What is Snake's Weakness?

[VeronEF]

Hi all, I'm new to Smashboards but my friends and I have been playing (and enjoying the hell out of) P:M for the last few months.

I play Ness, Ganondorf, Luigi, Squirtle, and Zelda in that order, my friend likes to play Snake. He is very good, and I want to get better. When I'm figuring out how to fight someone, the first thing I try to do is figure out what their weakness is. However, for the life of me I can't find Snake's. He seems to have an answer for every situation he's put in, whether it's his ability to refresh his own recovery, his amazing stage control/camp game, or his incredible KO Potential. I try to spike him, but his recovery's vertical speed is quite impressive and there's also the electric field to contend with, so I am rarely able to. Hence I came here to ask for help from people who main him. Where is Snake out of his element? Because I haven't been able to figure that out, playing against him has become very discouraging. The character I've had the most luck with is Zelda because of reflective Nayru's Love shenanigans, but he figured out ways around that and so it is still a very hard match-up no matter who I play. Is there a better character among my list for dealing with all the pain Snake can deal out?

 

[Translucent]

I think that he is prone to juggling because he doesn't have a good aerial move to get out of juggles. His recovery can be stopped, or you can at least hit him back off a few times before he makes it back. His aerial game from the front is not good, but he can just RAR bair you if you're not paying attention. He is kind of heavy so combos work well on him, as long as he does not pull out a grenade. That is what I can think off of the bat.

 

[Professor Pro]

Hey, and welcome to Smashboards
He doesn't have an incredible camp game, because he can camp, but there actually isn't much rewards you reap from it, so I wouldn't put that among one of Snake's positives, grenades don't blow up on impact so you can avoid them easily, and his Nikita might put you in a defensive position, but it's easy to avoid

- He still can get camped pretty badly but players with good projectiles
- He has a pretty weak approach game in comparison to the rest of the cast, since none of his aerials are good with approach so you can have to rely heavily on a ground orientated approach (but his punishment ratio is higher than most so it definitely evens this out)
- He gets juggled pretty hard
- His recovery isn't great (It's hard to straight up gimp him though, but you can get on a lot of percentage from him recovering which leads to kills)
- Decent combo weight for a lot of the cast

These are the major flaws behind his gameplay imo, but he's still a great character which is why I main him because his positives are too fun.
From that list I say you would probably have the best chance with Ganon.

 

[trash?]

The biggest problem with snake can be made with the following statement: "floaties whyyyyyyyyyy"

Having atrocious air mobility tends to do that, really. It also means that his aerials, while being really good when you hit them, require some pretty big guesses to get much use. He still has amazing ground control, though, so s'all cool.

 

[Akenero]

uh...his weakness....fast foes
I noticed something today when I was in Rumble falls, Snake's mines are nearly undetectable on the plank sections! You can't see them, but they're there.
Just wanted to point that out, as a snake secondary, that's a bit of good knowledge, not sure if anyone knows this yet, but whatever.

 

[Professor Pro]

uh...his weakness....fast foes
I noticed something today when I was in Rumble falls, Snake's mines are nearly undetectable on the plank sections! You can't see them, but they're there.
Just wanted to point that out, as a snake secondary, that's a bit of good knowledge, not sure if anyone knows this yet, but whatever.

Most fast people are also fast fallers, and fast fallers get Chaingrabbed and combo'd heavily so I wouldn't agree there.

And it's like that on a few different stages (where you can't see the mines that well) but I really wouldn't say it's that important, any competent player will just see where you placed it and avoid, it's easy to see and hear when he is doing it.

 

[gaarasgord]

I agree with pro I also think that he has a tough (not bad) match up against link because of being easily gimped and tough to get back on stage with and link has a better camp game however being like against him also means being combo bait as well because of links weight and his also pretty predictable recovery. Honestly I would just try to use a character you like and try to be aggressive and avoid getting grabbed

 

[shwickid222]

I main ganon. Snake has priority on most of my attacks. His neutral ground air and his forward ground air destroy my flame chokes, and cancel my palm strikes. Ganon has one of the fastest regular a attacks. Yet in that time snake can croutch duck snd send me packin. I honestly hate snake causeof his 12 special attacks. Hes such a frustrating character

 

[bombrider]

Snake is definitely a very strong character in the right hands...but at least he is balanced out by intentional design flaws. I believe Snake often gets outcamped by other characters and his approach can be very risky if you aren't careful. He also has a linear recovery that is very susceptible to spikes (which is a good trade off considering he can refresh his recovery with the C4 and the amount of utility his Up B now has). Snake's ground game is very scary, but his aerials, while strong, don't allow him to approach very well.

Snake is a very tool based character...he has a lot of tools to deal with most situations and many of his moves have a lot of utility. Snake is one of those type of characters that does not have any useless moves...but you have to be able to make effective use of all of his moves to be good with him which makes him have a bit of a steep learning curve.

I think he is extremely well designed by the Project M team. He is so much more fun (and balanced) compared to his vBrawl incarnation...where all he does is camp...which is dull.

Any of the "pro Snake" players feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about any of this. I'm not sure I would classify myself as even being a "skilled player" right now...

 

[Deleted member]

i don't think has any fatal flaws in his design. you're probably going to have to spend a lot of time playing to finesse favorable exchanges, it's not likely to be a cut and dried "do this to win" etc.

 

[bombrider]

That kind of makes sense to me...Snake doesn't have that "one fatal flaw" like many other characters...instead, he has numerous small holes in his gameplay. Does that sound accurate, or do I not know what I'm talking about?

 

[foxygrandpa]

What do people think against snake vs ike? Ike air juggles pretty well but at the same time gets chain grabbed pretty hard, and his projectiles are kinda hard deal with.

 

[WizKid911]

Hey, and welcome to Smashboards
He doesn't have an incredible camp game, because he can camp, but there actually isn't much rewards you reap from it, so I wouldn't put that among one of Snake's positives, grenades don't blow up on impact so you can avoid them easily, and his Nikita might put you in a defensive position, but it's easy to avoid

- He still can get camped pretty badly but players with good projectiles
- He has a pretty weak approach game in comparison to the rest of the cast, since none of his aerials are good with approach so you can have to rely heavily on a ground orientated approach (but his punishment ratio is higher than most so it definitely evens this out)
- He gets juggled pretty hard
- His recovery isn't great (It's hard to straight up gimp him though, but you can get on a lot of percentage from him recovering which leads to kills)
- Decent combo weight for a lot of the cast

These are the major flaws behind his gameplay imo, but he's still a great character which is why I main him because his positives are too fun.
From that list I say you would probably have the best chance with Ganon.

My friend shwick here hates snake and he plays with ganon. So why do you think that ganon is a good match up for snake? I argue with him all the time about how ganon has higher priority over most of my attacks. And I find myself getting blasted off the side of the stage by down b more than anything. So I want somebody elses opinion on that match up