@
Noa.
, Thanks for the post. I disagree with a few points, though.
I strongly disagree with this. At low %s, Mega can dthrow > bair x2 for a quick 30%. At high %s, it puts Ness (A) in the air above megaman... which is a negative position for Ness against Mega, who can punish landings well, or (B) offstage. Now I'm not in the camp that offstage Ness = dead Ness, but we all have to admit that it is a high-risk situation, and if Mega lands 1 read, Ness can die (also consider that Mega has a lot of tools to steal the double jump). As you said, it is fairly simple to grab Ness, but the reward is greater than you're saying.
I wasn't aware of any grab combos that Mega Man had. I'm not sure how reliable they are with proper DI but I'll take your word for it. In juggling situations Mega Man doesn't seem too threatening. Ness's aerial acceleration means that he can weave around uair pretty easily. Punishing Ness's landing with metal blade is difficult since it gets canceled out by nair. Usmash is very good at capturing opponents who are trying to land into Mega Man but does not work against opponents who are trying to run away. Fsmash can usually punish landings from farther away but the risk of PSI magnet healing is huge. If Mega man tries to dash grab or dash attack it loses to Ness's aeials. I mean obviously Ness is in a disadvantage when he's above Mega Man, but relative to most of the cast I wouldn't say he's too threatening in a juggling situation.
Getting Ness offstage is a pretty scary situation for Ness. I agree with you. It's not an auto death for Ness when he's offstage. As long as Ness has his double jump he is fine. But if you land a hard read and knock Ness offfstage without a double jump, he's dead if he has to use pkt2 to recover. Though Mega Man is not great at taking out Ness's double jump.
Why does Megaman have to retreat? I mean, I get that we can't stand there and pew pew... but we have more options than just moving backward. For instance, we have safe options for going over Ness and completely resetting spacing. we have a single full hop down45 thrown metal blade and double jump dair over Ness that literally stop him from punishing it. And if you read it and jump to punish, we can jump out of it before a punish. This is the main basis for my stance that Ness can't deal with zoning.
I'm just saying that Mega Man has to retreat to use lemons safely. He has tons of other options that don't require him to retreat. Ness does have trouble dealing with Mega Man's zoning due to his poor mobility I agree.
This is assuming a standing horizontally-thrown metal blade, which is by far the worst use of the move.
Mega Man shouldn't use metal blade in close range and I was just stating why. It's a great mid range tool and punishable on a read in close range. That's all I was saying.
Ok there's a lot to respond to in this section. I feel you are overstating the difference in reliable killpower, especially considering the relative weight differences. even completely taking away all of Mega's smashes and utilt... our bair will kill starting roughly the same % as your uair starts killing (and even if it doesn't kill, you're far offstage and now have to recover). And no... you don't have to jump to get hit by it. The third hit can poke a standing Ness, it outranges all of your aerials, and is an amazing punish for practically anything on whiff. It also makes the on-ledge game very risky for ness.
The third hit can poke a standing Ness if he's doing nothing. I mean you can't realiably expect to hit a standing Ness with the the third hit of bair. What is Ness doing? Jabbing? Charging fsmash? If you're doing a shorthop into a late bair I don't know why Ness isn't just sh nairing, sh fairing, or just shielding. Landing a bair on a standing opponent is not reliably at all.
It does beat all our aerials, which is why I said we have to jump to get hit by it.
I find it difficult to imagine Mega Man's bair punishing anything on whiff on the ground. The move would have to be laggy enough that you could see the opponent do it, turn around, short hop, and then do a late bair to get the final hit. There are very few moves that are laggy enough to fit that bill, and Ness doesn't use any of those kinds of moves.
Doing a ledge jump is easily punished by bair. As I said, bair can really only be landed when Ness is forced into the air at a distance.
Now let's talk about utilt. If you aerial a shield, we can utilt (we can also beat an aerial without shield due to invincibility). If you roll and we read it, we can utilt. If you throw a PK fire and we SH'ed on prediction, we can land utilt. if you magnet and we haven't shot a pellet, we can utilt. If you PKT2 onstage or try to use it as an attack, we can utilt.
All of these are really bad options that good players shouldn't be using. If you space Ness's nair, bair, or uair on shield you can't punish them with an uair. Rolling is pretty awful and should be rarely used. Using pk fire on opponents who are standing on the ground is horrendous. It's a tool that is used to punish people's landings. Ness's that try to use pk fire while opponents can shield or jump over it are bad. Magnet is really bad in this matchup and should only be used against fsmashes. Trying to magnet pellets or crash bombs is a sign of a Ness who has little experience in this matchup. Using pkt2 as an attack should not happen in neutral. It should only happen during a pk thunder juggle, where you cannot land and punish it.
I mean if you wanna just list off a lot of bad options bad players will do then go ahead. But come on, we like to assume both players are good when discussing a matchup. And none of those situations are going to occur when you have good players involved.
If we land a down45 Metal Blade off a full hop, we can utilt.
I don't see how this is going to happen often? In this matchups the Ness player should be conditioned to shield often agaisnt lemons, metal blades, and aerials. If Mega Man jumps into the air, a Ness should either resort to shield, or a sh aerial. I can't imagine a situation in which getting hit by a metal blade in that angle would lead to an utilt. The hitstun on metal blade is not that long, and if you land it while we're in the air utilt won't land since its hitbox is so small. What are you envisioning that Ness is doing when you full hop into the air?
another big one... if you try to juggle us with PKT and miss for some reason, either by an air dodge or anything else, you're eating an utilt.
I know we have come off in the past as overstating utilt... but you are criminally understating it. I mean... on hit, it's going to kill Ness in the 70-90 range (depending on rage). Considering I stated a 0-30 combo before, this is a huge issue and something that Ness has to constantly be mindful of. Because practically ANYTHING we predict, we can punish with utilt in some fashion.
Ness has good killmoves. I can't argue that, but considering everything I just said, along with Mega's weight and the edgeguarding vs recovery curve being significantly in Mega's favor... the kill ratio is not nearly as lopsided as you are saying. It may be slightly Ness's favor, but I don't even believe that. Ness's primary setup is grab... and you really haven't established how Ness is going to land a reliable grab out of neutral (again, the primary problem for Ness in this matchup is approaching)
Yes we have endlag on miss, but we do have reliable kill setups... especially off of metal blades
I mean I just don't see utilt as a move that lands very easily. You're really understating the small size of the hitbox. The fact that you can't do it out of a run also limits its applications. Mega Man stays almost the entire matchup just at lemon range, which is where he should be. That is well outside the threat of utilt. Mega Man's utilt comes out on frame 6. However if Ness is ever in cqc situations, his immediate options are jab, nair, and grab. Jab comes out frame 3 and nair coms out frame 5. Both are faster than Mega Man's utilt. Grab comes out frame 7 or later I think, but is obviously intended to be used if you predict that Mega Man is going to shield.
Anyways it seems that we both agree on very important things. Ness has trouble getting in against Mega Man in the neutral due to his zoning with projectiles and Ness's low mobility. Ness however has an easier time killing and is stronger in a more advantageous position. Overall the matchups leans towards Mega Man.
We seem to slightly disagree on how big or small each of these advantages or disadvantages are in the matchup, but that's to be expected.
As for what the matchup should be labeled, I stated this earlier:
A Ness player should never lose to a Mega man player that he is better than, assuming that they both know the matchup well. And Megaman player should never lose to a worse Ness player. When they are both evenly skilled, they will go back and forth, but the Mega man player should have a slight edge.
I still stand by this and believe this. Mega Man has an advantage in this matchup. It's pretty small, but existent nonetheless. I can even see why it'd be listed as a solid advantage instead of a small one, though I don't see it as so.
Now labels is a pretty important discussion to have. I see right now that you guys like the ratio out of a 100 label. Personally, I really dislike using matchup ratios.
In brawl when we discussed matchups this is what I saw as the meaning for matchup ratios:
50:50 even obviously
55:45 mostly even, but one character has a definite edge. It's very small, but definitely there.
60:40 solid advantage, soft counter. Difficult matchup but still perfectly winnable You have to be better than your opponent to win, but not that much better really.
65:35 hard counter. Really difficult matchup. You have to be much better than your opponent to win this matchup in a tournament set. A secondary is not absolutely required, but is definitely recommended.
70:30 Unwinnable. Must use a secondary to beat this character in a tournament setting.
Now this is obviously how I interpreted these numbers. Lots of other people shared similar interpretations to these, but everyone is different. Reading the OP of this thread this is what I coudl find:
The overall score will be based on a score of 100. We will mostly use multiples of 5. The number on the left will represent Mega Man, the number on the right the current match-up opponent in discussion. For example, let's say that we have a favorable match-up against Mewtwo, we would say 70-30 if its solidly in Mega Man's advantage. 90-10 would be a close to unwinnable matchup. 80-20 is a strong "hard counter". 70-30 is a solid advantage. 60-40 would be for an advantage. 50-50 would be neutral. And then it switches sides. Green will indicate an advantage while red is disadvantage for Mega Man. The lighter the color, the more intense the advantage/disadvantage.
You've defined what the meaning is for 50:50, 60:40, 70:30, 80:20, and 90:10 is. However, I would suggest that you elaborate further on what each number actually means. When you say that Mega Man has a solid advantage, what does that mean? When does a matchup stop being a solid advantage, and starts being a hard counter. Doing your best to clearly define the borders and boundaries between what each definition entails is important. It makes it easier to organize matchups if everyone knows exactly what a ratio means for a matchup. That's why when I described the ratios earlier, I evaluated the matchup in a variety of ways. How should you expect to perform in tournament against equally skilled player, and players who are worse than you? Do you need a secondary? How often should you be winning? By establishing clear cut definitions it's easier to have a dialogue. This is especially helpful when you invite people from other character boards.
When I first came in here and saw that you had listed this matchup as 70:30 I thought you were all being ridiculous. But then I saw what you actually meant by 70:30; solid advantage. I can see that. PK beam reacted so poorly because he misunderstood what you meant when you said that matchup was 70:30.
This is why I don't really like the matchup ratio system. It seems that everyone has a different meaning for each of the numbers and what they mean. They have such a loaded history from Brawl that they should probably be avoided. Plus how many levels of matchups are there really?
Even
Slight advantage
Solid advantage
Huge advantage
Unwinnable
I would say that all matchups can fall under one of those five categories comfortably. Trying to delineate it any further would be a waste of time in my opinion. If there are really only five different kinds of matchups, then why implement a system that has room for 100 different kinds of matchups?
What's the difference between a 65:35, 75:25, and 70:30? It seems rather arbitrary at that point. You have Diddy listed as 52.5:47.5? What does that even mean?
Even just simplifying it down to single digits creates superfluous ratios. 5:5, 6:4, 7:3, 8:2, and 9:1 all have a purpose. What's the difference between a 9:1 or 10:0 matchup though?
Meh this is why I prefer just plain old numbers. 0, +1, +2, +3, and +4. By clearly defining what each number means, you can arrive to a conclusion easily. And you don't have any superfluous or meaningless labels like with other systems.
ON that note I will say reiterate my feelings on the Ness Mega Man matchup.
Mostly even, but one character has a definite edge. It's very small, but definitely there.
or
Solid advantage, soft counter. Difficult matchup but still perfectly winnable You have to be better than your opponent to win, but not that much better really.
I see either of those two applying. Personally I think it's a smaller advantage instead, but solid advantage is fine too. Assign whatever number you think is appropriate for my description in of the matchup.
