Ness is considered to be top tier?

[THERyanP7]

It is a very scrubby mentality to accuse other players of playing characters that you think are easy to play. When you lose, you lost because you're bad, and if you win, you win because you're good. That's the kind of mentality you should have. You shouldn't get salty because you think someone is playing an easy character.

And to be honest, Ness is not difficult to play in this game. What I would consider hard for Ness is getting dthrow fair combos consistently, maneuvering pk thunder very effectively, and landing pk fires on hard reads. Those three aspects do require skill, whether it be technical or mental. Apart from that however, Ness is a pretty straight forward character. I would say that ZSS, Sheik, Pika, and Sonic are all other high tier characters that are harder to play than Ness. I will admit Diddy is incredibly brain dead and the easiest character to play. But Smash as a game does not require a very high amount of tech skill. It's a relatively easy game to pick up, and mechanically it's very easy to learn characters. The skill in smash comes from learning how your options compare to your opponents' options, recognizing the counter to the option your opponent is going to do, and being able to execute it in a very short time frame.

And Ness is most assuredly high tier, for now anyways. It's difficult to say what will happen in three or four years, but in this day and age, Ness is a very very strong character.

I nnever said I'm losing to these characters I'm saying they require less skill and time to get good with them Ness is not a character who can just be picked up and beat on other high tier characters you get 2 skill-less players and give one Ness and the other Diddy, Rosa, Sheik or any other top 10 character Ness will most certainly lose! That's what makes a high tier char. And of course those things make a good Ness! If someone can't atleast do those things they aren't good and will lose! Unlike the other high tier chars. Where you don't need to understand the aspects of all the moves to be good! I don't usually lose I'd even bet I'd beat you so how about reading what I'm actually saying instead of looking for a reason to talk ****

 

[PKBeam]

2 skill-less players and give one Ness and the other Diddy, Rosa, Sheik or any other top 10 character Ness will most certainly lose! That's what makes a high tier char.

Rosa, ZSS, Sheik, Yoshi, Diddy, Greninja, Sonic, are characters that can beat Ness with barely any skill from the player! And honestly Mario and Rosa are straight up Ness killers! Ness is extremely gimpable and has alot more landing and move lag than most character's! I consider myself pretty good at smash with Ness and I can't see how people think he's so "Godlike" higher tier characters require the least amount of work to be good with and Ness is not easy to just pick up and be good with! I'm tired of people saying my main is top tier it takes alot of work to get good with him

So I don't suppose, that being easy to pick up is a result of being good, and not the other way around?

 

[THERyanP7]

So I don't suppose, that being easy to pick up is a result of being good, and not the other way around?

I'm making this same face trying to understand what you're saying...

 

[Meccs]

Greninja is not better than Ness anymore. Rosalina honestly isn't definitively above him either, anymore. I would say Diddy, Sheik, Sonic, ZSS are all better than him. Rosalina, Lucario, Pikachu (the most underrated character in the game right now imo) and Yoshi are around the same as him. But really I'd say Diddy and Sheik are in tier 1, and then 2 has ZSS, Sonic, Ness, Rosalina, and Yoshi.

 

[THERyanP7]

Idk I just feel he has more weaknesses then all of those characters I guess I shouldn't be complaining that he's good I just prefer his PM move set and stats

 

[Noa.]

I nnever said I'm losing to these characters I'm saying they require less skill and time to get good with them Ness is not a character who can just be picked up and beat on other high tier characters you get 2 skill-less players and give one Ness and the other Diddy, Rosa, Sheik or any other top 10 character Ness will most certainly lose! That's what makes a high tier char. And of course those things make a good Ness! If someone can't atleast do those things they aren't good and will lose! Unlike the other high tier chars. Where you don't need to understand the aspects of all the moves to be good! I don't usually lose I'd even bet I'd beat you so how about reading what I'm actually saying instead of looking for a reason to talk ****

Tier lists are not defined by how easy a character is to learn and pick up. It's more about how each character performs at a very high level, when both players know a lot about the game. I think Charizard is a really easy character to play and understand, but that does not make him a very good character. Conversely, Pikachu is one of the most difficult characters to play because of his high demand for tech skill, and he's one of the best characters in the game.

And believe me when I say that Ness is not that hard to pick up or learn relative to other members of the cast.

You're just coming off as incredibly salty and bitter for losing to other players.

 

[THERyanP7]

Tier lists are not defined by how easy a character is to learn and pick up. It's more about how each character performs at a very high level, when both players know a lot about the game. I think Charizard is a really easy character to play and understand, but that does not make him a very good character. Conversely, Pikachu is one of the most difficult characters to play because of his high demand for tech skill, and he's one of the best characters in the game.

And believe me when I say that Ness is not that hard to pick up or learn relative to other members of the cast.

You're just coming off as incredibly salty and bitter for losing to other players.

Haha you love throwing in them little jabs huh? Alright big dog calm down I never said anything about my self losing to these characters or anything salt-like just observations so anyways on the Charizard Pikachu thing... I feel exact opposite Charizard feels hard to pick up quick but I tried pikachu day 1 and his moves came easy to me... I guess everyone has different experiences in game so let's just agree to disagree

 

[Luco]

Wow, that's honestly pretty amazing. Can you link me to these lists?

Ahh yes sorry I forgot to do that before. His most recent list is unordered so I don't know how he views him now, but I know for a fact he considers him to be very, very good. http://smashboards.com/threads/character-competitive-impressions.367669/page-289#post-18407012

Also Ness doesn't lose very badly if at all to most of the top 10. His worst MU is like, Rosalina and she's one of the harder -1's IMO, possibly a -2 at worst. Ness will go even against Yoshi and ZSS, beats Lucario, Fox and probably Falcon, loses slightly to Sheik, Sonic and Diddy (possibly)... yeah...

 

[Earthbound360]

Sometimes, I still question whether or not Ness will be a consistent high tier in the future. Right now, I think he's probably somewhere near the bottom of high, mostly because of matchups. I honestly think they aren't good enough to keep him afloat in the top tiers. Let's just look at the top matchups for now

According to that back room list, the tops include: Falcon, Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Sonic, Pikachu, Fox, and ZSS.
In order to stay in the top tier region, we need to have good matchups against thsoe characters. But can we say we really do?

I'd argue that we lose to Sheik, Diddy, Rosalina, and Sonic. Falcon and Fox I'm not sure about, but I'd chalk them up to even for now. ZSS and Pikachu are the only ones I think we've got an upper hand on.

So out of the top 8, it's not looking too good for half of them.

 

[AuraWielder]

Whatcha mean diddy? Ness' Bair has pretty much literally the same power it did in Brawl except now its sweetspot doesn't stop the game for a few milliseconds now.

Also @ AuraWielder it turns out that Marth's range has actually been buffed and I have no freakin' clue how we beat out his range with Fair but somehow we do lawl! In any case, it turns out Shulk is okay because their game pretty much revolves around the SH so you can often psych them out by running in and SH Fair/Nair and then kinda get in on them. They can be troublesome though I agree. :3

I will say this. I formerly mained Marth in Melee/Brawl, but I dropped him in SSB4 for Shulk because I just absolutely HATED everything they did to Marth in this game. Shulk gives me the range I like back... as well as me being something of a Xenoblade fanboy, too.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Guys, Ness is top (or very close to it) tier for FOUR REASONS and JUST THESE REASONS
*Extremely small
*Midweight
*Good SH aerials that actually don't whiff on grounded characters
*Insane reward on basically everything

It's really that simple. The biggest buff to Ness is that the vast majority of aerial spacing got nerfed in this game and Ness is literally too small to space against safely for several characters, and combined with being a midweight, he's a lot harder to kill than he should be.

It's honestly bad for the game that Ness is good, because the reasons he is good basically don't make him a very deep character. But that's the way things are.

 

[Noa.]

Guys, Ness is top (or very close to it) tier for FOUR REASONS and JUST THESE REASONS
*Extremely small
*Midweight
*Good SH aerials that actually don't whiff on grounded characters
*Insane reward on basically everything

It's really that simple. The biggest buff to Ness is that the vast majority of aerial spacing got nerfed in this game and Ness is literally too small to space against safely for several characters, and combined with being a midweight, he's a lot harder to kill than he should be.

It's honestly bad for the game that Ness is good, because the reasons he is good basically don't make him a very deep character. But that's the way things are.

How is this design unhealthy? I will agree that his character is pretty shallow and that's he's pretty easy to pick up and play, but I wouldn't say his design was bad for the game. It'd be nice if Ness had more nuance, but it's not like he's toxic to the game.

 

[Earthbound360]

It's honestly bad for the game that Ness is good, because the reasons he is good basically don't make him a very deep character. But that's the way things are.

Have you met my friend Diddy?

 

[A2ZOMG]

How is this design unhealthy? I will agree that his character is pretty shallow and that's he's pretty easy to pick up and play, but I wouldn't say his design was bad for the game. It'd be nice if Ness had more nuance, but it's not like he's toxic to the game.

Have you ever like, tried playing against players who basically just roll and fish for grabs?

Nonsense is actually a lot harder to punish when you're as small as Ness, keeping in mind it's usually safer to bait grabs with aerials except in the case of extremely small characters who magically manage to make them whiff. And then there's his disproportionately high reward.

Have you met my friend Diddy?

Yep. And you realize that Diddy is the best character for a LOT of the same reasons I mentioned for Ness? And he's also similarly nonsense to play against.

 

[Noa.]

Have you ever like, tried playing against players who basically just roll and fish for grabs?

Nonsense is actually a lot harder to punish when you're as small as Ness, keeping in mind it's usually safer to bait grabs with aerials except in the case of extremely small characters who magically manage to make them whiff. And then there's his disproportionately high reward.

Yep. And you realize that Diddy is the best character for a LOT of the same reasons I mentioned for Ness? And he's also similarly nonsense to play against.

You're always very quick to label any character design as toxic or unheatlhy.

Players that just roll around and grab are bad players lol. Ness's small size doesn't help him against characters that are trying to use dash grabs, dash attacks, and dsmashes to punish rolls. I mean what are you even talking about lol.

 

[A2ZOMG]

You're always very quick to label any character design as toxic or unheatlhy.

Players that just roll around and grab are bad players lol. Ness's small size doesn't help him against characters that are trying to use dash grabs, dash attacks, and dsmashes to punish rolls. I mean what are you even talking about lol.

Ness has a very good Dashgrab and B reverse PK Fire is an extremely high reward punish against almost any ground commitments. On top of his DA beating EVERYTHING that isn't shield or perfectly spaced SH aerials. If playing a ground game against Ness was simple, he would probably be low tier given his low mobility.

However the risk/reward for his options, especially given his small size, just makes him good for not even doing much of anything. In Brawl, he was hindered partly because SH aerials in that game were much stronger universally. Now he just randomly ducks under a lot of aerials...

And I am not saying rolling and fishing for grabs is a good strategy. I am saying characters like Ness and Diddy actually can get away with it competitively viably to an extent due to their size and reward.

 

[Noa.]

Ness has a very good Dashgrab and B reverse PK Fire is an extremely high reward punish against almost any ground commitments. On top of his DA beating EVERYTHING that isn't shield or perfectly spaced SH aerials. If playing a ground game against Ness was simple, he would probably be low tier given his low mobility.

However the risk/reward for his options, especially given his small size, just makes him good for not even doing much of anything. In Brawl, he was hindered partly because SH aerials in that game were much stronger universally. Now he just randomly ducks under a lot of aerials...

And I am not saying rolling and fishing for grabs is a good strategy. I am saying characters like Ness and Diddy actually can get away with it competitively viably to an extent due to their size and reward.

Against bad players sure it works.

I mean Ness is a good character, but he is not intrinsically toxic or poorly designed. Just because a character is strong doesn't mean that they're unhealthy.

The proportion of his size, weight, speed, and damage on hit is pretty skewed, but he has pretty signiiicant weaknesses. You mentioned his low mobility, but it can't be understated how crippling low mobility is. Ness, Luigi, and Rosalina are the only low mobility characters in the higher tiers and they have all have very big strengths to make up for it. Ness's recovery is also quite susceptible, and he has no good projectiles in neutral. All of his projectiles are designed to be used in the advantaged state, so he is always forced to approach.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Rosalina does not suffer from low mobility tbh.

Honestly Ness is beatable for most characters. Just I dislike how huge of an advantage being small is in this game, and how this interferes heavily with intuitive counterplay against Ness's options.

 

[Lukingordex]

Ness is high tier, but not top imo, because of match ups.

 

[Earthbound360]

A ton of these things you listed are false. His size isn't really what makes him good. It's the power he has per hit and decent mobility he maintains for having it.

Ness does not have aerials that hit out of SH on all characters. Fair, bair, and uair will all miss if unless you wait to come down. Dair out of SH is suicidal. Nair is the only one, and that is good but not foolproof.

Not EVERYTHING has high payout. Stop exaggerating. It's just grab and sometimes PKF (unless you're a bad and can't DI). One of Ness' best neutral tools actually hits for pitiful damage (fair, 7%, less if not all hits connect). It only does good damage if comboed into. Also, if it trades with any other fair, you can bet your mother's retirement fund that he'll be losing that trade.

There's nothing toxic about Ness at all. Sounds to me like you're just salty at how good he is. He's got a rather unique playstyle being grab and aerial based, and there's nothing wrong with a playstyle such as that being good. I could equally complain about Ganondorf saying he's "nonsense" since I have to land 4-5 hits to make the damage equivalent of his 1 hit. I mean, why do I have to work 10 times as hard for the same damage?

 

[A2ZOMG]

A ton of these things you listed are false. His size isn't really what makes him good. It's the power he has per hit and decent mobility he maintains for having it.

Ness does not have aerials that hit out of SH on all characters. Fair, bair, and uair will all miss if unless you wait to come down. Dair out of SH is suicidal. Nair is the only one, and that is good but not foolproof.

Not EVERYTHING has high payout. Stop exaggerating. It's just grab and sometimes PKF (unless you're a bad and can't DI). One of Ness' best neutral tools actually hits for pitiful damage (fair, 7%, less if not all hits connect). It only does good damage if comboed into. Also, if it trades with any other fair, you can bet your mother's retirement fund that he'll be losing that trade.

There's nothing toxic about Ness at all. Sounds to me like you're just salty at how good he is. He's got a rather unique playstyle being grab and aerial based, and there's nothing wrong with a playstyle such as that being good. I could equally complain about Ganondorf saying he's "nonsense" since I have to land 4-5 hits to make the damage equivalent of his 1 hit. I mean, why do I have to work 10 times as hard for the same damage?

Funny. Bowser and DK are highly mobile characters with great reward. Neither is considered a top contender.

Obviously there's the point that they're the largest characters in the game, but the point is, Ness's extremely small size is one of the biggest reasons why he's good. In fact a lot of the good characters in this game are quite small. Diddy, Sheik, Pikachu, and Fox are all great characters because they have good moves, and are small enough (or in Sheik's case, runs low enough to the ground) that a lot of spacing options simply aren't viable against them. Ness benefits from this TREMENDOUSLY in this game.

I'm totally aware I can trade with Ness F-air. Do it all the time with most of the characters I play. One of the few reasons he doesn't steamroll a lot of characters completely. Pretty sure rising F-air hits everyone on the ground unless it's really small characters crouching under it. F-air also has the benefit of being multihit meaning you can't simply powershield read it when he tries to space it.

Note that not once have I actually used the word "toxic" to describe Ness. You are correct in that I dislike how good Ness is in this game, given he basically benefits from really obscure and almost invisible things, which don't add any depth to playing as or against him aside from skewing his risk/reward nonsensically.

And for the record, I wouldn't want Ganondorf in his current design to be explicitly amazing, given he is a rather extreme character by design. However, Ganondorf is a balanced character with clear strengths and counterplay, which makes him fair to fight against for basically everyone, even in the matchups where he has slight advantage. That's not really the way Ness is right now, to be frank. Ness manages to be polarizing with things like PKT juggles and PSI magnet denying energy based projectile zoning, and he has several invisible strengths along his explicit ones that actually remove a lot counterplay against him. The main legitimate weakness he does have is low overall mobility, which is significant and prevents him from being as good as Diddy or Sheik.

 

[THERyanP7]

I feel one thing nobody talks about is Ness's landing lag... it's pretty long for someone his size even doing everything I can to cancel some of the landing lag he still takes longer to move than charactears twice his size.. this definitely hinders him against defensive hit and run players.. if anyone has a simple sure fix to cancel the lag please share!

 

[Noa.]

Funny. Bowser and DK are highly mobile characters with great reward. Neither is considered a top contender.

Obviously there's the point that they're the largest characters in the game, but the point is, Ness's extremely small size is one of the biggest reasons why he's good. In fact a lot of the good characters in this game are quite small. Diddy, Sheik, Pikachu, and Fox are all great characters because they have good moves, and are small enough (or in Sheik's case, runs low enough to the ground) that a lot of spacing options simply aren't viable against them. Ness benefits from this TREMENDOUSLY in this game.

I'm totally aware I can trade with Ness F-air. Do it all the time with most of the characters I play. One of the few reasons he doesn't steamroll a lot of characters completely. Pretty sure rising F-air hits everyone on the ground unless it's really small characters crouching under it. F-air also has the benefit of being multihit meaning you can't simply powershield read it when he tries to space it.

Note that not once have I actually used the word "toxic" to describe Ness. You are correct in that I dislike how good Ness is in this game, given he basically benefits from really obscure and almost invisible things, which don't add any depth to playing as or against him aside from skewing his risk/reward nonsensically.

And for the record, I wouldn't want Ganondorf in his current design to be explicitly amazing, given he is a rather extreme character by design. However, Ganondorf is a balanced character with clear strengths and counterplay, which makes him fair to fight against for basically everyone, even in the matchups where he has slight advantage. That's not really the way Ness is right now, to be frank. Ness manages to be polarizing with things like PKT juggles and PSI magnet denying energy based projectile zoning, and he has several invisible strengths along his explicit ones that actually remove a lot counterplay against him. The main legitimate weakness he does have is low overall mobility, which is significant and prevents him from being as good as Diddy or Sheik.

I also agree that Ness's size is a very big factor as to why he's a good character. Ness isn't that small, but he's small enough that it can make the difference in certain situations.

I don't think that Ness is unfair to play against or lacks counterplay. Just because characters benefit from base stats and the environment of the game around them does not mean they lack counterplay. It just makes them less interesting to play against because their strengths come from things outside of the player's control. The only time I feel situation is legitimately unfair for opponents is pk thunder juggles against large characters. Most characters can get out of juggles with smart use of their double jump and air dodge, and it's hard to keep them in juggles for long. But larger characters kind of get ****ed over by pk thunder juggles and there isn't much that they can do about it. But the majority of the game is very unfair to the larger characters.

 

[NorCal_DSS]

Bottom of A-Tier imo. Great tools, and can cheese characters pretty easily.
However, we're also prone to getting cheesed. Once our double jump has been clipped offstage, it's a free 50% or even death for us. It's probably our biggest weakness as a character, and why I consider him barely in A-Tier.

 

[Earthbound360]

Ness has a ton of weakness. It just sounds to me like you aren't working hard enough to exploit them. Sure, they're not as glaring as some other characters, that's why he's good, but that doesn't make him unfair. A majority of his aerials are unsafe on block (I feel that bair is the only truly safe one), and his short range and abusable recovery are all easily taken advantage of. For what he has in the risk/reward department, he has a plethora of other issues bringing him down to manageable status easily.

 

[SC | Chrollo]

Right off the bat, no pun intended, any character that has a kill throw move at acceptable percentages is sent to high tier. But ness is very adaptable in his play style except for being aggressive. But, his follow ups out of grabs are on point and his aerial game is beast. Don't forget with the pk thunder harass and baits can be something a lot of people would love to see.

 

[Tito Maas]

Ness should be considered high-tier. Has incredible range on his running neutral A, awesome aerials, a back throw that kills at ridiculous percentagespercentages (his forward smash is also deceptively strong when charged... the king of knockback), PKT which has critical knock back (which is perfect considering his mind games and options he has with PKT), and most importantly, has almost no punishable moves (his taunts are even so fast they're barely punishable). The end lag on his moves are near nonexistent and he can dodge and attack immediately after anything except his forward smash and PKT. No weaknesses, no punishable moves, and his gimmick recovery is now quite reliable as well as being outrageously powerful as an attack.

High-tier.

 

[Earthbound360]

Ness should be considered high-tier. Has incredible range on his running neutral A, awesome aerials, a back throw that kills at ridiculous percentagespercentages (his forward smash is also deceptively strong when charged... the king of knockback), PKT which has critical knock back (which is perfect considering his mind games and options he has with PKT), and most importantly, has almost no punishable moves (his taunts are even so fast they're barely punishable). The end lag on his moves are near nonexistent and he can dodge and attack immediately after anything except his forward smash and PKT. No weaknesses, no punishable moves, and his gimmick recovery is now quite reliable as well as being outrageously powerful as an attack.

High-tier.

Complete and utter BS.

 

[PKBeam]

it's a trollpost

 

[XCounter]

If the current top tier consists of characters like Diddy, Sheik and Sonic, Ness definitely isn't a part of it. Those three and Rosalina & Luma win against Ness, I think Fox, Luigi and Yoshi either go even or win, the matchups against Peach, Pit, Dark Pit, Shulk and Mario don't seem easy and I'd argue even Marth could potentially give Ness problems.

I'd say he's towards the bottom of the top 10.

 

[Tito Maas]

Complete and utter BS.

It's incredible how quickly he can roll and spot dodge out of attacks. You have to play quite close to him to punish moves (not including the bat and PKF), unless you're talking about PKT and PKFlash, which a smart Ness player isn't using while you're close enough to punish anyway.

 

[Earthbound360]

You can punish nair, fair, uair, dsmash, usmash, grab as well.

The only thing that I can argue is not very punishable is his bair, which is admittedly very good. But it doesn't matter that you have to be "very close" because Ness has such short range that you almost always will be.

 

[Plorf]

For me personally (I do not own the game), Ness is top tier.

I definitely see the power of other top tiers, and can't really place him above or below any one of those particular characters, but there's no doubt in my mind that he's extremely powerful, and is my most feared matchup as any chararacter.

Would love to prove myself wrong.

 

[Lukingordex]

There's no way Ness is top tier, his terrible neutral game gives him some not very good matchups not only against the top tiers, but also against some mid tier characters that just happen to have decent options in the neutral game.

Also, @ XCounter as a Yoshi main myself I can confirm this MU is even.