Meta Analysis: The Amazing Digital Fight Game!
Read this as a youtube guy's youtube video
Jax. jax is the top of the meta right now, and for good reason. he's both the fastest character in the game, and has the best combo game in the game, letting him build meter very quickly. With fast heavy and neutral moves with the largest vertical jump and some very strong down airs, Jax is very good at juggling opponents, particularly heavier characters in Zooble and Kinger, who he can infinitely loop until they die. Gummigoo is an exception for reasons we will get too. He also has a very strong opening move in his side heavy, which hits fast and early, letting him combo off from a surprising distance.
Jax isn't perfect, however. what he has in speed, he lacks in range and damage. His average range is 0.28, but when you ignore his lengthy side heavy, it drops to 0.23. In comparison, Pomni has the second shortest range in the game, and she sits at 0.28 naturally. This means that Jax has a difficult time confirming kills outside of combos. That and his specials suck, and are rarely seen used.
Moving to the queen of A tier, Ragatha is (arguably) the only defensive character in the game. having an alright matchup against jax with a counter and a vanish special to escape jax's combo game, and all her special moves having priority, she is one of two characters that has a direct answer for close combat with Jax. her match up everywhere else is also pretty good, as her side specials have more than decent reach on them
Rags does run into an issue with her kit in that her meter needs constant management. Being a very special heavy character, it is very easy to run out of meter on her, and her combo's are not the best. She's not a combo oriented character like Jax or Gangle. She has a couple of them, but nothing truly impressive. Ragatha would not be in A tier if Jax was not the king of the meta right now, but as she is a solid counter to most of Jax's shenanigans and has a decent match up at worst against every one else (except zooble) it lands her firmly in A tier.
Zooble, much like Ragatha, is also somewhat special oriented. Being the only dedicated ranged character in the game, their specials are integral to her range dominating playstyle. their surrounding normal and heavy kit is also pretty strong, coming with long reaches and good knock back. You can take advantage of this if you manage to catch a floaty Jax or rushing Pomni off guard and stutter them with an up or side special, but this is difficult considering their slow speed and clunky movement.
Zooble is the second heaviest character in the game, making their recovery time longer and having less knock back. They are normally combo fodder for most characters if they can get in close, but her ability to control space makes up for that. Traditionally, Jax, gangle, and Pomni have better chances than most, but a skilled Zooble player can render their speed or combo oriented gameplay mute with well placed specials and jabs.
Pomni. Pomni is the face of TADFG, it's poster child. it's no wonder that she is the easiest character to pick up. with a straight forward combo focused on looping Side normal into overhead heavies and a small, fast moving target she is very good at closing the distance to her opponents. her damage output is also surprisingly chunky, being able to delete sections of opponents health bar by just brawling it out. While Pomni is simple, it does not mean she isn't elegant or comes with a low skill floor. There are several ways to get combo extensions using various movement techs or special animation cancels where most other characters would have to give up and reset.
That being said, she lacks specific uniqueness or special powers. Unlike Jax, her actual vertical is only average and her range is the second smallest with no great reaching options. her arial game is also sub-par, and she lacks unique defining playstyles. She doesn't have defenstive tools or super armor like Ragatha, or range control like Zooble, or a strong mix up game like Jax.
Kinger is the only character in C tier. Being the second character with a mix up oriented playstyle. Kingers moves are rarely telegraphed and his combo's are branching, leading to a difficult to predict style that leaves you guessing as to where you want to be blocking. While all his combo's do eventually end before confirming a kill, they come pretty close to it. Something kind of unique about Kinger is that he doesn't suffer from the weight class issue. Most combo's in the game end up having a fall off point, heavy characters having that fall off point be later on in the combo. Kinger doesn't have this problem, letting him pull off the full combo on even the lightest characters in the roster.
Kinger does struggle in the air though, and lacks strong arial mobility. He has the shortest vertical in the game, and his aerial moves not very good at all. this leaves him waiting for more mobile characters like Jax and Pomni to come to him, which in this game is not a good thing.
Gangle is a character that feels left behind. Supposed to be the other combo character, Gangle has been given a strong set of grappling moves to work with in the form of her up and side heavies. These moves lead into a series of normal aerials followed by a down special, which is a strong spike. The issue is that the set of aerials is very easy to tech out of or escape, and does not do a lot of damage.
Gangle is a character full of contradictions. She has good reach and range on her grounded normal, but she is designed around a grapple into aerial combo. her specials lack range and are meter heavy, but her aerial combo's do not build meter rapidly enough to consistently end the combo with a special. her resets do not start with grapples, but rather her grounded normal which don't allow for the throw that leads into her aerial combos. Gangle feels like two separate kits that accidently got mixed together and never really separated into a aerial grapple character and a ranging brawler.
And finally we have the bottom of D tier, our newest character, Gummigoo. Gummigoo has.... a problem. Gummigoo is slow, his moves are very telegraphed and easy to dodge if you are not in the middle of your animation. While he has a large health bar and a stunningly good range on his side normal, it doesn't mean much when you can just run circles around him. Gummigoo amounts to a skill check: Can you not get caught pressing buttons, or panic. Honestly, he should be in F tier, but isn't for one very simple reason.
His normal and heavies (grounded and aerial) all have super armor. This means that Jax (and that extent Gangle) can't do shit to him. it is impossible to combo Gummigoo, because you will be punished with one of his devastating heavies. While outplaying Gummigoo isn't hard and can be done with good timing and spacing as his attacks are the slowest in the game, if you lack the damage on your attacks to actually damage him (looking at you, Jax) you can't kill him.
if he does catch you you can say goodbye to your health bar. And he will catch you, eventually. Gummigoo is the only character where learning special animation cancelling is a must, as it will make landing normals much easier. Gummigoo is in a very interesting position in that he is a hard counter to the best character in the game, but is easily beaten by anyone else that knows what they are doing. Pray that Gummigoo never receives any buffs.
