=( I wish I would get surprised more in brawl. If something happens I'm not usually surprised by it. LOL at the nerdy girls comment. I'd be ok as long as they're naturally hot imo. I like girls more with good posture/don't slump and stuff like that.
About offstage gameplay, I became incredibly interested in it when I thought about followups after bthrow-->dash attack at medium-high %s (85-105 after bthrow dash attack), where most of the time, the opponent is thrown offstage. This is the best reliable setup for offstage game, other than random powerful attacks that don't quite kill, but send the opponent offstage. I realize that Ike's offstage game is heavily based on heavy hits offstage where the opponent cannot readily challenge Ike's range. + Ike is one of the few heavies(and fast faller) with multiple strong KOing aerials that's usable offstage.
I've been looking at things like full hop/shorthop fast fall fair (best to wait and fast fall right before the hitbox comes out), and double jump double aerials with short hop and full hop. I'm only thinking more about this now, because at first I assumed a play-it-safe role where one would occasionally whip out a full hop fair offstage or something like that, but I realized that Ike has an great chance at scoring an early offstage kill.
Before all this, I highly recommend setting a shoulder button to jump (I use L), so you can easily double jump and throw out an aerial offstage.
Ike can do 2 aerials with more than enough time to upB which counts as 3 attacks at most offstage.
For 2 Forward Airs where you must buffer jump+fair and make it back with upB
1.Full hop: The latest to fair is slightly after you reach the top of your jump
2.short hop: The latest to fair is very slightly before the top of your jump (which isn't very high)
These same timings also work for 1 fair and a FAST FALL.
if you do your forward air earlier, you can double jump+fair and return as late as an Ike's distance below the stage from the edge.
For 1 fair no fast-fall, you can fair as late as when the middle of Ike is in line with the stage edge.
You can even decide to use double jump + only 1 fair and reach a surprisingly large distance away from the stage.
This is only for forward air, too. I think all of Ike's aerials except for nair have unique uses offstage, especially since the long range and power of the attacks ~90+% means non-heavy opponents need to avoid these attacks. Combined with aether, which can immediately reach high levels above Ike where you used your aerials to hit/bait your opponent and make them use multiple recovery options like double jump, aether can be a useful tool. You can also easily time it so you can return to the stage with aether without grabbing the ledge.
when someone is slightly below offstage and you wish to attack them, I think walk offs are inferior to jumping, throwing out fair/upair/dair, and then timing a fast fall right before the hitbox comes out. When using upair offstage, it's best to face away from your opponent because the hitbox extends the most behind you. this leaves you with a nice option for possible bair too if you were originally planning on upairing someone. It's also best to fast fall upair and time the extension of the hitbox at a specific point with a fast fall.
The good thing is that Ike has decent enough air speed, where few characters are fast enough in the air to get past the range of Ike's aerials easily when overcoming Ike's own decent air speed, especially when spaced defensively (fair thrown from a good distance away of where they could possibly be if they held forward). This means that adequate amounts of pressure can be put on a variety of characters. Retreating double jump + fair is also very potent because it can be used at many points, especially at surprisingly low points below the stage. The good thing is that even if you miss 1 or 2, we still have aether, and by that point, we should have successfully made the opponent exhaust a few recovery options.
Fun fact: Ike can full hop fair, counter (to face the other way) jump+bair and return to the stage. At first, this seems kind of useless because Ike will be too low, but on stages with platforms where you can jump higher, it has a possibility of having a use slightly beyond a lol.
tl;dr paragraph
Ike can fall fast, he can use many long range aerials with good amounts of kill power (especially after bthrow-->dash attack) offstage for a surprising duration, utilizing the vertical distance of his upB, because you don't need to go too far offstage (even though you can) because the aerials more than make up for it. I think exploring offstage game (and recovery!) will help us in a lot of ways, because it seems pretty unexplored as far as I know (seeing some things sometimes but thinking we should do certain things more)
