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So I'm Thinking of Becoming a Ness Main...

Cr0wbaR

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jun 14, 2011
Messages
90
Location
Oakville, ON. Canada
Alright, background:

I started as a Brawl player, Diddy main, fell out of it over the years. I tried getting into PM but never went to tournies, and now I've been playing a lot of Melee.

I played around with a lot of characters, mainly Falcon and Marth, and got a good feel for the movement, wave landing, l-cancelling etc. I was playing at a small game club at school, and after getting upset about how much better everyone was over me I started picking weird characters... then I picked Ness.

Oh my... things were stringing together, DjC-ing was fun and smooth, having to wavedash into grab was fun, and I was getting sneaky f-smashes with the lower part of the hit box.

So where should I start? What should I practice? Is YYG actually a useful tech? I find I still try to use PK Fire/thunder to mess with people off stage, but I'm actually really enjoying playing Ness.
 
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gemigumi

Formerly gemininoiser
Joined
Oct 17, 2010
Messages
17
Location
London, Ontario
Not really the best Ness main and tbh don't know how good I really am but...

Understand Ness' moves properties. How do they affect the opponent in terms of knockback and direction, their range, their priority, how they combo. The Ness sticky guide does a pretty good job of explaining all of Ness' moves, it's pretty insightful to read it all the way through. Although there's a couple of things I don't agree in the first opening post (specifically where it says dair should not be used in combat. It's actually a decent move and great to start combos, and also has an auto cancel window). You should understand what moves are good in general. It can help to watch some other Ness' and see what moves they frequently use, then try to use them and try to understand what makes them effective. For example, Ness' fair is one of Ness' most important moves in his arsenal and you'll see it used a lot in matches, so it's important to know how to incorporate it into your own playstyle.

I feel movement with Ness is also very important. Not just dashdance/wave dash sort of stuff but getting used the properties of his jump. Of course you realize you can djc, but it means more than just quickly double jumping close to the ground and using an aerial. The properties of his jump make the angles of aerial movement very different from other characters in the game and it helps to know exactly where you can be and throw out and aerial at any moment, especially when you throw platforms in the mix. Get used to how you can stall and quickly shift directions thanks to djc. Of course you'll also want to get used to low to the ground djcs, and need to get used to using one and being able to quickly act afterwards.

Whether YYG is viable is up for debate. There are times where you can YYG, but Bat or Grab is just a safer better option. There isn't a reason to YYG besides style points if you can kill with Bat or Back Throw. Also there's the fact that you may miss the timing, your opponent might mess up the glitch and you can't connect your next attack after you use the glitch. You can learn it but it isn't the best thing you could learn right now. Saving it for much later is better. That said, why wouldn't you want to be able to glitch out your opponent. :')

PK Fire and PK Thunder aren't bad moves for edgeguarding. Just make sure to consider other options as well. Bat, D-tilt, edgehogging(+ leaving your opponent guessing if you'll even be on the edge), Pk Flash, etc. There isn't much a point in mindlessly throwing out PK Thunder when you can simply get the kill through edgehogging or bat. PK fire is really strong if you get a hit off the stage if you can hit it. There's also the aerial PK fire with another angle. Also it's good to swing PK thunder around to the opposite side of someone recovering as PK thunder pushes people in the direction it is coming from.

Someone correct me if I'm completely off base with something.
 
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gmBottles

Fun Haver
Joined
Jul 20, 2014
Messages
6,002
Location
Fairhope, AL
NNID
komfyking
Main Ness for the hype and have a higher tier backup character. That or go all Ness and get super good at it. I don't play much Ness, but more Ness mains isn't a problem. We need more people playing obscure characters.
 

Ganreizu

Smash Ace
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Messages
670
I feel movement with Ness is also very important. Not just dashdance/wave dash sort of stuff but getting used the properties of his jump. Of course you realize you can djc, but it means more than just quickly double jumping close to the ground and using an aerial. The properties of his jump make the angles of aerial movement very different from other characters in the game and it helps to know exactly where you can be and throw out and aerial at any moment, especially when you throw platforms in the mix. Get used to how you can stall and quickly shift directions thanks to djc. Of course you'll also want to get used to low to the ground djcs, and need to get used to using one and being able to quickly act afterwards.
Movement is something ness mains don't abuse enough at all. It's important for every character, but there are limits that having a cancel-able double jump can alleviate.

I started a thread about djc movement but it doesn't seem to have gotten as much traction as i would have thought.

you can't connect your next attack after you use the glitch
With the exception of fair since it's his only multi-hit move. I have started up a fair the instant before the thunder jacket hit to get like a 40% damage fair before. Use the fact that you're completely open when you have a jacket and throw in your invisible hitbox in the moment you get the hit and that weakness goes away.
 
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ihasabuket

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 17, 2015
Messages
321
Ahhh i see. Funny I actually had a really long discussion about this on the mewtwo boards but we didnt know what to call it. I referred to it as a DJC aerial interrupt. This is actually amazing for platform techchases and can really help polish ness's punish game on fastfallers on stages with platforms. I would like to start new thread with you discussing the top tier MU's for ness.
 

ihasabuket

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 17, 2015
Messages
321
So i was screwing around and i found a little FD flowchart against fox. So far its upthrow, upthrow, upthrow, DJC upair, grab upthrow. After this I try to DJC upair juggle him AFTER he starts descending during his hitstun arc. Usually i land 2 or 3 and as I see he's going to high i'll end it with a bair or reverse bair. Players will try to DI to the edge so a bair can setup an edgeguard earlier than you want. From here I wait to WD back to get intangability before they recover and look for the grab to backthrow them offstage.
 

CheAkiwara

Smash Rookie
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
13
Location
Germany
So i was screwing around and i found a little FD flowchart against fox. So far its upthrow, upthrow, upthrow, DJC upair, grab upthrow. After this I try to DJC upair juggle him AFTER he starts descending during his hitstun arc. Usually i land 2 or 3 and as I see he's going to high i'll end it with a bair or reverse bair. Players will try to DI to the edge so a bair can setup an edgeguard earlier than you want. From here I wait to WD back to get intangability before they recover and look for the grab to backthrow them offstage.
I actually have a method of my own for dealing with Fox´s on FD. If you Uthrow them and they just DI in one direction your can Fthrow them near the ledge and just edgehog. They cannot recover. You can do the same on Falco and C.F.
 

ihasabuket

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 17, 2015
Messages
321
They should be able to double jump and recover at low to mid %s though. Am i missing something?
 

Ganreizu

Smash Ace
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Messages
670
Ahhh i see. Funny I actually had a really long discussion about this on the mewtwo boards but we didnt know what to call it. I referred to it as a DJC aerial interrupt. This is actually amazing for platform techchases and can really help polish ness's punish game on fastfallers on stages with platforms. I would like to start new thread with you discussing the top tier MU's for ness.
It's definitely not an aerial interrupt. I experimented with other djc characters including mewtwo to see if they had anything similar, and they don't. The only one that has anything useable is peach, with either dair or fair, but her speed in her double jump and in general make it not very useful for movement purposes. She's better off using float, which peaches already do. Mewtwo specifically doesn't have a long enough auto-cancel windows (the longest being around 6-8 frames on start up if i remember correctly) and similar to peach, his speed really isn't there.

I think this tech has more implications for shield dropping than it does for platform tech chases since you can prepare an axe style shield drop pretty easily while dair is out. Also ness has a ledge dash using this.
 
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