Edge Guarding with Ike

[KariteSama]

I'm not very good at edge guarding with Ike. I love going off stage with him but I have trouble covering multiple options. What are some good strategies for the sake of coverage?

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

Walk-off fair

/thread

 

[Y-L]

I'm not very good at edge guarding with Ike. I love going off stage with him but I have trouble covering multiple options. What are some good strategies for the sake of coverage?

Fsmash and fair are my primary methods of edgeguarding. With fair you can do walk off fair fullhop fair and shorthop fair and its coverage is huge. Fsmash is good when they aren't going to sweetspot (i.e spacies/fire emblem chars) counter can also be good when you don't have time to throw out a fsmash. Dtilt sometimes is good cause it can meteor. Walk off dair works pretty well on chars with longer tethers/chars recovering below stage. Reversed usmash also covers get up attack/roll option on ledge. Hope this helped.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

Do not get into the habit of using FSmash often. It is a great option to cover a good range of recovery heights and punish missed sweetspots, but is best reserved for predictable recoveries and always needs good timing.

 

[Y-L]

Agreed. Fair is usually the best choice.

 

[lordhelmet]

Nair can be used. It's a lot faster than fair. If they DI up, you get a fair setup. DI away and they are in a pretty bad spot.

I usually hang on the ledge and punish their recoveries with bair.

 

[Moy]

Is walk off Dair a consistent way to edgeguard tether characters? Seems pretty risky if you mistime it or they recover high. For the most part, I just grab ledge, predict at what point they're going to tether and Bair them.

 

[Y-L]

Is walk off Dair a consistent way to edgeguard tether characters? Seems pretty risky if you mistime it or they recover high. For the most part, I just grab ledge, predict at what point they're going to tether and Bair them.

it's not very consistent but it works better on samus/zss/ivy. I tend to just wait on ledge and ledgehop fair when they jump off of their tether

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

Tether characters are actually pretty susceptible to walk-off fair if you time it right. You gotta realize around when they'll tether and from where - but thankfully, some characters like Lucas are nice enough to airdodge first so you know where to put your fair/dair, and which one to use. How nice of them.

 

[Moy]

Tether characters are actually pretty susceptible to walk-off fair if you time it right. You gotta realize around when they'll tether and from where - but thankfully, some characters like Lucas are nice enough to airdodge first so you know where to put your fair/dair, and which one to use. How nice of them.

This might be a pretty scrubby question, but when exactly are tethers vulnerable? I probably played Brawl for a month then dropped it, so I never really got down the timing.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

Well, tethers are pretty different in P:M anyway.

Different blokes have different reel-in times, but characters essentially stay the position where the latch on for a moment, before reeling in (or may choose to swing down if they don't reel). Ivy has a real fast reel in time, as does Gohan Luke, but those with Zair tethers telegraph their position to an extent when they elect to airdodge before their tether. (And ZSS and Ivy can't do this since their tethers are not zairs). Ivy has the overall fastest reelspeed of tether users I think, but her horizontal tether rage is actually pretty short, deceptively so. She is quite susceptible to not reaching the stage if you even Nair her far enough away. Walk-off fair is actually fairly consistent on her provided you learn the spacing and timing right since besides her Up-B she has no mix-ups when hit out far (which you can do, as Ike). After playing her a bit recently I've honestly begun to think her recovery is pretty weak when facing someone who both knows how to edge-guard her and has the proper set of aerials to do, lol. She really hates Ike, and Marth Fair -> B-Reversed Dolphin slash is death as well.

Lucas is trickier due to his airdodge being able to put him in position and out of an aerial's range, as well as him having mix-ups like tether -> de-tether -> magnet, or actually using his Up-B. You need a read in addition to your timing/spacing but it's a 50/50 between walk-off dair and fair to whack him (and usually dair only forces him to Up-B since you are likelier to get the flub than the meteor. Even so if you're on a walled stage you can use walljumps instead of Aether to return to stage quick enough for a punish.) Well-timed walk-off fairs cover several of Link's many options (though not all, but it is *Link's* recovery after all) and Zamus is in a similar boat to Ivy: no mix-ups to speak of once she's whacked out of Down-B range and has to tether. Samus is absurdly tricky to edgeguad and we lose that MU hard anyway so try to land vertical kills instead of bothering with edgeguards, rofl. Or better yet, pick a different character for Samus.

 

[Moy]

So if I'm reading this right, you want to hit Up-B tethers a little before or right after they latch on, and for Zair tethers you want to wait until right after they airdodge to punish?

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

In essence. It's a little tricky and you risk having the tables switched around on you, but tether characters have very restricted movement and options, plus no hitbox on their recoveries once they have to commit to tethering. Reading that and using the appropriate aerial spells death. Ledgedrop bairs can be less risky depending, but putting a giant fair hitbox out at the right time both requires less finesse and honestly has a lower margin of error, and so I'd argue involve less risk.

 

[TylerX5]

Do not get into the habit of using FSmash often. It is a great option to cover a good range of recovery heights and punish missed sweetspots, but is best reserved for predictable recoveries and always needs good timing.

To add to this the best time to use a Fsmash in my experience is as a punish for air dodging, in most cases you can just react to it if you're reactions are half-decent

 

[Crezyte]

Go deep or go home. If its a tether character, ledge drop n-air.

 

[Commander]

Go deep or go home. If its a tether character, ledge drop dair.

You don't even know what it means to go deep.

 

[Y-L]

Offstage fair->QDWJ fair, double jump fair, or offstage neutral b is how you go deep

 

[RomanCenturionX]

My personal favorites have been walk-off fair, f-tilt, fsmash (usually dependent on a read), bair, WJ fair, and dair for those who are recovering low or tethers. I've been trying to work dair in more to my game after seeing its utility dealing with my friend's Lucas.

 

[TylerX5]

I'll share Probably the easiest technique that's upped my edge guarding a bit when I know it's best not to go off stage, and to just let them grab the ledge. When I'm on a stage with a platform that's near the ledge (battlefield, Dream land, YS) I'll jump on on it, wait for an attempt to recovery back onto the stage, and drop down with a nair (a trick to easily L-cancel this is to drop and just mash the Z button, careful to stop after the cancel though or you'll shield) . If you time it right It covers a lot of their options and unless they roll (which in some cases with proper spacing you can cover that too) they are going to be hit in most cases. Nairing from a standing position is solid too but not nearly as quick since you have to wait for the jump squat to end before nairing (adds about 5 frames to the set up (jumpsquat is 5 frames + Nair which takes 7 frames to come out) and since you can't use the starting hitbox to hit under Ike (as when you're droping from a platform) you need to wait for the later hit boxes the later hit boxes to come out so over all that's much slower.

 

[TylerX5]

Also learn to QD ledge grab from the stage (when the QD isn't charged this is done by doing a manual QD slash right as Ike is going over the ledge), that technique is very underused and not too difficult to learn (although tricky to master)

 

[Y-L]

Never tried either of those but both of those options sound interesting Tyler.
Albeit harder to do, I tend to qd->reverse WD to ledgehog quickly

 

[Commander]

Also learn to QD ledge grab from the stage (when the QD isn't charged this is done by doing a manual QD slash right as Ike is going over the ledge), that technique is very underused and not too difficult to learn (although tricky to master)

I've done this before but I was never sure if it could be done consistently and gave up on it. Since it can only be done from uncharged QDs I don't really recommend it since you need to do it from the full distance, otherwise the momentum can carry you off. Charged QDs don't work at all because the momentum always carries you off. It is a better idea to do QD>turnaround>wavedash for instant ledgehogs because then can do it from half way across the stage with a slightly charged QD.

 

[TylerX5]

Never tried either of those but both of those options sound interesting Tyler.
Albeit harder to do, I tend to qd->reverse WD to ledgehog quickly

That's a very solid option, but at closer ranges QD ledge grab is the quickest way to grab ledge with Ike. The biggest draw back is the risk of messing it up and SDing. But hey as we like say when talking about Ike's unique techniques "you main Ike or you don't use Ike"

 

[TylerX5]

I've done this before but I was never sure if it could be done consistently and gave up on it. Since it can only be done from uncharged QDs I don't really recommend it since you need to do it from the full distance, otherwise the momentum can carry you off. Charged QDs don't work at all because the momentum always carries you off. It is a better idea to do QD>turnaround>wavedash for instant ledgehogs because then can do it from half way across the stage with a slightly charged QD.

You can do it at any QD charge but need to adjust the spacing when to manually QD slash, I reccomend doing it from an uncharged QD because it's the easiest one to learn. And I agree with you that QD>rar> wavedash is better because it's easier and covers more range in less time AFAIK, but QD ledge grab is the best option in a few cases where you're to ledge, but too far to wavedash grab it quickly.

From my experience notably against spacies (not including wolf) who know how to avoid running into Ike's Fair. If you grab a spacy while near the edge and then throw him off while he's still at lower percents (10%-30%ish?) he basically has these options 1. DJ to grab ledge 2. DJ > side B to grab ledge 3. DJ > side B above ledge to land on stage 4. try to recover with Up B at some point. The only way I've found to cover all these options is after throwing them off the ledge is to QD ledge grab, all other methods put Ike (at my execution lvl at least) at risk of being hit with a side B (Falco's will meteor or spike too). If the sapcy chooses option 2 he's dead. If he chooses option 3 I can punish it with QD. If he chooses option 4. I'm in a pretty good position to cover it. If he chooses option 1 he goes to option 4.

 

[Kerfuffle]

My new favorite edeguard with Ike is multiple ledge canceled fairs. It covers a huge area in rapid succession and has 0 endlag, so you can keep your options open if they go below or above the ledge. Doesn't work on certain characters though.

 

[Zx2963]

Walljump > Bair or Fair

 

[RomanCenturionX]

QD Wall jump -> Erruption or QD Wall jump -> QD Attack offstage

SHOW NO SYMPATHY!!!

 

[Zx2963]

QD Wall jump -> Erruption or QD Wall jump -> QD Attack offstage

SHOW NO SYMPATHY!!!

I like the way you think

 

[Dawnz_]

Fair is probably the best option, although its pretty slow so when they're far out i like to jump making it look like i'm going to fair, hopefully making them do a certain option that either allows me to wall jump into a fair bair dair or even counter depending on their recovery move. Just make sure to mix it up using whichever depending on the characters recovery moves, or if they go straight for the ledge thinking that your fair will be too slow to hit you can just QD back to the ledge and then roll up. Its also okay to just stay on the stage and wait for an f-smash option or whatever. Also something against spacies or other characters recovery moves you can spike with d-tilt, just make sure only the front of your sword is off the stage so if you miss time the spike their up-b doesn't hit you, it's pretty situational though.