What can you learn through Ike dittos?

[Rango the Mercenary]

It's one of the things I don't do very often. I play all kinds of characters, but rarely match up in Ike dittos - let alone volunteer in them. I've had the disastrous experience of playing people who don't use Ike a fraction of the time I do, and losing to them simply because they played me better.

Considerably, Ike vs. Ike is a unique matchup in more than one way. First off, Ike is a unique character. He has a large, disjointed hitbox, which gives him range. He has attack and killing power that rivals heavyweights, like Bowser, King Dedede, and Donkey Kong. Most of all, he has perhaps the most punishable moves of anyone in the game. Nearly everything Ike uses is unsafe and is susceptible to punishment from anyone, and some times, from any part on the map.

Some say "Ike is Ike's worst matchup." Losing to a less-experienced Ike is simply because they know the game better, read, and punished you, using your own hitlag against you. In the case of dittos against other characters, it's easy to win if you're better with that character because you have more safety options at your disposal. But when you play Ike vs. Ike, you feel like your entire game has completely changed based around playing safe and punishing someone's mistakes.

But for the game in general, what can you learn from Ike dittos? How does it help overall against other players?

 

[Ussi]

All dittos are unique in the sense that you tell the other person what they can do to you by doing whatever you do to them The most annoying thing about dittos is that being the player who adapts better is the biggest key to the MU. You can't abuse anything in dittos to try to undermine a better player (or good MU) because it gets used back at you.

On another note, it lets a new player see how to play the character and accelerate his learning from experiencing it instead of just watching,

 

[Mario766]

Reads and covering options.

You know what your character can do, so if you're the more experienced player you can use that as an advantage and read their options.

 

[Deleted member 269706]

Ike vs. Ike is honestly one of my favorite match-ups...I don't even get mad when I lose, it's so fun to see how other players utilize the character. It's always interesting though, cause a lot of the Ike's I play against use the Smash attacks, whereas I almost never use them (save Dsmash for mindgames). And a lot of them tend to catch me with moves like Quick Draw or Aether, moves I rarely use outside of recovery.

 

[Arrei]

I use Quick Draw like other characters would use their dash attack - to capitalize on brief openings while Ike is too far away to use a stronger attack. It feels a lot more reliable for that purpose due to its speed and distance coverage than his actual dash attack.

Aether's a bit of a high risk move but is still rewarding - a miss leaves you terribly open but successfully punishing an air dodge with it is worth a pretty good amount of damage. Once my throws start sending my opponent too high to follow up with an aerial with just a single hop, if the positioning is right Aether's startup is pretty much perfectly timed to smack my opponent right when their air dodge wears off if I use it when I see them use it, and larger opponents like Ike are easier to hit with it. It can be thwarted by fast fallers, though.

Of course, I have no idea if that's a viable tactic at all - I can't seem to ever catch an opponent with a double jump aerial, and I don't know if I'm just doing it wrong or if online lag is to blame.

 

[genesis_SOC]

The more patient Ike will win. Stare at him with your more manly Ike prowess no matter how long it takes and wait for his opening.