Groh's looking pretty strong and beginner-friendly from I've seen so far. What jumps out immediately is his range. It may not look that long since he takes his body with him, but his attacks reach a long distance without exposing his body hitbox too much. His attack speed and recovery aren't particularly slow either. The combination of medium speed, long range, and recovery (as well as stance transition options on whiff, maybe) means Groh players won't need to worry as much about whiffing and playing the standard neutral game against him looks to be difficult. Counter-poking rather than trying to move around his attacks seems like a better strategy against him, especially because...
He has a lot of decent looking lows. They do have particular animations, but they are not that slow looking and there's more than one to look for. This kind of low is the ideal type to use against step G (after a short delay for linear lows). A little misdirection and subtlety and these lows will be landing in high level play, mark my words.
I'm not seeing much in the way of pokes that don't move him forward, so a keepaway playstyle might not be easy to accomplish despite the long range. It seems he's intended to attack from mid to long range primarily, bringing him closer to the opponent, and to keep the opponent in his "web" so to speak, making him stop moving so Groh can do lows perhaps. Or, he can back off after landing hits, of course, but the defensive pattern will be going in and out from long range to mid range and then back to long range.
His whiff punish tools that look really easy to use play into this, as he'll be able to hang around at the opponent's tip range at mid to long range while they're well within his range and mix between coming in with an attack and baiting whiffs.
As for weaknesses, one will likely be opponents simply blocking his big moves, which may leave Groh in front of them at disadvantage. Like Cervantes or Aeon/Lizardman who have had this similar mid-long range, mid speed, heavy hitter archetype, it looks like he commits pretty hard any time he uses an attack, though, even something as simple as having a good A poke would change that. He appears to have the tools to deal with passivity, though.
This design doesn't leave a lot of room for skill to carry him, as skill doesn't seem required to avoid whiffs and on block he seems to be committed. I personally couldn't play a character like this because the design doesn't seem to reward good spacing, though it may help to avoid falling prey to his other likely weaknesses, getting dominated when in the ideal range of other characters and getting hit as he comes in with an attack without anything really fast to whiff punish quick pokes.
Also hi babalook go to tournaments
