Is Ness "Borderline Broken" ?

[JosePollo]

I believe this claim was made due to Ness' ability to kill reliably (and relatively early as well) and how he can rack up damages like if it was nothing. His aerial game is very good too.

Despite these strong points, Ness' weakness shows no mercy to him. Once he's offstage, he's almost assured to not comeback if he's against decent "Edge Guards". Even though you might say "No sane person is ever going to jump into PKT2 point-blank", all it takes is a bit of timing and it's over for him.

It's actually a fairly common--though incredibly risky--tactic among higher-skilled players to jump into PKT2. It halves the distance Ness travels, and the player can simply tech off the stage to survive while Ness falls helplessly to his doom.

 

[Uffe]

I believe this claim was made due to Ness' ability to kill reliably (and relatively early as well) and how he can rack up damages like if it was nothing. His aerial game is very good too.

Despite these strong points, Ness' weakness shows no mercy to him. Once he's offstage, he's almost assured to not comeback if he's against decent "Edge Guards". Even though you might say "No sane person is ever going to jump into PKT2 point-blank", all it takes is a bit of timing and it's over for him.

I've had players purposely take the hit from PKT2 because all they needed to do was tech the wall behind them and they would survive while I felt into oblivion. While PKT goes through bodies at the start up, the ledge can be grabbed by more than one character, and the wall bounce being added, Ness still has issues with recovering. Someone on Sakurai's team must have saw the easy gimps on Ness from previous games and thought these would be helpful, but Ness still gets screwed over. This is why I kind of like Lucas' recovery, because you can try to gimp Lucas by getting hit by his PKT2, but he'll just go through the opponents body anyway, whereas Ness gets cushioned.

 

[ilysm]

Ok. This is all really intelligent discussion as always. I agree with (and have made in the past) a lot of the points made in this thread. It's great. But. In total politeness and without the intention to seem disrespectful to anybody (please let me know if I do).

How many times is this going to happen? How many threads do we already have collecting dust in which we've debated Ness's balance into the dirt, and firmly debunked any theories of his being 'broken' or 'overpowered'? I can think of three off the top of my head. There's probably more. Is there a kind and not-rude way we can tell people coming here (usually immediately after having watched ZeRo's tier list video) that we've already discussed this to death? I really don't want to come off as cross or impatient to people visiting the boards because lively, friendly, intellectual discussion is a big part of the lifeblood of this community and Smash has always had the privilege of being a generally warm and welcoming bunch and I love that. But rehashing the same points on and on ad nauseam won't help anything at some point. It just isn't productive.

 

[DeleteThisAcct]

I believe this claim was made due to Ness' ability to kill reliably (and relatively early as well) and how he can rack up damages like if it was nothing. His aerial game is very good too.

The hilarious irony of such claims is the complete and utter hypocrisy of it all. Especially if you consider just how many of these same people who salt about Ness, main or secondary someone infinitely more cheap in BOTH departments like Shulk, Yoshi, Rosalina, or "Trollager"; or Diddy Kong before he got nerfed into oblivion.

Shulk can, has, and will, rack up incredible damage in the blink of an eye with Buster, then switch to Smash to make virtually all of his moves reliable kill options - which is almost assured given his incredible range unless you stall it out or turtle. The only real blessing is it can backfire if you're a good enough player who's experienced in punishing Shulk.

Yoshi can inflict up to a mind-blowing 34% on average with a single dAir! That's about 1% shy of a fully charged PK Flash iirc! He also has quite a repertoire of reliable kills and perhaps the best spike in the game that's aided by a super-armored second jump. Add to that Yoshi's low lag which makes him rather difficult, if not near impossible, to punish when in the right hands to the point that you just have to slowly and painfully chip at him until can go for kill with bThrow.

Rosalina... one word, Luma. 'Nuff said. I'm not even going to get into how absurdly fluid and powerful she is, or the fact she's like a glorified Ice Climbers but without any of the drawbacks.

Villager aka Killager aka Trollager can rack up damage fairly quick as well by camping and spamming SH nAir and Lloyd Rockets in alternating sequence; can gimp and punish hard with Pocket, has RNG for uAir and dAir that can be devastating; and again, also has reliable kill moves too. I'm just glad his recovery took a hit so he's not as obnoxious to deal with.

Yet these are the same people we're stuck hearing whine ad-nauseam about how "cheap" and "broken" Ness is on a consistent basis. One person from chat I know personally salts insanely hard about it when he's using Shulk and Yoshi of all characters. Again, as others have said on these boards - Ness has a bad neutral game, bad approaches, and an easily punished recovery. He's balanced, not broken by any length, but regardless, we use him because we love him and the series he came from. Heck, I even mained Ness in Melee without a care for his weaknesses, so I'll be damned if anyone accuses me of using Ness just to win or because he's "broken".

If you can't handle Ness, or feel the urge to whine about him, I have five words for you: Learn how to play Smash! I'm sure the second one of us dethrones ZeRo with our beloved main, he'll cry and cry on YouTube about how badly Ness "needs" a nerf... it's sickening. But alas, given Ness' weaknesses, being able to even make it far enough to face ZeRo might prove to be quite the undertaking, yet Ness is "broken", okay, sounds legit.

EDIT: Corrected typos

 

[Lukingordex]

As a said in my first post, Ness is just a very good character with the tools to do well, but also has his weaknesses. The problem is that people who don't understand how he works thinks he's somehow broken because of his combo potential and good kill moves. They don't really have a full understanding of how his neutral game is weak, how his disavantaged state is not one of the best in the game and how his recovery is exploitable.

That's not just a Ness case, some other characters also get hated for being good while they actually have some weaknesses, and honestly you can notice this happening right here in this thread, from the people that's critizing Ness' haters but then taking the same opportunity to hate other characters.

 

[ilysm]

@SapphirePaladin924 All good points, though I would say it's important to acknowledge that Ness himself does have a wealth if reliable kill options. Uair, bair, fsmash off a read, dsmash at the ledge, or of course back throw. These are all fairly easy to land and make Ness very scary at high percentages. All the characters you mentioned have good tools to rack up damage and kill, yes; it's just important to concede how flexible and dangerous Ness himself can be when you make a comparison. Is he broken? No. He's great at killing and punishing but other aspects suffer in exchange.

Also I'll note that comparing him to Monado Shulk is a bit facetious since by that logic Shulk is the best character in the game. If you compare characters to Monado Shulk, he deals damage as well as Ryu, kills as early as Ganon, recovers as well as Mewtwo, moves as fast as Sonic, and lives as long as Bowser. Any Shulk main will say that comparison is not really all too practical. ^_^

 

[DeleteThisAcct]

@ ilysm You're missing my central point a little. I'm not saying Ness doesn't have good kill options, his trademark is his Grade AAA punish game after all. in fact Ness' kill options exist to compensate for his glaring weaknesses that serve to balance him just fine.

Rather, I'm trying to point out just how hypocritical it is to whine about Ness when the majority of those whining about him, use the aforementioned characters and / or turn a blind eye to the aforementioned characters instead of crying about them (case in point - ZeRo who mains Diddy Kong and abuses Hoo-Hah cause he's "easy and powerful" - a character so broken that he got nerfed hard, TWICE in succession. Need I say more?), characters with much better options per situation on average, all while not having the cringe worthy drawbacks that Ness does. That being said, I'm not complaining about the above characters, but rather explaining why it's so ridiculously hypocritical for those mains especially to complain about Ness once you consider their toolbox PLUS a much superior neutral game and better match-ups overall - something Ness lacks.

EDIT: Elaborated central point.

 

[ilysm]

No, no, you misunderstand: I agree with your points--most of those characters do have very good tools to rack up damage and kill, just like Ness--I just think you may be overexaggerating them somewhat. I don't really think Ness's drawbacks are 'cringe-worthy' or 'glaring', even though they're certainly present and do hold him back a bit; Smash 4 is the first game in which his strengths vastly outnumber his weaknesses. His damage output and kill potential really do make up for his lack of range, bad recovery, and poor neutral. While he's not Top 5 material for those reasons imo, he's still a very good character. Also, I may be a bit behind in the discussion due to spending some time away from this game, but I'm pretty sure Ness has mostly positive matchups across the board. The few bad ones I can remember discussing were Sonic, Diddy (pre-nerf though so maybe something's changed) and possibly Luigi. Maybe RosaLuma but I heard noise that the MU isn't as bad for Ness as most tend to assume because of the whole Gravity Pull gimp thing (noise I'm inclined to agree with but that of course is strictly opinion-based until we have a more consolidated discussion on it).

And I do agree that Ness gets an unfair amount of exposure as a 'broken' character when a lot of underrated characters can do the same as he can or better (in some situations). It's frustrating when top players like ZeRo spread misinformation or misrepresent the character. But hey, it's how we do. No community's perfect. The important thing is to stay patient and keep pushing the facts.

 

[L9999]

@ ilysm You're missing my central point a little. I'm not saying Ness doesn't have good kill options, his trademark is his Grade AAA punish game after all. in fact Ness' kill options exist to compensate for his glaring weaknesses that serve to balance him just fine.

Rather, I'm trying to point out just how hypocritical it is to whine about Ness when the majority of those whining about him, use the aforementioned characters and / or turn a blind eye to the aforementioned characters instead of crying about them (case in point - ZeRo who mains Diddy Kong and abuses Hoo-Hah cause he's "easy and powerful" - a character so broken that he got nerfed hard, TWICE in succession. Need I say more?), characters with much better options per situation on average, all while not having the cringe worthy drawbacks that Ness does. That being said, I'm not complaining about the above characters, but rather explaining why it's so ridiculously hypocritical for those mains especially to complain about Ness once you consider their toolbox PLUS a much superior neutral game and better match-ups overall - something Ness lacks.

EDIT: Elaborated central point.

I still remember January-February when ZeRo was ******* everyone with the Hoohah. You know, an actual death by air dodge read? And when Ness does fair chains is bad, but when Sheik does it it's OK? Yeah, the hipocrisy is gigantic around here.

Ok. This is all really intelligent discussion as always. I agree with (and have made in the past) a lot of the points made in this thread. It's great. But. In total politeness and without the intention to seem disrespectful to anybody (please let me know if I do).

How many times is this going to happen? How many threads do we already have collecting dust in which we've debated Ness's balance into the dirt, and firmly debunked any theories of his being 'broken' or 'overpowered'? I can think of three off the top of my head. There's probably more. Is there a kind and not-rude way we can tell people coming here (usually immediately after having watched ZeRo's tier list video) that we've already discussed this to death? I really don't want to come off as cross or impatient to people visiting the boards because lively, friendly, intellectual discussion is a big part of the lifeblood of this community and Smash has always had the privilege of being a generally warm and welcoming bunch and I love that. But rehashing the same points on and on ad nauseam won't help anything at some point. It just isn't productive.

I think this topics won't end unless the Ness haters and hypocrites stop getting salty because Ness beats their precious top tiers, even though the characters they play have better options than Ness (Yoshi, Killager, Rosaluma, Sheik, Diddy to name a few). And all those hypocritical players will continue to cry and this topics will continue to exist. It's like the Sonic hate threads, they don't give up and their hate fueled heads insist on making those threads. It's the same for the Ness players that defend Ness against the claims of being broken.

 

[Earthbound360]

Ness loses to the top 3 in this game, so idk what people are on about sheesh.