BBR Weekly Character Discussion #14: King Dedede

His only true approach is run and shield. Can usually get by without approaching because insane grab range and his projectiles, but the focus should always be on exploiting his lack of approach.

King DeDeDe has nearly as many bad matchups as he makes bad matchups for others. He's an extremely good character but suffers from a lack of variability in options, which makes him predictable. Luckily, what he does have is so good that is often doesn't matter that it is predictable (Grab, B-air, etc.)

Back throw, Down Throw (chain or tech-chase), Back air, F-tilt, and U-tilt are often all that he needs, with a small mix of other moves in the process. All of these options are insanely good and can take him a long way. However, his lack of a "real" jab can often hold him back, and cause him to get out grabbed by characters that have good jab>grab setups. This weakness isn't exploited nearly enough by most players.

I think he is probably one of the best "pocket" or secondary characters in the game. He has favorable matchups against many "oddball" or "lowtier" characters, making him an excellent option against characters that a player might not have experience against. You can often pick DeDeDe strictly to "weed out" certain players, and that is a very strong plus to him as a character.

However, he is also generally a very poor choice to go in blind with (to use as your main). Having a good deal of tough matchups, he is not someone that is generally a good first choice on a neutral, unless you can be certain that your opponent doesn't play a character that gives him trouble.

Despite those problems, I feel that he is more capable in his bad matchups than most people give him credit for. Often, Falco is cited as "impossible", however I don't see that to be true. As someone who mains both Falco and DeDeDe, I can say that I have both lost to DeDeDe's as Falco (Coney), and beaten Falco's with my DeDeDe (Kemorro).

So long as the matchup is not on a large, flat stage such as Final Destination, DeDeDe can do quite well against Falco. His ability to predict and get 16% damage from one back throw means that he only needs a few reads to take out many of the small and fast characters that give him trouble. While still at a disadvantage, I feel that DeDeDe vs Falco is a very winnable 40:60 disadvantage.



Overall, DeDeDe is a very strong character that has a good amount of even matchups, a great deal of advantaged ones, and nearly just as many disadvantaged ones. Personally I think he is perfect for being at the top of the present B-tier.

Not a lot to say about DDD. I love playing him, one of my favorite characters in the game, but he's predictable and one dimensional. He's pretty viable, and he helps keep down the number of Snake's out there (which MK probably thanks him for). DDD is odd in his tier placement in that he has a huge impact on the metagame with his chain grab, but overall isn't actually that amazing.

For a character with multiple jumps, his recovery is crap btw.

He's secretly really good, despite being so simple. His properties are pretty ridiculous.

I agree with Reflex, a lot of the match ups that people consider bad for DDD are greatly exaggerated, except MK

I agree, I think MK is probably one of DeDeDe's only truly impossible matchup at high levels. Maybe IC's too but that's probably it.

He still has a lot of disadvantaged (but very doable) matchups, though.

Dedede is just amazing at what he does.

Stopping other characters from being viable.

An MK banned world would most likely have dedede as the biggest threat in the metagame again (obviously not no.1, but yeah).

I think Dedede could be explored more as a character in terms of the moves he uses, but yeah... very limited approaching.
Nearly every single one of his disadvantaged match ups bar MK is winnable on the right stages though, and this includes many of those in the starter list too.

Shaya said:

Dedede is just amazing at what he does.

Stopping other characters from being viable.

An MK banned world would most likely have dedede as the biggest threat in the metagame again (obviously not no.1, but yeah).

I think Dedede could be explored more as a character in terms of the moves he uses, but yeah... very limited approaching.
Nearly every single one of his disadvantaged match ups bar MK is winnable on the right stages though, and this includes many of those in the starter list too.

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He's a lot like Diddy Kong in that way though. He's heavily affected by what stage the match takes place on. By the same token, I think that also like Diddy Kong, he needs to win the first game to avoid being taken to a stage he can't handle the matchup on.

I honestly think it's a lot less about the stage and a lot more about the opponent.

Dedede has stupid trouble with Meta Knight and Falco in general.

If he can't chaingrab, there's always B-Throw--16% is almost as good.

Even on stages that heavily promote camping (assuming the opponent can't go under, like Norfair or Green Greens), you pretty much have to pass Dedede eventually to continue to camp. While Dedede's F-Tilt doesn't do much damage, opponents are not going to punish smart use of the move, and Dedede almost always has the advantage when it comes to a close-quarters exchange, where it's because of pivot grab, B-Air, F-Air, D-Tilt, or Neutral-B.

Dedede is a character that really changes the metagame because of the huge number of chars he's extremely good against.

He sucks vs Mk mainly, specially in stages like battlefield he gets juggled for ever. I'm not sure of DDD vs climbers ( if its like MK or like falco, oli and pika) but DDD is not that bad vs Falco, Olimar and Pikachu, I'd say its about 55-45 or 6-4 for those characters. Besides those 5 chars, everything else is either even or in his advantage, some people still tend to believe that zelda, kirby, gaw and some other chars beat him but thats not true.

His grab is awesome, even without the chaingrab its his main game against every char. waddle dees are overrated, he has an insane quantity of lag when throwing one to the point mk can shield the waddle throw then nado until D3 without D3 being able to shield.

About the stages, I don't think he's that bad with them as falco or diddy to need to win first game, yes he sucks in brinstar, but the other cps are really good for him: halberd, delfino, castle siege and pokemon stadium are great for DDD and frigate is not bad at all either.

I think going only DDD and placing is really hard but him combinated with another char is a really good choice for top level play, he's one of the best counterpick characters ever.

Come to FL where we have co18, hbox, and seibrik who are amazing with DDD and you will see how ******** he can be.

The worse thing about DDD, his spotdodge. Even if you predict it and charge a smash, sometimes it still wont hit because you have only 2 frames to hit him with. Any whiffed attack or not perfect spacing leads to a grab.

I can't say too much about Dedede that already hasn't been said.

He has plenty of attacks with incredible range, a grab game that forces many characters to fight outside of their element, and a bair that's ridiculously good for edge guarding anyone not named Meta Knight.

Stages mess with him, but as said, the stages effects aren't to the extent of other characters like Falco and Diddy Kong. Many levels also opt for him to focus less on his grab game (like Norfair), which kinda puts a damper on his ability to rack up fast, easy damage via chain grabs. However, both his air game and ground game are still competent enough for him to properly deal with the opponent.

Oh, and he also gets wrecked by Meta Knight, has issues with Ice Climbers/Falco, and has a love/hate recovery.

DDD is a bad character. I'm sorry to anybody who thinks otherwise. If you thin he's good, you probably get CGed. Pick somebody who doesn't.

Waddles can be punished on reactoin if you're looking for it.
He has 0 approach. His spacing move is also very slow.
If he hits your shield with an aerial (Except nair) and lands, you can grab him. Every time. Even ZSS can grab DDD out of bair/fair/uair/dair.
He gets edgeguarded as easily, it not worse than Snake does. Free damage when he up-bs going up, and then you hit him out again when it's going down.
When he up-bs, he has to go above the ledge a little, no matter what. This basically shouts at you, "PLEASE GRAB THE LEDGE! I'M FAT AND CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT IT!"
Honestly if he didn't live to stupidly high percets, save gimps and spikes, I would think he should be low tier. Since he lives forever, he should be mid, mid-high, just for the fact that his CG wrecks so much of the cast.
I hope this isn't MU bias, because I just find him bad.

tl;dr
He's a bad character who is fat and CGs a slew of characters.

Move down out of high tier, pl0x.

He's too good. Amazing spacing moves, and his entire game revolves around camping, which is something he does really well.

A decent Dedede will never land with his aerial without acknowledging that he's taking a big risk in that.

It's fairly difficult to get him off the stage, because that implies that you've gotten in range of him and successfully dealt with him.

D-Air covers a great deal of juggle stuff, and the fact that his fastfall is so ridiculous means that any juggle prospect is just a guessing game that Dedede is likely to win.

Not everyone has Zero Suit Samus's jump to juggle and Forward-B to outcamp him. :/

TheReflexWonder said:

He's too good. Amazing spacing moves, and his entire game revolves around camping, which is something he does really well.DDD's entire game should not revolve around camping. It revolves around staying still. There is a difference.

A decent Dedede will never land with his aerial without acknowledging that he's taking a big risk in that.Fine, hitting your shield with a rising aerial is still punishable though.

It's fairly difficult to get him off the stage, because that implies that you've gotten in range of him and successfully dealt with him.So, dodge his slow spacing moves, or his grab, which is his real tool anyway.

D-Air covers a great deal of juggle stuff, and the fact that his fastfall is so ridiculous means that any juggle prospect is just a guessing game that Dedede is likely to win.Don't try to juggle him from below. His dair's hitbox SUCKS when the opponent is not directly below him. DDD's aerial mobility isn't the best either.

Not everyone has Zero Suit Samus's jump to juggle and Forward-B to outcamp him. :/

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Okay, I acknowledge the jump thing, but side-b loses to Waddle throw, so that one doesn't actually work.

I've always thought pretty much the same about Dedede as NickRiddle does (as in that he's a bad character with extreme properties), but I would still have him roughly where he's at now because he's such a solid counterpick against many characters, including some of the top tiers. Ease of use isn't really a factor in deciding tier list placement, but the fact remains that he gets many tournament points for being an easy pocket secondary. His bad matchups are noteworthy, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that they're completely crippling, though you would be better off not completely maining him. Out of the B tiers I can only see Pikachu and maybe Olimar overtaking him in the tier list. Maybe some C/D tier characters will continue to rise, but it seems unlikely for them to go that far.

Dair sucks.
SDI it and punish him with an Uair.
Thats what I do anyway.
With his piss poor aerial speed its easy.

ShadowLink84 said:

Dair sucks.
SDI it and punish him with an Uair.
Thats what I do anyway.
With his piss poor aerial speed its easy.

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He'll just B-Air you. It'll be fine.

gallax said:

Come to FL where we have co18, hbox, and seibrik who are amazing with DDD and you will see how ******** he can be.

The worse thing about DDD, his spotdodge. Even if you predict it and charge a smash, sometimes it still wont hit because you have only 2 frames to hit him with. Any whiffed attack or not perfect spacing leads to a grab.

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This, seriously. I forgot to list his spotdodge as an approach because it really is.

DDD is good on a LOT of stages, I might add. All the "weird" stages give him really nice chances to get grabs/infinites and walk off kills. I think he gets a significant boost on more liberal rule sets.

NickRiddle said:

DDD is a bad character. I'm sorry to anybody who thinks otherwise. If you thin he's good, you probably get CGed. Pick somebody who doesn't.

Waddles can be punished on reactoin if you're looking for it.
He has 0 approach. His spacing move is also very slow.
If he hits your shield with an aerial (Except nair) and lands, you can grab him. Every time. Even ZSS can grab DDD out of bair/fair/uair/dair.
He gets edgeguarded as easily, it not worse than Snake does. Free damage when he up-bs going up, and then you hit him out again when it's going down.
When he up-bs, he has to go above the ledge a little, no matter what. This basically shouts at you, "PLEASE GRAB THE LEDGE! I'M FAT AND CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT IT!"
Honestly if he didn't live to stupidly high percets, save gimps and spikes, I would think he should be low tier. Since he lives forever, he should be mid, mid-high, just for the fact that his CG wrecks so much of the cast.
I hope this isn't MU bias, because I just find him bad.

tl;dr
He's a bad character who is fat and CGs a slew of characters.

Move down out of high tier, pl0x.

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While most of what you said is true (ie, the details), I disagree with the concept that DDD isn't that good because you can pick characters that don't get chain grabbed. The fact of the matter is that lots of characters do get chain grabbed. A character's worth is his average of how he does versus the entire cast, you can't just ignore a huge sub set of matches when deciding if he's good or not. That's not what the tier list is about. Basically, I agree with Marc's assessment of DDD.

D3's metagame has been done for a while. That doesn't change the fact that this character is extremely good. I agree with basically everything Reflex has stated in this thread. D3 is simple, effective, has a small learning curve and is just a **** good character. No need to go into great detail on any of his moves.

This statement sums him up quite nicely:

TheReflexWonder said:

He's secretly really good, despite being so simple. His properties are pretty ridiculous.

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And I -hate- that he's so good, because few things make me angrier than losing to someone who didn't have to think much about his actions at all...

But with that spotdodge, that fastfall, that grab, and that obscene range, weight, and power, there's a lot more "this is just a guessing game" than I ever care to see.

If you hate his spot dodge, use Peach. His spotdodge is useless against her because everytime he uses it he risks being down air'd. He does have tons of other tools on her, but at least the annoyance of losing to the spot dodge is completely eliminated (if you play right) there are other characters with useful multi hit moves that will eat spot dodgers up.

Try to use attacks that go into Z axis, makes his spotdodge a non-issue.

He only has more invincibility because he isn't in the same axis as you, but if you go into his, he has a bad spotdodge overall.

Which axis are you considering the Z axis - the axis perpendicular to the plane of the TV screen? No such attack exists O_O That would have been a SUPER FUN addition the game though, similar to a lot of attacks in Soul Calibur. By not allowing movement into that axis but allowing dodges and attacks into the axis, it could work.

EdreesesPieces said:

Which axis are you considering the Z axis - the axis perpendicular to the plane of the TV screen? No such attack exists O_O

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Rob dsmash has Z axis property.


Such attacks and properties do exists.

For the duration of DDD's side step, Rob's downsmash doesn't hit him. It only hits DDD because the downsmash lasts enough frames to hit DDD once he's returned to the plane of the TV screen.

EdreesesPieces said:

For the duration of DDD's side step, Rob's downsmash doesn't hit him. It only hits DDD because the downsmash lasts enough frames to hit DDD once he's returned to the plane of the TV screen.

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No, we looked into up and there is a Z axis property on rob's dsmash, even though D3 is in another plane, Rob can hit him.


That or I have been fed lies, either way someone should figure these mechanics out.

Wait are you serious? Wow, that's completely new to me if true.

TheReflexWonder said:

And I -hate- that he's so good, because few things make me angrier than losing to someone who didn't have to think much about his actions at all...

But with that spotdodge, that fastfall, that grab, and that obscene range, weight, and power, there's a lot more "this is just a guessing game" than I ever care to see.

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I lol @ this statement. Cant wait to see your top placings with Dedede.

Anyway Dedede is good prob a spot higher than he should be.

I made a thread about it a long time ago, and no one cared.

I wanted to compile a list, but no one helped.

EDIT:

CO18 said:

I lol @ this statement. Cant wait to see your top placings with Dedede.

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I don't mean that Dedede takes a complete lack of thought to win. My Dedede is bad, mostly because I can't run -> shield -> grab, and because I'm not good at close-range fighting with him (read: a lot of important things, hah). It's just that I'm convinced landing certain things in many matchups involves nothing more than a guessing game, and that frustrates me. Let's play the "How Many Jumps?" game. Let's see when my invincibility is going to be on (or, harder still, off!).

I feel like many of the situations he creates have less of an emphasis on psychology and more about getting lucky when the odds are stacked in your favor.

I don't feel like I'm getting my point across well. :/

TheReflexWonder said:

I made a thread about it a long time ago, and no one cared.

I wanted to compile a list, but no one helped.

EDIT:


I don't mean that Dedede takes any lack of skill to win. My Dedede is bad. It's just that I'm convinced landing certain things in many matchups involves nothing more than a guessing game, and that frustrates me. Let's play the "How Many Jumps?" game.

I feel like many of the situations he creates have less of an emphasis on psychology and more about getting lucky when the odds are stacked in your favor.

I don't feel like I'm getting my point across well. :/

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Basically, character skill is not all that much required for dedede, mostly great yomi since he is very basic but very good at the same time. On the other hand, because he is so simple, you can't improve much upon it, so you need to compensate with good yomi/mindgames.

Is that what you mean?

swordgard said:

Basically, character skill is not all that much required for dedede, mostly great yomi since he is very basic but very good at the same time. On the other hand, because he is so simple, you can't improve much upon it, so you need to compensate with good yomi/mindgames.

Is that what you mean?

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Mostly.

Don't get me wrong; I value mindgames above all else, and I think that should easily be the most important factor in competition in general. It's just that Dedede's handful of options are heavily skewed in his favor in many matchups.

The difference between his normal fall speed and his fastfall speed is very large, and his B-Air deals great damage while being virtually unpunishable against many characters (while using multiple jumps). This, combined with the fact that he can spotdodge, shield, grab, U-Tilt, or D-Smash as soon as he hits the ground makes for a guessing game heavily skewed in Dedede's favor.

Guess correctly? Alright, you hit him for ~10-15 damage, and this guessing game resets.

Guess incorrectly? He grabs you and you take anywhere between 20 and 40 damage, as well as potentially dealing more damage with his excellent edgeguarding game. Oh, and he KOs you at 100% with U-Tilt.

I guess what I'm saying is that Dedede players can make situations like this a crapshoot every time and still succeed in the end, because Dedede stands to gain much more from a correct guess/read than the opponent.

Obviously, this is a single instance, and more than a handful of characters don't have it so rough, but I know it's not much more than a handful, and that there are other examples where this sort of thing takes place with Dedede. It's not that Dedede is incapable of using great skill and reading ability to overwhelm the opponent. It's that he doesn't -have- to, a lot of the time.

Sure, relying on pure luck isn't exactly the most consistent strategy, but if anyone can pull it off, it's Dedede. If he does things correctly and remains unpredictable (which is pretty easy, given the extreme properties described), there is no way to reliably read him in that. You're forced to guess and take a great risk or let the situation reset.

I had heard about this z-axis before, does anyone know of a list with moves that hit there? Iirc charizard's bair also does.

But both charizard and rob get destroyed by D3 anyways xD.

D3 isn't good, if you get outplayed, he can seem ridiculously good, but in all honesty it's the players and not the character (unlike a certain winged bat we could all name off).

DDD rocks. He's the only reason why I haven't quit playing Brawl.

*idle stomach pound*

DDD is legit. He reminds me of Kirby in that both have predictable approaches and pretty straight forward game plays.

I like Atomsk's DDD. I wish it could go back to beating Metaknights.

I think D3 is about where he is on the tier list for the shee fact of him destroying like...half of the cast, and having a small advantage on another 20%. I think Pika is better than him, and that's about it right now.

DDD's worse matchup is DDD when infinites are allowed D: