Super Effective! Ivysaur match-up thread. [Updated for 3.0+]

[Swann]

@KenboCalrissian Ftilt works but only when you can catch him out of dash, or when he's in a techchase position. Like, chasing after jab2 (which will often force a knockdown), you can jab again or ftilt. Or utilt, which is probably just better in every way... hadn't considered that.
EDIT: yeah, ftilt can be DI'd behind Ivysaur absurdly easily (literally the other person just has to hold the direction), and you can be grabbed for hitting people with it. It was very infuriating when the patch had just come out and I was used to using ftilt all the time.

@ TreK Yeah ftilt isn't god status anymore but it's still decent. I use it during ledgeplay a fair amount, and waveland-->ftilt is surprisingly useful. It has as much or more range than dtilt, and it's fast enough that your opponent probably won't think to DI in. Or you'll just catch him DDing or something which is just as good.

@ EmLeingod Against Yoshi, you just want to bair once you get him offstage, rinse and repeat until he's too low to egg/airdodge. Drift around so you'll be in his path if he eggs, then shift to cover down b to the ledge after he crosses a certain threshold (sorry, hard to explicitly describe). If you do this correctly, you can bair both moves on reaction. If he is going low instead of high, he will either try to sweetspot (rare), or wait for you to hit him so he can armor through and nair or something. Fair him as he rises, if possible.

Footstool him whenever possible.

Dair is also very good, as it will knock him out of 2nd jump armor even at mid%.

ZSS is very frustrating to edgeguard. You'll want to cut off her down b movement options with seed bomb. Try and scout a preemptive divekick if she's way above you. At normal heights above the stage, she will either attempt to down b toward center stage, or stall until she can tether safely. Both are hard to punish. If you can get the read, it's actually pretty easy to vine whip her as she uses her down b jump... just learn how far the max distance goes and be ready. If she doesn't look to be in a position to jump over you, just grab the ledge. ZSS's laggy ledgehop is VERY easy to punish (nair is guaranteed, uair is very easy).

Neutral game vs ZSS is hard but doable. Her projectile can invalidate any attempt to approach if she's content shooting minimum charged shots. Most stages have enough room that you can stay out of range, where you can throw a leaf. Since neither projectile interacts with each other, you can then chase your leaf with WD OoS or by jumping over the blaster. In this way, you can force her to give up stage control and push her to the ledge, or to retreat to platforms. She can't really cross you up so long as you're mindful with how you place seed bombs in neutral, and unless you run into bair or dsmash she's going to have a pretty hard time killing you.

 

[EmLeingod]

We should have an "immune to Ivy" section for all of her new found unwinnable MUs in 3.5.

 

[Sixonesix]

Yeah so since this entire subforum is COMPLETELY DEAD otherwise let's argue about 3.5 matchups for a bit

Strongly favorable:
King Dedede
Ice Climbers
Jigglypuff

Favorable:
Bowser
Donkey Kong
Ganondorf

Mildly favorable:
Ike
Snake
Peach
Samus

Even:
Captain Falcon
Charizard
Falco
Game & Watch
Kirby
Link
Mario
Mewtwo
Ness
Olimar
Pikachu
Pit
Roy
Sonic
Squirtle
Toon Link
Wolf
Zelda
Zero Suit Samus

Mildly disadvantageous:
Wario
Reasons: He's a fat floaty **** and Ivysaur has a hard time finishing his stock even at high percents.
Yoshi
Reasons: Also heavy and hard to KO and has a combo breaker nair, though Ivysaur's bair can eat his double jump at high percents.
ROB:
Reasons: Heavy and hard to KO, plus his optimal space (about a 35 degree angle above, 3 character lengths away) is really difficult for Ivysaur to get in on.

Disadvantageous:
Lucario
Reasons: Ivysaur is the perfect combo weight for Lucario and neither her bair or reverse uair work particularly well at edgeguarding his up b after it starts, making it similar to a spacie matchup without the traditional weakness in his recovery. Edit: after hearing a bit more about reverse uair vs up b and his onstage landing lag I'm going to look into this one a bit more
Marth
Reasons: Chaingrabs, drop down bair edgeguards, and Ivysaur has a nasty habit of always getting hit by tippers.
Sheik
Reasons: Sheik's moveset is especially effective on average weight, average fall speed, "everyman characters" and Ivysaur is one of those characters. Plus needles beat the leaf.

Strongly disadvantageous:
Luigi
Reasons: Can't combo him or juggle with seed bombs (nair), can't edgeguard him well (misfires), can't set up for KOs easily (floaty), he juggles the crap out of Ivysaur and he edgeguards her hard with his own bair.
Fox
Reasons: Ivysaur lacks the tools to keep up with an extremely defensive Fox that plays keep away the entire match.

No idea:
Diddy Kong
Lucas
Meta Knight

 

[TreK]

I'd put Sonic in disadvantageous, Luigi in even, and Marth in strongly disadvantageous, other than that I agree

I don't have that much experience in 3.5 though

Luigi : his recovery is long, but extremely vulnerable, just try harder. One thing you have to realize is that his misfire has a lot of lag, and cannot sweetspot. So either he'll misfire and overshoot, or he'll do a normal side B and attempt to sweetspot. A misfire is punished by shielding and then doing something oos, a normal side B is punished by any hitbox ever. It's a 50/50 but with good reaction you can make it a 100/0 and he'll have to choose between wasting a misfire charge in order to eat a slightly less violent punish, and not wasting it, most likely at the cost of a stock.

Sonic : his damage output was decreased, but he's still got that incredible movement that allows him to both win the neutral by a margin and edgeguard Ivy extremely consistently.

Marth : there aren't that many top Marths out there, and I've simply yet to see a top Ivy vs top Marth matchup in 3.5. I think it's even worse than it is for us mere mortals.

GnW and ZSS might be disadvantageous as well, but I suck at those matchups. Need to grind them a bit more.

 

[Sixonesix]

I think the ZSS matchup is just horrible for both characters. To us we have to fight her similarly to how we have to fight Sheik, but to her she's already bad at approaching and Ivysaur makes it 3x as hard. I think it's even but more like 0/0 never play

I probably need to fight more good G&Ws but I had him there by virtue of the fact that I thought that matchup went to Ivy in 3.0 and now she can't throw to vine whip to end stocks.

Marth I actually have the opposite opinion, I see that matchup trending closer to even as time goes on (though probably not actually even). Aggressive Marths are incredibly unnerving to be sure, but once Ivysaur can actually get in on him she can mess him up pretty bad, and her edgeguards on him are about as good as one could hope for. His weight class, body size, and recovery are all fairly optimal for Ivy so she has some advantages, just Marth has automatic tippers so he has a rather bigger advantage lol. In that sense it kind of feels like Falcon vs Fox.

I don't think I've fought any Sonic mains in 3.5 so no comment there, just that I didn't hate the matchup in 3.0 and he got nerfed about as hard as Ivy

My issue with Luigi is mostly that he beats us so hard on stage that when you actually get the bair that puts him off stage and into a semi vulnerable position, and he just DIs up and misfires high above you where you can't reach him to get back to the stage, that's when the matchup starts to feel really silly. Actually what do we want to do to him on stage anyway? Spaced fair? He beats out nair so often I've had to condition myself to never use it against Luigi in particular...

 

[Swann]

Ftilt, jabs, and rolls/wd oos beat luigi. Bair him if he's in the air. Usmash if he's above you. Seed bomb in place.
I will say this matchup is completely different from almost everything else.

I'll talk about more stuff when I'm not on my phone haha

Big edit @ S Sixonesix 's post
Hmm. ICs and Jiggs are for sure borderline broken MUs in our favor. Dunno about DDD. He probably has some tricks but he's big and not the fastest character so leaf and seed bomb and fair probably just destroy him. He has really good range and some great things going for him (especially strong if we are above DDD)... probably not strong advantage but still in our favor. Healing off waddles LOL

Ike is probably closer to even. His throw followups are ******** and he hits really hard. We combo the mess out of him and can stuff his recovery pretty easily. Peach is probably solidly in Ivy's favor, since we out-range her everywhere, her projectile sucks (airdodge catch rethrow/agt lol), and her recovery is pretty linear and easy to intercept.

Samus is almost certainly even if not slightly in Samus' favor. We don't really have a good option to counter missile spam, and it is REALLY hard to start doing things on Samus since her CC is so ultra mega broken. Once we work around her range and can stay in that sweet spot where she can only really hit with dash attack it's good for us, but getting there and staying there is really really hard. Also, killing her takes forever and she will almost always outlive us every stock. Not sure on the final conclusion but it doesn't feel in our favor.

Falcon is absurdly stage-dependent but probably about even.

G&W is such a PITA, I hate that guy. Would argue slightly disadvantageous. He autocombo's us until 80% easy and everything could potentially kill because RNG. We kind of out-zone him but it can be really hard since he is generally much much faster than we are and because his CC is so good despite being very light. Buuuuut yeah he dies at like 50% to usmash sooooo

Link is so much easier PRAISE THE DEVS. Probably even because projectiles are still really dumb. Pit is also a ton easier, feels even.

IMO Mario is in our favor but I know not everybody thinks that.

Olimar is definitely in our favor lol

We stuff a lot of Sonic's BS but he's still Sonic and doesn't have to play smash bros so it's still in his favor IMO. Plus his up b is broken at gimping Ivysaur.

I don't think Lucario is in his favor. It's probably closer to even. We wreck his neutral game so effing hard because of dtilt/waveland ftilt, leaf, and seed bomb in place. I almost feel bad. Yeah he combos us but what else is new. Dsmash his recovery!!

Marth is dumb

I think vs Sheik we need to just WD OOS and dtilt until we can pop up for followups. Need to play more but I don't know any Sheiks.

Wrote up a huge thing about spacies that I'll post later.

Meta Knight is MUCH easier than before. Leaf wrecks him in neutral because he can't clank it, but of course he's so fast it's still very hard. His ftilt is really good and he can kind of edgeguard us. Uair is still stupid. He was toned down a lot, though. Probably slight disadvantage.

Anyone I didn't mention I just don't have enough experience to even say a few cursory words about.

 

[EmLeingod]

GnW is a really easy MU imo. I get to play dakpo occasionally and do extremely well against him. He hates the MU so much he picked up flaco for it (Denti actually made him pick up Falco though, not me).

Pretty much everything GnW excels at can be shut down by Ivy. Good recovery? Doesn't matter Back Air is a cure all if they're offstage. Good at gimping? Doesn't matter our offstage game is ridiculous, so good luck gimping us. Good range? PFFFFFFFFFFT, BACK AIR AND D-TILT. And everything he's bad at we can make worse. Bad neutral? Have a razor leaf. Good at escaping combos? Yeah well our attacks all have pretty decent damage, and you'll eventually be in too much hitstun to escape our combos after mid-percents.

But yeah, D-tilt more, u-air kills super early. Don't let him get in or else it's all orge, you'll get shrekt. He has a god like combo game on us, but our neutral game can destroy his. Doesn't matter how well he can combo if he can't get in. You do have to play it a little lame, but hey such is the life of a glass canon.

 

[Dakpo]

GnW is a really easy MU imo. I get to play dakpo occasionally and do extremely well against him. He hates the MU so much he picked up flaco for it (Denti actually made him pick up Falco though, not me)..

i want to point out that this is a completely new update. I will no longer have to use Falco because ivy has a decent character design this time around. Thank you based PMBR. I have done extremely well jz multiple times . This match-up changed to 50-50 as soon as Ivy lost her ridiculous 50/50 chance kill throw at 50% along with her recovery nerfs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoFADTWdEqM

 

[EmLeingod]

i want to point out that this is a completely new update. I will no longer have to use Falco because ivy has a decent character design this time around. Thank you based PMBR. I have done extremely well jz multiple times . This match-up changed to 50-50 as soon as Ivy lost her ridiculous 50/50 chance kill throw at 50% along with her recovery nerfs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoFADTWdEqM

I'm surprised you think it's changed that much. But I guess I haven't played any good GnWs in 3.5 (as Ivy) now that I think about it. You probably know much better than I do.

 

[Swann]

Did a frame-by-frame comparison of 3.5 Ivy to the stats from 3.02

Only things that changed were ftilt FAF is one frame earlier (39 from 40) and dash attack strong hitbox lasts one less frame (strong 4-5 (from 4-6), weak 6-20 (from 7-20) FAF 35). I definitely thought more would be different but... yeah, I guess not.

I can do move damage/KB comparisons on request.

 

[Sixonesix]

The reason I had Dedede there is because I thought Ivysaur vs Dedede in 3.0 was the most skewed matchup in the entire game. Dedede had no real answer to razor leaf -> crossup autocancel nair because she could do it so deep into his shield and finish behind him where he couldn't grab, nor could he punish with a bair. Then if he were to actually get hit by that nair (rather than shield the whole thing and get nothing while she got better stage position), he was so large and fell so fast and her autocancel frames on nair were so outrageous that he would be under her control for days. Then uthrow vine whip just KOed him at 90% so his size didn't help him there either.
3.5 Ivysaur is obviously much less ridiculous but Dedede is still not a fan of taking leaf -> repeated nairs when he doesn't have a good get of me move like his fellow fatty Bowser.

Samus also doesn't enjoy nair that much because while she can cc the whole thing, actually getting a punish off of it is not that easy so sometimes it'll just be free damage. Nair's effectiveness is compounded by the fact that Samus can't get a guaranteed shieldgrab off of it. Edgeguarding her takes forever but Ivysaur can remain in control for most of while she's doing it so it's not that bad. Every time she's in the lag from a bomb jump should be an attempt at bair. If she tries to tether while you're on stage jump off and uair straight down and she'll either reel into it or swing into it, it's much easier to catch he than it was in 3.0. If you're on the ledge and she tethers onto the stage, ledgehop dair -> vine whip will get the KO.

Link and Pit were two matchups I was originally inclined to put as a minor disadvantage because I'm personally bad at dealing with both of them, but I couldn't give a reason for either one so I just put them in even. Pit I'm particularly lost on, I don't know what range I want to be at to fight him when arrows force me closer and his combos outdamage mine if I'm too close.

Sheik I know we have two distinct strengths vs her that we should be trying to play to: dtilt (because Sheik's approach isn't that great), and our ability to abuse her recovery. Ivysaur can tether to the ledge and hang in tether as Sheik is about to up b, leaving no option but for Sheik to poof onto the stage (or platform). Then we can punish her lag with dair -> uair for a ton of charge and a possible KO.
We can do similar things to Lucario's recovery if he doesn't have aura because his up b has a ton of landing lag too. If he has aura then our best bet is to just go out and snipe him after a down b or in the pause just before his up b (much like what we want to do to Wolf). I love dsmash but I don't particularly love it vs Lucario unless he doesn't try to sweetspot at all because he can angle it, and it doesn't take a whole lot to throw off your dsmash timing when it's so slow to begin with.

 

[TreK]

So, 3.5 has almost been out for 3 months now, what do you guys think the new matchup spread is like ?

Here's what I've come up with, feel free to help make it better :V

Nearly invalidated by Ivy:
(+maybe DK ? Poob disagrees iirc)
Lose badly to Ivy :

Lose Moderately to Ivy:

Lose slightly to Ivy:

Roughly even:

Beat Ivy slightly:

Beat Ivy moderately:

Crushes Ivy:

Invalidates Ivy:


Not enough experience or footage to tell :

 

[EmLeingod]

Here's my MU spread:

Really good for Ivy(70/30)

Good for Ivy(60/40)

Close to Neutral

Bad for Ivy (40/60)

Really Bad(30/70)

Just plain stupid(20/80):


Not Sure(???/???)


NOTES:

• Leaning good for us at least on most the ones I don't know except Ganon and R.O.B
• Marth sux.
  
• R.O.B. is the busted character in this build imo, but lack any real MU experience. I feel like it wouldn't be too bad tbqh.
  
• I really think Ganon is bad for us, but that just sounds so wrong. Any character that can get us offstage this easily is really hard to deal with honestly. You have to play so much more patiently and our punish game on him isn't nearly as good as his punish game on us.
• I don't think big characters lose to us at all any more just because of size. The throw mix up into up-b is gone and our recovery was nerfed really hard. So they can actually kill us now, and our best kill move is back air which most of them can deal with on stage. IDK how anyone thinks D3 v Ivy is in Ivy's favor. Approaching a D3 with a brain as Ivy is not possible. Minions make it ridiculous and his recover isn't THAT susceptible to our conventional ledgegaurds. Bowser being the only real exception. He really can't do much about us. I can still auto-pilot good Bowsers, though not nearly as bad as 3.02/2.6.
• Marth sux.
• Spacies are really close to being stupid for Ivy.
  
• Tink is god-tier in this game and anyone saying otherwise is LOCO He's fast as hell and has like one of the 3 best neutral games in this build.
  
• Sonic and GnW (Dakpo disagree's, but whatevs) are pretty easy to shut down imo I have no idea why everyone thinks they're so bad
  
• Link's really not that bad. Nair eats boomerang, he's slow as hell and his disjoints suck, granted he combo's us pretty well and ledgegaurding us is mindless Okay yeah I was the crazy one, I think this is slightly in link's favor now
• Marth
  
• sux.

Edit 3/19: G&W Ivy was actually really stupid afterall. I watched Dakpo and Denti throw down at a recent tournament and I just don't see how we are supposed to ever get a kill off. I also think sonic is pretty even now.

 

[TreK]

Interesting, I didn't expect our charts to be so different :o

I'll take your word on D3. The only one I've played with is Tekk, who's a strong Melee player, but he's not really put that much effort in PM. He probably lost due to matchup inexperience and lack of knowledge in general.

My GnW training partner went from him being reliably 3 stocked to putting me last stock 0% regularly. That's why I put him here tbh. His upB get out of jail free card is pissing me off lol

Sonic has the dash dance of gods. It's an okay matchup in my region because I can ban all of the legal big stages, but in another region it would be a lot of pain. I'll get a lot of footage of that matchup in 2 weeks, maybe I'll change my mind then.

I really disagree with CF being that bad. We both zero to death each other, but our neutral game >>> his on small stages (and == his on big stages). He's got a few mean frame traps but you only have to care about nair, dair and grab in the neutral.

Marth sux

 

[Sixonesix]

Man I really don't know how you guys are handling Luigi, even after playing a lot more against him I still consider him among the top 5 worst matchups for Ivysaur. He racks up so much more damage on Ivysaur than she can do back, I feel like all Ivy's good for in that matchup is hitting him out of his missile with uair spikes and otherwise trying not to touch him with any non-vine attacks...

 

[Swann]

Since Luigi has such poor air mobility, he MUST stay grounded the majority of the time (unless there are low platforms... so keep wavelands in mind). Space yourself about 1.2 Luigi WD lengths away and throw out leaves, ftilt, dtilt, and maybe the occasional neutral seed bomb. Ftilt is amazing in this matchup.

We don't threaten him with our backs turned so don't bother trying to use a good DD unless your reactions are on point. If he catches you off guard with your back turned he can WD in and hold down and dsmash out of whatever you do. Just dash forward->wavedash back (mix up with shield and WD OoS).

If you can get him to jump or on a platform just wack him with bair. If you can get a fair then do that but it's pretty hard to combo luigi so... YMMV

Yeah like you said just chunky dunk his missile

 

[EmLeingod]

Man I really don't know how you guys are handling Luigi, even after playing a lot more against him I still consider him among the top 5 worst matchups for Ivysaur. He racks up so much more damage on Ivysaur than she can do back, I feel like all Ivy's good for in that matchup is hitting him out of his missile with uair spikes and otherwise trying not to touch him with any non-vine attacks...

I do bad vs my resident Luigi main(Zael) but he's just a lot better than me. We can literally just play keep out and he has no good approach options vs us, and we're pretty decent at forcing approaches. But yeah you gotta lame it out basically for this MU too look decent for Ivy since we really can't combo him.

 

[Steel Kangaroo]

Yeah to beat Luigi you really have to play super cheesy. I think it's about even; you can usually get spikes with dair if they missle below the stage but if they are smart about WDing in neutral they can bait out your bair and punish hard. Important to not overextend against him.

I'll do my matchup spread later but for now...does anyone have any tips against Wolf? I feel like against spacies in general Ivy loses neutral and just needs to pretty much go for gimps (almost like Jiggs in melee) but I have such trouble gimping Wolf's recovery...even the Side-B and Up-B mixup is enough to make it frustrating. Lasers also seem to be just better than razor lead

 

[Sixonesix]

The ultimate goal against Wolf is to follow him off stage and nail him with a sourspot dair JUST as he pauses to do up b or side b, or bair if you think he'll take a swing at you in response. Either way, hit him in the startup of either recovery move.

I don't fight Wolf players too often so I don't have terribly deep knowledge of this matchup aside from "Wolf kicks the crap out of Ivy until she bthrows/fthrows him off stage once" etc.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Just popping in to note that while Bowser vs Ivy is pretty damn rough, I don't think it's any worse than 30:70 (maybe 65:35) with a standard map pool. It's pretty tough for Ivy to get projectiles out vs Bowser due to Dash Attack, and Bowser might even have a slight edge in the, uh, edgeguarding department.

Yeah, Ivy has all kinds of 0-deaths and wins the neutral game, but Bowser actually has a decent number of tools, unlike his MU against ROB for example.

I played really bad here, but you can sort of see some of this stuff in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2K5-i4dPuA

 

[Llama Juice]

I can't find a way to deal with G&W as Ivy. If Ivy is in a tether G&W can just drop down the ledge and nair through Ivy's reel in to the ledge and it feels like an immediate spike to Ivy. His Up+B recovery makes him impossible to spike off stage which I rely on a lot to close stocks. All of that mixed with G&W's ability to just blindly combo Ivy 0-70% makes me not know how to play against him. Any help in the G&W matchup would be fantastic.

 

[Frost | Odds]

@ Llama Juice got any videos? Tough to critique without more detailed information - I'd like to see how you approach the neutral game.

 

[Swann]

I hate the GW matchup. I think it's incredibly polarizing and I honestly just switch to Falco because it is so obnoxious and unfun as Ivysaur.

To someone else on Reddit I said:
"My preliminary thought is that Ivy dominates the neutral against GW but I haven't learned how to space correctly around dtilt/up b so I just don't bother right now.
Getting auto combo'd to 90% every stock is pretty dumb too
Like I said I'd rather just do lol falco things for now until I understand the nuances better."

I still think Ivy wins on paper but it's just so dumb. It feels like GW can just mash buttons and win a lot of the time.

 

[Steel Kangaroo]

I still think Ivy wins on paper but it's just so dumb. It feels like GW can just mash buttons and win a lot of the time.

I'm still trying to figure out the matchup a lot for myself as well, but personally I think we have a huge advantage over GW. The most important thing to recognize is that GW does not have a single move that outspaces ours. If you're smart about keeping them out, they really have no options. Obviously there is the risk of DACUS and bacon from them and you have to play smart, but I just assume that every time they get in I'm going to get 0-death, so I just never. let. them. approach. Bair and dtilt alone can win this matchup in a lot of ways. Dtilt beats their dtilt if it's well spaced and since GW tries to CC dtilt a lot (esp if they dont know the Ivy matchup), you can usually chain 1-2 dtilts (or more lol) until they pop up. Most of GW's approaches and even their overall gameplan is pretty 1 dimensional (lol) so as long as you anticipate their approach you will keep them out.
As for edgeguarding, once you stuff their UpB once with bair, its this slow game of hitting them away when they UpB. Over and over. Eventually they will die. If you can time it right and they try to UpB to land above the stage instead of sweet spotting ledge, you can dair the apex of their UpB (had it work a few times in friendlies, need to dbl check hitboxes). I wouldn't say its the best edgeguard but try w practice partners you have and see if it works for you. Very demoralizing and can end a stock much earlier. If you can land a gutsy uair or upsmash on them, they die around 80% on most stages...down throw can still set up for UpB combos if they DI the wrong way. When they start comboing you, try to nair to interrupt their combo.

As for the nair tether gimp...A. dont get hit offstage if you can avoid it B. mixup your recovery. if you can get back to the ledge without dair stalling, do it sometimes. Throw RL sometimes. Throw out a fair as you DJ sometimes. If you have only one recovery pattern and they get a download on it, you're going to get stuffed every time. Experiment on your own knowing how to recover in different ways. Ivy has a lot of variability of where we can grab ledge from and knowing how to be tricksie can keep us from getting gimped easily. Play friendlies against a GW or Pikachu or Kirby or something who can gimp easily and practice coming back to ledge and avoiding their gimp.

Stages: Stay away from stages with a lot of platforms. BF is IMO GW best stage just because they get so many free followups and UpB refreshes that you just get combo'd forever. I like distant planet, FD, dreamland...stages that are really large and you just play keepaway the whole time. I think GHZ you will win if you're better than them, otherwise you will get bopped. Your bair knocks them off at like 40% but theres nowhere to run and their fair will hit you off at like 50% also...

 

[Steel Kangaroo]

Good


Neutral



Bad



Unsure:


I pretty much broke it into 3 categories because I haven't played enough different players of some of these characters to know exactly how good or bad the matchup is. Some general comments and then I will discuss the more potentially contentious placements.

Wario: I think we have a slight edge here just in our ability to keep him out, but Wario has some insane combos on us, and a good Wario will be able to convert any time you let him in. Not to mention that playing keepaway means more wafts for them.

Ness: Just spam bair. Almost any other air attack sets them up for bs conversions. Once you understand how truly long their UpB can carry them, you will be able to edgeguard them.

Jigglypuff: Lol our bair beats theirs and we live longer...I suppose if they read our tether they can punish with a rest? Something to think about,

Kirby: They can chaingrab us. A lot. Don't know the exct percents and if it's off a jab reset or not, but I had decent success DIing down and teching left or right and 50/50 a dash attack.

D3: Haven't played many but I feel like fullhop fair makes them cry. Trick is to actually approach and go in on them so they don't have time to keep you out with ftilt.

Charizard: Such a fun matchup to play. We combo each other so well. Being more aggro in this matchup is good as long as you don't overextend. If they spend too much time in the air spamming nair use seed bomb. Actually just use a lot of seed bomb anyway, it keeps them grounded (bad for them) and random seeds hitting charizard is likely with their big body. If their punish game is well developed you will eat 50-60% off a grab. Do the same back.

I don't think the Sheik matchup is all too bad for us personally. A CCing Sheik is definitely dangerous (dsmash and dtilt) but we have some decent mixups to stop CC that we can do outside of their range (grab, RL, ftilt) so it makes them think about the CC. Once they're not CCing, our combo games are pretty similar. We have some nasty followups on Sheik, especially off dtilt. Bair outranges most of their kit (just space really well and watch for ftilt). Needles are a pain but RL clanks with 1-2 needles (maybe even 3 need to test more) so don't be afraid to challenge it.

Ganondorf: Still deciding if I think this is even or bad for us. If we keep them out, we win. They do have a lot of ways to get in on us though...wizard's foot, wavelanded platform shenanigans, even side B. And their ftilt and dtilt will mess you up if you're not expecting it.

Link: After playing this more...I think bigger stages work to our advantage. We can beat boomerang with side B, dodge arrows and bombs fairly easily...if you can get the Link to come to you it's EZ. Still playtesting this one but I think it's slightly bad and not OMFG bad.


In addition to this matchup chart I am trying to put together a "move choice matchup guide". It can be a lot of trial and error at first to see which air attacks work against which characters. Basically some characters aren't scared of our bair but get messed up by our fair and vice versa. Any input? (For instance under "use bair" I have and under "use fair" I have )

Seriously guys let's argue matchups :D

 

[it's Papa]

Alright, I have Cruzycakes in my pool for Shots Fired and since we don't have a good Mario in Ohio, I'm doing a bunch of recon right now and trying to learn the matchup.

Already I'm thinking bair spam will probably be a strong tool against fireball pressure; does anyone know if nair still cuts through fireballs like it did in 3.02? How do you guys typically deal with Mario's fireball game?

I make very extensive use of Ivy's jab, but against Mario's insane CC game I feel I'll need to be extra conservative/careful with my spacing when trying to utilize it.

One of the difficult aspects of the Luigi matchup for me is that he is able to force out a nair while I'm trying to nair>up-tilt him, which effectively removes one of Ivy's most reliable combo starters. Does anyone know if this is an issue against Mario as well? I've had pretty good success against Luigi by conditioning nair>up-tilt a few times and then mixing up nair>buffer shield to bait out his nair and then hitting him with oos nair. I'll look up the frame data myself in a little bit and try to theory it out, but I'd like some input as well.

I know Mario's shield pressure game is very strong with fullhop fireball>up-air/dair as well as his crazy good jab and grab game. Is wavedash back oos safe against a Mario who is trying to falling uair/dair>jab my shield, or is nair oos generally our best option? Again, I'm going to try to frame this all out, but if any of you guys have experience against competent Marios I would love to hear it.

Are there any other issues I haven't thought of that I need to be aware of? What stages should I generally keep Mario away from/where should I try to take him?

Thanks everyone

 

[Swann]

Yeah... jab is borderline useless against Mario (ftilt is great though). Your game should revolve around getting him in the air, in a combo, or grabbing him until he's past like 90% and then you don't have to worry about CC. Mario's CC is STUPID so just respect it and you won't have to roll your eyes at how dumb it is.

Bair can be really really absurdly good in this matchup depending on how much the Mario likes to jump or use platforms. If you've shut down his air game with bair, dtilt invalidates his dash dance/WD movement so you should have a huge advantage. Making his aerials/fireballs ineffective is a very important goal.

Nair/fair/bair eat fireballs (dtilt too).

Mario cannot really nair/whatever out of dtilt/utilt followups.

WD back OOS is good. WL forward ftilt/dtilt is good.

Watch for grabs, jab->smash, and WD->(jab)->smash tactics once you reach higher percents. Try not to get grabbed because I'm pretty certain dthrow fair is guaranteed.

Take your time at the ledge/offstage. Mario can get dumb conversions if you misstep. Invincible waveland on is a godsend

 

[Sixonesix]

Also I refuse to believe Falco is a bad matchup for Ivysaur when we have a tighter edgeguard game on him than freaking MARTH does and we have an actual tool to break up his momentum from lasers (Razor Leaf) and we're sort of floaty so we don't always catch the worst of his pillars. If Ivysaur loses to Falco who the hell doesn't lose to Falco?

 

[Blanc]

i cant figure out the peach mu halp

 

[Killem]

I'm having a lot of trouble playing the ness matchup. I feel like it should be good for ivy because edgeguards are cake but he has so many answers to what we can do in the neutral with all that platform play and mag resets and offstage with that gimmicky frame three meteor and force getup WL f-smash. Maybe i'm just bad or maybe the ness matchup needs to be played differently than i'm used to playing

 

[Steel Kangaroo]

I'm having a lot of trouble playing the ness matchup. I feel like it should be good for ivy because edgeguards are cake but he has so many answers to what we can do in the neutral with all that platform play and mag resets and offstage with that gimmicky frame three meteor and force getup WL f-smash. Maybe i'm just bad or maybe the ness matchup needs to be played differently than i'm used to playing

Okay I'll give this a shot since I have a lot of Ness in my region so I play the MU a lot. I'll break it down into neutral, combos, and offstage.

Neutral:
-Ness approach options on us are basically 3 things. PK fire (usually after DJC), DJC fair, and dash attack. Anything else is pretty unsafe and should be able to be punished if you're expecting it. PK fire can be shielded, and really your whole plan in neutral should be to avoid/shutdown PK fire. If they go for it and miss, you can get a free punish. The way I see this matchup is this: we can't really combo Ness too well, and they can combo us pretty damn well even with good DI on our part. So to me that means we have to play keep em out. Fair (esp fullhop fair) is horrible on Ness at low percents, don't even try to use it. Bair on the other hand pretty much destroys Ness. They can't beat our range and on smaller stages (GHZ is ideal in this matchup IMO) bair knocks them offstage really early. Your goal in neutral should be to avoid their setups and back air them a lot. Mix up bair -> ftilt and bair->dtilt to punish CC and not CCing and to keep them guessing. Purely spamming bairs against a good Ness with lead to a lot of WD OoS -> dtilt on their part so be ready and aware of that. Ftilt counters that. Bair -> dash attack -> dsmash near the ledge is another good option for getting them offstage. Razor leaf is a mixed bag in this matchup also. DJC nair cancels it, they can jump over RL and pk fire if they're expecting it. If you throw it out and they can't deal with it, keep using it, but Ness has options to deal with it so don't rely on it at all. Be aware of your shielding habits, Ness can put some pressure on shield but not like spacies so you should mix up buffered rolls with nair OoS when they start trying to go HAM on your shield. Jab is a pretty good option as a "get off me" move since it's faster than a lot of Ness' ground options.

Combos:

As mentioned, we don't really have many options that are reliable. Utilt -> uairs works pretty well as long as you don't get greedy. Dtilt setups are still good, nair/uair/dair/utilt depending on percentage. At higher percentages a fullhop fair -> uair works well for killing.
Ness' Combos: fair->dthrow, pk fire->dthrow, pk fire->fsmash. Watch out for fair and pk fire approaches. If they get you with a dthrow, you will probably eat 30-40% at least. I think DIing the dthrow behind them is the hardest for them to follow up at low percents and then I DI it waayyy forward at high percents to avoid uairs. Their dair -> uair is important to tech dair if they hit you into the ground so they can't dair you again, also try to DI left or right on reaction to a dair that would pop you up. The uair is not guaranteed so you may as well try to DI it.

Offstage:

Not as free as you might think initially if the Ness is smart. Bthrow or bair work for getting them offstage. A good Ness will DI the bairs up + away so they end up in the top corner rather than bottom corner. If they ever end up using their UpB coming from the bottom corner of the blast zone...that should be a free bair + kill. Coming from top corner they can either aim for stage or try to sweespot ledge. If they go for ledge, RAR jumpoff bair should be able to intercept them. I'd recommend practicing with a Ness friend to see how far their UpB can go, how fast it travels, etc etc so you are aware of what movement options they have while using UpB. Goes farther and faster than you might think. Our bair beats them even if they've used the PK thunder and are flying towards the stage. I would think seed bombs would be a good option to mess them up more. If they go on stage, be aware that Ness has great aerial mobility so don't commit too hard to some smash attack that will miss.
When you're recovering, you have to watch out for that dair. If they hit you as you're tethering, it can kill as early as 40% so watch that ****. RL to cover you return to ledge is solid. Watch fsmash/PK fire when you're coming back from ledge.


Overall I think this matchup is in our favor but is also really stage dependent. We really have to play kind of like Jigglypuff in melee and just space bairs. Channel your inner Hungrybox lol. I think smashville, GHZ, and DL are all good starters for us and I think battlefield and PS2 are horrible for us as starters. Most Ness' can use the platforms way better than we can and set us up for early kills. Low ceilings are better for them than for us...FoD would be a good counterpick I would think. Most of our kills come from gimps so DL might be really good (need to test this more), especially if they rely on dair->uair kills.


Anyone have anything to add?

 

[it's Papa]

i cant figure out the peach mu halp

I get to play pretty frequently with Hanky Panky, one of the best - if not the best - Peach player in PM at the moment, and I can occasionally take games off him. It's a matchup I think about a lot and am still very much working on myself. What I can say is that the switch from 3.02->3.5 hurt our MU with Peach; we used to win, but it now feels pretty close to even/maybe slightly in Peach's favor. I'll make an effort to take some serious notes next time I get to play a session with him and report back with a more thorough write up.

 

[Downdraft]

Does anyone have advice for a Zelda main? I've always struggled with Ivysaur since I began PM two years ago, and the OP agrees that Ivysaur is super effective versus Zelda.

 

[TreK]

The OP is from the last update, idk how it goes in 3.5

Here's a recent 20 minutes set of that matchup if you want to see how it goes :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0N4UnedEO0

And as far as Ivy goes, here are her strengths and weaknesses so you can know what to avoid/capitalize on :
Strengths :
-one of the best edgeguarders in the game. She can intercetp most recoveries with bair (although it's possible to SDI if she hits you with both hits sometimes : SDI up if Ivy's doing a falling bair, SDI down if Ivy's doing a rising bair, pray for your life if Ivy does a bair at the apex of her jump), uair (belly stomp, place any hitbox above your head and you'll be fine), dair (powerful meteor, make sure you cancel it properly) and other moves.
-decent shield pressure for a floaty. Nair is -2 on shield so you can't shieldgrab it, and if you shield razor leaf you WILL get grabbed. However, due to the amount of multihit moves she has, she's pretty weak to shield SDI
-lots of range and disjoint. She has about the same threat zone as Marth, but a smaller hurtbox.
-can get out of juggles pretty easily thanks to her momentum altering dair and uair
-good on every stage, so she'll CP you where you hate playing most.

Weaknesses :
-Very weak oos options (the two fastest options she has are nair oos, 9 frames, and shield release jab, 10 frames, both of which don't really have a lot of range), so even characters with bad shield pressure can put some shield pressure on Ivy.
-Weak to CC due to having a lot of weak multihit moves. Her only anti-CC moves are tipper dtilt, tipper fair, dash attack and grab. And her grab sucks (14 frames startup)
-Edgeguarding 3.5 tethers is braindead : edgehog and wait for her to pull up, and you'll have at least 50 frames to react to where she strafes. Be patient and you will get a punish every single time. If you can hit her before she touches the ground, she won't regain her tether count or double jump so if you are quick enough, make sure you do that.
-Slow movement speed and a lot of startup on her moves, so she's a pretty weak tech chaser, which is bad against fast fallers (sorry Zelda main haha)
-high committal moves outside of like three of them (bair, dtilt, razor leaf), so she's pretty weak to dash dances.
-perfect combo weight for Falcon-like and Marth-like combo

The healing mechanic helps her but don't focus on it, it's inconsequential at best. Ivies will try to make you approach by healing on the other side of the stage, but you will deal much more damage to her by camping than she'll be able to heal.

Keep in mind, those are just generic things about the Ivy matchup in general. There may be some intricacies about the Ivy Zelda matchup in particular, I do not know that matchup.
If someone who does feels like contributing, feel free to :V

 

[Steel Kangaroo]

Here's a recent 20 minutes set of that matchup if you want to see how it goes :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0N4UnedEO0
There may be some intricacies about the Ivy Zelda matchup in particular, I do not know that matchup.
If someone who does feels like contributing, feel free to :V

Okay I'll give this a shot. I've played a decent amount against 3.5 Zelda, including against Riot and Atlas, a really cerebral Sheilda player from NE.

Neutral
Ivysaur and Zelda are both spacing heavy defensive characters, however Ivy is pretty much faster than Zelda in every way. Zelda is slower on the ground and oos and we can overwhelm her with our disjoints if you put her on the defensive. Zelda does have options in neutral via her specials. UpB teleport is tricky because if they're smart they will switch up between teleporting in place and teleporting on top of you. I think the best option for us when Zelda starts teleporting is to shield until you see where she goes. This prevents her from dropping an up smash in your dome but cedes her some positional advantage. Typically if they bait you into shielding, they will use the time to place a dins fire or to take center stage.
Dins fire is something you have to be mindful of, they can place it ontop of you, place it during your crumple to punish getup attacks, place it offstage to mess with your recovery, place it in places that will continue combos. Basically always be aware of where it is. If you can throw out a hitbox to get rid of it without being punished, do it. Be aware that if you let the din's burn for 4 seconds without doing anything, it will make a big explosion.

Against Zelda, Ivysaur should try to outspace her and overwhelm her with hitboxes. Our fair, dtilt, bair, etc are all larger than anything she can effectively throw out in neutral so use that to your advantage. You want to keep in her shield as much as possible, since she is very slow OoS. She is most dangerous when she's right on top of us and we're shielding, so it seems like whoever gets in first can run train. Watch out for her throwing out a neutral B when you're on top of her, I think she can cancel it sometimes (?) and it is really good at hitting us away. Very obvious if you know when to expect it, and can be punished really bad in the endlag so be ready.

Offstage/Ledge
I think this is where most of the intracies of the matchup will play out. When we're offstage and Zelda is edgeguarding, the biggest thing we have to watch out for is Din's Fire being placed right near the ledge. Expect to have to use your fair to swat away the din's or to have to dodge it on the way to ledge. If you grab the ledge and there's a din's that will hit you if you were to try and get back on, you can use the ledge invincibility to swat it away. Fair and nair are both really good for that and if you watch the video TreK posted, by game 3 I was really figuring out ways to avoid the din's on the way back. I really think if we're on ledge and there is no Din's blocking our path, there is nothing Zelda can really do. Jab is slow, fsmash is slow...I'm not saying that we get back to stage for free necessarily, but we have way more options from ledge than Zelda has to prevent us from getting back.

When Zelda is offstage, we are really good at keeping her from getting back on stage. Our bair can intercept and interuppt her UpB so don't be afraid to go offstage and get her. If Zelda's on ledge, we have a lot of ways to keep her from getting back on stage. Between bair, dtilt, ftilt, we can set up a wall that pretty much keeps Zelda with her slow ledge options from getting back. If she jumps from ledge, bair her. The only 2 aerials she can do from ledge are fair and nair, fair is hard to sweetspot so they typically don't go for it (still be aware of positioning near ledge) and nair is pretty slow to come out so you can react to either of them.

 

[Machiavelli.CF]

So I need to get around to updating the orignal post to 3.5 and making it overall better. I haven't put much time into this, and probably won't feel confident about it until after my experiences at Aftershock, but I'm curious what the players here think about a precursory match-up list like this one:

Large Advantage - (65:35) +

Advantage - (60:40)

Slight Advantage - (55:45)

Even - (50:50)

Slight Disadvantage - (45:55)

Disadvantage - (40:60)

Large Disadvantage - (35:65) +

(Characters in each tier organized by alphabetical order)
???

 

[it's Papa]

@ Machiavelli.CF this seems close to accurate. I feel Lucario is a lot closer to even for us since we can pretty much wall him out by playing super lame, essentially taking away all his options; once he hits us it's touch of death, though. I think we do lose to Sheik, but maybe not that badly. I have a bunch of Sheik experience from playing with Drephen and it feels much closer to 45:55 imo. Good to see a list that doesn't cartoonishly over exaggerate our advantage over Bowser; he actually has a lot of tools that can give us a headache.

 

[Machiavelli.CF]

@ I it's Papa I'm glad to hear a good review. I've got a few replies to the MU comments you bring up.

The Sheik MU feels a lot easier to me these days than it used to, but I got the impression that most others did not feel that shift, so I gave the collective Ivysaur nation the benefit of the doubt and kept her as a very hard MU. Like you, my instincts tell me it is not that bad, though.

Bowser's power and Ivy's weight means danger when considered together. The moment that the legendary JaimeHR (whom I've played on a handful of occasions) killed me at around 60% on FD with an Up B OOS was the moment I started to rethink the exaggerated MU stereotype that gets tossed about usually. Especially in the recent update, with the changes to grab and up B, fatties definitely don't automatically lose to Ivysaur if they ever did in the past.

My experiences with Lucario come from playing with iPunchKidsz on a weekly basis, but that doesn't necessarily make me right. We definitely have the tools to wall out Lucario pretty well, but it feels less like a strength or luxury (when it may feel that way in other MUs) and more like a necessity. That's because like you said, Lucario will stomp you out fast if he gets in, and that becomes increasingly more accurate the better the Lucario. Camping in that MU feels like you're hanging by a shoestring, constantly trying to fend him off.

 

[it's Papa]

Fair point on Lucario. I have limited experience against competent Lucarios since we don't have any in my region, so I'd probably defer to your experience with iPK lol.

 

[Steel Kangaroo]

@ I it's Papa
The Sheik MU feels a lot easier to me these days than it used to, but I got the impression that most others did not feel that shift, so I gave the collective Ivysaur nation the benefit of the doubt and kept her as a very hard MU. Like you, my instincts tell me it is not that bad, though.

Agreed. We can combo Sheik pretty well (almost as well as they can). I'd say the biggest issue for Ivy in this MU is that CC is so strong against her, and Sheik is CCing half the time whether they mean to or not with such a strong dtilt and dsmash. Oh and needles can be annoying...but not overwhelming...mostly annoying.

Overall, Mach, I think this MU chart is pretty awesome. Very few places where I have strong disagreements.
Any logic on GW and Link being even MUs? I feel like GW is easier for us and Link is slightly harder for us (I'd probably still say even but then I'd make GW advantageous for us)

I would say Lucas is slightly disadvantageous for us. Fall speed and weight like Ness which makes him hard to combo, better recovery options so harder to gimp, plus his projectile is better than Ness' for keeping us on our toes. To be fair, the only Lucas I really play is Spaz who is just a great player overall.