His new one may be slower
You say this as if it's a minor issue. The ridiculous speed was why the attack was so great; that it was also an amazing finisher was extra. Whenever a non-shielding opponent is too close, down-smash! Even if he does manage to shield in time, it still works for spacing. But it just doesn't work anymore in SSB4, so the only thing left is a slow finisher (and G&W has plenty of slow finishers).
His air game is still good with great disjoints,
No it isn't. I've had situations where I managed to get a full hit in with an aerial, and THEN get punished by an opponent's attack because their hitstun was shorter than the time it takes for the move to finish. Game & Watch is simply that bad right now.
but what I'm trying to say is that he's not going to become any
better by whining or praying. We can (and should) acknowledge his faults
and maybe realize that winning with him may be harder than with some other characters.
But rather than be sad about the loss of things that made him good
in a past game, we need to look for new tools and strategies
he didn't have before. Don't turn away or discourage people
who try to make a character work.
You don't seem to understand that some characters are inherently unviable for competitive play. I have mained Mr. Game & Watch since Melee, and despite having played G&W far more in SSB4 I'm achieving far better results with Jigglypuff despite playing clearly worse with Jigglypuff. To win with G&W you need to be A LOT better than your opponent (or your opponent's character must be weak to G&W), and when playing against a good opponent it's just not feasible to play with a character like G&W.
The only hope we have of getting G&W to a tournament-viable level is for him to be buffed in a patch. No amount of skill is going to make him work as-is.
Keep in mind I HAVEN'T PLAYED THE GAME YET.
No offense, but I don't think your opinion means much when you haven't played the new G&W yourself. To really understand the extent to which G&W was nerfed, you need to play as him. All of his nerfs are minor on paper, but in practice the effect is huge.
I do way better when I bait people into doing wrong things. Such as throwing out aerials out for no reason.
Yes, Game & Watch still works against unskilled players. But you can't expect skilled players to throw out easily punishable attacks all the time. Having to rely on your opponent's incompetence is hardly a winning strategy.
Just try not to eat the end lag if you miss.
The issue with end lag is not that you get punished if you miss (because in that case you simply deserve it), but rather that you get punished if the opponent shields ANY of your attacks, or sometimes even when the attack properly connects! You can't pressure the opponent with attacks they must avoid because any attack you try that with will be punished. This leaves Mr. Game & Watch with a very passive playing style (wait for your opponent to initiate the attack and try to counter that), which it's very bad at (slow attacks, low priority, ****ty hitboxes, slow roll).
hey guys, how effective is Chef in your opinion?
I havn't had the chance to try it on my best buddy/good players, but the average FG-guys tend to give me an opening for a dash/fair/grab rather often.
What's your opinion about that?
Extremely effective, one of G&W's best moves now that everything else is nerfed. Obviously you shouldn't use it on fast characters standing idle, but sausage spam against opponents that aren't able to punish you for it (slow opponents/opponents in the air unable to reach you/etc) can rack up damage quite fast. It's especially annoying against opponents trying to recover vertically but have a slow up-B, so they have to re-do the up-B every single time they get hit by a sausage.
Also keep in mind that the pan itself has great horizontal knockback for spacing. Against slow opponents it can be used in a similar way to Brawl's Down-smash to get some distance. Against certain characters (and incompetent opponents) it can also be used to stop them from rushing you/using charge attacks towards you with proper timing.
Another use is to abuse G&W's amazing vertical recovery with it; if you have to recover horizontally but are plenty high up, you can just sausage spam off the edge if the enemy isn't chasing you, then recover from below. The sausage spam deals damage, frustrates the opponent (occasionally enough to surprise them with a sudden aerial back to the stage) and makes it hard to approach you. Again, results vary strongly per character you're playing against.
