Ivysaur Help!

[Chaos 0]

I'm not an amazing Ivysaur player, but I do think I'm an okay one.
But, I want to be a lot better, and I know many of you are better than me,
so could you tell me what you'd do in these situations?

1. Usually, when the match starts I start off with Razor Leaf, but I find it too predictable,
so what would you do?
2. Every time I get hit offstage, I always try dair and then up-b, and this is the way every Ivy main recovers,
but my brother can usually gimp me with Marth. How could I avoid this? And is it just me, or is her/ all tether
recoveries really bad?
3.Whenever I'm on the ledge, I usually try hit a down-b stun, but this has always caused me to miss the ledge
despite being so close, am I doing it wrong? On a stage like Lylat, I'll drop under, B-Reverse to get back around and up-b and on Green Hill Zone type stages, I'll drop low enough to hit a down-b into the ledge.
4. When should I use F-throw? I use B-throw for killing, U and D throws for combo starters, but I can't find uses for F-throw.
5. Is there any techniques that are important to Ivysaur that I really need to learn?
6. And lastly, what are a few Solar Beam and Up-b combos?
The ones I know are:
Full Nair into Critical Up-b or Solar Beam
Dash attack into Critical Up-b or Solar Beam
D-tilt into Critical Up-b or Solar Beam
U-tilt into Critical Up-b or Solar Beam
Tippered Fair into Critical Up-b or Solar Beam
Dair into Solar Beam
Uair-wavedash back- Solar Beam
U-smash into Up-b or Solar-Beam
D-throw into Up-b or Solar Beam
U-throw-wavedash back- Solar Beam

Thank you!

 

[Swann]

Take all my responses with a grain of salt. I am by no means the best Ivy player.

1. I typically take center stage however possible. Sometimes leaf is the best way to do this, sometimes dash forward->dtilt is best, sometimes DD is best. It depends on the stage and the other character.

2. Tethers suck in 3.5. Seriously, they are garbage. You should aim to recover high and then mix up your drift patterns. Don't be too quick to use uair and don't feel like you need to tether every time. Just gotta mix it up as best you can. Also, Marth sux.

3. Really not sure what you're talking about. Down B into the ledge from offstage (if that's what you mean) is AT BEST a terrible mixup. Any competant opponent will back off after you get the ledge, due to the threat of LH fair/nair/leaf and WL shenanigans.

4. Fthrow is a DI mixup with dthrow if you get a grab facing offstage. If you dthrow, they will go too far for vine whip, but fthrow will send them SIGNIFICANTLY further offstage (sometimes it kills outright). It sends low enough to set up for an easy bair edgeguard.

5. RAR bair. WD OOS, since Ivy's OOS options suck so much. Seed bomb trajectories. SH immediate fair->waveland is nice. Invincible waveland from the ledge is really good. Make sure you are consistent with turnaround vine whips so you don't go for an easy followup and end up looking like an idiot.

Can't really answer 6 since i go for those moves based on "feel" rather than practiced setups.

 

[Chaos 0]

1. My brother is a Marth and Fox main, and he always picks FoD or Yoshi's Story. Mostly, I go either FD or Yoshi's Island.

2. What could I use to mix it up? I've only done d-air, up-b, air dodge and when I'm high up, I'll d-air to get me onstage and u-air back down.

3. Against a Marth main, I usually get hit by a well spaced f-smash, despite ledge-hop fair nair or leaf, which is why I started to do drop down down-b. I can usually get it, but I'll never recover.

Thank you, this is very helpful and I'll try to incorporate these into my Ivysaur play.