the metagame of ness

[Jamwa]

DJC AC platform lands
backwards DJC fair/nair sourspots to extend combos
yyg out of uthrow uairs or dash attack on fast fallers
pivot charge usmash (pivot and then up-cstick + z) to punish bad sh approaches and get a yyg out of neutral
PKF ledge cancelling
Pokemon stadium dair/pkt2 glitches
powershielding techniques (z/light-powershield)
using forwards and backwards DJ to alter hurtbox and then change position when hit to avoid things like fox uair or make teching onto a platform easier
sweetspot pkt2 angles on every stage
aerial interrupts? platform warping? double jump landing (FoD/PS especially)
djc shield pokes
PKT1 anti-air/frame perfect trades
PKT1 autocancels
PKT1 gimps using tail and head (still havent perfected this yet, its hard to account for enemy SDI)
PKT1 shield bouncing into PKT2 to punish wd oos (super extreme sexy mixup, must study this in 20xx or something)

this is mostly just a placeholder for things i need to practice but i thought i'd post it here to get people sharing [useful] techniques that are pretty obscure and stuff.

 

[Ganreizu]

yyg out of uthrow uairs or dash attack on fast fallers

yyg off of get up attack is actually much less complicated for fox/falco.

PKF ledge cancelling

Eh

powershielding techniques (z/light-powershield)

General (high level) character meta. ZPS is actually future meta, no one is really there yet.

sweetspot pkt2 angles on every stage

Don't think this classifies as meta but rather character mastery.

double jump landing (FoD/PS especially)

If this is what i think this is, it's got to be far too difficult to be useable.

PKT1 anti-air/frame perfect trades

Actually pretty meta.



Ness' movement is incredibly deep, and i don't think anyone is competent at it yet including me. I feel like you need a kadano controller sometimes to truly unlock ness. A lot of his new tech requires intense muscle memory training to perform consistently. I'm a year into it and i still have a long way to go.

 

[gemigumi]

PK fire edge cancel is a thing, yeah.
Pretty cool. I can't do it because I need to practice, and I end up never doing so.

A question though.
Does double jumping to avoid the second hit of fox's up air confirmed work, or am I just getting out because Fox is spacing it poorly?

 

[Jamwa]

PK fire edge cancel is a thing, yeah.
Pretty cool. I can't do it because I need to practice, and I end up never doing so.

A question though.
Does double jumping to avoid the second hit of fox's up air confirmed work, or am I just getting out because Fox is spacing it poorly?

Basically, when you DJ, your hitbox extends downwards
after the first hit of fox's uair, your DJ animation cancels
when your DJ animation cancels, your "being hit" animation updates to where your hurtbox would normally be
so effectively, you can guarantee you get hit by the first hit of Fox uair, and then SDI + animation update makes you move quite a significant amount away from the 2nd hit.
on a good day, i SDI about 90% of fox's uairs that i expect.
on a bad day it goes down to like 50%.

 

[Sieghart]

Basically, when you DJ, your hitbox extends downwards
after the first hit of fox's uair, your DJ animation cancels
when your DJ animation cancels, your "being hit" animation updates to where your hurtbox would normally be
so effectively, you can guarantee you get hit by the first hit of Fox uair, and then SDI + animation update makes you move quite a significant amount away from the 2nd hit.
on a good day, i SDI about 90% of fox's uairs that i expect.
on a bad day it goes down to like 50%.

Just to get this straight, you double jump prior to getting hit to guarantee the first hit then SDI that to avoid the second one?

 

[CheAkiwara]

PK Fire edgecancel is a thing? Never seen it done. I tried it multiple times alone and with friends never seemed to work.
[Playing on PAL]
Never seen recorded footage of PKF EC neither , could anyone upload a gif of this?

 

[gemigumi]

I have seen it done. I'm really bad at it but if I have time I'll try to upload something. I'm in the middle of exams right now though.

Some other Ness main KL Kid showed me a setup for it. He did a wavedash backwards off of yoshi's platform, jumped forward and pk fired, and it edge-canceled on the other side of the platform. He like haxdashed on the platforms first, but I imagine it doesn't matter.
It seems like a fairly practical setup if you really want to get one off. Air pk fire controls space nicely I think.

I would be surprised if Vrud didn't know how to do this stuff, considering how much he loves pk fire.

 

[Ganreizu]

Ness ledge dash into shield yields 4 frames of invincibility if done frame perfect. I landed a tight ledge dash turn around SH bair the other day.

Good tip on the pk fire set up. Window is tight especially on battlefield, but easily useable on yoshis and probably fountain. Can mix up with djc dair landing (and thus shield drop) to punish their approach.

 

[Jamwa]

Ness ledge dash into shield yields 4 frames of invincibility if done frame perfect. I landed a tight ledge dash turn around SH bair the other day.

explain inputs frame-wise please

 

[Ganreizu]

explain inputs frame-wise please

Pull (read: flick) back from ledge asap -> jump asap -> dair after 10 frames or else death -> fast fall (potentially not needed if frame perfect, but otherwise YES). You have the option of holding towards stage to influence how far in you land, but you generally don't need it to land on stage.

I only did enough frame testing to know how much invincibility there was. Apparently others like kadano knew of this method, but CLEARLY no other ness's use this despite how useful it can be. It's rather...technical. Took me a fair while before i could do it consistently in battle, longer than psi dashing, while both have steep and deep learning curves. Beats all of his ledge options for getting on stage by a large margin, as ledge dashing should. If ledge invincibility is 29 frames and ness has 4 frame perfect iframes then perfect ledge dash is 25 frames, saving 9-34 frames compared to normal get up, and commonly forcing a powershield.

 

[Jamwa]

babababa

do u have any videos or vods uploaded?
if not pls make it happen, really keen to see your ness
here's a playlist of all recorded footage of me
if you'd be bothered, i'd definitely like to hear your thoughts on my recent matches vs macky and pcg (at the bottom of the playlist)

 

[Ganreizu]

do u have any videos or vods uploaded?
if not pls make it happen, really keen to see your ness
here's a playlist of all recorded footage of me
if you'd be bothered, i'd definitely like to hear your thoughts on my recent matches vs macky and pcg (at the bottom of the playlist)

I'll preface with A) you're a better player than me and B) i'm not good at giving advice. Also rhode island isn't the strongest state in the US, so take that as you will.

Biggest point of criticism you would get is something you could find in the comment on the set with PCG which is just develop better edgeguards. You either went for tail whips or somewhat risky off stage bair when you always had guaranteed positioning for taking a stock. Use ftilt more, maybe even learn to do bair to cover ledge, maybe platform cancel it to grab ledge. Use fair and dtilt/ftilt to reset edgeguard situation into something you're more comfortable handling. There was a specific edgeguard against macky in one of the two sets where he missed the sweetspot and you backed off for whatever reason, and i think a ledge dash attack would have worked well. You shouldn't back off stuff like that but definitely get yourself in a good spot for the aftermath either way.

I noticed you also did a lot of full hop aerial into neutral double jump dair (particularly against PCG if i remember correctly), which i think is generally a panic option? I think i do that a lot when i don't really know what to do, which isn't good. You were also falling with uairs a lot when they were mostly below you which doesn't really get you much.

Did you know you can full hop with any aerial except dair and double jump dair autocancel onto top platform on any stage? (dreamland timing is somewhat tough, but not that bad) A lot of your interaction with the platform had to do with boarding it with airdodge in some way, and you were 100% safe every time you did it, so you should try landing with dair autocancel more. Ness' platform game can be RIDICULOUS, with the shield pokes, the movement, the frequency with which we throw out attacks, and what we're able to do in general, all of these things get better the more we get better at using platforms and cutting our laggy animations.

It didn't seem like either of those players legitimately knew how to deal with ness (i didn't see a single dthrow DI'd correctly for example though you did use them sparingly and in really tricky situations), and while you still clutched out a looot of games, you shouldn't let them figure the character out.

 

[Dahv]

PK Fire edgecancel is a thing? Never seen it done. I tried it multiple times alone and with friends never seemed to work.
[Playing on PAL]
Never seen recorded footage of PKF EC neither , could anyone upload a gif of this?

In case you're still interested, I do it here in a tournament set. As stated earlier, wavelanding off a platform and then immediately double jumping forward using PK Fire is a pretty reliable setup, keep in mind the timing differs depending on the size of the platform (I find that I have the most success with it on Yoshi's).

 

[Jamwa]

it'd be easiest on the grass edges of FoD due to the lower friction
im probably making this up tho so test it before you believe me

 

[Ganreizu]

it'd be easiest on the grass edges of FoD due to the lower friction
im probably making this up tho so test it before you believe me

Risky trick of the day lmao. I think you might as well just throw it off stage instead of trying to edge cancel it and dying. :/

You can do the edge cancel on any platform though. In order of difficulty from easiest to hardest: Yoshi's, FoD (only because they move), battlefield, stadium, dreamland.

 

[CnB | Chandy]

Edge cancel PK Fire is super cool. It feels so good and is pretty useful in certain situations.

DJC reverse pk fire edge cancel ledge grab is ness' fastest method of grabbing ledge out of a dash, run, and stand

http://gfycat.com/LikableImprobableImpala

DJC pk fire teeter cancels at the edge of the stage will supplement your edgeguarding coverage by allowing you to immediately rapid dtilt or dropzone fair afterwards

http://gfycat.com/RapidCostlyAsiantrumpetfish

if you do the teeter cancel pk fire into slide off fair on the edge of platform, you can approach with fair semi-safely behind the PK fire, although it's still ness so this option isn't super duper great

for the reverse PK fire edge cancel, you can delay your DJC slightly so a hitbox of PK fire will actually come out before you slide off, meaning you can punish missed tech and tech rolls with a low-commitment PK fire that can lead into meaty punishes if you're quick

http://gfycat.com/CaringYellowBull

lastly, even a forward facing teeter cancel pk fire can jab reset a missed tech on a platform

http://gfycat.com/EagerMintyFanworms

in the above gfy I got the jab reset on accident while trying to film the other tech punish, so I didn't react quickly. however, if you were looking for the jab reset, you would definitely have enough time to punish before fox would be actionable after the reset.

Thoughts? I really like this thread by the way, will bookmark for future reference.

 

[Jamwa]

that's awesome dude, those applications definitely make it a technique worth learning.
will have to look into pc dropping as well i think. the more ledge mixups the merrier, since ness' edgeguard game is so lame even with these added options lmao.

i've been trying to get DJLs to work, but it seems it's only a thing if the platform is moving. ill lab some things and see how it goes, haven't forgotten about this thread - just been busy

 

[CnB | Chandy]

Yeah I hope that edge cancel PK Fire becomes a consistent part of high-level Ness movement fundamentals. His low traction and variable DJC timings afford him a lot of ways to set them up on every platform stage. Here's a neat one on Dreamland going from the top platform to a side platform to get two PK fires out in quick succession.

http://gfycat.com/NiceDisfiguredElephantseal

Obviously immediate DJC fair into fsmash wasn't the optimal punish here, I was mostly just showcasing the double edge cancel set-up.

In my experience though PK Fire doesn't keep people occupied for long. The three most common escapes I've noticed are SDIing out to the left or the right, holding down and shielding, and holding down and buffering a roll. When you a hit a missed tech with the fire you'll at least have the time they spend doing the slow get-up to wail on them for extra damage, but if you throw it out in neutral to like cover an approach or a fair or something they'll get out pretty quick. Luckily the hitstun from the fire will usually let you cover their escape option pretty nicely, especially on platforms where rolling away isn't hard to punish.

For example, in the gfycat above, let's say I double jump and waveland back on the platform immediately after the second PK fire instead of doing the fair. Fox is currently getting hit by two fire pillars and I am standing to the left of him on the platform waiting to react to his escape option and punish accordingly.

If he SDI's out to the right, he's going to be vulnerable at the perfect spacing for tipper fsmash, and because he's holding right for his SDI, you'll catch him with terrible DI and he'll get sent very far away offstage. You have to be careful to time your fsmash to hit during the window of time between Fox still getting hit by the fire and becoming actionable after the hitstun of the fire wears off. If you're too early, the knockback stacking of the fire pillars will negate fsmash's knockback and Fox will go nowhere and become actionable while you're still in the cooldown of fsmash. If you're too late, Fox can shield or spotdodge or jump or do whatever to avoid getting fsmashed.

If he SDI's in towards you (and center stage), you can either dash past him pivot grab bthrow (if he's at high percent) or wait for that aforementioned window of time between him being stuck in the fire and being actionable and DJC stomp him to start a punish (if he's at low mid percent). If he holds down and shields, grab him before he can shield drop or shield roll. If he holds down and rolls out, punish the roll with a dash attack, instant djc bair/dair or fsmash depending on your positioning on the platform/his percent.

If he doesn't know about SDI/holding down or tries to DI up, then just wail on him with DJC aerials until the fire ends and then bthrow/bair him. With all the stun from double PK fire you can even do a guaranteed weak-charge PK Flash on him for extra swag, or even take the time to set-up PKT2 or a YYG if you're super fancy.

That may sound like a lot of possible escape options to react to, but if you manage to land two PK fires with one of these advanced set-ups, your escape option coverage decisions get easier to make. This is because your opponent's choice of escape option is unlikely to change between the first and second fires, so if you watch what they're doing to try to escape the first fire, it will usually be the same option you should be looking to cover after throwing the second fire.

For example, if I'm Fox in that gfy, and I get hit by the first PK fire, I may think "okay, I'm going to SDI out to the right", which would in this case take me towards the ledge and away from center stage. When you hit me with the second fire, I'm not going to think "okay, let's SDI to the left now", because that would be undoing all the distance I already SDI'd after the first fire and result in me spending more time in the fire. So, you can observe my reaction to the first fire, see that I'm SDIing to the right, and then prepare to react with your tipper fsmash coverage. This requires excellent judgment and really quick reactions but hey, you decided to play Ness so it's not like it's supposed to be easy.

Is there a way to do a triple PK Fire edge cancel on a legal stage by only using consecutive DJCs? I challenge you guys to find one. It would probably nearly impossible to do consistently and be really situational but still. Wouldn't it be cool? I think it would be pretty neato!

Here are some other standard set-ups I've found for edge cancel PK fires. Please let me know if you find any other useful ones that I can make gfys of for reference.

http://gfycat.com/NauticalFakeBarebirdbat
http://gfycat.com/PlainUnsightlyBunting

 

[CnB | Chandy]

schmooblidon , if it's not too much trouble, could I request gifs of Ness' dash attack ledge grab (both the smash turn and regular turn versions)? I would do it myself but you always make the nice HD gifs with the frame counter and animation names and all that fancy stuff which I think are pretty important in this case because the timing and spacing are so precise. My crap capture card gfys probably wouldn't be helpful here, unfortunately.

 

[schmooblidon]

schmooblidon , if it's not too much trouble, could I request gifs of Ness' dash attack ledge grab (both the smash turn and regular turn versions)? I would do it myself but you always make the nice HD gifs with the frame counter and animation names and all that fancy stuff which I think are pretty important in this case because the timing and spacing are so precise. My crap capture card gfys probably wouldn't be helpful here, unfortunately.

Ness doesn't have the necessary velocity to do this with tilt turn, as cancelling on frame 5 or lower will not turn you around.

Here is the smash turn setup

https://gfycat.com/RepulsiveCorruptAlpaca

The main thing to observe from this is the spacing of the dash attack, as it's very precise.

 

[CnB | Chandy]

So I've been looking into psidash as a defensive ledge option and it appears that if you do it well enough you'll have enough intangibility frames to shield before you become vulnerable. See the gfy below for reference.

http://gfycat.com/FixedLastingFoxhound

I use the term "perfect" here loosely, I'm no Ness tech god so I'm probably not good enough to actually do the psidash to get the max number of actionable intangible frames. Maybe one of you guys can TAS it and see how much intangibility you can retain if you do it perfectly. I hate to bug schmooblidon again but I'm sure one of those shiny HD gfys would be much more useful as a reference tool than my attempt at it.

 

[CnB | Chandy]

While we're at it, I'd imagine that using the hitbox distortion of dair to get over the edge and then drifting back to edge cancel the dair, fastfall and regrab ledge is the fastest way for Ness to refresh his invincibility at the ledge. Like this:

http://gfycat.com/ClearcutEveryElephantseal

However, I doubt that this gfy shows the fastest possible execution of all the components. If anyone's gonna be TASing this stuff, I'd be interested to know the details on how fast this ledge stall can get. I'd imagine it's probably not fully invincible, but how many vulnerable frames do you have with perfect execution? I doubt it, but could it be done faster with a different aerial maybe?

I don't think Ness can even do a regular haxdash with his double jump so this might be the best bet for Ness at the ledge. Although, maybe perfect psidash onstage --> immediate wavedash back fastfall grab ledge would be faster overall as a kind of pseudo-haxdash. I'm not sure. I wish I knew how to TAS.

 

[Jamwa]

While we're at it, I'd imagine that using the hitbox distortion of dair to get over the edge and then drifting back to edge cancel the dair, fastfall and regrab ledge is the fastest way for Ness to refresh his invincibility at the ledge. Like this:

http://gfycat.com/ClearcutEveryElephantseal

However, I doubt that this gfy shows the fastest possible execution of all the components. If anyone's gonna be TASing this stuff, I'd be interested to know the details on how fast this ledge stall can get. I'd imagine it's probably not fully invincible, but how many vulnerable frames do you have with perfect execution? I doubt it, but could it be done faster with a different aerial maybe?

I don't think Ness can even do a regular haxdash with his double jump so this might be the best bet for Ness at the ledge. Although, maybe perfect psidash onstage --> immediate wavedash back fastfall grab ledge would be faster overall as a kind of pseudo-haxdash. I'm not sure. I wish I knew how to TAS.

have you tried this with backwards DJ? im sure that rises faster than forwards DJ

 

[CnB | Chandy]

I'm away from my set-up for the weekend but I'll try it out with backwards DJ and see if it's any faster when I get back.

Another neat thing I found to use psidashing for: because autocanceling the dair causes you to end up in a neutral state with no lag, you can input a smash turn or a tilt turn and do any grounded move facing the opposite direction one frame after landing (or immediately, in the case of ftilt and fsmash). This allows you to do a kind of pseudo-pivot really consistently, and it especially helps with moves that are incredibly difficult to do out of a pivot, like usmash or utilt. You can also vary the length of the initial psidash to result in several different spacings depending on what you need to use at that point. However, only the fastest and shortest psidashes are comparable in speed to actual pivoting; the longer you get, the slower these pseudo-pivots will be in comparison to the real thing.

http://gfycat.com/ElatedDistantBuffalo

The risk of getting hit out of a psidash is also much greater much than getting hit out of a pivot because you'll have no double jump, and psidashing tends to telegraph an attack moreso than just dashing away in preparation for a pivot. However, I see this being most useful as a substitute for pivot utilt or usmash, which tend to be really hard inputs to do consistently. Experiment with it and let me know how it works out.

 

[Ganreizu]

So I've been looking into psidash as a defensive ledge option and it appears that if you do it well enough you'll have enough intangibility frames to shield before you become vulnerable. See the gfy below for reference.

http://gfycat.com/FixedLastingFoxhound

I use the term "perfect" here loosely, I'm no Ness tech god so I'm probably not good enough to actually do the psidash to get the max number of actionable intangible frames. Maybe one of you guys can TAS it and see how much intangibility you can retain if you do it perfectly. I hate to bug schmooblidon again but I'm sure one of those shiny HD gfys would be much more useful as a reference tool than my attempt at it.

I did the frame data during christmas. It's a couple frames (4ish iirc?) if perfect. Kadano has a thread/post on ledge dash invincible frames that you can google that has this number.

Been practicing this and implementing this for a while and it is worth using, just one of the most difficult ness techs to be more than consistent at ESPECIALLY invincible landing. Particularly useful on yoshis where it's easiest to get invincibility, every other stage is pretty neutral in terms of ease of execution.

While we're at it, I'd imagine that using the hitbox distortion of dair to get over the edge and then drifting back to edge cancel the dair, fastfall and regrab ledge is the fastest way for Ness to refresh his invincibility at the ledge. Like this:

http://gfycat.com/ClearcutEveryElephantseal

However, I doubt that this gfy shows the fastest possible execution of all the components. If anyone's gonna be TASing this stuff, I'd be interested to know the details on how fast this ledge stall can get. I'd imagine it's probably not fully invincible, but how many vulnerable frames do you have with perfect execution? I doubt it, but could it be done faster with a different aerial maybe?

I don't think Ness can even do a regular haxdash with his double jump so this might be the best bet for Ness at the ledge. Although, maybe perfect psidash onstage --> immediate wavedash back fastfall grab ledge would be faster overall as a kind of pseudo-haxdash. I'm not sure. I wish I knew how to TAS.

Hmm...i'm sure air dodge up is less frames. FF let go of ledge -> air dodge up -> grab ledge. I just never try using it because i don't know any of the windows for it to protect me and not get ledge stolen from me in the process.

Psi dash WD FF regrab is fast, but i'm not great at doing the FF part for quick af regrabs. When i practice the ledge dash regrab it's particularly difficult to get used to FFing because there's so many stick movements at that point. Flick off ledge, then forwards to get the forward jump or enough aerial drift to be above the stage, then fast fall to land asap, then WD back, then FF...that's 5/6 hard stick moves in totally different directions in around than 3/4 of a second. T.T And then you probably want to do the perfect ledge dash again. T.T

I never considered ledge cancel as an option though. Hopefully the dair timing doesn't **** with the other important dair timings. :/

I'm away from my set-up for the weekend but I'll try it out with backwards DJ and see if it's any faster when I get back.

Another neat thing I found to use psidashing for: because autocanceling the dair causes you to end up in a neutral state with no lag, you can input a smash turn or a tilt turn and do any grounded move facing the opposite direction one frame after landing (or immediately, in the case of ftilt and fsmash). This allows you to do a kind of pseudo-pivot really consistently, and it especially helps with moves that are incredibly difficult to do out of a pivot, like usmash or utilt. You can also vary the length of the initial psidash to result in several different spacings depending on what you need to use at that point. However, only the fastest and shortest psidashes are comparable in speed to actual pivoting; the longer you get, the slower these pseudo-pivots will be in comparison to the real thing.

http://gfycat.com/ElatedDistantBuffalo

The risk of getting hit out of a psidash is also much greater much than getting hit out of a pivot because you'll have no double jump, and psidashing tends to telegraph an attack moreso than just dashing away in preparation for a pivot. However, I see this being most useful as a substitute for pivot utilt or usmash, which tend to be really hard inputs to do consistently. Experiment with it and let me know how it works out.

Yeah this is basically the cornerstone of using psi dashing for offense. I don't get why you need to turn around for the fsmash though since you can just c-stick it, or ftilt for that matter. Turn around uair, utilt, or dtilt would be good though, these are things i haven't really worked on yet.

In case you didn't know, psi dashing seems to be the easiest way to cross up shield, because wavedashing or running through a shield causes your hurtbox and their shield to interact in a way that takes longer for ness to technically be on the other side of the shield (and i think it moves the opponent in shield a little bit), whereas with psi dashing since you're airborne you just pass right through them with no interaction at all. Obviously shine oos will catch you no matter what, but shield cross up turn around dtilt/usmash/utilt can be useful in it's own ways.

Also, it's exceedingly rare that i get caught out of psidash without my double jump. 9.9 times out of 10 i get caught because i didn't buffer shield/light shield before landing, but i still landed and gained my DJ. When you're ledgedashing however it's far more likely, but again this only happens to me when i don't do it perfectly (read: i don't fast fall the landing or i input dair too slow or both).It has happened where i was obviously caught for using it on stage, but it's quite unlikely that you'll find someone that good at a local level or even a regional level. But i'm from NE and we're pretty bad lmao.

Thanks for all the gfys. ^^

have you tried this with backwards DJ? im sure that rises faster than forwards DJ

Can confirm that it is possible to backwards DJ dair and land on stage. Don't know about ledge cancel, but i'm sure it can be done.

 

[Jamwa]

i've found you can drop from ledge, DJ backwards, airdodge straight back (180 deg) on stage and have at least enough invuln to shield and it's got about 2-3 frames leniency for the airdodge.

 

[CnB | Chandy]

I did the frame data during christmas. It's a couple frames (4ish iirc?) if perfect. Kadano has a thread/post on ledge dash invincible frames that you can google that has this number.

I think the 4 frames in that post refers to Ness' regular ledge dash. I'm not even sure @Kadano had psidashing in mind when he made the table, but I'd be interested to see what he comes up with now that its use is well documented. Not that I don't trust your math or anything, but hey, I never get the chance to ask Kadano about stuff so why not. Figuring out Ness' fastest method of refreshing invincibility would be a neat puzzle to tackle too I bet.

Yeah this is basically the cornerstone of using psi dashing for offense. I don't get why you need to turn around for the fsmash though since you can just c-stick it, or ftilt for that matter. Turn around uair, utilt, or dtilt would be good though, these are things i haven't really worked on yet.

Yeah, that's what I meant by "(or immediately, in the case of fsmash and ftilt)", should have been clearer about that. Don't forget to mix in those psidash turnaround grabs either! If you people think you're going to do a low djc dair on their shield (which is what psidashing looks a lot like), they'll be holding shield in anticipation of blocking your utilt or jab or whatever, which means free grabs. Kind of like an even more visually misleading version of a tomahawk grab.

Never even thought about the fact that aerial movement passes through shields quicker than grounded movement does, that's a really good point.

Psi dash WD FF regrab is fast, but i'm not great at doing the FF part for quick af regrabs. When i practice the ledge dash regrab it's particularly difficult to get used to FFing because there's so many stick movements at that point. Flick off ledge, then forwards to get the forward jump or enough aerial drift to be above the stage, then fast fall to land asap, then WD back, then FF...that's 5/6 hard stick moves in totally different directions in around than 3/4 of a second. T.T And then you probably want to do the perfect ledge dash again. T.T

I think this might be the fastest method, actually, despite how technically demanding it is. Whether or not it's more feasible or practical than just airdodging still remains to be seen, however. If only I could TAS! How sad.

I'm not sure using the backwards DJ and having to fade all the way in to get your dair to come out over the ledge will allow you enough time to shift your momentum outward to edge cancel during your landing. We'll see.

 

[Ganreizu]

I think the 4 frames in that post refers to Ness' regular ledge dash. I'm not even sure @Kadano had psidashing in mind when he made the table, but I'd be interested to see what he comes up with now that its use is well documented. Not that I don't trust your math or anything, but hey, I never get the chance to ask Kadano about stuff so why not.

I mean i'm really quite sure i'm right on it, and i think kadano did know about it at the time. Mofo seemed to know the method already when i talked to him recently. Just thinking about it, wavedashing for a ledge dash wouldn't grant invincibility if pdash only gives 4 frames since landing with airdodge always takes 10 frames, which is over 1/3rd of ledge invincibility.

It's more a problem of no one perfecting such a difficult tech, and ness being so niche that no one bothers to spread the word.

I think this might be the fastest method, actually, despite how technically demanding it is. Whether or not it's more feasible or practical than just airdodging still remains to be seen, however. If only I could TAS! How sad.

I did some testing on it earlier today. I'm really confident pdash to regrab is faster and/or better than the airdodge thing now. I did manage to get the double jump dair ledge cancel thing from that one gify, but i don't know the frame data at all and it's really weird to input it. It does seem like quite a fast regrab.

 

[CnB | Chandy]

Okay, so. I've been thinking about it a lot and I think that regardless of what the fastest option is, the best method for refreshing invincibility is to ledge drop while holding away, brief fastfall, then airdodge up and towards the ledge diagonally, drift back, slide off the edge and fastfall to grab ledge. I'm not sure if it's the fastest in terms of the least amount of frames between Ness leaving and regrabbing the ledge, but it's the method I've found that results in the least vulnerable frames during the ledge stall itself.

With this method you don't use your double jump, which is helpful in case you get hit, and it's safer than just airdodging directly to ledge because if someone steals the ledge from you, the edge cancel will leave you actionable so you can use your double jump and up-B instead of just falling to your death. Perfect psidash wavedash back fastfall is the only thing I could think of that might be better, but I'm not good enough at executing that to really know if it's better. This is exactly why having someone who could TAS this sort of thing would be great.

https://gfycat.com/DemandingThirdElephant

Side note, by DJC'ing your aerials at the right time and/or using edge cancels, Ness can use some of his aerials off the ledge and regrab the ledge immediately afterwards. This has obvious utility for edgeguarding from the ledge, and with nair you get three frames of invincibility and active hitboxes, meaning you can easily beat out Firefox and Illusion (or else trade with it, which will usually result in taking the stock anyway).

With the ledge hop fair edge cancel regrab, I find this most useful for safely poking from ledge and trying to trick your opponent into thinking you're doing a normal ledge hop fair to land onstage so you can bait out a reaction, at which point you can safely use some other method to get back onstage after they whiff their punish attempt. Really useful for when your opponent has caught on to your use of fair or nair from ledge and starts to crouch cancel them, which normally makes ledgehop aerials pretty ineffective. Experiment with them and let me know how it all works out.

https://gfycat.com/AbsoluteNiftyAfghanhound

 

[Ganreizu]

Okay, so. I've been thinking about it a lot and I think that regardless of what the fastest option is, the best method for refreshing invincibility is to ledge drop while holding away, brief fastfall, then airdodge up and towards the ledge diagonally, drift back, slide off the edge and fastfall to grab ledge. I'm not sure if it's the fastest in terms of the least amount of frames between Ness leaving and regrabbing the ledge, but it's the method I've found that results in the least vulnerable frames during the ledge stall itself.

With this method you don't use your double jump, which is helpful in case you get hit, and it's safer than just airdodging directly to ledge because if someone steals the ledge from you, the edge cancel will leave you actionable so you can use your double jump and up-B instead of just falling to your death. Perfect psidash wavedash back fastfall is the only thing I could think of that might be better, but I'm not good enough at executing that to really know if it's better. This is exactly why having someone who could TAS this sort of thing would be great.

https://gfycat.com/DemandingThirdElephant

I like the way you theory craft, son.

That regrab idea is way better than anything else. Since you made the gif slow mo, it seems to be 29 frames? Without FFing after edge cancel? I guarantee that is better than pdash regrab. Pdash regrab is somewhere north of 35-40 frames if frame perfect and this would be far easier and safer. Do you know if that airdodge angle needs a special stick input or if it's the NW notch input? I'll test that later regardless but still a great tip.

Something to keep in mind though is to not accidentally tap jump when you input the angle, since that would immediately make it much less safe.

Edit: After testing...i dunno. I know that when you start to get a feel for new things with arguably marginal benefits it doesn't seem as good as the thing you already have, but i just think this refresh isn't as good as pdash regrab in practice. At this moment I find it much easier to kill yourself and much easier to waste the effort by not edge canceling. My problem with it is the stick movements, direction, timing, and general precision required. If we iron those out it could be good. I'll keep trying it but i can't see myself benefiting a whole lot from becoming consistent with it when compared to spending the time practicing ledge dashes which is obviously much more helpful.

 

[CnB | Chandy]

Edit: After testing...i dunno. I know that when you start to get a feel for new things with arguably marginal benefits it doesn't seem as good as the thing you already have, but i just think this refresh isn't as good as pdash regrab in practice. At this moment I find it much easier to kill yourself and much easier to waste the effort by not edge canceling. My problem with it is the stick movements, direction, timing, and general precision required. If we iron those out it could be good. I'll keep trying it but i can't see myself benefiting a whole lot from becoming consistent with it when compared to spending the time practicing ledge dashes which is obviously much more helpful.

Yeah, I find this really hard to input as well. Overall, getting consistent with perfect psidash from the ledge will pay off more across the board. I think you're right to focus the majority of your practice time on that rather than this one specialized difficult input that's really only useful for one thing. I'm not the one who actually plays Ness so I trust your opinion here.

On an unrelated note, when you're forced to use PKT2 to recover, you almost always want to sweetspot because otherwise it's super laggy and punishable if you go through the regular endlag. If your opponent starts to catch on to that and begins to take ledge against you to force you to recover on stage, you should always try for the PKT2 angles that change your trajectory to have you "crawl" along the ground instead of continuing on upward. When you "snap" to the stage or a platform during PKT2, not only are you likely to surprise your opponent with the weird change in trajectory, but your collision box also extends downward because the game thinks you're in a grounded PKT2. This makes it way easier for you to Amsah tech a potential hit than if you were up in the air, and since you're stuck waiting ten years for Ness to become actionable either way, you can start inputting your ASDI/SDI down and buffering your tech as soon as PKT2 starts because you don't have to worry about controlling the trajectory or anything like that.

The PKT2 crawl angles are tough, but they improve your chances of survival much more than just doing a predictable angle toward center stage and eating an attack with no chance of teching it because you're hanging there like a TOTAL GOOBER. I would recommend practicing crawl angles on Great Bay at first. If you jump away from the rock on the left side of the stage, you can PKT2 to the main platform to simulate recovering while your opponent is occupying ledge, since that ledge isn't grabbable. If you bounce off the side you know you would have gotten a sweetspot, otherwise just keep trying until you can do the crawl consistently.

Here's a reference gfy with some crawl angles I've found that may be of use to you all during your solo practice.
http://gfycat.com/KaleidoscopicPalatableAgouti

If you want to get consistent with your crawl angle Amsah techs and you have a 20XX set-up, you can freeze Marth in his fsmash animation at the Great Bay ledge, get to a high enough percent to need to tech, and then grind these angles and the ensuing tech all you want. I would recommend using the d-pad save states liberally here to speed up the process; once you have Marth frozen and in position and you're at your desired percent, press right to save the state and then you can load back to it immediately by pressing left. So if you see immediately that you didn't get a crawl angle, you can just reload and try again before the PKT2 even ends instead of getting tippered and waiting to respawn or SDing off the sides or bottom and waiting to respawn and reload. Just be careful, save states can freeze the whole thing if you do them too much or at the wrong times. More information on 3.02 20XX in game toggles here:
http://i.imgur.com/YbOvw80.png

The magic in action:
http://gfycat.com/UglyDemandingAplomadofalcon

 

[Jamwa]

i think the most important part of the pkt2 crawl is getting your dj back
and i also think that going high with ness is also super good because autocancel and fastfall mixups.
i almost never angle my pkt2 downwards unless im trying to go into a platform (to get dj) or sweetspot, or mixup against some opponent that doesnt know how to deal with it.


...i always called this pkt2 bouncing as there was a similar technique to this that you could do in brawl, but only if the ledge was occupied and you were recovering towards a ledge from the right side.


that said, i may have literally "bounced" before off a ledge from a certain angle. idk how to reproduce and i might just be imagining things but im sure i've done it before

 

[CnB | Chandy]

Guys I'm totally stumped. WE GOTTA PUT OUR HEADS TOGETHER AND SOLVE THIS MYSTERY!! Here's a clip from the Ness tech video, Filthy Low Tier.

http://gfycat.com/FlawlessSimplisticImperialeagle

Unfortunately because he didn't use a fixed camera angle, Ness is out of frame for the part of the clip I'm most concerned with. According to the guy who made the video, Ness rides down the slope of the cliff with his PKT2, then goes airborne at a perfect angle to edge cancel the PKT2 off the platform jutting out in front of the cliff, which then carries Ness' momentum forward into a slide onto the next platform, followed by a taunt.

This is weird to me because I've never heard of Ness being able to edge cancel the massive endlag of PKT2. I've also never seen an up-B edge cancel behave like this, in that the animation is canceled early but the momentum and the visual effects are still preserved once you become actionable, kind of like the Peach Bomber superslide thing.. If the only function of riding the cliff is to produce this magic angle that allows the edge cancel to occur, and the platform on which the edge cancel happens is straight horizontal like any other platform, then I should be able to reproduce this effect on the edge of any platform provided I can get the magic angle. However, I haven't been able to do it once anywhere other than this cliff.

My initial guess was that it might be like a tech bounce slide-off sort of thing, where sometimes you'll miss tech on the edge of a platform but slide off during the bounce and end up with no lag. If Ness PKT2's into the ground at a steep enough angle, he'll bounce like a missed tech, which would allow him to do a kind of pseudo edge cancel with the slide off. However, the screen doesn't shake after the initial triggering of the PKT2 and there's no fireball at the edge of the platform where the tech bounce slide-off would have occurred, meaning he definitely didn't miss tech bounce at any point during this sequence. (Maybe this tech bounce thing is what you're talking about, Jamwa ?)

Does it have something to do with starting grounded before you curve down into the magic angle? Or am I just not getting the magic angle in all my attempts to replicate it on other stages? What exactly is the magic angle (or the magic range of angles) that will result in an edge cancel? Can you only get the edge cancel during a certain part of the animation? Could you ever potentially do this coming from below a platform? If you edge cancel really early on in the PKT2 animation, would it be possible to retain any of the intangibility frames you get during the start-up of it while you're still actionable, or is the intangibility canceled along with the animation?

I heard that Simna ibn Sind was the one who showed him this trick, maybe you can fill us in on the mechanics behind it? Because I have never been this clueless. Like, ever!

 

[Jamwa]

this is honestly pretty useless because your pkt2 hitbox disappears once you're off the cliff and it takes a while to set up. i think ness is useless on the rock transformation vs certain popular top tiers anyway so might as well show off or somethign while you die to 2 fox uairs right

of course, if your opponent is oblivious to what you're doing it's useful

i think this has to do with the transition from the cliff onto the platform jutting out from the cliff, and we keep the momentum and end up on the other platform.

you could probably test this by trying it on other stages that aren't legal and have similar platform formations, but afaik this is the only stage where this sort of thing is possible. MAYBE it could work from ys to randall? super forbidden technique right there if it does.

 

[Simna ibn Sind]

Yeah so this doesnt have anything to do with edge cancelling. Also it works a lot on Brinstar Depths too ^____^

 

[Simna ibn Sind]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye7t2_SK79s

 

[CnB | Chandy]

Ah thanks, that's helpful. It looks like Ness becomes actionable as soon as he leaves the cliff slope, meaning the edge of the platform isn't even a factor in canceling the PKT2 at all. So all it comes down to is just doing a grounded PKT2 that slopes off at that particular angle? Wow, that's kind of a huge bummer. I was hoping this would have applications for recovery but Ness is doomed to be complete garbage in that category for the foreseeable future.

Another nice thing about crawl angles is that crawl angles from below will still end up grabbing ledge if your opponent isn't occupying it because of Ness' massive ledge grab box. So if you're recovering from down low and you have the intuition that your opponent will try to edgehog in anticipation of an attempt to sweet spot, you can option select a crawl angle to be optimally safe in either case; if they do take ledge, you'll get a crawl onstage and you'll regain your double jump and be in position to amsah tech their potential punish. If they don't take ledge or give up the ledge too early, you'll grab ledge and be safe anyway, all from the same exact angle.

However, this crawl angle/ledge grab option select is not always the best choice from below because it's too high of an angle to be a true sweet spot, meaning it leaves some of Ness' head poking up over the ledge while he's still vulnerable, whereas a lower angle to ledge would be safer. So you should only try for this crawl angle if you have the intuition that your opponent has caught on to your habit of sweetspotting and is likely to take ledge, otherwise low sweetspots are safer.

Does that all make sense?

 

[CnB | Chandy]

So let's talk about dthrow tech chasing on fastfallers. I'm sure you already know some of this stuff but it might be helpful to write it all out for your reference and practice.

In the spacie match-ups, when you grab between 35 and 55%, uthrow's only guaranteed follow-ups don't lead into anything juicy, and unless they have really bad DI, you're unlikely to get more than a single aerial off of it and that's a huge bummer. Dthrowing and then reacting to both their initial DI and subsequent tech option will always get you something as long as your reaction time is good. At the very least you can always get a strong hit of dash attack, and while dash attack is pretty unreliable sometimes it has more combo potential than uthrow --> single aerial --> nothing.

The first thing you have to do off of dthrow is react to their initial DI. For our purposes there are three categories of DI that matter; full DI in (Fox lands right at Ness' feet, within his grab range), partial DI in/away/no DI (Fox lands outside of Ness' grab range, but if Ness did a full dash forward, he would go through Fox), and full DI away (If Ness did a full dash forward, Fox would still be in front of him). Luckily you only have to worry about two different inputs in response to both of these DI options.

If they DI full in at this percent, you can regrab them and get another free dthrow before they even get a chance to tech. Most Foxes aren't going to do this more than once, but whenever you see it, take the free damage and feel relieved that the reaction was so easy. If they do either partial DI away or full DI away, you have to input one initial dash (basically a foxtrot) towards their landing as soon as you are actionable after dthrow. This is to put Ness in position for the subsequent reactions.

If they did partial DI away and a full dash will make Ness go through Fox, cancel the full length of your initial dash by beginning to dash dance in place. You don't want to go through Fox in case they tech in place shine and you're not facing the right way to grab, so dash dancing in front of them leaves you open to react to a tech roll with a dash attack. Grabbing tech in place shine out of a dash dance is ****ing hard though, holy ****. Partial DI away tech in place shine might be the hardest to thing to react to. If they partial DI out and missed tech, continue dash dancing out of the range of get-up attack and wait for them to do something. If they get-up attack or neutral stand, dash attack them. If they roll in or away, follow their roll by ending your dash dance and continuing into a run in their direction and then dash attack.

Alternatively, upon seeing missed tech you can cancel your dash dance by shield stopping. You will then shield get-up attack and get a free grab (or shield grab neutral stand on reaction), or you can react to their tech roll with a wavedash out of shield into grab. This is a pretty hard reaction though, so I prefer the dash dance into dash attack method. If you don't want to risk things on a dash attack and you want a regrab, you can try it out.

If they full DI away, you will need the full length of that initial dash in order to cover their options because Fox lands so far away from you. If Fox does full DI away and tech away (which is super common), continue your initial dash into a run and dash attack him. If Fox does full DI away and techs in, dash back out of your initial dash and dash attack him. If Fox does full DI and techs in place, immediately dash grab him before he can shine or spotdodge. Full DI away to tech in place is one of the harder reactions here, and I'd say it's second or third most common so get used to reacting quickly.

For full DI away into missed tech, you don't need to start dash dancing. You just let your dash end and wait outside of the range of get-up attack. From here, if they get up attack, you can pretty much do anything to punish the endlag of it. If they're at the higher end of the tech chase range (55%ish), I like to fsmash. Otherwise, just wait it out and then dash attack or grab to continue the tech chase. If they missed tech and neutral stand, dash attack them. If they missed tech and roll away or in, dash attack them.

Alternatively you can jab reset DI away missed tech, but when your opponents start to get good they'll SDI up and roll out of the tech chase, which is a huge bummer. Doing rapid dtilt makes it harder to SDI out though, so you could try that. I know you're a fan of jab reset punishes but waiting out missed tech is technically more optimal in terms of coverage. You can also just skip all these reactions and dash attack as soon as you see missed tech. Use your best judgment here.

If you're a pivot master like me you can even punish techs in with dash back pivot fsmash on reaction. It's so cool. It's like the coolest thing ever. So Marth-y.

Here are some gfys that demonstrate some of these reactions in real matches, with slomo at the appropriate parts so you can see the reactions. In some of these cases Fox gets a shine out before I can dash attack him; I can assure you that dash attack will land before shine comes out in these situations, but my reactions are just a little slow. Sorry for not being amazing guys.

Full DI Away Tech In and Full DI Away Tech Away:
https://gfycat.com/AmusingWillingBordercollie

Full DI Away Missed Tech --> Wait
https://gfycat.com/BeautifulBronzeFruitfly

Full DI Away Missed Tech --> Dash Attack, Partial DI Away Tech In --> Pivot Fsmash:
https://gfycat.com/GorgeousInfamousCoral

Partial DI Away Missed Tech --> Shield Stop, Full DI Away Missed Tech --> Dash Dance into Dash Attack:
https://gfycat.com/EvenWillingBighorn

Full DI In --> Regrab, Full DI Away --> Grab Tech In Place, Full DI Away --> Immediate Dash Attack:
https://gfycat.com/HorribleFarflungChickadee

All of this stuff works on Falcon, but he takes longer to throw because of his weight so you have slightly less time to react to his initial DI. It also works on Falco, but his tech rolls are a bit longer so your reactions to tech away and tech in have to be faster. Practice these and pretty soon I won't be making fun of you as much for being bad at following up off of dthrow, and you'll get to do dank tech chase combos like CnB | Chandy the legend.

https://gfycat.com/MaleHealthyAegeancat
https://gfycat.com/PlainImpassionedIndigowingedparrot
https://gfycat.com/DisastrousParallelGalah

 

[Ganreizu]

Just a reminder after last post that if you bait out get up attack on spacies it's a free YYG setup.

 

[iAmMatt]

I always felt like pkf was underused, but I understood why because of landing lag. However, ledge cancelling would absolutely change the viability of this move and I think it could be used for edgeguarding/extending combos (comparable to marth's neutral b)