Considering ZSS as a Secondary

[Sabre]

Hi everyone, so I'm an ivy main, but I've been recently looking for a secondary to complement my main. I was messing around with ZSS for the first time tonight and really liked her interesting neutral and good combos, but I'm not sure if she really provides much to my skillset that ivy doesn't already cover, since looking at the matchup charts she doesn't really cover any of ivy's bad matchups. It seems like she has a slightly better recovery than ivy(although it's my understanding that tethers are still very bad recoveries in 3.6 in general), and trades a worse neutral for great mobility and solid combos.
I feel as though my main weakness with ivysaur is that as soon as my opponent begins to dictate the pace of the match and get in my face, I lose a lot of my options. Do you think that ZSS would be worth looking into as a secondary or double main?

 

[Foo]

I think zss is a pretty bad choice for a secondary tbh. She takes a LOT of work to unlock her potential and plays quite differently from most characters. She also mostly beats up on lower tier characters and loses to higher tier characters (namely, spacies and sheik).

I think ZSS is a good character to main in 3.6 if you put a lot of work in and really get her down, but you'd do pretty much all the same things with a character like roy much more easily as a secondary.

 

[ph00tbag]

If you feel that you struggle when your opponent dictates the pace of the match, then ZSS is not for you. She suffers a lot when her movement is restricted and has very few solid options for dealing with pressure.

 

[Sabre]

Okay, thank you guys for your advice! I think I'll keep looking then, since it's probably a bad idea to put so much work into a character that has pretty much the same weaknesses as my main.

 

[Foo]

Okay, thank you guys for your advice! I think I'll keep looking then, since it's probably a bad idea to put so much work into a character that has pretty much the same weaknesses as my main.

If you are ever considering switching mains, though, ZSS is a pretty solid choice right now. Most of her bad matchups from last patch got nerfed a bit and her upthrow buff is a HUGE boon. (dthrow too, but to a lesser extent.) If not, what matchups are you struggling with? I can probably pick out some other decent secondary choices for you.

 

[Sabre]

I don't think I'd ever switch mains, since I really love ivysaur, but it feels as though her recovery really weakens her as a character, and she doesn't deal well with pressure. I've been struggling a lot with falco, since once he gets in then I've found that ivy doesn't really have many options to get him off. Other than that, I've been struggling with marth/sheik as well, both of which are awful matchups for ivy.

 

[Foo]

I don't think I'd ever switch mains, since I really love ivysaur, but it feels as though her recovery really weakens her as a character, and she doesn't deal well with pressure. I've been struggling a lot with falco, since once he gets in then I've found that ivy doesn't really have many options to get him off. Other than that, I've been struggling with marth/sheik as well, both of which are awful matchups for ivy.

I think roy is a good choice. He plays in a pretty similar manner to zss (melee spacing and dash dancing with a sick combo game). You'll probably like him. Other choices would be marth and maybe rob.

 

[Sabre]

Yeah, I play marth in melee, so I've been thinking about just playing him against marth/sheik since I really like him in PM. I haven't looked into rob, but I'll definitely consider it, and I'd play roy but my biggest problem is that he's similar enough to marth to screw me up when I play him since I'm so used to melee marth.

 

[ForgottenLabRat]

If you are just looking for someone new to play, basically anyone will do, just don't pick a character that requires countless hours like Lucario or Lucas. If you are looking to cover your bad matchups, I wouldn't recommend Roy because Marth does out range Roy so while it isn't as bad as the Ivy v Marth MU, it isn't great. I am not sure which characters have good matchups against swordies, I feel they are generally very well rounded. Rob might be a good idea, he has been consistently high in tournaments so he can clearly handle swordies and decently high on PM's shallow tier list. The only problem I see with Rob, is that you will have to spend a lot of time learning what he can as he is a very unique. This will however give you that unknown factor because most people have no idea how to fight a Rob.

You can also fight fire with fire. It is never bad to know how to use Marth in PM. It might be a little weird switching from melee Marth to PM, but depending on your adaptive skills it shouldn't affect your game in either version. This is worth a try, but if you start to mess up the timings in either way and you start doing worse, I would recommend dropping Marth in PM. You could also go with Shiek. You play melee, so I'm guessing your fundamentals are at least decent, which is very much what Shiek is about. If you don't have great fundamentals, this would be a great character to learn them with which is a plus. I think that Shiek has a good matchup against Marth, but I don't see it often in PM. I don't think Shiek has similar matchups to Ivy as far as I know.

Not to say you can't do both or course. Play a character you enjoy, but also covers Ivy's weaknesses. Just mess around with a lot of characters and see what clicks, but don't play a character that feels like a ton of Ivy skills transfer over as they might have similar weaknesses. It will also give you more perspective and see what other characters are capable of giving you more knowledge on how to fight them.

 

[G13_Flux]

i dont think that ZSS would cover enough of ivys bad MUs as well. i dont know ivys MU spread too well, but i cant see her doing great agains the spacies or falcon, which is generally one of ZSSs weakpoints. i personally do think that roy would be a choice to compliment ivy, mainly beause he does well enough against the space animals, and ivy can assist with some of his bad MUs (DK, DDD, and id probably say zard too).

 

[Sabre]

Yeah, ivy doesn't do so great against the faster characters like spacies or falcon either. I was playing against a really good falco today and would say that that's the matchup that I'm really struggling with the most, since it just feels like ivy really lacks good options to deal with his pressure. I was thinking of maybe picking up kirby, who goes even with sheik, beats marth and has a really good matchup vs falco. What do you guys think?

 

[ForgottenLabRat]

I don't know Kirby MUs at all, so it might be fine. I'd look into a player called Tetra, she plays Kirby at a super high level if you want to find some of her vids in tournaments.