Ganonhelp

[Honest Ham]

I want to play Ganondorf at a higher level, but I'm not as comfortable with him as I used to be back before I had tried anyone else (I'm fairly new to melee). Fox, falco, marth, sheik, luigi, and bowser are all so different than him, and so I struggle with going back and forth. I find his wavedash to be especially difficult, as is his movement in general.

Fortunately, I've got a lot of time to practice and now I own my own cube and a dazzle, so I'm hoping to improve a lot. Below is the first ganondorf fight I recorded (about 2-3 weeks ago). I'd like to get some feedback and strategy advice, as I'm pretty much just throwing out moves randomly.

youtube / watch?v=6HGJYGyUNH0&feature=youtu.be

 

[-ACE-]

Watch spamming the side-B and down-B versus jiggs. It's super dangerous. I make this mistake too sometimes so trust me it's a bad one.

0:28 - You get a grab on jiggs when she's at 0% (with one pummel), dthrow, and fair her. I really like that your fair was retreating for slightly better spacing, but you are lucky that it worked out. You still could have been punished there, possibly with rest. fair isn't safe until like 70-80% I want to say, and even then you have to space it so that only the tip of his fist is hitting jiggs, otherwise you can get rested. I'm not exactly sure at which % the fair becomes safe, but even if jiggs has a few frames after stun ends to jump or rest, the spaced fair will hit her uncontested (this is without a doubt higher than 60% --- somewhere in the 70-85% range is what I'm talking about)

0:32 - that waveland off the top platform was wayyy too aggressive and put you in a bad position. You're lucky you got that trade with that rogue fair at 0:30 as it is. You closed the distance on jiggs before you could really get a hitbox out, and simultaneously put yourself OVER her. bad idea. She is now so far inside that she can not only win the exchange, but hit you with ease, while gliding in for a ridiculously easy folllow up.

The next few seconds you continue to run in and get your wrist slapped. See that fair attempt at 0:35? that is classic Ganon vs jiggs. Fairs are very difficult to land in this matchup and should be used both sparingly and wisely. Obviously landing them means profit but they need to be damn-near perfectly spaced to win exchanges/trade in this matchup, and spacing aerials against a good jiggs is just hard. Her horizontal aerial mobility is so superior to Ganon's that it requires us to read jiggs's approach. She isn't easy to grab but grabs are great because you get a guaranteed aerial which doesn't require a read for once.

In this case, after that fair she landed on you at 0:35, she gets a jab reset on you (not a true jab reset, as it didn't force you to stand up, but you did stand up) and doesn't punish. Be ready for stuff like this, jiggs's fair can put you in a techchase situation quickly.

---- I have no comment on you getting hit by the rollout twice and then trying to fair an invincible jiggs, lol -----

You go for a rogue fair at 1:13 and get bodied. Gotta use more uairs and bairs in this matchup. well timed ftilts (lots of low ftilts) and jabs, and occasional fully spaced dtilts as well.

1:22 - good choice of utilt there as punish. If she was at 0%, utilt will not kill if she's at the center of the stage and DI's.... you can dair, and if they aren't holding some form of down, you get another dair as they pop up, and then a techchase opportunity for a 55-60% punish (2 stomps plus aerial). If they are holding down, you can still follow up, and if nothing else, you are in a good spot to pressure her.

The second uair you did at 1:40 just put you in a horrible position... and that pound made you pay with your stock. Gotta play it safe. Only go offstage unless you KNOW you are going to hit her. It's tough. Just keep in mind also how well this character is capable of baiting Ganon.



Magus post from 2007 on the jiggs matchup.... I couldn't agree more lol

"Reverse u-airs as an anti-WoP only works well if they actually attack. As Jiggs, I find Ganon to be one of the easiest chars to fight. Just control space, empty SH around, get your little bonfire going and b-air camp like a champ. Ganon's slow jump and landlag combined with slow horizontal speed make it easy to just weave around at the right distance and slap him with the tip of a b-air after he tries to jump or do just about anything. Nevermind a wall of pain, it's more like a minefield of bitchslaps and aggravation."

 

[-ACE-]

remember, pivot bairs are faster than fairs. And, the hitbox is already out front (in this matchup, the initial frames of the fair (up top) aren't nearly as useful in the neatral game as the fully extended hitbox of the fair a few frames later). Practice that.

 

[Honest Ham]

Thanks for the comments ACE. I'll keep in mind what you said about B spam, aggressive (and bad) spacing, and aerials vs puff (and rollouts and invincibility). At 1:40... well since I got a dazzle, I've been losing a lot of stocks to swag attempts. My friends and I are amateurs (of which I'm the best) and because of that, a lot of things are possible that would NEVER work normally. That's why I go after ridiculous swag sometimes. After my first real tournament (UNH NESS Qualifier) last week, my new bruhs GTTom and Mafia taught me to play more seriously and cautiously, which I've since worked on (shoutouts btw). On a side note, in pools, Matt Dot Zeb explained that I had insulted him by throwing out a warlock's punch while falling from the sky (he didn't let it finish, obviously).

I've read about pivoting and tried to learn it, but I only have succeeded at it once, ever. Is there a trick to mastering this technique?

Lastly, at the tournament, I was told by multiple skilled players that 1) I beat myself by being impatient and throwing out random, sometimes even trollish moves and 2) I need to learn how to dashdance, wavedash, and generally just move better. As far as movement is concerned, I can perform a wavedash fairly well, but it seems like crap compared to Luici's and Fax's. When you play Ganon, how do you approach movement?

 

[-ACE-]

Going for the swag is cool and I do it too, but any advice that I give will be towards people developing only the most practical techniques for competitive play.

It's cool you've got some people to smash with. LOL you should practice the utilt as an edgeguard when you're bored. Just enough to get the timing down... so when you're feeling in a troll mood you can shatter dreams (how do you think MDZ would like that?). I utilt ganon, falcon, sheik, and spacies in friendlies lol. For spacies you just have to hit them offstage so far that they can barely make it back to begin with, then just time the utilt to go off the instant their trying to grab ledge. People think it's disrespect but I just love the challenge/reward of landing a move that requires such a long read and has such a monstrous hitbox.

As far as movement, just practice being fast. It's not imperative that you have the fastest Ganon around but speed helps Ganon at high level play quite a bit. You want to have all ganon's basic techs down so that you don't mess something up in tournament (one accidental fsmash and I die, happens all the time)... being fast and being in control. edge tricks, intricate wavelands, fastfalling everything, edge cancels, etc.

 

[Mikkelmann]

Also try to practice your --> A and Your spike if you master that you will win a lot of edge guarding.

 

[Honest Ham]

Thanks for the tips guys. I'll try out the utilt edge-guard soon. I've been working on applying everything that I've learned over the past month and it finally payed off. I couldn't stop going for warlock punches and other hot stuff, but I did pretty well at this tournament. Ofc, someone screwed up the labeling of characters and put marth as my second, so I had to fix that ASAP.