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PSA: Learn to edge-guard, and quit recommending that people use neutral b to do so

Sudz

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Ayo,

Getting annoyed on here and reddit whenever I see someone suggesting, as though they've figured out some unstoppable cheese, that people should "destroy off-stage stocks" by spamming/charging Ridley's neutral b.

Get more aggressive in edge-guarding situations and use Ridley's great recovery and aerials to keep people there. Using plasma breath is a complete and total waste of his off-stage game. There are situations where it is appropriate, but people suggest it offhand as though that is THE Ridley strat, when it pretty obviously isn't.

You will play better if you learn to fight off stage, so get started practicing your options now, otherwise you're sacrificing half your option coverage for the sake of staying scared on-stage.
 

Gleam

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While Ridley's edgeguarding and gimping is a forced to be reckoned with, there's no problem in just sitting back safely and lobbing fireballs. Some characters like Lucina have enough range and priority to actually give Ridley's aerials some trouble. Why take the risk of going off stage when you get just stay where you are and fire? Neutral B may arguably not be as good for edgeguarding as just plain Nair or Fair off the stage, but it it's much safer and still forces your opponent to approach the way you want it. Not only that but you can also mix up fireballs with other moves, again forcing your opponent to make different changes in their approach.
 

Sudz

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Not only that but you can also mix up fireballs with other moves, again forcing your opponent to make different changes in their approach.
See

There are situations where it is appropriate, but people suggest it offhand as though that is THE Ridley strat, when it pretty obviously isn't.

You will play better if you learn to fight off stage, so get started practicing your options now, otherwise you're sacrificing half your option coverage for the sake of staying scared on-stage.
Sitting back on stage spamming fireballs is lazy and wasteful and all too often people suggest it's optimal when it's definitely not. Mixing it up with other things is fine, as I said in my original post and highlighted above, but based on my experience against Ridleys online and threads here/on reddit people are overusing plasma breath and giving away recoveries for free when they could be stuffing them left and right and actually winning matches
 

E.G.G.M.A.N.

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It is the best option sometimes; against recoveries that you can't challenge directly, or to waste the opponent's jumps so they have to recover at an angle where you can gimp them at. In some match-ups it's pretty much the only way to deny magnet hands. But I think up-b spike onto the ledge is the low-key mvp of edgeguarding. Haven't seen too many Ridleys using it yet.
 

Sudz

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It is the best option sometimes
There are situations where it is appropriate
I see too many people relying on it and ignoring Ridley's air game. The basic point of this post is to remind others that off-stage play is an important thing to figure out and sitting on-stage doing nothing but launching fireballs is frequently not the best way to guarantee stocks
 

Ridley_Prime

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I’ll be the first to admit I need to get outside my comfort zone and use him off stage more. It’s something I hadn’t been used to doing too much with other characters, but Ridley was built for that and designed to get/keep others off the stage.

I’d say the effectiveness of fireball edgeguarding depends on the matchup, some characters’ recoveries it just devours, but agree it shouldn’t be used as a crutch.
 

S-bow64

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I wholeheartedly agree with Sudz, neutral B shouldn't be used exclusively to edgeguard, that's a waste. It makes you comes off as lazy and kills creativity.

While I do agree some characters may be tricky to edgeguard directly I believe we do need to try all our options to expend the meta.


I'll keep it here, unless you can snipe, neutral B should be used to force low recoveries. One salve is enough, if you want to secure a stock you need to go and get your hands dirty. Fair stays long enough to catch people before they snap and multi-hit makes teching more tricky, reverse Nair send people at a lower angle. Hell you could just stall in the air and go for a backward Up-b, the hitbox stays forever and there's no sourspot in that or even Down-b if you're feeling gutsy, the sourspot may still mess the opponent if you whiff.
 

Wakko

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Assuming you "play" ridley, you should already know his Air Game.
If you launch somone offstage and fireball when they are in the air, you're doing it wrong indeed.
But anything below the stage's floor line is a spam fireball opportunity.
Spam it until you always get the correct obnoxious range, the one that always gimp.It's a hard pressure for 90% of the cast.
And when you're good enough at gimping you can use it "creatively", going deep after one connecting then NAIRing, BAIRing whatevering that spike or disrespekt

Also
DOWN-B off stage.
 

vVv Rapture

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I mean you can edgeguard by going offstage and also using neutral B. Fireball is very good and very safe. It's a good recommendation lol
 

Sudz

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Assuming you "play" ridley, you should already know his Air Game.
Based on the target demographic of my OP, I'm pretty sure this bit of your comment invalidates the entirety of your response.

Almost every time I play against a Ridley, and they manage to get me off-stage, they start charging fireballs and I get to recover for free. This post, as I've already outlined multiple times, is to remind people that they need to figure out how to play off-stage if they expect to get anywhere. Believe it or not, not everyone that wants to play Ridley is already aware of his options and off-stage game, and as I'm sure you're aware, people need to learn things before they know them. So I'm telling the board to get to learning.

Thanks for your contribution.
 
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Wakko

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I meant "one" when I said "you"

anyway "You will play better if you learn to fight off stage, so get started practicing your options now, otherwise you're sacrificing half your option coverage for the sake of staying scared on-stage. "
Isnt a ridley focused advice, its like saying if you wanna improve, get good.
Yeah okay.

Give actual advice then like :
>if they are recovering horizontally, short hop FAIR in their direction
>if they are recovering from afar, ecover up spam fireballs from atop the nearest plateform or at a edge-rollout distance, so they catch the ledge and the low recovery
>if they are recovering up/aggressive shorthop NAIR spam and prepare to punish airdodge
>if they recover low with a startup animation (chrom, ness inkling etc) dropdown NAIR or dropdown crossover backair to stage spike
>mixups options above, fait one, reverse sideB, reverse UP B, drift fireball, angle forward tilt down to snatch the ledge
 

Sudz

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Give actual advice then like :
Tips for players are always welcome. This topic's was "quit leaning on neutral special", hence the PSA title which you must have missed. Yikes, that's embarrassing of you

I didn't list other tips because that wasn't the purpose of the thread to begin with. If you want a breakdown thread, I'm sure you're more than capable of taking care of it. Either that, or you can stay mad about it and keep it ITT. You do you!
 

DarkSt0rm009

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Give actual advice then like :
>if they are recovering horizontally, short hop FAIR in their direction
>if they are recovering from afar, ecover up spam fireballs from atop the nearest plateform or at a edge-rollout distance, so they catch the ledge and the low recovery
>if they are recovering up/aggressive shorthop NAIR spam and prepare to punish airdodge
>if they recover low with a startup animation (chrom, ness inkling etc) dropdown NAIR or dropdown crossover backair to stage spike
>mixups options above, fait one, reverse sideB, reverse UP B, drift fireball, angle forward tilt down to snatch the ledge
If I may add to this:
> Use a downward Up B If you want to spike someone at the ledge while you're off stage; if you let go of down, you'll snap to the ledge while still landing the spike hitbox (Just make sure you're facing the stage first)
 

popemanz

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Ayo,

Getting annoyed on here and reddit whenever I see someone suggesting, as though they've figured out some unstoppable cheese, that people should "destroy off-stage stocks" by spamming/charging Ridley's neutral b.

Get more aggressive in edge-guarding situations and use Ridley's great recovery and aerials to keep people there. Using plasma breath is a complete and total waste of his off-stage game. There are situations where it is appropriate, but people suggest it offhand as though that is THE Ridley strat, when it pretty obviously isn't.

You will play better if you learn to fight off stage, so get started practicing your options now, otherwise you're sacrificing half your option coverage for the sake of staying scared on-stage.
but people want to be sucked off
 

Great Potato

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Ridley doesn't have the best recovery while being edge-guarded, he's got some weaknesses there like a fairly lengthy startup on Wing Blitz, but as the one doing the edge guarding we have the options to basically cover every angle they choose to come back from and then get back to the stage ourselves. If they're coming in high then our three jumps will usually be enough to reach them, coming in horizontally and we can drag them all the way to the blast-zone. Coming in low and we can follow them to the lower blast zone and still make it back up if we held onto our jumps. I think we're only really doomed if we went too deep both horizontally and vertically in our edge-guard but the Plasma Breath is still there to cover that option against characters who with a more vertical recovery trying to come up at an angle or characters who have an air game that's risky to challenge.

Sudz is not saying don't use Plasma Breath or that there's not situations where's it's not the best option, but that one should look at the character you're fighting and the habits of the player to determine the best approach since often times there will be better options available for edge guarding and you won't hit his full edge guarding potential if you're stuck in the plasma breath comfort zone.
 
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E.G.G.M.A.N.

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Imagine still thinking Ridley's recovery is bad
It is bad. Not the worst, but bad compared to good ones like Pikachu/Pichu, who can come back almost for free from anywhere in a matter of seconds. Ridley's recovery is none of those things, it is slow, predictable, and lacks armor. The best thing about it has nothing to do with recovering, it's the spike edge guard.
 

Sudz

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It is bad. Not the worst, but bad compared to good ones like Pikachu/Pichu, who can come back almost for free from anywhere in a matter of seconds. Ridley's recovery is none of those things, it is slow, predictable, and lacks armor. The best thing about it has nothing to do with recovering, it's the spike edge guard.
First of all, his recovery is decent at worst even when he's in a disadvantage state. Second, none of the things you mentioned have any impact whatsoever on whether he is able to get back on stage when he's already edge guarding and in advantage, unless you muff up the interaction so bad that somehow the person you were edge guarding reversed momentum on you. Do you even know what this topic is about or are you just responding for the sake of responding?
 

E.G.G.M.A.N.

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First of all, his recovery is decent at worst even when he's in a disadvantage state. Second, none of the things you mentioned have any impact whatsoever on whether he is able to get back on stage when he's already edge guarding and in advantage, unless you muff up the interaction so bad that somehow the person you were edge guarding reversed momentum on you. Do you even know what this topic is about or are you just responding for the sake of responding?
I was responding to the Kalomaze convo, but yes. The lack of distance he can travel with his up-b hurts his off stage edgeguarding ability against characters with better ones, since they can go lower to avoid being gimped.
 

Sudz

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I was responding to the Kalomaze convo, but yes. The lack of distance he can travel with his up-b hurts his off stage edgeguarding ability against characters with better ones, since they can go lower to avoid being gimped.
You didn't say anything about distance lul you said slow predictable and no armor but I guess we can keep changing what is being said just for the hell of it. His vertical recovery is very decent and if characters are blatantly outside of Ridley's safe distance then you shouldn't be all the way down at the bottom of the screen with them?? But if they're down at the bottom of the blastzone recovering low then you DEFINITELY shouldn't be spamming plasma breath because that would be completely useless! You've said nothing that relates to the original post let alone refute any point I've made. Again, I'm not sure if you're just responding for the sake of reading your own comment or if you actually have any interest in the topic at hand, but you're missing real bad rn lmao
 

E.G.G.M.A.N.

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You didn't say anything about distance lul you said slow predictable and no armor but I guess we can keep changing what is being said just for the hell of it. His vertical recovery is very decent and if characters are blatantly outside of Ridley's safe distance then you shouldn't be all the way down at the bottom of the screen with them?? But if they're down at the bottom of the blastzone recovering low then you DEFINITELY shouldn't be spamming plasma breath because that would be completely useless! You've said nothing that relates to the original post let alone refute any point I've made. Again, I'm not sure if you're just responding for the sake of reading your own comment or if you actually have any interest in the topic at hand, but you're missing real bad rn lmao
He was talking about recovery in a more general sense, not for edgeguarding specifically. He's not wrong though.
 

Sudz

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He was talking about recovery in a more general sense, not for edgeguarding specifically. He's not wrong though.
Then both of you are ignoring the context of the thread, extrapolating a statement, and applying it to an unrelated topic for no good reason. As per the literal title of this post, I am talking about the advantage state and there is nothing ITT to suggest otherwise. Why even bring up an irrelevant situation outside the boundaries of what is being discussed? Weird :upsidedown:
 

E.G.G.M.A.N.

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Then both of you are ignoring the context of the thread, extrapolating a statement, and applying it to an unrelated topic for no good reason. As per the literal title of this post, I am talking about the advantage state and there is nothing ITT to suggest otherwise. Why even bring up an irrelevant situation outside the boundaries of what is being discussed? Weird :upsidedown:
He brought it up, in a half joking sort of way. He wasn't replying to your OP, just the portion of the post he quoted. I responded to the tangent he started, then I responded to your response. Just to be clear, I wasn't referring to edgeguarding at all in the first response. But I was in the second. Does that help?
 

Sudz

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He brought it up, in a half joking sort of way. He wasn't replying to your OP, just the portion of the post he quoted. I responded to the tangent he started, then I responded to your response. Just to be clear, I wasn't referring to edgeguarding at all in the first response. But I was in the second. Does that help?
At no point did you respond to anything anyone said except for me so that bit of your comment makes no sense. (Edit: wait no I guess I can see how you you were addressing the totally tangential topic brought up by the other user but not that user directly. nvm.)

Even so, your comment pointing out his "recovery distance" is rubbish because if people are recovering low to avoid edge guarding then plasma breath becomes useless as well. All this does is highlight my original point, at best.

So, to answer your question, no, it doesn't help, because everything you've said in this exchange remains nonsensical.
 
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E.G.G.M.A.N.

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At no point did you respond to anything anyone said except for me so that bit of your comment makes no sense. Even so, your comment pointing out his "recovery distance" is rubbish because if people are recovering low to avoid edge guarding then plasma breath becomes useless as well. All this does is highlight my original point, at best.

So, to answer your question, no, it doesn't help, because everything you've said in this exchange remains nonsensical.
You were responding to him, were you not?
 

Sudz

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You were responding to him, were you not?
I edited my comment after I realized what you meant by that bit, but you're ignoring the rest of what I said, which was definitely the meat of the argument. As such I'm going to make the assumption that you are dense, intentionally or unintentionally. Later!
 

E.G.G.M.A.N.

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I edited my comment after I realized what you meant by that bit, but you're ignoring the rest of what I said, which was definitely the meat of the argument. As such I'm going to make the assumption that you are dense, intentionally or unintentionally. Later!
The rest of the post didn't really relate to what I was saying. I think you're making this out to be way more complicated than it actually is.
 

Sudz

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The rest of the post didn't really relate to what I was saying. I think you're making this out to be way more complicated than it actually is.
...It was a direct response to what you posted right here in this thread, and outlines why your posts made no sense. You can scroll up and see for yourself. It's not that deep.

This is the one and only explanation you get, I have no interest in ****ting up the thread with you
 

S-bow64

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The thread simply got side tracked for a moment, no need to hurt your brains over it.

Ridley's recovery is decent if you're being mindful of your jumps and positionning but the lack of diagonal hurt it in some situations. end/

Now back to the edgeguard chat.
 

JayLow618

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Shameful confession: I got into Elite by never learning how to edgeguard and just spacing myself from the edge by one back roll, and spamming plasma breath. That spacing makes most of your fireballs keep going down, but some bounce right on the edge, covering both mid-recoveries and low-mid-recoveries. Even if I catch them in a loop (common for Fox/Falco and PP), plasma breath doesso much damage that they come back ready to be KO'd. I'm sure I've made many people very mad by doing this strategy.

For high recoveries I usually just try and catch from below as they fall back to the stage. Probably has about a 50% working rate between Ridley's uair and usmash (for when they land on one of the BF side platforms).

Really need to learn how to stop low recoveries, though. I've already been scarred by a shameful amount of SDs from Ridley's dair, but I know I can recover from it if I practice it enough.
 
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Wakko

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tl;dw: git gud with your plasma breath
 
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Krimnorr

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but I know I can recover from it if I practice it enough.
It's only possible to recover from a dair if you full hop at the ledge and use it instantly. Any lower height will result in death, since Ridley isn't necessarily the best vertical recoverer.
 

Reila

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As someone who plays Villager and Isabelle, and has been playing lots of Piranha Plant, Ridley's recovery feels really underwhelming to me. Not the worst ever but I wouldn't call it good at all. At least it is not as bad as Duck Hunt's (not even going to talk about Little Mac's...).
 

Kalomaze

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his recovery isnt horrible, but its not incredible or overwhelming. its somewhat below average. this isnt an actual debate lol.
 

chainmaillekid

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Ridley has a really incredible off stage game IMO.
But he also suffers from really terrible vulnerability from his recovery options, and esp with the long start up time of up-b, it means there's a lot to go wrong.

So, yes 100% DO go offstage. Go out there, intercept and nerf and all that. Because thats such a great part of Ridley's kit.

But at the same time, you'l need to learn to recognize when not to get off, who its not safe to go out against.

Plenty of people can be gimped by a single fireball who are un-gimpable through off stage play, that is an important skill to have.

And lastly, both should really be used honestly. Mix things up throughout the match.
 
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