Social The Suburbs of Onett - Ness Social Thread

[Sir_Zedd]

Ive been away for quite a while, any big Ness related news I might have missed? Congrats on the tournament results guys!

 

[Pazx]

big ness related news: our nair is good

yo what's your url tumblr?

 

[Noa.]

I used to have a tumblr, long ago. After a while I didn't enjoy it too much anymore. Now I just use reddit.

 

[Sir_Zedd]

big ness related news: our nair is good

yo what's your url tumblr?

:O Inform the press!

I don't have a tumblr account, sorry.

 

[Luco]

big ness related news: our nair is good

yo what's your url tumblr?

:O

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!

I actually think mixing up spaced Nairs and Fairs on shields in neutral is near unpunishable by like half the cast lmao.

 

[Noa.]

Idk if you saw the discussion we had on Ness's moves Luco. We rated them all based on how useful they all were. I placed nair at the top of the list with our great moves.

 

[Sir_Zedd]

Lately I've been using PKthunder way more often than usual against people and I think they might be thinking that it's getting a bit 'cheap' I know I should keep it up and hold the "git gud" "lrn2dodge" approach but it's starting to feel bad.

Also, avatar change! Not sure if the old one was better though

 

[radiostarkiller]

Hello, fellow Ness players! Decided to make an account after some lurking. <:

 

[PKBeam]

welcome to the Ness boards

 

[Luco]

Hello, fellow Ness players! Decided to make an account after some lurking. <:

Welcome to the Ness boards!!!!

And yup I did see the discussion, and I rate Nair incredibly highly. ^_^

Tagging @NAKAT here - if you get to reading this I was hoping for word on your thoughts on general gameplay strategies atm and how useful some of the B&B moves are at top level. Been watching vids but it's nice to hear from someone who really knows the viable strategies against other top players. =)

Stuff like, how safe ARE some of our moves and what might some of the current MUs be like at top level?

 

[PKBeam]

we can do testing for advantage on block for Bair, Nair, Fair etc.

 

[Luco]

we can do testing for advantage on block for Bair, Nair, Fair etc.

Well knowing whether it can objectively be punished is good info, I was just curious to hear whether it is at top levels of play because that says something about whether we have the capabilities as humans to punish it effectively/reliably.

 

[PSIBoy]

Hello, fellow Ness players! Decided to make an account after some lurking. <:

A little late, but welcome to the Ness boards and Smashboards. Hope you have a good time!

 

[PKBeam]

anyone have thoughts on the WFT matchup? someone over there said it was +1 WFT because she wrecks us offstage or something. i really can't see WFT being as bad as Diddy or Sheik.

 

[Luco]

*blink blink*

WFT? I highly doubt it

We outrange her unusual hitboxes and have PSI magnet which forces her to approach unless she has percent and we don't (an odd situation to have to approach in) - we are a small-ish character and some of her attacks won't really hit us properly. I don't see how this character has much on us... I'll go take a look anyway though :3

 

[Noa.]

Wft mains are hard to find. I've never played a good one. But I don't see how we lose the matchup. Wft sucks and she doesn't have the moveset to exploit Ness's weakness.

 

[BahnCalamari]

I am not super competitive but I thought this might be an okay place to ask a question.

I have been having issues against a buddy of mine that has a very good Yoshi main. He is very good at juggling me with eggs and I am not sure how to play around it as Ness. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Luco]

Wft mains are hard to find. I've never played a good one. But I don't see how we lose the matchup. Wft sucks and she doesn't have the moveset to exploit Ness's weakness.

Ironically I versed a WFT main that refused to use her against me in bracket and decided to go Yoshi instead haha.

@ BahnCalamari Yoshi is a difficult match-up. You want to approach him early on - do this by shielding his eggs (preferably powershielding them) as you approach him and space aerials until you can disrupt his patterns. We rack up combos and kill early as opposed to Yoshi, so keep that in mind and you should be alright. =)

 

[Pazx]

This is what I was talking about earlier, ledge snap vulnerability. I'm thinking nair/dtilt/dsmash will be our best punishes for it, opinions?

@ radiostarkiller welcome to Smashboards, I really like your art honestly, you're very talented.

 

[Earthbound360]

I still wanna know how many frames PK Flash is active for. We might have a good use for it then.

 

[Noa.]

If pk flash has enough active frames to make use of that vulnerability when ledge snapping, then it would be useful. Testing needs to be done.

 

[Earthbound360]

I certainly hope its usable in that way. Ness really doesn't have a good option to abuse with this technique. I mean, nair is okay, and bair and dair are only sweet on frame 1, which would be really hard to land with this timing. However, I'm pretty sure dair can hit people without even going off stage here.

On a somewhat related note, I think I've found a new technique that could help with quicker edgeguarding. Coincidentally enough, it could probably be used alongside this rather well. More details when they come.

 

[Tikao]

i actually managed to hit pk-flash while someone was trying to grab the ledge once, but the timing is tight + pk flash is still slow

so your foe needs to be far away from the edge for you to charge that pk-flash, but also he must not be able to reach the stage without the edge, because he can just get onstage and punish you (pk-flash is slow enough for that)

most of the time people are not offstage for the required amount of time, and if they actually are, then because they just survived a killmove and are near the corner of the upper and the side blastzone of the stage, which means they'll easily be able to reach the stage without the edge

the one time i actually hit the foe with it, he was near that corner, but was scared and grabbed the edge instead of getting onstage and punishing me, something like that will never happen, if they know what they're doing

so in order for that to actually work, they need to be near the corner of the lower and side blastzone
an additional requirement is a good recovery, some characters simply don't even reach the ledge at that position

so let's say we got villager at this exact spot, now we still need a frame perfect fully charged pk-flash, we need to know the exact frames our pk-flash needs to fully charge, need the exact frames the foe needs to reach that edge, then substract the charge frames and start the pk-flash charge at these exact frames and actually hit these exact frames
those frames are different for EVERY character recovering

let's say we trained that exact thing against every character and are able to frame perfectly use this 100% of the time ... how do we get someone at this far away and low position with ness after all?
dsmash could get someone near that, but how often do you actually hit someone near the edge at the perfect position with dsmash without killing?

let's say we get villager at this position with dsmash without killing, can perfectly execute this technique and are ready to use it ... how many percentages did they have? ... rather high ones, or else you don't get them to the required spot where this tech works
so after devoting our life to this technique, it is not even that much of a value, because they're already at high percent, you can gimp them in a different way or just kill them later onstage, since ness is a god in killing stuff

tl;dr : pk-flash for abusing this 1 frame vulnerability is useless

 

[Earthbound360]

Mmm. He's right. No good player would realistically condition themselves for this. Moving on!

Does anyone know the active frames for the dair sparkle? Like, I don't even care about the sweetspot, just the general activeness of the hitbox.

 

[Luco]

I've heard that Dair can be used in this situation and has been used reasonably effectively. I often try to use Dtilt and it works about 50% of the time. :o

 

[PKBeam]

the Dair hitbox data can be found in our frame data thread, off the top of my head I think it's 4 frames, 20-23. Dtilt hits every 8 or 9 frames. Bair is active from 10-18 and Nair from 5-15 (used to be 5-23 in Brawl ). Fair is 8 to 20-something.

 

[Earthbound360]

So fair is the most active huh? Interesting. I'll record the new tech probably today and see if it can work well with it. We might be looking at a quick and easy stage spike if it's viable.

Anyways, I have something else I need to talk to you guys about. I feel like the Ness boards are chill enough to talk to about this.

But have any of you ever placed so abysmally, or lost to people you know that you really shouldn't have that you just questioned your skill? Let me just state this now, that I feel like an overrated player on these boards. My technical knowledge of Ness and long time commitment to this character has probably led many to believe I'm some sort of pro with him. I mean, I'm good enough, but I'm not great. But man, I just got back from a tournament last night that I did way worse than I feel like I should have because I was just falling for stupid stuff. I lost to people I really feel like I should have beat.

Looking back on it, I think it was one thing that REALLY got me: tourney nerves
Yeah that's right. I think I have a severe case of tourney nerves. The reason I attribute it to this and not my badness is because I sense a massive change in how I play in tourney, as opposed to friendlies. Last night, I got put into losers because I SDed twice in my first game against GimR, then let him time me out on game 3. Then there was Craig, who I literally had not lost to the entire night of friendlies, who eliminated me. What exactly happened here? Why am I so bad at handling this stuff? I feel like I wouldn't have done either of those things in a casual setting, and not trying to diss either player, but I REALLY think I could have beat either one of them.

So it makes me want to ask, what do you guys do to combat the dreaded tourney nerves? Do you play the serious and focused game, or do you imagine that it's just another friendly? What do you tell yourself going into the match? Anything else you do?

 

[Noa.]

So fair is the most active huh? Interesting. I'll record the new tech probably today and see if it can work well with it. We might be looking at a quick and easy stage spike if it's viable.

Anyways, I have something else I need to talk to you guys about. I feel like the Ness boards are chill enough to talk to about this.

But have any of you ever placed so abysmally, or lost to people you know that you really shouldn't have that you just questioned your skill? Let me just state this now, that I feel like an overrated player on these boards. My technical knowledge of Ness and long time commitment to this character has probably led many to believe I'm some sort of pro with him. I mean, I'm good enough, but I'm not great. But man, I just got back from a tournament last night that I did way worse than I feel like I should have because I was just falling for stupid stuff. I lost to people I really feel like I should have beat.

Looking back on it, I think it was one thing that REALLY got me: tourney nerves
Yeah that's right. I think I have a severe case of tourney nerves. The reason I attribute it to this and not my badness is because I sense a massive change in how I play in tourney, as opposed to friendlies. Last night, I got put into losers because I SDed twice in my first game against GimR, then let him time me out on game 3. Then there was Craig, who I literally had not lost to the entire night of friendlies, who eliminated me. What exactly happened here? Why am I so bad at handling this stuff? I feel like I wouldn't have done either of those things in a casual setting, and not trying to diss either player, but I REALLY think I could have beat either one of them.

So it makes me want to ask, what do you guys do to combat the dreaded tourney nerves? Do you play the serious and focused game, or do you imagine that it's just another friendly? What do you tell yourself going into the match? Anything else you do?

Performing worse in tournies is a problem that a lot of players have. I'm actually the opposite. I play pretty poorly in friendlies and play much better in tournament. In friendlies I tend to just autopilot because it's exhausting for me to spend all my mental energy on every friendly I play.

In terms of determining how good you are compared to other players, only matches in tournament matter. You should not judge others based on how they play in friendlies. Not only do people take them less serious, but some people just find it impossible to motivate themselves to their peak performance without having money or their tournament life on the line.

If you have difficulty playing consistently and always performing at your highest skill level, that's a weakness you have as a player that you need to amend. I used to have this problem myself but lately I've been playing a lot better. Now when I lose I know I lost because my opponent is better than me, and not because I was paying poorly.

There are a variety of steps you can take to make sure that you're playing at your best or near your best. Now everyone is different, and you should do what works for you, but I'll list how I've managed to overcome my tournament nerves.

1. I practice almost every day leading up to the tournament. I find that if I just spend the day or two before the tournament practicing, I do much much worse. Say if a tournament is on Saturday, I perform much better when I've played at least four days that week before the tournament. And by playing, I'm referring to playing with other local players in person. Wifi is satisfactory I suppose, but it's better to play with other tournament players in your area.
2. Make yourself comfortable when you sit down for your tournament match. I always take everything out of my pockets at a match, like my phone, keys, and chapstick. I just hate playing with things in my pockets because they get in the way of my arms resting on my legs. I move the chair around so that I'm just at the right distance from the tv, not too far and not too close. I make sure that the tv is not at an angle I dislike. If possible, I like to see if I can turn up the volume of the tv to a suitable level. I pull up the sleeves of my jacket. etc. All of this seems pretty high maintenance, and it is. Now it doesn't have to be perfect. Don't spend ten minutes adjusting the tv and the chair to a perfect angle and orientation. It's important not to get hung up on trying to fix the setup as much as possible. Just take a couple seconds to make sure that you feel comfortable in your chair for your match.
3. Personally, when I play I get very very serious and tense. I learn forward in my chair and look directly at my chair. I do my best to block out everything else in my mind and devote all of my thoughts on what my opponent is doing and trying to track habits and patterns. Now I know that some others play better when they take it a bit more relaxed, and that is all great. Everyone is different, and it's up to you to find the balance between being completely serious and focused, and taking it easy.
4. A lot of people like to listen to their music while they play. I personally don't but I can definitely understand why it would help. Music can help people relax. I just find it distracting but everyone is different.
5. I always take a breather when i die in tournament. Just take a couple seconds to wipe my hands from my sweat, take a deep breathe, and tell myself that I can pull through for the win on this stock.
6. Try to use the same controller for all your events.
7. When I know the bracket ahead of time, I sometimes don't perform as well. I get concerned with matches I have against future opponents, instead of focusing on the player right in front of me. It's important to take each match one at a time. The others will come later.
8. Go to lots and lots of tournaments! By going to more tournaments, you'll feel less and less anxiety about them. By playing in more tournies you'll learn about what habits and little rituals you should do to help you perform in tournament. Everyone is unique and requires something different. Go to every tournament you can go to and play as often as you can.

Playing inconsistently in tournament sucks because you have to focus on trying to play well instead of improving on your ability to read opponents, and your knowledge about the game.

 

[Earthbound360]

Thanks for the tips Noa. I went to a good number of tournaments for PM, and I was much more consistent there. Then I took a little break from Smash to focus more on school, came back to Smash 4, and my consistency rate dropped like a rock lol. You're probably right, if I just keep at it I'll get more into the swing of things.

I understand that friendlies aren't the best gauge of skill, but I still think I wasn't playing at my top performance either, mostly because of those darn SDs.

I've considered listening to music as I play, but I generally like to hear audio cues from the game. For example, I don't actually count the jumps I have as Jigglypuff, I just listen to the little "puffs" she makes when she DJs, which get higher pitched the less jumps you have. I'll probably give music a shot next time, since I do see a lot of people do it. I'll see how it works out for me.

 

[Luco]

I often get some tournament nerves, in my most recent matches I win game 1 against patv and the commentators are like "okay well Luco is freeaaakkiinnnggg out" and I was because it was such an intense match hahaha.

The way I combat it is once I actually get into the matches. If I see that my opponent isn't too much better than me early on, I'll rally myself because I know I can win, I know it'll be okay and suddenly I'll be focused in a really good zone. I also enjoy playing a lot of friendlies so that my relationship with other players is really friendly, that also helps to alleviate stress on both sides which is nice - and in those matches I like laughing or joking about something funny that's happened, it makes the match feel more homey.

I guess for me I like making a match feel more like a friendly than a tournament match. It seems to work, but the techniques/goal might be slightly different for you. :o

 

[Pazx]

I am the king of tournament nerves. In Brawl, I'd drop chaingrabs as Falco against characters like Wolf (who you can almost infinite) and Link (you don't even have to be frame perfect). I get so jittery man.

The best thing for me was really getting to know the people in my scene. I'm nervous as **** when I play Melee in friendlies because I'm rubbish but I can still pull off an occasional win, and dealing with that "holy **** I'm going to embarrass myself this guy has been playing for 13 years" pressure really helps me deal with Sm4sh matches where I should be winning. I try to play a lot of friendlies and stay relaxed during them. Not everybody does, and when someone's getting frustrated in a friendly you really have their number.

One thing that I'm not entirely on top of (and this applies to all of you as well) in tournament settings is picking the correct throw. Too often do I dthrow at 60% instead of up or forward throw, and I was eliminated from my last tournament because I used dthrow when my opponent was on 140%. I think this has something to do with me going into autopilot when I go for a grab because my brain goes "Yeah, I got this" and I just flub everything.

My next tourney is next (not this) Saturday and I'm feeling pretty calm, I think if I were in form I'd be placing top 3 (read: 3rd) however I've been exclusively playing Melee since the start of the year and I don't have an adapter for my controller for Sm4sh so some of my tech skill isn't up to par. At this point I'm sometimes flubbing followups out of dthrow as Diddy. Whoops.

tl;dr play more srs matches and focus on what specifically you did wrong, writing it off as tournament nerves is only okay if you can say "alright tournament nerves got the better of me but next time I'll use the correct throw"

 

[Luco]

I am the king of tournament nerves. In Brawl, I'd drop chaingrabs as Falco against characters like Wolf (who you can almost infinite) and Link (you don't even have to be frame perfect). I get so jittery man.

The best thing for me was really getting to know the people in my scene. I'm nervous as **** when I play Melee in friendlies because I'm rubbish but I can still pull off an occasional win, and dealing with that "holy **** I'm going to embarrass myself this guy has been playing for 13 years" pressure really helps me deal with Sm4sh matches where I should be winning. I try to play a lot of friendlies and stay relaxed during them. Not everybody does, and when someone's getting frustrated in a friendly you really have their number.

One thing that I'm not entirely on top of (and this applies to all of you as well) in tournament settings is picking the correct throw. Too often do I dthrow at 60% instead of up or forward throw, and I was eliminated from my last tournament because I used dthrow when my opponent was on 140%. I think this has something to do with me going into autopilot when I go for a grab because my brain goes "Yeah, I got this" and I just flub everything.

My next tourney is next (not this) Saturday and I'm feeling pretty calm, I think if I were in form I'd be placing top 3 (read: 3rd) however I've been exclusively playing Melee since the start of the year and I don't have an adapter for my controller for Sm4sh so some of my tech skill isn't up to par. At this point I'm sometimes flubbing followups out of dthrow as Diddy. Whoops.

tl;dr play more srs matches and focus on what specifically you did wrong, writing it off as tournament nerves is only okay if you can say "alright tournament nerves got the better of me but next time I'll use the correct throw"

I feel so accused!

Something good about tournament nerves as you pointed out is they can make you keep on your toes and not get too calm, they allow you to feel a bit of stress which can actually improve your gameplay.

On the topic of grabs, sometimes around mid percents I'll screw up (against heavy characters though Dthrow ---> Uair/ Fair still works at like 50 lawl) and do the wrong throw, but at high percents I'm pretty confident in my kill percentages. Draconoa and I for the past month or so (we've taken a long hiatus from it haha) have been working on a project that records Ness' Bthrow kill percewnts on every character without rage from near, centre and far stage of FD. It's influenced my decisions more than once and actually allowed me to win games I might otherwise have not. :D

When we finish the project we'll be chucking it here for you all to see =3

 

[Noa.]

Yeah it's taken a while for this to get done. I've often too busy with work, school, or actually playing smash with other people. It's really fun to lab though. And now that I have the wii u version I can do that kill percents with some decent DI.

 

[PKBeam]

as if Bthrow wasn't good enough already, now you have to make a guide for it?
oh, does anyone know how rage scales knockback values?

 

[Luco]

as if Bthrow wasn't good enough already, now you have to make a guide for it?
oh, does anyone know how rage scales knockback values?

Jiggz dies at the near end of FD even with DI at 79% WITHOUT RAGE.

With mind blowing facts like that, a kill percent chart was needed.

As for rage's KB scaling, I only have a vague idea of it at best, but I know by the time you get to around 130-150, and even further between 150-180, your Bthrow kill percents are ludicrous

 

[PKBeam]

Because of how rage moves seem to scale 1:1 to their regular counterparts and damage isn't affected by rage, I think it increases only base knockback.

that's a shame tho, could you believe how ridiculoulsly early Bthrow would kill if rage increased damage by even a few %?

 

[Pazx]

I'm of the opinion that rage probably multiplies KBG rather than BKB because characters like Sheik get very little out of it, and our bthrow which is notorious for having insane KBG gets even more deadly.

Trivia: PSI magnet is active on frame 10 and lasts for 35 frames, while Lucas's magnet is active on frame 12 and lasts only 32. Useless information? Correct! But it's the only thing I gathered from a quick flick through the "official" guide book to SSB4 (a friend's younger brother left it lying around so I had a squiz). It did have information on every single custom move in the game though, which is neat.

 

[Tikao]

it depends on how exactly rage affects kb values

if rage adds a flat number to it, then our bthrow would benefit more of increased bkb rather than kbg, since our high kbg also scales of our bkb
adding 16 to our bkb (15) would more than double it, while adding it to our kbg (1430) wouldn't realy affect it
and depending on how exactly kbg scales with bkb

if it is percentage based rage, then (depending on how kbg sclaes with bkb) it wouldn't even matter what it increases (assuming a 30bkb/1430kbg move kills at half the % than a 15bgb/1430 move would, which would mean a 30bkb/1430kbg move kills exactly as early as a 15bgb/2860kbg move, in that case you would just multiply both, so it wouldn't matter which of both you increase by x%)

it might also just affect the resulting kb, which would be the most logical one

on another note, rage stops increasing after you reached around 150% (probadly exactly 150%)

 

[Noa.]

I've heard that rage scales and works differently for different moves.

I'm almost done with season conclusions from all the kill percent data I've collected. I just want to test rage and then Luco and I can publish our stuff.

 

[Pazx]

man nakat is making ness look good in doubles

http://www.twitch.tv/EvenMatchupGaming