So I played Mofo again last night. He's still the best ness in the world, rofl. Though he doesn't get much faster, his ness does get more creative and I took a lot of mental notes. This is that.
Mofo does predictive utilts vs spacies dair and wins. it's a viable move to mix up with dash attack/ things that force people to jump. The cooldown isn't too fun but it doesn't reduce it's viability too bad, outside of making it hard to combo out of at low percents.
His main spacing tools are fair and dash attack. bair, utilt and grab are all punitive once they've committed. He admits dash attack is kind of a gamble, but he gets a lot of launches out of it, and tech chases really well with the first 2 hits. if he's spacing vs someone who jumps a lot, he throws out more midair djc dair which he doesn't fastfall (I'll get into the djc dair autocancel technology later). If the dair connects on the ground, he'll take his free 2nd hit, but if it connects in the air he'll land and mash dtilt. Once they leave the range by sding away, they're at perfect range for a tipper fsmash. Even if he doesn't dtilt them eighty times like he sometimes does, he generally gets a good ~50% off a random hit.
He beat me one game of fox vs ness by mashing out a super fast djc bair oos when I was pressuring his shield. (Our matches were dead even unless one of us busted out the turbo tech skill. Turbo ness is just as scary as turbo fox.) I wanna say I did fullhop nair but I think it might have been a shorthop. Point is, he reacted light-speed and despite getting hit by the pressure, won the game by betting on a good trade. It felt kinda like peach nair oos, how you're expecting to get hit but the point is to get your high-knockback move out.
His fullhop fair -> double jump fair soaks up airspace, and he tends to weave it so the first fair goes above the platform, then he falls to the back of it and dj fairs under it. This is similar to a jiggz' aerial weave, but I'm sure Hbox does a different one. Mofo said he has to learn from Hbox's air control. His dj choices around platforms are phenomenal, he usually puts himself far enough under the platform that he can wavedash away by the time I catch up or punish me if I try to go on top of the platform.
To that point, the real magic of his ness is the djc bair. He uses ness' aerial mobility pre-fastfall every time he jumps, but uses double jump to do the following: 1) cover horisontal space/under platforms, 2) to reassess his momentum after his initial jump, and 3) to activate ness' fastfall (usually into autocancel dair) at unexpected times during the jump. The 2nd point is what makes his pressure game so insane. His jump away -> dj back -> djc low (sometimes even shield stabbing) bair is really fast and pretty much impossible for a human being to shield grab. On top of that, he can fullhop really high and still hit the dj->fastfall fast enough to shield stab my feet.
He missed a lot of uthrow combos. I think some of that is rust, but I'm pretty sure they're just inconsistent.
also, I second the falcon comment, lol. I said that exact thing after playing p:m for 30 minutes this weekend. Every character is supposed to have the "fun" apsects of melee, which we immediately associate with tech chasing into a launcher and then doing a 5 hit offstage combo. So every character has a tech chaseable throw, a launcher, and aerials designed / tools for offstage comboing.
At FC, I told strong bad I thought P:M DK was overpowered. In DK's case, every move creates the opportunity to do the same zero to death you did last stock. It feels like every launcher guarantees a followup or a ****ton of advantage. I see the grab combos assuring death more often than they assure a large chunk of percent, or even the opportunity for escape before the KO move.