Ness Strategy! How do you play ness?

[lordmud]

So Ness is a very versatile character you can do a lot with. and I'm just curious what everyone does differently as far as early, mid, and late game.
how do you dominate neutral game? how do you ensure a stock? i know these seem like easy questions, but with high level players, it's not always easy getting in or finding that finishing move with ness.

 

[Lochy]

*ALERT WALL OF TEXT APPROACHING*

Early percents 0-40 %In the beginning of the game I try to do nairs, fairs and bairs on their shield.(poke and retreat)
Get the grab and do the normal Ness Bread and Butter combos,
Down throw -> Fair
Down throw -> Fair -> Fair
Down throw -> Up air (watch for the airdodge. Many people tend to airdodge after a down throw)
Down throw -> fair -> Up air
(Way more advanced combo that only works at super early percents 0-10% but is worth mentioning)

Down throw -> fair -> Up air -> up tilt -> short hop nair -> bair or fair (depending on which way they go after the nair.)

Mid Percents 40-80%
Try to hit them with bairs, fairs and nairs. They do quite a lot.

High percents 90-999%
Go for the back throw if you know it will kill. If they aren't at quite the percent to die from b throw then you could f throw them offstage and gimp them with bair, fair, nair or pk thunder.

Dominating neutral: Use lots of nairs and bairs because they are safe on shield. Only use fair on shield if you are retreating with it. DO NOT throw out pk fire randomly in Neutral. It has 59 frames altogether from start to finish. So you it to punish the opponent if you know what they are going to do.

 

[Noa.]

Quoting myself from another thread.

I wrote this on Facebook and thought I should say it here as well. This is really a Ness primer.

All right Ness is one of the easier characters to play.

In neutral you want to constantly be in the air. There's not too much of a point to walking and running around a lot.

Just walk up to them and do well spaced short hopped aerials in their face. Nair, fair, and Bair are the aerials you do in neutral. Nair is great for everything and your default. spam that **** it's amazing. Fair is amazing anti air and beats most other aerials in the game. If you think they're going to jump then use a fair to stuff them. Bair is nice cause it does 15% sweet spotted, is super safe on shield cause of pushback, and has more range than nair. Bair comes out frame 10 and nair comes out frame 4 or 5. You'll use nair more often but Bair works too. Fair is not that good against grounded opponents generally.

They key to sh aerials safely to to mixup what you do after you aerial. Like do a rising short hop aerial and then drift away cause you want to space it well and hit with the end of your hitbox. After you're drifting away you have some options. If you did a sh nair you can land with another nair. You can sh double nair. Or as you drift away you can just land on the ground. Though often people will punish you for that. The best option is that after you sh aerial and retreat away, just double jump and do another nair. When you get them to be wary of punishing your landing after you short hop, you can just land.

Just pressure them with aerials constantly. They'll be scared to jump cause your aerials best theirs. And they'll usually just try to shield. Keep jumping at them and condition them to shield. And then just jump at them and tomahawk, and then grab them. A tomahawk is an empty short hop or landing. You just jump into the air to fake them out. So useful for ness and the best way for him to land grabs. Short hop at them and then land and grab them.

That's like the basic game plan for Ness in neutral.

If you're playing against a character who has an aerial that can beat your aerials, such as sheik fair or diddyfair, then you have to play pretty differently though. Stay grounded and just try to run in and shield a lot. Mixup between dash attack, dash grab, and short hop nair. Now earlier when I was talking about short hop nair I was talking about spacing it well. In those cases you move forward diagonally and retreat. Against sheik and Diddy to combat their aerials just run underneath them and do a sh nair straight up.

You can also try to land pk Fire their landing If they land close to you, but you gotta be careful if they still have their double jump.

Pk Fire is not a spacing tool or pressure took. It is way too laggy to be used like that. You use it to punish things and on a hard read. If you hard read a spot dodge you can pk Fire. You can punish them for charging a smash or getting stuck in a laggy move. You can punish them for landing near you without a double jump. Do not just spam pk Fire cause **** is laggy though.

And yeah that's ness in the neutral.

After that make sure you practice your dthrow combos and pk Thunder juggling. It's really important to get good at both. They add tons of extra damage to your oppoenent. Whenever you send them offstage or high into the air, pk Thunder immediately and hit them with it. A good pk Thunder juggle is imperative to winning.

When you want to kill just spam sh uair and randomly dash grab and you'll kill them sooner or later.

 

[Rocket-Bot]

Down throw combos, PK fire depending on the matchup, bair at the ledge.

One of my favorite things to do is up throw, bait a reaction, then punish that with another up throw.