Has Ness ever won a major tournament?

[MT Williams]

Just wanted to know. I know he's considered pretty low tier

 

[Nido]

Ness won WHOBO 4 mid tiers if it counts for anything.

Other than that, no he hasn't.

 

[Jamwa]

Fsann maybe?
i dunno

 

[Mizuxe]

Not yet... Don't underestimate Ness. He's pretty good if you know how to use him. Actually, you can underestimate him. A lot.

 

[Luco]

Ness is under-estimated but he's not great, unfortunately. Grab shenanigans and a few chars with superior range hurt him a little too much for him to be up there, even if we don't factor in gimping potential (Yink told me a while ago that good players made it a non-issue, which is actually pretty true).

But i'll always love him and do stuff with him. Look at Fsann and see, maybe he's done more in Japan. But he's a lower tier there than he is here so i'm not sure.

 

[Tikao]

i played brawl with 2 classmates and won with ness because they played brawl the first time, does that count ?

 

[Nido]

Yes, this is the greatest kind of honour Ness can receive.

 

[Tikao]

actually its realy sad because its true ... at least a bit

 

[smashbroskilla]

Ness will always be the tournament winner in my heart.

 

[MT Williams]

Do you guys think it would be possible? Not likely...but possible? I think any character has a chance if the right person plays as them and knows how to take on other characters. Especially Meta Knight lol.
Looks at Salem. He won Apex with ZSS. Nobody was expecting that. Granted she's considered higher tier than Ness but still

 

[Luco]

Do you guys think it would be possible? Not likely...but possible? I think any character has a chance if the right person plays as them and knows how to take on other characters. Especially Meta Knight lol.
Looks at Salem. He won Apex with ZSS. Nobody was expecting that. Granted she's considered higher tier than Ness but still

ZSS doesn't suffer from the same flaws. Hers are much easier to over-come.

Basically the thing is, Ness has had some large upsets, don't get me wrong. But to get every single upset and throw it at one big national? That's a freakishly tall order. We'll all be doing our best though, so who knows? It's just we have a few match-ups that generally just stop us dead in our tracks. There's no shortage of players of said characters either, so...

 

[MT Williams]

ZSS doesn't suffer from the same flaws. Hers are much easier to over-come.

Basically the thing is, Ness has had some large upsets, don't get me wrong. But to get every single upset and throw it at one big national? That's a freakishly tall order. We'll all be doing our best though, so who knows? It's just we have a few match-ups that generally just stop us dead in our tracks. There's no shortage of players of said characters either, so...

What would you say is the average amount of Ness users in big tournaments?

 

[Jamwa]

What would you say is the average amount of Ness users in big tournaments?

Shaky

 

[Luco]

Although Jamwa is exaggerating, there's not many players of Ness out there in relation to some.

If I could put together every decent Ness player around the world that i'd know, including ones that have retired by now, i'd still probably only come up with like 20-30. :/

 

[MT Williams]

so basically it would probably take years and years of intense training to stand a chance in a tournament?

Is there hope at all? lol

 

[Luco]

so basically it would probably take years and years of intense training to stand a chance in a tournament?

Is there hope at all? lol

Yeah, well there's still stuff in the meta to be improved but for the most part we cheer on our top players whilst attempting to get better ourselves. If you wanna see hope for ness, look at some recent videos of Shaky or Fsann. ^^

In the meantime we'll be looking to get up there too.

 

[Jamwa]

so basically it would probably take years and years of intense training to stand a chance in a tournament?

Is there hope at all? lol

Being a low tier doesn't necessarily mean the character is limited in potential
it's just harder to play that character, and so the better you are the less the character choice is an issue

 

[Luco]

Being a low tier doesn't necessarily mean the character is limited in potential
it's just harder to play that character, and so the better you are the less the character choice is an issue

You say this stuff so much better than I can.

 

[Jamwa]

You say this stuff so much better than I can.

as you get older it gets easier
but i still suck at vce english

 

[Luco]

as you get older it gets easier
but i still suck at vce english

That's alright man, you sound fine. ^_^

 

[smashbroskilla]

I went to several south florida tournaments and always used Ness. Going against players like rockcrock, killerkai and other OG smash players I would get destroyed. I got better by getting destroyed by fast players though.

 

[Ness 682]

I usually go to my local Arizona Bi-Weekly tournaments, and when I do, I usually get 9th or 17 people or so. The best I ever placed was 3rd, but my area has a few Marth , Game and Watch, Meta Knight, and Snake players -.- But hey, I can get better experience that way.

From personal experience playing competitively a little over a year now, it really doesn't feel like I'm getting better, but trust me, I AM! I just look back in some of my very first tournaments, still new to new techniques (like PK Jump, or pivot grabbing) and doing absolutely terrible because I only focused on the moves, and not the player. Overtime, I'm still learning a lot of Ness' techs (more advanced PK Fire stuff), but I feel more comfortable to where I just need to focus on mind-reading opponents.

All I have to say is playing safe is the 95% success rate towards winning (5% being caused by luck purposes). The ideal way to win safely is timing one out, but no one wants to play like that, so we don't unless the match up suggests so.

 

[mobilisq]

Being a low tier doesn't necessarily mean the character is limited in potential
it's just harder to play that character, and so the better you are the less the character choice is an issue

for this reason, whenever i see people claiming someone who plays a snake or a metaknight or other such high tier character is "the best in the world" or some other such nonsense, i tell them i wont truly be impressed until i see that player own someone with ganondorf

sadly, most of these kids JUST. DONT. GET IT

surprising lack of ability to grasp abstract concepts in the smash community

 

[P.I.E.]

MLG Columbus 2010, and i don't know about nationals, but there's consistent locals with 40+ entrants. I've seen shaky win them, then there's FOW who won son, and shaky went overseas once. it's possible, but as with every low tier, difficult

 

[Jamwa]

for this reason, whenever i see people claiming someone who plays a snake or a metaknight or other such high tier character is "the best in the world" or some other such nonsense, i tell them i wont truly be impressed until i see that player own someone with ganondorf

sadly, most of these kids JUST. DONT. GET IT

surprising lack of ability to grasp abstract concepts in the smash community

You can't say they're not the best though. They are winning, so that means something, and that's what they mean by best.

I don't talk about that though, there's so much other criteria in judging a good player that it's pointless arguing who's the best.

 

[P.I.E.]

The tier list got that way largely because of tournament wins. They won with that character. If m2k used ness for brawl, I'm sure it'd be a different story, and the metagame would be more developed in ness's favor.

Sht like that's usually based on what we think a character's capable of, what we've seen them do. That doesnt always cover what is possible.

 

[Jamwa]

Nah MK's frame data is just ridiculous. Tier list would be much the same if people changed characters, their advantages are evident without good players.

 

[P.I.E.]

The greatest sword in the world is useless in the hands of someone who can't use it properly. Especially against someone who knows his sword and their own sword far better than the inexperienced wielder.

Ex ample:
Marth's death grab can be a frame trap on ness, but as the better player, if I play to the edge or camp correctly near a platform, how would it be an issue?

Wolf and wario have free smash upon release on ness, but if I know what situation not to be in, and dedicate my gameplay against it the ENTIRE time, I takes that factor out of the match.

It's the player's willingness to study and overcome the problem that makes a "disadvantaged" character best a "ridiculous" character.

The tier list is partly based off of tournament placing consistency in relation to other characters, so it would in fact change if, say, nesses with dedication studied bad matchups enough to close the gap. That's why I want to get this matchup thread together. So we can achieve this.

 

[Jamwa]

The greatest sword in the world is useless in the hands of someone who can't use it properly. Especially against someone who knows his sword and their own sword far better than the inexperienced wielder.

So what? We're not talking about a baby playing against Shaky. We're talking about similarly skilled players, and in that situation, it is easier (read: less risky) to play MK or Marth than Ness.

Tiers are also now based off opinion rather than placings, so yeah.. There was this thread where you could vote.

May I also explain that at top level, every character is essentially evenly matched. Buy guess what? Humans aren't frame/reaction perfect. Thus if you're playing a character who is fast, has long range, can't be gimped, and off one hit has many strings/safe mix up for which being punished is unlikely, then that character is EASIER TO PLAY. That's what the tier list tells you.

 

[Eagleye893]

Ness is under-estimated but he's not great, unfortunately. Grab shenanigans and a few chars with superior range hurt him a little too much for him to be up there, even if we don't factor in gimping potential (Yink told me a while ago that good players made it a non-issue, which is actually pretty true).

But i'll always love him and do stuff with him. Look at Fsann and see, maybe he's done more in Japan. But he's a lower tier there than he is here so i'm not sure.

@gimping, your second jump is more effective than pkt2 in terms of recovery potential because of how floaty it makes ness move. The only time you're in trouble is when you're sent far and low to try and angle the pkt2 perfectly.

Do you guys think it would be possible? Not likely...but possible? I think any character has a chance if the right person plays as them and knows how to take on other characters. Especially Meta Knight lol.
Looks at Salem. He won Apex with ZSS. Nobody was expecting that. Granted she's considered higher tier than Ness but still

The potential of ZSS is infinitely higher than Ness. Ness is restricted by slow movement and the lack of an ability to force an issue on the opponent (force being that the opponent needs to play hugely differently to accommodate for an aspect of a character). ZSS throwing out sideB and B as well as DSmash will always apply more pressure than anything Ness can do to opponents because of range and lock-up potential. Ness' PK Fire can't really lock people up, his FAir does little damage and isn't effectively long-ranged as other moves in the game, PKT is his best form of pressure but lags too hard to reliably transition like ZSS' B; the most Ness hopes for in a game is to poke in with an attack (Fair, Bair, Dair sometimes, PKfire, yoyo, tilts) or grab and see where he can take it. If shield pressure were like melee, Ness would probably have a good fighting chance because of how well moves can string together AND most of his aerials are close to lagless on landing.

EDIT: Also, what Jamwa said in the post above mine is right: Playing Ness well requires so much more precision than playing MK or other characters well. I would look for more examples to display for this point, but just think of PKT/2 with its complexities and you'll understand a good point to that argument.