Ganon Strategies and Gameplay Discussion.

[Taytertot]

Some of the information in this thread regarding grabs/refreshing DJ is incorrect as I understand it. In Melee, being thrown refreshes your double jump, but if you are grab released, it only refreshes if you hold up. In Project M, simply being grabbed refreshes your jump. This is why Falcon and Ganon's up-b gives opponents their jumps back.

I posted this in the matchup discussion thread but suppose it would work better here- Is platform camping (specifically top platform camping) a useful tool for Ganon? So far I have had success with it against a number of skilled players. If so, what tools would Ganon use? I imagine dair could be used to challenge people sharking from under the platform, and float could be used as a mixup to bait and punish attacks. Haven't really explored/theorycrafted this too much but would love to hear some discussion.

It certainly could be useful in specific matchups, though im not sure which ones exactly maybe characters who have to dj to get to you and have the weird dj that peach, mewtwo, ness, lucas, etc have where they can djc but have a slow momentum startup. floaties who are slow to gain vertical distance could potential have an issue threatening you. generally speaking though youre not gonna want to camp the top platform because it inherently limits the options you have available to threaten your opponent both defensively and offensively. On top of that almost every character has either a short ranged or laggy dair/tool to deal with things below them which is why most uses of dair are during combos to extend, finish the combo. You will see dair sometimes used to approach but the player is usually, in those situations, taking a bigger risk in the hope of a bigger reward.

if you were to ever platform camp with ganon dair would most likely be the option of choice since it has a lot of reach (i believe it has some disjoint to it though i could be wrong) and it is a very heavy hit that can be circumstantially followed up on from there. In some situations i could see you maybe using the ending of his uair because it does reach down a bit. Otherwise, you dont really have any other reliable options, which is why you're generally putting yourself at a disadvantage, not only because you have just 2 options to mixup with but also because these moves have significant lag and not nearly enough coverage from threats below. It can help you in rare occasions during a match and can potential catch inexperienced or offguard players but the better players arent going to fall for it much and will very quickly adapt a strategy to beat it.

 

[Squints~.~]

Some of the information in this thread regarding grabs/refreshing DJ is incorrect as I understand it. In Melee, being thrown refreshes your double jump, but if you are grab released, it only refreshes if you hold up. In Project M, simply being grabbed refreshes your jump. This is why Falcon and Ganon's up-b gives opponents their jumps back.

I posted this in the matchup discussion thread but suppose it would work better here- Is platform camping (specifically top platform camping) a useful tool for Ganon? So far I have had success with it against a number of skilled players. If so, what tools would Ganon use? I imagine dair could be used to challenge people sharking from under the platform, and float could be used as a mixup to bait and punish attacks. Haven't really explored/theorycrafted this too much but would love to hear some discussion.

Depends on your opponents character and skill level in my opinion. I've gotten a lot of float mixup d-airs this way, but characters that can cover platforms well with hitboxes (like Marth) can get around this fairly easily. Being on the ground gives Ganon more room for movement/wavelands and also gives us more room to utilize u-air.
I wouldn't camp top platform for very long but sneaking d-airs in is very possible. Another option might be to favor one side of the platform, wait for your opponent to advance, and edge-cancel down b on the opposite side and b-air, u-air, what have you. I haven't really used that much, more of a theory.

 

[Spralwers]

I think if you're doing whatever it takes to keep and maintain a lead, top platform camping isn't actually a bad idea. Especially because of float. Floating above the platform gives you access to so many mixups against people who try to approach from below. Combine it with shield drop uairs and bairs and you can really make approaches unsafe. I could see it being universally effective on Dreamland, Delfinos, and Battlefield, with more situational, MU dependent usefulness on Warioland, Yoshis Story, and Distant Planet.

Otherwise I would prefer "camping" (I use the term kinda loosely) around lower platforms. Mixture of floating above and below the platform, moving around it, threatening with hitboxes, etc.

 

[CORY]

something one of my local friends showed me after he was messing around with ganon is that if you drop through the platform, but immediately float, you'll float just slightly above the platform, but your ground collision bone doesn't touch immediately.

if you do this and immediately uair, you can get the hitbox to just pop out and then you'll land on the platform immediately. i think the timing was really tight, though. this should also work with nair.

so, something else you can use to mess around with platform camping, in theory. gives another option, since you can now be below or above it after the hitbox.

 

[HiroProtagonist]

Yo, just got around to reading the discussion about top plat camping. Good stuff. Looking at the stagelist now, you could probably plat camp people on DL, BF, and Norfair and Delfino's in some transformations. Obviously highly stage/matchup dependent but I think its an interesting idea. I've had success camping top plat vs Luigi and Bowser, and I think it could probably work well vs Yoshi, Jiggs, Peach, Ness. It really depends on how quickly they gain vertical distance, how high each of their jumps take them, and how good of a hitbox they can put out above them. Using dairs, floats, and shield drops I think Ganon can be in a pretty powerful position up there though. Unfortunately, there's so many characters in PM that I don't understand or have experience with that it would be very hard to figure out exactly who this would work against and on what stages, we'd all have to pool our knowledge.

 

[HiroProtagonist]

Hate to double post, but there doesn't seem to be another thread relevant to this topic, so here we go. Tech junkie that I am, I've been looking to incorporate some new things into my game. Shield drops seem excellent with Ganon and with my controller I don't find them that difficult. So far, I figure his best options are shield drop-float (you could maybe SD, float, then first hit nair and start a combo? Idk), shield drop upair (duh), shield drop side-b (this is hella laggy but would be fresh af to land), and shield drop- instant down b ground pound (more on this later). When do you guys implement shield drops into your game, and can Ganon use them to punish, for example, Marth uptilting him from below while on a platform?

Does anyone have even any theoretical uses of footstools? They might just not be useful to Ganondorf which I wouldn't be surpised about.

Finally- does anyone have information on how exactly the "instant ground pound" works? For the uninitiated, in select scenarios Ganondorf can output an almost instantaneous (frame 1 or 2) hitbox, doing the landing animation of aerial wiz-kick with zero startup. Someone (Purple Haze, I think?) on here posted all about this ages ago, but I haven't heard anything about it since. What I know right now is that it's insanely easy to perform on moving platforms but that its also theoretically possible to perform on regular ones as well as just on the ground itself (Purple posted a gif of him extending a combo on Link by using an instantaneous ground pound). The applications of this are obvious- it gives Ganon an almost instant option out of shield drop that can sometimes be used as a combo starter- on moving platforms, its nearly as fast or as fast as shield drop shine. The easy drop-through works on Delfino's, Fountain of Dreams, Norfair, and Yoshi's Brawl when the platforms are moving, and always works on Smashville and Green Hill Zone. If I can work out how to trigger it in other situations it could be seriously useful.

There's another application of this that deserves its own little block of text here. Through some arcane magic, it is possible to drop off ledge, down-b and trigger the instant ground pound, and then instantaneously snap back to ledge- all while maintaining ledge invulnerability. Does anyone know how in the world this works, technically? I've gotten it a couple times just goofing around in practice but it happens so fast that I can't figure out how my inputs are different.

 

[CORY]

i don't know the exact stats, but i'm assuming the awk has a trigger that makes it do the ground pound as soon as you hit a surface, whether or not the hitbox comes out, which is why it's easy to pull it off on platforms, but a lot more difficult otherwise.

my setup isn't connected, so i can't really test stuff right now, but in theory you can play around with frame advance in debug and see if you can get an instant ground pound out of jump-first frame downb. if not, see if maybe waiting a frame or two after jump allows it.

if still not, then you likely can't pull it off out of a jump and need to have something slightly above you (hence why it works with shield drops/platform drops).

 

[HiroProtagonist]

I've been playing around with it and it just doesn't really make that much sense to me. Its super easy to hit if the platform is moving at all- regardless of direction, or up or down. When the platform is stationary, its suddenly very difficult to hit and I haven't been able to get it instantaneously in frame advance. I should probably try it while rising through the platform rather than dropping down.

 

[CORY]

hrmmm... that's a bit odd. so, even if it's moving down and you try to, say, platform drop-instant ground pound, it still works?

 

[Bazkip]

Shield drop float sounds like a great way to get yourself hit.

Shield drop uair should be the best bet. Maybe nair cause it comes out a frame sooner, though with it's low active frames and uair having better coverage, uair is probably still the better choice.

 

[CheCray]

I can only consistently do the instant ground pound on moving platforms. In fact, when the platform is moving its stupidly easy to do, no matter which way the platform is moving. Otherwise I cant do the instant GP at all.

 

[CORY]

That seems really odd. I wonder if it's a carryover from brawl's goofy physics with moving platforms

 

[Taytertot]

i imagine that doing the instant aerial wiz kick would only be effective at middling to somewhat higher percents because at low percents i think ganon would just be at a frame disadvantage.

i wonder if footstool to FF aerial wiz kick spike would work? maybe on floaties?

footstooling slightly above a platform might give you a chance to get an easy AFC as you fall to be just above the platform. you might also get a dair if not to high above them when they land on the platform because i think i remember that you cant tech during a footstool.

 

[CORY]

I know that one of the things ganon could do back when footstools dropped shields was footstool into instant wizkick. Less applicable for general purposes now, but if the opponent is near the ground, it's something to keep in mind.

 

[HiroProtagonist]

So, I rewatched Ganon On Ice yesterday on a whim, and my jaw sort of dropped when I watched Bizz do an instant ground-pound from ledge. It happens several time in the video- (https://youtu.be/zexwVu-kh-I?t=16s) for one. I'm shocked, I had no idea this was in Melee as well. I wonder if the Melee Ganon boards might have some more info on this? Crazy.

 

[Bazkip]

Something I've noticed some top Melee Sheik players do in tech chase situations in start to walk one way and then dash back to dash attack or boost grab if the opponent goes the other way. While we're not as quick as Sheik I see no reason why we can't do the same to at least some of the cast, and also DACUS can likely be used to catch characters with longer rolls. And of course if they do stay in place or go towards the direction we're going, we've got plenty of options to cover those.

 

[HiroProtagonist]

Is DACUS really useful in a tech-chase situation? Never really thought of using it that way, seems like you'd have to be super quick on the reaction to catch someone's tech with it

 

[CORY]

My main issue with dacus is how precise you have to be with the spacing. It could work in tech situations, but you'll probably have to know the proper characters it works on.

 

[Bazkip]

I think dash attack should be able to get most of the cast but will probably fall short of the longest techrolls, which is why I suggested DACUS might work. I don't know for certain, I haven't tested it or anything, just speculating.

 

[Spralwers]

Reverse uair is a really nice mix up in neutral. It protects you pretty much until you land (in which case you can waveland/auto cancel), and still outreaches most approach options in the game (thanks to log legs and it's up -> down trajectory). Its weak knockback but good damage still puts on decent hitstun, so landing a late uair on a grounded opponent can lead to follow ups like ftilt. A well spaced one is safe on shield too.

 

[Bazkip]

log legs

I'm pretty sure you meant "long" here but it's still accurate lol.

 

[CheCray]

At low percents or on heavy/high friction characters you can confirm the weak hit up air to grab, which is dope. you can incorporate it into grab game on floaties you cant chain grab with Dthrow > weak hit Uair > Regrab.

It looks swaggy as all hell too :D

 

[Bazkip]

At low percents or on heavy/high friction characters you can confirm the weak hit up air to grab, which is dope. you can incorporate it into grab game on floaties you cant chain grab with Dthrow > weak hit Uair > Regrab.

It looks swaggy as all hell too :D

Is that more reliable than dthrow > AFC > grab?

 

[CheCray]

Nah don't think so, getting the weak hit is dependent on their DI, you'll have to change the direction you face for the up air. But at the very least your hitting with the rest of the up air. I can usually do this to the Wario at my local at low/middle percents. Wario seems perfectly heavy enough not to go too high, while his friction doesn't push him too far back when you land the hit. I could always just chain grab him too though.

with fast fallers you can do something similar with up throw, but there's a myriad of better options..... still swaggy tho

 

[CORY]

That looked like it was entirely escapable if he knew what was going on, or was buffering a roll "to be safe" or something.

Pretty swag, though.

 

[CheCray]

I don't have any hard data but on some characters it seems guaranteed, then on others they can beat it out with a spotdodge if they know its coming. In that game against wario when i did a frame by frame review:

the shield comes out 1 frame before I grab him, and he doesn't look to be actionable before that. I checked the 60 FPS footage just to be sure, so assuming his shield came out on his first actionable frame that ass was grass anyway you put it.

lately i've been using weak Uair in neutral as a hit confirm since its safe on shield if spaced, works well against spacies and falcon. The less traction a character has the harder it is for Ganon to follow up tho, they just slide too far away :'(

 

[CORY]

Hrmmmm.. Ok, cool, then : o

I was watching it on my phone, so there's a lot less I can do to investigate. It just "looked" like wario stood there out of hitstun for a while, which would be sensical if he had no idea what just happened.

 

[CheCray]

How often do you guys use float, besides when recovering? I'm starting to use it more and more because it's like THE mix up. I've been floating backwards towards opponents. If they try and swat me out of the air, I just Bair them. If they try and run away I can wave land towards them or use my jump. I don't have to commit to anything anymore.

On some characters it's so good for tech chasing. You can cover 2 tech roll directions easily with float, and if they miss the tech can get up attack a short hop float is high enough for a decent portion of the cast to miss you.

I'm sure everyone here knows how good float is, but how often do you guys actually use it?

 

[CORY]

How often do you guys use float,

all.
the.
****ing.
time.

 

[CORY]

How often do you guys use float, besides when recovering? I'm starting to use it more and more because it's like THE mix up. I've been floating backwards towards opponents. If they try and swat me out of the air, I just Bair them. If they try and run away I can wave land towards them or use my jump. I don't have to commit to anything anymore.

On some characters it's so good for tech chasing. You can cover 2 tech roll directions easily with float, and if they miss the tech can get up attack a short hop float is high enough for a decent portion of the cast to miss you.

I'm sure everyone here knows how good float is, but how often do you guys actually use it?

Real answer now : p

I like using it to mix up and remain ambiguous when I've taken control of the match pace, like I get a hit, take stage position and force them to shield. Run up and you have a crap ton of options to mess with them, and I really like the basic "jump aerial vs jump float for a delay aerial". You can catch people trying to antiair you on reaction, making it a bit of a frame trap.

Then, you turn around start using your aerials without float once they try to call you floating, then they eat a fist or something because of the timing mixup.

Alternately, you're taking stage but don't fully have momentum, so you mixup spaced aerials vs float spaced aerials, same basic idea as above.

Combine that with grounded pokes and you can stay less predictable.

Further uses from using momentum gains include sh bair into dj bair, vs into float into bair vs float away vs wl out of bair etc... Thus is really effective as well when they're on a platform, since you can do a bit more with the mixup, going as far as full jump bair to dj bair to float bair, if they decide to not roll away or anything.

All really simplified, since you can use a lot of different aerials depending on spacing and momentum (since you can reverse b, b reverse, and wave bounce the float).

It:s also gahlike to further edgeguard situations, since you can go out super deep with uair or just wait out someone's offstage stall attempts.

 

[Taytertot]

How often do you guys use float, besides when recovering? I'm starting to use it more and more because it's like THE mix up. I've been floating backwards towards opponents. If they try and swat me out of the air, I just Bair them. If they try and run away I can wave land towards them or use my jump. I don't have to commit to anything anymore.

On some characters it's so good for tech chasing. You can cover 2 tech roll directions easily with float, and if they miss the tech can get up attack a short hop float is high enough for a decent portion of the cast to miss you.

I'm sure everyone here knows how good float is, but how often do you guys actually use it?

its such a good edgeguard tool. i'll often full hop float and then wait for them to commit to a recovery option and punish with a bair, back side of uair or double jump aerial.

 

[CORY]

Any pointers for using/spacing Ganon's DACUS?

You'd probably get more help in this thread.

Personally, I feel people overrate his dacus a lot because of how fast/far you move with it.

The hitboxes don't come out until you've stopped moving, so make sure to keep that in mind.

I think the best uses are probably doing stuff like afc-jab-dacus on (semi)floaties at their proper percents. I couldn't:t really tell you those off the top of my head, but they're fairly narrow ranges, iirc. But, some of them will just die from the dacus at those percentages, so....

For general use, if someone's respecting your range and you want a bursty movement option, dacus isn't bad. If you're comfortable with the range on it, you can throw it out and be safe on block a(and even whiff in many situations) due to how fast the move ends when the hitbox finishes.

 

[CheCray]

I also use DACUS for punishing an opponent who has been launched onto a platform, whether they miss the tech or not. its a pretty low risk high reward option if you are below them and call out their roll direction. Because its so quick you can react to their roll direction if you're a good distance away in some cases, so it's not always a read. The reward is massive damage/KO if you hit it, the risk is low because IASA frames are good, you'll be actionable pretty quickly.

Only other use I find with it is when you know an opponent is going to jump you can usually DACUS underneath and catch em. Pretty hard read tho, but if you get it you usually get both hits which is like 44%... and as always, it looks swaggy af

 

[Bazkip]

So I've been doing some thinking about tethers and I believe I may have figured out our optimal strategy to punish the forced reel in. This is just theorycrafting though, may not necessarily work out. We can ledgehop bair to cover all fade back options, and then it appears that we still have enough time to grab them should they drift forwards. If this is the case then that would guarantee a punish every time as long as we execute properly.

If it turns out that we can't guarantee a grab after a whiffed bair (max drift in + FF may avoid standing grab, but maybe we can dash/boost/JC grab to get that?) I still believe these are probably our best options, we'll just need to instead react to their drift and choose one.

There's also the unfortunately possibility of getting a reverse bair which is a fairly light punish unless they're at a high enough percent to get sent far offstage on the other side.

Grab also won't get us much at some higher percents (and even mid-high percents against Samus) so maybe just ledgehop uair for the guaranteed hit at that point? Idk.

 

[Hungry Headcrab]

So I've been doing some thinking about tethers and I believe I may have figured out our optimal strategy to punish the forced reel in. This is just theorycrafting though, may not necessarily work out. We can ledgehop bair to cover all fade back options, and then it appears that we still have enough time to grab them should they drift forwards. If this is the case then that would guarantee a punish every time as long as we execute properly.

If it turns out that we can't guarantee a grab after a whiffed bair (max drift in + FF may avoid standing grab, but maybe we can dash/boost/JC grab to get that?) I still believe these are probably our best options, we'll just need to instead react to their drift and choose one.

There's also the unfortunately possibility of getting a reverse bair which is a fairly light punish unless they're at a high enough percent to get sent far offstage on the other side.

Grab also won't get us much at some higher percents (and even mid-high percents against Samus) so maybe just ledgehop uair for the guaranteed hit at that point? Idk.

I don't get to play against non-Samus tethers often enough to have punishes planned out for the faster fallers, but I'm quite fond of reverse-fair against her at least (not that I'm as consistent as I'd like on the spacing), which seems to work on anything aside from a super hard drift in. Not sure how viable it is against everyone else though.

I'm gonna have to toy around with bair though. Do you really have time to grab on drift in on the faster fallers like Lucas and such?

 

[Bazkip]

I don't get to play against non-Samus tethers often enough to have punishes planned out for the faster fallers, but I'm quite fond of reverse-fair against her at least (not that I'm as consistent as I'd like on the spacing), which seems to work on anything aside from a super hard drift in. Not sure how viable it is against everyone else though.

I'm gonna have to toy around with bair though. Do you really have time to grab on drift in on the faster fallers like Lucas and such?

Like I said this is just theorycrafting, it's entirely possible it works on some or maybe even none of the tether characters. Need to do some research/testing to determine if it's an actual option.

Fair definitely works in some cases but I'm trying to find something that covers everything. Uair already does that but on drift it in not much of a punish, so if you're using it then your opponents will just opt to drift in and take it every time cause they'll most likely be fine.

 

[Bazkip]

Okay so

Lucas forced tether reel in fast fall 29 frames airborne
30 frame landing lag
Actionable frame 60

Perfect ledge drop doublejump bair 28 frames airborne
12 frames l-cancelled landing lag
Actionable frame 41

Of course, we need to react to the reel in, and I don't think any of us are doing perfectly timed ledgehop bairs so...I don't know if this means it's possible or not lol. But given window I'd say plausible, with likelyhood increasing against the floatier tether characters.

 

[Bazkip]

Tried it out with a friend today and he was unable to buffer spotdodge before I could grab him, so as long as we don't mess up it seems it does work every time.

Also make sure you're jumping far enough onto the stage, there was a couple of times where I landed right on the edge and was out of range to grab.

Spoiler

lol triple post

 

[CORY]

so option coverage for forced tether jump is:
ledge hop bair, as far forward as possible, then grab if they drift ahead of us.

and it works on the fastest falling tether character, so it should work on even the floatier ones.

 

[Bazkip]

Was talking with @Lafungo about this stuff the other day and he said he prefers to use flame choke. Suppose well timed that should catch anything they try to do as well. Up to you which you think is the better option, but it's almost certainly the best option against Samus since AFC > Wiz Kick is a thing.