well let me ask you guys this, considering that olimar has one of the longest grabs in the game (its also pretty fast, especially as far as grapple grabs go), who wouldn't he have an advantage against based on the "outcamp and win" strategy? I noticed you guys have some characters, such as marth, who has no projectile listed as a hard matchup. I would think that if you outspaced all his moves with pivot or running grabs you would always be able to beat a marth player, no?
Maybe what some of you aren't really seeing are the other aspects of how olimar plays (not trying to say that you don't know how to play your character, read on). Lets say olimar didn't have a long grab reach, and that he had a grab reach similiar to say gw's for sake of argument. How would he fair in the matchup?
As far as his camping ability, its quite easy for gw to nullify that with either a dtilt or a nair. Nair makes it incredibly easy for any latched pikmin to be expelled because it hits all around his body. GW can even approach by simply sh'ing nairs at oli on the way to him because this move autocancels very quickly and there wouldn't be much time before gw is in the air again.
His general high priority, low range cc skills are mostly nullified by gw's long range, high priority attacks. The only moves that olimar has that will outrange or beat gw's moves consistently are his up b and his up air. Other than his pikmin tossing (which we already covered), he has almost nothing to approach with (keep in mind we removed grabbing from the equation for now).
Lets look at recoveries. You guys know well enough that olimar's recovery sucks. Its not the worst in the game, but its quite easily gimped. Things that can gimp it? Quick hitting moves with good reach that knock olimar back out... fair. Long range quick attacks near the ledge to eat dj attempts... dtilt. Offensive up b to cover sneak attempts from the olimar to get to the edge... gw has that as well. I feel as though gw is more than equipped to handle olimars recovery. As far as i know, olimar has little to edgeguard gw, mainly because he can go so low to recover vs olimar. Is there any weight to his grab going below the edge? or is this to difficult to perform most of the time?
The only other thing i can think of is quirks like his down b having super armor. Super armor is excellent against high lag, powerful, one hitting attacks that leave players open. Say, against a dk it would be excellent against his giant punch or whatnot. However, gw's use a lot of multi hitting attacks to approach (turtle is no surprise, nair, uair), which can really hurt the super armor approach. Other than against smash attacks and the fair, im not sure how well the SA approach will work.
Also how well does olimar do vs the up air? Someone mentioned that the dair works well against the up air (personally i've never seen it but ddd's can do something similiar so i wouldn't be surprised, i'll take your word for it). As far as i can remember the dair doesn't increase your falling speed right? Thus wouldn't doing a dair leave you really open for a nair immediately after the up air?
If i had to rate this matchup, without olimar's grab included, i would say it was extrememly one sided. Olimar's main approaches and quirks seem pretty nullified by gw, oli can't edgeguard gw, and i feel as though gw can edgeguard olimar pretty **** well. Its probably somewhere between 7-3 and 8-2 for gw w/o his grab.
Now lets think about how the grab actually affects this matchup, and does it make enough of a difference for it to be an even matchup? First off, it gives him an amazing approach, i can agree with that. I play olimar a lot and i use his grab way more than most characters, and for good reason, its sick. OOS, i feel as though against gw's turtle its good, but not good enough as it is possible to outspace your grab. If i decide to land behind you with a nair, you wouldn't be able to turn around a grab before i grabbed you i don't think. Because gw has quite a bit of aerial movement, its difficult for olimar to run away and grab most of the time, especially when you consider how much reach the turtle has.
In conclusion, his grab definitely makes up an integral part of this matchup, but i don't feel its enough to make it even. As i have stated in our matchup thread, 6-4 gw feels like an accurate depiction of the matchup for the reasons stated above. Please, counter arguements welcome, considering im not an olimar master and i do make mistakes and misjudgements.
*edit @ puddin* really? im actually quite shocked that this. Whenever i use olimar i feel like his dsmash is his slowest smash. It feels like there so much lag coming out that it makes the move near unuseable, but maybe im just putting it in the wrong situations.
