The Nächi Ness Guide

The first thing you want to know about Ness’s move set is that it’s pretty solid all around, you’ve probably heard this like a million times before, but it’s true, Ness has a little bit of everything.

Before we start I recommend you look up several smash terms we are going to be using throughout the entire guide. Educate yo-self! Here’s a link to a good video, it’s a place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRbvCVVSVEk. But it might not cover everything, so you might have to look at other sources, such as... here in smash boards (lol), but anyway, prep up with smash terms. There are those who say knowledge is as important as fingers in smash. Anyway, let’s analyze the Ness “toolbox” checklist shall we?

• Projectiles? … Check
• Reflector? … Check
• Healing move? … Check
• Spike? … Check
• Combing aerial moves? … Check
• Disjointed moves? … Check
• Edge guarding tools? … Check
• Two aerials in one short hop? … Check
• Clutch Kill throw? … Check
• You get the point… Lots of tools

MOVE SET:


Jabs, Tilts & Dash Attack. Ness has a decent ground kit… Decent is the real key word here. You’re going to mostly want to stick to your air game, but on the ground Ness has some interesting options.

Jabs (2+2+4 = 8%)(Frames 3–4) Ness’s Jab is alright, it would be nice to have a faster Jab (frame 2 or something...), but I guess it still beats out grabs, which will probably be the biggest use for his jabs.

Utilt (5-7%)(Frames 7-8) Notice how Ness throws his hands in the air to show you how hard he parties? That’s pretty much all this move is good for… jk, jk. But seriously... the only real use for this move is to follow up some combos we’ll cover later on in the combo section, as well as in some advanced tricks. I personally wouldn't throw it out casually in the neutral since the hitbox is kind of small and rarely picks up opponents standing next to you.

Ftilt (9%)(Frames 7-10) A little kick that has little range and is little in general... I mean, it’s a decent “get off me” option when pivoted in the neutral and it comes out pretty fast, but in reality, it’s shadowed by the jab and sees very little use. I think tilting it up or down further reduces the moves range making it a little sad.

Dtilt (2-4%)(Frames 3-4) This move starts and ends MEGA quick (even faster than Ness’s jab), there's zero commitment involved. Using Dtilt is like having a one night stand without even using the bathroom on your way out, quick and dirty. Spamming this move will also let you show everyone how good you are at Mario Party. But fo-real, Dtilt comes out super duper fast and even trips. People don’t use it too much since the range is short and it’s hard to consistently trip with, but fun fact: It’s a crucial element in Japan’s Meta, Dtilt into “the Bat” is devastating. If you are an intermediate player looking to Pro-up, look into this move…

Dash Attack (3+2+4=9%)(Frames 8-22) This dash attack is actually pretty good and is a decent approach option since its fast and disjointed at the front. The attack lasts a long time which has its advantages and disadvantages but since the little explosions advance in a linear way, you can actually make this attacks sort of safe on shield if you space it to hit with the last “blasts”, just measure the length accordingly. By the way the last hitbox has a huge amount of knock back, even at 0%.


Smash Attacks. Ness carries some serious punch with his smash attacks, but they're nothing to brag about and will most likely see little use. They all extend from his body and all have interesting features and uses. I like to bat around easy projectiles and abuse the yo-yo at the ledge for some early kills. The downside is that all his smash attacks are a serious commitment since they have a ****load of lag, if you miss, you’ll get hit.

Usmash (9-13%)(Frames 6-30) Yo-yo Time! … More like a taunt with a hitbox on it… jk jk, I mean, I guess it does provides a hitbox outside of Ness’s body, but what puts people off is how slow the move looks. But on paper it should be a viable move and could work as a decent anti-air. The downside is that after the initial "thrust", it takes a year to do the “around the world” (pro yo-yo terms son).

Note: Don't be deceived by the frame data, the frame 6 hitbox is actually the micro animation where he pulls the yo-yo out before he starts the "around the world", yet it does have a hitbox and can be used as a super quick "get off me option".

Fsmash (18-22%)(Frames 21-22) “The BAT”. First thing to do is: Name it! And call its name out EVERY TIME YOU USE IT, call it “Jenny” or “Dr. Pain”, dunno, go crazy. The Bat is super cool, but sadly you won’t be seeing too much of it, unless you’re doing something that every other Ness isn’t (a lag cancel on this move would be amazing). The bat has some crazy lag, but it’s good to reflect easy projectiles back with X2 damage! Megaman’s Fsmash or Toon Link’s boomerang are some examples. When you do land a hit, be sure to savor that sweet sweet sound.

Note: The bat actually has a sweet-spot at the very tip that has some crazy knock-back. To practice try landing a PK Fire and hitting opponents with the tip... "Just the tip".

Dsmash (10%)(Frames 10-32) Another yoyo trajectory, this time hitting behind first. The move is good to punish people who roll behind you often, but at mid-high percentages it really shines since you can use it to cover the ledge whit edge guarding, just stand there with your back towards it and throw it out, it might just mess them up and grant you an early kill since it launches opponents horizontally. Learn to master this, we will go over it in detail in the Offstage Life section.

Note: You can actually act really quickly after the last hit of this smash attack. So you can throw it out in the neutral to maybe bait a grab from your opponent since you'll seem vulnerable after the last "reel in", only to see them take some quick jabs to the face.


Aerials. This is where Ness truly shines, he has a superb kit of aerials that include: a combo tool, two killing aerials, a spike and a fast Nair. If you want to play Ness effectively you’ll have to learn to short hop consistently and learn to poke your opponent with aerials to apply pressure. Fast falling will be useful too, it gets real technical when we go over Ness’s air game, but have faith, once mastered you will be able to take control of the skies.

Uair (13%)(Frames 8-11) One of Ness’s best moves and a personal favorite. Uair is a combo starter at low percent’s, a safe approach in the neutral (since the shield push on it makes it safe when spaced correctly) and a kill move at high percent’s. It also happens to be Ness’s lowest landing lag aerial, so you'll want to throw it out right before landing to keep yourself safe, practice it and love it.

Fair (All hits=7%)(Frames 8-20) This is one of Ness’s bread & butter, it’s what you combo and gain stage presence with, two for the price of one. Using Fair is what you'll want to get good at in the air, it has a disjointed hit-box, so it’s incredibly safe, and it also pulls opponents into it, making it perfect for comboing since you can drag people around during the attack and set them up for other aerials. During a short hop you can throw Fair out and if you hit a shield, retreat immediately, rinse and repeat. In the Combos section we will learn how to use Fair properly.

Nair (7-11%)(Frames 5-15) This is your quick “out of shield - get out of my hair” option, you can use two in a single short hop, it might even catch your opponent off guard on the second hit sometimes, but it becomes pretty predictable after a while. Nair hits on both sides, which is surprisingly convenient, it’s the quickest aerial Ness can throw out and an excellent overall tool. You can use it both offensively and defensively, trade damage and even edge guard with it (covered during the Offstage Life section), just run off the stage and Nair to slap some fools and cash some stocks.

Note: Just in case you missed it... You can use two Nairs in a single short hop.

Bair (8-15%)(Frames 10-18) Why this move do 15% damage? … Who knows… But it hits like Kimbo Slice. Slam both feet into your opponent and watch them explode against the side of the stage. Bair alone makes it worth learning how to RAR (reverse aerial rush) trust me, you’ll need to RAR to use this beast move. Bair will also teach you the art of auto-canceling aerials, its another personal favorite move and an essential must for stage spikes (check the Tips, Tricks & Jank section).

Note: The only downside to this move is that it’s not always safe on shield. In fact, it’s pretty hard to make this move safe on shield at first, most people will usually prefer practicing with other safer moves to space with. There are ways of making Bair a little safer to throw out such as using a Nair immediately after during the same short hop.

Dair (10-12%)(Frames 20-25) Probably the least useful aerial in Ness’s arsenal, but hey... a spike is a spike nomsayin?. The move works like any other spike, only the startup takes forever (20 frames?! Are you kidding me Nintendo?!) and you have to be really accurate with the sweet spot otherwise you'll just save your opponent. I’ve honestly found more use for it in the neutral as a wild mix-up, then going for a jab lock or something. You technically have better options than Dair to edge guard with, but most people won’t see it coming if you do try going for a spike. There is also an important trick with Dair’s start up animation call "Dair canceling" (see The Neutral).


Special Moves. Ness’s special moves are a series of energy projectiles and a healing magnet. The PK-package is devastating and are all part of a set of signature moves that have made Ness unique since N64.

Neutral Special - PK Trash (9-37%)(Frames 43-149) This move is hands-down terrible and useless IMO, but it’s worth mentioning that it’s Ness’s most damaging move (37%). Still... using PK Trash in the neutral is pretty much a sign of disrespect. Your opponent will be able to taunt 3 times, light a cigarette and fully charge any smash attack he pleases to hit you in the time it takes you to charge PK Trash. You can try to use it to edge guard but it’s still tough… Maybe in doubles?

Note: PK Trash travels further backwards, so if you do use it, turn around first. Also, you’ll be tempted to use this if you get a shield break, but unless you are going for pure damage, go for a PKT2 instead since it has more knock-back and a higher probability to kill, just don’t kill yourself.

Up Special - PK Thunder (8%)(Frames 20-137) “Thandah!” This move not only saves your life, but also works to: juggle opponents, gimp, create frame traps, remind you how good you are at “snake” and grant you ridiculous kills at 30%. We’ll go over all the funky stuff you can do with this move in the Tricks & Jank section, but for now be sure to learn how to use it to recover from EVERY offstage angle possible… Go to training and practice.

Note: Remember that if you need to cancel this move pronto, you can crash it into the ground. Also, while recovering with PK Thunder 2 (PKT2), which is the blast after hitting yourself with the PKT, remember that if you hit an opponent, it will decrease the travelling distance. This might just make the difference between making it back to the stage or not, so careful.

Side Special - PK Fire (All hits=22%)(Frames 21-26+?) PK Fire is one of the most dangerous projectiles in the game (both for you and your opponent). When the bolt hits, it ignites and the fire traps opponents. It even drags foes down when hit offstage as the fire drops. Whenever you land one, it’s usually a free grab, but if you land it close enough, you can sometimes throw out …. [Insert name] (The Bat!) (see Tips, Tricks & Jank for tricks on landing PK Fire easier). There are several set ups and tricks with PK Fire that we’ll see later on. For now, just use it with caution since it’s not safe on shield or if people jump over it. Start by memorizing the max range of the bolt, learning how to pivot a PK Fire and confirming into grabs.

Down Special - PSI magnet (Frame 18) Why not PK Magnet? (I’ve wondered all these years) But it’s pretty much a healing wave thingy that lets you absorb energy projectiles and heals you for more % than they originally damage. It’s a miracle move in doubles, and there are a few tricks you can do with it, again… we’ll see them later in the Tips, Tricks & Jank section.


Throws. Ness has some of the best throws in the game, comparable or even better than some of the other top tier characters. Dthrow is a terrific combo throw and Bthrow will get you out of tough situations when you desperately need to take a stock. A good Ness player is going to have to learn how to consistently grab opponents to convert throws into damage.

Note: remember that pummels exist! Ness actually has a pretty good and fast pummel that should be used when possible, free damage is free damage dude, and you are going to be grabbing a lot so squeeze in that extra damage.

Uthrow (10%)(Angle=90°) Uthrow sends opponents directly upwards (duh). I guess the best use for this throw is probably at mid-high percentages when Dthrow no longer combos into aerials but Bthrow won’t kill just yet. Having your opponent above you is usually a good thing since you can juggle them with Uairs or PK Thunders (see Tips, Tricks & Jank for these).

Fthrow (11%)(Angle=45°) Fthrow does a surprising amount of damage, so it could serve as a damage throw to not stale Bthrow. Otherwise go ahead and use this to gain stage control, sadly there are no known follow ups from Fthrow (wtf is up with the Base KB of this move?), but you can surely go for an edge guard attempt nomsayin?

Dthrow (7%)(Angle=70°) Ness slams his opponent to the ground and delivers some sweet fire justice. Dthrow is a miracle throw, its the center of Ness’s combos, it send opponents forward at a 70° angle and is perfect for low to mid percent combos. People will learn to fear your grab because of Dthrow. At low percentages it confirms into most aerials, at mid percent… it still does, lol. You’ll use it over and over to gain stage presence and push your opponent to the abyss. Learn to use it and love it.

Note: Better players will most likely quickly learn how to DI out of your Dthrow, you need to be able to act accordingly and chase after them or hold back when ever its needed.

Bthrow (11%)(Angle=135°) Welcome… to having the best kill throw in the game... Around 90% Bthrow will start to take stocks if you’re standing at the ledge, at around 110% it will start killing consistently depending on the opponents weight. But at 130%+ it’ll make opponents seem like they're made of paper and explode off the corner of the stage, and lets not even talk about range added in. This throw is legendary & iconic; nothing in Ness’s move set is feared more than his Bthrow. At high percentages, opponents will start becoming paranoid about getting grabbed and will start having black and white Vietnam flashbacks about it. Nothing conditions opponents harder than the existence of Bthrow in your arsenal, they will always expect you to fish for it, good Ness players use this to their advantage (see conditioning in The Neutral section).

Note: Btw everyone hates this throw, haters be hatin'. But chill, this will most likely only mess with their focus. Besides its only fair since PK Trash is useless...

Fewf… Now that the move set is over with, we can start talking about the real Ness experience. The 3-2-1-GO! sign at the beginning of a match just disappeared and you need to win your losers bracket match or maybe just win in order to not have to take another shot of tequila, whatever the reason. Its time…

But before that, everyone loves pros and cons list… but this is basic 1-2-3’s, so we’ll keep it short:


Pros:

1. Superb aerial attacks, disjointed and hard hitting.
2. Freaking Premier Grabs/Throws that include a combo throw and the best kill throw in the game.
3. A better than average tool kit of moves to control the pace of the neutral and to edge guard effectively.

Cons:

1. One of the slowest ground speeds in the game.
2. Susceptible to getting gimped easily, especially by characters with a reflector, counter, multiple jumps, anything really.
3. Lacks easy approach options in the neutral (ex. Sheik - Fair, Pikachu - Quick Attack, Luigi - Fireballs).

But what does this list really tell us about Ness? In a nutshell, these things explain the core of Ness as a character. He’s someone that you are going to be short hopping around with, throwing walls of attacks at your opponents while waiting for a golden opportunity. He is a patient fisher, a master baiter… a floaty combo machine, a grabbing wizard. If you don’t mind being patient and waiting for that one moment where you can deliver an instant sucker punch KO and wreck that guy who’s been saying ****ty jokes all night… Then Ness is for you. He’s not for the strong headed, you will have to learn to be zen with Ness and not give into temptation. Ness is a color stripped deadly wasp, zooming in the air. He’s like a mini Bruce Lee. If you get “mad bro disease” and try to go offstage for a spike without thinking it through, you’ll just end up dead. He can be flashy character, but most of the time Ness rewards solid fundamentals. Be warned: people will give you constant **** for properly landing PK fires, chaining Fairs all day and finishing games with your Bthrow. You´re going to have to get creative with your gargantuan tool box and think over every scenario beforehand. Sadly Ness has some strong weaknesses. You will have nightmares about how slow you move around the stage. Prepare yourself to get gimped regularly and get creative with every recovery. And expect to be outgunned against pretty much every other projectile. But the thing is Ness isn’t a full rush down aggro character either, he is a golden gun waiting for that OP shot. This is what you need to understand from that pros and cons list if you decide to main the electro-fire super boy: Ness.


The first three things you'll need in order to start feeling comfortable and start winning with Ness are:

1. Applying safe short hop pressure (both offensively and defensively).
2. Learning to shield properly and acting out of it.
3. Avoiding a short list of beginner mistakes that I have listed here.

Note: These things will most likely improve anyone’s game, regardless of if they use Ness or not, but this explanation covers Ness’s POV and tactics.


1. Safe short hop aerial pressure


Let’s start by learning to applying safe short hop aerial pressure shall we? Doing this properly will monumentally improve your Ness game, especially since it’s what you’ll be doing in the neutral around 40% of the time. For starters you’ll have to learn how to short hop, there is no other way, end of discussion. But you probably already know how if you’re reading a smash boards guide, now practice it until it’s consistent, literally 19 out of 20 times (for now… then 49-50… then 99-100!). If you don’t know how short hop yet, no worries, there are several tutorials on YouTube, watch one and come back… please…

Once mastered, learn how to do short hop aerials, start with Fairs and Bairs (Bairs requires you to RAR, “Reverse Aerial Rush” LEARN ASAP), follow with figuring out the timing of double Nairs (since you can throw two out in one short hop) and finally some Uairs (preferably hitting your opponent with either the beginning of the attack or the very end, either tip will suffice). Whenever you land facing your opponent after an aerial, get used to the idea of throwing out one or two jabs to cover yourself, you need to practice these as well. Many beginner and even some intermediate Ness players hardly ever use jabs at all, which is a huge mistake since they are your fastest ground option against incoming grabs. People in smash 4 love to grab so … press A and use your Jab. EZ.

Sooner or later your opponent will catch on to your aerial pressure by shielding and grabbing you immediately when you land, this is called “shield grabbing”. But don’t worry. Even if an opponent suspects that you are going to do a short hop aerial, if you position yourself precisely by throwing out an aerial and retreating just in time to land out of your opponents range when you land, they won’t be able to shield grab you. This is called “spacing”. Still… shield grabbing is pretty OP in today’s Meta (late 2015), even with the current shield stun patch, and it’s hard to be consistently safe against a good defensive player. So don't fret and just get in your head the idea of practicing spacing a lot since it’s a key skill in smash.

You'll notice some aerials are safer to space with, for starters try only using Fairs and Uairs. Fair lets you maneuver nicely in the air while Uair pushes opponents in their shield far enough to be sorta safe, as long as you hit with either tip of the attack (front or back). Once you can get those two aerials down semi-consistently, then go ahead and try using the Bairs and Nairs again, which are a little trickier to be safe with.

Note: You could always try “crossing” your opponent by landing behind them if spacing just isn’t working for you (landing behind your opponent is a little safer since they cant shield grab you).

When you sort of get the hang of being in front of your opponent, doing a short hop, throwing out an aerial, poking at your opponent and then pulling back to land safety out of their range; then you can scream: hurrah! You successfully learned how to use short hop aerials to safely apply pressure on your opponents… Boom! That’ll immediately improve your approaches. #progress. High-five your monitor and be proud :D, this stuff is real hard at first.


2. The art of the shield


One of the easiest and most useful techniques in smash 4 is learning how to shield approach. It’s pretty easy to do, don’t worry, all you have to do is start a dash animation and while running press the shield button. In any pro match you’ll notice people dashing forward and backward and activating their shields all the time (you can easily tell if it’s a shield approach because they even slide a little when activating it). But why? Well, turns out that shields come out really really fast, like frame 1 fast, which is pretty much the fastest a move can come out in smash. Making shielding in general a good idea/option since it’s a quick way to beat "normal" attacks. Remember, "normal" attacks, off course there are several exceptions such as shield breakers and other stuff, a notable one: simply getting grabbed (lol, oh smash...so easy and yet so complicated), but anyway, for now lets assume its a god option.

The other variation of shield approaching is actually doing a very important thing... walking (lol)... Some people will read this entire guide and when they ask me about stuff ill be sure to send them all the way back to this part of chapter 2 . Its important to remember that aside from dashing to shield approach, you can also walk and shield approach. In fact in many ways, walking is a stronger option since "dash-shielding" requires a specific distance traveled before being able to shield. This little distance is actually a big deal eventually when you play better players. On the other hand, by walking, you can activate your shield at any point of your movement, making it a very strong option indeed.

I know shielding all day can be a little boring but its all worth the wait because now we are going to learn what to do out of a shield. Let’s try an interesting exercise. Imagine your opponent has no grab button/s (Z), in fact, if you have a friend to help you out in this exercise, it would be the better. I think lower level CPU’s don’t tend to grab as much, so that might work too. Anyway, have your buddy throw out ONLY "normal" attack moves at you (no grabs or weird ****). Then proceed to shielding their attack and immediately retaliating with the appropriate “out of shield option” (OoS), depending on where they are:

1. While shielding, press “A” to shield grab (close in front)
2. Drop shield and Dash attack (far in front)
3. Drop shield and PK Fire (far in front) (better when the opponent has landing lag)
4. While in shield, short hop and Nair (close in front or behind)
5. Drop shield and Jab (in front)
6. Drop shield, turn around & grab (eventually pivot-grab) (close behind)
7. Drop shield and Dsmash (close behind)
8. Drop shield and USmash (close in front) [use jump cancel smash for quicker results]
9. While in shield, press “jump” and GTFO
10. While in shield, tap left or right on the joystick to Roll (Don’t make this a habit)

Note: For OoS aerials, while holding shield, press you “jump” button and immediately press A, all in one motion (buffer the move as fast as possible). Speed is key here, so you need to be fast. For details on how to perform Mr. complicated option #8 look at the Tips, Tricks & Jank section.

Usually you will go for options #1 or #4 depending on the situation (shield grab and short hop Nair), since these two are the most common and safe options. Nair out of shield is a quick panic/safe move that everyone loves since its easy to use and very effective. But, keep in mind that Ness's grabs lead into some crazy damage. So if you get your pick, you should try to go for a grab… or a confirmed PK fire into a grab combo (even more damage), you get the point... damage.

If you can’t shield grab your opponent easily after they throw an attack on your shield then it most likely means that they are spacing perfectly and applying safe pressure… Remember? That thing we learned a while ago? Of course there are also several exceptions. Certain attacks have enough range or shield push to send you sliding away far enough to be safe from a counter attack. Can you imagine a match where both players are safe all the time with their approaches? Well this actually happens at the very highest level of game play. Usually both players are super duper safe, but even then, not everyone can apply safe pressure all the time, mistakes happen. So remember: consistency is the key to victory. To break this safe stalemate, top players go into endless reads and baits, but enough of that, this is 1-2-3… So forget all that and start by learning these two techniques and start seeing improvement in your Ness from day 1! Guaranteed!

By now you’re probably still like: “But what do I do now? Do I just apply pressure with short hops and wait for my shield to get hit so I can go for grabs all the time?” Of course not… you are going to do hundreds of different thingies until they are all burned into your subconscious. This entire guide is a huge list of things you’re going to do with Ness, but everything in due time. We´ll go over other things in the neutral and offstage sections later. Besides, everyone has their own style and tricks, eventually you will too, once you get a solid grasp on the character.


3. Avoiding beginner Mistakes


Now that we have a couple of tools in our arsenal let’s talk about things you don’t want to do. The most common and saddest thing a Ness player can do is abandoning all their training and playing sloppy by:

• PK fire-ing like its free
• Going for predictable raw grabs
• Rolling around all day
• Double Jumping
• Screwing up your recovery

These five things will be the end of you if you don't patch them up quickly and dedicate some time towards improving. Here is the 1-2-3 version of what you have to do:

1. Don’t PK fire all day (use it sparingly)
2. Condition your opponent to shield before going for a raw grab to avoid missing and getting punished (aerials work great for conditioning)
3. Eliminate your bad rolling habits (easier said than done)
4. Don't double jump unless you 100% have to (Don't be a DJ...er)
5. Go to training mode and practice (fo-real)

PK Fire like its free

We'll actually talk a little more about PK fire in the next chapter, and even mention some ways of making it safer. Yet I should take the time to warn you from the beginning that PK fire is a really really unsafe move that embodies the phrase "high risk high reward". But right now, id say the risk is not worth the reward, not until you can guarantee that a confirmed PK Fire will earn you 30%-40% damage from a combo, which trust me, later on it will, but for now its the biggest double edge sword ever and it can really mess you up when used incorrectly.

Predictable Grabs

We already talked about how Ness's grabs are amazing in almost every way, the speed is there, the range is there, the combo potential and killing power is there, the variety too... the only draw back is that for some reason Ness has a suspicious amount of additional lag when he whiffs a grab (compared to the rest of the cast) For example: 43 frames of lag on a whiffed dash grab compared to Luigi's 36 frames or Megamans 38 frames... Interesting, the point is, they are risky, so be sure to not miss, missing will guarantee hard damage.

Rolling around all day

Rolling around too much is never a good idea, you've probably heard this from a couple of people already, so instead lets replace rolls with other defensive options such as: spot dodging, retreating short hop Nairs or jabbing to protect yourself. Not so fun fact: Ness has a rather slow and unsafe roll compared to other top tier characters, so just don't do it often.

Double Jumping is no bueno

This one is interesting because not many people address this as a key beginner issue. In fact its more like an advanced player mistake, but I might as well and warn you that Ness's double jump is very risky and predictable against people who know what they are doing. Onstage your double jump will most likely leave you too vulnerable and coupled with Ness's floatyness landing will be an issue. i recommend not using this too often and sticking to short hops or even full hops.

The second and main issue with the double jump goes hand in hand with the recovery part and its that during a recovery attempt a double jump wont snap the ledge nicely, so at first you will find yourself constantly going past the edge and getting hit with a Fsmash or something. Instead, try staying underneath the ledge and aiming your PKT2 to go for the ledge if your opponent is waiting for you.

PKT2 Recovery is important

What happens when you get hit offstage papa? Well, you have to practice recovering with your PK Thunder. Although most beginner and even intermediate players won’t dare to get in the way of Ness when recovering from underneath the stage, since the blast might just kill them, experienced players will most likely try to gimp you hard. If you try placing yourself perfectly under the stage to recover to the ledge with your PK Thunder, then your opponent will probably react accordingly and try to hit you out of your second jump right when you are getting in position to PKT. In this case, mix it up by recovering onstage from a higher position (above the stage) or recovering the farthest possible under the stage while still in range of your PKT2 range (usually this is enough to discourage some opponents to go that far down to hit you). You can also try "riding the wall" to snap the ledge since its usually a little safer.

These tips will help you start mixing up your recovery in order to consistently return to the stage. Remember: Go for the ledge! You might fail to recover consistently with PKT2 at first, but once you get the hang of it everything will be golden. Ness falls victim to getting gimped if you desperately try to rush back on stage, but don’t worry, you’re also pretty good at edge guarding yourself, we’ll go over this later (in the Offstage Life chapter). For now try to make sure that when someone is offstage that person isn’t you (easier said than done, lol).

All these solutions will brutally help you improve when you start slacking off. Get these habits patched up quickly so you can use the precious time to start analyzing your opponent and several other more important things.

Recap:

If you are a legit beginner reading this guide for the first time I want to take a second to applaud you for getting this far. Just this first chapter is a real mouthfull to digest and we are barely scratching the surface of Ness's gameplay. Nevertheless dont be discouraged and I recomend taking this guide in steps.

If you forgot what we went over in this chapter to improve your Ness game, here’s a short recap of what you need to remember. Start practicing to get better.

1. The advantages and disadvantages of using Ness.
2. Learning to short hop and using aerials.
3. “Dare to Nair”…. Twice.
   
4. Jabin’ after landin’ (cover yourself from grabs).
5. The art of spacing aerials and shield grabbing.
6. The shield is your friend, but your best friends are those out of shield options.
7. Important beginner mistakes.
8. Quick tips to help you recover and not die.

What is the neutral? (You’re going to hear this term a lot)


The neutral is the state in any match where both players are on stage and neither of them has positional advantage, in other worlds: both players are on even ground and are trying to gain an edge over their opponent by applying pressure… with… you guessed it! Those short hop aerials that you learned to use a second ago in the last chapter. This whole situation is also referred to as “footsies”, but people often simply call it the neutral. A bit of Ness’s neutral game was covered in the last chapter but now we get to go deep into detail.

Perfect Shielding

Another interesting shield technique is perfect shielding. If you are aiming to be a competitive Ness player you're going to need this a lot, especially to deal with projectiles (remember we talked about this a little?). Projectiles come in two different flavors: energy and physical, the actual line between these is pretty fishy, you’d be surprised at what might be considered an energy projectile in the Nintendo universe... But an easy way to confirm is by using your PSI magnet to see what you can absorb (but don't hold on to that statement because some projectiles like link’s bombs for example are physical, yet the explosion can be absorbed). Anyway, when perfect shielding you take no shield damage and can act immediately after (no shield drop lag). You’re going to need to be able to use your shield to advance towards your opponent under projectile fire (this sounds kind of epic). Don’t worry, you most likely won’t master perfect shielding anytime soon, and don't fret about it either. The longer you play smash you’ll start to do it automatically and eventually it’ll be effortless, but for now learn to approach using your regular shield, that’s what it’s for.

Note: You might not be able to perfect shield at all during online matches because of the input lag, but offline it’s a very useful tool that advanced players might want to invest time into.

Let’s go over some general options that you might want to use during the neutral, this way you can pick from a list to execute and try out (eventually you’ll know what goes where and which option is appropriate for which scenario). Besides shield approaching and using your aerials you are going to want to occasionally throw out a PK Fire and go for raw grabs. These last two options kind of go hand in hand with each other in a funny way since an important part of Ness’s neutral game is to condition your opponent to be cautious and use their shield often (making it easier to land a grab).

PK Fire

The main way to condition your opponent to shield often and be defensive is obviously by throwing out those aerials, but another effective way to achieve this is with your PK Fire. PK Fire is sadly not safe when your opponent blocks it, it doesn’t ignite on shields and the end lag you get makes you incredibly vulnerable after missing the move. But there are a couple ways of making the move a little bit safer such as “pivoting” the PK Fire (other PK Fire techniques are covered in the Tips, Tricks & Jank). To pivot a PKF, just dash one way quickly and throw out a PK Fire in the opposite direction... easy. By pivoting a PK Fire you might trick your opponent into thinking that you are escaping only to immediately turn around and burn that fool. I would also recommend to pay attention to the maximum range of your PK Fire and try to hit the opponent the furthest away possible (just to put some space between you and them incase you miss, it makes it a little safer). If you land the hit, go for a grab, do a 30% damage combo and maybe push your opponent offstage and into an edge guard attempt. You'll quickly notice that after that, the next time you return to neutral they are going to be more inclined to shielding your PK Fires (lol)… This is pretty much what conditioning is all about, injecting fear into your opponent.

Grabs

Once you start hitting your opponent’s shield constantly with aerials and have them paranoid about your PK Fire’s, you can go for raw grabs, without needing to shield grab. Ness is all about grabs, just don’t shoot yourself in the foot by using them all the time and becoming predictable. Cycle between these grabbing options:

1. Dash Grabs – ABC simple, just run up to your opponent, press the "Grab" button and hope they don't spot dodge (one of the counters to dash grabbing), Ness has a pretty good dash grab, just get used to the range first.
2. Pivot Grabs – Once your opponent starts spot dodging, or you simply need that extra little range on your grab to catch a landing aerial or something, you can start mixing it up with pivot grabs. To do this: dash one way and then tap the joystick the other way while pressing the grab button. If you take too long you will do a Ftilt (which isn’t that bad as far as miss-inputs go, lol). The other common use for pivot grabbing is to run past your opponent and as they spot dodge, keep going and pivot grab them back #rewarding
3. Tomahawk Grabs – This option might be a little more complicated. You are going to go ahead and short hop towards your opponent pretending like you’re going to throw out an aerial, but instead, simply fast fall, land, press the grab button… and giggle. You have to be pretty fast though. This is a classic read based on conditioning. If you pulled it off, congratulations! You performed your first effective bait! (this is what top smash is all about).

Note: If you miss a grab and are stuck in lag, try throwing out some Jabs, opponents with good throw combos will want to go for grabs as well when they see you vulnerable, so intercept them with a quick punch to the rib.

Dair Cancel

Another cool option to try out is a “Dair cancel” grab. I was originally going to explain this technique way later (in the Tips, Tricks & Jank section), but since we’re already dipping our spoons into baits, I might as well mention it here. Once you learn how to fast fall aerials you can start trying this out. By now you probably know that Dair has a long animation before the actual kick comes out (19 frames). Well, during this animation, before the hit box comes out, if you slam Ness down by fast falling, you’ll cancel the move and won’t have any lag. OMFG! Try “Dair canceling” into some jabs… whoa! The jabs will be coming out while the landing animation is still going on! If you ever played Kirby, this is pretty much the same thing as a “Hub-cancel”, there are several tutorials about it that you can look up if you need an extra reference and additional help. Now, instead of jabbing after Dair canceling, try using a grab and it will come out nearly as fast. Woohoo! Now you know how to “Dair cancel grab”, use it wisely. It can technically be your 4th option on the list above. It also might be a little easier to do than a Tomahawk Grab (for some people).

Frame Data & Landing Lag (aerials)

Now that landing and lag is on the table, lets quickly talk about is Ness’s landing lag. You should complement this paragraph by looking up a chart with Ness’s frame data, here’s a good link: http://kuroganehammer.com/Smash4/Ness. BTW, shouts out to whoever made this page with all the frame data, that **** takes ages and benefits everyone.

Anyway you probably heard about frames before, but to put it simple; frames are like the pictures that make up the movement in smash, the game works at 60 frames per second, so 1 frame is 1/60th of a second (…pretty fast). Understanding frame data will show you how fast or slow Ness’s attacks come out (after the input), how long they last out and how much lag the attack might have after it’s finished (moves with more lag leave you more vulnerable). Attacks that come out in only a couple of frames are generally considered quicker and sometimes safer… Why “sometimes”?, well because safety depends on other things too. The truth is, safety is generally more like the combination between how quick an attack comes out, range, wheather or not the move is disjointed or grants you some sort of armor and how quickly it ends so you can react out of it (its a whole formula indeed). Anyway back to frames; frames are important because they help you keep track of which of Ness’s aerials are quicker and safer to use. Landing lag, on the other hand, is how much lag you get when you touch the ground during an attack animation, and it can also be measured in frames of lag. In order to give you a little perspective on how safe Ness’s aerials are I have some examples:

• Fair has 26 frames of landing lag when you touch the ground during the animation (1/3 of a second, which is a lot in smash!)
• On the other hand Uair only has 14 frames of landing lag, making it much safer.

Auto-cancel windows

An interested feature in the game are these things called auto-cancel windows. Remember a while ago? That trick with Dair where during the initial frames of the animation you fast fell to the ground and canceled the move to get rid of the lag entirely? Well most of Ness's aerials have this little ninja feature both at the beginning and at the end of the aerial, usually just a couple of frames, but some aerials like Ness's Dair and Bair are an exception and have a large amount of frames to work with. But don't worry about this technical mumbo jumbo, it'll all be more digestible in a while when we see frame data charts, for now keep in mind that if you touch the ground during the frames of an animation that are not auto-cancel-able, you'll receive landing lag as punishment.

But lets not get depressed about landing lag because here is a cool tip: If you let the a Fair animation start and end while you’re in the air during a shiort hop, then you’ll land with the normal landing lag of 2-4 frames (i.e. NO LANDING LAG!!!)… whoa! If you understood anything I just said during the previous explanation then you might have understood a very important part of Ness’s air game.

Tip of the MONTH: By timing your aerials duration during a short hop, you can actually avoid having any landing lag if the animation finishes before you touch the ground!

Here is a small chart with some of Ness’s frame data, so you start getting used to seeing and understanding this kind of information:



Let me further explain this chart, see the First Actionable Frames column? (FAF) well that’s how long you’ll commit to a move (in theory) when you input a move in the air. During these frames you are stuck in that attack animation and cannot do anything else other than move Ness around in the air with the joystick. Again, if you touch the ground during the attack animation you’ll get the number of landing lag frames shown in the column next to it (both amounts don’t stack, no worries). Now, in green and blue are two numbers that you need to memorize: 42 and 64. These are the amount of frames that a short hop and full hop take up while you're in the air (assuming you don’t fast fall).

Let’s imagine you do a short hop and use a Fair during the short hop. The entire short hop lasts 42 frames, but the Fair animation only lasts 40 of those 42 frames, letting you use up all of the short hop animation frames and finish just in time for you to come clean and not get any landing lag frames of punishment (pretty sweet huh?). Either way we'll go over this part again in the Combos section.

Note: All of this info applies to other aerials too, we simply used Fair in this example because it’s an important attack that you’ll use constantly.

Jab

We now already know that spacing is the key to using aerials and that timing the duration of an attack can lead to a lag-less landing. The only thing left to do is to add some jabs once you land. I’ve been saying all along that after landing you should throw out some jabs to keep you safe from people who try to run up and grab you. But now you can also understand why, thanks to frame data. Let’s remember that jabs come out on frame 3, which are faster than grabs. Most grabs usually come out on frame 6-7. Hence Ness's jab is twice as fast and twice as effective. You might as well throw out a single jab just to be careful (tap A only once), never hurts to be safe, they say…

Dealing with projectiles

Let’s start from the beginning of a match, the very first thing that you might see is a projectile flying towards your face, so let’s learn how to deal with these. Ness has several projectiles himself, but he struggles to approach characters with better/more reliable ones such as Mario’s fireballs, Falco’s lasers, Villager’s rockets, etc. You’ll have to adapt by shielding properly, learning to jab projectiles, absorbing energy projectiles and dodging properly in order to finally get close enough to start throwing out those aerials and grabs. Learning to approach is a huge part of playing Ness, but we will go into detail about it in The Neutral section. There are several “alternative” options and tricks too, but those will be covered in the Tips, Tricks & Jank section. Quick tip: Nair is pretty good at slapping week projectiles, try it out when possible and practice for consistency.

Reads & Baits

A huge part of smash is to learn to effectively to “read” opponents. Now, there is no 100% guaranteed way to teach someone else how to read opponents, you just kind of have to pay attention to their actions and more importantly: “their intentions”, but here is the general set of thumb rules for improving your reads.

The easiest way to start “reading” people is to play with them frequently. Your most frequent playing partners will become your first victims, since you’ll be able to catch on to their patterns soon enough. If you know the person in real life it’ll help too (but don’t hold on to this statement too firmly because some people change when they play smash, lol). There are two sides to the coin of playing with your opponents mind: “baits and reads”. Baits are done by creating tempting scenarios where you might seem vulnerable so you can lure your opponent to do something and then punish them, a classic mind game. A perfect example would be the “Dair cancel grab” we learned to do a while ago.

On the other hand; Reads are basically learning to do well educated guesses on your opponent, based on things they’ve done in the past, in order to predict their reactions and punish them accordingly; this is where intentions become relevant. An example would be if your opponent always rolls behind you after missing a Fsmash, use this information, get some damage in them and the next time they miss a Fsmash and try to roll behind you seeking safety, be ready to punish them for the kill, muahah. The way to improve your reading skills (lol) is to “feel” the general mood of your opponent's: movement, attacks and recoveries. An example could be against someone really aggressive that constantly challenges you with offensive moves when they land (Like a Dair). If the last two times he came back from the ledge he threw out a risky attack that managed to hit you, odds are he will do it again if the scenario repeats itself. With this in mind scroll down the list of punishes you have and let them have it the next time they decide to come down on you with a Dair.

From the very beginning of the match, you can start to pick up on hints about your opponent’s playstyle and intentions. If the first thing your opponent does in the match is run up and dash attack you, then you can start to assume that they are a yolo-aggressive player that enjoys reckless approaches. But if they run up, short hop into a retreating Fair, then they are zoning and applying safe pressure, signals of a more defensive player. Of course really good players will alternate between aggression and defense, but taking notes of player habits is always a good thing, just watch out and don’t generalize people, expect surprises to happen (ex.: not every Captain Falcon is overly aggressive). The same goes for offstage combat, try to see if your opponent likes to recover a certain way, especially at higher percentages. Figure out what makes them feel "safer" when recovering. So that you can crack their "safety zone" when the time arrises. During a match you even might want to give up some punishes in order to extract some crucial info about their habits, if used correctly it will come in handy later when performing a hard read to score a kill.

"Breaking" opponents & Momentum

During the neutral, both you and your opponent will fight to tip the balance in your favor by throwing out safe attacks and pressure of all sorts. Ness by nature is a monster bait & punish machine, but he isn’t hopeless at forcing favorable situations to happen either, still, most of the time you are going to be stalking for the right moment to get a solid grab on your opponent or a good aerial to get some hard damage in, in an attempt to break your opponent. By “break” I mean force them to lose focus to the point that you can really go in on a combo-pain-train-mission. When this happens, combos that most of the time should be unconfirmed will start working, resulting in an explosive streak that you should definitely take advantage of before your opponent recollects himself (usually on the platform after you take their first stock, lol). This is also referred to as momentum. You’ve probably seen this phenomenon when things start to connect magically for some reason. Take a look at any match where ZeRo or Nairo combo someone from 0 to death, or the entire meta-game of melee, it’s pretty brutal. We will talk more about this in the next chapter: Combos.

By the way,be careful to not break yourself. When under lots of pressure (from your opponents or life in general like tournaments, big crowds or the “popo” you might go for a series of unsafe choices that might get you killed. A common example is being behind a stock and wanting to urgently kill your opponent with a risky Fsmash, only to get repeatedly shield grabbed 3 times in a row. Here’s a quick tip: Whenever you take more than 20% damage from several unconfirmed hits, immediately pause to recollect yourself. The edge is a good place to do this mid-match, it’ll give you like a second to think, just don't set up camp too long, or the invincibility frames might wear off. Remember your fundamentals, return to step one, go back to using those safe short hop aerials, space correctly, use your shield, remember to spot dodge, keep calm, then rethink what you are going to do. You might be losing or might have taken some damage, but in Sm4sh, damage is power and now you can counter attack stronger, faster, better .


Recap: This is a list of the main tools Ness has in the neutral that we went over in this section. Cycle through these until you start figuring out what works best for you in different scenarios. Remember, the more options the better, but it’s no use if you can’t do any of them consistently.

• Shield approaching
• Perfect shielding
• Using PK Fire “safely”
• Dash, Pivot & Tomahawk Grabs
• Dair canceling
• Jabs
• YOUR MIND!, just like Ness (baits, reads & the psychological warfare)

Ness has several combos that rack up some serious damage and push opponents off stage. Let’s look at some basic (and some not so basic) combos. I arranged them by color based on how complicated they are (IMO), then by percentage in which they usually keep working. At high percentages (60%+) throw combos no longer confirm so you should go for stage presence or the kill throw (Bthrow). You’ll eventually have to learn percentage and character differences for some of these combos to work. This knowledge is the key to consistently pull off combos in Sm4sh and sadly there is no way around it. Directional Influence (DI), weight, rage, and falling speed literally makes all the difference. So let’s start, I marked which combos are easy to start out with. I also added a section of combos that are in no way confirmed, but hopefully illustrate the sort of massive damage that Ness can deliver when going full combo mode. Remember in the last chapter when we talked about “breaking” your opponent? When you notice something of the sort, try going for one of these unconfirmed combos. Later on you’ll be able to “organically” create combo strings when you reeeeally start to understand hit stun and fully understand Ness.


The art of Fair


When you scroll down to look at the combo list you’ll notice that a good amount of these combos include a couple of Fairs in them. Back when we were going over Ness’s move set I said I was going to explain how to Fair properly, so here we go. The first thing you’ll notice is that when you hit an opponent with all of the hitboxes in Fair, you’ll actually be able to drag them with you in the air, try using a rising Fair to pull your opponent upwards and then a falling Fair as you are falling to drag them down, interesting huh? You can practice on a CPU in training mode with the jump command on, then you’ll get exactly what I’m talking about. You can even push or pull opponents forwards or backwards, transferring your aerial momentum onto them. This opponent manipulation is important in order for you to be able to connect more Fairs or other follow ups. In the combo list I added: “Rising, Falling and Fast Falling” to most aerials, so you can get the feel for it and drag your opponent during the move. “Fast Falling”, means you have to tap down on your joystick to fall faster one you reached the apex of your jump, practice it before hand, because you’ll need this in the advanced combos.


Last but not least, I wanted to give you some mind blowing info about Fair. ANOTHER TIP OF THE MONTH: Although you can only execute a single Fair during a short hop, you can actually do another one before landing by double jumping into another Fair (the timing is real precise, 2 frames, yet it’s worth learning how to do this, trust me). The reason you can do this is because a short hop lasts 42 frames, but a Fair lasts 40 frames (the entire animation), so if you do the simple math here you get 2 extra frames at the end of the Fair if you did it immediately after short hopping. During these magical 2 frames you can double jump and use another Fair… I know, sounds impossible, but try it out, it’s easier than it looks. In the combo list, one of the yellow ones has the inputs for this, you’ll need to be able to do this for some combos. During the neutral, you can use this too to mix up your approach if you don’t want to land after a short hop Fair. This might catch your opponent off guard or give you enough space to escape a situation. If you feel like you didn’t space the move correctly halfway during the attack, then it can be an excellent alternative, granting you a ton of flexibility during the move, use this information wisely. By the way, you can use other aerials out of Ness’s double jump, Nair works great too.


Note: All the following combos were tested on Mario & Captain Falcon in training mode with no rage, nonetheless they can be pulled off in a regular match. Just keep in mind that percentages will differ with every match up, and that some characters have quick Nairs that break combos and will ruin your fun .


Pink = Easy to do and works on most characters
Yellow = Medium difficulty and more character dependent
Cyan= Harder to do and heavily depends on the character as well as opponent DI


You might need this too:

SH = Short Hop
FH = Full Hop
(R) = Rising (aerials)
(F) = Falling (aerials)
(FF) = Fast Fall (aerials)
C. = confirmed-ish percentages (w/o rage)
FFC. = confirmed-ish percentages for fast falling characters (w/o rage)
D. = % Damage (approx.)


Useful grab set-ups:

• PKF -> Grab (C. Most %s)
  
• Dtilt -> Trip -> Grab (C. Most %s)
  
• (FF)Uair -> Grab (C. 0-10%)
• (FF)Uair -> Pivot Grab (C. 10-20%)
• Jab 1 -> Jab 2 -> Grab (C. mid/high %s)

Note: Remember that PK Fire does around 18% damage, and that a (FF)Uair will do 13%, so they might mess up the percentage needed for some combos to confirm. Also, to jabs into grab easier you might want to "Jab cancel" by tapping down on your joystick to cancel a jab string so you can use a grab.

• Dtilt -> Jab1-2-3 (C. Most %s, D.= 12%)
• Dtilt (trip) -> Fsmash -> Side Taunt (C. Most %s, D.= 22%)
• Dthrow -> SH -> Fair -> Land -> Ftilt (C. 0-10%, FFC. 0-20%, D.= 23%)
• (FF)Uair -> Land -> Grab -> Dthrow -> FH -> (R)Uair (C. 0-15%, FFC. 0-20%. D.=33%)
• Dthrow -> FH -> (R)Fair -> (F)Fair (C. 0-15%, FFC. 0-20%, D.= 21%)
• Dthrow -> FH -> (R)Fair -> (F)Uair (C. 0-15%, FFC. 0-20%, D.= 27%)
• Dthrow -> FH -> (R)Fair -> DJ -> (R)Fair (C. 0-45%, D.= 21%).... (Start with this one)
• (FF)Uair -> Land -> SH/FH -> (R)Uair (C. 20-50%, D.= 26%)

• SH -> (R)Fair -> DJ -> (R)Fair (C. 0-50%, D.= 14%)
• Dthrow -> SH -> (R)Fair -> Land -> Grab -> Dthrow -> SH -> (R)Fair -> DJ -> (R)Fair (C. 0-10%, FFC. ?%, D.= 35%)
• Dthrow -> SH -> (R)Fair -> DJ -> (R)Fair-> (FF)Uair (C. 0-20%, FFC. 0-30%, D.= 33%)
• Dthrow -> FH -> (R)Fair -> DJ -> (R)Fair -> (F)Fair (C. 0-30%, D.= 25%)

• (FF)Uair -> Land -> Utilt -> Utilt -> FH -> (R)Nair -> DJ -> (R)Bair OR (R)Fair (depending on opponent DI.) (C. 0%, D.= 43-51%)
• Dtilt (trip) -> PK Fire -> SH -> PK Fire (in the air) -> Land (close) -> Fsmash -> Side Taunt (C. 0-60%, D.= 58%)

Unconfirmed Combo Strings:

• *Dthrow -> FH -> (R)Fair -> (F)Fair -> Land -> PK fire -> Dashgrab -> Dthrow -> FH -> (R)Fair -> DJ -> (R)Fair (C. 0-10% D.= 54%)

• *Dthrow -> FH -> (R)Fair (catch their second jump) -> (FF)PKT -> PKT2 (C. 40-60%, D.= 38%)
• *Jab1 -> Jab2 -> Dtilt (trip) -> PK Fire -> Fsmash -> Side Taunt (C. 50+%, D.= 48%)
• *PK Fire -> SH -> (F)Uair -> Land -> Utilt -> FH -> (R)Uair (C. 0%, D.= 48%)

• *(FF)Uair -> SH -> Footstool -> (F)Uair -> FH -> (R)Uair (C.15-35%, D.= 39%)
• *Dthrow -> FH -> (R)Fair -> (FF)Uair -> Land -> Utilt -> FH -> (R)Uair (C. 0%, D.= 47%)
• *PK Fire -> SH -> Dair -> Land -> Jab Lock -> PK Fire -> Fsmash -> Taunt (C. 50+%, D.= 65%)
• Nair -> Jab Lock x3 -> FH -> Dair -> Jab Lock x3 -> PK Fire -> Fsmash (C. 40-60%, D.= 75%)

Some of these unconfirmed combos might need a video to go along with it now that I think about it, I’ll try to see if I can make one in the near future, but hopefully the “Rising and Falling” will help you feel more or less the exact timing to use an aerial since I found it kinda hard to explain on paper.

Let’s talk about the unconfirmed combos. Most of there will be hard to pull off if you don’t play smash regularly and don't have a feel for hit stun and reaction times. You don’t have to go full Mew2King and see numbers on the walls and become a robot to combo, but from now on try to notice the percentage numbers at the bottom of the screen. Many times during a match you’ll have a free second or two, use it to look down and check them out instead of dash dancing or hanging out. Start planning your combo options in the middle of a match.

Opponent DI (Directional Influence)

Once you stop practicing these combos on CPU's and actually try them out on real people you'll find that opponent DI (Directional Influence) is a real **** block. The most important thing here is to read the DI during your Dthrow since this will be the largest window where your opponent can think about DI'ing. So here is a general mindset over what to do when reacting towards their DI.

When your opponent DI's INTO YOU, you're going to have them real close to you. If you try going for a standard Fair combo string you might actually miss them, so the best option here is to do an Uair since it hits hard and covers a wide area, depending on the percentage you could even go for another one.

If your opponent DI's AWAY during the combo, then it usually means they are going to take 2-3 Fairs, depending on whether you chose the right jump height to start your Fair string (Short or Full hop).

If they DI UPWARDS then you are going to have to use a Full hop during the Fair to catch them a little higher in the air.

If they DI DOWNWARDS then it gets a little tricky and skill heavy because you are going to have to use a short hop to connect your Fairs and figure out if either they are close enough to the ground for you to try a re-grab or go for that 2 frame window into the double jump Fair.

The real deal here is that good opponents will most likely DI one way as they get Dthrown and then try to DI another way during the first Fair, so you really have to react accordingly and that's the main reason why there are so many slightly different combo options in the list. A perfect example of execution woule be: They DI upwards so you full hop the Fair and then they DI into you so you actually don't even double jump and you simply throw out an Uair after the Fair ends. EZ

Anyway, back to the combo list; hopefully you were successful with the list of unconfirmed combos or at least able to visualize them. These sort of combo strings are what makes the aggro Ness a force to be reckoned with. Remember in the last chapter when we talked about momentum and breaking your opponent? That’s when you want to try out an unconfirmed combo. Ness can be a devastating complex combo character that goes far beyond chaining Fairs. Hopefully advanced players look deeper and deeper into these listed combos to further develop crazy stuff and share them back with each other, I think cooperating in this field only benefits Ness as a character and everyone who plays him. #Opensource

Edge guarding = the sometimes pretty desperate attempt to keep your opponent from coming back to the stage.

Click to expand...

Let’s talk about life offstage… It can be really scary sometimes, especially if you’re playing on Final Destination and the double-solar-eclipse/birth-of-the-universe is distracting you while you are trying to recover with Ness for the first time. But we’ll eventually arrive at the “how to survive” section. First let’s talk about our “happy place”; you standing safely onstage while your opponent desperately tries to recover and you say: “Not today”, then proceed to wrecking him.


Ok so, ill divide edge guarding into two schools: onstage edge guarding and offstage edge guarding. Let’s start with the onstage edge guards since it’s easier, less risky and what you will most likely see in local smash tournaments and in general.


Onstage edge guarding


The advantages of onstage edge guarding are real simple… you most likely won’t die… good enough. The disadvantages are… it probably won’t be as effective against better players, since it won’t really catch opponents where they are most vulnerable or guarantee kills. Edge guarding is all about risk and reward, the higher the risk, the higher the reward. Also, remember that smash 4 is all about having different options in your arsenal to keep your opponent guessing. Knowing more edge guarding methods will benefit you in the long run, but more isn’t necessarily better if you can’t do it consistently. There is no point in knowing 20 different edge guards if you keep missing your PK thunder gimps… (lol).


Anyway, let’s start with the very basics, approaching the ledge safely (onstage), this is easy, just run towards to the ledge and shield in front of it, leaving a small space between you and the abyss. It’s exactly the same thing as shield approaching in the neutral, only near the edge. This is how you’ll want to approach the ledge from now on when edge guarding. It’s particularly useful when an opponent is hanging there and is likely to do a get up-attack (pressing A while hanging), by shield approaching you can simply shield grab and throw them off again. For academic purposes, start practicing this every single time, either way you´ll need to learn how to shield approach during the neutral so… yeah.


If you are standing there and your opponent is offstage attempting to recover, try out these basic ways to edge guard onstage with Ness:


1. If your opponent is recovering high, then just intercept them with any aerial, Nair might work well since you can throw multiple ones out, try to force an air dodge so they get landing lag and then slap that fool.


2. Stand near the ledge and throw a PK thunder to pressure your opponent from a far, usually this means some free damage. Try using the electric tail of the attack by drawing circles or “S” shaped trajectories, this will mess their recovery without send them flying upwards. You can really gimp some characters with PKT, such as: Diddy Kong and Luigi.

Note: Later in the Tricks & Jank section we will go over some useful PK thunder trajectories and what works best.


3. Stand with your back to the ledge and Dsmash to try to cover the ledge with your yo-yo the moment they try to go for it. (This is one of the more satisfying edge guards and can result in a very early kill). If you notice your opponent has no second jump and a bad recovery, try this out, if it hits its usually a kill.


4. Wait to see if your opponent wants to grab the ledge and before he does, throw a PK Fire at ground level to intercept them, then watch be dragged by the flames, muahah.

Note: Fast falling characters could straight up die to this since the fire drags them down quicker, it could also lead into other follow ups, but we will cover those later in the Tips, Tricks & Jank section. While they burn, you can position yourself to use your yo-yo for example.


5. Short hop a PK fire near the edge to shoot down at your opponent if they are recovering low. It’s pretty much the same as the ground level PK fire, but with that downward angle to hit opponents below the edge. All the things that apply to the other PK Fire apply here as well.

Note: There are many other onstage edge guards, but start with these general ones that are pretty effective and easy to do. Remember that it’s better to be really good with a couple, other than waste your time learning things you won’t actually use when the situation arrises.


Test them all out and see which one suits you the best, don’t worry if some of them require a lot of practice, just have a CPU Donkey Kong or Bowser be your dummy and you’ll get them in no time. Also, you’ll probably find that some options are more useful against certain opponents. For example, Captain Falcon doesn’t have a hitbox in his recovery and can be very vulnerable to the yo-yo if he tries to go for the ledge.


Offstage edge guarding


Now let’s talk about offstage edge guards. I recommend starting with the onstage ones but if you’re feeling risky you might as well start here. The main advantage you’ll get from an offstage edge guard is that it maximizes the distance you send your opponent away from the stage (if you hit) and it might just be the difference between a kill or not. The disadvantage is … that you may die… so it’s definitely a high risk high reward kind of deal. Before committing to anything think if the gimp is worth putting yourself at high risk over.


Here is my list of Ness’s offstage edge guards… take your pick and may the god of the gimp be with you:


1. Run off into: Nair or Fair. Literally dash offstage and throw out any of these two aerials. Some things to keep in mind are that if you miss the initial hit, you can always try double jumping back onstage while covering yourself with another Nair or Fair. Try to time it nicely so that you hit them between their second jump and their Up-B.

Note: Most people don’t know this, but the last hit of Fair has some real crazy Knock Back Growth (KBG). What this means is that the more damage your opponent has the more knockback your move will do at higher percentages. It’s an underestimated surprise that you can pull out of your pocket in the right situation.


2. RAR offstage into a Bair (if this lands, your chances at killing your opponent are real high), you can even try a double jump Bair if you opponent stalls his recovery. But stay in range of your PKT2 so you can return to the stage safely. Who knows, you might also hit your opponent on the way back. #happens

Note: remember that if you hit your opponent with the PKT2, it will decrease your recovery range. Try not to his your opponent with the PKT ball or it will just cancel your attack and you’ll fall to your death.


3. You could try going for a Dair spike if you are “really feeling it”. I guess the most effective way to actually pull this off is to condition your opponent enough so you can simply jump into them (just like you would when trying to hit them with a run off Nair) in order to bait an air dodge and then double jump and spike them quickly. In my opinion this is the least effective edge guard, but who knows… child prodigies are born all the time. Be sure to call yourself a “Dair virtuoso” if you do get lots of spikes.

Note: some characters don’t have a hitbox on their recovery move, making it easier for you to Dair them, such as captain falcon or Yoshi (when the super armor wears off). Or they do have a hitbox but it’s not at the top, like Bowser and Donkey Kong, take advantage of this.


4. When your opponent is hanging from the ledge you can try a trump, into a double jump Bair (though it’s not confirmed on Ness compared to other characters). Now, I know what you’re thinking: why is trumping in the offstage side of edge guards? … well… I decided to put it on this side of the spectrum because: 1. It’s pretty hard to learn at first, and 2. Half of the time, while trumping, you’re technically offstage so: aha! “You lose general Kenobi”. Yet we will have to put this on hold for the moment because my trumping tutorial is further ahead in the Tips, Tricks & Jank section of the guide.


5. Run off stage and go for a stage spike. With the amount of hit stun and knockback that Ness’s Bair has, if your opponent doesn’t tech immediately, they’re dead. Just run off the stage and Bair your opponent into the side of the stage. The angle will pop them down to their doom. I’ll have a mini tutorial dedicated to this edge guard in the Tips, Tricks & Jank section since it’s my favorite edge guard :D. It’s also one of Ness’s strongest weapons, since not many characters have such a devastating Bair.

Note: You can also stage spike with Nair if you hit them towards the stage.


6. As your opponent is flying off stage, run and hang on the ledge, then simply wait for them to get close and intercept their returning trajectory by letting go (tap away from the ledge) and double jumping back into a Bair. This method is pretty good once your opponent uses their double jump, since you can usually just hit them or trade over and over until they can no longer return.


Eventually you’ll learn that some characters are more vulnerable at different points of their recovery. It really depends on who you are edge guarding. For example, Bowser has a pretty linear recovery with a predictable trajectory, and might be worth the risk of gimping offstage every time (lol). On the other hand Pikachu barely even needs his second jump to recover and hitting him out of a quick attack is almost impossible, so… there you have it. Think about it for a second, then act.


We are now finally back to the moment where YOU are the one trying to recover to the stage and some other dude is doing the edge guarding. Most of the time, due to how dangerous it is to use your second jump to grab the ledge, you’ll be recovering with PKT2. There are several different ways to recover with PKT2. But although I could try to explain all these options, I think it would be pointless, since most of them are present here in a fellow smash board guide: “Surviving Mortal Damage”, and honestly, I doubt anyone (myself included) could ever write such a detailed and technical guide on the matter. So why not learn from a specialist? Here is the link to that guide: http://smashboards.com/guides/surviving-mortal-damage.151/


Another way to recover with PKT without actually hitting yourself is by using it to cover your approach on the ledge, let’s call it “PKT Ledge” for now. This strategy works best on opponents who prefer to stand further from the ledge. Just position yourself above and a little away from the edge and use a PK thunder to hit your opponent forcing them to shield or take the hit. While in PK thunder-casting-mode you’ll stall in the air a little, so by the time the thunder hits your opponent you should be perfectly around ledge height and be able to snap it instantly. Ness for some reason can get pretty liberal with this distance since he snaps from further than it looks. You’d be surprised at his magnet-hands, he can grab the ledge even if he’s a little under it. Tip: Remember to actually hit your opponent or crash the thunder into the ground to cancel the “casting animation”, otherwise you’ll end up too low and die, it can take a while to get used to this recovery. Look up “FoW” or “Taranito” to understand how to correctly use it. Remember that the height you need from the ledge is directly related to how far away your opponent is from you.


Offensive Ledge Recoveries


Once you make it to the ledge, there are several options you can take. I’m going to assume you know the 4 basic get up options (jump, attack, roll and stand up). But something I’m not going to assume is that you know all these other offensive options that Ness can do. While hanging on the ledge, tap backwards to let go and try out these:

1. Double Jump into Uair - During an attack animation Ness won’t grab the ledge even if you are pushing against it, use this to your advantage throwing out an Uarir and slamming your head against your opponent near the ledge, then land as fast as you can, fast falling helps here.

2. Double Jump Fair – Let go of the ledge, then as you double jump, use a Fair to cover the entire ledge and into your opponent, if this succeeds you can sometimes follow up with other things as well, to take control of the stage and flip the situation around. When you get the hang of it, it WILL be tempting to recover like this all the time, but don’t… your opponent will adapt quickly … so don’t spam it.

3. Double Jump Air dodge into landing Uair – As you double jump and enter into your opponents attack range, do an air dodge and try to go through your opponent. Ness’s air dodge lasts long and his air mobility lets you go far past them. Because of how floaty Ness is, if you time this correctly you can throw out a Uair as you land to protect your back. The Uair hitbox starts from behind, so it’s a pretty good option, Uair also has low landing lag. This strategy is good against people that like to edge guard with smash attacks since you’ll just go past them and it’ll give you the time to land safely and GTFO.

Recap: We went through tons of onstage and offstage edge guards, PKT2 recoveries and offensive recoveries, let me quickly list them again so you can try them out and see what works best.


Onstage edge guards:

1. Intercept high recoveries with Nair or other aerials.
2. PK Thunder from a far.
3. Ground level PK Fire to intercept the ledge snap
4. Short hop PK Fire downwards to catch low recoveries
5. Turn around Dsmash (yo-yo) to intercept the ledge snap

Offstage edge guards:

1. Run offstage into Nair or Fair to catch low recoveries (right before they use their Up-B)
2. RAR Bair (good when they no longer have their second jump)
3. Dair Spike (be sure to mix it up nicely)
4. Trump into Bair (be super-fast to catch them off guard)
5. The Stage Spike
6. “Hanging” Bairs

High recoveries:

• How to: "PKT Ledge”

Offensive ledge recoveries:

1. Double jump, Uair
2. Double jump, Fair
3. Double jump, air dodge into falling Uair

Finally the long wait has ended, it’s time for the Tips, Tricks & Jank section! Here we’ll go over a bunch of Ness technology that I’ve learned in sketchy bars here and there. This part, unlike most of the guide so far, won’t be sugar-coated for beginners. You might have to learn some terms and get some experience with Ness first in order to understand some of the things I’m going to cover here. But then again, if you’re currently a beginner you might want to stay away from this section for now, since more than half of these things will probably get you killed if done incorrectly. There is no particular order to these, just pick one out when you’re bored and practice it to have more and more options in your arsenal.


1. Out of shield - Jump cancel smash attack.

First let’s go over how to do an “Out of shield - jump cancel smash attack”. This was one of the more complicated OoS options back in the Basic 123’s section, but it’s very useful. Before we start, here’s a quick not-so-fun-fact: When you let go of your shield you’ll get 7 frames of lag before you can do anything, but you’ll notice that jumping out of shield is faster since you can jump while still holding the shield button, losing no time in between actions. The thing is, every time a character inputs a jump they do a “jump squat” before they actually take off into the air, Ness’s jump squat lasts 5 frames. During these 5 frames you can input upwards on your joystick and press A to do an Usmash. If done correctly, the smash attack will cancel the jump animation and come out a couple of frames faster than by simply letting go of the shield and using an Usmash regularly (at best it will come out 5-6 frames faster) Now, you might think: “Nächi, wtf man, this only makes the move a couple frames quicker”, but hey, you’d be surprised at how much more effective it makes the move. It’s exactly this sort of “optimizing” that advanced players can do to enhance their gameplay.

Note: In the explanation and example we used an Usmash, but you can use other smash attacks with the same technique. I personally use Dsmash more often than Usmash since I like the knockback trajectory more and it kills close to the ledge.


2. Stage Spiking.

Everyone’s favorite edge guard... Am I right? Fact: One of the most common ways to recover in smash 4 is to stay low and go for the ledge, stage spiking is used to nullify this option and punish your opponent pretty hard. In smash 4 you can no longer ledge-hog the ledge from your opponent, so stage spiking has grown in popularity. I mentioned it in the Offstage Life section but now we’ll go into detail. To stage spike, just run offstage and as you’re in the air, immediately throwing out a Bair. Notice how the hitbox covers the whole triangular space of the edge? ...good. At first the timing is hard, I recommend practicing stage spiking on characters who like to recover low and have no hitbox on their recovery (like Pit or Captain Falcon), here’s a useful tip: “look at the second jump, feel the Up-B” (repeat this mantra to yourself). Try to get in your opponent’s shoes and feel their struggle as they try to grab the ledge, it’ll help you predict when they are going to use their recovery, since timing is everything. Opponents will tend to drag out their recovery and use their up-B at the last second to try to make you miss your stage spike. But if done correctly you’ll intercept their recovery before they grab the ledge, smashing them into the stage and then downwards to their death (the angle depends on the stage shape). A second method is to run offstage and as you double jump back, throw out the Bair while you rise, covering more or less the same area. This will let you stage spike at lower areas of the stage and mix up the timings once your opponent start predicting a stage spike.

Note: The shape of the stage edge is very important for this to work, I find it easier to pull off in battlefield since the ledge is sharp and the reverse pyramid lets you spike at many depths. Some omega stages have a flat wall that don’t let you stage spike L. #NoFun


3. Ledge Trumping.

By running off and holding back the second you’re offstage, Ness will turn around and grab the ledge. Ness actually has one of the easiest trumps timings in the game, the real challenge is to do it quickly since he’s slow. Start by trying a joystick roll, first in front, then downward and into the stage to fast-fall-ledge-snap. But first, why would you ever want to do this? Well, because if an opponent is already hanging from the ledge, then you’ll steal it from them, sending them flying away at a very favorable angle. You can then, quickly do one of two options:

• Let go, double jump, and hit them with a Bair. This will grant you some really quick stocks, as early as 70%. But Ness’s Bair doesn’t come out as fast as other Bairs in the game, and he’s pretty floaty… so don’t assume that trump into Bair is confirmed in any way. Opponents will still have a couple of frames to react if they are quick enough. Still, it’s a good tool if you want to mix it up.

• The second option is to get back on stage quickly and use the first hit of your Dsmash (the backwards yo-yo reel in) to hit your opponent if they are attempting to grab the ledge once more. Lets remember that when you grab the ledge a second time you wont have invincibility frames. So your opponent will eat the yo-yo and be sent flying off, possibly even to their death.

I'd like to quickly mention that because Ness is so slow after sending your opponent flying, many times you won’t be able to run fast enough for an edge guard. So if your opponent is already hanging there thinking about life in their ledge invincibility you can try to trump them… Not so invincible now!


4. Double Jump PK Fire Cancel.

Remember we mentioned how important it was to be able to successfully land PK Fires due to how much damage they can guarantee? Well, now we can add a quick trick in order to have an extra mix-up: Double-Jump PK FIRE (DJ PKF). Turns out that your double jump animation can be interrupted by throwing out a PK Fire (at any point), you can even cancel the DJ at the very beginning of the animation. So why would this be important? Well, here are two uses:

· By now you probably tried shooting a PK Fire in the air in an attempt to find a “safer” way to use the move. Now let’s be honest, you probably failed, it’s pretty useless using PKF in the air since the diagonal trajectory is super predictable and it leaves you veyr vulnerable. By using a DJ PKF… you’ll be just as vulnerable… except you’ll be able to mess around with your opponent’s mind, since at any point during your jumps you’ll be able to turn a simple double jump into a death fire/combo experience. Its main use it to use it as a mix up and condition your opponent by creating fear from… you jumping (lol).

· The second advantage is that since you can cancel your jump into the PK Fire, you can end up real close to your opponent after it hits. Way closer than doing it normally and close enough to be just in range of… [Insert name] (The bat)! Confirming a DJ PKF into a bat at mid-high percentages is an easy way to score a kill since the combination of both attacks adds up to 40% damage and the bat has tremendous knockback. Just don’t spam that ****, use it only once or twice during a match, since missing means getting punished.


5. Offstage PK Fire follow ups.

Remember that PK Fire can be used to intercept an opponent attempting to grab the ledge? (onstage edge guard #3 & #4) Well, once they are burning there and falling slowly… go for the kill! Free damage is free damage kid! Get over there and finish off that fool! Here are some quick options:

· Run off into an aerial (Nair/Fair recommended). The classic, it’s an easy way to get some extra damage and maybe even the kill.

· If there was ever a time to go for a Dair spike, now is the time. #JustDoIt

· If your opponent is close enough to the stage, jump past them and stage spike them with Bair.

· Depending on where your opponent is burning, try short hopping a PK Fire downwards to hit your opponent with another one and hopefully drag them further down to their death (works best on fast fallers).

· *Like the previous one, use another PK Fire, then jump past them and PKT2 yourself back to the stage while hitting them on the way back (…No joke). Then save the replay and start a SSB4 Ness disrespect YouTube channel.

Note: You get the point, milk the opportunity as much as you can, the PKF into PKT2 might be a little too crazy, but that’s why there is a (*) on it (lol). #HaveFunWithTheGame


6. PSI Magnet Tricks.

We are now going to go over two tricks with the PSI Magnet. A couple of patches ago it was buffed and now there are some interesting things you can do with it. Let’s start with the Magnet Air Stall (MAS). During the rising animation of any jump (much like in the combo section) you can cancel the animation by using the PSI magnet quickly, after the PSI magnet animation ends, it will actually keep you locked in the air for a second... weird. If you’ve ever seen Diddy Kong do a “side-B reverse pop gun cancel” you’ll understand the uses of this technique, it pretty much mixes up your air momentum and lets you be sneaky, the only bad thing is that it doesn’t shift your momentum anywhere, it only locks you in place, but hey, “a gig is a gig”.

· An easy way to actually use this and not look like an idiot is to bait opponents during the neutral. Just do a short hop and during the rising animation; use a MAS. Your opponent will be like: “wtf kid” and if they run up for a grab or something, then you can simply throw out a falling Uair to slam that huge head into them (remember: after the Uair, follow up with jabs).

· Another use is during a recovery, good players will ALWAYS follow Ness’s double jump trajectory in order to score an easy gimp. They’ll set up their attack at the end of the double jump animation. But now you can cancel the double jump animation by using a MAS and quickly use PKT2 to recover, throwing off your opponents timing and recover safely. Ah-ha! #Trickster

Note: The PSI Magnet has an interesting feature that not everyone knows about, but Ness mains should know. When absorbing an energy projectile you can immediately act out of the PSI Magnet animation, try it out. You can spot dodge to avoid a classic approach: projectile into grab (cough, cough… Luigi/Pikachu), you can also jump, grab, jab, all sorts of stuff. An easy way to practice is by having a CPU Mario throw fireballs at you and as you absorb the fireball do a short hop Nair or Jab. With this you can bait people into quick punishes.


7. PK Thunder Tricks.

Everyone loves PK Thunder, am I right? Easiest 8% damage of my life son! Let’s talk about some effective trajectories and tactics to gimp, juggle, and successfully land a PKT2, in that order. I haven’t seen anyone talk about PKT in depth so we might as well have “the chat” :D.

Gimping:

When gimping opponents offstage (compared to onstage situations) you are going to have a very powerfully ally to work with: Gravity. Your opponent is always going to avoid falling to their death, so their trajectory is most likely going to be downwards-horizontal towards the stage… #predictable. Use this knowledge to your advantage to create diagonal walls with the tail of your PKT to cover this predictable trajectory and turning the head outwards (making a sort of a tilted “U” shape) to create a sort of hook in order to hit your opponent with the head of the attack if they double jump to avoid the wall (created by the electric tail). They could maybe completely avoid everything by air dodging through, but that would make them go lower and they’ll usually want to avoid this.

Your main goal with your offstage PKT pressure is not necessarily to hit them but to force them to use their second jump or air dodge in harmful ways. If done correctly it will force them in a situation where they are left only with their up-B to recover to the ledge and you can capitalize by using your list of edge guards and choose the most effective one based on the situation. Remember that edge guarding is all about limiting your opponent’s recovering “resources”.

A common effective strategy is aiming your PK thunder at your opponent and then right before you hit, do circles to try to hit them with the tail, depending on your opponents character and how far they are, it might really harm them. For example, Pit and Lucario probably could care less if they get hit with the tail, but if you hit Diddy Kong out of his rockets, trust me, he’ll mind.

Finally, if you have the distance and the time, you can pressure with the PKT to force your opponent to go low under the stage. Then hit them from the opposite side of the stage with the head of the attack. Depending on their percentage, they could even get stage spiked against the side of the stage and die, probably the easiest stage spike ever.

Juggling:

To juggle an opponent on stage, similar rules apply. The most important thing here is to force them to use the second jump foolishly or air dodge into the ground, when they double jump try to zap them in the middle of the animation. Without a second jump, "most" characters will only have their falling speed, direction and air dodge to try to avoid your PK thunders (some characters like fox have other resources, and it might be a waste of time trying to juggle them with PKT). The main difference between juggling and gimping is that to juggle you are going to want to hit with the head instead of the tail, since it sends opponents high up with a surprising amount of hit stun, enough for you to cast another PKT and keep juggling them over and over, as long as you hit. A smart opponent will try to crash their character against the tail of the PKT if they are forced to take some damage. So you have to be tricky, circles usually do the trick, as well as covering both sides underneath your opponent by making a sort of “V” shape beneath them with the PK Thunder. The “V” shape will cover one side with the tail while you follow the character with the head.

Note: juggling works best at high percentages where knockback and hit stun are increased, you can even get a kill of the top if your opponent tries to evade the attack by jumping higher and you catch them.

PKT2:

You’ve probably already witnessed the devastating kill power of Ness’s PKT2, it can kill from the stage as early as 30%, and nothing tastes better than taking a stock at mid percent and giving yourself a brutal lead during a match. I’m going to try to explain some trajectories and tactics to improve your odds at landing a PKT2.

Landing a PKT2 is easier when your opponent air dodges into the ground next to you and gets stuck in some heavy landing lag. But how do you force this to happen? You’ll notice in the Combos section that one of the unconfirmed (*) combos is catching your opponents double jump with Fair into using a PKT next to them, zapping them with the initial attack and circling the PKT into yourself depending on where they fall into a PKT2 hit. The real trick to land it is knowing how sharp you can turn your PKT to make “8” and “0” shaped trajectories.

Start by standing in the middle of the stage and throw a PKT, then wait half a second, take a right circle turn to make a circle and then go left to make a cross, now take a left circle turn to hit yourself… done, this is a standard “8” trajectory. Now, what you want to ideally do is have your opponent spot dodge the first circle and land with lag during the second circle in time for you to blast them with the beginning of the PKT2 (The initial frames of the animation do the most damage and knockback).

It also works if your opponent is trying to recovery high and air dodges past you to land behind. That’s when the “0” shaped trajectory comes in hand, it really is like a number zero and not a perfect circle because the trajectory looks a bit skinny and tall. The trick here is to use a PTK, to get your opponent to air dodge past the PTK and then turn it into yourself to hit them on the other side.

You can really create some frame traps with PTK into PTK2, especially on fast fallers that fall to the ground faster while air dodging, making them easier prey. One final tip is to keep the PKT


8. Full Hop PK Fire -> Another aerial?

You might have figured this out already if your really into frame data or if you have quick hands, but it turns out that during a full hop Ness can actually cast a PK Fire and still have time to throw out another aerial to cover himself, adding another option to our plethora of PK Fire options.

The easiest way to understand this is by trying it out from the jumping ledge option. Simply grab the ledge of the stage, press "jump" and then immediately us a PK Fire, if you did it fast enough then you'll notice the animation ends in time for you to use a double jump and an aerial afterwards to get you to safety. The thing is you can actually do the same thing during a full hop, only the timing is pretty strict, in fact its easier to map one of your triggers to jump to make this easier, but its possible to do it with the regular control setup, only you have to be lightning fast. I personally use my "Y button" for specials, so it makes this process a little easier.

Overall its an interesting and useful PK Fire use because if you miss or they shield the bolt then you can still use an aerial to cover yourself or add more pressure. You are going to want to practice it a little before trying it out fo-real.


9. Jab Locks & Setups.

This is a pretty cool mechanic that will make you a total ninja, but I must admit that its pretty advanced for someone who might be starting out. Before we start I really recommend that you watch this video: "Jab Lock Tutorial", its a very detailed explanation of how jab locking works in smash 4 and is most definitely worth seeing to understand how to do all this perfectly.

The most important things you want to know is that after an opponent slams to the ground in a "tumble" animation and that green circle thingy appears, you have 25 frames to use one of three moves to lock your opponent into the ground forcing a regular getup on the spot. Technically you can use Jab, Ftilt and Dair, but realistically you'll be using you jab almost exclusively for this since Ftilt sends opponents flying away and Dair takes 20 frames for the hitbox to come out so ... yeah.

Note: Ness can Jab Lock opponents 3 times :D

So I added here a couple of setups that you can do with Ness to force that tumble so your opponents slams into the ground. Hopefully they wont tech and hence you'll be able to jab lock them into some crazy ****. By the way, the percentage listed are the ones that work on Mario, so based on that they will differ drastically depending on your opponents characteristics. Still its a good place to start, naturally for Bowser for example you are going to have to slide the range +15 or something like that. Here are the options:

• Nair -> Jab Lock (35-55%)

This option is probably the best and is my go to for trying to jab lock an opponents, Nair comes out quick and you can even use it out of shield, simply follow your opponent in the air after the hit and if they miss their tech, jab lock them and let the pain start.

• Bair -> Jab Lock (24-44%)

Bair is a little trickier since it doesn't come out as quick, its a little harder to use as an out of shield option, so try using a RAR instead. Also you might have trouble hitting really short characters with it. The good part is that you can start the pain train 10% earlier since Bair will set any fool into tumble with no problem... its a beast move. I recommend using another Bair after the first one while you follow your opponent in the air and try to use the auto-cancel window (frames 1-9) to turn around and quickly jab them to start the lock.

• Dair -> Jab Lock (57-70%)

Dair is hard to simply use in the neutral. but its possible, a well landed PK fire at mid/high percentages is a good opportunity to try and score a Dair and try to lock from there. Once a Dair lands your opponents will most likely be in so much psychological horror that they'll miss the tech fo-sho.

• Fair -> Jab Lock (29-50%)

Remember that the last hit of Fair has that weird additional knock back for some reason? Well you can use this to your advantage and try hitting them with it as you are coming down with a Fair to set thim into the tumble animation and follow them to lock them. Fair is a little harder to use for this but it can be a setup that even better players wont see coming.

Note: Be sure to hit with the last hit, it comes out on frame 20 of the animation and is essential, if you fast fall the Fair for example, and the last hit no longer comes out then you wont be able to send your opponent into the tumble animation and they wont slam into the ground.

• Uair -> Nair -> Jab Lock (22-32%)

By now you are probably aware that a fast fall Uair confirms into a short hop Nair, and since Nair sets people up for a Jab Lock... then its perfect, working at really low percents, sadly it also stops working real soon since the combined attacks already do 24% damage and quickly sends your opponents well into the mid percentages, where setups aren't as confirmed.

• PK Thunder -> Jab/Dair Lock (0-50%)

Fun fact, PK Thunder always sends opponents into the tumble animation (weird huh?), the only thing is, it also sends them at an 110° angle, giving them lots of time to react. But if they ever forget to react be sure to start Jab locking them as early as 0%!!! It does imply that you used a PK Thunder in neutral which is kinda taboo, but I personally see a lot of potential here since you can act really quickly out of confirming a PKT hit, quick enough to go for some jab locks at 8%, lol...

SO, now that all those setups have been covered we can get to the cool part; choosing a punish for when our opponent has to get up on the spot. The ideal move is clearly...[Insert Name] (The Bat). But depending on their percentage there are several other options. I personally like to go for a well timed PK Fire into the bat, or if they are around 50-70%, depending on their weight I might go for a well timed spike that might lead me into a second jab locking opportunity. Otherwise going for a grab is a good idea since you get to combo nicely, my recommendation here is to go for a pivot grab after running past them, so that if anything goes wrong you are at least behind your opponent with their back towards you. I'd say this leaves them a little more vulnerable than if they were facing you. Either way be sure to capitalize heavily since you wont get many opportunities to jab-lock an opponent.


10. Footstool Setups

So many of you have probably heard of footstools and think they are something that happens offstage every now and then and can grant you a free kill. But I think footstools are incredibly underused by pretty much everyone in smash and should be considered for resetting and extending combos. First of all, lets watch this video that explain some general characteristics of footstools: "A Few Notes on Footstools".

These are three attacks that can confirm into am aerial footstool depending on the percentage and the character you are dealing with, I highly recommend practicing these on DK or Dedede since their hit-boxes are huge, making footstooling them in the air easier.

• (Fast Fall) Uair -> Jump -> Footstool
• Utilt -> Jump -> Footstool
• Dthrow -> Jump -> Footstool

Once you have your opponent nicely in the air under hit-stun then try to jump into them with your first jump and once you are perfectly over them jump again and the result will be that instead of double jump you will proceed to foostooling them.

Note: You can technically also footstool people during your double jump animation by pressing jump during the animation while overlapping with an opponent. But for these setups hit-stun is limited and you most likely will find more success going for a footstool right after your first jump.

Here are two general ideas or mindsets that you should have when footstooling opponents in the air.

1. At low percentages try to semi reset the situation by landing a fast falling Uair on your opponent as they get up from the footstool, since Uair pretty much combos into everything, including grabs.

2. At mid percentages try to use Ness's floaty-ness (lol) to try to stall in the air a little after your successfully footstooled your opponent and then come down with a Dair as they get up. This option is crazy ifficult but could lead into another Jab lock and a tremendous amount of damage, not to mention the moral destruction it would have on a human opponent.


Recap: As always, the list of things we went over in this section:

1. Out of shield - jump cancel smash attack
2. Stage Spiking
3. Trump into Bair
4. Double Jump PK Fire
5. Offstage PK Fire Follow-ups
6. Magnet Air Stall (MAS)
   • To bait
   • To recover with
7. PKT trajectories and tactics
   • Gimping
   • Jugling
   • PKT2
8. Full Hop PKF -> Aerial
9. Jab locking & Setups
10. Footstool Setups

[Pending]

[Due to the amount of research and examples im going to require for this chapter its still not ready. The match-ups are what take up my time since I have to research all of them individually and many are widely unknown, but in the mean time, why wait if you could already be reading whats ready? I promise ill finish this part ASAP. Good Luck trying out everything learned so far! :D]

Spoiler: vs (Best match up ever... jk jk)