Wow a lot happened in here today.
Before I get into the issue of my views on Pacman, allow me to post a short video I made before work about some delayed fruit/hydrant tricks for you guys.
I know this stuff all takes a bit to set up, and it is all fairly situational, but also incredibly strong if you get it set up, as well as being a VERY good way to break a timeout situation.
Of these the galaga one is the easiest to set up, but also the easiest to see coming (Galaga launches hydrant slowly and has more audio indicators).
Strawberry setup is also very useful and very easy/safe to set up.
The bell one is neat, but honestly I've never found a way to set it up mid match, especially since the version in that video is the quickest launch. The slower launch, which is even harder to time, can allow you to combo into side B, but good luck ever getting it in a real match.
The ones I used Melon for work with any fruit that doesn't pierce, although only melon and apple will launch the hydrant unless you stick around to hit the hydrant before the fruit comes back down. That said those setups are very useful against other characters that need to set up, characters with non-threatening zoning, or to corner someone trying to time you out. You can also do these setups with the piercing fruits, but it's trickier.
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Anyway it's really interesting how vastly different a lot of our opinions are. TBH I both agree and disagree with every single person to have posted on this topic so far.
EDIT: By the way, reading through this I see what I am saying starting to sound really gloomy. To reiterate before I get super blown up, I do not think Pacman is bad by any means. In my mind he just slipped into mid tier or maybe the low end of high tier, but it is important IMO that we accept some of these weaknesses so that we can either learn to get around them or join hands in a prayer circle and beg papa Sakurai for a buff or two.
HERE COMES THE USUAL WARNING, WALL OF TEXT INCOMING (You know how I do). This one is long though, even for me. Still, lots of info in here and I would really like to discuss these things:
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I want to preface this by saying that I do think Pacman is viable, but not anywhere near as much as he used to be. Pre-patch, I thought solo-maining this character was feasible, MAYBE needing a secondary for 1-2 MUs. Post-patch, he is definitely not solo-mainable and from what I've seen has significantly more MUs where you could benefit from a secondary.
Now I am NOT saying this in response to poor tournament placements (My placements since the patch dropped have actually been good, getting to GFs in every local I played and making top 32 at the regional I was at), but just how I feel things have become from playing more people, especially the ones who play me often enough to not be tripped up by the basic Pac stuff.
Pros:
-His trap game is without equal. It really helps that a lot of setups look similar, making it hard to judge what we are about to throw out.
-His ledge traps are ridiculous (Seriously, more of us need to abuse this. It is one of our biggest strengths.)
-He has a very good combo game. Anyone thinking otherwise needs to live in training mode for a while. You should be tacking on anywhere between 10-80% anytime you land a hit on someone below 140-ish% IMO (Excluding pokes like Ftilt/Dtilt and jabs... although those moves can start big damage combos too). Despite mentioning going into training room to explore your combo potential, I do mean this should be happening in real matches.
-Very good recovery. Even if the opponent knows how to stuff it, we have so much leeway in how we recover that while gimping us is possible, it is not feasible to do consistently if we are playing smart.
-Our tools allow us to change the rules of the game/neutral.
-More gimmicks than anyone can keep track of.
-Great frame data in terms of move startup and endlag for most of our kit.
-Lots and lots of kill confirms, both situational and reliable.
-Decent mobility.
-Good punish tools
-Frame 3 Nair (AKA C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!)
-Key is one of the better punishing moves in the game.
-While our B-reversals suck, we do have tools to get back to the ground thanks to hydrant
-Pretty flexible playstyle.
-Lots of mixups.
Cons:
-Becomes infinitely more effective with set up time. The reason this is a con is because it means we are much less effective when we don't have breathing room.
-Most of his normals have no disjoint or priority.
-Most of his normals (Hell, specials too) are unsafe on block.
-His grab is frame 12-39, AKA really really active but also super duper slow.
-Some of his moves are punishable on hit in certain percent ranges (Trampoline and Fair at low %s, DA at higher %s sometimes, Dair hits 1-3 all the time).
-While his punish game is very good, it did get weakened by the shield mechanic and none of his main punish tools kill early (Nair/Jab/Trampoline/Ftilt)
-Due to the above combination of factors, Pacman is one of the characters IMO to suffer most from the opponent knowing the MU (I will get into this later as this requires much more explanation than I can put in this list).
-All traps can be used against you.
-It can be hard to deal with zoners holding on to your fruit.
-More of a player thing, but due to how the character works and how much thinking/planning he takes, going on auto-pilot with him is far more detrimental than it would be with other characters.
-A lot of characters can punish a whiffed trampoline if they are anywhere near you, with a few doing it from anywhere on screen.
-Some of the better characters can punish a grounded hydrant drop on reaction from anywhere on the stage.
-Our mobility, while not bad, is also not good.
-We have some very VERY bad glitches. Like glitches that can cost us our tournament life, sometimes randomly and for no apparent reason (Yes I am still salty Lylat... And Castle Siege...)
-Our B-reversals suck
-It is super easy to spike us out of Side B.
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I said I would explain why I think MU knowledge hurts us more than other characters, so here we go:
Let's say I play someone for the first time and do Fair>Nair>UpB on their shield. Most people think this is a true blockstring, or at least not punishable. Hell, I used to think few, if any, characters could. It took a LOT of games for the people I play constantly to realize that not only is it punishable, but Fair is actually super punishable on block, and most decent OoS options will beat any Fair follow up whatsoever.
This isn't like saying that we can punish a mis-spaced Sheik Fair with trampoline if we know about it, where the solution for the attacker is simply to space better; this is an issue of our move is punishable any time it hits shield for any reason. The solution: Either don't use it, or use it sparingly enough that hopefully the opponent will either not shield it or not react to it.
Another example would be Fsmash. Tipper Fsmash is + on block IF it's the 1st hit. If it's not tippered, it's unsafe. Okay, so space it right and you should be good right? Somewhat. Sourspot is SUPER unsafe on block, and it is unsafe on whiff. This means we have a move that needs to be tippered to be safe, but can't be *too* tippered or it becomes as punishable as a whiff. Keeping in mind the first hitbox takes 18 frames to come out and is only active 2 frames, with the sourspot being active 8 frames, and you have yet another move where the solution is "Don't use it or pray they don't react fast enough to punish".
Okay, so Fair is a problem, but w/e, smash attacks are meant to be strong and unsafe. So we have an unsafe aerial and a few unsafe smashes.
Oh yeah, Nair and Dair have the same problems. Nair is punishable by most shield grabs and strong OoS options that cover behind the character. Not even sure why either because frame data sort of implies it shouldn't be punishable and yet it is.
Uair has the same problem near the ground.
Every jab is punishable, although the opponent has to read a jab cancel to punish. That said pressing buttons to punish a jab cancel is *almost* always worth it (Unless it's in front of a hydrant) since you can get some hefty punishes on a right read and only eat 4-7% (If jabs are fresh) on a wrong read. This would mean jab should realistically be used as a punisher and not a poking tool.
Trampoline is not safe on hit at low percents, and not safe on whiff against a good portion of the cast from within half screen unless ledge canceled.
Fruit has 12 frames of startup and is horribly unsafe in close range.
I *think* Utilt is safe on block, but it is still negative, meaning that while you usually can block an attempted punish, you're pressure is over.
Hydrant is not safe on shield either near the ground.
DA, while harder to punish now (And impossible for some characters I think?), is still punished by strong OoS options.
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This leaves us with Ftilt, Dtilt, Bair, somewhat Utilt and... that's it. Those are our *safe-ish* options. Of those, Utilt and maybe Bair are the only ones that might win trades against moves with decent amounts of disjoints.
Now this sounds worse on paper written out like this than I mean it to be, but here's the point:
If I learn to play against Mario, that doesn't change the fact that most of what he does is safe. If I learn the Sheik MU, it won't magically make her more punishable. Learning MUs will however teach you to punish whatever IS punishable. In our case, it's almost everything.
Now yes, we do in fact have VERY good mixups, some of the best in the game IMO, along with everything else I've taken note of up above, and playing unpredictably does definitely help us BUUUUUUT mixups are not exclusive to us and benefit everyone. When you look at our mixups vs the ones of better characters, while we do have a very good reward for a successful mixup, we also have a much higher risk tacked onto it than most good characters.
While other characters have recently gotten safer, we are still unsafe on almost our entire kit, and once people catch onto that, it makes everything we do carry much more risk.
Now yes, we can in fact make ourselves safe with our setups and traps (Sometimes ridiculously so), but these all require setup time, which in turn requires us to have breathing room. This used to be easy to create, but unfortunately the latest patch hurt our ability to do this. Now the best way to create space is still to bait and punish, but to do it
without using shield against most moves while keeping in mind our safe moves lose to disjoints while the moves that beat disjoints/trade favorably are unsafe.
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Okay, enough on that, I do want to reply to a few things though:
Mario has throw combos into kill moves at specific percents before 100% though. Pika and Sheik have some admittedly more situational shenanigans.
It becomes relevant when you realize that if you are nowhere near that specific part of the stage, they can simply ignore the trampoline altogether. We also don't need to be high up at all for that. FF a disjoint aerial that normally has landing lag on trampoline, like IDK Wario or Sonic's Bair, then be back in the air with all of your jumps for free? Not too bad. We can punish these options for sure, but it's not like they CAN'T use the trampoline either. I know my training partner hits them whenever I can't punish them just to leave red trampolines in my way (As Kirby he stays in the air forever doing this too).
Not saying trampoline is bad, but be mindful of the counterplay or it will blow you up.
I disagree with like 12 things in just this paragraph.
1) Pika and Fox have safe shield pressure that can convert into kill moves on hit so the comparison is bad. They work around it by abusing that and their good grabs which set up situations where they can tech chase into a kill or kill an opponent trying to land. We have literally none of these things. Our ways to deal with shielding is vastly different from theirs.
2) DITCIT confirms are awesome, but how exactly does that help with shielding opponents?
3) This is like the 4th time I've heard things about fruit gushing being obvious... You guys are aware that all fruits have between 3-8 gushed arcs and speeds when normal B-thrown and even more than that when you have it in hand right? Pretty sure I explained/showed some of this before, but I can do a few quick recordings of these if need be. When mixed in well, I do think gushing is valid, especially when mixed with all of our many other options when a hydrant is behind us.
Okay fine only 3 things...
This is COMPLETELY true WHEN we have time to set up our tools. Not saying we can't; it's not too hard to charge fruits, set up a hydrant, etc. What's tough is having a competent opponent let you do it without punishing you, especially when you consider how bad our neutral is UNTIL we get set up, and that some of our neutral tools get us punished when we set them up.
I am a recognizable name in 2 separate games with this exact type of character, both of which were low tiers; my attitude is NOT from unfamiliarity with this character archtype. In fact it's kind of the opposite: Since the patch I am recognizing the same issues my other characters had, even if on a lesser scale.
Trap based mixup characters are incredible, but you need a decent neutral to make it work. I know I'm probably the only person to have played Injustice in here, but this was Joker's problem. Yeah sure, when I landed the hit I could set up a trap where you would instantly stand up (Avoiding wakeup invulnerability) into an overhead and 2 lows which could hit in any order I wanted them to while gaining armor on myself for the ultimate mixup. It didn't matter since Joker's terrible neutral meant that against top tier characters he could go an entire match without getting in range to set himself up.
Now that's an extreme example as Joker was bottom tier and Pacman is far from that, but it's the same issue, except instead of needing to get close enough to set up, we need to make enough breathing room to set up.
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BSP
Not going to quote it all, but Ike gave you trouble you said? (I know it's Ryo, but I trust we're talking tools moreso than the player)
While the ones I've played weren't on the same level, it did seem to me like Ike's lack of OoS options actually made our rushdown game viable as he didn't seem to have anything to punish crossup aerials/DA on his shield, nor to get us off of him once we start comboing him other than that super slow counter.
That said Ike was wrecking me when I tried to play a more defensive playstyle for all the reasons you listed.
Do you think against a better player like Ryo an aggressive trap style would be more effective, or did you already try that?
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I know some of you skipped straight here but here you go, final thoughts:
Extreme TL DR/moral of the story:
What we need is to find a better way to make space to set ourselves up. If we can do that consistently, then we can be a great character. Until then though, we hover at good.
