Binx
Smash Master
The purpose of this guide is to create working, effective strategies on how to deal with the trouble moves of every character in the ssbm cast.
This will be a cooperative effort between all members of the IC community. ICs aren't played enough to have discovered every tactic that we can use, as time goes on we will constantly be looking to add new effective tactics to this compendium.
If you have experience in any matchup, or trouble with any matchup then you can feel free to post a question here, how do I beat such and such move, series of moves, whatever. And on the other side of the coin feel free to answer other members questions or feel free to find the answers to your own problem moves and share them with the rest of us so we can add it.
Look at how far we have come as a community since August of 2007 when I first started this guide, we now have solid information and tips vs 16/26 members of the cast, we have all of the trouble characters covered and most of the awkward matches. I never dreamed that this guide would get so detailed and I just wanted to say I am really proud to be an Ice Climber main ^_^
Fox
Watch out for:
From Wobbles the Phoenix:
From Kyu Puff:
Sheik
Watch Out For:
From Cablepuff
Tips:
From HoChiMinhTrail
When fighting sheiks you should resort to counter fighting. Her tilts and airs have priority over yours except in rare instances. You have to attack during her openings. Sheik's most vulnerable times are when she is in the air or after her smashes. Whiffed smashes obviously should always be punished by wavedash to smash or grab. The strat that most sheiks adopt is shuffling fairs to tilts or jabs, effectively spacing the ic. The only problem with this strat is the fact that even when short hopping she jumps too high. This blaring weakness allows u to jump in with up airs or fly under her with your up smashes or up tilts with no risk. I am undefeated vs sheik players in tournie, I've played some of the best(lol pwn that ginger drephen all day LAWL). This is not due to me being amazing at this game, but because of the realization of this simple yet extremely effective strategy against sheik. It's free damage when she is in the air. You cut her air game and she is forced to play a more risky ground based game vs you where the climbers can throw their weight around.
From Binx:
Falcon
Watch Out For:
From Choknator:
Don't:
From Choknator:
Do:
From Choknator:
Tips:
From Wobbles
From Choknator:
From Wobbles the Phoenix:
Samus
Watch Out For:
Tips:
From Wobbles the Phoenix:
From Delphiki
Marth
Watch Out For:
Don't:
Do:
From Wobbles
his d-tilts are beatable with short hopped f-air if you space it, you can shield grab or down-smash him out of his grabs, CC his forward+b into grabs or rolls, and shield his f-smash into wavedash out of shield. Once you can do all that, it just becomes figuring out what he plans to do... unfortunately, I'm not sure what to do about the f-airs. If he retreats with them, he becomes very very safe. If IC's weren't so slidy, I'd recommend playing attrition using CC's against them, just because one f-air compared a grab or smash is way more advantageous.
If he APPROACHES with f-air, then dash dance grab becomes viable, but if he stays in one spot or just retreats using it I can't seem to beat it. I suppose you could WD in with your shield up and try to get him to push himself to the edge of the stage where you can try to RPS some of his above options.... or use the double shield to mess up his timing on SHDF-air, or his double jump after... basically anything to fluster him and force him to pick options you can easily punish.
I do know that if he does a RISING f-air and you space it you can get dash attacks, so that's something to keep in mind.
fighting Marth is hard
Fortunately, there are methods and tricks.
First off, his d-tilt is really good, but you have a simple answer to it, which is SHFFL'ed F-air. It requires moderately good spacing to achieve, but you can hop over the tip with your f-air. Odds are he'll CC and you can have a free d-smash, jab grab, or tech-chase.
It's also possible to wavedash in from a distance and grab him to punish when he misses, but you need to predict both the spacing and timing of the tilt, as well as execute a long wavedash. I don't think it's worth it to try this, really.
His f-airs are the devil, but again, spacing and timing is how you can beat him.
First off, the f-air is punishable as long as it barely misses you. You can slip in with dash attacks and grabs, or if you're really sneaky, wave-smashes. Another trick is to use long wavedashes into shield to try and make him land a deep hit on your shield. This reduces hit stun and almost guarantees a shield-grab.
His f-smash is really good. The answer is do your best to shield it, then wavedash from your shield to punish. Any Marth that uses the f-smash too much will lose to you purely from grabs.
His grab game is strong, but defeatable. The hard part about it is that he has massive range on the grab and your shield is very important to you as an IC player... but if you keep a couple tips in mind, you can probably punish his grabs pretty well.
1) If he grabs Nana, smash him or grab him during lag. You can shield grab his throws if you're in close enough.
2) If he grabs YOU... keep shielding with Nana and have HER shield grab instead. If he throws you anywhere but up, you should recover soon enough to combo off her grab.
His forward+b is really good. Fortunately, the first hit or two are susceptible to crouch canceling. You can get CC'ed grabs if he only decides to do the first hit, or CC into your shield and a shield grab if he keeps going. Remember that the different forward+b's make him move around a lot, so you need to consider where his body goes when he does the different attacks. Sometimes you can grab and the ending animation will pull him or push him out of reach. And they hit in weird places on your shield too, so watch out for that as well.
I also strongly believe that blizzard is one of your best friends. Try and have Nana blizzard from rolls and dodges, have her Nanapult to a) land blizzard hits and b) act as bait that lets you land whatever opener fits the situation.
I don't really have a good method for edgeguarding him, but I'm toying with some weird ideas ATM. I'll post about them if they wind up panning out.
Does this help a little? It's very much a spacing battle and that's hard considering Marth's reach, but I believe it to be winnable.
From Binx:
From nealdt:
Luigi
Watch Out For:
from AZN_LEP
The biggest problem with Luigi isn't his maneuverability with wavedashes, it's his ability to do so many aerials and eat away at your shield. I like choknater's idea of d-airs, but against Luigi, I'd only use d-airs when Luigi is air borne... in between attacks. CC d-smash ***** Nana, and u-air out prioritizes >.< Luckily Luigi is really easy to edge guard, just jump way out with b-airs and interrupt his forward b, and pray for no misfires.
from UMBREON MOW
a smart IC player would know that their shield when combined with their low traction won't help fight luigi's air game at all, and would thus stop trying to shield-*** him. If chu really wanted to beat a luigi player, I would imagine he'd be better off evading air attacks than blocking them and trying to abuse the range of ICs fair and bair on luigi's low air mobility.
Doc
Watch out for:
From choknater:
Don't:
From choknater:
From nealdt:
Do:
From choknater:
Tips:
From choknater:
Ganon
Watch Out For:
From Binx
From Binx
From Binx
From Binx
Fighting Ganon seems like a mix between fighting Falcon and fighting Doc, all of Ganons moves come out fast and have huge knockback but he is also very easy to combo and moves fairly slow compared to most of the cast.
The key to this fight seems to be speed, your much faster than him and you are about as powerful, the difference lies in that you are a snowball and he is a tank, you cant afford to get hit, and he can take hits like no other. Although it seems stacked for Ganon this really isnt the case, patience will lead you to grabs or dash attacks which will both lead you to wins.
Unless chain throwing you want to try and keep ganon above you with dash attacks uairs usmashes and tilts. Usmashes on ganon work amazingly well because he doesn't fly very far from them even at considerable damage.
Ganon is very hard to kill off the stage because of his Wizard Kick renewing his jump if you hit him with a fsmash and he doesnt die immediately from it he often is closer to making it back to the edge without using his up B than he was before. Use this knowledge and the knowledge that it is insanely difficult to sweetspot with ganon's up B and just jab him when he is almost at the edge, he will fall strait down, wait for the up B and keep jabbing, once he does one too early get a fat dsmash on him and this will often time be enough to kill him. Doing a dsmash before he goes to high is risky because then he can tech the hit on the edge and up B over you and its hard to follow up.
Hope this helps.
From Choknator
You want Nana if you're facing Ganon. The problem is, he can easily kill Nana in two hits or even one hit. Desynching is quite useful against him, but it is a great risk because a single fluke means a dead Nana, or worse, a dead Popo. Popo alone can do fine against him, and he can somewhat CG him without Nana, but it's still extremely dangerous. In this matchup, you want to maximize damage on every combo and make sure he dies when you edgeguard him. Fortunately, edgeguarding him is pretty easy.
from Azn_Lep
I'm not sure if I would have put dash attack as a do against Ganon. Pretty much every good Ganon player has realized almost his entire game is retreating f-airs into jabs or more retreating f-airs. Playing against Eddie and some good local Ganons, I can vouch that dash attack isn't really a "do." More often than not they'll dodge the attack and you'll eat a f-air
Peach
Watch Out For:
From Binx
From Binx
From Binx
From Binx
Always expect the worst, be careful not to get dsmashed if you can help it, rarely try to shield grab an aerial because peach can floatcancel and perform a down smash faster than your grab comes out.
As with most characters try and keep peach above you with Up attacks. Down throw up smash can kill peaches at around 100%. Maintain proper spacing, this is important in all match ups but doubly so in this one since peach can punish your mistakes so severely.
Alot of this match is going to be maintaining spacing and position at the middle of the stage, and some luck on how nana chooses to act while you are seperated. Although this fight is disgustingly tough its a lot of fun for me. There is no better way to teach yourself how to play ICs than to fight peach, when you can't afford to make any mistakes you tend to learn not to.
Lastly, there is a lot of focus on her down smash because its so good, so abused and so destructive to the ice climbers, however peach does have other moves and the more she uses down smash the less you will expect other attacks and vice versa. Be wary of all her options, a fair will harm you just as well as a dsmash.
From Wobbles
1) Catch turnips. They completely change the dynamic of Peach's approach against you. If you have them you can just use them to screw up Peach's float and make her land awkwardly, or hand it off to Nana (jump in the air and hit Z to hand it off) for a wavedashing approach. It also makes it easier to stop her turnip approaches if you can catch them consistently.
2) Twin Squall. When she starts hovering at the sweet-spot height -- just above your up-tilts and smashes, but low enough that her aerials will hit you before you can use your own -- move around a bit. Before she can hit you with an aerial.
3) Light shield. Oh God light shield.
4) Master--COMPLETELY MASTER--the ledge-chaingrab in case wobbling is banned. I was able to get completely perfect 0-death chaingrabs on Xelic with it at least once per match. Peaches like to stay near the edges of the level, so this will happen more often than with other characters. I also think she's the easiest to do this against. On that note, you'll also want to practice up-throw up-smash, since maxing out the edge-chaingrab renders d-throw up-smash unusable. The ledge-chaingrab can also be done on platforms, so if you somehow get a tech-chase onto one, use it there too. It will impress Nana.
5) When she lands on the top platforms, your u-air and f-airs are completely safe pokes. For Yoshi's and FoD, poke with full jump u-air. For Battlefield and Dreamland, use full jump u-air. She is unable to hit you with d-smash if you do this. On Yoshi's and FoD, your u-smash also has a good chance to beat/clink with her d-smash on the smaller platforms. Don't jump into her, just smash at her. If it's a clink, you're no worse off.
6) Her jab may be her most difficult to beat attack. It's too fast to punish on whiff and she'd have to be dumb as hell to let you walk up and f-smash her through it. Fortunately, there's a very useful de-sync for setting up Nana's blizzard, which will give you the chance to storm in with a grab, f-air, or smash.
7) Bait using de-synced charge smashes. Charge u-smashes and f-smashes with Nana and you can encourage Peach to attack with a foolish aerial in an attempt to punish, letting you intercept with n-air and u-air; she also may just float away complacently and not notice you leaping in with aerials. This trick works against a lot of people, actually.
8) Watch for turnip pulls. If you can get at a certain distance and predict when the pull will happen, you can punish with a grab. That right there should be a whole stock, since Peaches like to stay at the edge to pull turnips. See # 4
9) On the subject of turnips, you can wavedash d-smash through turnips; you will get hit but Nana will go through. When you're close to Peach and she's holding a turnip she may try to stop you, and wavedashing into the smash will often connect and knock her away while she doesn't DI.
10) Don't use your jab. She'll crouch cancel it. Every time. At later percents (probably 90+) you can f-tilt and her CCs will slam her into the ground. She might even slip off the level and d-air while she falls, giving you a good edge-guard setup. In fact... I just had a crazy idea for an edgeguard against her, but I won't share it until I can confirm it isn't completely ****ing stupid.
10a) You are allowed to jab her when she's holding a turnip. Just be careful that she doesn't throw it and force you to catch it, letting her CC d-smash anyhow.
10b) Your best aerial for preventing CC d-smash is f-air. Once she gets past around 20 percent (assuming you still have Nana with you), CC'ing it will ground her.
11) Go crazy when edgeguarding her. If she's floating low and keeping you from edgehogging, just leap off the level with a fast-falling forward-air. If you spike her, her vertical sucks and gets her killed. If you don't, she'll eat some extra damage and you can still recover with twin-squall hammer.
12) Her b-air is a very spammable move, but she has nothing that can go completely through your blizzard. De-sync lots of blizzards and it will keep her *** out of your face. Jumping blizzard helps you do a bit of extra damage but it's riskier; if she's DI'ing up she can come over your head.
The last thing you have to really remember: Peach is effing hard to punish. A lot of her moves have deceptively low ending lag which gives the illusion they can't be punished. Excluding her jab--which I think IS unpunishable unless she jabs deep into your shield, though that's really stupid--everything can be punished with something. What you want to do is FAKE your punishes. Dash in and sit outside her range, let her dodge or whiff a d-smash, then punish that instead.
This matchup is still stupidly hard since she can camp you like crazy. Your best bet if she's platform camping is to force her to the sides and try to get her really high where your u-airs and squalls can start reaching her.
.Mario
Watch Out For:
from Binx
from Binx
from Binx
from Binx
See do's and don'ts. Seriously though this is a relatively simple fight, if you stay safe, protect nana, be wary of postion and spacing then the fight should go your way most of the time.
Jigglypuff
Watch Out For:
from Binx
from Binx
from Binx
from Binx
This is another match where controlling the center of the stage is very helpful, this will give you time to hit jiggs and save nana from being comboed off the edge. Being in the middle of the stage also lets you have more freedom to DI and get out of combos before they send you off the edge where you are dead meat as well. As always maintain proper spacing. As I mention earlier properly timed forward smashes will win this match for you. The choknator combo is apparently very effective here, I have not tried it myself but I would trust him and the others who have endorsed this. For those of you who have been living under a rock the combo is dthrow nana dair popo dair nana fsmash.
from Wobbles
Watch Out For:
from Binx
from Binx
from Binx
From Delphiki
I find that most Falco's miss their L-cancels against shielding ICs. The double shield lag messes up their timing very often. Any Falco that doesn't have much ICs experience will think they're safe attempting pillars - and they'll get grabbed.
When you get a grab, you have three options:
1) with both Climbers, you can DtDair Falco to death (80-150%, depending on location and DI).
2) with one Climber, you can U-throw into dash attack, U-Smash, U-tilt, or another grab. All of these lead into a Smash if you want. The only way Falco can escape is by you messing up or by jumping. So wait for the jump, then U-air right above the place he hits the button, and you'll intercept with (hopefully) enough time to land and continue. If you manage to get the U-air off into another hit, the Falco will almost surely die. If this proves unsuccesful, you can:
3) D- or B-throw into a techchase. Rinse and repeat.
Just like Samus, powershielding works great, but I'd like to mention that it's possible to powershield a projectile, then have it hit the other Climber. To avoid this you can dash forward before you powershield, putting Popo out front.
A smart Falco will pummel you with lasers or space aerials well and go for grab > F-throw, separating your Climbers and killing one. So be careful blindly sheilding.
Dash attack works wonders if you're looking to approach without a shield, but only with two Climbers (with one Climber, powershielding is much easier, so I advise that) - reason being one climber will take the hit from the laser and the other will continue.
Finally, you can fight fire with fire - pick Falco! x_x Use Ice Blocks (synced) against laser spamming - you shoot two for his one, and each one does about the same amount of damage as a laser. This will force Falco to either approach or take to higher ground, giving you the advantage.
from Binx
Most of this battle will be you trying to trick falco into being grabbed so you can get an easy stock, the trick is to create situations where he wants to act certain ways and take advantage of them when he does. Sway in and out of his sweetspot if you can, powershield lasers or dash dance so nana takes it and you get a free grab(throw and tech chase if they try to escape you wont have enough time for nana to get back and help unless they are above 50% damage). When he full hops go ahead and nail him with a uair, it beats falcos anything and will make him think twice about being up there. Make sure and shield grab or wavedash grab any shielded/missed smashes. If you have succeded in punishing his most used tactics such as laser spam and full jumped aerials then he will be more likely to use them less, this is where his spiral of defeat starts, once he stops lasering so much you can start tricking him with dash dance blizzard grabs, and just dodging his aerials and grabbing. Other than that his recovery is terrible and he is a pretty easy edgeguard.
Good luck it isn't easy.
from Wobbles
I thought I'd just share this as advice for the Falco matchup...
IC's are one of the few characters who can approach through Falco's lasers, for the simple reason that there are two of them. If you wavedash and input a command, you can get free hits while the Falco is landing from his laser.
Here's an example: wavedash towards the Falco into a f-smash. The first laser will hit you, while Nana moves towards Falco still executing the f-smash. You can do this with a grab as well if you're pretty close. You may even be able to execute a dash attack and follow up with a grab. I've been using it against laser spammers and it's worked magnificently.
Yoshi
From Choknator
Honestly, I believe this to be an EXTREMELY deadly matchup for those who don't have the experience. And it's very likely that you don't. There are very little Yoshi mains out there, slim to none. Yoshi secondaries are rare; he's not a popular low tier to pick up. No jumping out of shields? Poor special moves? Bad grab?
Don't let any of that fool you.
Since I wrote up a guide to fighting Doc through my experience with HomeMadeWaffles, I find it only fitting that I should also write a guide to fighting Yoshi through my experience with Park5150. They are both my former crew members and both incredibly well-versed in fighting IC's. (e.g. they totally demolish every other IC player in my region, and I totally demolish other people who use their characters.)
So here's why Yoshi can **** Ice Climbers. You might not believe your ears or your eyes. Maybe Park and I should record some new videos. He has beaten my IC's with Yoshi each time that we played each other in tournaments, forcing me to counter pick with Sheik/Falcon.
What to watch out for:
It's hard to explain this matchup in words without experiencing it yourself. For most of you Ice Climbers players out there, it's probably not gonna happen. But in case some godly Yoshi pops out of the depths of the tournament scene, you'll be ready.
The only tip I can give you for IC vs Yoshi is get a lot of experience. I know exactly how to counter Yoshi with any character, but with some chars (IC, Mewtwo, Pikachu, etc.) it's straight up impossible. If y'all can figure something out for me, it'd be greatly appreciated.
Mewtwo
special thanks to Vts for
Watch out for:
From Choknater
Mewtwo has nothing on IC's
just one of those matchups (like mario... young link) where you can wd grab/wd fsmash rock paper scissors the whole game and just **** hard
From Wobbles
Ice Climbers
Watch out for:
From Binx
In general stay below Ice Climbers, be prepared to crouch cancel jabs and dairs into your own smashes. Expect most Ice Climbers to wavedash into smash attacks, if you predict these you can forward smash them out of these, if they fake you out by dash dancing or something first though you will eat a smash yourself during your recovery lag. Wavedash forward tilt can be an effective weapon in this match up
Make sure to gimp Nana as often and brutally as possible to open up chain throws vs solo popo as well as cut your opponents recovery options and damage output in half.
Obviously this advice goes both ways, try not to let any of this happen to you ^_^
From Kyu Puff
Your grab game is devastating if you manage to grab the other Popo. Nana automatically throws away whoever she grabs, leaving the other IC at your disposal.
D-throw u-smash, or u-throw f-smash, to send Popo away can buy you enough time to kill Nana provided she isn't close enough to interfere.
Fair also beats dsmash (its less laggy than fsmash too so it's probably safer - Binx)
Link
Watch Out For:
Don't:
Tips:
from Binx
Watch Out For:
from Binx
This will be a cooperative effort between all members of the IC community. ICs aren't played enough to have discovered every tactic that we can use, as time goes on we will constantly be looking to add new effective tactics to this compendium.
If you have experience in any matchup, or trouble with any matchup then you can feel free to post a question here, how do I beat such and such move, series of moves, whatever. And on the other side of the coin feel free to answer other members questions or feel free to find the answers to your own problem moves and share them with the rest of us so we can add it.
Look at how far we have come as a community since August of 2007 when I first started this guide, we now have solid information and tips vs 16/26 members of the cast, we have all of the trouble characters covered and most of the awkward matches. I never dreamed that this guide would get so detailed and I just wanted to say I am really proud to be an Ice Climber main ^_^
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Completed Characters
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Fox
Sheik
Falcon
Samus
Marth
Luigi
Doc
Ganon
Peach
Mario
Jiggs
Falco
Yoshi
Mewtwo
Ice Climbers
Link
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Completed Characters
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Fox
Sheik
Falcon
Samus
Marth
Luigi
Doc
Ganon
Peach
Mario
Jiggs
Falco
Yoshi
Mewtwo
Ice Climbers
Link
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Watch out for:
- Shines, your low traction causes these to send you very far, on a smaller level this can mean you and nana off the edge, I almost always end up DIing back to avoid a second shine and using by foward b to get on the stage, this often leaves nana hanging onto the edge where she is summarily shine spiked.
- Up Smashes, Fox's up smash is very fast, if you block to late it will hit nana due to the 6 frame lag she has in copying your actions, even if you do block this the timing is very strict for a wavedash grab.
- Don't throw smashes here that your arent relatively sure will hit, Fox is very fast and can get to you and shine you or grab and forward throw you very quickly.
- Don't roll very much, fox is very fast and will hit you out of a roll.
- Don't spot dodge to desynch when he is close by, fox is very fast and will hit you out of a spot dodge. Screw around near the edge unless you're edgeguarding him, spam your smash attacks, up-tilt or dash-attack unless you're certain it will connect
- Use lots of jabs.
- Try and predict Fox's full jumps and intercept them early with up-air.
- Dash dance into grabs to get killing combos.
From Wobbles the Phoenix:
"Here's pretty much what I know about fighting Fox: bear in mind that I'm not really the expert here. I've had success fighting him, but there are some things about fighting him that really irk me and I'm still not entirely sure how to get around. I also want to offer a piece of advice to all the IC players out there, which is STOP SMASHING SO MUCH. You have a basic heads or tails mindgame between smashing and grabbing; smashes are stopped with shields, grabs are stopped with... well, everything else. The more you mix them up, the more both of them land. And when you have an opening for a smash, consider doing a grab instead; it gets you a smash, chaingrab, infinite... whatever you pick, it's better than an isolated smash.
With that in mind...
The deadliest thing about this matchup is the shine. As Binx mentioned already, your six frame delay makes it very difficult to keep Nana safe from his faster moves. The shine, being the fastest move in the game, is vicious in that it sends you far and splits you up. I have also been legitimately combo'd by a shine off the stage into a second shine that killed me. It is his best move, and you should expect him to abuse it accordingly.
Fighting Fox is a lot like a weird rock-paper-scissors game. His basic options are; staying on the ground, short hopping, and full jumping, and each option has a few sets of counters.
If the Fox is shffl'ing aerials, you have a few options for stopping him in his tracks. One is dash dancing into grabs; even though it splits Nana up, you have decent combo options off up-throw, and it's still possible tech-chase with down-throw and back-throw. If he is at a high percent, you can wait for Nana to return before using a finisher combo. The other strong defense against his SHFFL offensive is retreating wavedashes into jabs. They come out quickly, and do very well to interrupt his n-air and d-air. Jabbing won't beat a shine, but it's faster and safer than a smash. It can lead into grabs and smashes, and you should use them frequently.
Also, and this is rare, but sometimes a Fox anticipates you to move around and SHFFL at the spot directly in front of you. I have KO'ed enemies with forward smashes by guessing this was going to happen; the f-smash hits them as they DI down for the fastfall and you earn an early KO. Just remember, your smashes have a lot of reach and priority, and if you don't abuse them they make excellent surprise weapons. Don't abuse them and they will connect more often.
The next option Fox will probably use are full jumped aerials. These are almost universally stoppable with up-air, which combos well. Dash dancing into grab works a lot here as well, simply because if he's throwing out an aerial, he pretty much has to land within a set area; that lets you space and predict much more easily. The basic mindgame here is this: will Fox attack, or will he double jump? And once he's double jumped, you ask yourself: will he retreat, or fall down and attack now? He can further confuse his intentions with jump-canceled shines. It's basic, but this simple guessing game is at the heart of almost every smash situation.
With that said, your goal when he full jumps is either to 1) do nothing and let him mess around in the air however he wants, or 2) intercept with up-airs. Up-airs lead to more up-airs, sometimes grabs, sometimes back-airs.
When he's landing, you want to connect with grabs, or you can try and time a dash attack to punish his lag. Dash attacks lead into either more dash attacks, grabs, or smashes.
That sums up a lot of the battle with Fox, but here are some other pointers:
His up-smash is incredibly hard to punish out of your shield, so unless you're really confident, don't go for it.
His forward-smash can only be shield grabbed or punished from shield if he hits with the very start of it, deep against your shield. His down-smash is much more punishable, however.
He can connect with grabs and up-throw up-air from a shine if he's fast enough; be ready to DI when you get shined.
His back-air is insanely difficult to punish because of its range. It has the most landing lag of his aerials apart from f-air, however, so your best option is probably spacing a forward-smash against it. I believe you can grab if you anticipate the b-air and wavedash grab with really good timing; just remember that b-air has a lot of range and priority.
That's all I can think of at the moment."
With that in mind...
The deadliest thing about this matchup is the shine. As Binx mentioned already, your six frame delay makes it very difficult to keep Nana safe from his faster moves. The shine, being the fastest move in the game, is vicious in that it sends you far and splits you up. I have also been legitimately combo'd by a shine off the stage into a second shine that killed me. It is his best move, and you should expect him to abuse it accordingly.
Fighting Fox is a lot like a weird rock-paper-scissors game. His basic options are; staying on the ground, short hopping, and full jumping, and each option has a few sets of counters.
If the Fox is shffl'ing aerials, you have a few options for stopping him in his tracks. One is dash dancing into grabs; even though it splits Nana up, you have decent combo options off up-throw, and it's still possible tech-chase with down-throw and back-throw. If he is at a high percent, you can wait for Nana to return before using a finisher combo. The other strong defense against his SHFFL offensive is retreating wavedashes into jabs. They come out quickly, and do very well to interrupt his n-air and d-air. Jabbing won't beat a shine, but it's faster and safer than a smash. It can lead into grabs and smashes, and you should use them frequently.
Also, and this is rare, but sometimes a Fox anticipates you to move around and SHFFL at the spot directly in front of you. I have KO'ed enemies with forward smashes by guessing this was going to happen; the f-smash hits them as they DI down for the fastfall and you earn an early KO. Just remember, your smashes have a lot of reach and priority, and if you don't abuse them they make excellent surprise weapons. Don't abuse them and they will connect more often.
The next option Fox will probably use are full jumped aerials. These are almost universally stoppable with up-air, which combos well. Dash dancing into grab works a lot here as well, simply because if he's throwing out an aerial, he pretty much has to land within a set area; that lets you space and predict much more easily. The basic mindgame here is this: will Fox attack, or will he double jump? And once he's double jumped, you ask yourself: will he retreat, or fall down and attack now? He can further confuse his intentions with jump-canceled shines. It's basic, but this simple guessing game is at the heart of almost every smash situation.
With that said, your goal when he full jumps is either to 1) do nothing and let him mess around in the air however he wants, or 2) intercept with up-airs. Up-airs lead to more up-airs, sometimes grabs, sometimes back-airs.
When he's landing, you want to connect with grabs, or you can try and time a dash attack to punish his lag. Dash attacks lead into either more dash attacks, grabs, or smashes.
That sums up a lot of the battle with Fox, but here are some other pointers:
His up-smash is incredibly hard to punish out of your shield, so unless you're really confident, don't go for it.
His forward-smash can only be shield grabbed or punished from shield if he hits with the very start of it, deep against your shield. His down-smash is much more punishable, however.
He can connect with grabs and up-throw up-air from a shine if he's fast enough; be ready to DI when you get shined.
His back-air is insanely difficult to punish because of its range. It has the most landing lag of his aerials apart from f-air, however, so your best option is probably spacing a forward-smash against it. I believe you can grab if you anticipate the b-air and wavedash grab with really good timing; just remember that b-air has a lot of range and priority.
That's all I can think of at the moment."
From Kyu Puff:
"if you DI shines away, the stun ends before Fox can hit you again, so if he tries to follow it up you can punish him. If you're close to the edge of the stage, you can grab the ledge either if you crouch cancel the shine or fastfall right as you tumble off the stage. The latter can be pretty dangerous, though, because if you miss the timing you're in a terrible position."
Sheik
Watch Out For:
- Tilts, Forward tilt and downtilt can set you up for more tilts and then a...
- F-air or slap as some call it, this move is deadly and outprioritizes your forward b if timed well.
- Do NOT under ANY circumstances leave nana alone for a second. Nana does NOT DI at all and she will be forward tilted and faired off the edge she will die and half your damage WILL die with her.
From Cablepuff
- Don't let her eat your shield away with fair. Instead you can wavedash under her and up smash or approach under her with up-air or nair
- Crouch cancel at low percents, sheik players are not used to this and against her this can lead to a free grab.
- Chain throw when you can. D-throw, d-throw d-air, and d-throw d-smash all work great.
- be reactive and cautious. It is very true that an offensive Sheik is very dangerous to ICs and you wanna keep them synched for the sake of chain grabbing her, which is ridiculously easy. Sheik is one of those characters you really need to grab, because she can be chain grabbed by both ICs and even just Popo to very high percents. Constant hopping fairs and well-placed needles will prevent grabs. WD usmash and shffl uairs will help to get around this.
Tips:
From HoChiMinhTrail
When fighting sheiks you should resort to counter fighting. Her tilts and airs have priority over yours except in rare instances. You have to attack during her openings. Sheik's most vulnerable times are when she is in the air or after her smashes. Whiffed smashes obviously should always be punished by wavedash to smash or grab. The strat that most sheiks adopt is shuffling fairs to tilts or jabs, effectively spacing the ic. The only problem with this strat is the fact that even when short hopping she jumps too high. This blaring weakness allows u to jump in with up airs or fly under her with your up smashes or up tilts with no risk. I am undefeated vs sheik players in tournie, I've played some of the best(lol pwn that ginger drephen all day LAWL). This is not due to me being amazing at this game, but because of the realization of this simple yet extremely effective strategy against sheik. It's free damage when she is in the air. You cut her air game and she is forced to play a more risky ground based game vs you where the climbers can throw their weight around.
From Binx:
"Make sure and jump cancel your grabs when you are chain throwing with popo and waiting for nana, if you miss and nana regrabs it can be difficult to follow up, what I do when this does happen though is wavedash in front of her and hope for a down throw or forward throw so I can usmash or fsmash depending on precent, if she up throws you will have time to jump and bair once, if she backthrows you have a tech chase opportunity, this will cover most of your bases. Nana can be used as a shield in this matchup, if you expect a needle barrage you can dash towards then away and nana will take the brunt, if you are close by you get a free grab opportunity after this."
Falcon
Watch Out For:
From Choknator:
"The Knee. Apart from that, every single one of his aerials is a combo starter, and Falcon is known to be one of the fastest Nana-killers there is, rivalled only perhaps by Ganon and Fox. A couple knees or uairs and Nana is dead. And unfortunately, solo Popo is not gonna cut it in this matchup. You want to keep Nana alive as much as possible, so focus as much as you can on spacing, since Falcon's sporadic movement can be hard to follow if you're being too aggressive. This matchup is **** or be *****, so don't put yourself in a position to be Knee'd.
Falcon's grabs can also be dangerous. His dthrow, and possible his fthrow and uthrow, can easily separate the two, allowing easy knees.
Remember that Falcon's knee will control his side of the matchup. It's possible that Falcon can even dominate using only knees. But all hope is not lost... Grab combos will brutally damage him, and edgeguarding his is simple."
Falcon's grabs can also be dangerous. His dthrow, and possible his fthrow and uthrow, can easily separate the two, allowing easy knees.
Remember that Falcon's knee will control his side of the matchup. It's possible that Falcon can even dominate using only knees. But all hope is not lost... Grab combos will brutally damage him, and edgeguarding his is simple."
Don't:
From Choknator:
"Don't try to grab too much. You should only grab when totally necessary, especially when grab = kill. Otherwise, Falcon is too fast to be grabbed.
People get the general idea that IC are a grab-based character, which is very untrue in certain matchups, i.e. Falcon, Marth, and Luigi where aerials can be spammed so quickly that sometimes there is no opening for a grab. Substitute dash attacks, wavesmashes, fairs, and jabs into the approach just to mix it up, and don't ever miss. A smart Falcon will try to avoid your grab at all costs, and as a Falcon secondary myself... it's not very difficult. It IS difficult, however, to escape combos started by tech chases or dash attacks.
Don't roll, tech, or dodge predictably. If you repeat a movement, the weary Falcon players will catch it and abuse it. I understand they are great escape tools, but sometimes Falcon's empty shorthops and purposely missed aerials are only tricks to make you roll/dodge into your own death.
Don't desynch.... excessively. A desynch here or there is fine, but think about how Falcon moves. He runs and jumps all over the place, so it's unlikely that blocks and blizzards will ever hit him. Perhaps only close range smash/grabbing desynchs should be used, if ever."
People get the general idea that IC are a grab-based character, which is very untrue in certain matchups, i.e. Falcon, Marth, and Luigi where aerials can be spammed so quickly that sometimes there is no opening for a grab. Substitute dash attacks, wavesmashes, fairs, and jabs into the approach just to mix it up, and don't ever miss. A smart Falcon will try to avoid your grab at all costs, and as a Falcon secondary myself... it's not very difficult. It IS difficult, however, to escape combos started by tech chases or dash attacks.
Don't roll, tech, or dodge predictably. If you repeat a movement, the weary Falcon players will catch it and abuse it. I understand they are great escape tools, but sometimes Falcon's empty shorthops and purposely missed aerials are only tricks to make you roll/dodge into your own death.
Don't desynch.... excessively. A desynch here or there is fine, but think about how Falcon moves. He runs and jumps all over the place, so it's unlikely that blocks and blizzards will ever hit him. Perhaps only close range smash/grabbing desynchs should be used, if ever."
Do:
From Choknator:
"Dash attack! As I mentioned before, this move is a totally killer combo starter against Falcon. It's actually quite difficult to punish if you space it correctly, and it comes out so fast horizontally that Falcon's spacing skills can be nullified by its reach. If Falcon doesn't DI, it could be a free grab or uair, depending on percentage. If Falcon does DI, you can do another dash attack. Though it may be a bad move in some matchups (like certain floaties), it's awesome for Falcon.
Reverse dair chaingrab. According to azn_lep, it should be inescapable if you don't mess up. It's the best way to rack up damage and set up easy deaths. Most of the time, you should always mix up your grab combos... but if you're under pressure, the reverse dair will work wonders considering how easy it is to do. (remember to use c-stick for the dair, it's easier.)"
Reverse dair chaingrab. According to azn_lep, it should be inescapable if you don't mess up. It's the best way to rack up damage and set up easy deaths. Most of the time, you should always mix up your grab combos... but if you're under pressure, the reverse dair will work wonders considering how easy it is to do. (remember to use c-stick for the dair, it's easier.)"
Tips:
From Wobbles
Awesome Falcon Post Link
remember that because of Falcon's ground speed, he usually has to aim his knee pretty far in advance of actually connecting it. He has to judge your movement, his own, and put them together, and given that ICs wavedash gives them lots of bursty movement it's actually tough for Falcon.
For me, the single most important part of playing ICs has become their movement. Your job is never to wavedash or dash the distance they expect, and never at a time they expect. Stutter your movement by braking with your shield, then wavedashing out of it at weird times. Don't be afraid to sit in your shield doing nothing in the middle of the level; it confuses people. It says to them, "I am defensive right now," even though your wavedash quickly makes you offensive. It lets you roll away if you don't like the other guy's spacing or options too, which means de-sync'ed blizzard which, for a moment, walls off Falcon's (and most other characters') approach.
The benefits of rolling away a lot are pretty vast. As long as the other guy isn't too close, it's completely safe. Because it is punishable under certain circumstances, particularly for characters with good ground speed, it taunts them into saying, "you should have seen this coming, come and get me." Then you don't roll, you n-air out of shield, or you wavedash forward into a smash, or you bait them into running straight at you and grab blindly.
If you want to beat characters with better spacing, speed, and control, you have to get them to forget for a moment where you *are* by conditioning them into thinking they know where you *will be.* Those kind of assumptions absolutely murder one's attention and reflexes--it's a very large part of my game and it's a big reason why so many of my KOs are poorly DI'ed smashes at low percent.
I spent a few hours playing Darkrain the other day and I'm of the opinion that against Falcon you should, 95% of the time, be facing backwards. Good Falcons don't get shieldgrabbed so that's not really an issue, your b-air out of shield works 100% of the time against his forward+b, and since your D-smash starts behind you that's faster as well.
I'm not going to be happy until ICs that aren't me start jumping off the level to edgeguard more. Seriously, you guys just wait on the level, it's really boring.
I like leaping off the level with f-airs and n-airs at people, double jumping into the next aerial (usually n-air) and then forward+b'ing back. Works best against Falco since you can get him from almost any position, and gimping him when he goes low is a good way to force him to forward+b more.
For Falcon I like getting out there and beating him up if he's anywhere above the edge, particularly on non-FD levels. Just leap out and n-air, force him farther out and then do like you said with holding the edge and waiting.
remember that because of Falcon's ground speed, he usually has to aim his knee pretty far in advance of actually connecting it. He has to judge your movement, his own, and put them together, and given that ICs wavedash gives them lots of bursty movement it's actually tough for Falcon.
For me, the single most important part of playing ICs has become their movement. Your job is never to wavedash or dash the distance they expect, and never at a time they expect. Stutter your movement by braking with your shield, then wavedashing out of it at weird times. Don't be afraid to sit in your shield doing nothing in the middle of the level; it confuses people. It says to them, "I am defensive right now," even though your wavedash quickly makes you offensive. It lets you roll away if you don't like the other guy's spacing or options too, which means de-sync'ed blizzard which, for a moment, walls off Falcon's (and most other characters') approach.
The benefits of rolling away a lot are pretty vast. As long as the other guy isn't too close, it's completely safe. Because it is punishable under certain circumstances, particularly for characters with good ground speed, it taunts them into saying, "you should have seen this coming, come and get me." Then you don't roll, you n-air out of shield, or you wavedash forward into a smash, or you bait them into running straight at you and grab blindly.
If you want to beat characters with better spacing, speed, and control, you have to get them to forget for a moment where you *are* by conditioning them into thinking they know where you *will be.* Those kind of assumptions absolutely murder one's attention and reflexes--it's a very large part of my game and it's a big reason why so many of my KOs are poorly DI'ed smashes at low percent.
I spent a few hours playing Darkrain the other day and I'm of the opinion that against Falcon you should, 95% of the time, be facing backwards. Good Falcons don't get shieldgrabbed so that's not really an issue, your b-air out of shield works 100% of the time against his forward+b, and since your D-smash starts behind you that's faster as well.
I'm not going to be happy until ICs that aren't me start jumping off the level to edgeguard more. Seriously, you guys just wait on the level, it's really boring.
I like leaping off the level with f-airs and n-airs at people, double jumping into the next aerial (usually n-air) and then forward+b'ing back. Works best against Falco since you can get him from almost any position, and gimping him when he goes low is a good way to force him to forward+b more.
For Falcon I like getting out there and beating him up if he's anywhere above the edge, particularly on non-FD levels. Just leap out and n-air, force him farther out and then do like you said with holding the edge and waiting.
From Choknator:
"FYI, Silentspectre tends to recover very high when I play him, as high as he can possibly use up-B. It makes it difficult to predict where to smash him. He may go behind you, or do hard backwards DI and go back to the ledge while you tried to follow him toward mid-stage. Either that, or he sweetspots the ledge and attempts to wall-tech. Falcon's recovery SHOULD be predictable, but be very weary as to where he's DI-ing during his comeback.
As solo popo, play as gimpy as possible. Stick close to the ground, because Falcon's uair will demolish you if you're on a platform. Use dthrow chaingrabs and/or combos, **** him with tech chases, and if necessary, stay by the edge to lure him into a gimp. Solo Popo is a strong edge guarder, so all hope is not lost if you lose Nana.
Regardless, solo popo usually gets ***** lol. You have no choice but to play your absolute best in that situation. Also, FD is your friend. Platforms are your enemy.
the greatest video reference example for this matchup: Azen vs Chudat"
As solo popo, play as gimpy as possible. Stick close to the ground, because Falcon's uair will demolish you if you're on a platform. Use dthrow chaingrabs and/or combos, **** him with tech chases, and if necessary, stay by the edge to lure him into a gimp. Solo Popo is a strong edge guarder, so all hope is not lost if you lose Nana.
Regardless, solo popo usually gets ***** lol. You have no choice but to play your absolute best in that situation. Also, FD is your friend. Platforms are your enemy.
the greatest video reference example for this matchup: Azen vs Chudat"
From Wobbles the Phoenix:
"Falcon is tough because you can't play your normal shield game against him. I found that intercepting his aerials using your own can work wonders; since he's most likely to approach with knees and stomps, you can catch him out of those with n-air. You will probably lose a priority war against Falcon's own n-air, but that's the risk you take. Fortunately, his n-air is easily defeatable with up-tilts and up-smashes, so you've got a simple guessing game to play.
An annoying tactic Falcons like to use is repeated forward+b. It sends you too far to shield grab most of the time--I'm not sure why it sometimes lets you grab him, but whatever--so I like to wavedash out of my shield into jab. It usually wins. Again, I'm not sure why. The obvious mix up is if he forward+b's then jabs you. If you think this is habit instead, just shield grab the jabs. Again, another basic guessing game.
Falcon's best passive option is his roll, since his spot dodge is garbage. Any time you know he's going to take a passive option, such as when you jab him and want to grab or smash afterwards, odds are it's going to be a roll. Be prepared to take advantage of this.
Don't fight his d-air with up-air; his move will probably win.
Don't fight his up-air with d-air; he will probably win again.
You are best off never shield grabbing a Falcon unless he severely screws up an up-air or neutral-air; his other aerials are basically unpunishable.
Falcon has an interesting method to his short hop aerials; because of his ground speed, he has to aim them from far away. This means that he can't adjust his spacing when he's in the middle of the move. What THAT means is he will try to predict where you plan to dash or wavedash next. The result is that you cannot have patterns to your movement. This is the case against a lot of players, but especially against Falcon. Most IC's like to wavedash back and forth repeatedly, and if the Falcon has any experience against IC's he probably knows. Mix up your wavedashes with dash dances and wavedashes in place; predict the timing on his approach and go somewhere else. That's pretty much what it's all about.
His platform game can be very scary and unpredictable. My advice is not to screw around with him when he's playing with platforms unless you're **** sure you're going to connect."
An annoying tactic Falcons like to use is repeated forward+b. It sends you too far to shield grab most of the time--I'm not sure why it sometimes lets you grab him, but whatever--so I like to wavedash out of my shield into jab. It usually wins. Again, I'm not sure why. The obvious mix up is if he forward+b's then jabs you. If you think this is habit instead, just shield grab the jabs. Again, another basic guessing game.
Falcon's best passive option is his roll, since his spot dodge is garbage. Any time you know he's going to take a passive option, such as when you jab him and want to grab or smash afterwards, odds are it's going to be a roll. Be prepared to take advantage of this.
Don't fight his d-air with up-air; his move will probably win.
Don't fight his up-air with d-air; he will probably win again.
You are best off never shield grabbing a Falcon unless he severely screws up an up-air or neutral-air; his other aerials are basically unpunishable.
Falcon has an interesting method to his short hop aerials; because of his ground speed, he has to aim them from far away. This means that he can't adjust his spacing when he's in the middle of the move. What THAT means is he will try to predict where you plan to dash or wavedash next. The result is that you cannot have patterns to your movement. This is the case against a lot of players, but especially against Falcon. Most IC's like to wavedash back and forth repeatedly, and if the Falcon has any experience against IC's he probably knows. Mix up your wavedashes with dash dances and wavedashes in place; predict the timing on his approach and go somewhere else. That's pretty much what it's all about.
His platform game can be very scary and unpredictable. My advice is not to screw around with him when he's playing with platforms unless you're **** sure you're going to connect."
Samus
Watch Out For:
- Missiles; they can really screw Nana, as she will walk straight into them if she's desynched, and the 6-frame lag between your shield and hers means she'll get hit by a lot of explosions if you're late in shielding.
- Forward tilt and forward smash have good range and speed.
- Umm wavedash off the ledge and airdodge yourself to death
- Be patient and wait for the right moments to interupt her missiles with iceblocks. Block missiles from hitting nana in someway, crouch cancel, shield or just tilt them. Try and help nana make it back to the edge, if samus has a charged shot be wary of you shield cause you dont want it breaking to save nana. Dodge missiles while recovering.
Tips:
From Wobbles the Phoenix:
"Binx speaks truth about the iceblocks; if you jump when you fire them and time them right, you can hit a missile and break it with the first iceblock while the second goes through. The only thing to watch out for is if Samus missile cancels then moves in on you while you're vulnerable and in the air. Also, a charge shot will completely vaporize the iceblocks. Since you can't move after you've fired one, you're a sitting duck. It's worth being careful about.
One of the biggest problems you will have in this matchup comes from Nana's inability to DI. You are most likely, on the ground, to get hit by a down-tilt or down-smash, while in the air you will probably get f-airedor u-aired. Any DI you have will NOT be mimicked by Nana, which means it's easy for you two to get split up.
That's only the first part of the bad news. The second part is that if Samus just spams missiles while Nana is split up, she WILL hit her. Your best option would be to angle f-tilts and knock them down, CC them for Nana until she's back with you, or light shield them so the explosion doesn't connect with her.
You can punish Samus' laggier moves from shield with well timed wavedashes out of shield. If she f-smashes and you shield, you can enjoy a free grab if you're fast.
Use the 3D--Double Direction Downsmash--if you think she's going to sidestep a lot. Here's some frame data to tell you why; if you don't like frame data, then just trust me that you improve your chances of hitting Samus by doing it.
To do a 3D, wavedash in facing forwards. Hold opposite the direction you're facing and d-smash as soon as possible. You will down-smash facing backwards, but Nana will down-smash facing forwards. This is a useful trick because your down-smash starts behind you and ends in front, meaning the front hit is delayed. This helps YOUR down-smash come out faster, and Nana's come out later. This spreads out the attack and, in a sense, makes it last longer. On to the data.
Samus' sidestep has 13 frames of invulnerability with 7 frames of vulnerability afterwards.
The IC's down-smash comes out on frame 6 and ends on frame 11.
Nana has a delay of 6 frames.
So, your d-smash will come out on frame 6. Nana's will be delayed by 6 more, and last for another 5. This means that your attack is lasting for essentially 11 frames. This is not normally the case--usually you are facing only one direction, so half of the down-smash misses out on the fun. With a 3D, you cover both sides.
An 11 frame attack versus a 13 frame spot dodge. Your odds of connecting against a dodging Samus with this trick are MASSIVELY increased compared to a normal spot dodge.
The trick does have a weakness, however, and it comes from hitting Samus with the very tip of your d-smash. If you do that, you will be putting a great deal of time between your hit and Nana's, and both hits will only have one or two frames to connect (which isn't much).
So if you attack on frame 2 of the spot dodge, your 11 frame attack will end by Samus' 13th frame of invulnerability. That means you missed.
If you attack on frame 7 of Samus' dodge and only reach with the tip, then you will connect on frame 13, when she is invulnerable, then Nana will connect 11 frames later, when she can shield or dodge again. Of course, if the Samus tried to attack, odds are Nana would hit her first, so you're still pretty good on that score. It's nice to know, however, that if you don't reach with the tip, you have even more leeway, so NORMALLY this trick is pretty good.
Here's the shortened explanation for the tl;dr'ers. Doing a 3D makes your downsmash last longer and more likely to hit Samus' dodge, which a lot of Samus players like to use.
But wait, there's more.
Samus' f-tilt is an incredibly potent move, and is one of the most annoying things to fight. I think I have a solution for beating it though, and it's a particularly vicious one at that.
Of course, it only works at low percents because what you're doing is CC'ing the f-tilt into a grab. If you do that successfully, you just might get a stock out of a CC'ed move. It works really well against Sheik's f-tilt as well. A lot better, actually, since Sheik's f-tilt wants to send you up while Samus' sends you out. CC'ing Samus' at later percents knocks you over or slides you too far.
Be careful about light shielding on platforms; when you're knocked off, you hit the ground in free fall, which can leave you open to tech chases and fast attacks.
Against characters that outrange IC's, I'm a big fan of using jumping blizzards to build percent and then force them to approach where you can use your advantageous shield game; this doesn't really work against Samus unless she's in the air--which she rarely is--because she can CC into d-smash and d-tilt. In fact, she can do that to almost all of your moves. F-air is the best option against this, but you have to watch out for up-tilt, since THAT outranges you as well.
Short hop f-air is a really good move, but only for defeating her d-smash. It will hop over the tip, and if you're DI'ing in afterwards you can fast fall it and shield; if you slam her into the ground, you can tech chase, and if you pop her up you can wavedash out and chase with up-airs.
You're at your strongest against Samus when she's above you. If she's on a platform, abuse your up-air because it's your safest move. Also note that with a full jumped up-air, you can hit through the platforms of Yoshi's Story, Dreamland, FoD, and Pokemon Stadium's Grass and Water formations. I don't know if it works on Battlefield though, and I don't have a memory card right now so I can't check
Anyhow, use that knowledge to your advantage if--for whatever reason--any character tries platform camping. On Dreamland especially, since only the very tip of your hammer peeks through. This means nobody can beat you in priority, since it spaces for you perfectly.
I recommend if you're going to full jump up-air that you use the c-stick; it lets you keep your horizontal momentum more (so you cover more range) and you don't risk double jumping into CC'ed moves or d-airs or whatever.
Another powerful trick is the platform chain grab, which works especially well against floaties. Down-throw beneath a platform, wait for them to tech on the platforms above you, and then waveland into another grab. Use this opportunity to charge up-smashes and then d-throw, and you can KO earlier than normal. MAKE SURE YOU CHARGE THE UP SMASH, or you might accidentally have Nana fall through the platform when you down-throw.
Uhh... Ice-blocks are your friend, watch out for up-tilt, and that's all I got."
One of the biggest problems you will have in this matchup comes from Nana's inability to DI. You are most likely, on the ground, to get hit by a down-tilt or down-smash, while in the air you will probably get f-airedor u-aired. Any DI you have will NOT be mimicked by Nana, which means it's easy for you two to get split up.
That's only the first part of the bad news. The second part is that if Samus just spams missiles while Nana is split up, she WILL hit her. Your best option would be to angle f-tilts and knock them down, CC them for Nana until she's back with you, or light shield them so the explosion doesn't connect with her.
You can punish Samus' laggier moves from shield with well timed wavedashes out of shield. If she f-smashes and you shield, you can enjoy a free grab if you're fast.
Use the 3D--Double Direction Downsmash--if you think she's going to sidestep a lot. Here's some frame data to tell you why; if you don't like frame data, then just trust me that you improve your chances of hitting Samus by doing it.
To do a 3D, wavedash in facing forwards. Hold opposite the direction you're facing and d-smash as soon as possible. You will down-smash facing backwards, but Nana will down-smash facing forwards. This is a useful trick because your down-smash starts behind you and ends in front, meaning the front hit is delayed. This helps YOUR down-smash come out faster, and Nana's come out later. This spreads out the attack and, in a sense, makes it last longer. On to the data.
Samus' sidestep has 13 frames of invulnerability with 7 frames of vulnerability afterwards.
The IC's down-smash comes out on frame 6 and ends on frame 11.
Nana has a delay of 6 frames.
So, your d-smash will come out on frame 6. Nana's will be delayed by 6 more, and last for another 5. This means that your attack is lasting for essentially 11 frames. This is not normally the case--usually you are facing only one direction, so half of the down-smash misses out on the fun. With a 3D, you cover both sides.
An 11 frame attack versus a 13 frame spot dodge. Your odds of connecting against a dodging Samus with this trick are MASSIVELY increased compared to a normal spot dodge.
The trick does have a weakness, however, and it comes from hitting Samus with the very tip of your d-smash. If you do that, you will be putting a great deal of time between your hit and Nana's, and both hits will only have one or two frames to connect (which isn't much).
So if you attack on frame 2 of the spot dodge, your 11 frame attack will end by Samus' 13th frame of invulnerability. That means you missed.
If you attack on frame 7 of Samus' dodge and only reach with the tip, then you will connect on frame 13, when she is invulnerable, then Nana will connect 11 frames later, when she can shield or dodge again. Of course, if the Samus tried to attack, odds are Nana would hit her first, so you're still pretty good on that score. It's nice to know, however, that if you don't reach with the tip, you have even more leeway, so NORMALLY this trick is pretty good.
Here's the shortened explanation for the tl;dr'ers. Doing a 3D makes your downsmash last longer and more likely to hit Samus' dodge, which a lot of Samus players like to use.
But wait, there's more.
Samus' f-tilt is an incredibly potent move, and is one of the most annoying things to fight. I think I have a solution for beating it though, and it's a particularly vicious one at that.
Of course, it only works at low percents because what you're doing is CC'ing the f-tilt into a grab. If you do that successfully, you just might get a stock out of a CC'ed move. It works really well against Sheik's f-tilt as well. A lot better, actually, since Sheik's f-tilt wants to send you up while Samus' sends you out. CC'ing Samus' at later percents knocks you over or slides you too far.
Be careful about light shielding on platforms; when you're knocked off, you hit the ground in free fall, which can leave you open to tech chases and fast attacks.
Against characters that outrange IC's, I'm a big fan of using jumping blizzards to build percent and then force them to approach where you can use your advantageous shield game; this doesn't really work against Samus unless she's in the air--which she rarely is--because she can CC into d-smash and d-tilt. In fact, she can do that to almost all of your moves. F-air is the best option against this, but you have to watch out for up-tilt, since THAT outranges you as well.
Short hop f-air is a really good move, but only for defeating her d-smash. It will hop over the tip, and if you're DI'ing in afterwards you can fast fall it and shield; if you slam her into the ground, you can tech chase, and if you pop her up you can wavedash out and chase with up-airs.
You're at your strongest against Samus when she's above you. If she's on a platform, abuse your up-air because it's your safest move. Also note that with a full jumped up-air, you can hit through the platforms of Yoshi's Story, Dreamland, FoD, and Pokemon Stadium's Grass and Water formations. I don't know if it works on Battlefield though, and I don't have a memory card right now so I can't check
Anyhow, use that knowledge to your advantage if--for whatever reason--any character tries platform camping. On Dreamland especially, since only the very tip of your hammer peeks through. This means nobody can beat you in priority, since it spaces for you perfectly.
I recommend if you're going to full jump up-air that you use the c-stick; it lets you keep your horizontal momentum more (so you cover more range) and you don't risk double jumping into CC'ed moves or d-airs or whatever.
Another powerful trick is the platform chain grab, which works especially well against floaties. Down-throw beneath a platform, wait for them to tech on the platforms above you, and then waveland into another grab. Use this opportunity to charge up-smashes and then d-throw, and you can KO earlier than normal. MAKE SURE YOU CHARGE THE UP SMASH, or you might accidentally have Nana fall through the platform when you down-throw.
Uhh... Ice-blocks are your friend, watch out for up-tilt, and that's all I got."
From Delphiki
Dair the missiles, Nair doesn't work. I don't even know if it's POSSIBLE, and it's definitely not reliable. Also, POWERSHIELD. Powershielding consistently completely destroys your opponents projectile game, and is frightening to your opponent. They know that their Charge Shot is practically useless aside from techchasing.
Samus is weak when above you in the air, but you have to be careful because her aerials have very little lag. Samus' slowest aerial has less lag than Sheik's fastest! Because of this, most Sami will immediately attack instead evading (at close range). This usually will catch your attempt at a shield grab. So - don't try to shieldgrab her after Fair, instead wait for lag following her next move.
Also, DtDair her until she starts escaping. Always exploit chaingrabs until your opponent gets out twice - and expect them to escape. While some players like to use chaingrabs for the end of the game as a surprise factor, I find that using them early demoralizes your opponent and makes them prone to fear and mistakes. Although usually against good players your best grab option is blizzard, Dt-Usmash, Uair, U/B air.
Samus is weak when above you in the air, but you have to be careful because her aerials have very little lag. Samus' slowest aerial has less lag than Sheik's fastest! Because of this, most Sami will immediately attack instead evading (at close range). This usually will catch your attempt at a shield grab. So - don't try to shieldgrab her after Fair, instead wait for lag following her next move.
Also, DtDair her until she starts escaping. Always exploit chaingrabs until your opponent gets out twice - and expect them to escape. While some players like to use chaingrabs for the end of the game as a surprise factor, I find that using them early demoralizes your opponent and makes them prone to fear and mistakes. Although usually against good players your best grab option is blizzard, Dt-Usmash, Uair, U/B air.
Marth
Watch Out For:
- His sword (lol). Has amazing reach and priority
- Forward air is tough to get around. If he does retreating fairs all you can really do is keep pushing him to an edge where you have an advantage, its very unsafe to try and attack him while he is doing retreating fairs because he spaces enough to keep away from you. When he approaches you with them you can sometimes get a shield grab or a safe roll behind him. Against rising fairs feel free to time a good dash attack and keep him above you.
- his forward smash goes through iceblocks so make sure you are far enough away if you choose to use them against him. It is punishable if he hits your shield with anything but the tip by wavedashing out of your shield.
- His down is very fast and is has IASA frames that he can use to really take advantage of your reaction to it, counter these with short hopped fairs or by getting inside and CC and low percents into grabs.
- His utilt is really quick and has a huge arch above him, you CANNOT get through a properly timed u-tilt with a fair or a dair, so try your best to never be above Marth.
Don't:
- Never approach Marth from above.
- Attack recklessly
- Don't miss any attacks
- Ice block much, Marth cuts through you and your projectiles.
Do:
- Dash dance a lot.
- Blizzard frequently, he has no projectile and this is tough for him to approach.
- Keep below or behind him if at all possible, his priority in front and above him are more or less unbeatable.
- Chu Dat vs M2K - FD @ Smashtality III 2.1
- Chu Dat vs M2K - PS @ Smashtality III 2.2
- Chu Dat vs M2K - PS @ Smashtality III 1.1
From Wobbles
his d-tilts are beatable with short hopped f-air if you space it, you can shield grab or down-smash him out of his grabs, CC his forward+b into grabs or rolls, and shield his f-smash into wavedash out of shield. Once you can do all that, it just becomes figuring out what he plans to do... unfortunately, I'm not sure what to do about the f-airs. If he retreats with them, he becomes very very safe. If IC's weren't so slidy, I'd recommend playing attrition using CC's against them, just because one f-air compared a grab or smash is way more advantageous.
If he APPROACHES with f-air, then dash dance grab becomes viable, but if he stays in one spot or just retreats using it I can't seem to beat it. I suppose you could WD in with your shield up and try to get him to push himself to the edge of the stage where you can try to RPS some of his above options.... or use the double shield to mess up his timing on SHDF-air, or his double jump after... basically anything to fluster him and force him to pick options you can easily punish.
I do know that if he does a RISING f-air and you space it you can get dash attacks, so that's something to keep in mind.
fighting Marth is hard
Fortunately, there are methods and tricks.
First off, his d-tilt is really good, but you have a simple answer to it, which is SHFFL'ed F-air. It requires moderately good spacing to achieve, but you can hop over the tip with your f-air. Odds are he'll CC and you can have a free d-smash, jab grab, or tech-chase.
It's also possible to wavedash in from a distance and grab him to punish when he misses, but you need to predict both the spacing and timing of the tilt, as well as execute a long wavedash. I don't think it's worth it to try this, really.
His f-airs are the devil, but again, spacing and timing is how you can beat him.
First off, the f-air is punishable as long as it barely misses you. You can slip in with dash attacks and grabs, or if you're really sneaky, wave-smashes. Another trick is to use long wavedashes into shield to try and make him land a deep hit on your shield. This reduces hit stun and almost guarantees a shield-grab.
His f-smash is really good. The answer is do your best to shield it, then wavedash from your shield to punish. Any Marth that uses the f-smash too much will lose to you purely from grabs.
His grab game is strong, but defeatable. The hard part about it is that he has massive range on the grab and your shield is very important to you as an IC player... but if you keep a couple tips in mind, you can probably punish his grabs pretty well.
1) If he grabs Nana, smash him or grab him during lag. You can shield grab his throws if you're in close enough.
2) If he grabs YOU... keep shielding with Nana and have HER shield grab instead. If he throws you anywhere but up, you should recover soon enough to combo off her grab.
His forward+b is really good. Fortunately, the first hit or two are susceptible to crouch canceling. You can get CC'ed grabs if he only decides to do the first hit, or CC into your shield and a shield grab if he keeps going. Remember that the different forward+b's make him move around a lot, so you need to consider where his body goes when he does the different attacks. Sometimes you can grab and the ending animation will pull him or push him out of reach. And they hit in weird places on your shield too, so watch out for that as well.
I also strongly believe that blizzard is one of your best friends. Try and have Nana blizzard from rolls and dodges, have her Nanapult to a) land blizzard hits and b) act as bait that lets you land whatever opener fits the situation.
I don't really have a good method for edgeguarding him, but I'm toying with some weird ideas ATM. I'll post about them if they wind up panning out.
Does this help a little? It's very much a spacing battle and that's hard considering Marth's reach, but I believe it to be winnable.
Against Marth, his jabs are unpunishable from certain ranges, his fair is unpunishable unless he DI's toward you, if he does that then it is punishable with really tight timing with a dash dance grab. His dtilt can be punished with a fair but if you call it wrong you get fair'd or grabbed or utilted. His forward smash is always punishable, off your shield with a WD, or off a wiff the same way, his forward tilt can't be punished unless you shield it at very close ranges.
Against Marth the ONLY way I've found to really beat them even occasionally, and believe me its HARD (this match will make you a really good Ice Climber player even if you lose) is to get into a situation where they are closer to an edge than you and you have the middle of the stage, if you can get in this position then you can make Marth approach you a little bit and it opens up damage, other than that he is untouchable, beat his full jumps with uairs, also hit with uairs if he is ever on a platform.
For the love of christ stay below him at all costs, don't get knocked off the edge cause you can't recover against a good Marth, keep trying and mixing up your recovery, pray he messes up and make sure you get some damage off afterwards.
This is the only match that I believe positioning is this important, because you can't hurt Marth if he doesn't approach you need to be able to pressure him into attacking, Chu likes to bait with auto canceled uairs, a good option. If you find yourself in a desynch I like to pult Nana but not far, if just the tip of her blizzard hits and they don't expect it you can open up a window to some damage, blizzard outranges all of Marth's moves. When I am at the edge of the stage and Marth is pressuring me I like to do a short hop blizzard with both climbers, I've still yet to be punished in any way for doing this and it sometimes gets them to give you a few more pixels of room afterwards while they think, I don't overuse this and I don't know how it can be punished because I've always caught my opponents by surprise with it, even my closest friends, I would love to hear some stories on this being used lemme know if it's effective for you (a warning though, if you use this and don't hit with at least some of it, you can get dash attacked or probably grabbed after using it, so make sure not to miss).
Against Marth the ONLY way I've found to really beat them even occasionally, and believe me its HARD (this match will make you a really good Ice Climber player even if you lose) is to get into a situation where they are closer to an edge than you and you have the middle of the stage, if you can get in this position then you can make Marth approach you a little bit and it opens up damage, other than that he is untouchable, beat his full jumps with uairs, also hit with uairs if he is ever on a platform.
For the love of christ stay below him at all costs, don't get knocked off the edge cause you can't recover against a good Marth, keep trying and mixing up your recovery, pray he messes up and make sure you get some damage off afterwards.
This is the only match that I believe positioning is this important, because you can't hurt Marth if he doesn't approach you need to be able to pressure him into attacking, Chu likes to bait with auto canceled uairs, a good option. If you find yourself in a desynch I like to pult Nana but not far, if just the tip of her blizzard hits and they don't expect it you can open up a window to some damage, blizzard outranges all of Marth's moves. When I am at the edge of the stage and Marth is pressuring me I like to do a short hop blizzard with both climbers, I've still yet to be punished in any way for doing this and it sometimes gets them to give you a few more pixels of room afterwards while they think, I don't overuse this and I don't know how it can be punished because I've always caught my opponents by surprise with it, even my closest friends, I would love to hear some stories on this being used lemme know if it's effective for you (a warning though, if you use this and don't hit with at least some of it, you can get dash attacked or probably grabbed after using it, so make sure not to miss).
From nealdt:
"At 0 percent, a d-throw f-air combo will knock Marth back to you and leave him standing for a free grab + maybe a wobble; at higher percents, follow the f-air with a Popo d-smash for some good damage and knockback. D-throw to nair is also a good combo at lower percents; if they DI your throw away, a running shuffled nair will set up for another grab."
Luigi
Watch Out For:
- All aerials.
- D-smash, difficult to punish because it pushes your shield very far.
- Nana gets ***** when separated. D-smash leads to several u-tilts and some nair combos followed by a f-air.
- Don't Block often, Luigi's smashes knock you too far to follow up reliably. He can do two aerials in a short hop the first of which cant be shield grabbed the second of which pushes you too far to shield grab. A better option is prediction the jump and fsmashing or perhaps usmashing or utilting to hit him out of the air.
- Don't try to grab too much against Luigi, he moves very fast on the ground and spends alot of time in the air from either double aerials or single aerials to wavelands, you will have few opportunities to grab and you should take them but unlike most match-ups this wont be your primary source of damage.
- Edgegaurd aggressively, his recovery is fairly predictable from certain distances and he cant do much when he is recovering to interupt your after you hit him.
- Use plenty of spaced bairs and fsmashes
from AZN_LEP
The biggest problem with Luigi isn't his maneuverability with wavedashes, it's his ability to do so many aerials and eat away at your shield. I like choknater's idea of d-airs, but against Luigi, I'd only use d-airs when Luigi is air borne... in between attacks. CC d-smash ***** Nana, and u-air out prioritizes >.< Luckily Luigi is really easy to edge guard, just jump way out with b-airs and interrupt his forward b, and pray for no misfires.
a smart IC player would know that their shield when combined with their low traction won't help fight luigi's air game at all, and would thus stop trying to shield-*** him. If chu really wanted to beat a luigi player, I would imagine he'd be better off evading air attacks than blocking them and trying to abuse the range of ICs fair and bair on luigi's low air mobility.
Watch out for:
From choknater:
"FORWARD AIR. I must stress this one. This is Doc's ultimate move to use against the Ice Climbers, so be aware and dodge it when necessary. It's super strong and separates both ICs very easily. It has loads of shield stun, so if you shield it too late and Nana is hit, it's open season on your girl. Doc also has the easy combo of uthrow fair (or dthrow fair at higher percents) so be sure to DI the grab well every time. It's possible to escape. At 100%, dthrow fair is instant death, so avoid it with DI at all costs.
Doc's dsmash is also pretty potent. I like to believe that all fast-starting dsmashes provide trouble for IC's WD approaches (the Links, Peach, Samus, the Marios.) Doc is no different. It hits on both his left and right, so it's his best spacing tool for avoiding WD approaches. Plus it's strong, and it can easily set you up for Doc's great edgeguarding abilities. I suggest outranging him with your fsmashes as much as possible.
Pill spams are a-ok with IC's. If he's on platforms, weave your way under him and try to uair. If he's spamming them on the ground or low to the ground, weave your way through them and fsmash. You can even try WDing toward him and smashing, because Popo will take the hit and Nana will continue sliding for the smash.
Don't get grabbed by Doc because it is immediate separation and/or deadly attacks and edgeguards. The swinging of his fthrow and bthrow make it okay for him to throw safely without being smashed by the other climber. His throws mean easy fairs and edgeguards. Speaking of edgeguards...
Doc is too good at edgeguarding. No matte what, it'll always be hard, so here are some tips: His main tools are his dsmash and bair. Since ICs can't sweetspot, he doesn't really have much use for the cape, since it's hard to cape the squall. If you try to hit him with the squall, he can easily CC dsmash it. Your best bet is to try to get over him by recovering high with the squall or by using up-B (Nana will probably die, so all you can do is pray.) Also be aware, if you're on a platform, he can fair you to your doom... be careful up there."
Doc's dsmash is also pretty potent. I like to believe that all fast-starting dsmashes provide trouble for IC's WD approaches (the Links, Peach, Samus, the Marios.) Doc is no different. It hits on both his left and right, so it's his best spacing tool for avoiding WD approaches. Plus it's strong, and it can easily set you up for Doc's great edgeguarding abilities. I suggest outranging him with your fsmashes as much as possible.
Pill spams are a-ok with IC's. If he's on platforms, weave your way under him and try to uair. If he's spamming them on the ground or low to the ground, weave your way through them and fsmash. You can even try WDing toward him and smashing, because Popo will take the hit and Nana will continue sliding for the smash.
Don't get grabbed by Doc because it is immediate separation and/or deadly attacks and edgeguards. The swinging of his fthrow and bthrow make it okay for him to throw safely without being smashed by the other climber. His throws mean easy fairs and edgeguards. Speaking of edgeguards...
Doc is too good at edgeguarding. No matte what, it'll always be hard, so here are some tips: His main tools are his dsmash and bair. Since ICs can't sweetspot, he doesn't really have much use for the cape, since it's hard to cape the squall. If you try to hit him with the squall, he can easily CC dsmash it. Your best bet is to try to get over him by recovering high with the squall or by using up-B (Nana will probably die, so all you can do is pray.) Also be aware, if you're on a platform, he can fair you to your doom... be careful up there."
Don't:
From choknater:
"Don't approach him with weak moves. Docs with good reflexes will CC dsmash every dair, squall, or jab you use to approach. But also...
Don't play passively. There is nothing you can do but space if he keeps approaching with his fair. It's too strong for you to counteract, and it's very difficult to shield grab. Playing defensively will open you up to pills, fairs, grabs, and dsmashes."
Don't play passively. There is nothing you can do but space if he keeps approaching with his fair. It's too strong for you to counteract, and it's very difficult to shield grab. Playing defensively will open you up to pills, fairs, grabs, and dsmashes."
From nealdt:
"Don't try to chaingrab him. He recovers very quickly and will n-air you out of any chaingrab attempt."
Do:
From choknater:
"WD fsmash. Doc will get annihilated by this simple approach. Don't be afraid to do it. He can shield grab it, so try not to be repetitive... but it's okay to just throw it in at times. You'll notice how useful it is if you play against Doc often... he just can't do much for some reason. Dsmash is faster, but Docs can jump over them and fair. Fsmash is WAY more difficult for him to jump over. Sidestepping won't help him much because he will more than likely get hit by either the fsmash or your next move. Also, remember what I said before: this approach can beat pills.
Save Nana from his combos (which are usually uair combos.) You are way superior to him in ground mobility because of your WD. So if he's doing uair combos on Nana, WD to him as fast as you can and hit him with any move. If Nana gets hit by a fair, she is dead meat.
Grab him, it's not hard. His jab and dsmash will attempt to stop you, but yours are better. Your jab is a disjointed weapon, so it's better than his punch. While he's facing you, his dsmash is good... If you're facing away from him, your dsmash is better. If he's facing away from you, your dsmash is always better."
Save Nana from his combos (which are usually uair combos.) You are way superior to him in ground mobility because of your WD. So if he's doing uair combos on Nana, WD to him as fast as you can and hit him with any move. If Nana gets hit by a fair, she is dead meat.
Grab him, it's not hard. His jab and dsmash will attempt to stop you, but yours are better. Your jab is a disjointed weapon, so it's better than his punch. While he's facing you, his dsmash is good... If you're facing away from him, your dsmash is better. If he's facing away from you, your dsmash is always better."
Tips:
From choknater:
"Edgeguard him with finesse. Doc mains can all sweetspot very well, so I'd suggest Battlefield or Pokemon Stadium as counter-stages. FoD is decent also because your fsmash and usmash can cover the two lower platforms. Plus the closer walls make it easier to kill him horizontally.
Attack his pills if you can. If you like aerials and you are very accurate with them, cancel his pills with your uair and bair. Fsmashes and jabs are fine too. This will help you break through them. IC's WD under the pill gives you enough speed to catch up to him if he attempts to camp/spam. Ice blocks will also help against campers.
Docs can't really camp platforms against you because your uair beats anything he has coming down.
Be aggressive. Always remember: Your fast ground movement will eventually overwhelm him. Stay aggressive on Doc, attack him before he gets you. The moves that he requires to beat you are hard to hit with (fair, grab, pills) if you are aggressive. If you have an opportunity to WD and smash, always use it. Even the best Doc players get caught by quick smashes.
Also: It is easy for Doc to escape dthrow dair chain throws. Use other grab combos. Dthrow usmash and dthrow reverse dair reverse fsmash are good finishers for characters of his weight/falling speed.
I can understand why people would have trouble with this matchup. It's difficult for those who haven't experienced it... And I would say solid Doc players would have an advantage. But if you become experienced against Doc you will realize that IC counters Doc and you can play confidently thereafter. At 0c3 crew battles, our crew quickly put a Marth up against Bob$, but I told them that I wanted to go instead. I beat him and I confirmed my belief... He's obviously the superior player, but I used my Doc experience confidently.
A special Thank You goes out to HomeMadeWaffles for training me against Doc."
Attack his pills if you can. If you like aerials and you are very accurate with them, cancel his pills with your uair and bair. Fsmashes and jabs are fine too. This will help you break through them. IC's WD under the pill gives you enough speed to catch up to him if he attempts to camp/spam. Ice blocks will also help against campers.
Docs can't really camp platforms against you because your uair beats anything he has coming down.
Be aggressive. Always remember: Your fast ground movement will eventually overwhelm him. Stay aggressive on Doc, attack him before he gets you. The moves that he requires to beat you are hard to hit with (fair, grab, pills) if you are aggressive. If you have an opportunity to WD and smash, always use it. Even the best Doc players get caught by quick smashes.
Also: It is easy for Doc to escape dthrow dair chain throws. Use other grab combos. Dthrow usmash and dthrow reverse dair reverse fsmash are good finishers for characters of his weight/falling speed.
I can understand why people would have trouble with this matchup. It's difficult for those who haven't experienced it... And I would say solid Doc players would have an advantage. But if you become experienced against Doc you will realize that IC counters Doc and you can play confidently thereafter. At 0c3 crew battles, our crew quickly put a Marth up against Bob$, but I told them that I wanted to go instead. I beat him and I confirmed my belief... He's obviously the superior player, but I used my Doc experience confidently.
A special Thank You goes out to HomeMadeWaffles for training me against Doc."
Ganon
Watch Out For:
From Binx
- All of his aerials. The King of Evil has some dastardly air attacks all of which are frighteningly powerful provide tons of shield stun, and worst of all push you away so you are unable to shield grab (unless his attack was horribly spaced)
- His Jab. Ganon's jab comes out very fast has high priority and decent knock back with, sorry to say, amazingly low lag.
- His Down B the Wizard Kick. When used on the ground he will slide quickly towards you and boot nana off the screen, this move is very hard to react to if you dont expect it, and very easy to react to it when you do. Keep wary of this move, if you are against someone who uses this often spend a little extra time in shields and a little more time in the air and you can abuse his lag heavily.
From Binx
- Don't attack from above him, his uair and his usmash both have long reach great prioty rediculous power and come out relatively fast, they will eat your dair so try and stay below him.
- Don't rush him, one careless move and you and nana can become easily seperated his attacks have insane knockback, if you are DIing them Nana is alone and in trouble.
From Binx
- Do Chain grab. Ganon is susceptible to various chaingrabs including dthrow chain, dthrow dsmash chain, dthrow dair chain.
- Do try and stay below him, although his dair will outprioritize your uair it's slow and most times you will be able to hit him before he hits you, if you are patient and he uses his dair and you decide not to uair and instead dodge you get a free grab which can equal a stock against Ganon.
From Binx
Fighting Ganon seems like a mix between fighting Falcon and fighting Doc, all of Ganons moves come out fast and have huge knockback but he is also very easy to combo and moves fairly slow compared to most of the cast.
The key to this fight seems to be speed, your much faster than him and you are about as powerful, the difference lies in that you are a snowball and he is a tank, you cant afford to get hit, and he can take hits like no other. Although it seems stacked for Ganon this really isnt the case, patience will lead you to grabs or dash attacks which will both lead you to wins.
Unless chain throwing you want to try and keep ganon above you with dash attacks uairs usmashes and tilts. Usmashes on ganon work amazingly well because he doesn't fly very far from them even at considerable damage.
Ganon is very hard to kill off the stage because of his Wizard Kick renewing his jump if you hit him with a fsmash and he doesnt die immediately from it he often is closer to making it back to the edge without using his up B than he was before. Use this knowledge and the knowledge that it is insanely difficult to sweetspot with ganon's up B and just jab him when he is almost at the edge, he will fall strait down, wait for the up B and keep jabbing, once he does one too early get a fat dsmash on him and this will often time be enough to kill him. Doing a dsmash before he goes to high is risky because then he can tech the hit on the edge and up B over you and its hard to follow up.
Hope this helps.
You want Nana if you're facing Ganon. The problem is, he can easily kill Nana in two hits or even one hit. Desynching is quite useful against him, but it is a great risk because a single fluke means a dead Nana, or worse, a dead Popo. Popo alone can do fine against him, and he can somewhat CG him without Nana, but it's still extremely dangerous. In this matchup, you want to maximize damage on every combo and make sure he dies when you edgeguard him. Fortunately, edgeguarding him is pretty easy.
I'm not sure if I would have put dash attack as a do against Ganon. Pretty much every good Ganon player has realized almost his entire game is retreating f-airs into jabs or more retreating f-airs. Playing against Eddie and some good local Ganons, I can vouch that dash attack isn't really a "do." More often than not they'll dodge the attack and you'll eat a f-air
Watch Out For:
From Binx
- Her down smash, this is peaches most powerful smash, it comes out fast is very hard to hit through and has very little lag, it also has an annoying habit of hitting multiple times especially if you crouch cancel it. This move can do up to 80 damage vs fox but is much more forgiving to our little ****** buddies, or thats what I would like to say. The fact is, Peach's dsmash still does a remarkable ammount of damage but the worst part is that if you DI at all then you and nana are likely to be seperated.
- Her Grabs, especially when solo, her downthrow pops you up to a perfect height to hit with a bair or fair at most percents and he fair can kill you at 150% and set you up for easy edgegaurds as low as 90%.
- Peach's aerials, none of them are particularly notable but the fact that peach can float cancel leaving all of her aerials with only 4 frames of lag can lead into aerial grabs, aerial dsmashs. Peaches that know what they are doing can eat away your shield with floating dairs which are about impossible to punish, from my experience your only real option is when you want to roll, she can do this aerial 3 times then fall into a dsmash which at that low of a shield will hit you even while blocking, so its up to you when you want to risk rolling, if anyone can think of other options in this situation I would love to add them.
From Binx
- Jump out for edgegaurds, most ICs wont do this anyways and for good reason but the fact that peach can float as long as she wants makes he basically impossible to edgegaurd in this way, you probably wont hit her and you will probably lose a stock or a nana before making it back, trust me it isnt worth it.
- Don't jab, or don't jab often. Peach has a great CC and an awesome followup (down smash) your jabs will rarely phase her and will only let her know its safe to smash your face in.
- Don't go for grabs when peach isnt in some sort of lag. Peach's down smash tends to go off faster than your grab will and for some reason isnt interupted by grabs often so you usually dont want to grab if peach isnt lagging from something.
From Binx
- Do grab when it is relatively safe as often as possible, your grabs are some of the only things you can do to get a peach above you and its one of your main finishers as well. Dthrow to Dair can be escaped by peach but its alot harder if they dont expect it, every once in a while you can tac on a down throw dair for extra damage instead of an usmash.
- Catch Turnips - they help you to stop some of her float game
- Aggressively edgeguard Peach even off the stage if she is far enough out and low.
- Light Shield a lot
- Wobbles vs Cort - YS @ 11 months ago 2
- Wobbles vs Xelic - BF @ Final Smash 5 1.4
- Wobbles vs Xelic - BF @ Final Smash 5 1.2
- Wobbles vs Xelic - BF @ Final Smash 5 1.5
Notice how Wobbles controls the Peach by using platforms, the same way Marth or Fox would do to us, also note the creative use of his side b squall hammer move. Also note how simple bairs and forward smashes are more effective than trying to go for grabs in this match up, there isn't much you can do out of a grab, a missed grab has 30-40 frames of punishable lag, pretty much the same as a smash, only its harder to hit with against peach.
From Binx
Always expect the worst, be careful not to get dsmashed if you can help it, rarely try to shield grab an aerial because peach can floatcancel and perform a down smash faster than your grab comes out.
As with most characters try and keep peach above you with Up attacks. Down throw up smash can kill peaches at around 100%. Maintain proper spacing, this is important in all match ups but doubly so in this one since peach can punish your mistakes so severely.
Alot of this match is going to be maintaining spacing and position at the middle of the stage, and some luck on how nana chooses to act while you are seperated. Although this fight is disgustingly tough its a lot of fun for me. There is no better way to teach yourself how to play ICs than to fight peach, when you can't afford to make any mistakes you tend to learn not to.
Lastly, there is a lot of focus on her down smash because its so good, so abused and so destructive to the ice climbers, however peach does have other moves and the more she uses down smash the less you will expect other attacks and vice versa. Be wary of all her options, a fair will harm you just as well as a dsmash.
From Wobbles
1) Catch turnips. They completely change the dynamic of Peach's approach against you. If you have them you can just use them to screw up Peach's float and make her land awkwardly, or hand it off to Nana (jump in the air and hit Z to hand it off) for a wavedashing approach. It also makes it easier to stop her turnip approaches if you can catch them consistently.
2) Twin Squall. When she starts hovering at the sweet-spot height -- just above your up-tilts and smashes, but low enough that her aerials will hit you before you can use your own -- move around a bit. Before she can hit you with an aerial.
3) Light shield. Oh God light shield.
4) Master--COMPLETELY MASTER--the ledge-chaingrab in case wobbling is banned. I was able to get completely perfect 0-death chaingrabs on Xelic with it at least once per match. Peaches like to stay near the edges of the level, so this will happen more often than with other characters. I also think she's the easiest to do this against. On that note, you'll also want to practice up-throw up-smash, since maxing out the edge-chaingrab renders d-throw up-smash unusable. The ledge-chaingrab can also be done on platforms, so if you somehow get a tech-chase onto one, use it there too. It will impress Nana.
5) When she lands on the top platforms, your u-air and f-airs are completely safe pokes. For Yoshi's and FoD, poke with full jump u-air. For Battlefield and Dreamland, use full jump u-air. She is unable to hit you with d-smash if you do this. On Yoshi's and FoD, your u-smash also has a good chance to beat/clink with her d-smash on the smaller platforms. Don't jump into her, just smash at her. If it's a clink, you're no worse off.
6) Her jab may be her most difficult to beat attack. It's too fast to punish on whiff and she'd have to be dumb as hell to let you walk up and f-smash her through it. Fortunately, there's a very useful de-sync for setting up Nana's blizzard, which will give you the chance to storm in with a grab, f-air, or smash.
7) Bait using de-synced charge smashes. Charge u-smashes and f-smashes with Nana and you can encourage Peach to attack with a foolish aerial in an attempt to punish, letting you intercept with n-air and u-air; she also may just float away complacently and not notice you leaping in with aerials. This trick works against a lot of people, actually.
8) Watch for turnip pulls. If you can get at a certain distance and predict when the pull will happen, you can punish with a grab. That right there should be a whole stock, since Peaches like to stay at the edge to pull turnips. See # 4
9) On the subject of turnips, you can wavedash d-smash through turnips; you will get hit but Nana will go through. When you're close to Peach and she's holding a turnip she may try to stop you, and wavedashing into the smash will often connect and knock her away while she doesn't DI.
10) Don't use your jab. She'll crouch cancel it. Every time. At later percents (probably 90+) you can f-tilt and her CCs will slam her into the ground. She might even slip off the level and d-air while she falls, giving you a good edge-guard setup. In fact... I just had a crazy idea for an edgeguard against her, but I won't share it until I can confirm it isn't completely ****ing stupid.
10a) You are allowed to jab her when she's holding a turnip. Just be careful that she doesn't throw it and force you to catch it, letting her CC d-smash anyhow.
10b) Your best aerial for preventing CC d-smash is f-air. Once she gets past around 20 percent (assuming you still have Nana with you), CC'ing it will ground her.
11) Go crazy when edgeguarding her. If she's floating low and keeping you from edgehogging, just leap off the level with a fast-falling forward-air. If you spike her, her vertical sucks and gets her killed. If you don't, she'll eat some extra damage and you can still recover with twin-squall hammer.
12) Her b-air is a very spammable move, but she has nothing that can go completely through your blizzard. De-sync lots of blizzards and it will keep her *** out of your face. Jumping blizzard helps you do a bit of extra damage but it's riskier; if she's DI'ing up she can come over your head.
The last thing you have to really remember: Peach is effing hard to punish. A lot of her moves have deceptively low ending lag which gives the illusion they can't be punished. Excluding her jab--which I think IS unpunishable unless she jabs deep into your shield, though that's really stupid--everything can be punished with something. What you want to do is FAKE your punishes. Dash in and sit outside her range, let her dodge or whiff a d-smash, then punish that instead.
This matchup is still stupidly hard since she can camp you like crazy. Your best bet if she's platform camping is to force her to the sides and try to get her really high where your u-airs and squalls can start reaching her.
.
Watch Out For:
from Binx
- Forward Air, Mario will strait up G punch your Nana. After a fair you and nana fly strait up in the air mario can then utilt and hit nana 100% of the time and you if you don't DI properly, at medium percents this can lead to a death combo on nana consisting mostly of uairs.
- Dmsmash, Mario will break dance you into oblivion. Marios down smash comes out quickly and has a moderate knockback at higher percents 120%+ this can start to kill you depending on stage position.
- Fsmash, no cool comment for this one. Mario's best/worst finisher depending on how you look at it. Its really hard to get hit by this move if you are trying not to, if you dont throw out risky attacks or run into this he probably wont be able to land it on you very often in a match. This will kill nana around 70-80% though so it's worth noting. It will also start to kill you around 100%. Just dont get hit by it.
- Back throw. Mario spins the you or nana around hitting the other climber with your soon to be corpse stopping you from interupting it with smashes. At 170% this can kill which is decent for a throw, DI up and Towards Mario as soon as you see the windup you should never DI this incorrectly, you have plenty of time.
from Binx
- Be above Mario. His uair combos really well especially at medium percents and your dair doesnt have enough priority to cut through it.
- Try to chain throw, from what I have observed there arent really any good grab combos you can do on mario your best bet when you do grab is to just dthrow fsmash or dthrow usmash.
- Counter Mario's air game with uairs and bairs. When Mario is high in the air uairs can keep him there and tack on a good bit of damage, when he is low your bairs have more range than any of his aerials just make sure you are accurate, remember he could fall early and shield grab so dont overuse this.
- Throw lots of smashes Mario can short hop in and punish pretty hard for missed smashes.
from Binx
- Stay below him. As I mentioned earlier Mario can uair combo very well and from above you have very few options.
- Shield often. Most of Mario's attacks will push you out of shield grab range but this will keep nana from taking too much damage, thus making her harder to kill, with nana you have the advantage in pretty much every area of this fight, but once she does you have only one way to recover and it is worsened, your grabs become weak and your aerials and smashes start to do half damage. Even solo Mario hardly has the advantage from what I can tell.
- Use desynch blizzards on aggressive players, it does a free ~8% and usually gets you into an easy grab situation which is another ~20%.
- Use ice blocks well. The first person to use their projectile is usually placed in a worse situation. Mario can jump over your iceblocks and shoot off a fireball that you have to block thus putting you in a small ammount of shield stun and giving up ground, however this means you were far away from eachother anyways so as long s your not crouding the ledge your probably okay. When mario shoots his you can just short hop yours and his fireball will cancel out with one and the other iceblock will go after Mario.
from Binx
See do's and don'ts. Seriously though this is a relatively simple fight, if you stay safe, protect nana, be wary of postion and spacing then the fight should go your way most of the time.
Watch Out For:
from Binx
- All aerials. Puffs can stay in the air spamming backs and fairs for quite a long time, if they are good at mixing up when they land its very hard to find openings.
- Rest will kill nana instantly at most damages because she doesnt have an u-b or a squal hammer when she is alone. When she misses a rest your best option is probably a fully charged forward smash.
- Pound (forward-b). Jiggs pound can be used for recovery making her very hard to kill and also can be used to hit you the opposite direction she uses it, it has a lot of shield stun does decent damage and if she gets nana off the edge with it you are one bair from being solo... sorry.
from Binx
- Spend much time in the air. Jiggs out maneuvers you there and she can throw a rediculous ammount of attacks while airborne.
- Don't go off the edge for edgegaurds. Jiggs out maneuvers you there also and can easily pound you further out while getting herself close to the edge.
- Stand too close to the edge when puff is recovering. Her pound can knock you behind her and she can easily pop out and gimp you with a few bairs fairs or dairs.
from Binx
- Use plenty of smashes. Your hammers bring with them disjointed hit box's as we all know from everywhere but also from Choknators guide. A well placed Forward smash whiile she is short hopping is your best friend in this match. Assuming you predict where she will be and when he attack ends you can time a fsmash and sometimes catch her DIing away and get really low kills 60-70%.
- Use ice blocks. To edgegaurd as well as to force to to approach, if you hit with a desynched ice block you can sometimes land a free grab.
- Mix up recovery. Should go without saying but mix up your recovery, I mention this especially here since jiggs is so good at gimping people off the edge, if you are out there against a good jiggs and she doesn't mess up, chances are your dead, but you might as well make it hard for them by being unpredictable with your options.
from Binx
This is another match where controlling the center of the stage is very helpful, this will give you time to hit jiggs and save nana from being comboed off the edge. Being in the middle of the stage also lets you have more freedom to DI and get out of combos before they send you off the edge where you are dead meat as well. As always maintain proper spacing. As I mention earlier properly timed forward smashes will win this match for you. The choknator combo is apparently very effective here, I have not tried it myself but I would trust him and the others who have endorsed this. For those of you who have been living under a rock the combo is dthrow nana dair popo dair nana fsmash.
Backthrow to Fair at mid percents combos
FalcoWatch Out For:
from Binx
- The shine. This is falco's best move, its what takes him from a cake walk to even or better against you. For starters it can be used to seperate you an nana if you are at different damages, secondly it comes out really fast so he can use it to hit you before your grab goes off. Lastly he can use it out of his aerials to prevent shield grabbing. During the stun on your shield if he jumps or wavedashes fast enough you will be unable to land a shield grab against him. Beware Falcos who use this move creatively to pick apart your team.
- The laser. Arguably the best neutral B move in the entire game, this tool allows falco to stun his opponents while an entire stage away and come at you. This move actively threatens you from an entire stage away while allowing Falco movement the entire time. Perhaps the most annoying thing about it is that it forces you to remain more or less immobile, 3 damage isn't much but at close range this can stun you enough for falco to hit you, or often times hit nana while you shield. As many can attest a good laser lockdown is probably one of the most annoying tactics in the game.
Special note: while falco is shooting you he is predicting where you are going to be, make sure that you arent thinking about the lasers too much because I can assure you falco isnt. - The Drill. The drill has really good priority lots of shield stun and damage, and can be used repeatedly against you or nana with relative impunity due to his shine. Good Falcos will use this along with other aerials to gimp your nana at amazing speeds.
from Binx
- Don't spend too much time in the shield, Falco's lasers will wittle it down pretty quickly and you will need it when he starts using aerials, once falco hits with 1 or 2 aerials its very hard to get the momentum back.
- Don't try and dash dance or wavedash around when you arent really close to falco, his laser wont stop at long ranges and if you are more or less still you can block or jump with better timing to get inside his range.
- Don't try to shield grab, as I mentioned earlier the shine makes this very difficult, if you are confident that your opponent will not shine you could try this as it will usually equal a stock but I gaurantee it isn't worth trying most of the time.
from Binx
- Stay close to falco. Falco's sweetspot range is about 2 and a half character(falco) lengths away where he can't hit with a short hop dair, his nair can hit there but I believe this is punishable.
- If you can powershield, do so. Simple enough, or not depending on who you are, if the information I have is correct there is a 3 frame window to powershield. If you can do this with a 30% success rate then I think its worth trying, even one powershielded laser can throw falcos offense off by rediculous proportions.
- Kill him if you grab him, Falco has a really tough time getting out of dthrow dair because of his weight most Falco's cannot get out of this without a stock being taken off.
From Delphiki
I find that most Falco's miss their L-cancels against shielding ICs. The double shield lag messes up their timing very often. Any Falco that doesn't have much ICs experience will think they're safe attempting pillars - and they'll get grabbed.
When you get a grab, you have three options:
1) with both Climbers, you can DtDair Falco to death (80-150%, depending on location and DI).
2) with one Climber, you can U-throw into dash attack, U-Smash, U-tilt, or another grab. All of these lead into a Smash if you want. The only way Falco can escape is by you messing up or by jumping. So wait for the jump, then U-air right above the place he hits the button, and you'll intercept with (hopefully) enough time to land and continue. If you manage to get the U-air off into another hit, the Falco will almost surely die. If this proves unsuccesful, you can:
3) D- or B-throw into a techchase. Rinse and repeat.
Just like Samus, powershielding works great, but I'd like to mention that it's possible to powershield a projectile, then have it hit the other Climber. To avoid this you can dash forward before you powershield, putting Popo out front.
A smart Falco will pummel you with lasers or space aerials well and go for grab > F-throw, separating your Climbers and killing one. So be careful blindly sheilding.
Dash attack works wonders if you're looking to approach without a shield, but only with two Climbers (with one Climber, powershielding is much easier, so I advise that) - reason being one climber will take the hit from the laser and the other will continue.
Finally, you can fight fire with fire - pick Falco! x_x Use Ice Blocks (synced) against laser spamming - you shoot two for his one, and each one does about the same amount of damage as a laser. This will force Falco to either approach or take to higher ground, giving you the advantage.
from Binx
Most of this battle will be you trying to trick falco into being grabbed so you can get an easy stock, the trick is to create situations where he wants to act certain ways and take advantage of them when he does. Sway in and out of his sweetspot if you can, powershield lasers or dash dance so nana takes it and you get a free grab(throw and tech chase if they try to escape you wont have enough time for nana to get back and help unless they are above 50% damage). When he full hops go ahead and nail him with a uair, it beats falcos anything and will make him think twice about being up there. Make sure and shield grab or wavedash grab any shielded/missed smashes. If you have succeded in punishing his most used tactics such as laser spam and full jumped aerials then he will be more likely to use them less, this is where his spiral of defeat starts, once he stops lasering so much you can start tricking him with dash dance blizzard grabs, and just dodging his aerials and grabbing. Other than that his recovery is terrible and he is a pretty easy edgeguard.
Good luck it isn't easy.
from Wobbles
I thought I'd just share this as advice for the Falco matchup...
IC's are one of the few characters who can approach through Falco's lasers, for the simple reason that there are two of them. If you wavedash and input a command, you can get free hits while the Falco is landing from his laser.
Here's an example: wavedash towards the Falco into a f-smash. The first laser will hit you, while Nana moves towards Falco still executing the f-smash. You can do this with a grab as well if you're pretty close. You may even be able to execute a dash attack and follow up with a grab. I've been using it against laser spammers and it's worked magnificently.
From Choknator
Honestly, I believe this to be an EXTREMELY deadly matchup for those who don't have the experience. And it's very likely that you don't. There are very little Yoshi mains out there, slim to none. Yoshi secondaries are rare; he's not a popular low tier to pick up. No jumping out of shields? Poor special moves? Bad grab?
Don't let any of that fool you.
Since I wrote up a guide to fighting Doc through my experience with HomeMadeWaffles, I find it only fitting that I should also write a guide to fighting Yoshi through my experience with Park5150. They are both my former crew members and both incredibly well-versed in fighting IC's. (e.g. they totally demolish every other IC player in my region, and I totally demolish other people who use their characters.)
So here's why Yoshi can **** Ice Climbers. You might not believe your ears or your eyes. Maybe Park and I should record some new videos. He has beaten my IC's with Yoshi each time that we played each other in tournaments, forcing me to counter pick with Sheik/Falcon.
- Sheer speed! If you've ever seen those godly Fumi videos, you could imagine the kind of destruction Yoshi could wreak if he spammed DJC aerials on your IC's. DJC nairs, fairs, uairs will immediately separate you and they are so fast that you have to be really aware to be able to counter them. His fsmash (like Falcons) jerks back before hitting you and has mega range, so it's pretty safe. Dsmash is fast. And we all know what fast dsmashes do to IC's. Yoshi's sliding light shield after rolling can easily get him away from your smashes. Wanna grab him? His dsmash out of shield comes out almost immediately.
- If you can avoid his spike, please do so. Meteor smashes might not be popular these days because they require precise situational positioning... but it's pretty easy for Yoshi because of these reasons: its range goes pretty far in front of him, IC's can't sweetspot, and his double jump protects him from being gimped if he misses
- The lick grab is hard to hit with but still watch out for his dthrow, it's really effective.
- Chain grab. Just watch out for yoshi's DJC counters. Don't know what that is? If he attempts to DI out of the grab, it's not certain that you can chase his Di and grab him again. If he double jumps toward you and quickly nairs, it can hit you before you grab him. It's just that fast. I've tried JC chain grabs and it works, but don't mess up and do a uair.
- Dthrow dsmash chain grab works great. It works just as well as it does against Sheik. Not inescapable, but still a good choice. Yoshi's weight also makes it easier to execute.
- Face away from him if you're dsmashing so you can match his dsmashing speed. It takes a little extra fraction of a second for your hammer to get in front of you during your dsmash, so you want that fast startup frame of the hammer behind you to clash with Yoshi's tail. If your spacing is correct (which is pretty d*mn hard) then your hammer should win because it's disjointed. Getting dsmashed by Yoshi is dangerous in general, but yeah, this is helpful to know.
- He can't sweetspot either! Unless he is totally precise with his recovery egg cancels, you can gimp him IF AND ONLY IF you hit him hard enough. His double jump gets through anything at low %'s. You will need ice blocks, fsmash, and bair to edgeguard. Bair bair bair. At high %'s, your first bair will take out his double jump, and the second (nana's) bair will kill him!
- Please be very aware and use quick reflexes. Chances are a good Yoshi player will have incredible reflexes. I can vouch for Park in saying that Yoshi (and Mewtwo) are technically the most difficult characters to play, moreso than Fox. Believe me kids.
- Grab. He can't CC counter you if you grab.
- Uair and Bair. Controlling Yoshi in the air is a great way to control the matchup because of his lack of 2nd jump. If you gimp after his 2nd jump, he is dead for sure.
- Rush toward him recklessly. You might be thinking "duh!" but maybe even your normal playstyle can be looked at as reckless against yoshi. His dsmash, fsmash, and djc counters will eliminate a lot of your approach options. Rather, you'd want to get yourself in a position to hit him hard. If you hit him hard, he is much less likely to counter you. He can CC many things. So if you're not gonna grab him, your best approaches are: fsmash, fair, and bair. Yeah, they take quite a bit of accuracy but you're gonna have to master it.
- Don't try to dair dthrow chain grab him too much. He's heavy, so your timing may be thrown off. His djc counter has gotten him out of this quite a few times because although he is heavy, his falling speed isn't too fast, so he can DI out of it. If he can DJC counter, he will almost always do it if his DI is correct and you don't JC grab. *sigh* so much tech skill in this matchup. I'd really suggest you just smash him out of your grabs instead. Or wobble, if you swing that way.
- Don't dair. This is way, way too easy to CC. And Yoshi's (like samuses and peaches) will CC dsmash you like no tomorrow. Dair might be a decent move to use in other matchups, but not here.
- Blocks/Blizzards. Well, ranged damage is always nice against Yoshi. More damage reduces his potential to DJC and CC counter. But focusing too much on ranged damage makes it incredibly easy for Yoshi to approach you. One example is desynched Ice Blocks... You might feel like doing it for that extra damage, but how easy is it for Yoshi to jump really far on top of you and fair you? If spacing is proper, you won't be able to shield grab him. And if you whiff a shield grab, you get dsmashed. What an annoying matchup =\
It's hard to explain this matchup in words without experiencing it yourself. For most of you Ice Climbers players out there, it's probably not gonna happen. But in case some godly Yoshi pops out of the depths of the tournament scene, you'll be ready.
The only tip I can give you for IC vs Yoshi is get a lot of experience. I know exactly how to counter Yoshi with any character, but with some chars (IC, Mewtwo, Pikachu, etc.) it's straight up impossible. If y'all can figure something out for me, it'd be greatly appreciated.
Mewtwo
special thanks to Vts for
Watch out for:
- Mewtwo's Nair breaks up the climbers 90% of the time. The range is short so space well so you don't get sucked up in it. It also shield pokes.
- Platforms are dangerous in most match ups but against Mewtwo its especially bad, be wary of nairs and utilts.
- Mewtwo's grabs are great killers and desync the ic's to well avoid getting grabbed 90%+
- Dtilt is a great combo starter vs ICs because they are floaty
- Dair at low percents
- Be reckless trying to punish his Up-B it's recovery times is surprisingly low.
- Approach Mewtwo at ledges on Battlefield lols.
- Approach with Fairs
- Punish hard with grabs
- Space with Bairs and Blizzards
From Choknater
Mewtwo has nothing on IC's
just one of those matchups (like mario... young link) where you can wd grab/wd fsmash rock paper scissors the whole game and just **** hard
M2 huh.
Short hop f-air > d-tilt
Short hop blizzard > dash dance grab
Wavedash d-smash > roll
D-throw d-air > DI
Poor Mewtwo You need to be careful of n-air clipping through your shield and him grabbing you. B-throw and d-throw have crazy dead-weight hitboxes, so Nana can't punish if you get grabbed. Sometimes she ruins u-throw, sometimes she gets hit, sometimes she stands still and gapes.
But yeah, short hop f-air is the best thing to approach with. Also applies to Marths who d-tilt after f-air. Auto CC into d-smash or jab-grab. <3
Short hop f-air > d-tilt
Short hop blizzard > dash dance grab
Wavedash d-smash > roll
D-throw d-air > DI
Poor Mewtwo You need to be careful of n-air clipping through your shield and him grabbing you. B-throw and d-throw have crazy dead-weight hitboxes, so Nana can't punish if you get grabbed. Sometimes she ruins u-throw, sometimes she gets hit, sometimes she stands still and gapes.
But yeah, short hop f-air is the best thing to approach with. Also applies to Marths who d-tilt after f-air. Auto CC into d-smash or jab-grab. <3
Ice Climbers
Watch out for:
- Smashes, these little guys have quick powerful smashes that do good damage, especially if they both hit you
- Try and stay in front of and below Ice Climbers, their Uair out prioritizes everything you have from directly below you.
- Your own Nana, keep her alive if at all possible, once its 2 vs 1 it's over son.
- Let Nana die
- Try and grab unless Nana is far behind popo
- Try to grab Nana at all
- Don't miss with fairs the Ice Climbers can wavedash and take advantage during the lag with a smash or in some cases a deadly grab
- Approach with wavedash Dsmash, but be wary of forward smashes if they predict you
- Punish hard with grabs once their second climber is dead
- Space with Bairs and Blizzards
- Gimp Nana
From Binx
In general stay below Ice Climbers, be prepared to crouch cancel jabs and dairs into your own smashes. Expect most Ice Climbers to wavedash into smash attacks, if you predict these you can forward smash them out of these, if they fake you out by dash dancing or something first though you will eat a smash yourself during your recovery lag. Wavedash forward tilt can be an effective weapon in this match up
Make sure to gimp Nana as often and brutally as possible to open up chain throws vs solo popo as well as cut your opponents recovery options and damage output in half.
Obviously this advice goes both ways, try not to let any of this happen to you ^_^
Your grab game is devastating if you manage to grab the other Popo. Nana automatically throws away whoever she grabs, leaving the other IC at your disposal.
D-throw u-smash, or u-throw f-smash, to send Popo away can buy you enough time to kill Nana provided she isn't close enough to interfere.
Fair also beats dsmash (its less laggy than fsmash too so it's probably safer - Binx)
Watch Out For:
- Nair, it has good reach, and it comes out quick, Link can autocancel it in a full hop and throw out two of them, so just be aware of that possibility.
- Up B out of shield, not too threatening unless you are at high damage, but it hits fairly hard for its speed, if you are at a fairly low percent ~50 you can even punish this on a hit. It also semi spikes if you get hit from underneath, make sure to go high up over them when recovering or sweetspot to prevent this.
- Bombs, good links use bombs very well and in unpredictable ways, some use to to turn around and do attacks you won't expect, for edgeguarding, or for shield pressure. If Link is holding a bomb when you grab it puts a time limit on Wobbling if it's legal, and chain throws.
Don't:
- don't be distracted by projectiles, its easy to lose concentration when Link is throwing things at you, just be calm and shield/avoid them and you can wait for a good opening to attack.
- don't camp, this is one of the few matchups Ice Climbers can really be aggressive in, your OoS options vs Link decimate him. So feel free to be as aggressive as you need to be, Link doesn't have any big punishers against our little ****** buddies. And if he guesses wrong you can smash or grab him for big damage.
- try not to use Utilt or Usmash vs link, he doesn't attack from above very often and if he does his downward aerial will beat out all of your up attacks except uair, and even then only because uair is faster not because it has more priority or range.
- Try and edgehog, when he is coming in sideways, if he doesn't have to up b then he will hookshot to recover, it will knock you off ledges and its hard to punish effectively, if you can desynch an ice block and try to interrupt it then edgehog, if not just let him back on and kill him on the stage where you have the advantage anyways.
- Be aggressive with your shield, waveshield into him to throw off his spacing and l cancels, it can force bombs to explode on him, and he really doesn't have any good ways to punish it. Mix this up with wavesmash and grabs and Link is in a losing situation most of the time, when he guesses correct he only gets minimal damage, when he guesses wrong he gets destroyed.
- Uairs, if he jumps high nail him with these, what's he gonna do?
- Bair. When he nairs or bairs your shield and crosses you up, quickly short hop a bair, worse case scenario you are now shield pressuring him with autocanceled attacks that he can't effectively retaliate against, or you've just hit him for 20 damage and are chasing him towards one of the ledges.
- Chain throw. Dthrow dsmash, and dthrow dair both work pretty well.
Tips:
from Binx
Just follow the bullets ^_^
from Kyu PuffBefore you rush in, wanting to destroy his spammy ***, remember that Link, a mediocre version of Ganon, is a defensive wall. No matter how slow and completely lacking of potential he is, he has a lot of priority and range, and you put yourself at risk by being on the blind aggressive. Watch out for defensive tools -- n-air, u-tilt, f-air, jab, d-smash -- while keeping in mind that he has a significant range advantage on you. You want to get close enough to Link to stop his projectile spam, but play a patient punishing game, abusing his inability to do anything when you don't approach.
The hitbox of his u-tilt extends far behind him, so be aware of it while he's facing away. It hits you out many approaches if you misspace your wavedash, and afterward he can combo Nana (who won't DI out of it) with additional u-tilts, u-air, and d-air. It will be tough to save her considering the priority of his u-tilt and your position after being hit. According to Wobbles you can CC the u-tilt and punish.
Fortunately Link isn't a fantastic Nana-killer. His d-air hits Nana diagonally upwards and doesn't kill her for a long time on most stages. Up+B semi-spikes her if she walks into it in the middle of its animation. His only other reliable way of killing Nana is knocking her off the stage, and either spiking her with up+B or stealing her jump with n-air (in which case she's unable to recover).
Another problem fighting Link lies in his heaviness and recovery. I try to be reactive when edgeguarding Link. Unless you perfectly time invincibility frames, edgehogging typically doesn't work. If you wait away from the ledge to see if he sweetspots or not, you can try to edgehog him if he sweetspots or wd d-smash if he misses. When you're off the stage he'll hit you out of side+B with his n-air and up+B; recovering onto platforms is usually safer although a sweetspot from below with SoPo might throw him off.
Link's n-air has the best priority from above you, and he loves to fulljump n-air. Link mains also love to platform camp, and there are plenty of uses for u-tilt and u-smash (although u-smash is situational as always, it can get you some surprise kills from under the platforms on YS). If Link uses fj n-air to double jump on your shield make use of u-air and b-air oos.
Captain Falcon's Sexy ManlinessThe hitbox of his u-tilt extends far behind him, so be aware of it while he's facing away. It hits you out many approaches if you misspace your wavedash, and afterward he can combo Nana (who won't DI out of it) with additional u-tilts, u-air, and d-air. It will be tough to save her considering the priority of his u-tilt and your position after being hit. According to Wobbles you can CC the u-tilt and punish.
Fortunately Link isn't a fantastic Nana-killer. His d-air hits Nana diagonally upwards and doesn't kill her for a long time on most stages. Up+B semi-spikes her if she walks into it in the middle of its animation. His only other reliable way of killing Nana is knocking her off the stage, and either spiking her with up+B or stealing her jump with n-air (in which case she's unable to recover).
Another problem fighting Link lies in his heaviness and recovery. I try to be reactive when edgeguarding Link. Unless you perfectly time invincibility frames, edgehogging typically doesn't work. If you wait away from the ledge to see if he sweetspots or not, you can try to edgehog him if he sweetspots or wd d-smash if he misses. When you're off the stage he'll hit you out of side+B with his n-air and up+B; recovering onto platforms is usually safer although a sweetspot from below with SoPo might throw him off.
Link's n-air has the best priority from above you, and he loves to fulljump n-air. Link mains also love to platform camp, and there are plenty of uses for u-tilt and u-smash (although u-smash is situational as always, it can get you some surprise kills from under the platforms on YS). If Link uses fj n-air to double jump on your shield make use of u-air and b-air oos.
Watch Out For:
- Manliness
- don't try to compete with the manliness, you can't, just try and be as cute as possible and hope you win with that
- as I said above the most important thing is to be cute, desynch taunts and wacky stuff like blizzards, its the only way to show falcon your moves.
- sorry no vids, can't be helped.
from Binx
Good Luck fellow IC mains.
