If you have the time, don't skim over this thread. Answer the questions and help all of us out!
In case you haven't seen it G&W is placed at the 8th slot on the newest (3.0) tier list. While 6 characters are part of the S tier, G&W is in 2nd place on the A tier: right below Marth and right above Pikachu and Olimar. Now obviously a lot of thought went into creating this list, and most of it probably wasn't from you guys (the G&W boards). Of course, we have representatives to talk for us in the SBR like Hylian, OBM, DMG, etc... but what about the rest of us? I think we should get a say-so or at least a place to express our opinions on the matter.
What I want from you guys, everyone who helps in any discussion on the G&W boards, is to get your opinion on the following (take as many questions as you would like):
1) Do you think G&W should have been higher or lower on the tier list?
2) Do you main G&W, secondary him, or just know a lot about him? If you main G&W, do you use other characters in tournament besides G&W and if so which ones? If you secondary G&W, who do you main?
3) Why do you think the SBR put G&W so low compared to the last tier list? Do you think it is because of his poor tournament placings? Or maybe because people have figured out how to avoid his kill moves? Or people are dropping him for a different character? What do you think?
4) In your personal experience, what are G&W's three hardest match-ups? If you can, provide a reason for each.
5) What do you think G&W's biggest weaknesses as a character are when comparing him to other top tier characters, mainly those in S/A tier? Is it the match-ups, the stages, or other limitations of the character?
The main reason for asking all of these questions is to find out what happened to G&W and what changes we need to make so that we can win tournaments with him. I'll post my response later after I hear some of yours.
1. Higher definitely.
2. I main Mr. Game & Watch and only Mr. Game & Watch.
3. I think the main reason is that he's just plain unpopular. The way he looks and his history as a character mean that people who just look at the cast and pick characters to try randomly (with the plan to stick with one they like) are likely to try him last. The fact that he was in melee and was completely horrible there means people were even less interested. He isn't the optimal character to pick if you just want the absolute top either so the fact that he's good really didn't change his popularity as much as it seems like it should have. The fact that he seems super easy and mindless when you first play him but really isn't actually probably drives people away from him.
This might not sound like an explanation for him falling, but early in the game's life he was still unpopular, he was just overwhelming when used. People didn't really pick him up ever, and his earlier position was the shock factor canceling his unpopularity. Now his unpopularity is just catching up to him.
4. I'm going to go with, in no particular order, Meta Knight, Snake, and Toon Link.
Meta Knight: There is really only reason he's a pain, and that's Shuttle Loop. Shuttle Loop beats the turtle (your main approach move) cleanly. That means you have to be very tricky to approach him, but you do kill a lot lower than he does and have better aerial mobility and range otherwise and are even more damaging so I'm not calling it horrible or anything.
Snake: Snake is a really interesting case. Basically, you totally control the match, but mistakes that are small against everyone else are big against Snake. You have to consistently perfectly space turtles, absolutely never throw out a dumb key or suffer fair landing lag, and never misposition yourself to get random utilted. That makes it hard, but then again, I only see this getting better for Mr. Game & Watch as skill on all sides increases.
Toon Link: He's like a perfect storm. He's disjointed and floaty too, and his projectiles are just generally really effective against you (especially since you can't use your bucket to help at all). No one thing about him is really overwhelming; he just comes together as a character in a way that's a really massive pain to deal with between his ability to occasionally challenge your aerials and his ability to play a really great keepaway game (also having a tether grab, which I find is generally bad for G&W to have to go up against).
I'm crazy though and don't think any of his matchups are very bad, just some are slightly bad.
5. His most obvious big weakness is the fact that he doesn't have a good projectile and thus has to be looking to get in a lot. He also is not particularly fast, has a generally terrible grab, and has issues with his moves not really leading into each other that much. Basically, whenever he's not able to consistently either land turtles or get the opponent in the air, he's in trouble. I don't think it's really unreasonable to do this, but having to is a real weakness, especially against players and characters who are good at stopping it.
Also, Mr. Game & Watch really doesn't combo or even fake combo into kill moves. I really don't think they're unreasonable to land cold given their generally nice properties, but not being able to land something light and quick and end with the opponent dead is a weakness not shared by many (any?) other top characters.
I think his matchups are fine, though. He just has to be careful and smart and not expect things to be better than they are. I do think it's easy to think he's a free win against a lot of characters generally considered low when that's not really true.
The stage issues do hurt him a lot. There's been a general shift toward fewer stages all around (only the most liberal areas even match the SBR's stage list, which was a more conservative list than the previous one anyway), and I swear if they were specifically trying to screw him they couldn't do much better. Mr. Game & Watch thrives on stages that give him something to "work with", be it platforms, pass through floors, ledges, hazards, whatever. That means the common 5 stage starter lists are basically totally anti-Mr. Game & Watch since there's a lot of the stuff he does worst on there, and if you want the stage list to favor you, you pretty much want to support everything being legal. The stage discussion topics mostly showed this; we like almost every counterpick stage! I feel that the more conservative stage lists really hurt him against Meta Knight in particular a lot; it's a lot harder when you either lose all of your good counterpicks or all but one which the Meta Knight player uses his ban on.
As per where to go from here, well, whenever I have ever had trouble at this game in general, my solution has always been to just focus even more heavily on spacing and not leaving myself in positions to get hit as I pressure. I don't know how much we can talk strategy to get better; a lot of this stuff is too subtle to really talk about. In this matchup on this part of this stage, I space my turtle half of his head's length more to the left. If I stand RIGHT HERE and charge fsmash for just this long, it is good at hitting this character out of a ledgejump. Those things are just too small that we don't even consciously know them, but like any competitive game, victory comes from a summation of small advantages. Though, judging by one common theme, we should probably start any bigger strategic talks by talking about our banana game...
If you just want him to move up on the tier list (which is just making people think he's better than they currently do), I think getting more people to play him would be the main thing that would help, but that doesn't seem like something that would be doable. Of course, using him and only him instead of him and some other secondaries can only help. At the very least, make sure to pick a secondary who can grab release infinite Wario or pick up Pikachu to exploit his chaingrabs on Falco (and Meta Knight last time I checked) and exploit both of those things mercilessly and consistently with perfect patience and execution to send both of them dropping down past Mr. Game & Watch. This last paragraph is non-helpful non-advice really, but if any of this actually happened, it would be pretty cool.
He's just not that popular.
). I dont know too much about G&W, as im sure some of the better G&Ws do, but i know enough.
