Q&A How to Wreck *****es with Ganon?- Linguini Q&A Thread

[YvngFlameHoe]

I know it works on Link too

 

[X WaNtEd X]

Shield to bait grab -> jump oos -> warlock punch. lmao. They'd probably hit your jump before they notice your warlock punch, so the risk is probably relatively low if you're not at a juicy or high percent.

 

[Swagic]

Okay, guys, I took about 5 minutes today and started compiling a list of things to practice. I've seen enough people jump in asking "what should I practice?" that I decided to put some effort into it. I know I don't have much of a name, but 95% of this stuff came from these boards. I arranged it in a sort of "trials" layout. Feel free to critique, add things, take things out. As it stands, this is what I'm working on.

Ganon trials:

Movement:

Wavelanding platforms to ground DL64
Battlefield
Yoshi's
FoD

Wavelanding to moonwalk
DL64
Battlefield
Yoshi's
FoD

DD to wavedash (a lap is one length of FD)
2 laps
4 laps
6 laps
10 laps

SH waveland
Perfect
Shortened


Ledge options:

Ledgehop
Temple
Yoshi's
FD
Uair regrab

Ledgedash
Temple
Yoshi's
FD

Reverse Ledgedash
Temple
Yoshi's
FD

Ledgedrops
Up-B
Uair
Bair

Ledgedash pivots
Jab
Ftilt
Uair

Extra credit:
Pseudoland


Defense:

Recovery
WF to ledge
Reverse Up-B
Ledgetech bair
Extra Credit:
The RockCrock

Platform
Shield drop uair
Platform drop fair (no shield)
Shield drop fair

Misc:
PS lasers
DI into grab


Combat:

Pivots
Fsmash
Jab
Ftilt

Grabs
JC
Tomahawk
Pivot grab
Extra credit:
CG

 

[PseudoTurtle]

If you read (might be able to react as well) a standing/jc grab from a Samus you can sh warlock punch, pretty hilarious that it's guaranteed.

Works on marth counter too. Funny option against marths who like to ledge hop counter. I don't think there's a situation that you can really react to it, though.

 

[F. Stein]

Works on marth counter too. Funny option against marths who like to ledge hop counter. I don't think there's a situation that you can really react to it, though.

React to the sheer amount of horror on your opponent's face when they realize your intentions and panic lmao.

 

[-ACE-]

Swagic that list is pretty damn good. That's more than I practice. All good stuff too.

I'm still ****ing around with NIL ****. I did something that's kinda jank but it's actually good and IMPOSSIBLE to mess up: NIL to walk. Lmao. If you NIL and simply walk for a split second, you can Isai drop instantly. Walk is slow but you aren't doing it but for a quarter second, and the NIL gets you to the platform very quickly. It's just a little slower and a little less demanding than NIL to instant dash to instant running shield drop (shai drop even tho I hate that name, it's a running shield drop or a shield drop out of dash ffs), but still a quick falling uair happens as soon as they say "why the **** is he walking" lol, kinda funny.

I suck at proofreading.

Double edit: also I chaingrabbed spider_sense's fox 50 to death 3 days ago.

Gotem City. Population: Jason's fox.

 

[Swagic]

Oh, by the way, platform drop-fair is a thing. NIL-walk-fair would be a hilarious combo, except it would only work on someone standing directly in front of you and won't work at high level.

 

[-ACE-]

It certainly can work, you just can't get repetitive. It's a good mixup along with

NIL instant drop
NIL instant dash into shield drop or pivot shield drop
NIL instant drop, dj wL back on plat
Platform wL
Jump while holding down (never land on plat) as a bait

They often expect the wL. Anything that can surprise them has a purpose.

 

[-ACE-]

I feel like you could bait someone easily with NIL walk forward to dash back shield drop bair. I'm just brainstorming.

 

[Swagic]

Someone who didn't have a faster attack than your turnaround. If they catch you in shieldstun, that's a bad time.

 

[-ACE-]

Just dash sooner, lol (or execute the whole thing sooner, or when there is more space between you and your opponent). If the aerial is spaced right that's all that matters

 

[X WaNtEd X]

It certainly can work, you just can't get repetitive. It's a good mixup along with

NIL instant drop
NIL instant dash into shield drop or pivot shield drop
NIL instant drop, dj wL back on plat
Platform wL
Jump while holding down (never land on plat) as a bait

They often expect the wL. Anything that can surprise them has a purpose.

I feel like you could bait someone easily with NIL walk forward to dash back shield drop bair. I'm just brainstorming.

Yeah I've been working on this stuff for a bit now and implementing it in games. What I've found is that NIL is good, but situations to instantly drop rarely happen. I find more often that NIL dash dance into shield drop bair works for ledge pressure and sometimes for edgeguards. Another cool thing that's worked for me is shield drop dj platform wl offstage into uair/bair/dair. People just don't see it coming, especially if you were dash dancing into to. There's also shield drop wl to grab ledge on Yoshi's and BF. I've gotten some good ramen noodles out of it. Also shield drop into wl on the ground gives you some sick movement options and mixups for this. For example, a mixup for the shield drop bair once they start shielding it is shield drop wl grab. Depending on how far you go, you might have to smash turn the grab.

What I'm currently working on still is getting down shield drop fair out of a dash down consistently on all stages. The idea is to be able to shield drop out of a dash dance regardless of the direction I happen to be facing to react to someone coming in with either bair or fair just by hitting the c stick in the right direction in time. And of course, being able to shield drop a fair from a lower platform is really good for spacing. Doing it from the top platform is really good too.

Another cool thing I found is that shield drop dair on BF will shield poke if you do it right on Fox. Not sure about other characters. It comes out at almost the same spacing as what you'd do if you were just shing into a shield poke dair attempt. And it's pretty cool because you could be on a platform and potentially cover a spacie side-b recovery onto stage below a platform by running to the correct positioning and shield drop dairing.

Anther movement idea I've had lately is to copy what HBox does with Puff on platforms with Ganon. He'll often wavedash in place, giving a fake cue that he's dropping through the platform. I'm experimenting with this with Ganon. Maybe wd in place as a bait into shield drop/regular drop bair or wd off platform into something. There's a lot of things you could do with this.

 

[-ACE-]

Nice post. Although risky, I like shield drop to immediate dj uair in some cases. Also once they get used to your drop aerials, shield drop grab (like a tomahawk) becomes a thing.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

Yeah that's what I was talking about with shield drop wl grab. It's important to wl in place if you do it at some spacings. There's also shield drop up-b on shield.

 

[RedmanSSBM]

So about those mod duties...

 

[-ACE-]

So about those mod duties...

I'll let you know if I hear anything else bro

 

[Swagic]

South Floridorfs-

Anybody going to the FGCU LAN event in April? I'm already registered. It's completely free, if that helps.

 

[-ACE-]

South Floridorfs-

Anybody going to the FGCU LAN event in April? I'm already registered. It's completely free, if that helps.

April ey? No idea. Looking at possibly the Tampa tourney at the end of Feb or Pound in April.

 

[RedmanSSBM]

April ey? No idea. Looking at possibly the Tampa tourney at the end of Feb or Pound in April.

Please go to Pound.

 

[Swagic]

Pound is first weekend of April, this is the 23.

Edited to fix date.

 

[Linguini]

Unrelated:

Yo ganon homies, coming out with a music release in a few weeks, here's a preview of the track. Would appreciate the support! If you like it please buy it online!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIXr5EyZsXg&feature=youtu.be

Will post the link once it's out.

Peace!

 

[Bwmat]

On the topic of platforms, something I do a lot (more with falcon but with ganon as well) which is surprisingly effective is, while right beside someone in neutral while under a platform, just jump onto the platform (nil is desirable) and then immediately drop with a fast aerial (so for Ganon, bair). People put down their shields when they see you going for the platform way too often.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

Sometimes that works for me, but people often just attack me before I can get an aerial out. So if I do that, I make sure I'm far away so that by the time they attack, my hitbox will be out.

 

[Bwmat]

Yeah, fully spaced bairs ftw

 

[RedmanSSBM]

Unrelated:

Yo ganon homies, coming out with a music release in a few weeks, here's a preview of the track. Would appreciate the support! If you like it please buy it online!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIXr5EyZsXg&feature=youtu.be

Will post the link once it's out.

Peace!

Nice. Looking forward to this.

On a side note, where did the name 'Meeels' come from?

 

[Swagic]

Just a thought- what would turning more defensive do for the Ganon meta?

We spend a lot of time working on developing new approaches or ways to recover off the ledge, which is fair, because those are Ganon's biggest weaknesses. But the dude is a tank. With good DI, he can survive (often) past 150% and just eat a lot of approaches to counter (Think CC Falcon's nair).

Basically, what if we had a compendium of the most common approaches from the opponent and how to counter them?

Like Falcon's nair, which we CC jab/ftilt/dtilt/whatever you can fit in,
Or Fox nair (that I have no answer to)
Or Falco lasers that you either DI in for a grab or PS or jump over.

I know, it would be a lot of work, but I think it would be VERY helpful.

 

[F. Stein]

Sounds like something good for our ganon tool box for sure.

 

[RedmanSSBM]

Just a thought- what would turning more defensive do for the Ganon meta?

We spend a lot of time working on developing new approaches or ways to recover off the ledge, which is fair, because those are Ganon's biggest weaknesses. But the dude is a tank. With good DI, he can survive (often) past 150% and just eat a lot of approaches to counter (Think CC Falcon's nair).

Basically, what if we had a compendium of the most common approaches from the opponent and how to counter them?

Like Falcon's nair, which we CC jab/ftilt/dtilt/whatever you can fit in,
Or Fox nair (that I have no answer to)
Or Falco lasers that you either DI in for a grab or PS or jump over.

I know, it would be a lot of work, but I think it would be VERY helpful.

Thank you for using the word 'compendium' correctly.

From a theoretical standpoint at the highest level, Ganon is limited enough to where he virtually has no choice but to play defensively. He cannot afford to get aggressive against other top players because of how easily Ganon's weaknesses can be exposed. Being more defensive overall could maybe advance the Ganon meta, but we can't just concentrate on only being defensive and nothing else. This game is all about adaptability and unpredictability and you need to express both of those aspects of the game through Ganon very well.

What does it mean to be defensive? To me, being defensive means negating the offensive tactics of your opponents by using Ganon's defensive strengths to his advantage. Ganon does have a pretty damn good CC and ASDI down ability that is often underused because we have this idea to leave the ground a lot and do our aerials much like Falcon, but we easily forget that a lot of our ground moves knock people down at much lower percents than other characters, especially if you compare to Falcon. We can't utilize the strength of CC if we are no on the ground, and if you're not fast falling enough when you do do an aerial, then a fast character will be able to catch you as you're falling and the only thing you can do them is DI and hope that they mess up their punish. Getting really good with predicting when a light-hit attack is coming your way and CCing for it by being in the ground is a crucial fundamental to the game that we often get caught not doing cause we want to do the aerials so frequently. It's almost always a case of who jumps first is the one that loses.

I strongly believe that Ganon's ground game is better than Falcon's ground game on the basis that when Ganon needs to attack and knockdown opponents, his tilts reach pretty damn far and knock down really early, and his jab knocks down early as well and comes out very fast. Falcon might be fast on the ground sure, but his strengths as a character are in his aerials that he does, and he only has one aerial that knocks down at 0% and that's dair. Ganon has two aerials that knock down at 0%; dair and fair (in NTSC).

The thing about doing moves on the ground is that if you are holding down while doing them, ASDI down is definitely an option for you. It's important to be on the ground more than in the air in neutral when you are at low percent so that you don't get knocked down and a punish can't be started on you. Whiffing a dtilt but still holding down so if the opponent is dumb enough to attack you with nair will result in them getting CC jabbed or CC grabbed. A smart player will realize you are going for this CC defense and counter it by grabbing you, which you can counter it by simply jumping.

It's typically safer to start jumping at higher percents where more moves will knock you down cause even if you CC it, you'll still get knocked down and the best you can hope for is to tech it. You won't be able to act immediately and this is key.

I think another defensive thing we could do more of is retreat out of shield and not be afraid to retreat to the ledge, since with intangibility Ganon can be really troublesome at the edge, if not stronger. I think it's just a matter of being aware of what your opponent is looking for and what your opponent is capable of doing in order to be able to punish them at the ledge or be able to get back to center stage. Ganon definitely has the ability to do the "Mew2King affect where being at the ledge is actually advantageous for him and I think it's really a matter of being more comfortable at the ledge and concentrating our punishes to put people off stage.

Even if you're going to be offensive, you still want to make sure then even if you whiff, you can quickly put yourself in a defensive position and maintain control. I often see too much aggression from players that put them in worse positions than they were before and don't know how to quickly transition back into being defensive. Some players are even concentrating on only being defensive and are hard to get in on, but they are thinking on a rather linear path and they can be adapted to rather quickly as long as you're patient enough.

So when you mention how to counter moves from opponents the most important thing is context, as some moves will work better than others depending on a myriad of factors. Even learning to be defensive against Falco's lasers in neutral and learning to wavedash out of your shield efficiently is a very key thing in especially the Falco matchup.

A compendium would be a nice reference point but there would be so much data to cover that it would never get finished (just look at Renth's match-up guide from a while ago. He only managed to get ICs and Ganon dittos matchup done) so it's best that we try to think in terms of theoreticals and trying to apply that stuff so that way it's more flexible and there isn't so much time being wasted on finding data that only helps us in certain contexts.

 

[-ACE-]

I like the thought of being more defensive at certain times against floaties. Basically, maximizing pressure is the goal, but forcing sub-par situations isn't. In some matchups you can afford to be patient, and some you need to go ham.

Edit: agreed with Locke, as a whole Ganon is definitely a defensive character.

 

[gmBottles]

I think being defensive is overall much better for Ganondorf, as opposed to playing very aggro. I always preferred that kind of playstyle with him over BizzaroFlame-esque style. One is more hype I suppose, but the other is much more effective.

 

[-ACE-]

Basically, this is where you want to take your opponent.

 

[Swagic]

Thanks Locke, excellent points. I was mainly bringing it up because there has been so much discussion of approaches recently. My idea was to start it more as an FAQ, like "what do I do against a DD camping Falcon?" "How do I stop Puff utilt?" Stuff like that. I realize that there are a multitude of options, but that's what the benefit of the site is- community effort. Start with just three approaches from the top four, with like one counter per approach, then have the community help.


But the more I think about it, the more clearly I see Ganon is a defensive character.

 

[-ACE-]

Speaking of defense, I picked up something the past few years that has helped me out a lot against characters with fast aerial approaches. And that's simply to do a maximum wd back or dash wd back as soon as I anticipate the approach. I think reaction time is one of my strengths and I can throw off their spacing sometimes with this as a general go-to strat. Lots of new options can surface if you guess right. If you guess wrong, you have only sacrificed some stage, but not much. You at least won't get punished much, you just don't want to corner yourself. Good vs falcon, fox, pikachu, pichu, jiggs, marios, etc. It REALLY helps vs falcon and pikachu imo since you kind of have to respect the **** out of their approach, laying low and waiting for solid grab opportunities.

Rofl Swype text. Genital go-to strat instead of general. lol

 

[tm]

LOOOL Ace.

Yo any Floridorfs wanna house me for Fri & Sat night for CEO?

 

[-ACE-]

LOOOL Ace.

Yo any Floridorfs wanna house me for Fri & Sat night for CEO?

When is CEO? And unfortunately I can't, it's me and my girl in a small place currently.

 

[tm]

June 24 (fri) - 26 (sun)

 

[-ACE-]

I might not be in Florida anymore by then. Not sure.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

those dorf connections tho

 

[X WaNtEd X]

But back to the topic, I think defensive play in neutral is mostly the way to go. But if you get too defensive, good people will just run over you. You have to be able to offset your defense with aggression to get your openings or vice versa. Saying it's never good to be aggressive with Ganon is naive in my opinion.

Also, I think the more important aspect of defense is combo DI and SDI. People talk about defense in the neutral too much. Sure that's cool but a big reason most Ganon players suck is because they don't have nearly as good DI as the good Ganons. You gotta accept the fact you're going to lose neutral probably more often than your opponent if they're good. So you better be ready to mitigate their punish game as much as possible.

 

[tm]

I don't have trouble against players that approach me lul. Although ganon's defense is way better than his offense, it can only do so much.