Fan Fighter Clash 3: Finals Results Explanation

AwfulBeast 07/20/20

Written by Daehypeels

So, it has come down to Sion and Grievous duking it out for the title of Champion. Ash is still in a coma next to us, and Awful’s FFC2ing us AGAIN… he means well, at least, and a risky plan is far better than no plan in this situation. It’s basically just me stuck in these cages now, once again, so might as well do the one thing I can do in these situations.

Guesstimate.

Dimentio is “kind” enough to have us watch the finals for ourselves, so while we could just wait to see, I’m assuming you guys want to hear who I think will win. If I can recall my notes properly, we should already have the answer sitting right in front of us…

…kind of sucks that neither ash nor awful are able to talk rn, having company for once makes these stupid bird containers far more bearable.

Anyways.

Fan Fighter Clash 3: Finals

Championship Match: Sion VS General Grievous

I can barely believe it’s down to these two characters, but it is how it is. Whoever wins though, I hope they’re the lesser of two evils…

Summary:

It feels odd describing Sion and Grievous for the 4th time each…

Sion, Finalist of Fate

Sion’s imposing figure hasn’t changed in the slightest throughout the tournament, and his usual strengths will be just as prevalent here. As a refresher, he is the heaviest of weights with a MASSIVE battleaxe in his hands, and I don’t even need to tell you that he could level buildings with a few hits from that thing.

That alone makes him extremely threatening to deal with (picture Ganondorf but all of his moves are huge dists), but his versatile Specials grant him a variety of ways to make up for his downsides – with Neutral Special he can run as fast as Captain Falcon himself for a short period of time, with Down Special he can not only halve damage taken but even create a huge explosion around him afterwards regardless of whether he’s able to act or not… and if foes get hit by his crippling Side Special, that often results in a swift and highly painful death right there and then. And you already know that he packs the completely unique ability to ignore death for an additional 5 seconds, granting him Neutral B’s incredible speed and temporarily fantastic frame data to hopefully finish off his opponent.

But never forget the two weaknesses he can never overcome; he’s still very slow to move around 90% of the time and he can’t buff his frame data, which for the most part is atrociously laggy and lets the opponent easily punish any whiffed swipe. And his recovery is not good in the slightest, with terrible distance and extremely slow startup.

He’s a powerful monster who one will struggle to contain, but he has some crippling flaws that may spell his defeat in the end.

Grievous, Finalist of Fate

Grievous on the other hand is a different kind of beast altogether, and potentially even more difficult to deal with. He has well-above power and range due to lightsabers being almost unfairly powerful in the source material, but he doesn’t trade speed to swing them; his run speed is surprisingly fast and his frame data doesn’t suffer significant amounts of lag.

And his Specials continue the trend of his kit being very well-rounded – he can space from range and combo up close with his Neutral B, he can approach, recover, and kill all in one with his Side B, and even if he’s somehow being camped out, Down B’s reflector properties and extremely high damage will prevent that from being a problem. All of these lead to Grievous lacking any severe downsides, and even things like his combo game are still notable enough to pose a serious issue.

But his rounded nature can lead to issues for him; he doesn’t particularly excel at anything (even weight), and he’s still rather laggy when swinging those blades around, meaning that he’s easier to punish on whiff or block than most characters. And finally, his recovery with his version of Wario Bike is pretty great, but without it he becomes extremely vulnerable offstage, since as long as you don’t cooperate with him his Up B is essentially useless as a recovery tool.

Again, Grievous can completely ruin you just like his counterpart, but neither fighter are perfect, and both have highly exploitable flaws.

The question is… who’s flaws are more prevalent?

Results:

[C]During judging, we spent a long time going back and forth on the exact winner, given these two have similar strengths and weaknesses but to a different degree. The Specials being different and their exact levels of strengths ended up being a large part in deciding who came out on top.

A large boon in Grievous’ favour is that he automatically has the advantage of forcing Sion to approach pretty much every single time, since his reliable and long-ranged Blaster doesn’t have any direct counter other than being non-optimal up close. And given his similar (albeit noticeably shorter) range, spacing out Sion’s gigantic swings isn’t the biggest pain for him like it was for a lot of Sion’s previous opponents. Add in his higher speed and Grievous will be landing more hits overall, likely meaning that he wins neutral at least slightly more often, if not significantly.

But when he does inevitably lose neutral, Sion’s meaty strikes will always hit harder and lead to a harsher disadvantage for Grievous, and the axe’s superior range and ability to give Sion the advantage if moves clank is definitely something in favour of the brutal warrior. Despite him losing neutral more often, Sion’s attacks can at the very least counterbalance Grievous’ more frequent hits, especially if he uses Neutral B to trade a Blaster hit with something ridiculous like F-Air, U-Air, or even Dash Attack. Blaster is not a free option.

Then again, Grievous’ higher speed can lead to him maintaining the pressure on his foe better when he does land a hit, keeping Sion on his toes and likely landing even more hits, sending him offstage and preparing him for what’ll typically be an easy gimp. In that case, since Grievous wins neutral more often and therefore that situation would likely be common, he could have far more valuable wins off of neutral.

Back to Sion though, Grievous’ recovery is just as exploitable if not even more so, since the Seperatist general only has one viable recovery tool which at best Sion can trade with and at worst he can easily gimp, basically killing Grievous on the spot. And again, Grievous may win neutral and lands more hits overall, but Sion can tank far more hits than Grievous can and his superior range + power could likely mean that only 5 good hits from Sion would kill his opponent whereas Grievous needs 9 bare minimum…

It’s really hard to tell who’ll kill the other earlier, and which character’s set of strengths would be more useful than the other’s. Again, Grievous lands hits slightly easier, but Sion needs less of them to be just as effective, pretty much cancelling each other out.

See what I mean about how hard this was?

However, when we took a step back and looked at it in different ways, things started to become a bit clearer.

Sion’s main weakness in the fight is the fact that he always needs to approach, but his kit allows him to work around it. Neutral Special lets him trade a knockbackless 20% in exchange for extremely high movement speed for a few seconds, meaning that suddenly Grievous is the one on the back foot – a mistimed Blaster can simply be hopped over and by the time he’s out of endlag a giant axe could already be planted inside his head, and even within each other’s bubbles as long as Sion has Grievous’ back to a wall he can utilize his superior range and higher power to outspace him with relative ease. Grievous has no such advantage, he can indeed force Sion to come to him but to effectively do so he still has to put himself into dangerous endlag and let his opponent get closer each time.

Analyzing both recoveries also revealed a superior option… Grievous’ Side B does go further and faster than anything Sion has, but at the ledge, Sion has very little reason to worry about getting hit by it while gimping – he’s so far away from the other blastzone that, coupled with his extremely high weight, he likely won’t ever die from a failed edgeguard, and as mentioned before he can easily trade or even beat out the bike due to his axe’s giant dist. On the flip side, the Noxian juggernaut’s recovery is overall noticeably worse than his opponent’s, but Grievous has to be EXTREMELY careful when attempting to stop it… Up B’s hitbox is powerful enough to kill midweights at 40% onstage, let alone the obscenely early percentage anyone would die at if they’re stagespiked by it, and there’s nothing stopping Sion from mixing things up via throwing out a differently-timed aerial instead. Overall, Sion’s recovery works better.

Keeping both of these advantages in mind and noticing all of the smaller advantages Sion has… things like some of his moves packing blatant super armor allowing him to sometimes ignore Grievous’ attacks entirely, his far better grab game, the fact that the general has not one but 2 basically useless Specials (Down B is indeed an attack but it’s not a very good one, and Sion has nothing to reflect)…

In the end, in the final battle, to take it all, one fighter will emerge victorious.

And his name will be Sion, The Undead Juggernaut.