Why NO ONE Plays: Ganondorf | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

As a Ganondorf main it's not about winning or losing it's about sending a message.

If you’re playing Ganondorf, it all boils down to whether your opponent underestimates you and plays stupidly or they actually know how to dodge a 70 frame attack.

Gannon knows all he has is power. He's been trying to get wisdom and courage for over 30 years but Link and Zelda just won't give him those pieces of the triforce, that's the whole plot of legend of zelda!

You see all you need is a third eye to see what your opponent is going to do, then you can play Ganon optimally

His Neutral B in the mod is inspired by his battle in OoT. I do wish he had that as satisfying as warlock punch is.

Ganondorf is the most fun character to play in my opinion , and watching somebody highly skilled with him play and kickass is just rad , and he may be low teir but that just makes it even better when he does win a battle

The float comes from ocarina of time where you face off against Ganondorf at the end he overs above you in that pose while you play dead man’s volley to knock him down. That REALLY would fix him I think

Considering that Gandondorf can literally fly in Ocarina of Time his terrible recovery seems really harsh. Honestly, having the ability to act out of Aerial Flame Choke would fix many of his problems.

So basically, Ganondorf is what happens when you put all your stats in offense.

Something really funny about Ganondorf is that although he does a huge amount of damage with each attack, his combo game is so bad that he actually does surprisingly mediocre damage in practice, such as doing only around 40% off of a low% combo

There's a good reason why Light didn't go offstage against Ganon, and that's because Ganon's aerials have more range than any of his moves, and the fact that they come out much faster than it appears. Ganon is truly bottom 3, but those aerials do hurt real bad. Only time it's generally safe to challenge or go offstage against Ganon is if you have a good disjoint, a projectile, or if he's relatively far offstage.

Ganon in Smash is the Rampardos Theorem at its finest: amazing power, terrible everything else.

Ganondorf is the character that plays the game the least. He either kills you in 3 moves or gets killed in 3 moves

Ganon is the character nobody plays but everybody plays at the same time 😂

Its amazing how Bowser gets a redesign and a run speed leagues faster than his Melee/Brawl counterpart. But Ganon's the exception from any loyal changes that reflect from his series. He knows magic and faster sword skills. The mod that has Ganon as a mage and sworduser seperately is how to do it right. Or, idk, give Ganon a way to reflect/absorb projectiles.

One thing I'd like to mention regarding the point you made of Ganon feeling like an echo of Falcon: Sakurai never wants to change a character so much that the playerbase doesn't "recognize" the character anymore which is why Ganon will always be this bad Falcon as long as Sakurai makes Smash games. Ganon was a last minute add on to the Melee roster afaik which is why he ended up the way he did in the first place. If they only added him to Brawl...he probably would have been more like a warlock and less like a drunk tavernbrawler

To kind of illustrate on how bad Ganondorf has it in Ultimate, something to note about SSB4 Ganondorf is that the character was known for having a surprising good amount of representation for a perceived bottom tier character. Adom, Gungnir, Rickles, Ray Kalm... some iconic faces in the Ganondorf community. Gungnir notably got 17th at Umebura Japan Major 2017 while beating Earth, yuzu, and kept. Not great results overall (he is low tier for a reason), but surprisingly good for what he is. In Ultimate, Ganondorf doesn't really have any of this. There is the Nairo vs Light set, but that was a one-time surprise counterpick that happened near the start of the game's life. When that one set is pretty much Ganondorf's only real contribution to the Ultimate metagame, then you know that your character has a lot of problems. There is Rickles, but his results are sparse and frankly not too great for being the only high-level active player for the character. Everyone else mentioned above has been either inactive/semi-active, or entirely dedicated to online play. In other words, Ganondorf (and Mii Swordfighter) is pretty much the only Smash Ultimate character is be virtually irrelevant in high level play throughout the entire duration of Smash Ultimate's life, a fall from even what he did in SSB4.

Ironic that the villain who’s been memed to come back in almost every Zelda game in some way also can’t come back whenever he’s knocked off the stage in Smash.

The mod you showed would definitely make Ganondorf better representative of how he is in his home series and better on the tier list. If we had to stick with the moves he has now, I would like to see three changes to buff him. The first is the projectile invincibility on down b that you and Mockrock mentioned and the other two would change side b to not send into freefall and to have the opponent die first. I think with those three changes, Ganondorf would at least be mid-tier and be better represented in tournaments.

The satisfaction of hitting a Doriyah or the dunk keeps me addicted to ganondorf. No matter how much of a disadvantage it is.