I get that people are saying Ness's design require his weaknesses to be "a, b, and c" (in this case, range, speed, and bad recovery) and in a game like this, those weaknesses count more than other things, and therefore he will always be bad.
However, I disagree that he HAS to be bad. All Ness players wouldn't mind if he was even with everyone else. We don't like playing a niche character with a lack of usability. What we like is a character we perceive as having great mindgames, amazing aerial mobility with DJC and a certain comboability with DJC. We'd still love him to be viable while playing on those features.
Honestly, you can retain his core character while giving him buffs to make him viable. Those buffs can be in the very areas that are supposed to define him or can be in areas that are traditionally thought of as his weaknesses (i.e. erasing a weakness or two).
For instance, if I wanted to buff Ness so that he excels in the areas he is supposed to be a master of, I might do it in the following ways.
1. improve his magnet so it synergizes with his djc, allowing him to aerially combo better. These improvements could be in the magnet hit trajectory, or they can play on making it a better aerial "wavedash", in the way that sinisterb currently uses it.
2. improve his djc so it allows for more combo freedom on characters other than spacies. We already got a controllable djc, so we can do rising aerials. Maybe if his second jump was a little larger, he could follow aerially even better.
3. improve his horizontal aerial mobility. I always imagined Ness to be a fighter jet in the air and be able to apply aerial pressure similar to how rob does (although obviously without the air dashes that rob has).
4. take his underused moves like yoyos and utilts, and give them a more prominent place in his play
5. Improve some of his mindgamey **** more, like his pk thunder.
The other option is that you can administer buffs in areas that we all perceive him to be weak. For instance: increase his ground speed game, and make it so his weakness's mostly are in his recovery and range instead. OR, improve his aerial range. They've already improved his recovery quite a bit and I personally feel it is exactly where it needs to be.
So yeah, I don't really agree that Ness HAS to be bad. If he doesn't have enough tools now (and I personally am not saying that he doesn't) there are plenty of ways to give him those tools. I hope the BR is always open to them. I personally feel they've gone halfway on the magnet but it still needs more work.
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