approaching, though his combo game and pressure can be a pain to deal with. So as long as you have an answer to his projectiles he wont be able to easily approach especially since you, as ganon, outrange him and out-prioritize him.

I'll let others give a more detailed explanation since i know very little about this mu.

 

[JosephGee]

Does anyone have any advice on the ganon v lucario MU. Not really sure what are good stages or how to approach the character.

Its an odd matchup because Ganon has a better neutral and worse punish game than Lucario, which is not the case for most of Ganon's matchups. I like to space nairs so he can't hadouken me and try to get him to approach where I can stuff it with a d tilt, a nair, or punish any down b approaches with bair (you can also try shield grabbing but its less than consistent because Lucario can either Hit->side special or can hit->aura cancel->grab).

One of the big advantages Ganon has is edgeguarding so make sure you can hit his extreme speed with aerials. As for stages Lucario hates platforms and Ganon loves small stages, so you can ban based on either or both of those.

 

[Bazkip]

Ganon has a better neutral

I know Lucario mains complain their character's neutral is **** but I just don't ****ing buy this.
I don't think they know what "Bad neutral" actually means.

 

[Bazkip]

So apparently first seed in my pool at McSmashter is a Marth main. According to @Coastward he's bad but uh...I'm bad too so...any advice?

 

[Spralwers]

Marth v Ganon is free for Ganon when both players are bad. Abuse CC. Bait out attacks and then punish. But if Marth seems insistent on baiting you out, then fair or ftilt his shield and make him crumble under pressure.

The advice generally applies at all levels, except at the higher levels, because baiting out Marth becomes harder than Marth baiting you out. But CC abuse is good no matter what level you're playing this MU at.

 

[thechosenjuan]

Roy main picking up Ganon as a secondary, I've had some past experience with him (Melee), but obviously there's much more depth in this game with more characters and stages. Who would you guys say is Ganon's worst matchups and best matchups? How does one approach someone like Falco who can zone you out with projectiles?

 

[Nevermind]

One of my casual friends picked up sonic and it got me curious: how do we handle that matchup?

Late, but I figure the information is still useful.

In neutral, Sonic handles something like a faster Falcon with more movement options that doesn't have the luxury of an amazing nair. What that means is that he has literally no means of getting in unless you give it to him. Don't give it to him. Watch a video of Wizzrobe playing Sonic and note how his opponents get punished. Most of the time, it's because they get antsy due to Sonic's speed and throw out a preemptive attack. This is what you want to avoid. If you're playing slow a bad Sonic will tend to fall back on his spins in the hope that you can't deal with the speed or respect them too much or something. Just throw out an auto-cancelled nair and laugh at the negative disjoint. A good Sonic will try to scare you with fast, non-committal options, so the key in that case is to stand your ground and chew up as much space as he gives you. A Sonic without room to run is a sad Sonic, and Ganon has the walling tools to make it extra painful.

I don't have much in terms of punishes that work specifically on Sonic, but keep in mind that you can chaingrab him for a while at lower percents and that he can spring out of sloppy combos. Sonic's recovery is far-reaching but very linear. If he DIs correctly and ends up high, Sonic can spin and gain quite a bit of horizontal distance; but in doing so he also sacrifices height and forces himself into a low recovery. That's where you want him. Hit him with a reverse up-air and he's dead regardless of percent. Sonic uses his jump to cancel the spin and has no horizontal recovery on his up-b, so a Tipman is a death sentence almost 100% of the time. If Sonic is recovering from a flexible position (i.e. could go high or low), there are a few more options of which to be wary. He could spin back onto stage if he has the height (get a sense for it), homing attack (if he's a good distance away you'll be able to use the start-up to react, but if he's closer he can quickly shorten [challenge before he gets here]), up-b high (which puts him into a mixup situation with his dair), or up-b low (already covered, don't get hit by a suicide fair when you're on the ledge).

My sister plays Sonic, which is why I can speak on the matchup. I'll try to get some footage of us playing and edit it into this post tonight so that you guys have some visual examples of this stuff.

 

[Bazkip]

Oh hey I also have a Squirtle in my pool
My current gameplan vs Squirtle is to spam Wiz Foot and hope they're bad

Seriously how do you hit that tiny ******

 

[CORY]

dtilt, angled ftilt, spaced aerials.

if you catch him on a withdraw read, go for flame choke. it straight out beats withdraw and now you can (apparently?) just react to squirtle's tech rolls with more flame choke and literally infinite him to death.

 

[Frost | Odds]

I know Lucario ganon mains complain their character's neutral is **** but I just don't ****ing buy this.
I don't think they know what "Bad neutral" actually means.

#triggered, ftfy

I'm happy to provide my services at any time. :3

@ Bazkip just don't get baited against Squirtle. He actually has an extremely hard time getting on on Ganon as long as you play solidly and don't overcommit to stuff. Use dtilt or flame choke to stuff his approaches once he's committed and you're golden.

 

[Bazkip]

#triggered, ftfy

I'm happy to provide my services at any time. :3

@ Bazkip just don't get baited against Squirtle. He actually has an extremely hard time getting on on Ganon as long as you play solidly and don't overcommit to stuff. Use dtilt or flame choke to stuff his approaches once he's committed and you're golden.

I said bad neutral not nonexistent neutral like Boozer Kappa

Butthanks, sounds solid.

Anywho Coast lied to me the Marth main is actually a Peach main wtf do I do against Peach.

 

[TheFatHen]

I've been having alot of trouble with the Roy MU especially when I am trying to recover onto the stage.This is because the Roy just F-smashes me or charges his neutral B and it is alot harder to sweet spot the ledge with Ganon.

 

[Cpt.]

Does anyone have any advice on the ganon v lucario MU. Not really sure what are good stages or how to approach the character.

I'd advise using Ganondorf's moves with a lot of range (Ftilt, Dtilt, Dair) since Lucario doesn't have much range.

I've been having alot of trouble with the Roy MU especially when I am trying to recover onto the stage.This is because the Roy just F-smashes me or charges his neutral B and it is alot harder to sweet spot the ledge with Ganon.

My best friend mains Roy. There is really nothing you can do about this besides trying to bait out Roy's smash early so it misses. Roy is at his most powerful when edge guarding so should worry to much if you are dying a lot more this. The only other way to get back from this is by teching one of the smashes.

 

[Taytertot]

Are you sure that roy's fsmash and nB can reach ganon if ganon sweetspots? as a roy main and ganon secondary, i dont feel that either of those 2 attacks of roy's should be reaching the lowest that ganon can still grab the ledge from. On top of that you shouldnt fear roy going off the stage to edgeguard you if you decide to drop as low as possible because most if not all of roy's moves wouldnt allow him to still reach the ledge if he dropped as low as ganon can upB from. generally roys best option is to either try to reach you with a big hitbox move or just wait and try to poke you back off.

I've been having alot of trouble with the Roy MU especially when I am trying to recover onto the stage.This is because the Roy just F-smashes me or charges his neutral B and it is alot harder to sweet spot the ledge with Ganon.

Something to note about roy as a character that might help you in the MU is that roy has a great combo game and has a very aggressive playstyle, but he doesnt have a whole lot of safe moves from neutral. By that i mean that roy can try to poke you with the tip of dtilt, ftilt or the first hit of sideB but if the roy player doesnt space them with the tip then you can generally punish him. Roy doesnt have a lot of moves for directly getting in on an opponent and has to bait and close off space in order to actually get things started. Once an opponent doesnt have much space left then roy can get them to do something unsafe and start comboing (or if the player throws out moves carelessly), but until then roy doesnt have safe options.

That being said, i think roy generally has a good mu vs ganon so its gonna be rough if the roy player knows what hes doing because ganon doesnt have many fast moves. But if you force him to respect your space with ftilt, dtilt and jab and then punish mistakes with harder moves you should have a decent chance.

 

[Cpt.]

Are you sure that roy's fsmash and nB can reach ganon if ganon sweetspots? as a roy main and ganon secondary, i dont feel that either of those 2 attacks of roy's should be reaching the lowest that ganon can still grab the ledge from. On top of that you shouldnt fear roy going off the stage to edgeguard you if you decide to drop as low as possible because most if not all of roy's moves wouldnt allow him to still reach the ledge if he dropped as low as ganon can upB from. generally roys best option is to either try to reach you with a big hitbox move or just wait and try to poke you back off.

If the roy player was good he would Fsmash a Ganondorf player coming from below. That only works if he is coming from the side, above side or below side. In order to sweetspot you pretty much have to be in a different location.

 

[Scuba Steve]

what are you even saying, you can definitely sweetspot under both flare blade and fsmash with both up-b and side-b lol

 

[Electric Tuba]

You can go under Roy's edgeguards with flame choke? Seems like with the grab box changes it'd be a pretty small window... but I haven't tested anything, you're probably right.

 

[Bazkip]

Holy**** I'm atrocious at the Fox MU

teaaaaaach meeeeeeeeee

 

[CORY]

become a god at hard reads ;x

 

[Spralwers]

Kage is really good at the Fox MU. I'd honestly just recommend picking a match video or two of his in that MU even in melee and analyzing the crap out of it. You need strong literacy skills to be good at that MU because of how quick and how non-committal (relatively speaking of course) of a character Fox is.

 

[JosephGee]

Kage is really good at the Fox MU. I'd honestly just recommend picking a match video or two of his in that MU even in melee and analyzing the crap out of it. You need strong literacy skills to be good at that MU because of how quick and how non-committal (relatively speaking of course) of a character Fox is.

Definitely some gold in the kage vs Armada match:

Edit2: Youtube video is now up

 

[Balxeyrd - Bread]

So is it just me or does a good Mr. Game and Watch give Gonon a hard time. Because my friend plays him and we are basically back and forth, I have to go super try hard to win. other than that it's super close games.

 

[Bazkip]

become a god at hard reads ;x

Okay so I just need to be Kage then lol.

Kage is really good at the Fox MU. I'd honestly just recommend picking a match video or two of his in that MU even in melee and analyzing the crap out of it. You need strong literacy skills to be good at that MU because of how quick and how non-committal (relatively speaking of course) of a character Fox is.

Was already planning on doing that, just haven't had the time :/

Definitely some gold in the kage vs Armada match:

twitch. tv/projecttoronto/b/628439487?t=5h04m24s

( remove the space, apologies for the poor link, its not on youtube and I lurk too much to have linking privileges)

Edit: also if this VOD expires and SSBMmontreal or Ontario Project M hasn't uploaded this I may upload a copy myself.

SSBMontreal already uploaded all the matches they streamed.
Source: I uploaded them.

So Toronto's just being bad at things like usual.

 

[CORY]

SSBMontreal already uploaded all the matches they streamed.
Source: I uploaded them.

So Toronto's just being bad at things like usual.

links? : D

 

[JosephGee]

links? : D

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL65IMg9w1B_hzNCdxXvKCLZr1DV49u08X

 

[CORY]

bruh. broooooo!

 

[Bazkip]

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL65IMg9w1B_hzNCdxXvKCLZr1DV49u08X

Let's get you an actual link

 

[JosephGee]

Let's get you an actual link

I would have but I need to post more to be able to use actual links, like 1-2 more after this one.