Great results man. I'm assuming plup played pika against you. Can you give some insights on that matchup? Also saw that you beat noa. I don't do well against ness. Any insights as to how you beat him would be helpful as well.
Thanks. I'd love to see some videos soon!
I'm actually quite bad and inexperienced against Pikachu. I could only provide raw numbers and no theory. However, Ness is a character I take pride in beating up on. He's a very small character, so he's hard to hit but struggles equally to hit others because of his terrible range. Max range F-tilt and D-tilt are nightmares for him on a normal shield, so he gets harassed in neutral easily. Although Ness' F-air is great, he can't necessarily retreat with F-air against us. If I can recall, our tether grab's range will just snipe him out of it because of his poor double jump and floatiness. Retreating Z-air can also hurt a Ness player that loves to jump in mid-range more frequently than he should. Moreover, it's quite easy to setup spikes and u-tilt edge guards due to his recovery. Ness is limited to four options when coming horizontally and vertically (up) to stage. He can either air dodge on stage or lead with F-air when coming horizontally. He's forced to double jump or PKT when comin vertically to stage.
If you want to play it safe, hold your shield if Ness is coming horizontally onto stage. When you catch an airdodge, let go immediately with OOS n-air, shield drop u-tilt, or rising CS OOS. If he taps your shield with F-air, screw attack OOS him. If you're confident that you've gotten into the player's head, you can SH AD RAR B-air punish his F-air or just deny him with a well-spaced CS. If you know he's going to airdodge, just wait for it and U-tilt to get that good Sakurai angle or up angled F-smash if he's at higher percents. When Ness is recovering low, go down early. The biggest mistake you can make is deciding to run off-stage for a gimp or spike him at after he starts using PKT1. He will just hit you with PKT2 because our fall speed isn't fast enough for split second decisions like that. Even though I and many other players are afraid of going off-stage sometimes to harass Ness, don't be. Samus has excellent vertical recovery. Spike or N-air Ness and quickly return to stage.
When Ness takes his time in the matchup to punish us with his powerful grab follow-ups via holding shield, shield dashing, and staying just over mid-range, our sweetspot in neutral, it can be a problem for us if our rushdown and reliable mix-up in the player-to-player matchup hasn't been established. Yet, as we all know, Samus has ways around the shield. If you're predicting a shield grab or OOS N-air, drop a bomb from high up to force them out of shield. Otherwise, if they hold, they will take immense shield damage. Use max range F-tilt and U-tilt to stack even more shield damage. Mix up your Z-airs with missiles if you're positive they'll stay in shield to sneak in some shield damage (my favorite). If you're 100% positive they won't roll or spotdodge, grab them to further develop your mix-up on the player. If they're still shielding and somehow avoiding your grabs but you've managed to whittle the player's shield exceptionally (to just about half a shield), use a CS while in mid-range to break them.
Being heavily reliant on CS isn't a bad thing. While PSI magnet is powerful, so are missiles. They cannot be absorbed. If you have a full charge, bait a magnet. Throw missiles from max-range at Ness to force defensive options out of hismagnet via shield, jump, duck, roll, or spotdodge. Play his game for a while. When you're positive your opponent will shield afterwards, throw a CS for an insta-break. You will have to be closer to capitalize on his other options, so move closer to him after every missile. If he rolls, throw your CS quickly. Get hard reads on spotdodges with CS or punish on reaction with dash attack.
Ness has an incredible punish game when his opponent is off-stage as well. While I haven't exactly gotten the best at finding ways around PKT harass when we're recovering, here are some thoughts. Cancel the PKT1 with U-air, F-air, N-air, or Z-air. If you can do that reliably it will usually be better than air dodging.
Ness isn't too hard. I don't want to go too far into tier list theory, but I believe he's a heavily overrated character. His punish game, like Luigi's and Barbie's (ZSS), probably sits among the top 5 in the game, but those characters lack the powerful neutral that other characters like Samus have. They suffer from tiny hitboxes and are reliant on 2-3 attacks in their kit to transition out of neutral. For Ness, it is his grab and F-air. On the other hand, we have many powerful tools to use in neutral. Max range F-tilt, U-tilt, D-tilt, Z-air, SHAD / Falling U-air, Grab, Dash Attack, and even missiles and bombs if spaced correctly are incredible neutral mix-up attacks.
I hope you found this helpful.
Sorry for the long post, Xyro.
