pocket ganon

[djmath]

Yo I'm a marth main looking to pick up a pocket ganondorf. He's really fun to play as and I love his ko power: every strong hit feels like landing a tippered f smash.

I want to play ganon seriously as a secondary main and I was wondering if anyone has any good relevant tech skill lists, important threads to read, must watch videos or specific training routines

 

[X WaNtEd X]

read "how to wreck *****es with ganon", the tech chase guide and all the other good threads here. go to youtube and look up videos under kage, linguini and bizzaroflame. but you should also look out for other ganon content. just read around here on the boards and you'll find more. those are just some places to start.

 

[Эикельманн [РУС]]

imo it's not possible to secondary ganondorf. he takes way too much effort.

 

[XLAX_OVERDOSAGE]

I don't know. Thing about ganon is that IMO he's so simple to use.

The only issue I see having ganon as a secondary could be transitioning the spacing and wavedash speed from other characters.

 

[djmath]

Elaborate on that: what is it about ganon that makes him so hard to secondary? Is it tech skill or meta game? Is the match ups or the reads?

At the end of the day, I just want to wreck my friends with hella dope aerials, but sometimes I feel like his playstyle more suits what I like about the game. Marth is all about baiting and fishing for grabs or other openings, but I feel like Ganon’s punish game is so strong that you don’t have to wait as long and you can capitalize WAY more on your opponent’s bad decisions than you can with Marth. If you lose the neutral game against ganon more than a couple times, that’s it, gg. The thing about marth is that marth needs to win 7/10 of the encounters in the neutral to be able to convert into a KO.

But if everything I was saying were true, the tier lists would be a lot different wouldn't they?

I don’t know what I don’t know; tell me why ganon is all or nothing

 

[X WaNtEd X]

I don't know. Thing about ganon is that IMO he's so simple to use.

The only issue I see having ganon as a secondary could be transitioning the spacing and wavedash speed from other characters.

ummmm

so in addition to having such a vastly different wavedash speed, you also need to account for the waveland timings, various l-cancel timings (dair on shield is known for being something people **** up for example), ledge dash shenanigans, etc.

he's not a simple character. i find it very hard to switch between him and other characters easily. i need to warm up my marth for a bit after playing ganon and vice versa. and i can tell you that many other experienced ganons feel the same.

Elaborate on that: what is it about ganon that makes him so hard to secondary? Is it tech skill or meta game? Is the match ups or the reads?

it's all the above and more.

At the end of the day, I just want to wreck my friends with hella dope aerials, but sometimes I feel like his playstyle more suits what I like about the game. Marth is all about baiting and fishing for grabs or other openings, but I feel like Ganon’s punish game is so strong that you don’t have to wait as long and you can capitalize WAY more on your opponent’s bad decisions than you can with Marth. If you lose the neutral game against ganon more than a couple times, that’s it, gg. The thing about marth is that marth needs to win 7/10 of the encounters in the neutral to be able to convert into a KO.

But if everything I was saying were true, the tier lists would be a lot different wouldn't they?

I don’t know what I don’t know; tell me why ganon is all or nothing

the longer you play ganon you start to realize that his punish game isn't as godly as it seems. a matchup i've found that exemplifies my point is the captain falcon matchup. you fight some low level falcons and it's like clockwork. but fight a falcon with really good di and an incredible defensive game and suddenly converting off of things like jabs, tilts, grabs, and other small hits that you will find yourself getting more often than say dairs and other obvious conversion hits in the neutral requires reads. because of how slow ganon is, covering all the options is often not an option. because of this, you need to think about the game in a different way than you do playing higher tier characters. add that to the specific technical prowess you need to be able to play ganon well (by this i mean that ganon tech requires a much different timing than most characters) and you can start to see why he's not an easy character to main or secondary.

 

[XLAX_OVERDOSAGE]

His game focuses a lot on getting hits where you know your opponent would turn a blind eye. You must be sneaky with your hits. Ganon becomes very spacing-dependant not only to land all those hard hits, but to evade them instantly right as you strike them.

Switching from Ganon to Fox and wavedashing are like two different worlds. You really whiff them if you're not synchronized instantly after switching.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

yeah i have a friend who plays fox with a secondary ganon. needless to say, his ganon isn't very good and he's considering dropping it completely.

 

[djmath]

thanks for the advice. While I agree with everything you've said, but I don't think that relearning l-cancel and wavedash timing are really that difficult in comparison to learning the matchups and how to play against "good" people. I think I'll continue to play with him casually and then see what happens.