Ganondorf is the main villain of the Zelda games. Gameplay wise, he is considered a clone of Captain Falcon. As such, he fights in a brawler style similar to Captain Falcon, except in a slower but more powerful manner.
Currently, Ganondorf ranks 14th in the C+ tier on the Tier List. This is due to his extreme power, good reach, good chain throwing ability, surprising speed in some areas, having what is considered one of the best aerial games, great edgeguard game, and having strong matchups overall. However, he has some major flaws, such as his slow ground game, susceptibility to combos and chain throws, being so easily bogged down by fast attacks and projectiles, and being arguably the most vulnerable character to edgeguarding. Another major problem facing Ganondorf is having poor matchups against the top tier characters. While he has some great strengths, his major flaws, especially the matchup problem against the top tiers, could be what keeps him from being in the higher tiers.
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Weaknesses
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- Powerful Attacks - Ganondorf boasts some of the highest damage output in Melee on a per-move basis. Many of this attacks are explosive in power and knockback ability, meaning getting hit by any one of them usually means it's gonna hurt or even result in a stock.
- Survivability - Being the heavy character that he is, Ganondorf will often live to very high percents as long as he plays his cards right. Also because of his weight he is often able to double jump out of combos that most players might not expect.
- Movement Ability - Ganondorf has a surprising arsenal of tools at his disposal for getting around the stage. His waveland can allow him to mix in an unexpected approaching ground move or allow to get around an opponent's approach and punish afterwards.
- Edgeguarding Prowess - Possessing one of the best moves in the game for edgeguarding, Ganondorf's upair semi-spike allows for him to easily complete edgeguards on many other characters in Melee.
- Range - He's a big dude, so naturally with limbs as long as he has, many of his attacks will allow him to dish out potential huge damage and kills while also being able to space it from a safe distance from most of the cast. Just look at how long his ftilt reaches!
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- Combo Food - While Ganondorf does have the ability to be able to double jump out of a lot of potential combos, a lot of the time that won't matter because of his enormous hurtbox. Ganon's huge size is both a strength and weakness for him, allowing for good range on his attacks at the cost of being a bigger target to hit.
- Linear Recovery - It's true that Ganon is able to recover from quite far from off of the stage thanks to his down-b giving back his double jump. However, he has no protection on his recovery, as well as a lot of end lag on down-b, leaving him very vulnerable and relatively easy to edgeguard. Once you're offstage as Ganon, there's a good chance you'll be losing your stock.
- Slow Attacks & Movement - For a dark wizard that holds the Triforce of Power, all of that power does unfortunately come with the cost of being slow. His attacks have a significant amount of startup on most of his moves, so he often has to telegraph his attacks. It doesn't help either that his run speed is among the slowest in the game.
- Poor Defensive Options - Often times Ganondorf will be unable to do much about shield pressure, as most of his moves and attacks out of shield are too slow to get the opponent off of him easily. He has to pick his options wisely out of shield or he could potentially lose the stock for it.
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