Ivy vs Ness and Ike

[Elwing285]

I have trouble versus a local ness main as my other mains (ganon and bowser), do you think Ivy is a better matchup versus ness. I also think Ivy is my best bet versus our local Ike main. How should I play out the neutral vs these characters? Is there something I should avoid or use in certain situations? The ness likes to approach mostly with aerial PK fire, Fair, and DD grab.

 

[cisyphus]

Spoiler: read below first

Ness in general has trouble against projectiles and disjoint, and Ivysaur has both. The one thing I'd be cognizant of is his ability to cover sloppy recoveries; that down air is quick and rising DJ down air is insanely good if you aren't careful.

But really it sounds more like you're having trouble with some base concepts like Spacing and SDI. PK fire spam loses pretty soundly to good SDI (usually out but it can be dependent on the situation) and fair chains end if you SDI in a way they don't expect. Ness shouldn't be getting dashdance grabs on you. His grab range isn't great, and neither is his dashdance really (as far as I remember). These problems in reality aren't quite Ness-specific and I think you need to realize that instead of grasping for a secondary. That "this game requires secondaries" idea is cropping up a lot again lately but I think that's pretty bull**** (maybe not for Ganon/Bowser, but nevermind that). I guarantee unless you're playing Boiko or someone like that, it's not really the MU that's bogging you down but a lack of understanding of how Ness works and ergo a lack of understanding about how to counter his play.

Ike is kind of the same way. He has a lot of weird things about him. It took me ages of getting bopped by Lordy to understand how to beat Ike. The system of edgeguarding him wasn't obvious to me until I went to Canada for Summit and saw people edgeguard Blitz and Ally and other Ikes like it was nothing. His neutral game seemed so crazy with the quickdraw shenanigans but then I started to actually look at Ike instead of my own character and I caught on to how to beat QD (in a sense). Before then, I was thinking about bringing in my Melee Samus to help combat Ike, but really she just had the easier tools to deal with Ike compared to Snake (i.e. Missiles and Bombs and lasting hitboxes). Instead I learned how to use my character's tools properly and now I don't really lose to any Ikes. It's a matchup I feel pretty comfortable in, even. I can grab ledge at the exact right time to avoid Aether and cover wall jump QD and still have enough invincibility to swat Ike away with my back air. I can tranq his QD and force him to either eat a fat punish or revert to neutral (and give up positioning). I can read how he's gonna edgeguard and force him to go for the guaranteed stuff that'll hit me regardless (lol bananasword) instead of the risky business (YOLO down airs).

the tl;dr
If this Ness player isn't winning your regionals or isn't making a name for himself out of region, you probably just need to learn the matchup, and it improves your gameplay immensely by working through the matchup with your original character. Picking a counterpick character isn't really relevant until you get waaaay up there (like how Lain doesn't go Fox or Falco against me—he'd lose lol).

 

[Elwing285]

I only use the counterpick mentality because it works(at least for me). I know its frowned upon, but its more interesting for me and plays well to my strengths. I actually play up to 5 different characters in tournament, Bowser is cool but he just has some pretty uphill battles. There are players in my area that I can only beat with one of my 5. Not necessarily because its a bad matchup, but because my playstyle with that character beats their playstyle.

Ness does have a bad DD game, but it is pretty decent vs Ganon and bowser who have ****ty grounded movement. And he I said he uses PK fire, I did not say he spammed it. Spammed PK fire is pretty easy to beat, but he uses it pretty intelligently. I definitely understand spacing (ivy without spacing kinda sucks), but my SDI is pretty terrible...

But really I was just looking for good neutral options that ivy can use vs ness's and Ike's options and ways to DI or get out of his combos as ivy.. I appreciate the SDI comment, I need to work on improving that.

 

[Swann]

You can pretty much simplify the Ness matchup at mid/low level to just: bair more. Work on dash dancing and bair if he jumps/throws PK fire. Bair beats everything he has in the air.

Once Ness is grounded, use dtilt (running dtilt) to interrupt his dash dance. If you can pop him up for a combo (in general, not JUST with a dtilt) make sure that you either (a) have really airtight combo timings, (b) outrange him, or (c) opt for stage positioning advantage, because ness has a lot of fast, high-priority aerials that he can break combos with.