How to Fight Ivysaur?

[Benny P]

How should a roy fight an Ivysaur? i feel that this match up is hard because you cannot use your range at all, because ivysaur is better at that. How should Roy fight Ivysaur?

 

[NIFOFD]

Well you're certainly right that Ivysaur makes great use of ranged attacks, but I believe our boy has sufficient means to combat that threat. Indeed, I think with a little practice, you may find that Roy does quite well in this match up.

So as is almost always the case, you'll want to look at your movement in this matchup. You might not be able to directly outrange an Ivysaur, but you'll be able to get in if you make use of Roy's great movement. First look to your dash dancing, utilizing your dash dance to bait out attacks from ivysaur is a very basic, but effective strategy. The idea being to dip into Ivysaur's range briefly to lure them into using a larger disjointed attack (such as a bair) and dashing back to avoid the attack. You can then take advantage of the end lag to get in and punish. Of course, there's more to movement than just dashdancing. Baiting out approaches with a wavedash back, or using platforms to maneuver around Ivysaur with wavelands can also be very valuable.

Roy can also get in by using more than just his movement: Taking a hit and crouch canceling can lead into great followups via something as classic as cc -> dtilt or you could seal a stock with a cc -> dsmash. Don't underestimate the potency of ccing in this matchup.

Once you've gotten in, you'll find that Roy can really dish out crazy punishes on Ivysaur. Ivysaur's weight/fallspeed seem to make him/her extremely susceptible to Roy's juggle based combo game. Following up with a string of up-airs or a well placed up-tilt can help to extend your combo and rack up %. Throws are usually quite easy to follow up in this matchup as well. F-throw can lead into f-tilt for % or a dash attack to extend combos (depending on your opponents DI and %). D-throw also has similar followups (and can lead into f-smash if your opponent DIs incorrectly, something that might happen more often if you mix up f-throws and d-throws). Should you seriously have trouble sealing a stock, you can always resort to up-throw to get the kill if your opponent is getting close to 200%ish (which shouldn't be happening given Roy's kill setups). I don't typically see b-throw used that often, but sometimes it can be used to set up edge guarding opportunities (though edge guards work a little bit differently in this matchup due to ivy's tether).

Making sure you finish off stocks is fairly important here (the less time ivy spends in the neutral, the better). Roy's finishers, f-smash, d-smash, bair, flareblade (neutral-b), work great on ivysaur (note that taking stocks with other moves like f-tilt is also a possibility, but the moves listed prior tend to be the ones I get kills with in this matchup). At lower %s especially, ivysaur really has to watch out for Roy's crouch cancel game. A misplaced aerial can lead to cc-dtilt-bair or cc-dsmash, both of which will kill ivysaur at higher %s. Dair also sets up into kill moves, the strong, non spike, hitbox will pop opponents up possibly leading into f-smash or bair. If you don't take the stock outright with a kill-move, you'll have to edge guard ivysaur which can be a real pain if you don't know the matchup. Ivysaur's tether up-b has a massive range that allows him/her to grapple to the ledge from a distance too low below the stage for Roy to safely threaten. Thankfully, all Roy has to do to combat this is to take ledge before Ivysaur comes up from the tether (taking care not to be hit by the actual up-b from ivysaus as this will usually kill Roy via stagespike, so refresh invincibility with a ledge hop if necessary). Once ivysaur has tethered and Roy is holding the ledge, Ivysaur will not be able to shorten the tether to grab ledge, instead he/she will do an automatic little hop at the top of the tether upon going to the ledge (do not let go of the ledge, or ivysaur will be able to take it). This jump at the top of the tether is simple to punish with a ledge hopped aerial.

Play around some with the matchup and I think you'll find it's very doable for Roy (if not skewed in his favor). Try to figure out what punishes/followups work with what %s and DIs. Avoid making foolish approaches on shield, or just in general. Your movement and punish game are great assets here, so don't be afraid to hold back a little bit and scout out opportunities to punish hard. Good luck!

 

[Brim]

It really just amounts to getting in Ivy's face and going to town on her. It's really not that hard as long as you can counter her projectiles and slightly outranging attacks. Ivy has quite the offstage against Roy when she's on ledge because she can just jump off and bair you (Though I always thought Bair meant neutral B aerial). Either that or learn how to powershield her razer leafs (Whatever it's called), which is just awkward.
But refer to what most of NIFOFD said.

 

[Verduyn]

The Roy/Ivy MU can be very brainless for Roy. All he has to do is cc dtilt into aerial strings and then when he gets Ivy off the ledge just hold onto the ledge so she gets the ~50 frames of not being able to do anything. When Ivy is in those ~50 frames just use dair. Always dair. It will either spike or hit her into the stage in an easy to follow up way

 

[Brim]

The Roy/Ivy MU can be very brainless for Roy. All he has to do is cc dtilt into aerial strings and then when he gets Ivy off the ledge just hold onto the ledge so she gets the ~50 frames of not being able to do anything. When Ivy is in those ~50 frames just use dair. Always dair. It will either spike or hit her into the stage in an easy to follow up way

You could always just setup from forward tilts or one of the small variants of the tilt, that's one of the things I really enjoy doing against Ivy since she's not particularly fast, and you generally don't have to worry about her being very mobile.
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My idea of a setup against Ivy: Hit f-tilt against her, WD in, grab, down/forward throw, chase.