Stage Striking

[Kyle Strand]

I wanted to start a thread on stage banning and counterpicking for speciic matchups. To give an example, For the Marth matchup, I tend to ban castle siege, yoshi's story, and wario ware and take them to big stages like dreamland or pokemon stadium 2.

 

[Sabre]

To me it seems like ivy is pretty versatile, so you want to play to your enemy's weaknesses. Against a laser-heavy fox or a spammy link, you want to get in close and go to smaller stages, while you want to go to a smaller stage against someone like puff, who wants room to run away.

 

[Infinite901]

I like Warioware for a lot of MU's, especially Fox.

 

[Llama Juice]

I've been banning Smashville a lot lately, as I can never actually use the platform effectively, and nearly every other character can recover to that moving platform, so I feel like it gives more of an advantage to my opponent than it does to Ivy.

I do feel like I need to take more characters to Wario Land, but I typically autoban Wario Land. I always feel like Ivy needs to live forever to be able to really get a lot of work in, and Wario Land doesn't really support that. Most of the sets that I get to choose which stage I go to, it's either PS2 or Dreamland. If both of those get banned then Distant Planet is typically the choice.

Against projectile heavy characters i've been trying out green hill zone so that I don't have to chase them around as much.

Also, what's up Helix.

 

[Mmeaninglessnamee]

[replying to somewhat old thread] I'm not a good Ivysaur by any means, but I end up favoring stages without lots of platforms above them. This lets me use lots of seed bombs in neutral, which makes me more difficult approach because the seed bomb will fall down on attackers. Is it really a good strategy to play this defensive, or should I be forcing myself out of this mindset with my stage choices? I feel like I'm restricting Ivy's potential with flatter stages.

 

[Infinite901]

[replying to somewhat old thread] I'm not a good Ivysaur by any means, but I end up favoring stages without lots of platforms above them. This lets me use lots of seed bombs in neutral, which makes me more difficult approach because the seed bomb will fall down on attackers. Is it really a good strategy to play this defensive, or should I be forcing myself out of this mindset with my stage choices? I feel like I'm restricting Ivy's potential with flatter stages.

Yeah, I sort of do this too. I prefer when platforms are there (I don't think FD is very good) but I like having open spaces, so I prefer PS2, Warioland, Green Hill, Distant Planet, Norfair, Smashville, and Delfino somewhat. FoD also isn't bad.

 

[Killem]

I think platforms make ivy really good at not only camping but for being aggressive as well because ivy's platform movement is pretty decent but you can also ledge cancel the up air for rad movement so I like to go battlefield a lot. On a side note I feel like Yoshi's story would be pretty decent if it was'nt for randall killing ivy every time you're close trying to tether back

 

[Sabre]

I'd agree with all that. I really like both FoD and Delfino because their platforms really help ivy's movement and combo games, and I definitely feel like having more platforms is usually better, barring some matchups where I'd prefer FD(like fox for example). That said, my most common bans are smashville(the platform only ever helps my opponent's recovery, making it useless to me), and fd/dreamland(both should be good stages for ivy but her tether sometimes doesn't work when right under the ledge, and it's noticeably only on these two that it ever happens to me, so I usually don't go there to avoid the risk of it screwing me in tournament).

 

[Verduyn]

Personally I autoban Smashville because of the same reasons as everyone else and generally my second ban is Yoshi's Melee if it's legal outside of MUs where I have to camp and control as much space as possible (like Sonic). My reason for that is I don't want to be Randall glitched and die to bull****. If Yoshi's isn't legal (like in my region) then my second ban is very MU dependant. I will never ban Battlefield though