Spending some lab time with Ganon.
Jesus Christ, you guys, how can anybody not see how completely ridiculous he is right now? adslkasfjlawef
can SHFF AC:
uair
bair
nair
known. you can't do them close to the ground, so safety gets more difficult. they're mostly useful with wavelanding (onto next point).
can waveland from shorthop:
uair
bair
sh-bair-wl is useful as a spacing tool, but that's primarily when you wl away, which resets you to neutral, which isn't always the best idea. wavelanding towards the opponent (to go behind them for crossups or to read out a roll and punish with something) is riskier, since you can't react, you have to hard read the situation, so you can get shield grabbed if they go for that option (or hit by aerial oos).
uair wl is primarily a combo tool, considering how long you're in the air after the hitbox comes out in front of you. but, i'm also not good at landing that one at all, so i'm pretty inexperienced with its full applications.
can FHFF WL:
fair
uair
bair
safe on shield:
nair (when AC'd and followed by jab)
fair
spaced uair
spaced bair
technically, ac nair, if done properly, lets you grab the opponent before they can if they try to shield grab (+3 on shield and all), and it's the stupidest thing in ganon's toolset and i wouldn't be surprised to see it changed in some form next patch (push its iasa back, take out the iasa and make it only lcancellable, adjust damage so it's less safe on shield, something is going to happen, i know it, but don't know what it is).
and then spacing aerials makes them safe? man, whodathunkit.
you're still either making a larger commitment in terms of startup (fair), or you have to go in deeper with the hitbox and start it later (uair) or you have to rar (bair) to make heavy use of them, along with ganon's lower ground speed not giving him as many opportunities to set up for them. if the opponent is faster, they can still rush in on you with a quick aerial and stuff your options, making you have to use them in less outright safe ways.
and nair doesn't save you from fast rushdown entirely either. it's hitboxes are almost all on the horizontal, so you can get hit from above (or baited out into a punish, since you're still in the air a decent amount of time).
ac nair is stupid, but it's only one move and it's attached to ganon, making it less stupid, due to movement limitations. yes, wavelanding is great and it's fun, but it also requires a commitment of jumping+the waveland lag and you can't throw out a nair during it. it's primarily stupid once you get someone to shield it, which usually means you've gained momentum, and if they know what to do about it, they can buffer rolls or spotdodges out, making you have to hard read on them to get that followup.
it's not that he's terrible, it's that his strengths are pretty aptly balanced by the weaknesses he has. yeah, he hits really ****ing hard when he gets to touch you. he doesn't get to touch you that easily, though. being tied for 6th slowest character in the game, with a large frame and a niche antiprojectile utility means it's pretty easy to run from him and force him to commit to an action then beat him at that action. if you're a hard read god, ganon's a god. that's why scrubs and newbies always whine about him. they play predictably, then get caught in his punishes and die in three hits. once people start playing intelligently, you don't get those easy first hits into stupid damage nearly as often and he starts looking like a normal character, one with a beefy punish and edgeguard game, but hindered by a less than stellar neutral.
please note that
1. Perfect Wavelanding with Ganon is the easiest thing in the world
2. any time you can waveland, you could also Flame Choke (ie. longass range command grab with insane followups) or DJ or float or uair or nair
God help us all when someone actually gets good with this character.
@
Divinokage pls confirm
EDIT: WTF IS THIS ANGLE ON HIS FTILT
flamechoke still has a literally human reactable 16 frames of startup. i'm not gonna plateprop and act like that's infinity years to watch and react to it, but it's primarily usable once you've achieved control over the game state and can start setting up mixups on people.
and i know that i'm only a mid tier player at best, which is why i get my information and form my opinions with input from players much better than me. and, fortunately, living in dfw gives me access to some pretty good players to get opinions from and start to get the aggregate, after discarding outliers. i think the highest i've heard someone with ganon knowledge rank him is upper mid into high, with the vast majority of them setting him in the middle (mostly almost square in it, sometimes near the bottom of it).
at the same time, even in the best balanced game, someone has to be low tier and at that point, it's all about relativity. i don't think ganon has many advantaged matchups, but i don't think he has all entirely terrible ones either. it's just, his terrible ones tend to be matchups that matter due to popularity (fox can be really mean, falco is trash, snake is really annoying, ivy's mean, wario sucks, tink is terrible, link is hard, diddy's not that fun. some of these [snake, wario, namely] might just be mental blocks, but if the character is somewhat mobile and has good projectiles, you're in for a rough time. and those character types tend to be pretty good in the meta and with the way the engine works).
Mark my words - screenshot this, whatever. I'm going to be personally responsible for getting Ganon nerfed. There's way too much potential here to not pick him up for a while.
or i'll prove myself a fraud forever ayy lmao
i wanna see it, tbh. you think you can get up to a proper level for it by ltc3? or is that too soon to work out the gameplay/etc... for you? i'm not being facetious with this, either. if you can prove all of the meta development wrong, awesome. that's new data to interpret and take into account. but right now, you're saying a lot of things that new players say about ganon, which makes it difficult for people to take you seriously when you talk about how he's secret top tier.
