Archetypes

[outfoxd]

Probably a dumb thing to wonder about, but does anyone feel like there are multiple archetypes of Duck Hunt play emerging?

Just from watching videos it seems like there's people that favor a trickster, trolling sort of gameplay and another that plays a suffocating game based on fundamentals and shutting everything down, And everything in between. You guys have any opinions on which may be the better, or is it really a matter of preference until the metagame shakes out?

 

[Pyro-is-Magic]

What makes duck hunt such a unique character is that he fulfills a ridiculous amount of playstyles. Defensive trading, offensive trading, defensive can shielding/rolling, offensive foxtrot can, b-reverse approacher, multi-option zoner, disjointed offense, disjointed defense, setup offensive combos, setup defensive combos, setup kill combos, offensive can dash/pivot grab approach, defensive can shield grab option.

As of right now a lot of Duck Hunt players have been trying to simplify Duck Hunt Dog to their playstyle instead of researching the most important thing about the character, his complex options. When a character's neutral B can lead into a million different options, it is incorrect to become associated with only 2-5 of them, what Duck Hunt players should really be doing is learning all the options and try to incorporate all of them into their play.

As of right now the only player that has shown a very strong Duck Hunt is MVD with his very defensive combo Duck Hunt, but even he doesn't fully utilize the character.

 

[Octagon]

The way that i play Duck Hunt is that i use projectiles to confuse my opponent so that he can't read me and is preoccupied by the projectiles so that i can get in his face with Duck Hunts smash attacks or aerials. I play a very offensive Duck Hunt style

 

[Diamond DHD]

My Duck Hunt play-style is strange, I'll call it the "Opportunist". I would pretty much go for the same set-up at the start of a game, short-hop can + gunman, follow the can as it gets shot by the gunman and go for a melee attack, if you get the tall gunman, shoot it manually. From there I had no specific set-up, instead I would overwhelm opponents with hard-to-predict projectile combinations and look for ways to take advantage of where the can is and where the opponent is, then go for punishes. The Opportunist part comes from coming up with set-ups on the fly using roll-of-the-dice combinations, this was the best I could do due to poor planning and not being a particularly smart player. It's a quite aggressive play-style, constant pressure is necessary and you must keep on the move and go for frequent aerials, grabs and dash attacks. It's kinda similar to what @ Octagon said, although you're less confusing the opponent with the projectiles, and more confusing yourself.

I don't think my play-style is the best, in fact, I think it's one of the worst, but it's a key part of being a Duck Hunt master, as it's almost entirely perception.

 

[Ninetale3]

My personal take on duck hunt is inspired on the heavies play-style. I rarely do highly complicated setups and use the projectiles more for making the reads easier. I start the matches particularly with a clay pidgeon off the bat to force them to respect me and minimize their initial aggression. From there I either walk a bit with the can or b-reverse arial gunmen to capitalize on their movement choice to punish. After that initial bit, it's all on foresight to help you. I also tend to use the tilts more then the average duck hunt for this reason as well.

I found that this style tends to help against some of the speedsters that give them trouble. Falcon being a very funny example as I actually got him to back off from going in off stage. Though I have trouble against more projectile based characters. That might be because I suck at fighting projectile characters to begin with.