Topdown Showdown

by Yut Put
Topdown Showdown
The medieval smasher returns
ID:2198793
 
Alright, there's been a lot of talk about Fugs lately, so I decided it might be a good idea to start a discussion on ways that you can approach the match-up with any character and win consistently if you're able to outplay your opponent. Before that though, let's outline Fugs as a character by looking at his strengths, weaknesses, and what he wants to do in each match-up.

First his strengths, we all know about his huge power and damage on each hit, on top of that he also has a small degree of combo potential and generous reach on just about everything. On top of this, he has one of the best out of shield games, the most shield bars of any character, and is one of the few characters capable of moving while shielding. He's also pretty nimble, and can move around quite fast despite being a heavy hitter character. Finally, if given enough time, he can armor up after a lengthy animation which grants full armor for a single hit, allowing him to force trades with his Fuggon Punch or power through a hit or projectile while attempting to land a grab or hit of his own.

Now, here are his weaknesses. First off, he's slow, and by "slow" I'm talking about his frame data, not his movement. Basically, just about everything he does can be easily whiff punished. Most of his moves have long start-ups compared to the rest of the cast, especially his Fuggon Punch, on top of that, they also have significant cooldowns, even his I attack which is all around his best move. His dash is also pretty bad compared to the rest of the cast, thanks to a clumsy roll animation at the end not unlike Gobo's tripping animation. This means he can't really use dash for much other than the occasional mix-up or for his recovery, if you try to approach with it, you can be easily hit, even with bump cancel. Because of this, he leaves large exploitable openings that make him susceptible to patient, "bait and punish" playstyles. His recovery is average at best, and that's being pretty generous. Let's take a look at it, he has one offstage dash, and his melee attack using the I button. That's about it, unless there's some hidden Tech that we don't know about yet. On top of that, there's also a significant delay between each melee attack, though not quite as much as with the Druid, so jumping out and hitting him shouldn't be too hard either with the correct timing.

So, what is Fugs' M.O? In general, he's going to want to look for opportunities to land a grab or knock people offstage with I or strong I so he can edgeguard them. If possible, getting a hard read into the Fuggon Punch is also a huge bonus since it'll usually either set up for an edgeguard, auto-gimp on it's own, or just knock them into the blastzone. However, it's also incredibly telegraphed, which also makes it one of his easiest moves to punish, nothing else look or sounds like it in his moveset, and it's easily one of the most reactable moves in the game. If Fugs is standing around mashing this button in neutral, that's an easy punish right there. It's a lot more scary when he uses it for edgeguarding though and remember that you cannot block the Fuggon Punch, he will send you and your shield flying just like Gobo's barrel, so don't bother trying to block it. If you're stuck in a situation where it will probably hit you, either time a roll into Fugs to effectively "spot dodge" or just beat him to the punch with something faster, probably a grab. It's good to be in the habit of grabbing Fugs instead of hitting him, because you'll be much less likely to absentmindedly go charging directly into armor, then eating a Fuggon Punch for your trouble. Overall, Fugs is a punish character, plain and simple, that's how he gets pretty much anything going and how he wins games. He's a character that can play a pressure game, he lacks projectiles, and his whiffs are large and easily exploited. So he's not going to want to just press buttons without a good reason, even careless use of I can be easily punished.

So what do you want to do against Fugs? Regardless of which character you are, you're not going to want to mindlessly aggro Fugs, he excels at dealing with that, I out of shield is honestly pretty amazing and needs to be respected, of course he also has one of the biggest grabs in the game. So what you want to do is bait these options out of Fugs then punish him. You can do this by either simply moving in and out of range to bait a whiff, or you can move towards him as if going for an attack or grab and simply roll into him when you anticipate his response. This is actually pretty effective and works vs Druid OOS grab too! If you time it correctly then whatever Fugs tried to hit you with will whiff and you'll be able to get a free hit while he recovers. I find it helps not to be holding a direction for the roll, you'll always roll in the last direction you moved, so you can aim this spotdodge roll from any direction and it works with direction input rolls as well but they may be less practical except in a few situations perhaps. So now that you're landing hits, what you want to do next is get Fugs offstage, he is at his worst here, and being offstage as Fugs always feels awful. Gimping him off of an edgeguard is going to be the most reliable method to take the stock, so try to go for an edgeguard on Fugs when he's attempting to make it back. It shouldn't be too hard to catch him right after he uses an attack, especially if he already used up his roll. Anyway, these are just my thoughts on Fugs in general. Hope this helps to make him less of an issue, thanks for reading.
fugs is ez to beat, just stop running into his punches. watch the replays - the vast majority of my fuggon punches landed were a result of me pressing fuggon punch and then the enemy dashing into me soon after.
You make a good point there, Empirez. Fugs is the kind of character that punishes mistakes well, so it stands to reason that the fewer mistakes one makes, the easier he will be to beat, and likely why he may fall down in effectiveness as the meta advances, much like a grappler in any fighting game. However, in regards to your tournament matches, ever notice how most of your punches were also landed backwards? The pre-patch punch was deceptively disjointed in all directions which looked incredibly janky most of the time. Maybe if it was some kinda Fuggon Slam which conveys the notion of 'This hits all around me.' that'd be fine. However, what we got was 'This is clearly a punch thrown in front of me, but it hits all around me cause why not?' It also had 0 cooldown, this meant it was pretty spammable for what it was and not terribly difficult to aim, you just stood in the general area near other players or about where they might try to roll and use it, then if you miss, you're not punishable anyway and can probably just attack or grab before they get to do anything. That was part of the issue with Pre-patch Fugs.