what does 3.5 mean for us?

[TreK]

uthrow sweetspot usmash is so good, uthrow bair sets up edgeguards pretty damn reliably, uthrow down B is the ultimate disrespect.

I love this throw as well, I must say.

 

[TreK]

double post since it's related to 3.5

lab time showed me this today :
-it is actually impossible to do the gatling combo now. We can dacus, but its distance is about a third of the distance of a JC usmash so it's useless. I tested all possible timings. Only characters with dash attacks that hit frame 3 or sooner can gatling now, so only GnW to my knowledge.
-it is possible to edge cancel the forced tether hop. It takes a ridiculous amount of practice compared to the rewards it gets you though : the opponent still has more than 30 frames to punish you before you can act, even if you are frame perfect on your fastfall and pixel perfect on your strafing (and it takes you 4 more frames to nair or to airdodge). The advantage compared to just strafing offstage is that you get your dair bumps, tethers and double jump back. IF you don't get hit, obviously.

God I hate 3.5 Ivy.

 

[Sweet™]

Only change should've been to upB. I think the sweetspot is too small now, but 3.0 was a little big. An in-between would be good.

I think removing smash B razor leaf was dumb. I always wanted to see her downB have a smash thing. Like, if you smashed it, the seed bomb would move faster, if you just did it regularly it would go as it does now.

Upthrow is stupid now. **** that.


Also, does anyone miss 2.6b forward air? That move was dank.

 

[Dng3]

Ivy's progression:

1. 2.5 not good enough. Get's buffed to ridiculous levels in 2.6.
2. 2.6 Ivy too good. Nerfed accordingly.
3. 3.0 almost perfect. Nerfed and then some.
4. 3.5 back at square one pretty much.

I'm curious how much play testing goes into each iteration before finalizing releases. This inconsistency is discouraging (alongside other characters like Sonic, Ike, etc.).

 

[Swann]

Yeah I didn't think gatling was possible anymore. I tried for half an hour and couldn't get it once. Good to know for sure that it wasn't just me.

Honestly if we could waveland out of fair I don't think we'd need any other changes.

Or if we had a normal grab Q_Q

 

[Queen Ystella]

Oops wrong thread lol

 

[Nova The Silly One]

Luckily, I forgot my playstyle during PM 3.2 so this shouldn't affect me much

 

[RuslinJimmies]

It's soooooo painful have the IASA frames after up throw pushed back so far. All that potential
Like it doesn't even feel natural to be stuck that long

 

[EmLeingod]

I think 3.5 Ivy is great, it's just some of the other characters that are too good.

The only things I think need to be changed:

Buffed KB on Up-B since the hitbox was reduced and near guaranteed follow-up removed. Make it more like 2.5-2.6 since the hitbox is basically the same size now.

Something to make her be able to deal with characters that have better projectiles/faster disjoints than her OR a good OoS option.

And while I really like the new up-throw, I think it should have its FAF made sooner. Maybe by 4 or 5 frames.

 

[Killem]

i feel like bair is a little too nerfed, It doesnt kill till 130% and it sends at an awkward angle thats harder to kill with, up b isnt even worth going for anymore, the dair nerf is some bs i think we should have at least 3 stalls, the tether nerf was way too overdone. The up throw change is okay i guess you can get a seed bomb off it but thats about it. 3.5 ivy is no longer viable imo, i hope they fix her in the next update ;-; i'll miss you ivy

 

[Festive]

I find myself being punished with the recent tether nerf often. My friend likes to grab the edge when I'm off stage so when I tether he can jump and do a fair on me EVERY time. Not sure if it's just me or if this can't be helped? If it can't be helped it should be stupidly easy to punish Ivy getting onto the stage.

 

[TreK]

Short answer, no, there's no way around it : against someone who knows how tether work you ARE going to get hit every time. Your goal should be to minimize the damage you're going to take, by doing the only two things the game allows you to do : strafing and fast falling.

Long answer :

The special hop animation lasts for 50 frames (although you can land on frame 27 by fastfalling, even earlier on stages with slopes), and you can only strafe and fastfall during all 50 frames of it.
If you land during this animation, you'll go through a special landing animation that lasts 30 frames.
Read this post for more details.



Strafing backward, here's what can potentially hit you :
-a bair, which would put you back offstage without giving you your double jump, the bumps on your dair, or your tethers
-some other move that happens to hit at the back of the opponent's character first (ex : Bowser's fair, Marth's nair, ...) This will also put you back offstage.

Strafing backwards is extremely dangerous because if the opponent predicts it you are most likely losing your stock. But it's a pretty good mixup. You can act on frame 50 but you don't have a double jump so your fastest options would be nair or airdodge, 4 frames each. This leaves 54 frames at best for the opponent to react. Careful not to SD.



Strafing forward, here's what can potentially hit you :
-a fair or a nair, which would send you on the other side of the stage. This means that the situation won't repeat itself, you're pretty much in the neutral at this point so that's actually what you're aiming for.
-an uair, which would set up a juggle situation from which you have more options than when you're at the ledge
-a waveland into a ground move (in example a grab or a charged smash)

Strafing forward is often the least punishing option, until you play against people who can use their brains and go for a waveland into a ground move, which is much more rewarding than a mere fair for most characters. They have 57 frames to react to this (and a waveland from the ledge takes about 25 frames iirc ? not sure on that sorry, and it must be character specific anyway).

There is, however, one additional thing you can do.
If you strafe just the right way, you can ledge cancel the special landing animation which would otherwise be 30 frames long. With this trick you only give your opponent 28 frames to react (but this is fairly difficult and sub-optimal execution on your part will lead to worse results, so you can more realistically expect something in the range of 30-35 frames). This makes it so the opponent doesn't have the time to wavedash onstage and punish you with a ground move.
This cuts the most rewarding option from them, so yeah, it's going to be useful when you'll fight people who know the matchup really well. At the moment it's pretty irrelevant since everybody's stupid though.



In order to avoid having to ask yourself those questions, there are a couple things you can do :
-make sure your DI is on point, this'll allow you to recover high (=without upB) more often
-use razor leaf to hit someone who's on the ledge (aim for the actual ledge)
-use razor leaf to stop someone who's standing above the ledge from edgehogging (aim for ground level)

Hope that helps :V

 

[Festive]

Short answer, no, there's no way around it : against someone who knows how tether work you ARE going to get hit every time. Your goal should be to minimize the damage you're going to take, by doing the only two things the game allows you to do : strafing and fast falling.

Long answer :

The special hop animation lasts for 50 frames (although you can land on frame 27 by fastfalling, even earlier on stages with slopes), and you can only strafe and fastfall during all 50 frames of it.
If you land during this animation, you'll go through a special landing animation that lasts 30 frames.
Read this post for more details.



Strafing backward, here's what can potentially hit you :
-a bair, which would put you back offstage without giving you your double jump, the bumps on your dair, or your tethers
-some other move that happens to hit at the back of the opponent's character first (ex : Bowser's fair, Marth's nair, ...) This will also put you back offstage.

Strafing backwards is extremely dangerous because if the opponent predicts it you are most likely losing your stock. But it's a pretty good mixup. You can act on frame 50 but you don't have a double jump so your fastest options would be nair or airdodge, 4 frames each. This leaves 54 frames at best for the opponent to react. Careful not to SD.



Strafing forward, here's what can potentially hit you :
-a fair or a nair, which would send you on the other side of the stage. This means that the situation won't repeat itself, you're pretty much in the neutral at this point so that's actually what you're aiming for.
-an uair, which would set up a juggle situation from which you have more options than when you're at the ledge
-a waveland into a ground move (in example a grab or a charged smash)

Strafing forward is often the least punishing option, until you play against people who can use their brains and go for a waveland into a ground move, which is much more rewarding than a mere fair for most characters. They have 57 frames to react to this (and a waveland from the ledge takes about 25 frames iirc ? not sure on that sorry, and it must be character specific anyway).

There is, however, one additional thing you can do.
If you strafe just the right way, you can ledge cancel the special landing animation which would otherwise be 30 frames long. With this trick you only give your opponent 28 frames to react (but this is fairly difficult and sub-optimal execution on your part will lead to worse results, so you can more realistically expect something in the range of 30-35 frames). This makes it so the opponent doesn't have the time to wavedash onstage and punish you with a ground move.
This cuts the most rewarding option from them, so yeah, it's going to be useful when you'll fight people who know the matchup really well. At the moment it's pretty irrelevant since everybody's stupid though.



In order to avoid having to ask yourself those questions, there are a couple things you can do :
-make sure your DI is on point, this'll allow you to recover high (=without upB) more often
-use razor leaf to hit someone who's on the ledge (aim for the actual ledge)
-use razor leaf to stop someone who's standing above the ledge from edgehogging (aim for ground level)

Hope that helps :V

Very informative. I appreciate it a lot!

 

[GFooChombey]

So no more gatling, no more covering high recoveries from the ledge, and no more reliable upB kills.

Spoiler

I practiced that stuff so hard too...

 

[Beets]

So I played Ivy a ton in Brawl and loved him. Played Project M since Demo 1 back in 2010, but I didn't keep updated until now. Decided I want to learn the character again.

Bullet Seed was really good. What practical use does Seed Bomb serve? I don't know anything about it.

 

[Sixonesix]

So I played Ivy a ton in Brawl and loved him. Played Project M since Demo 1 back in 2010, but I didn't keep updated until now. Decided I want to learn the character again.

Bullet Seed was really good. What practical use does Seed Bomb serve? I don't know anything about it.

Seed Bomb is really good for juggling opponents when they're just too high to hit with an aerial. While dthrow -> seed bomb isn't as rewarding as dtrow -> uair, it is much easier to hit for consistent damage. Additionally it's good for harassing people when they've already used their double jump high above you and can't otherwise get away easily. You can have a seed bomb falling in the area where they want to drift and vine whip to cover where they go to avoid it.

 

[Killem]

So i've been messing around with different approaches with ivy and have noticed that full hop fair hits the opponent with the bottom tip of the fair and it hits them up in a way that lets you get a dair uair or bair depending on DI and percent. I've also found that there is a chaingrab on fastfallers such as fox with dthrow, i'm not sure if that was in last update and i just never noticed it. Also I knew this before but if you hit the bottom tip of the fair offstage im pretty sure it's a guaranteed dair spike, either that or i'm just catching people with no DI. Just wondering if this stuff is day 1 ivy junk

 

[TreK]

hmm, you sure on that chaingrab ? Looks escapable to me
the rest is pretty well known yeah (they can evade the fair-dair if they DI out, kinda like the Ken Combo)

 

[Sixonesix]

Chaingrabbing is hard and not that productive. Unless you're like at the exact middle of the stage, throwing them over the nearest ledge is much easier and more rewarding than a chaingrab. Even if you are at center stage, dthrow -> dash attack -> dash attack is STILL easier.

 

[TreK]

Been experimenting a bit :

• The Marth Killer mixup

Okay so, thanks to shield SDI being in 3.5, we can now do the Marth killer. With a twist :
Ivy's shield is too small, so she gets shield stabbed by Marth's upB pretty much all the time. To give yourself a wider margin of error, you can hold the down+away direction instead of just away, but if you do, you will have to release down when Marth hits your shield else Ivysaur will ignore the ledge.
Marth only has two answers to this.
-The first, the most well known since it's the one you'll typically find in Melee, is to overshoot his recovery. We can actually still get a kill on him if he does that ! It's a 50/50 : after your roll, if you think he will overshoot his recovery, you can hold down instead of down+away. And instead of releasing down when Marth hits your shield, you perform a neutral B OoS.
-The second answer, which Marth has thanks to the absence of light shields in PM, is to snap the ledge from further away horizontally. I don't think there's much we can do about that, unfortunately.

A setup that actually makes sense for the windbox gimp. On our worst matchup. It's still got systematic answers but at least Marth has to work hard to recover.

• A use for crawling ?

So, you know how one of the techniques we use to edgeguard is to press upB and pull up on reaction to force the opponent to respect our edgehog ?
Well, when you're crawling towards the ledge while facing the center of stage, you can get the same effect, without the time limit that tethers have.
Basically, Ivysaur will pretend to crawl while staying right above the ledge as long as you are holding down+away. And as soon as you release the stick or press another direction, Ivy will ledge hog.

You can also press jump to go offstage and do some nice edgeguarding instead, down to do a dropzone bair, or forward to quickly dash back to the stage in case your opponent recovers high or something.

The only advantage that tether stalling has compared to this imo is that the ledge snap animation for tethers is 5 frames shorter, which is noticeable and allows you to act faster after your edgehog. However, since it is 5 frames shorter, you could also argue that it reduces the margin of error.


Other things I've been working on :
-using ftilt like a gtfo move in the neutral. It's actually an anti-CC move, so I feel like I should use it more, or at least study it more thoroughly.
-using weak dash attack as a killmove setup. It's great ! It sets up usmash and fsmash pretty reliably. Weak dash attack can be setup by a shffl nair, among other things.
-my ledge game. I wanna be as annoying as Denti =3
-trying to find uses to shield stops and sliding shields.


On another note, how do you guys edgeguard Marth when he recovers low ? I have no Melee background and am pretty clueless.
Here's what I've been told to try by a friend. Any thoughts on this ?

 

[Steel Kangaroo]

Woah good discussion TreK! I'm trying to get more active in posting here and seeing your posts are very helpful.

Discussing ftilt...I think it is very valuable as a spacing/anti-CC move. When people see us start setting up shop and spamming bair, they tend to CC. Learning to link a well spaced bair into ftilt can be super punishing if they don't expect it. Bair -> dsmash is a good mixup for this purpose also...both require good spacing.

I think it's important in 3.5 to think about spacing as Ivysaur since we have some optimal ranges and some ranges where we get destroyed. I'm a big fan of trying to dash dance/wave dash in neutral and force the opponent to approach. In most matchups they will have to, so I tend to mix in some WD backwards and also dtilts/jabs to keep them honest and have them respect our range. One thing we really lack is a good anti-air option (something like Sheik's ftilt) so spacing is incredibly important. Because of lack of good OoS options and anti-air, not to mention Ivysaur's terrible shield, good shield habits are really really necessary. I've been getting in the habit of buffering rolls out of shield under pressure or buffering nair OoS. Anyone know any good options OoS besides nair and dair?

Another thing I've noticed is that Ivysaur's ideal move choice changes a lot depending on matchup. In some matchups Ivysaur pretty much has to play like Jigglypuff, just spamming bair (Ness, Luigi, Kirby are all matchups like this). This is mostly because fair pops them up too much for followups and in some cases puts the opponent in a better position. Nothing more frustrating than landing a perfect spaced fullhop fair and going for a nair followup and getting DJC fair'd by Ness into dthrow lol. I would break it down into matchups where fullhop fair is a good opener and matchups where fullhop fair is terrible. Against DK, Charizard, etc., fullhop fair is one of the best openers/spacing tools because if it connects it leads to a lot of punishes, but if they don't get hit you can waveland forwards to ftilt/dtilt or backwards to dtilt.

TreK, I think that option is a good possibility for edgeguarding Marth. It's something I struggle with so I will playtest that option and get back to you. I routinely play against Sora's Marth so if it works on him, I think it will work against any Marth lol

 

[Swann]

I don't have anything to add, but I just wanted to say that I hate this, too

Nothing more frustrating than landing a perfect spaced fullhop fair and going for a nair followup and getting DJC fair'd by Ness into dthrow lol.

 

[Sixonesix]

On another note, how do you guys edgeguard Marth when he recovers low ? I have no Melee background and am pretty clueless.
Here's what I've been told to try by a friend. Any thoughts on this ?

Uair him. It's very easy to forget it's an option but if he comes from low and close to the stage you can aim for his head (sometimes his sword will beat it out if you trade with that part of his up b)

 

[Festive]

Uair him. It's very easy to forget it's an option but if he comes from low and close to the stage you can aim for his head (sometimes his sword will beat it out if you trade with that part of his up b)

Wouldn't down tilt hit him? Also I know that down smash will knock him off the ledge if you time it right when he up b's.

 

[Sixonesix]

Dtilt is an interesting option at the percent when it will combo into sweetspot uair and dsmash is good for nailing an obvious missed up b sweetspot but if the Marth sweetspots consistently neither is very effective. It's fine as a last resort if you're somehow not confident that you can reach the Marth offstage for a KO in that situation.

 

[Anuran]

what about run off back air? Is the reward not worth the risk of him grabbing ledge?

 

[Killem]

Doesn't SH f-air cover the ledge even if the sweetspot? So you could do f-air to like RAR b-air at higher percents and like f-air to d-smash at low percents. Not 100% on this though I don't play any good marths

 

[TreK]

Marth's upB is a lot faster than Ivy's shffl fair, so you'd have to predict his timing rather than react to it.

 

[WickedWarlock]

I know this has been discussed but I had a situation post tourney yesterday that I can't think of anyway to handle.

Playing a very good Falcon and I'm at like 60% and get knocked off stage and because I'm Ivy and he grabs ledge, I'm forced to recover low without a chance to throw out a razor leaf. We just sit there at the ledge for a second til I reel in and drift back a retether. He doesn't bite because he knows if I land on stage, there are still like 40 frames of special landing lag. Reel in again land on stage and he ledgedrop knees me and then we rinse and repeat on the other side of the stage until Ivy just can't take it anymore.

Is there an option other than just kill myself as soon as I get knocked off stage? It's ridiculous the lack of options Ivy has in recovery and the guaranteed punishes that come from it that just put me in the same situation repeatedly.

I switch to Ganon and manage to take a friendly off him later before he gets mad and proceeds to kick my ass 5 more times cause he was way better than I was. Either way, even Ivy's formerly decent matchups cause CF could never get back on stage just got terrible. I used to main Ivy in tourney, but I just find it impossible now and since switched to Ganon.

 

[Swann]

You can always do the edge cancel on the forced hop animation and drag him down with nair.

Doing this even once in 20 games will stop them from just forever chilling on the ledge.

 

[Sixonesix]

Also if it's ever possible to get back on stage with just dair and airdodge be sure to do that instead. This is punishable too mind you but at least it offers a smaller window than the tether.

 

[Dng3]

Would this be this a good suggestion to the existing tether mechanics? Say, the amount of lag you go through when reeling onto the ledge while the opponent is hanging there would be determined by how much damage you've taken?

So for example, there'd be 3 stages of lag: 0-50%, 51-100%, 100%>. On the the initial stages, it'd be more forgiving while on the last stage it'd be similar to what we have now (an eternity for opponents to punish us).

 

[TreK]

The tether mechanics would be fine if we had the option to recover high sometimes #FreeDair

Alternatively, upB tethers could have hitboxes either when you do them or when you reel in and that would fix most of their problems. Right now the opponent decides for you whether you sweetspot your recovery or not, and there isn't much you can do about it.
If they predict when you'll recover, fine, let them have a free hit, that's how it works for basically everyone else, but staying on the ledge for four seconds is not the kind of strategy that should allow you to land Ike's bair lmao

Alternatively #2, instead of the reel in being an automatice ledge snap, it could "make you jump" towards the ledge. That way, whether you sweetspot or not is decided by the place you upB from, like every other character ever. It's kind of stupid that Ivy's reel in only takes 3 frames, anyway.

I have lots more ideas but I think those two are the least stupid I have at the moment.

 

[QuickLava]

I'm confused, exactly why don't we like 3.5 Ivysaur? I didn't main her back in 3.0 so maybe I just don't understand the weight of the nerf, but Ivy seems more balanced now than ever.

 

[TreK]

I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but here are my reasons :
-she already lost to Marth and Fox in 3.0 and absolutely no effort has been made to change this, effectively making those matchups only worse than they already were. And having a bad matchup against the two most popular characters in the game means your character is not viable, period. (see Luigi in Brawl, in example, who has even/advantageous matchups against ICs/Olimar/Diddy/Pikachu/Snake and more, but whose worst matchups are Marth and MK)
-they removed a lot from the characters actual toolset, instead of making it less effective. We can't tether cancel, we can't gatling combo, we can't smash Razor Leaves, and shffl nair to footstool was part of Ivy's anti-shield mixups, in example. The actual amount of ATs this character has has only gone down.
-3.5 tether mechanics hops are duuuuumb

 

[QuickLava]

I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but here are my reasons :
-she already lost to Marth and Fox in 3.0 and absolutely no effort has been made to change this, effectively making those matchups only worse than they already were. And having a bad matchup against the two most popular characters in the game means your character is not viable, period. (see Luigi in Brawl, in example, who has even/advantageous matchups against ICs/Olimar/Diddy/Pikachu/Snake and more, but whose worst matchups are Marth and MK)
-they removed a lot from the characters actual toolset, instead of making it less effective. We can't tether cancel, we can't gatling combo, we can't smash Razor Leaves, and shffl nair to footstool was part of Ivy's anti-shield mixups, in example. The actual amount of ATs this character has has only gone down.
-3.5 tether mechanics hops are duuuuumb

... But didn't a lot of characters get nerfs like this? As far as I know, most characters lost a lot of functionality from 3.02 to 3.5. There are some exceptions (Bowser, G&W, Jiggs, etc...), but as far as I know everyone got some sizable nerf. For example, you talk about us losing the ability to smash razor leaves. Well, Pikachu got his Quick Attack Cancel nerfed, and that isn't even something we've gotten to fully explore yet, and had far more potential than razor leaf ever did. Everyone is taking the hit from 3.5. Hell, every character with a tether got it up the ass with the new ledge mechanics. And now the only character capable of Gattling Combos is I think G&W (though I could be wrong), so that isn't really a nerf specifically to Ivy, it's a nerf to everyone. It just seems like while yes, Ivy took a pretty hard nerf this update, a lot of the cast got hit even harder. Think about the things that we gained with 3.5 too. We got a new U-Throw, which yes is objectively worse offensively, but gives us a very easy healing string on fast fallers in the form of U-Throw --> U-Smash. We also got a small indirect buff with the reimplementation of Screen KOs, which give us even longer to heal if we kill off the top, giving us even more incentive to do so. All it seems to do is promote the use of strategy over brute force, and I'll take that over 2.6 Bairvysaur any day. And having bad matchups is a thing most characters have to deal with. This is why we should dual main, so we can cover those options as effectively as possible. I for example dual main Roy and Wolf. Between the two of them, I can cover the matchups that I personally find difficult without having anything too tough to deal with. I don't mean to come off as hostile or anything, I'm just saying that the nerfs we got were all for the betterment of the game as a whole. Not as an attack on us Ivy players.

 

[TreK]

Oh yeah I never said it was a bad decision. I can be pissed off at good decisions as well sometimes. That's what there was this disclaimer thingy at the start of my post haha

 

[Anuran]

I think all the changes to her were decent with the exception of the tether mechanics. They essentially said "you have like three options right now... we are going to take away twp of them and introduce a 95% success rate punish. I guess the reason they think it is balanced is because our tether reel in time is almost instantaneous therefor our opponent needs to be quick but like. I play against some of the best players in Ga on a weekly basis. Brassmonkey; otherwise known as "" plays DK and luigi and gets a free giant punch/ luigi ^B respectively off the crazy ledge hop. Against a competent player Ivy is **** offstage. The only potential counterplay option I have found is to drift out and retether half the time so they have to predict you. After a while they will catch on and just hold the ledge though putting you right back at square one.

 

[-Sothe]

Ivy's recovery is worse than before, but not completely terrible. In most matchups, ivysaur is able to mix the opponent up between the options of drift back and grab ledge, drift forward and take a hopefully lighter punish, then reclaim stage control, or edge cancel the drift. The opponent has the options of reading the drift back, reading the drift forward, or reading the drift in place (presumably for an edge cancel).

Opponent's Read/Reaction: Hold ledge because ivy is not moving forward, or because the opponent can't distinguish whether ivy plans to move forward or back to ledge.

Ivy's options: To counter ledge holding, the ideal answer is to edge cancel the recovery animation and dair the opponent, hopefully to their doom. If the opponent is slow to react, or does not know how to tell where ivy plans to move, going as far as possible into the stage works adequately against characters who can't punish with a quick kill move to seal the deal. The reason behind this is that ivysaur can DI the next attack appropriately, and then ivy can aggressively try to stake out a claim on stage position while recovering high. Tools to do so are seed bomb to cover area and uair to speed descent. The advantage of "staking your claim" in this manner while recovering is that you can always back off and uair toward the ledge instead.


Opponent's Read: Attempt to meteor/bair ivy for the kill since the opponent reads the drift back.*

Ivy's options: If ivy is currently attempting to move into stage, or move for an edge cancel, any meteors used will hit ivy into the ground. If the opponent meteors, tech in place and throw out jabs if you need a fast move, or grab/utilt them if you can. In the case of bair, if the opponent throws it, and you are going for an edge cancel or into the stage, it will likely be a reverse hitbox that hits you, or the move will miss. DI it and stake your claim for the stage as usual. If your opponent misses, buffer a roll or throw jabs if they don't have time to hit you before your lag ends. If they do, DI their punish as well as you can, and try to make it back to ledge again.

*It is important to note that while one can react to the ivy's ledge hop, it is not possible, or at least not easy, to react to the fact that ivysaur is drifting back. Thus, this punish cannot be done on reaction, since the opponent has to take frames to drop from the ledge and jump into position, and throw the aerial.



I will add more later

 

[Steel Kangaroo]

How do we deal with characters that can throw out a nair that covers both our drifting forwards and backwards (think Marth's nair). If they do it on reaction to you reeling in, it doesn't seem to matter which option you choose.

Additionally, against Marth if we opt to drift back and they read it, they get a guaranteed dair spike which is almost always a kill. Obviously the Marth has to expect the drift back, but between nair and dair we seem to not have many options.