Hi. I'm rather new to PM and the competitive smash scene in general. I started playing playing smash again this year after my friends got me into it. We mostly play PM right now and we are having a small crew battle in a few couple weeks. I recently picked up Ganon as my main because he seemed fun, but I'm not very experienced so most of my friends consistently beat me. I know the basics (l-cancelling, wavedashing, etc.) through my friends and the internet, but I'm struggling to apply what I know. I know that PM has given Ganon a lot of options, but I don't really know what I should be doing to get better. I've been getting frustrated with myself because I don't seem to be very "naturally" good like most of my friends are and I have trouble beating even people that I know I should be better than. I've tried several characters out of frustration, but I like Ganon and I want to be "that guy who plays Ganon" in my friend group while still winning. I get that this kind of thing takes a lot of practice, but I first need to learn how to practice. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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Help with Ganon play for a beginner
- Thread starter iturtle
- Start date
ganon lives and dies on hard reads, so if you have a hard time finding habits and exploiting them, or conditioning the opponent into doing "something" then punishing that thing, you'll have a hard time as ganon.
easy things to watch for:
-when you put them into a tech position do they have a habit? common habits include always rolling to the center of the stage or always rolling behind you. just set up a tech chase and watch them a few times in a row, to see.
-do they knee jerk shield grab, no matter what? you can take advantage of this if your lcancelling is on point by either jabbing or immediately flame choking (which will pull you back out of range of many grabs). you can also punish people who don't respect your nair's ac window by mashing jab as you land, which should catch them before they can do almost anything besides roll or spotdodge.
-do they always jump up asap if you throw them offstage? you can exploit this by basically immediately running out and jumping into a dair on the only trajectory they have. alternately, if they always fall down first, run off and dropzone uair eats a lot of people alive (in case you don't know, dropzone is literally just run off stage and do an aerial, no jump).
now, for conditioning, being ganon automatically helps you to condition people, because you can threaten with strong aerials, making them want to shield. get them used to shielding, then jump in and go for aerial flame choke a few times, then you now have a very basic mixup game. to expand upon this, you can also go for jump in-dj then aerial; jump in-float just a small amount-aerial; or jump in-float then jump out of float to either a retreat or the aerial. all have different timings and if the opponent starts trying to snipe your float out with aerials, the jump in aerial option should beat them (with proper spacing and attack choices), and jump-float-dj retreat sometimes being safe, too.
and now: things that you shouldn't do. don't throw out wizkick and flamechoke willy nilly in neutral. wizkick should almost always be used as a punish or a combo ender that gets the opponent at least offstage to setup for an edgeguard (i.e. don't wizkick at 20, you probably won't get much positional advantage and probably just reset the situation to neutral, which isn't that great for ganon). i consider using wizkick to go through predictable projectiles to be a punish, btw. flame choke can be used slightly more often, but you still want to be mostly saving it for "they're used to shielding, and i'm close enough that they can't easily react to the start up and roll away". don't use dair nearly as much as you probably are (blind statement. i know it just tends to get overused by newer players because it's a really sexy attack). if you're very new to pm/melee, don't worry about wavedashing and wavelanding, yet. wl-ing on platforms is great for ganon, but you won't get mileage out of it if you're not able to take advantage of the options you gain from the mixups and movement.
other random tips: use a lot more ac nair and sh uair than you are. this is a totally blind statement, but they're both amazing moves that get underutilized by newer players because they're not really as much fun as fair or dair. those two moves will do A LOT of work for you and help you to block out a lot of aggro options from other people. when you recover high, flowchart as: double jump into wizkick into float into double jump into up/side b. don't float before wizkick, it's not worth it. as an addendum: be careful when you wizkick too close to the stage, because it's easy to be hit out of it and not regain your dj. and get very comfortable with doing ledge drop uairs. if you're quick enough, you can get them out totally invincible and land on stage with it, only losing invincibility right before you land. this is going to take a bit of lab time to practice, but it's very useful.
and the final bit: ganon has a lot of really bad polarized matchups, namely falco and shiek (and to a slightly lesser degree, toon link, diddy, and link). those first two are almost (aaaaalmost, not entirely) unwinnable if the opponent is patient, because they can control your neutral options so well. don't get discouraged by quick characters (especially with projectiles). in the crew battle, hope your crew captain knows when to send you in, and never give up. if you can take it to a last stock situation, you can always hope to condition the opponent into rolling towards the ledge and ganonciding them for the win, no matter their (or your!) percent.
easy things to watch for:
-when you put them into a tech position do they have a habit? common habits include always rolling to the center of the stage or always rolling behind you. just set up a tech chase and watch them a few times in a row, to see.
-do they knee jerk shield grab, no matter what? you can take advantage of this if your lcancelling is on point by either jabbing or immediately flame choking (which will pull you back out of range of many grabs). you can also punish people who don't respect your nair's ac window by mashing jab as you land, which should catch them before they can do almost anything besides roll or spotdodge.
-do they always jump up asap if you throw them offstage? you can exploit this by basically immediately running out and jumping into a dair on the only trajectory they have. alternately, if they always fall down first, run off and dropzone uair eats a lot of people alive (in case you don't know, dropzone is literally just run off stage and do an aerial, no jump).
now, for conditioning, being ganon automatically helps you to condition people, because you can threaten with strong aerials, making them want to shield. get them used to shielding, then jump in and go for aerial flame choke a few times, then you now have a very basic mixup game. to expand upon this, you can also go for jump in-dj then aerial; jump in-float just a small amount-aerial; or jump in-float then jump out of float to either a retreat or the aerial. all have different timings and if the opponent starts trying to snipe your float out with aerials, the jump in aerial option should beat them (with proper spacing and attack choices), and jump-float-dj retreat sometimes being safe, too.
and now: things that you shouldn't do. don't throw out wizkick and flamechoke willy nilly in neutral. wizkick should almost always be used as a punish or a combo ender that gets the opponent at least offstage to setup for an edgeguard (i.e. don't wizkick at 20, you probably won't get much positional advantage and probably just reset the situation to neutral, which isn't that great for ganon). i consider using wizkick to go through predictable projectiles to be a punish, btw. flame choke can be used slightly more often, but you still want to be mostly saving it for "they're used to shielding, and i'm close enough that they can't easily react to the start up and roll away". don't use dair nearly as much as you probably are (blind statement. i know it just tends to get overused by newer players because it's a really sexy attack). if you're very new to pm/melee, don't worry about wavedashing and wavelanding, yet. wl-ing on platforms is great for ganon, but you won't get mileage out of it if you're not able to take advantage of the options you gain from the mixups and movement.
other random tips: use a lot more ac nair and sh uair than you are. this is a totally blind statement, but they're both amazing moves that get underutilized by newer players because they're not really as much fun as fair or dair. those two moves will do A LOT of work for you and help you to block out a lot of aggro options from other people. when you recover high, flowchart as: double jump into wizkick into float into double jump into up/side b. don't float before wizkick, it's not worth it. as an addendum: be careful when you wizkick too close to the stage, because it's easy to be hit out of it and not regain your dj. and get very comfortable with doing ledge drop uairs. if you're quick enough, you can get them out totally invincible and land on stage with it, only losing invincibility right before you land. this is going to take a bit of lab time to practice, but it's very useful.
and the final bit: ganon has a lot of really bad polarized matchups, namely falco and shiek (and to a slightly lesser degree, toon link, diddy, and link). those first two are almost (aaaaalmost, not entirely) unwinnable if the opponent is patient, because they can control your neutral options so well. don't get discouraged by quick characters (especially with projectiles). in the crew battle, hope your crew captain knows when to send you in, and never give up. if you can take it to a last stock situation, you can always hope to condition the opponent into rolling towards the ledge and ganonciding them for the win, no matter their (or your!) percent.