I for one think the Plant will be at least a solid character and hopefully a very good one.
We know from data-mining that they are the 8th heaviest character, but aren't super slow with an average run speed. Their air speed isn't great, but their recovery seems good enough that that shouldn't matter too much. I suppose those values could be changed on release, but I doubt they would change drastically, so we know we're dealing with a character who is almost as heavy as the "super-heavyweights" but is faster than all of them other than Charizard (who strangely is much better at running than flying) and has a much smaller model. So Piranha Plant will be nearly as hard to kill as a super-heavyweight without the giant hurtboxes to make landing kills easier.
From the moves we have seen, Piranha Plant seems to have a pretty solid moveset too! But its hard to say for sure. Some things that we don't know yet that will matter a lot for how good the plant ends up being:
- how fast can the spiky ball be sent out? and how far does it go? If it can be safely used in neutral for zoning/pressure that would be a pretty big deal.
- how long does the poison cloud stay in one spot? Can we use it to set up traps?
- does the pot/pipe have any sort of armor? We've seen that it gets some kind of armor during the extend attack, but if it gets armor or disjoint hitboxes during the other attacks that use it, that would let the plant act like a sword character :3
- does the recovery move have any hitboxes? Can it be canceled? If not Piranha plant might be a fairly easy character to ledge guard, especially when forced to recover low. But we're still looking at an amazing recovery for getting back from deep edge-guards, so I'm very excited to play off the ledge with the plant :3
- whats their combo game like? One of the tilts seemed to hit at a good angle for combo starting, and their nair (?) seemed to be fast, so they might have a good combo game!
- do they have any kill throws or kill confirms off grab? It was a little funny to see them use their leaf to grab instead of their mouth, but hopefully their grab game is good because of that.
I think the super long extend attack will be the biggest deal. If that move is good (which it looks like it is) then Piranha Plant could very well be one of the best characters in the game,
- If it trades with or beats aerial hitboxes, then it will kill anyone with a horizontal recovery super early.
- It looks like it could be great off the ledge. Seems like it would cover high recoveries well, and could probably force air dodges with enough time for a followup aerial afterwards. If it forces low recoveries with enough time to punish with a spike then that will be very strong!
- It should be an amazing ledge trapping move. It probably can beat every ledge option from a safe distance if you get the timing/angle right. If the charge can be held for a bit that might be doable on reaction rather than on read. If this move hits hard enough to kill from the ledge then that's just terrifying.
