Social General Ice Climber Chat

[Finch]

If a good puff hits your shield then you won't be able to do retaliate so don't worry about it.

The way hungrybox ***** me last time we played was while I was wavedashing around trying to figure out how to approach against his stupidly perfect spacing he would pound into me, which separated me, and then he would either rest nana if he was low percent because the most I can do to him is like 15 damage and then the matchup gets a lot harder for me, or he would just combo my popo and most of the time kill me.

Obviously this is a matter of just figuring out when he wants to pound and avoid/punish it, but I don't have the experience neccessary to do so. I know a lot about what ICs can do to puff but I don't know much about getting around what puff can do to you.

For example one of my training partners used to mess around with puff against me. He didn't really know how to be gay and space his aerials like puff mains but he would sit there uptilting and if I ran into it at low percent he would always get a rest on me. Is this really guaranteed or do I just suck at jumping?

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

I don't know much about puff. BUt I,ve been trying to think of a good way to have the ice climbers de-synce while wavedashing up together. Dude shff waveland de-synces them amaingly well. you get can have a fast burst of speed and have one smash and one down-B or one f-tilt nair. I think i,m going to use this as my new main way to de-synce for most of the time I try to de-synce.

DOes any one do this anyways?

 

[choknater]

nope, go for it

always try to innovate

if it works it works

as ic players i bet we are all gonna have different playstyles when we reach our primes

 

[ChivalRuse]

i use oos dair, i only bair if puff is in that exact position which is rare. (lol rhyming.)

i like to dair because if puff is inside me with an attack, i will at least trade or beat puff (unless its pound)



anyway

i think im the only player who happens to use dair a LOT vs puff lol. its just my strategy

Do you use FJ'ed uair dair OOS or SH'ed? Just curious.

 

[choknater]

do u mean dair? sh dair, cuz full hop dair is really bad

uair.... i dont really use uair out of shield at all against puff, shes never above me lol, always trying to space horizontally

if shes above shes asking for uairs lol

 

[*P*L*U*R*]

Unless I'm mistaken, I've had IC's bair beat out Jigg's bair. It makes sense because I don't THINK that Jigg's Bair is disjointed. Other than that, I try to just visualize and GIANT circle around her as far as her options. Actually, it's more of an oval since jiggs mostly space horizontally. Stay just barely outside that range and use quick attacks to get in. Dash attack when she SH bairs the air in front of you and retreats. The most that Jiggz can do out of a SH Bair is double jump out of it but I believe that the Dash attack will still hit her because i think the dash attack has higher reach than you'd think.

 

[KirbyKaze]

Unless I'm mistaken, I've had IC's bair beat out Jigg's bair. It makes sense because I don't THINK that Jigg's Bair is disjointed.

I won't spoil the surprise.

 

[PB&J]

i spam nair when im right below a platform then u can waveland to ****

 

[*P*L*U*R*]

I won't spoil the surprise.

you just did.

Fission Mailed

 

[Wak]

I started playing the Icies more seriously last week, and I like it even though I know how it is to play against them: it's just a pain.

It's the second time I try to main them. The first time I dropped the idea because worse people than me could win to my IC, and better people had a really hard time, some even lose against me.

The playing style of my opponents becomes really weird when I choose the Ice climbers. They usually try to just abuse the same move until it works, and it works =(. On the other hand, I can sometimes win against people that I rarely win to. I started playing them one day against chesterr01 and Pkmvodka, and they couldn't do anything. In theory, I take them 60 stocks when they take me 100 stocks, which is not that far from mild ****.

Last week, I was playing matches against a falco player and I tried every characters I usually take: falcon, falco, sheik, marth, and I lost them all. I took my rough Ics and won all the other matches.

This is that weird. Can someone help me out there?

 

[choknater]

haha ic's have a weapon and puff doesnt, naturally our moves can beat hers

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

wak- ice climbers are funny like that, really they could have a crazy amount of ways to be played, They could have perfect mindgames/ approach crap, but to me no one is really that techical and yes I believe wobbles is more techical than anyone non ice climbers will ever need(this doesn't include jc shines other near useless stuff). But the ice climbers are techical in every possible way and I would say we are far away from perfect control heck the video perfectcontrol is far away from perfect control.

Maybe you should cp pick as the ice climbers

 

[Batmansince1939]

CHock how are you at -78 post? laugh

 

[Wobbles]

Wak: ICs are a surprising character, in more ways than one. They play very differently from everybody else; most characters move fluidly and consistently, but the ICs are pretty erratic. That means a lot of your attacks, when they land, will be surprising to your opponent. This means bad DI, among other things...

Also, since so few people use them, most folks *still* don't have good tactics against them, so that helps as well. Which is funny, because if you just practice against a level 1 IC CPU, then you can practice gimping Nana until you're a pro, and then you have half the matchup down

There's something else I noticed... a lot of people will randomly do better with characters they don't use, even when they shouldn't be doing well at all. I think it's because most people learn techniques and tactics with one character and then focus too much on just doing moves. When you don't know what to do with a character, it makes you shift your mental energy into reading your opponent and playing carefully with the few things you actually know. That kind of careful and thoughtful play will beat the vast majority of folks you fight against.

That's why (I think, anyhow) picking up a secondary for a short while can help you out with your original main. It makes you a bit more choosy with your moves and frees you from your previous playstyle. A friend of mine plays a low-level Falcon and Marth, then randomly decided to start playing as Yoshi during a friendly. I showed him all three things I know about Yoshi, and he started trying to do them against me. A surprising percentage of them worked; when he went back to playing Falcon, he was playing a lot smarter. I still wrecked him of course but I could feel a noticeable shift in the way he played and thought.

Long answer short, you're probably catching people off-guard. Especially Falco, who can die at 40 to a d-smash if he DIs badly.

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

I would say it's more of the playstsyle, like I was playing as the ice climbers and I was trying to get something going vs a fox and he moved way to fast for me to do anything underpressure I couldn't get Myself to wavedash or I did very sloppy. So when into pure panic mode as them only people that I ever get pressured as(till I lose nana), you a d-smash him whenever tried to get anywhere near me.with the mix-up of a shffled bair every now and then.

I only lost one stock because he never up-smashed me and he was to fucused on just racking up damage and if you saw the match you would think fox was winning. What i,m trying to say is playing as different people opens up new playstsyles for other people, and you have to adapt and change when needed.

Yeah wobbles you should do that blog on feelings I can't control my throughts when I,m ice climbers being pressured, you forget to react, spam d-smash to no end, lose openings, mess up simple combos and chain throws, or you simplely want them to kill nana so you can relax. BUt really the ice climbers are insanely hard for mental control and the cpu controled nana is like oh what you want me to do something? she gets up-smashed.

 

[ChivalRuse]

Last week, I was playing matches against a falco player and I tried every characters I usually take: falcon, falco, sheik, marth, and I lost them all. I took my rough Ics and won all the other matches.

This is that weird. Can someone help me out there?

Wow. That's depressing to me. Whenever I try to change it up with ICs I get ***** in all kinds of unseemly ways, kneed 10,000 times, shinespiked, tippered, etcetera.

It's probably because I suck.

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

Way if you look at the ice climber vs fox's ranking thingy

noob------------good--------------------------------very good--------------------------------------------------------------------to good-------------------perfect

noob-------good----------------very good----------------------to good-----------------------------perfect

It's really hard to be good as the ice climbers vs fox or some other person

 

[Fly_Amanita]

I wasn't able to get any good until I abandoned my old mains, Sheik and Falco, for ICs. They came much more naturally to me than all of the other really good characters did.

 

[PokemonMasterIRL]

I play Icys Jigs and Dk.

Should I just drop the other two to focus on Icys?

Also what are some basic tech skill things to practice with the Icys?

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

wavesmashing, chain throw ,juggling, wavedashing. If their not techical you could keep them easily

 

[Fly_Amanita]

I play Icys Jigs and Dk.

Should I just drop the other two to focus on Icys?

Also what are some basic tech skill things to practice with the Icys?

I think sticking with a single character is important for improvement early on. Feel free to branch out later, but at the moment, trying to develop multiple characters at the same time will probably slow down your progress.

 

[Wak]

Having more than a main helps having a backup, let's say, against peach, ganondorf, samus or fox. They are very hard to play against as the Ice Climbers and if I ever lose a match, I still have the option to switch my character.

Plus, it will look dumb, but having more than a main increase the game's lifetime. Having one character may get you sticked on melee for a couple years, but if you look around, none of the remaining veteran players are still playing the same character as in 2005... maybe except darkrain, that's the only one I know that went through all this time. And we can't count the number of people back in 2005, used to their main, that aren't playing anymore: Ken, isai, chudat, pc chris, caveman, azen, Wes, dope, koreanDJ...

 

[Fly_Amanita]

Well, I did rely on Sheik for a few match-ups I couldn't handle with ICs when I decided to main ICs in late 2007, but it wasn't until late 2008/early 2009, about half a year after I started going almost entirely ICs, that I started beating any really good people.

 

[joeplicate]

Having more than a main helps having a backup, let's say, against peach, ganondorf, samus or fox. They are very hard to play against as the Ice Climbers and if I ever lose a match, I still have the option to switch my character.

Plus, it will look dumb, but having more than a main increase the game's lifetime. Having one character may get you sticked on melee for a couple years, but if you look around, none of the remaining veteran players are still playing the same character as in 2005... maybe except darkrain, that's the only one I know that went through all this time. And we can't count the number of people back in 2005, used to their main, that aren't playing anymore: Ken, isai, chudat, pc chris, caveman, azen, Wes, dope, koreanDJ...

that's coincidental
there's also armada, who does almost exclusively peach

mew2king was at his prime when he played marth and saved fox for counterpicks; now that he's switching characters instead of learning matchups, people are passing him up (hbox, zhu soon)

sure, learning a secondary can rekindle interest in the game, especially when one character seems stale from so much use, but ultimately spreading yourself out so thin will cap your skill level

you can apply the things you already know to different characters, or learn things you've never thought of with one character and improve

 

[Lixivium]

sure, learning a secondary can rekindle interest in the game, especially when one character seems stale from so much use, but ultimately spreading yourself out so thin will cap your skill level

you can apply the things you already know to different characters, or learn things you've never thought of with one character and improve

The problem with that statement is that IC's are probably the most unique character in the game; there's very little of their game you can apply to any other character.

I say forget about matchups and transfer of skills and whatnot; pick up a second character if you enjoy using that character.

 

[joeplicate]

I think there are some things, no doubt, but the point was it's better to stick with one character

 

[PokemonMasterIRL]

Icys are just such a deep character.

There are so many faucets to there game that are still barely used.

 

[ChivalRuse]

Icys are just such a deep character.

Yea. ICs are deep. It's like a never ending journey of unlocking their potential. But the rewards are oh so much sweeter.

 

[Fly_Amanita]

ActiveGamers should be fun. Wobbles/chok, are you going?

 

[Wobbles]

Gonna try

 

[Fly_Amanita]

My name is pink.


I had a chance to test my idea about stopping Fox/Falco's side-B from the edge with dair and I don't like it all that much. I've since come up with another probably dumb idea that I can test tomorrow: intercepting side-B with a grounded, synched squall hammer. I could see this doing decent damage and possibly leading to a grab/smash, although I don't understand squall hammer that well and wouldn't be surprised if this fails.

I do have bigger fish to fry, but my inability to consistently intercept this silly move is something I want to fix. I think nair -> grab would work well for stopping it at low percentages, but that requires getting a Fox/Falco on the edge at low percentages.


I feel stupid for bringing this up again, so I'll try to redeem myself by discussing something more interesting. Let's talk about trading hits with projectiles or any other move whose hitbox vanishes after connecting with a target such that Popo takes a hit and Nana delivers a blow to the opponent.

We've already talked about doing this with Falco's lasers; Wobbles likes fsmashing through them, Choknater likes using blizzard here, etc. I noticed a while ago that you can legitimately do similar stuff through Samus' missiles whenever taking a missile isn't a big deal and I've been thinking of trying similar things elsewhere. All of the following is pure speculation:

Let's say we're fighting Doc. An obnoxiously simple strategy that I've had trouble with is full jump and double jump pill-camping with occasional shffl'd fairs thrown in that are spaced such that they can't be punished out of shield. I think running forward and doing a short hop blizzard such that only Popo takes the pill could work; if the Doc just double-jumped, threw a pill, and is descending with the usual safe spacing, I bet this could be used to gain ground on him. I doubt that Nana's blizzard would usually connect, but it would provide protection and help push Doc closer to the edge. Even ice blocks might work, provided Doc doesn't have enough time to fair over one. Perhaps what is nicest here is that since pills travel slowly, we wouldn't need to play guessing games like we would when dealing with Falco's lasers and could just take the pill on reaction.

The other projectiles I think this has some potential to be useful against are the Links' boomerangs and arrows, Mario's fireball, and Peach's turnips. I know almost nothing about the Links, so I can't really say anything about them. I also know very little about Mario, but I bet that his fireballs can be dealt with like pills. I'm sure it's almost always better to catch turnips than do this sort of thing, but it might be worthwhile at times; for example, let's say you're at a reasonably low percentage and Peach throws a non-crazy turnip at you. You could try full jumping/short hopping forward at the last second and having Nana blizzard. Ideally, Nana's blizzard would hit Peach and Popo would recover from the turnip quickly enough to capitalize on this. I'm really doubtful of this, but I think it's worth looking into. Maybe fair could also work.

Aside from grabs, are there any other moves with hitboxes that immediately terminate once connecting with a target? I can't think of anything off the top of my head and I doubt this would be useful for dealing with grabs.

 

[Finch]

I ftilt spacies' side b. It doesn't work if they're close to the stage when they start it, but it's pretty effective and easy to do on reaction if they start it far away. Blizzard may be the best method if you can predict it, because it does a lot of damage and they're gonna have to end up below the stage. I've seen wobbles jump down and do a rising nair like sheik, but our nair is stupid and sometimes hits them back onto the stage instead of off.

One of my favorite IC edgeguards ever is the one trail did to shiz in the FCD south vs midwest crew battle. He bthrew shiz off the stage at low percent, blizzarded his side b, downsmashed his up B back off, and then ledgehogged ftw. It was really simple but very effective, and I think a lot of IC players need to work on efficiency in their game.

 

[Fly_Amanita]

Yeah, ftilt is good. My only gripe is that it doesn't have much knockback. I'm trying to find something I can do consistently on reaction that also will probably lead to death, and since I struggle at intercepting side-B with moves like fsmash and dsmash, I'm looking into more esoteric alternatives.

I also love that edgeguard and I do bthrow -> blizzard regularly. I'm usually reluctant to intercept up-B with dsmash since I can get punished if the Fox/Falco sweetspots, though. I usually just go for repeated ledgehopped dairs and nairs when I get Fox/Falco below the stage.

 

[ChivalRuse]

Dash attack is pretty broken against spacies. If you time it correctly to hit them out of side-b, it should lead to anything at any percent.

 

[Kyu Puff]

I'm not sure why everyone ignored me last time, but it's really easy to just lightshield the side+b, wavedash out and punish with a smash or grab. The only timing involved is doing a long wavedash oos right after the side+b hits you, but you can eye that.

 

[ChivalRuse]

I'm not sure why everyone ignored me last time, but it's really easy to just lightshield the side+b, wavedash out and punish with a smash or grab. The only timing involved is doing a long wavedash oos right after the side+b hits you, but you can eye that.

Haha yea that was like a full month ago though. Fly must have forgotten. He's still getting ***** by the side-b.

Well, light shield is probably the best option, after all.

 

[PokemonMasterIRL]

Fly mentioned Synched Squal Hammer.

I like doing it on someone's shield, I dont have the timing down(I am working on it), But you can desynch and have Nana do a grab immediately after. Its kinda cool because Squall Hammer is so long that it gets them to sit in their shield for a while.

 

[Fly_Amanita]

I noticed what Kyu Puff wrote the first time. I don't like that option since it lets the space animal get back to the center of the stage. I'm sure it's fine on something like Yoshi's Story, but on most other stages, I'd rather keep the spacie near the side.

Synched squall hammer is a weird move. I would not recommend using it for shield pressure since you can be punished as it finishes.

 

[Kyu Puff]

Well, for one thing, you can usually get away with wd f-smash, because they'll be unintentionally DIing the direction you want to hit them. Spacies aren't hard to edgeguard, and even at reasonably low percentages you should eventually get the kill this way. Otherwise you can grab -- most of these other options are trying to lead into that anyways (plus if they're expecting f-smash this can be a surprise mix-up, and it should be easier to grab to death).

 

[ChivalRuse]

Fly must have forgotten.

I noticed what Kyu Puff wrote the first time.

Ah! Get *****, me.