Solar Powered: Ivysaur Q&A/General Discussion Thread

[Swann]

Least favorite thing about Marth is definitely the guaranteed throw followups. That **** is beyond ********.

 

[EmLeingod]

Just don't get grabbed. You should be able to space a Marth better than they can space you. You have seed bombs and razor leaf. And either of those have pretty much guaranteed follow ups if they connect.

 

[Sweet™]

I decided to not abandon this character.

 

[Nequ]

At first: I know my english isn't that good, but please try to understand me ^_^

Maybe there's allready an answer for my question, but:

How do I win against Mario? I play often against a pretty solid Mario (actualy Doc) in my area...and...he placed last big PM-Tourney worse than me, but when we're facing each other I am just able to win because of counter picks (info: we're playing full Stagelist and 4 bans).

It seems like he can play this match-up very smooth: Stay back, spam pills (or fireballs), try to approach my shield with double nair or nair2dsmash. Donwthrow2nearlyanythingyouwant like fair is also pretty nasty.
My Plans were: Try to approach with sideb and try some grab-followups, too. But since she lost her strong grab/side b, i just have a chance to win with staying back, try to avoid his pills or destroy them with bair but since this move lost his speed, too, this match-up feels like a tumor in my a**hole.

Please give me some tips! Also for the Stagechoise. SV is the best starter-stage i can get against him, but still is very hard. Counterpicks? I like to play on Skyworld because of no walls and good plattforms for arials, downbs and upbs; Norfair 'cause i adore this stage; Lylat for nearly the same reasons I pick Skyworld, and Castle Siege because I'm a former Brawler and he plays Melee (better than me...for the most time). Even though YI is good for Ivy, I think it's even better for Mario: Huge wall and these heads popping up and helping him even better to recover. So totaly i got these 4 Stages. With our ruleset, he bans these 4 Stages and I'm kinda done. And even with Apex-Ruleset, Norfair and CS are autobanned, so this would be even worse. And Mario has tons of good stages: Draculas Castle, Distant Planet, Green Hill Zone, YI (as i said) and even Metal Cavern seems very strong for him. And with Apex-Ruleset he still good some "ok-Stages" like FoD, DL64, YS and WarioWare. Often for my Counterpicks i just can hope I know the stages better than he does and try to get some good edgeguards on MC, but then he drops some dthrow2fair and i'm dead at 80%; or I nearly got him on GHZ (actualy his counter pick-choise).


Please help me: I'm very frustrated against this insane Character with 13578345 - Recovery-Moves, an ultra-annoying Projectile and freaking approaches.
Maybe he'll update our last money match so you can take a look at our games.

 

[Swann]

I'll paraphrase some of my notes

vs Mario

You destroy him in neutral. Get stage control and there's basically nothing he can do to get it back except trick you. Threaten with dtilt to keep him at bay, and bair him if he tries to jump over it (Ivy's bair >>> any Mario aerial). If he takes space with fireballs, either nair/bair them away, or give him space and dtilt where he lands.

Usmash (close), seed bomb (far), vine whip (away), and bair (anywhere) beat everything Mario has when he's above you. Nair->bair is fun. Take the ledge when he's offstage and bair him if he does ANYTHING (cape, tornado, fireball). You can drop down really really far and still be able to tether. Don't use ftilt ever, and jab rarely, because he can CC->dsmash until like 120%.

Ban big stages. I like FoD, BF, Skyworld, Skyloft, and even Yoshi's, GHZ, and WW against Mario. The walls in the last three really don't help him that much. Take him (and every other character) to Brinstar if it's legal. You get almost infinite free heals and solarbeam ticks from usmashing the pillars.

Let me know if you're having trouble at the ledge, because you should be pretty OK there.

If he dsmashes your shield, I usually try to jump OoS and throw a leaf, then fullhop at him and fair/dair. This covers (Cape,) (shield), and (jump), puts you in a position to react to roll, and lets you seed bomb vertically to prevent him from rushing in on you.

Getting hit by Mario sucks. He has free combos for days (any move->any move), and guaranteed follow-ups off dthrow at certain percents. He is also one of the few characters that can actually edgeguard Ivy semi-reliably. I hated this matchup for a long time because it's so hard to punish his stuff... the trick is to hit him before he can get moves out. You have crazy range, disjoint, and projectiles. Make him hate you.

 

[Nequ]

Thanks for the tips so far. I'll test them when i'm able to train or fight against Mario again.
Some things i might disagree: You said even Seeds would be stronger than any of Marios Arials. Well I'm a 2.5-Child but hat realy enemies at 2.6 and I learned that his dair will eat my seeds like cereals and i couldn't imagine that they nerfed his dair or buffed (lol ivy and buffed moves lolololol) her seeds. Well with 3.0 i have a much more useful UpB onstage so maybe he doesn't want to be above me anymore, but back then he had an easy time above me.
Also dtilt is a problem for me cause he keeps jumping and spamming pills/balls. Still i got my bair but it seems like it's my only move to deal with him.

So if i get you right, my major and best tool i've got is my back air. I've to keep him on small stages oder medium stages like BF with many plattforms (and in my eyes small or no walls but that's a point we seem to disagree) and give him my bars and maybe some side-bs for other setups like grabthrow 2 fair-strings, get him off stage and try to keep him offstage with bair...sounds like a very very lame MU (puke)



Another question: What do you guys think about edge guarding from onstage? Dtilt or Dsmash? Dsmash has a great angle but i mess it up kinda often. A friend of mine (that mario player from my posts above) told me I should use Dtilt, but with dtilt i have the fear that i rather help him to recover. I know it would be easier to edgeguard them with my bair offstage, but e.g. Marth is very very hard to edgeguard this way cause he comes up at lightningspeed from below.

 

[Swann]

I just meant that the combination of usmash, seeds, vine, and bair means that Mario has a bad time when he's trapped above Ivy.

You want to *threaten* with dtilt. You don't actually have to throw it out. Make him respect your space, then when he's forced to jump, bair him.


A lot of characters can sweetspot underneath Ivy's dtilt and dsmash (look at falcon, for example), but I use dsmash almost every time. Alternatively, try this to edgeguard marth onstage.

 

[Nequ]

Ahh that new windbox....R.I.P Ivyshine . I seriously have my doubts with this skill. i tried it sometimes against CPUs and the just made it throw it like it was nothing. I guess i have to give it some more tries. Thanks a lot for your help ^_^

 

[TreK]

From onstage :
If you feel like making fancy reads, a falling bair or fair catches people so low that it hits them even if they sweetspot their recovery. Since you can only do it at the end of your short hop, it does require you to guess the timing of their recovery, though. Pretty sure they can edge tech but I've yet to have anybody do it to me.
Our grab's hitbox is also pretty low, so a recovery that is not perfectly sweetspotted can be grabbed. It's a good alternative to a dtilt.
If you feel like they'll stay on the ledge, dtilt them. It hits their hand. If you make them respect that, they will be forced to act before the invincibility wears out.
Razor leaf from a bit of distance away will option select pretty much any getup strat.

Question though. Any thoughts about the Pit matchup ? It feels hard.

 

[Swann]

Yeah, you can also RAR offstage and bair toward the stage as you fall to try and catch character who have a distinctly vertical recovery (Marth, GW, DDD, etc)

Pit is a very noxious matchup for Ivy. I'm in the middle of trying to pin down that finer points of fighting that character. Haven't had the chance to get more sets in with my city's resident Pit player, though.

 

[Dng3]

Ahh that new windbox....R.I.P Ivyshine . I seriously have my doubts with this skill. i tried it sometimes against CPUs and the just made it throw it like it was nothing. I guess i have to give it some more tries. Thanks a lot for your help ^_^

New windbox = gimmicky

There are always better options and it's not worth the risk to MAYBE push them far enough when they MAYBE miss the ledge sweet spot.

It doesn't even fit into Ivy's character either. I know the shine hit box didn't fit into canon either but at least that was useful.

 

[Ogopogo]

New windbox = gimmicky

There are always better options and it's not worth the risk to MAYBE push them far enough when they MAYBE miss the ledge sweet spot.

But punishing a Mother character or a un-sweetspotting-swordsman with a windbox is way more exciting.

 

[Dng3]

But punishing a Mother character or a un-sweetspotting-swordsman with a windbox is way more exciting.

I understand your point, but any character can be flashy and kill creatively to make the match "exciting". Luigi's taunt spike, Warlock/Falcon Punch, and Ike's fully charged, sweet spot Side B just to name a few. And the fact that Ivy's windbox is only effective against a few characters and not the whole cast only adds to its unnecessary inclusion.

It's one of those moves that is extremely situational and rarely displays itself competitively, hence why I say it's gimmicky. It's a "for fun" move if you will. There's only a few things I disagree with in regards to Ivy's transition from 2.5 to 2.6, but this definitely stood out as being pointless.

 

[Swann]

Dunno man, have you ever been pressured by Mewtwo? It sucks, especially with float cancelling. You know what doesn't suck? Doing synthesis OoS and pushing M2 off the stage.

Synthesis is underused. Experiment.

---

Who here has Diddy experience? Also looking for basics against Kirby and ZSS. All matchups I wish I was more familiar with.

 

[Dng3]

I guess until I see it actually being effective in high level play, I stand by my point that it's really not vital to Ivy's gameplay at all. I have seen one match where Reflex attempted to use it against a recovering Marth but just barely missed with it to kill. Even then, it was a situational where there were plenty of other options to use which would have been more effective and reliable, and it seemed like it was an attempt to be flashy.

With regards to Mewtwo, and other characters for that matter, any attempt to use Synthesis under pressure often leads to a trade where Ivysaur gets hit AND damaged while the opponent simply "gets pushed", and Mewtwo has amazing recovering which makes that little nudge hardly game changing.

 

[TreK]

In the inner area, where synth is actually useful oos, I pretty much always find nair to be the better option even though it's 2 frames slower. Now if it had M2's side B windbox, it'd be a different story.

Do you know all the item ATs like instant tossing, shield to zcatch and dtilt with bananas ? It usually helps a lot to have those tools, I see PM Diddies get away with a lot of things Brawl Diddies haven't been getting away with for a couple years.
Besides the bananas, I treat Diddy as an inferior falcon (and since I suck at the falcon matchup big time, don't ask me for advice lmao)

Basics against Kirby : if you knock him out of the upB startup, it will eat his jumps. Of you can make him respect you and stop spamming the horizontal upB, that's one approach you won't have to deal with.
His dash attack, nair and bair are safe on shield and are his three main spacing move. But all three of them lose to our disjoints. The way I get out of inhale properly is I roll the control stick and mash dair and one of my shoulder buttons which is set to taunt. That way I never get screwed up by the lack of release animation, but I get out about twice as slow as I do for grabs.

Basics for ZSS : you can crouch cancel the stun hitboxes if you really need to, it will reduce the stun time. You can't mash out of it or anything else really. Her recovery sucks once she's spent her second jump. But with it, she can actually recover high if she wants to. Her shield pressure is insane ( she's got about 5 ground moves which are combo starters and are safe on shield, plus her projectile) so yeah, just don't shield at all except maybe her side B if you don't find yourself in a spot from which you can punish it or avoid it without losing some stage control. If you can reflect her projectile with your shield, that will stop her from using it, which is good since it's tipycally used as an approach cover.

 

[Swann]

On the pushback: synthesis puts the other guy in a bad position, and any trade just meant I misspaced to begin with.

@ TreK no, I am a huge noob and know nothing about how items work in Brawl/PM. If you could give me a crash course (saying "screw it" and making me research is fine) I'd appreciate it. I don't know specifically what you're talking about.

The mashing is smart. I have L and X set to taunt, so I will be using this strategy. I swear I've bair'd kirby for bad dash attacks on shield but it's good to know I should be content to reset to neutral after nair/bair/dash attack.

ZSS's pressure is dumb, that much I know. I've played with Yeroc, who I believe was the character lead for ZSS, and he does stupid jab->jab->ftilt->dtilt shenanigans on shield. I don't think I'll have trouble with her locally, but I was playing on netplay and getting wrecked by her gun. I just wanted to see if I could adjust to playaround that handicap in some way, rather than just saying "well, netplay is dumb" and johning for myself. Thanks a ton, man.

EDIT: grammar

 

[TreK]

Z catch : press Z when near an item in the air to catch that item without any lag whatsoever. (Other ways of catching an item : airdodges, aerials, jabs, and pressing jab during the running stop and running turnaround animations)

Z drop : press neutral Z in the air while holding an item to drop that item without any lag whatsoever.

Tosses : you have three sets of item tosses : tilt tosses, smash tosses, and aerial tosses. Each have a different frame data and trajectory.

Dtilt with an item : press A during a crawl when holding an item, it will make you perform a dtilt instead of tossing the banana

Fsmash with an item : hold attack (you can do a wavedash, roll or special to begin holding attack without altering your game plan) and perform a fsmash with the c stick, then release attack. It will make you perform am fsmash instead of tossing the item

Aerial with an item : z drop an item and immediately catch it with an aerial.

Glide tossing : cancel a roll into an item toss. You will keep the roll's momentum. You can also cancel an airdodge into a toss, which is called aerial glide tossing. It also means you can glide toss a waveland or wavedash.

Instant tossing : use an airdodge to catch an item and cancel that airdodge to toss that item a couple frames after picking it up. It can be used to toss items back at the opponent while they're still in the air, or to toss an item that's lying on the floor by wavedashing upon it.

Extended glide toss : instead of tpssing the item with the c stick, toss it with a tilt toss during a glide toss or any or its variations. It will make you glide slightly farther at the cost of having a slower and shprter projectile trajectory.

Shield to zcatch : angle your shield so that an upcoming hostile banana hits it on a 45 degrees angle. The banana will bounce vertically, ypu can then jump oos (items have very low shieldstun) and zcatch or instant toss it. Careful though, if you wait in your shield, the banana will not hit it again on its way down and you'll trip.

Dodge drop : do an airdodge and use neutral A instead of the c stick to do the aerial glide toss. Instead of cancelling your airdodge into a toss, it will cancel it into a z drop, so it will in fact not cancel the airdodge but just drop the item and make you do an airdodge simultaneously.

There are a bunch of others but they aren't useful unless you plan on picking up Diddy. It includes things like making a banana slide on the floor so that it goes through shields, DACIT which is the item version of a DACUS, jump cancelled tosses which are an alternative for glide tosses with a shorter distance, and tricks to force the vict to trip towards you instead of away from you. Pretty situationnal stuff. Basically the things you must absolutely know are all above.

 

[Swann]

Thank you, Teneban-sensei. I will work on this stuff, will be useful vs peach as well (although that matchup seems way way easier in general).

 

[TreK]

Instant tossing a stitchface back at her is the best feeling ever.

So, on another note, how do you ledge ? Ledge jump basically has Marth's tipper's trajectory, ledge roll is meh, ledge getup is even meher, ledge attack is cool but predictable, ledge hop fair is like 20 frames so everyone reacts to it, and ledge waveland runs out of inincibility before the landing lag ends (although the reason might be that I'm stupid, I ledge hop with down instead of back).
So basically... Spam razor leaves and regrab the ledge until there's an opening ?

 

[Ogopogo]

What is instant tossing, anyways? Also, yes, how do you ledge

 

[Sweet™]

There are a lot of ledge mix ups in addition to what Teneban said.

Ledge jump nair.
Ledge hop nair.
Approach from the ledge with a back air. Vines will go through stage and put two hit boxes in front of you.
Razor leaf AWAY from the stage to turn around then rising back air to start pushing opponent back from you.
You can tap away from ledge and send a seed bomb up towards the stage at an angle and get up as it comes down. (unorthodox but can still work!)
Depending on how many more ledge grabs you have with up b, regrab the ledge til you reach the maximum then go to the stage as you choose. (used more as sort of a mixup)

 

[Swann]

Personally, I use leaf->ledge->LH late fair->jab/ftilt/dtilt as my go-to easy autopilot option. If they are too close, LH/LJ FF nair.

Ledge waveland is extremely good as Ivy. Watch how her midair jump propels her: she goes upside down. Why is this significant? Characters land on their knees, so being upside down means you can waveland relatively early (as soon as her knees clear the ledge) compared to other characters. Ivy also has a respectable waveland length. I like to abuse this to immediately regain stage control via invincible waveland->dash toward stage->sh bair (or seed bomb, situationally).

 

[Kyle Strand]

Any more good ideas about the Marth matchup? I always seem to have trouble with it no matter the character or game (Melee and M)
Also I played with my friend for a while who is learning ZSS. ZSS seems to be perfect combo weight for Ivysaur and Dthrow --> UpB hits from 0-85% consistently. Ledge guarding ZSS is easy with Bair off ledge
Also thanks for the ledge help for recovering. That has always been a trouble for me to consistently do well

 

[Ralph Cecil]

Can someone tell me how the MK matchup works? I generally find myself having a hard time getting off the ledge/past fsmash.

 

[WhinoTheRhino]

Would someone be able to tell me what stages I should counterpick as Ivysaur and why?

 

[TreK]

I can't test right now but I'm wondering, I've seen this gif :

Can Ivysaur do the same thing ? Aka wavelanding back to the ledge without losing the invincibility ? I think it would be a great asset to have because it would refresh the tether count and the dair bumps in case we get hit while trying to come back on stage.

 

[kevinw0w]

Would someone be able to tell me what stages I should counterpick as Ivysaur and why?

Of course, stage counterpicking is very dependent on your opponent's character, but in general...

Our best neutral is probably Smashville. You can get heal/charge off the balloon and camp the platform fairly safely against a lot of characters, if you're safe with it.
CPs: Yoshi's Island Brawl - heal off the shy guys
PS1: fire and rock transformations can give you a free solarbeam. Of course, it is possible that you get neither of them during a match :/
Dreamland: good against fastfallers as most of our kills will come from the sides anyways. Ivy's good recovery allows us to survive at high percents.

 

[Nominate10]

Would someone be able to tell me what stages I should counterpick as Ivysaur and why?

To a degree, this is matchup specific.
My general rule-of-thumb is to ban small stages vs large, slower type characters and CP large ones, and ban large stages & counterpick small ones vs fast, characters.
e.g:
Fox, Falco, Falcon, Pika: Ban FD, PS2, YI(B), PS1; CP: GHZ, WW, FoD
Bowser, Ganondorf, DDD: Ban YS, GHZ, WW, FoD; CP: FD, PS1, PS2

CP'ing fast, short range characters to small stages allows us to get in their way much more and wall them out without giving them much room to move around (an essential part to their metagame).
CP'ing large, slower characters to big stages gives us lots of room to move around, camp, and wall them out from a safe distance. Synthesis and leaf camping is usually your friend here if the enemy decides not to hastily approach.

I also usually auto-ban YS for a few reasons:
Randall interferes with our tether recovery
Really short ceiling (fox can uthrow > uair kill at like 40% and I don't think its escapable)
Way too small for my comfort

But then of course you're going to have more matchup-specific bans depending on how your opponent's character plays. For example, characters that kill off the top should be CP'd to stages with high ceilings and you should ban stages with low ceilings.

The rest comes down to personal preference. The best way to learn this kind of stuff is to just try things out! See which stages usually hurt you significantly and in which matchups. Good luck!

 

[niqster]

Semi off topic here from counterpick stage info~

What is the most important tech for Ivy? A lot of players are switching from brawl or didn't play melee as a veteran, so knowing what techs are extremely important can be difficult.

For the vets, what would you say are the most important ones to master first? I personally have found pages and pages of different techs and inner engine mechanics and its a lot to incorporate into your game-play all at once.

So basically a list of the top 5 Ivy techs' would be really appreciated by me and I am sure many others! Thanks in advance!

 

[Nominate10]

Ivy herself doesn't have really any super specific techs. Your biggest priorities should be learning the common ones that every character can and should utilize. This includes-

• L-cancelling
• Wavedashing
• Wavedashing (and other things) out of shield
• Wavedashing onstage (from the ledge)
• Pivot grabs & Jump-cancelled grabs
• Wavebouncing & B-reversing
• Sliding off platforms/the stage to cancel all aerial lag (don't know the name for this)

There's also a tether trick I've only really seen Denti use where he tethers to the ledge and then immediately presses down to detatch, and then tethers to it again.

Feel free to ask anything else about Ivy's mechanics/metagame/more techs, and contact me if you want in our Skype group!

 

[EmLeingod]

• Sliding off platforms/the stage to cancel all aerial lag (don't know the name for this)

I think you're referring to ledge canceling.

 

[TreK]

There's also a tether trick I've only really seen Denti use where he tethers to the ledge and then immediately presses down to detatch, and then tethers to it again.

Speaking of which, if you haven't spent your first dair bump yet, you can upB->dair->upB to get extra delay.

It isn't very useful though, but hey.

 

[Swann]

I have concluded that all I want for Christmas this year is standing grab.

 

[WhinoTheRhino]

Thanks for the responses guys, I'll keep all of it in mind.

 

[TreK]

Lab time monday !

Hand, a German Ivysaur I met this weekend, showed me that Ivysaur had the gatling combo, I did not realize we had one. Here are a couple things you might want to know about it :
-On most characters, the two hits wont connect, except at 0%.
-Both hits link if the opponent crouch cancelled the dash attack, on pretty much any character, and at reasonable percentages.
-If the opponent attempts to shield grab the dash attack, and you don't charge the up smash, the up smash will hit
-If the opponent keeps his shield on, two gatling combos will be enough to shield break him. However, usmash is not safe on shield. It does have a bit of pushback, so it can be made safe if the opponent is shielding near the ledge.
-You can only do the gatling combo during the first part of the move, when the hitbox is still strong.
-It works particularly well on fast fallers. If they crouch cancel it, they get hit by the sweetspot of usmash instead of the sourspot. If they DI towards you instead of away, the combo works until about 50%, which is incredible.

This looks like it could be useful when the opponent crouch cancels our nair. We can't reasonably jab, which is the fastest move we've got, because it sucks against crouch cancelling. So let's gatling instead. I'll check tomorrow if this actually works, I need to ready a new SD card with the frame-by-frame code so that I can do my tests properly :V

The rest of my lab time was spent doing shield drops, so I didn't come up with too much new technology. Maybe next time !

 

[Kyle Strand]

Lab time monday !

Hand, a German Ivysaur I met this weekend, showed me that Ivysaur had the gatling combo, I did not realize we had one. Here are a couple things you might want to know about it :
-On most characters, the two hits wont connect, except at 0%.
-Both hits link if the opponent crouch cancelled the dash attack, on pretty much any character, and at reasonable percentages.
-If the opponent attempts to shield grab the dash attack, and you don't charge the up smash, the up smash will hit
-If the opponent keeps his shield on, two gatling combos will be enough to shield break him. However, usmash is not safe on shield. It does have a bit of pushback, so it can be made safe if the opponent is shielding near the ledge.
-You can only do the gatling combo during the first part of the move, when the hitbox is still strong.
-It works particularly well on fast fallers. If they crouch cancel it, they get hit by the sweetspot of usmash instead of the sourspot. If they DI towards you instead of away, the combo works until about 50%, which is incredible.

This looks like it could be useful when the opponent crouch cancels our nair. We can't reasonably jab, which is the fastest move we've got, because it sucks against crouch cancelling. So let's gatling instead. I'll check tomorrow if this actually works, I need to ready a new SD card with the frame-by-frame code so that I can do my tests properly :V

The rest of my lab time was spent doing shield drops, so I didn't come up with too much new technology. Maybe next time !

Im confused on what you mean by gatling combo?

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Dash Attack -> U-Smash. It's like a DACUS, but you input the U-Smash on the beginning on the Dash Attack's active frames, so you get both attacks.

 

[Ralph Cecil]

I never thought to look for gatlin combos in P:M lmao. That's super neat.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

I made a video of them back in 2.6, I think. It's on my YouTube channel; a fair amount of characters can make use of it.