Guide Ice Climber Match Up Guide

[cablepuff]

From conversation with Roy Valle.

sheiks.
Don't let her eat your shield away with fair. Instead you can wavedash under her and up smash or approach under her with up-air or nair.

Don't approach or go offensive. Ice climbers are defensive counter characters.

Do:
Chaingrab or wobble whenever you can.
Shield wavedash any of her smash into grab.
Do shuffle up-air her when she decides to shuffle needles. Intercept her needle with shuffle up-air.

Tips.
* With both Ice climbers.
Best kill combo is down throw to forward smash than making sure she recovers above you! You can do this by edge hoging and having nana wait on stage afterwards wavedashing or getting on grabing her This way you can get last grab off and do down throw into up smash.
* Climbers ice block can be use as a camping aresenal against sheiks that wavedash back into forward tilt or space out down tilt.

 

[Binx]

@ Cablepuff I added - Don't let her eat your shield away with fair. Instead you can wavedash under her and up smash or approach under her with up-air or nair.

I firmly believe that being proactive is important at the very least you need to have a way to pressure other people into making decisions, whether it be by being close by, or other means. So the never attack isnt something I can put in the guide with any confidence because I believe it to be bad advice.

If enough people want to give me good reasons as to why I am wrong I will add that bit in. The "best" kill combo against shiek is the same best kill combo against any character and that is a dynamically shifting one, at certain percents based on position of the stage, DI you expect among other variables, I will admit forcing shiek to make the stage and taking advantage of the stun is a viable and effective method but I want to people to realize that the game is ever changing and realize that sometimes the most surefire options are the most predictable and become the worst in certain situations.

 

[cablepuff]

Those are not my advice. Instead they come from me asking on aim one of hte best ice climbers in the country (top 3 or maybe even top 2). I hardly touch climbers, i am marth/sheik main.

 

[choknater]

Hm, I admit I learned a little bit from reading cablepuff's little bits of advice. Edgehogging is, evidently, a really good way to edgeguard Sheik. Just hog, climb back up and pop her away again. I always forget to edgehog sometimes, and I attempt to smash her out of her up-B... but they always sweetspot. I'll keep it in mind next time.

Also, by "defensive" I'm sure he meant reactive and cautious, if anything. It is very true that an offensive Sheik is very dangerous to ICs and you wanna keep them synched for the sake of chain grabbing her, which is ridiculously easy. Sheik is one of those characters you really need to grab, because she can be chain grabbed by both ICs and even just Popo to very high percents. Constant hopping fairs and well-placed needles will prevent grabs... so his WD usmash and shffl uairs are pretty accurate advice.

 

[Binx]

Hm, I admit I learned a little bit from reading cablepuff's little bits of advice. Edgehogging is, evidently, a really good way to edgeguard Sheik. Just hog, climb back up and pop her away again. I always forget to edgehog sometimes, and I attempt to smash her out of her up-B... but they always sweetspot. I'll keep it in mind next time.

Also, by "defensive" I'm sure he meant reactive and cautious, if anything. It is very true that an offensive Sheik is very dangerous to ICs and you wanna keep them synched for the sake of chain grabbing her, which is ridiculously easy. Sheik is one of those characters you really need to grab, because she can be chain grabbed by both ICs and even just Popo to very high percents. Constant hopping fairs and well-placed needles will prevent grabs... so his WD usmash and shffl uairs are pretty accurate advice.

I dont deny for a second that edgehogging shiek works awesome against her, but its not neccesarily the "best" way to kill her, thats all I was arguing, its an effective option is it as good as dthrow usmash? depends on her damage and where you are, if shiek DIs your fsmash correclty alot of times she can make it to the edge without an Up B.

"Don't approach or go offensive. Ice climbers are defensive counter characters."

Dont approach to me means that you arent threatening, you can threaten someone without attacking by being close but you are still forcing action, or at the very least intimidating. You want them to think on some level that you might attack. Standing still far away however is defensive, blocking alot or running are also defensive. If he would have said reactive and careful it would have been better advice, and phrased that way I will go ahead and add it in as a tip.

EDIT: Ganon done-ish

 

[Delphiki]

Binx, if I were you I would take liberties to rephrase things that seem unclear, and perhaps have some of the more experienced players here look over things in case you're not sure. Glancing through, there seemed to be a couple of bits that were intended as general advice but were so broad that they didn't really tell you anything.

For example:

"Instead you can wavedash under her and up smash or approach under her with up-air or nair."

Sure, if they don't full hop and fair again. x_x

I think situational things should be included, but they should be specific. There are a lot of instances where a fairing Sheik should not be approached, depending on their height, spacing, patterns, and on the territory.


Also, there's nothing that is unclear now, but if you feel something might be confusing it would be good to take the role of editor.

 

[Binx]

Thanks Delph, this goes for everyone, if you see something confusing let me know and maybe make a suggestion to make it more clear.

EDIT: I want to go ahead and write up peach next. All help is encouraged and welcomed. The only experience I have in this match up is being *****.

 

[mood4food77]

uhhhh...for peach

abuse the missed dsmashes, if the peach likes to abuse that move...abuse the lag from it, it may not be much but it's enough to make them think about using it

tehre is really no safe way to approach her, but try to catch every turnip she throws at you since it will mess her up

you can try to stay underneath her on platforms...it has worked well for me but i don't know about the rest

*stupid message box being like 2 inches wide.....*

you can't be patient

really, all you can do agaisnt peach is abuse her lag

 

[pockyD]

gotta use fairs and bairs

 

[mood4food77]

dsmashes work well too...but fairs and bairs work better

don't rely on grabbing at all...she's the biggest pain to grab

i think her dsmash for whatever reason has disjointed properties

 

[Binx]

K I think thats about as well as I could possibly cover peach, I watched quite a few videos though and with my experience in getting ruined I think thats a pretty solid how to fight peach theory. If anyone has critiques or some good tactics against peach I would be happy to hear them.

Taking votes on a new character, if there are no requests by like 3pm PST I will just pull one out of a hat. But I want to try and get 2 chars done a day until its finished.

 

[pockyD]

i think it's more important to have detailed and complete information than to get it done faster

by that i mean let people post about whatever character they want, and never consider a section "done"

 

[Binx]

i think it's more important to have detailed and complete information than to get it done faster

by that i mean let people post about whatever character they want, and never consider a section "done"

I do view it that way, I am pretty sure I said it like that during one of my earlier replies, like for ganon and luigi where I say they have writing in them, when I say done thats all I mean. any new information will be added as its reported.

I want to have at least some information on all characters in the next week or two, 9 are here now so not too many more left that are troublesome and then after that its mostly chainthrow you win they have no moves.

Either way though its good to clarify, I dont think any character will ever be "done" per say because metagames evolve to counter strategies and the game is too deep IMO to ever be figured out so completely to have a concrete answer for every single situation. The main purpose of this guide is to give generalized tips. If you know falcon is going to jump at a certain time and knee at a certain time you should know every option your character has to evade, counter, or otherwise neutralize that move.

 

[choknater]

[*]Turnip spam giving you troubles try this. note: Not sure what he is pressing to do this I know z will hand off items but I dont know if he is catching it with A or... http://youtube.com/watch?v=4Mcp_lfVMV4, well I went to test this and I couldnt get it at all I have no clue what this guy is doing.

It's easier than you think. All he's doing is pressing A. You just press A to catch the turnip, then keep pressing A quickly to spam the throws and catches.

I'm pretty well-versed at IC vs Peach and I'd say your summary is pretty good. Good do's, don'ts, tips, etc. However, I still consider this matchup nigh impossible haha. And yes, it is pretty fun. Good job on Ganon too. Keep it up.

 

[Binx]

It's easier than you think. All he's doing is pressing A. You just press A to catch the turnip, then keep pressing A quickly to spam the throws and catches.

I'm pretty well-versed at IC vs Peach and I'd say your summary is pretty good. Good do's, don'ts, tips, etc. However, I still consider this matchup nigh impossible haha. And yes, it is pretty fun. Good job on Ganon too. Keep it up.

/grin thank you so much, this means alot to me, I worked really hard on those sections.

 

[pockyD]

i'd recommend you either re-order the characters by the tier list or have an index at the top of your post listing the order to make it easier to find matchups

 

[Binx]

Sure I can add an index, I was just using ctrl F but this way people know who is done without scrolling around anyways.

 

[psicicle]

I think that for each character, you should also add a small section on chainthrows, specifically something like: Can be chainthrowed with dthrow dair only with no DI, or can be chanthrowed with dthrow only with wrong DI or can always be chainthrowed with dthrow dair with any DI excluding smash DI up to whatever % and so on. If you do, I'd like to say that mario can't be chainthrown except with reverse dair, however I'm not sure it it is escapable with proper DI.

Also, on mario:

Grab combos are situational. At low % you will want to dthrow dsmash (without the dsmash knocking mario anywhere, like in the chainthrow) and react to DI. The majority of the time you will be able to either upsmash, run into a JC upsmash or dash attack to uair or bair. At very high percents (so that he won't break out too quickly), a reverse dair chainthrow could possibly be used for building damage.

With good DI, he shouldn't be able to kill you with his dsmash until something like 150% or so. His main finishing move is his f-smash, which will probably kill at about 100-110% or more depending on your posistion on the stage. Also, his edgeguards with arials are difficult for him because of the squall hammer hitbox and the fact that his arials don't have the greatest knockback. I've survived to percentages like 170 being hit by bairs. When recovering, you should aim to go either over him, or fake going over him but reversing direction if he responds. Because you want to go over him, you should DI up (unless you are so high that you will be KOd by the ceiling, in which case you should DI downish).

Edgeguarding is difficult, and the safest way is probably desynced iceblocks from a reasonable distance. It's hard to use any melee attacks because of the b-up move's hitbox. Desyncing into a blizzard with nana will tend to force a sweetspot, if you can somehow use that to your advantage. If you're quick enough you might be able to do that to an edgehog with popo and follow up but I don't know if that's possible, and it may be ineffective because mario can stall his recovery with his cape and tornado move.

If he is spamming fireballs and camping, it is safe to just dash attack or wavesmash or whatever into a fireball near him because one of the climbers will get hit, and the other will keep going into the mario.

 

[Binx]

K I can start Mario somtime tommorow probably early in the morning. As far as the chain grab section I cant really help there, I dont really know them very well and I dont know what you can do vs what chars. I dont have much match up experience. Most of what I write except about Marth and Fox is theory and very small bits of experience supplimented with pro videos, I have not fought the entire cast with ICs lol.

I am pretty sure Mario can jump out of a reverse dair cant he?

 

[HoChiMinhTrail]

to clearify, what i meant is that when fighting sheiks u should resort to counter fighting. her tilts and airs have priority over yours except in rare instances. u have to attack her in her openings. Sheik's most vulnerable times are when she is in the air or after her smashes. whiffed smashes obviously should always be punished by wd to smash or grab. But the strat that most sheiks adopt is shuffling fairs to tilts or jabs, effectively spacing the ic. The only problem with this strat is the fact that even when short hopping she jumps too high. This blaring weakness allows u to jump in with up airs or fly under her with u smashes or up tilts with no risk. I am undefeated vs sheik players in tournie and ive played some of the best(lol pwn that ginger drephen all day LAWl). this is not due to me being amazing at this game.. but simply the realization of this simple yet extremely effective strat against sheik.... its free damage when she is in the air. You cut her air game and she is forced to play a more risky ground based game vs you where the climbers can throw their weight around.

what i was too lazy to type while cablepuff was bothering me on aim lol.

btw this is the 2nd best ic player speaking... so u know its good.

 

[AzN_Lep]

I'm not sure if I would have put dash attack as a do against Ganon. Pretty much every good Ganon player has realized almost his entire game is retreating f-airs into jabs or more retreating f-airs. Playing against Eddie and some good local Ganons, I can vouch that dash attack isn't really a "do." More often than not they'll dodge the attack and you'll eat a f-air.

 

[Binx]

to clearify, what i meant is that when fighting sheiks u should resort to counter fighting. her tilts and airs have priority over yours except in rare instances. u have to attack her in her openings. Sheik's most vulnerable times are when she is in the air or after her smashes. whiffed smashes obviously should always be punished by wd to smash or grab. But the strat that most sheiks adopt is shuffling fairs to tilts or jabs, effectively spacing the ic. The only problem with this strat is the fact that even when short hopping she jumps too high. This blaring weakness allows u to jump in with up airs or fly under her with u smashes or up tilts with no risk. I am undefeated vs sheik players in tournie and ive played some of the best(lol pwn that ginger drephen all day LAWl). this is not due to me being amazing at this game.. but simply the realization of this simple yet extremely effective strat against sheik.... its free damage when she is in the air. You cut her air game and she is forced to play a more risky ground based game vs you where the climbers can throw their weight around.

what i was too lazy to type while cablepuff was bothering me on aim lol.

btw this is the 2nd best ic player speaking... so u know its good.

Thanks Trail, yeah your pretty **** good. This makes alot more sense now than when it was phrased earlier, I would be happy to add this in, great advice.

As far as dash attack on ganon goes in all the videos I watched and the matches I have played against Ganon it has similar effects as against falcon.

When there are openings to dash attack can it lead to better results than grabs? What should we use to approach Ganons safely? what options do we have against his fair approach? I'll go ahead and remove it as a Do, and maybe move it to a tip accompanied by a note that it can be used to do severe damage but not to use it if they think they will get punched in the face, if this is untrue then I can just remove it.

Thanks guys.

 

[psicicle]

I haven't played any ganons with ICs, but if I were to guess, iceblocks from far away might be useful, and if he's approaching maybe a backwards roll to desynced blizzard? Or if you are already desynced maybe a nanapault if he's approaching. I'm guessing that a good strat would be to let him attack nana and grab or something during the lag. But I haven't played ganons with my ICs so I don't know how well any of that would work.

 

[choknater]

You want Nana if you're facing Ganon. The problem is, he can easily kill Nana in two hits or even one hit. Desynching is quite useful against him, but it is a great risk because a single fluke means a dead Nana, or worse, a dead Popo. Popo alone can do fine against him, and he can somewhat CG him without Nana, but it's still extremely dangerous. In this matchup, you want to maximize damage on every combo and make sure he dies when you edgeguard him. Fortunately, edgeguarding him is pretty easy.

 

[Lixivium]

The Chu vs. Captain Jack matches from OC2 are pretty representative of the matchup.

You can see Captain Jack consistently killing Nana early and Chu having to hold his own with just Popo, which he does, largely through some flawless edgeguarding. Chu basically gets into Ganon's face with U-airs, B-airs, D-airs -> jab -> grab. Lots of reverse D-air chaingrab -> D-throw -> U-smash.

 

[Binx]

K so I added Falco, we are now done with the entire high-mid tier except ICs, but seriously you should know all of their moves. As far as low tier match ups go are there any that need explanation? I kind of want to just go ahead and do the whole cast but maybe in a less detailed way, like just have a tips only section or something. If you guys want me to go the extra mile and do the entire cast the same way as it has been I can do that.

 

[HoChiMinhTrail]

falco is like one of the ic best matchups, i will elaborate when im not so lazy.

 

[psicicle]

I think you can dthrow dair chainthrow falco right? Can he escape with smash DI though?

 

[choknater]

K so I added Falco, we are now done with the entire high-mid tier except ICs, but seriously you should know all of their moves. As far as low tier match ups go are there any that need explanation? I kind of want to just go ahead and do the whole cast but maybe in a less detailed way, like just have a tips only section or something. If you guys want me to go the extra mile and do the entire cast the same way as it has been I can do that.

I'd prefer that only the more difficult matchups are put up here. Characters like Bowser, DK, Mewtwo, Kirby, etc. are pretty easy and straightforward. They can figure out ways to beat IC but they still have the disadvantage overall.

IMO, I'd say the biggest low tier threat to IC would be Mr. G&W.

Zelda maybe, but I'd say she's easy enough.

 

[Binx]

K how about gnw, YL, link and then say we are done?

 

[nealdt]

Binx: a quote for you from one of my friends:

"'I' comes before 'E' except as in 'SHEIK'."

 

[Binx]

K the Sheik typo is fixed. Umm so anyone want to add to the characters we have? Trail seems to have some falco info.

Also link, y. link and GnW will be the last characters we are going to have, I dont know anything about these match ups and with work I dont really have as much time as I would like to learn them, so if someone else could post them it would be a huge help to me.

 

[PB&J]

good guide binx it helped me alot

 

[Smasher89]

Something I've learned against Falco, space so you can get the shieldgrab by wavedashing a little bit backwards, wavedash "through" him a couple of times every now and then, for making him more viable to not shield against your D-smash, which will be one really good offensive attack against Falco.
It´s atleast from my experience possible to shieldgrab, make him punished if he does try to shine you by getting a grab. When he is comboing you/nana be patience and wait for the oppoturnity to uair/bair him.
I think in my oppionion that Falco is the most fun character to play against since like everyone uses him and IC´s seem to have a nice advantage in that matchup...

BTW nice guide, will help me in the shiek/fox matchup...

 

[Binx]

Something I've learned against Falco, space so you can get the shieldgrab by wavedashing a little bit backwards, wavedash "through" him a couple of times every now and then, for making him more viable to not shield against your D-smash, which will be one really good offensive attack against Falco.
It´s atleast from my experience possible to shieldgrab, make him punished if he does try to shine you by getting a grab. When he is comboing you/nana be patience and wait for the oppoturnity to uair/bair him.
I think in my oppionion that Falco is the most fun character to play against since like everyone uses him and IC´s seem to have a nice advantage in that matchup...

BTW nice guide, will help me in the shiek/fox matchup...

As far as wavedashing through him that could probably work once but if he saw it coming it would be an easy short hop drill or smash from hitting you, its kind of risky, as far as the rest of it its kind of jumbled and confusing I dont really know what you are saying. Your down smash hitting him at random isnt something you need to condition them into, if you want them to not block a good solution is to grab more which leads to stocks, if you want them to block so you can get grabs use more downsmash, just make sure you pick the one they arent expecting, there are more options of course but those work fine most of the time. If you expect a jump you can fsmash early, or you expect a full jump you can uair, the only tactic I have trouble with is laser to shines, I am sure there is a solution short of powershield them all I just dont know it.

PS: I am also not sure how get inside tilt happy Marths, any advice on this would be awesome, he likes to down tilt approach and sometimes he does u tilts instead, I can short hop dair but he can crouch cancel and hit me. And I can short hop fair but then he has time to neutral a. There has to be a hole, desynch blizzard can put some space in but if he is careful he seems to inch me out of space and get some easy hits in.

 

[psicicle]

whenever a marth dtilt spams in place, I just retreat with iceblocks to try to force him to approach since marth has no projectiles... not counting the sword.

 

[Binx]

That would be fine but if he crouch cancels them I we are both stunned about the same time and I am still in the situation, once I hit the edge though its pretty much over.

 

[Lixivium]

Against aggro Falcos, put up a double lightshield and angle it slightly upwards. See if he can pillar his way through that. If not, you get a couple of easy shieldgrabs before he catches on.

 

[choknater]

Against aggro Falcos, put up a double lightshield and angle it slightly upwards. See if he can pillar his way through that. If not, you get a couple of easy shieldgrabs before he catches on.

Wow, that is some amazing advice. Binx, add this little bit to the Falco section.

 

[Delphiki]

I find that most Falco's miss their L-cancels against shielding ICs. The double shield lag messes up their timing very often. Every Falco that doesn't play ICs a lot will think they're safe attempting pillars, no matter how good they are - and they'll get grabbed.

When you get a grab, you have three options:

1) with both Climbers, you can DtDair Falco to death (80-150%, depending on location and DI).

2) with one Climber, you can U-throw into dash attack, U-Smash, U-tilt, or another grab. All of these lead into a Smash if you want. The only way Falco can escape is by you messing up or by jumping. So wait for the jump, then U-air right above the place he hits the button, and you'll intercept with (hopefully) enough time to land and continue. If you manage to get the U-air off into another hit, the Falco will almost surely die. If this proves unsuccesful, you can:

3) D- or B-throw into a techchase. Rinse and repeat.


Just like Samus, powershielding works great, but I'd like to mention that it's possible to powershield a projectile, then have it hit the other Climber. To avoid this you can dash forward before you powershield, putting Popo out front.


A smart Falco will pummel you with lasers or space aerials well and go for grab > F-throw, seperating your Climbers and killing one. So be careful blindly sheilding.

Dash attack works wonders if you're looking to approach without a shield, but only with two Climbers (with one Climber, powershielding is much easier, so I advise that) - reason being one climber will take the hit and the other will continue.

Finally, you can fight fire with fire - pick Falco! x_x Use Ice Blocks (synced) against laser spamming - you shoot two for his one, and each one does about the same amount of damage as a laser. This will force Falco to either approach or take to higher ground, giving you the advantage.



I hope I didn't take too much from Trail ^_^.