TL;DR Gouie needs more consistent ways of setting and activating The Mire.
I’ve done my achievement hunting with Gouie and the one thing I found myself wanting more of is chances to use The Mire. I am a Maypul main; having a stage obstacle for trapping/combos/kill confirms is a playstyle I thoroughly enjoy. Understandably, I was excited to see that Gouie has a similar mechanic!
However, Gouie does not get anywhere near as much opportunity to set up The Mire as other characters do for their setplay pieces (Maypul and Lilly, Galvan drills, etc). Add on that in order to reactivate it, you must land a hit with a Goober and then throw it into The Mire directly, you can be hard pressed to get any kind of consistent confirm with it during a match.
The options that Gouie has to set The Mire initially can be hard to land because of their commitment. Charge Shot from Big Gouie is probably the most consistent method, but getting big can be a risk in itself. Charge shot also still needs to connect to grant The Mire.
The hands going offline after a set duration, losing the puddle on parry/pummel/death (unsure if these are all true or not), even having to reactivate it, I feel are great ways of finding a balance for it. It still feels fairly lackluster to use when you can use it, and unless you can read that the trap will guaranteed connect at a high percent, you will probably find a tech chase at best at higher levels.
For more context, this post comes after my achievement hunting and watching Plup’s Gouie run at Cashbox this week. I do not believe there was a single set where Plup got to use The Mire. Call it biased because I enjoy setplay, but it feels like Gouie doesn’t get to use half of his gimmick most of the time.
If I’m hopeful, I’d like to see two changes made:
1) Specifically up special reactivating The Mire as long as the Goober lands in the puddle. No on hit, no need for a direct throw into the puddle. Just a Goober landing on the puddle reactivates the hands. With the variable angles of the throw, this can create mix-up situations on whether Gouie is trying to approach or gain stage control through The Mire activation.
2) A more consistent way of initially setting The Mire. Down special, get-up/ledge special, and Charge Shot all feel too commital for consistent use. Let Gouie have a more controllable way to set The Mire without the hands activated, then allow him to activate it by the above/typical methods.
Always open to hearing others’ thoughts!