This looked nicer in word, but here's a giant wall-of-text on Ike
There seems to be a myth that Ike is some kind of power house. Honestly though, if you go to
Kirk's Ike Data Compilation thread and look at not only his frame data, but also the knock back and damage on his attacks and compare that with Snake’s frame/knock back data (
here and
here), Ganon’s data (
here), or Donkey Kong’s data (
here), you’ll see that Ike wasn’t given the tools to actually be able to compete with the other heavy hitters (much less the rest of the cast). The other heavy hitter characters have a far better damage/knockback:speed ratio for most of their attacks. Snake even has a better damage/knockback:speed:range ratio on his utilt and ftilt. Ike still cannot compete with Snake’s utilt and ftilt even after the nerfs.
Now let’s face it, Ike’s jab is probably the only thing that keeps him from joining the triforce tier. In fact, it’s often called the best jab in the game. I’d argue that it isn’t even in the top 5 in vBrawl. Now with the discovery that Falcon can combo into a gentleman from another gentleman, Mario’s amazing increased kill power, Zamus’s linking jab, and Shiek’s new literal jab canceling feature, I have to wonder if Ike’s jab is even in the top 10 anymore.
The only other things Ike has going for him are relatively good kill power and range. I say relative because when compared to someone like Peach, Ike looks like a power house, but characters like Snake, G&W, and BBrawl Link make Ike look, well, average. Ike, however, easily outranges the vast majority of the cast. However, this means nothing if it takes him three times as long or long to get an attack out (Ike’s 18 frame fair vs. Marth’s 4 frame fair) or if his opponent is so much more mobile than him that they are able to weave in-and-out before Ike’s hitbox comes out (read: Yoshi, DK, Jiggypuff, etc.).
A well known fact is that Ike has incredibly difficult match ups with anyone who has a decent projectile. One of the number one offenders would be Falco. Falco’s lasers are fast, pretty consistent damage, and make you flinch, a recipe for disaster for Ike. Basically any character with two of those three characteristics gives Ike and incredibly tough time. Another example would be Toon Link. His zair has almost as much range as Ike’s sword, but he can also spam boomerangs, arrows, and bombs to which Ike has very few options. I believe that Ike’s aerials have some kind of transcendent priority because his nair does not clash with TLink’s projectiles like Marth’s fair or nair does. So while Marth can jump in on TLink waving his sword around, Ike is forced into a ground approach (or in BBrawl an aerial QD approach which is almost as bad as jumping in directly above). This would be fine if Ike had a quick walking speed like other characters (read: Peach, Marth, Link), he doesn’t and that makes walking and jabbing a very slow approach (punishable with a bomb). This leaves running and perfect shielding projectiles until you reach your opponent, eating the projectile, or SHADs.
Ike’s grab is one of his main punishing tools. Not because his throws are particularly good, but because they’re the only reasonable way for Ike to punish most of the cast. In fact, Ike’s throws are pretty terrible. His forward and back throws are basically the same and set up only for another grab at low percentage (only if your opponent doesn’t have a brain) or dash attack at higher damage (perfect shieldable if you just hold shield, don’t DI up and aren’t too floaty). His dthrow can set up for juggles, but Ike can’t juggle an opponent with a brain. Finally, uthrow has too little knock back to set up for a juggle and too much knock back to chain grab or even set up for another grab. It’s like dthrow, but even crappier. Additionally, most pokes have advantages of only -10 or so frames. This leaves Ike with literally two options to punish, one of which probably leads to a reset and definitely set up for nothing useful (grab) and the other which is a guaranteed 9 damage fresh (jab which someone like Marth can upb out of with proper DI). Adding to this, the vast majority of Ike’s move set comes out after 15 frames. These are almost all blockable on reaction.
Ok, so now we’ve established the following (tl;dr):
1). Ike’s jab is above average, not amazing
2). Ike’s power is simply outclassed by other hard hitting characters
3). Ike’s piss poor mobility makes his range not as great as it sounds
4). Ike has very linear approach options
5). Ike’s throws set up for almost nothing
6). Ike’s slow start up makes punishing a lot harder than it should be
7). Ike has no, that is 0, safe pokes (I’d go so far as to say moves in general…)
8). Ike has no juggle potential
9). Ike’s non-jab and bair attacks are blockable on reaction
10). Ike is one of the only characters unable to do two aerials in one jump
11). Ike has very few, if any, set ups into his incredibly slow kill moves
There are a lot of ways to go about fixing this character, but I think that the best way to do it is to focus on improving his ground game as it would be one of the best ways to differentiate him from Marth who has a relatively similar move set.
The following are my proposed changes:
Jab 1
Hit on: 3-4 2
Earliest Jab 2: 11 8
Earliest Jab Loop: 15 12
IASA: 17 13
Jab 2
Hit on: 3-4 2
Earliest Jab 3: 7 5
Earliest Jab Loop: 13 10
IASA: 20 12
Jab 3
Hit on: 10-14 7
IASA: 38 25 or 30
Dash Attack
Hit on: 18-19 10-11 or 12-13
IASA: 51 25 or 30
Ftilt
Hit on: 17-19 9-11
IASA: 56 33
Damage: varies 14
BKB: 38 30 or 35
Utilt
Hit on: 13-29 8-18
IASA: 50 30
Damage: varies 12
Trajectory: varies 92
Dtilt
Hit on: 16-18 8-10
IASA: 55 30 or 35
Keeps “sweet spot” at the hilt
Otherwise:
Trajectory: 40 100
KBG: 100 30
BKB: 55 30
Tripping rate: 35 40 or 60
Fsmash
BKB: varies 60
KBG: 100 110 or 120
Usmash
IASA: 67 56
KBG: 85 95 or 90
Dsmash
Hit on: 13-16, 32-4 13-16, 27-39
IASA: 70 50
Trajectory: varies BBrawl trajectory
Nair
Hit on: 15-32 5-20
IASA (Air): 76 25 or 30
IASA (Landing): 13 7
Damage: 9 11 (Knock back compensation)
No transcendent priority
Fair
Hit on: 18-21 10-13 or 13-16
IASA (Air): 60 52 or 55
IASA (Landing): 22 Between 17 and 22
Damage: 13 15
Bair
Hit on: 7-9 4-5
IASA (Air): 55 20
IASA (Landing): 22 10
Or have turn-around auto-cancel frames while Ike is backwards in the air
Fthrow(/Bthrow)
Trajectory: 28 30 or 32
BKB: 50 70
KBG: 50 20
Uthrow
Trajectory: 90 60 or 75
BKB: 70 60
KBG: 72 20
Aether
Super armor from initializing the attack until the either the end of the super armor frames in vBrawl or until he grabs his sword
First hit has set knock back into the spinning sword
Cancelable once he grabs his sword, but puts him into free fall
I do not believe Ike needs all of these changes to be viable. If he did have all of them, however, he would easily be one of the top characters in the cast. Obviously, these are some pretty extreme changes, but honestly, Ike will never be a serious contender in the (semi-)competitive scene without some extreme changes. If you actually think Ike is competitive material as is, then you are sorely mistaken.
