New Ganondorf main here

[Kulty]

Hi guys,

So after struggling for choosing a PM main, I finally decided to mainalong with my Melee mains (), because I think he's one of the most rewarding characters that I can ever play in PM and plus, he fits my playstyle. So basically I have a few questions to improve my Ganondorf play:
1) What does Ganondorf neutral look like? What should I do in neutral?
2) What are the techniques or concepts that I should practice often with Ganondorf?
3) What are the most important things or mindset to remember when I play Ganondorf?
4) What are the actions that I should avoid doing when playing Ganondorf? What are the most common mistakes that low level players who main PM Ganondorf make and how to avoid it?

I appreciate if someone can answer these questions. It will be really helpful since I really lovein all his Smash appearances, with being my favorite version. Since he has the potential to be great in PM, I decided to give him a shot, since he feels different compared to his main Smash appearances due to his change in animations, faster up-tilt, a float and a new down-taunt (that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE)

 

[CheCray]

I'm going to focus your question about the neutral in particular since neutral can be talked about forever in PM. In a game like PM neutral is kinda dependent on who your opponent plays, especially since the meta is so undefined. Normally Ganon is defensive and waits for the opponent to make a mistake, occasionally baiting out commitments and punishing with his burst movement. This strat works very effectively, but now he can initiate engagements against some characters thanks to his new burst movement options in PM. For example against grounded characters like Marth, Roy, DK, or sometimes Fox, tricky wavelands and platform movement can take Ganon far. Mix in floats and Ganon can often be the one Iniating strings with his deceptive burst movement. For example Ganon is posting up a wall of Bairs against a Roy who is dash dancing at a safe distance trying to wait for an opening, then instead of Bair-ing in place Ganon can WL in and jab, grab, Ftilt Ect. Here Ganon can be proactive and actively try and work his way in, instead of simply waiting for the opponent to approach and Ganon trying to counter play that approach.

That's not the only change for Ganon that benefits his neutral though, Ganon doesn't have to commit when putting pressure on the opponent anymore. Now that he has float, with good spacing, Ganon can float towards the opponent threatening with a possibility of an aerial, but retaining the ability jump or waveland away. Not having to commit is huge... like its Mondo Burger huge.

Yet as every Ganon main knows, certain characters can invalidate him and his burst movement, then Ganon has no other option but to stay back and wait for the opponent to approach and punish accordingly. Characters that invalidate Ganon ussually do it through movement Ganon simply can't keep up with or projectiles. Characters that do this include, Tink, C Falcon, Meta Knight, and Falco.

As for that other stuff you asked for? Learn how to move with Ganon, Wavelands out of EVERYTHING. do it. Ganon has insane burst movement use it and Ganon will pull off insane stuff. All you need is a touch on the opponent and you can zero to death a lot of the cast if you know what your doing.

low level players fair shields and get grabed, don't do that

 

[CORY]

don't use wiz kick nearly as much as you probably want. if you're not forcing them into a bad position, they're probably baiting it out.

don't use dair and fair as much as you probably want.

fair is a perfectly good spacing move, but fadeaway fair is easy for a lot of the cast to bait out, call you on it, then punish you either during startup or on a whiff. not saying, don't use it, but be mindful of why you want to use it and make sure that's a good situation for it. if you space properly and hit their shield, you can pretty much always at the very least roll away safely, and if you've forced them close to the edge you can start pressuring with spaced fair-f/dtilt or gfc or utilt or another fair or uair or etc...

dair gets overused by new players because it's really ****ing cool and it's a sexy move, but it has some good startup and a limited hitbox range (entirely below him, mainly) and since ganon doesn't move fast, you can't effectively extend it, like falcon could. further, since the hitboxes are all entirely below him, it's hard to make a safe spacing for it, due to lack of speed, so you can technically make it safe on shield with l cancelling, but it's easier to mess it up and you're putting yourself in a riskier position. save it for good read punishes and trying to edgeguard someone, as part of your overall repertoire.

for neutral, you're going to spend a lot of time grounded trying to poke out with ftilt (dtilt is better for comboes, but slightly slower and a bit less safe). once you start to figure them out, you can mix it up with rar-bair, which can be sh-auto cancelled, or delayed for a lower hit. with the ac, you can sh-bair-dj-[aerial] or float-[whatever] or waveland away or towards, with their own set of options out of them (sh-bair-wl away jump in fair works surprisingly well, for example). there's also sh-instant uair for a good coverage attack. since it covers so much above and around him and comes out frame 11, it's very useful against characters that want to approach from that 45 degree in front of you angle. hopefully they reinstate his hitboxes on nair, so you have more options to use, but until then, keep this more as a combo linking tool (it's frame 5 and does really good damage, so you can do stuff like dthrow-sh nair and if you get both hits you just dealt around 30 damage. brutal).

ganon's neutral is pretty weak, though. you can't force the opponent to do much and you're slow, even with wavelands, so you have to be patient and know how to play the stage control game. your neutral options rely mostly on the threat of your punishes and the fact that ganon can actually kill off of stray hits really well at what would be "just approaching" dangerous for a lot of the rest of the cast. to this end, as i said, you'll spend a lot of the neutral phase just trying to push people back towards the ledge so you can start forcing your options on them (think like a street fighter zangief playstyle. he's got bad footsie tools, but they get WAY better once he corners you and removes your ability to retreat and do bait-punish).

i'll find a link (or maybe someone else will) of the afc frame data. it's really rough, because there are inconsistencies with different di's out of it up to maybe 3 frames, but it lets you get a rough idea of what you can get guaranteed out of afc and whether or not you want that vs a hard read punish.

a lot of ganon's gameplan is centered around finally forcing the opponent to take an option, then punishing them for it. hence, the pushing around in neutral. you need to get good at finding patterns and preferences and exploiting those, especially any situations you have advantage (tech situations; staggered neutral, where you've gotten a hit but they're just in the air not being juggled yet; forcing them to shield near the ledge; things like that). if you can chaingrab that character, do it. if you can't, find out if you can do jank **** like dthrow-jab/grounded neutralb-regrab because they fell asleep on your something. if you can do something showy, to get inside their head, do it. the more advantages you can press on them the better.

and ganon is pretty bad under pressure. he has a few good options, but they either hit relatively high (nair, frame 10, hits near right below ganon's chest, i think; uair, frame 11, hits closer to his head; grab, lolz) or are really committal (upb oos, frame 11, can be turned to either direction at any point before it starts, has good grab range, but if you miss you're really high in the air...). for upb oos, specifically, don't be afraid to toss it out if the opponent is blatantly disrespecting you since it deals 18% and has pretty good kb on it. once they have to start putting more energy into thinking about their pressure and baits you get a bit more breathing room.

for practice, once you get used to the pm physics (since they're slightly different than melee's) the most useful things would be bair-wavelands and perfect ledge hop wavelands. other really useful tools to practice are rar-wavedash (for edgehogging) and learning to manipulate the float physics (so, breverse, reverse b, and wavebouncing) to open up your options out of it. also sh-uair-wl is nice, though more limited in application than sh-bair-wl. and practice sweetspotting with ganon. i don't know a good way to do it easily, but his sweetspot is really finnicky and seems to require only one small range of angles and distance. try to get used to that and practice it. get used to sweetspotting with sideb, as well.

i'm going to start off and say get really used to float. like, overuse it. get to where you're predictable about using it and are getting punished for it. then start cutting those bad situations out. use it to go super deep offstage and uair someone recovering, or just to wait out their offstage stall options before getting a tipman or bair or fair or whatever. in neutral, full jump float and watch your opponent. there's a lot of the cast that can just throw a random hitbox out and catch you, but anyone slightly slow can probably be reacted to if they jump in at you by dj-fair, and if nothing else it's a mixup allowing you to either go for sh-aerial, full jump-aerial, sh-float-[thing], fj-float-[thing], or skip the float and dj out of the first jump.

a small amount of the cast (slower characters without quick, big forward/upward coverage moves) can be sorta float camped by ganon. peach sits around this camp, so you can dd around to establish spacing and then sh float and react to whatever she does. if she retreats, you keep floating foward and just wait it out. if she approaches, you can dj out and aerial, or just dj out and reset the situation. if you force a retreat, you've gained stage positioning, if you're forced to pull back, you've likely just kept things neutral. as i said, though, not useful against too many characters. even ganon can just toss out uair and your dj won't get you out of the range ><

when you gain momentum, float becomes far more useful and way safer. if they're shielding you can now mix up your approaches with space aerials or jump-float spaced aerials (just simple timing mixups do a lot of work, especially when people are establishing patterns) or just tomahawks, or jump-afc (because they're just done with your ****ing aerial mixups and are just gonna shield and wait).

i'm not as good at this portion, but it's also great for tech situations, because you can, say, afc, then jump toward them and float. if they roll behind you, you can cancel out, wl back, and do a thing. if they go forward, you can just fair (or cancel into wl-thing, as well). or if they're forced to tech further out, say from bad di on a semi fastfaller eating fair, you can dash-sh-float and cover a lot of distance with it, while remaining relatively open as far as options go.

and, yeah, big long rambly write up. sorry, we don't have a good guide up, so this is probably the best i can do on a whim. feel free to ask questions, i'll see what i can do. check the vid thread and watch people critically, understand why they did what they did and think about it. it'll help you out as a player, too. and if you get any vids up, don't feel bad about asking for critique, that's how you start to find bad habits (and even your really good ones).

 

[CheCray]

yesssss CORY, spot on about all that float stuff you mentioned. Float is the greatest thing ever, almost as good as a Good Burger.


Might as well shamelessly plug my beginner guide I made, its got a good overview over moveset and tech for Ganon. It's prob pretty good for someone looking for a place to start, and its got lots of frame data if you want to get more in depth as you get better -----> :D

 

[Kulty]

I'm going to focus your question about the neutral in particular since neutral can be talked about forever in PM. In a game like PM neutral is kinda dependent on who your opponent plays, especially since the meta is so undefined. Normally Ganon is defensive and waits for the opponent to make a mistake, occasionally baiting out commitments and punishing with his burst movement. This strat works very effectively, but now he can initiate engagements against some characters thanks to his burst movement. For example against grounded characters like Marth, Roy, DK, or sometimes Fox, tricky wavelands and platform movement can take Ganon far. Mix in floats and Ganon can often be the one Iniating strings with his deceptive burst movement. For example Ganon is posting up a wall of Bairs against a Roy who is dash dancing at a safe distance trying to wait for an opening, then instead of Bair-ing in place Ganon can WL in and jab, grab, Ftilt Ect. Here Ganon can be proactive and actively try and work his way in, instead of simply waiting for the opponent to approach and Ganon trying to counter play that approach.

That's not the only change for Ganon that benefits his neutral though, Ganon doesn't have to commit when putting pressure on the opponent anymore. Now that he has float, with good spacing, Ganon can float towards the opponent threatening with a possibility of an aerial, but retaining the ability jump or waveland away. Not having to commit is huge... like its Mondo Burger huge.

Yet as every Ganon main knows, certain characters can invalidate him and his burst movement, then Ganon has no other option but to stay back and wait for the opponent to approach and punish accordingly. Characters that invalidate Ganon ussually do it through movement Ganon simply can't keep up with or projectiles. Characters that do this include, Tink, C Falcon, Meta Knight, and Falco.
I heard there's a movement called wavelanding out of the neutral-B. Is it like a better alternative of wavedashing for Ganon?
As for that other stuff you asked for? Learn how to move with Ganon, Wavelands out of EVERYTHING. do it. Ganon has insane burst movement use it and Ganon will pull off insane stuff. All you need is a touch on the opponent and you can zero to death a lot of the cast if you know what your doing.

low level players fair shields and get grabed, don't do that

I heard about floatlanding thingy. Is it a better alternative for wavedashing for Ganon?

 

[Kulty]

don't use wiz kick nearly as much as you probably want. if you're not forcing them into a bad position, they're probably baiting it out.

don't use dair and fair as much as you probably want.

fair is a perfectly good spacing move, but fadeaway fair is easy for a lot of the cast to bait out, call you on it, then punish you either during startup or on a whiff. not saying, don't use it, but be mindful of why you want to use it and make sure that's a good situation for it. if you space properly and hit their shield, you can pretty much always at the very least roll away safely, and if you've forced them close to the edge you can start pressuring with spaced fair-f/dtilt or gfc or utilt or another fair or uair or etc...

dair gets overused by new players because it's really ****ing cool and it's a sexy move, but it has some good startup and a limited hitbox range (entirely below him, mainly) and since ganon doesn't move fast, you can't effectively extend it, like falcon could. further, since the hitboxes are all entirely below him, it's hard to make a safe spacing for it, due to lack of speed, so you can technically make it safe on shield with l cancelling, but it's easier to mess it up and you're putting yourself in a riskier position. save it for good read punishes and trying to edgeguard someone, as part of your overall repertoire.

for neutral, you're going to spend a lot of time grounded trying to poke out with ftilt (dtilt is better for comboes, but slightly slower and a bit less safe). once you start to figure them out, you can mix it up with rar-bair, which can be sh-auto cancelled, or delayed for a lower hit. with the ac, you can sh-bair-dj-[aerial] or float-[whatever] or waveland away or towards, with their own set of options out of them (sh-bair-wl away jump in fair works surprisingly well, for example). there's also sh-instant uair for a good coverage attack. since it covers so much above and around him and comes out frame 11, it's very useful against characters that want to approach from that 45 degree in front of you angle. hopefully they reinstate his hitboxes on nair, so you have more options to use, but until then, keep this more as a combo linking tool (it's frame 5 and does really good damage, so you can do stuff like dthrow-sh nair and if you get both hits you just dealt around 30 damage. brutal).

ganon's neutral is pretty weak, though. you can't force the opponent to do much and you're slow, even with wavelands, so you have to be patient and know how to play the stage control game. your neutral options rely mostly on the threat of your punishes and the fact that ganon can actually kill off of stray hits really well at what would be "just approaching" dangerous for a lot of the rest of the cast. to this end, as i said, you'll spend a lot of the neutral phase just trying to push people back towards the ledge so you can start forcing your options on them (think like a street fighter zangief playstyle. he's got bad footsie tools, but they get WAY better once he corners you and removes your ability to retreat and do bait-punish).

i'll find a link (or maybe someone else will) of the afc frame data. it's really rough, because there are inconsistencies with different di's out of it up to maybe 3 frames, but it lets you get a rough idea of what you can get guaranteed out of afc and whether or not you want that vs a hard read punish.

a lot of ganon's gameplan is centered around finally forcing the opponent to take an option, then punishing them for it. hence, the pushing around in neutral. you need to get good at finding patterns and preferences and exploiting those, especially any situations you have advantage (tech situations; staggered neutral, where you've gotten a hit but they're just in the air not being juggled yet; forcing them to shield near the ledge; things like that). if you can chaingrab that character, do it. if you can't, find out if you can do jank **** like dthrow-jab/grounded neutralb-regrab because they fell asleep on your something. if you can do something showy, to get inside their head, do it. the more advantages you can press on them the better.

and ganon is pretty bad under pressure. he has a few good options, but they either hit relatively high (nair, frame 10, hits near right below ganon's chest, i think; uair, frame 11, hits closer to his head; grab, lolz) or are really committal (upb oos, frame 11, can be turned to either direction at any point before it starts, has good grab range, but if you miss you're really high in the air...). for upb oos, specifically, don't be afraid to toss it out if the opponent is blatantly disrespecting you since it deals 18% and has pretty good kb on it. once they have to start putting more energy into thinking about their pressure and baits you get a bit more breathing room.

for practice, once you get used to the pm physics (since they're slightly different than melee's) the most useful things would be bair-wavelands and perfect ledge hop wavelands. other really useful tools to practice are rar-wavedash (for edgehogging) and learning to manipulate the float physics (so, breverse, reverse b, and wavebouncing) to open up your options out of it. also sh-uair-wl is nice, though more limited in application than sh-bair-wl. and practice sweetspotting with ganon. i don't know a good way to do it easily, but his sweetspot is really finnicky and seems to require only one small range of angles and distance. try to get used to that and practice it. get used to sweetspotting with sideb, as well.

i'm going to start off and say get really used to float. like, overuse it. get to where you're predictable about using it and are getting punished for it. then start cutting those bad situations out. use it to go super deep offstage and uair someone recovering, or just to wait out their offstage stall options before getting a tipman or bair or fair or whatever. in neutral, full jump float and watch your opponent. there's a lot of the cast that can just throw a random hitbox out and catch you, but anyone slightly slow can probably be reacted to if they jump in at you by dj-fair, and if nothing else it's a mixup allowing you to either go for sh-aerial, full jump-aerial, sh-float-[thing], fj-float-[thing], or skip the float and dj out of the first jump.

a small amount of the cast (slower characters without quick, big forward/upward coverage moves) can be sorta float camped by ganon. peach sits around this camp, so you can dd around to establish spacing and then sh float and react to whatever she does. if she retreats, you keep floating foward and just wait it out. if she approaches, you can dj out and aerial, or just dj out and reset the situation. if you force a retreat, you've gained stage positioning, if you're forced to pull back, you've likely just kept things neutral. as i said, though, not useful against too many characters. even ganon can just toss out uair and your dj won't get you out of the range ><

when you gain momentum, float becomes far more useful and way safer. if they're shielding you can now mix up your approaches with space aerials or jump-float spaced aerials (just simple timing mixups do a lot of work, especially when people are establishing patterns) or just tomahawks, or jump-afc (because they're just done with your ****ing aerial mixups and are just gonna shield and wait).

i'm not as good at this portion, but it's also great for tech situations, because you can, say, afc, then jump toward them and float. if they roll behind you, you can cancel out, wl back, and do a thing. if they go forward, you can just fair (or cancel into wl-thing, as well). or if they're forced to tech further out, say from bad di on a semi fastfaller eating fair, you can dash-sh-float and cover a lot of distance with it, while remaining relatively open as far as options go.

and, yeah, big long rambly write up. sorry, we don't have a good guide up, so this is probably the best i can do on a whim. feel free to ask questions, i'll see what i can do. check the vid thread and watch people critically, understand why they did what they did and think about it. it'll help you out as a player, too. and if you get any vids up, don't feel bad about asking for critique, that's how you start to find bad habits (and even your really good ones).

It's okay. You don't have to be sorry! It's good that you explained a lot of this stuff, since Ganondorf is my boy in PM. Like I said before, he might not be perfectly solo-viable, but at least, he's very fun and rewarding. It gives me a better idea and better understanding on what to do and what not to do with Ganon. Also, do fix all of issues in terms of matchups from what you can think?

 

[CORY]

all of those characters probably have a better matchup spread than ganon on their own. like i told you in that general discussion thread: play ganon because you like his style. he's a middling character overall and you're probably not going to win anything big with solo dorf, but if you find him fun, then **** it all, just use him.

if you want to solo main anything larger than locals, you'll have better luck with pretty any of those other characters, tbh.

I heard about floatlanding thingy. Is it a better alternative for wavedashing for Ganon?

floatlanding? i think you might've accidentally portmanteau'd a couple terms together...

if you're talking about sh-instant float-cancel-waveland, no, it's much slower than a wavedash, but maybe faster than a sh-waveland. you have at least 14 frames of commitment from a float, before you can do anything (except maybe jump...), including cancelling it. you would do float-waveland mostly as a movement mixup.

 

[Kulty]

all of those characters probably have a better matchup spread than ganon on their own. like i told you in that general discussion thread: play ganon because you like his style. he's a middling character overall and you're probably not going to win anything big with solo dorf, but if you find him fun, then **** it all, just use him.

if you want to solo main anything larger than locals, you'll have better luck with pretty any of those other characters, tbh.


floatlanding? i think you might've accidentally portmanteau'd a couple terms together...

if you're talking about sh-instant float-cancel-waveland, no, it's much slower than a wavedash, but maybe faster than a sh-waveland. you have at least 14 frames of commitment from a float, before you can do anything (except maybe jump...), including cancelling it. you would do float-waveland mostly as a movement mixup.

Yeah. I really like Ganon playstyle, and my goal is not to necessarily win the game, but to have fun and learn at the same time. Ganon really amplifies the reward and the fun of playing a game like PM.

I meant floatdashing (that's the word)! I just wonder if floatdashing is useful for Ganon in neutral?

 

[CheCray]

Because it so hard to consistently do and requires so much focus its kinda impractical to do for primary movement, as much as I wish it wasn't. But doing a Float > waveland def has merits when being used during tech chasing or specific situations in neutral when you wanna **** with someones spacing with burst movement

 

[CORY]

probably not. you'd be better off putting out a big hitbox with good spacing or tossing out sh-bair to have a hitbox and some ambiguity as you come down from it in the form of wl's.

as biggm said, it's going to be useful more as a tech situation tool. you can probably extend that premise to just "you have momentum" and scare people into rolling away from your sh then sh-float dash in their roll direction.

 

[Kulty]

Thank you so much, guys! It helps a lot. I'll come back later to ask more questions if I have any. It might be difficult to win with Ganon, but who cares? He's fun to play.

 

[CORY]

oh yeah, something i forgot about, but odds reminded me:

dash attack. ganon's dash attack is amazing (except on shield). it goes forward really quickly and has decent duration, kb, and angles (from almost straight up on the sweetspot, to over his back later into the move). it can do a lot of work for you against faster characters who want to just try and dd you out of the game, since you can get close to their dd spacing and if they make any mistake in movement, you can dash attack them for it.

and once it hits, you can get some strong combos going from it, even if you end up doing dash attack-dash attack-[thing]. it's another really underused attack that has great applications.

and then it's also the reason ganon's dacus and boost grab are any good. i still feel like his dacus is highly overrated, just because you stop moving by the time the hitboxes come out and they're very narrow and vertical, but it's a VERY safe move, on whiff or shield. and at the spacing/percentages that things work for dacus (like, jab-dacus on (semi)floaties), it works really really well.

then boost grab, while being slower than a normal grab, obviously, is actually a good grab box and the boost sends you really far out. not as far as dacus, or even dash attack itself, but it's notably further ahead than normal dash grab.

 

[Kulty]

oh yeah, something i forgot about, but odds reminded me:

dash attack. ganon's dash attack is amazing (except on shield). it goes forward really quickly and has decent duration, kb, and angles (from almost straight up on the sweetspot, to over his back later into the move). it can do a lot of work for you against faster characters who want to just try and dd you out of the game, since you can get close to their dd spacing and if they make any mistake in movement, you can dash attack them for it.

and once it hits, you can get some strong combos going from it, even if you end up doing dash attack-dash attack-[thing]. it's another really underused attack that has great applications.

and then it's also the reason ganon's dacus and boost grab are any good. i still feel like his dacus is highly overrated, just because you stop moving by the time the hitboxes come out and they're very narrow and vertical, but it's a VERY safe move, on whiff or shield. and at the spacing/percentages that things work for dacus (like, jab-dacus on (semi)floaties), it works really really well.

then boost grab, while being slower than a normal grab, obviously, is actually a good grab box and the boost sends you really far out. not as far as dacus, or even dash attack itself, but it's notably further ahead than normal dash grab.

Thanks again man! I appreciate it. I also forgot to ask some things.
1) Aside of , who are good characters that can cover weaknesses or bad MUs? Here's the list of characters that I like to play in PM: . Just by curiosity, you can suggest me any other character aside of those that I mentioned, but I prefer this list of characters since I enjoy them a lot more.
2) Also, who are characters that can be a great doubles partner for Ganondorf?

 

[CheCray]

I play a secondary wolf, well I've never played him in tournament but I picked him because he handles all of Ganon's MUs better than Ganon.... and he has swag combos.

Ganon is Snoop and Wolf is Dogg

 

[Jazzy Jamboree]

Thanks again man! I appreciate it. I also forgot to ask some things.
1) Aside of , who are good characters that can cover weaknesses or bad MUs? Here's the list of characters that I like to play in PM: . Just by curiosity, you can suggest me any other character aside of those that I mentioned, but I prefer this list of characters since I enjoy them a lot more.
2) Also, who are characters that can be a great doubles partner for Ganondorf?

Some MUs that are between meh and awful for ganon in no particular order:


can cover a few of the really bad ones. is also pretty good against a chunk of these. Of the chars you like to play, and cover them the best, I think. You can counterpick pretty much anyone if you're comfortable with that many characters.

 

[CORY]

ganon's biggest weaknesses are strong projectile games and high mobility. you can work around high mobility better than strong projectiles, since it's easier to start choking someone down when they're trying to just run away, as opposed to trying to choke someone down when they're sending out projectiles constantly (especially ones you can't just muscle through, so bombs, intangibles, etc...).

wolf is probably the best character on your list, overall. right behind him is mk. they can probably just be solo mained, straight up, no issues, so either one will work to cover bad ganon matchups.

as for doubles, i personally prefer having a fast character on my team to help get me out of trouble or to harass the other side so i can pick them off easier. not really concerned with their combo strength or power, i just want someone who can make the other guys do something so i can start picking them off for doing that.

you can also go all in on power hits and double dorf or dorf bowser, but you have to be really secure in your gameplan, because if they split you guys up and force a 2v1 it'll be over. the upside is you both can tank hits pretty well and can both kill light to mid weights off stray hits easily, so they have to be on their toes all the time. and you also don't necessarily mind letting the other side punish you for something dumb just so your partner can whack them really hard in return.

my favorite team, though, is probably ganon-falcon. once you get used to each others' gameplans and playstyles, you can set up tech situations that have around 90% success rates and will probably end in death, along with falcon being a really fast, powerful character to back you up. in this situation, i tend to play harasser and let falcon use his speed+power to pick them off. you also help mitigate his somewhat lacking recovery by being able tank an upb hit to help him, or even upb chain each other into a wall for a tech option. but, really, it's just a crap ton of fun to be able to flame choke someone and then you cover everything in place and behind you and your falcon covers everything in front of you and just destroying someone. or dthrow chains into knee. or floating deep offstage to scare the other guy into going low so he then gets to eat a knee and die. it's just really fun : D

 

[Kulty]

Thank you so much guys! I was just curious, because I might consider my Melee mains as pockets in PM later on, and try to discover brand new characters that feel different compared to his original appearances in Smash. are perfectly fine for me, because feels like I`m playing , but with a slightly different moveset from Brawl along with new physics, which is always nice. no longer feels as broken, which makes him feel more rewarding just like .

 

[CuRsE]

Finally, another Ganon main. I have to agree with Cory, though, Wolf and MK are the best on your list. Ganon has several weaknesses, but using him right can lead to severe punishment in several cases. I wish you luck on playing Ganon!

 

[Kulty]

Thanks man! I appreciate it. I really do respect a lot of players of what they can do with their characters, but Ganondorf is just my favorite of the bunch in PM, just because he feels so different and unique compared to Captain Falcon and his moveset from his main appearances in the Smash games. I love Ganondorf's playstyle of bait and let opponents taste the fear of getting punished hard. Bait-and-punish aggressively is mostly my thing.

 

[Kulty]

I`m back guys! A bit unrelated, but I do have something that bothered me for a while. Basically I decided to only main in Melee. Basically I have a question: is it safe to assume that I can already playin PM if I know how to play them in Melee? I ask this, because usually in every Smash game, I try to maximize my number of different playstyles which is 3 and my maximum number of total characters (mains and secondaries included) by 4. In PM, I technically main 4 different playstyles, so I'm not sure if it's right or not. I chose to main along Mario and Marth. Should I limit my characters and play only Ganon and my mains in Melee or play Ganon and Sonic with my Melee mains? Basically what is the better option: or ?

 

[CORY]

marth is going to translate really really closely from melee to pm. they ported him as close as possible, so you'll just have some pm specific physics to work with (namely, being able to airdodge during iasa, so you can waveland out of some aerials; the universal physics delay, which might make frame perfect stuff feel different; and then wavebounce/reverse b/rar shenanigans).

mario vs doc is a bit different. pm mario takes a lot of stuff from melee mario, but also intersperses it with attributes from melee doc that were better. so, your pills/fireballs are a mix of melee doc/mario's angle and bounce; fair is doc's fair up until the last bit, where it's mario's fair; cape is mario's cape (iirc. it could be a mix); fsmash is mario's, but i think the sourspot sucks less?; dtilt is entirely mario's (but better); downb is entirely mario; sex kick is entirely mario.

you can probably take the base doc game from melee and convert it to pm mario pretty well, but you'll just need to get used to your new/different tools. overall, pm mario is better than either melee mario or doc.

as for number of mains, most people recommend only solo maining or having a dual main/main and secondary, where both characters cover each others' matchups well. going with 4 characters isn't a good idea, typically, just because it's easy to get caught without ability to cover for hard strats midmatch. it probably teaches good overall gameplay, though, since you'll need to rely on solid spacing, reads, and setups, due to less intimate character knowledge.

i typically espouse the "two at most" line of play, just make sure they cover each others' bad matchups, as i said before. marth can cover a lot of ganon's bad matchups, as can mario (i don't know how mario fares against spacies, though...). sonic also has a distinctly different set of weaknesses than ganon, meaning he should cover different matchups, as well.

 

[Kulty]

marth is going to translate really really closely from melee to pm. they ported him as close as possible, so you'll just have some pm specific physics to work with (namely, being able to airdodge during iasa, so you can waveland out of some aerials; the universal physics delay, which might make frame perfect stuff feel different; and then wavebounce/reverse b/rar shenanigans).

mario vs doc is a bit different. pm mario takes a lot of stuff from melee mario, but also intersperses it with attributes from melee doc that were better. so, your pills/fireballs are a mix of melee doc/mario's angle and bounce; fair is doc's fair up until the last bit, where it's mario's fair; cape is mario's cape (iirc. it could be a mix); fsmash is mario's, but i think the sourspot sucks less?; dtilt is entirely mario's (but better); downb is entirely mario; sex kick is entirely mario.

you can probably take the base doc game from melee and convert it to pm mario pretty well, but you'll just need to get used to your new/different tools. overall, pm mario is better than either melee mario or doc.

as for number of mains, most people recommend only solo maining or having a dual main/main and secondary, where both characters cover each others' matchups well. going with 4 characters isn't a good idea, typically, just because it's easy to get caught without ability to cover for hard strats midmatch. it probably teaches good overall gameplay, though, since you'll need to rely on solid spacing, reads, and setups, due to less intimate character knowledge.

i typically espouse the "two at most" line of play, just make sure they cover each others' bad matchups, as i said before. marth can cover a lot of ganon's bad matchups, as can mario (i don't know how mario fares against spacies, though...). sonic also has a distinctly different set of weaknesses than ganon, meaning he should cover different matchups, as well.

Yeah. I just feel that is fine enough for me. I'll just leaveas a fun character. Not a secondary, but just a fun character. I plan to solo main Ganon, and then having Mario and Marth as secondaries. I can practice my Melee characters at the same time. Because I feel that Mario and Marth cover Ganon's weaknesses pretty well right? As for , maybe for another time. Don't really feel comfortable with them right now, but maybe one day...

 

[Kulty]

Hi guys,

I'm back now with onlyas competitive characters. Solo mainingalong withfor my backup. Anyway, besides of that, I recently checked the ranking system in Smashboards for PM to see who were the most used characters in tournaments. To my surprise, Ganondorf came to be one of the most used characters in tournaments. He might not necessarily win tournaments, but Ganon seems to have good representation. Any reasons behind that? Just a theory.

Also, I do have trouble with short-size characters such as. What should I do against these types of characters?

 

[CORY]

he's fun and he crushes newer players because they're predictable and aren't very good at baiting and respecting space, most likely.

in regards to shorter characters, you'll be depending on dtilt and down-ftilt a lot for spacing and you'll have to time late aerials a lot more. random attacks and a lot of crouches will also just go under jab, so you can't use it as often for safety, either. and then there's grab #cryboyz

so, respect your own spacing more, and be very aware of it; use more dtilt, and more d-ftilt; you'll be spacing later fair/bair, as well. if you get them in the air, though, you can do a bit more work, just due to our big hitboxes, but that's still some work getting there.

 

[Kulty]

Thanks. I was so sad that PM stopped development, which really pissed me off in a way. However, the fact that development stopped can also lead to maybe a stabilized metagame. No more updates or balance patches that are going to come out. I don't know, but I'm just sad, since I just started my PM adventure with Ganon and Mario.

 

[Kulty]

Guys,

I officially installed PM in my Wii, and I now have the chance to play the full game. I'm basically trying to explore other characters to main along with. Alongside , who are some other characters that can help cover Ganon's bad MUs? I'm open to all character suggestions, because like Smash 4, I pretty much enjoy almost the entire cast in PM.

 

[CORY]

either or both of them will cover ganon's bad matchups. they'll probably cover each others' bad matchups, even.

mk's biggest issue seems to be someone like samus, who's hard to combo, recovers well, AND can throw out projectiles. wolf just seems to have a really really good mu spread (like maybe some 45-55's at worst, but a lot of at least marginally favorable, if not outright favorable otherwise). you will see better results spending time with those two characters than dorf.

you might not have as much fun, but i can't say that. that part's all playstyle. but, as far as character attributes within the metagame, they're far better characters.

 

[Kulty]

either or both of them will cover ganon's bad matchups. they'll probably cover each others' bad matchups, even.

mk's biggest issue seems to be someone like samus, who's hard to combo, recovers well, AND can throw out projectiles. wolf just seems to have a really really good mu spread (like maybe some 45-55's at worst, but a lot of at least marginally favorable, if not outright favorable otherwise). you will see better results spending time with those two characters than dorf.

you might not have as much fun, but i can't say that. that part's all playstyle. but, as far as character attributes within the metagame, they're far better characters.

I tried both Wolf and MK. I like Wolf, but he's too technical for me. I'm not a fan of technical characters, because I don't know if that's just me, but each time I play these types of characters, my fingers hurt so much. For MK, I really like him, and he really does play like Marth. Anyway, does either of these characters work for Ganon:? They're other characters that interest me? I don`t know if they`re solo viable or not. However, I'm pretty confident about Diddy being solo viable, but not Wario. What do you think?

EDIT: Out of all the characters in the PM roster, none came close to the level of fun that I have with Ganondorf. So there's more chance I'll stick to him as a main. It's just that I think that Ganondorf is a type of character that might be solo viable, but he REALLY needs a GOOD secondary to back him up. I want to pick between one of them:.

 

[CORY]

if you need a backup character, you're not solo viable ;x

diddy is largely considered top tier by most and one of the top of the top characters by many, so you can probably solo main him pretty well. junebug goes diddy main and uses dorf just to steal peoples' small stage counterpicks (and sometimes against gnw), but that's mostly because people are dumb and like stage first, rather than character first >.>

i can't say much about wario. he seems like a really really really good character, but pretty much all of my experience against him is salt because i have a dumb mental block against his basic strat : / i'm not sure how his overall matchup spread looks and what his bad matchups are, so i can't comment if he'll cover ganon's big holes well or not.

for a lot of these questions, you can probably go to those characters' matchup threads on their specific forums and read up on what their players' think. ganon's worst matchups are mobile characters with good projectiles (so, like, toon link ;x) and then mobile characters (like fox) and then characters with good projectiles, but mostly ones we can't interact with well (like falco). so, see what people think of those archetypes, at their source and compare back.

 

[Kulty]

if you need a backup character, you're not solo viable ;x

diddy is largely considered top tier by most and one of the top of the top characters by many, so you can probably solo main him pretty well. junebug goes diddy main and uses dorf just to steal peoples' small stage counterpicks (and sometimes against gnw), but that's mostly because people are dumb and like stage first, rather than character first >.>

i can't say much about wario. he seems like a really really really good character, but pretty much all of my experience against him is salt because i have a dumb mental block against his basic strat : / i'm not sure how his overall matchup spread looks and what his bad matchups are, so i can't comment if he'll cover ganon's big holes well or not.

for a lot of these questions, you can probably go to those characters' matchup threads on their specific forums and read up on what their players' think. ganon's worst matchups are mobile characters with good projectiles (so, like, toon link ;x) and then mobile characters (like fox) and then characters with good projectiles, but mostly ones we can't interact with well (like falco). so, see what people think of those archetypes, at their source and compare back.

Ok thanks. I'll try Wario at first, because he's the most appealing one to me.