You can bait up b, then punish him as he comes down. He can b reverse bacon, double jump, dair (which is easy to punish) or do nothing, so he has quite a few mix-ups. Find out how your character can cover at least 2 of these options, or cover what the GnW player does the most on the way down. Ex: Shield pressure him with an aerial at a safe distance away from his up b hitbox, which is smaller than shine) then aerial him as he goes up. Characters with swords have an easier time doing this.
I am still not sure this interaction/relationship is as polished as it ought to be. I'd say you forgot to add in Bucket Stalling/reversing, and fall down fair/bair are also mixups, in addition to the breverse bacon and dair. You could also argue tomahawk, and delayed uair (w/ landing hitbox) are also mixups if your opponents goal is to shield punish the possible dair. So in reality, when a GnW is above my head, I have the following options.
Scenario A: he saves his double jump, and he dairs. Beats most people intercepting from below, but loses to shield.
Scenario B: he saves his double jump, I try to get under him to cover the dair (via shield) and intercept him if he doesn't. He double jump jukes me and comes down with a falling fair/bair. Relatively safe on shield.
Scenario C: I try to intercept him from a side in the air, so as to avoid the key but still catch him. GnW bucket stalls, double jump aerials or double jumps to the ground. Potentially, I can still cover this if I don't commit too hard.
Scenario D: He's landing on me. I opt to shield so as to punish the Key. He's almost landed on me and no key has come out. He immediately starts an uair as he's about to land. Uair has a landing hitbox (meaning once uair's entire animation is over, there is an extra hitbox that magically covers him upon landing). This beats me if I'm not patient to stay in shield through the entire duration of the uair. Accounting for this final option has a high chance of losing to pure tomahawk.
I think your post, LZ, was pretty great, but I still think upb isn't nearly as disadvantageous a position as it ought to be. I think GnW's upb has to be altered for him to be healthy. I propose the mewtwo treatment--he can only use his jump after upb if the upb is started from the ground. This also would give him less flexibility with his recovery.
Like I don't personally think Ness is that great but at what point do we stop ourselves and think "hmmm, maybe I DON'T understand this game perfectly and there is more to Ness and/or this game than I may understand at the moment?". How many characters perform better than Ness on a national scale? Are Ness players born with simply more inborn talent than other players? Ness isn't that uncommon of a character, there is a good Ness everywhere you look and that's as someone who doesn't know much about scenes outside FL
I've already said a lot on this and at risk of sounding like a broken record, I'll just say a little bit more and then probably break from the topic. Please be patient with me while I seemingly defend this character once more.
People seem to realize that Ness was widely played in the top 64 bracket of Paragon. According to
this link so were DDD and Bowser. Neither of those characters are being discussed, probably because Ripple and Odds didn't make it to top 8. StereoKIDD, the best Ness in the world did make it to top 8, played his hardest match (bracket wise) against someone who displayed real lack of matchup knowledge (IPK), and then lost in top 8 once that player showed a day and night difference in adaption. Just two weeks prior, at another significantly less stacked tournament with just as much high level Ness representation, every Ness under-performed. Between 5 Nesses, not one made it to top 16. StereoKidd and Boiko were amongst that group of Nesses.
This statement is getting said a lot: "Nesses keep performing well, when are you going to realize that a character can't be that bad with good results".
The thing is, that statement is purely based on what happened at Paragon and does not consider other tournaments as a whole. I think the reason why we keep having this conversation about Ness and not Bowser/DDD is because people (rightfully) consider Ness as having a higher ceiling, and in a world where most of you don't play Ness, there is a natural urge to believe others have a similar lack of understanding of his potential. I won't say Ness is figured out, but I will say us Ness players have actually developed the character pretty far due to a few very specific reasons.
A. Ness, for whatever reason, attracts almost exclusively solo mains. Aki, Myself, Stereo, Reslived, Reyn Time, Dr. Grin, Octo, Zeej, Calabrel are all practically solo mains. Boiko was mostly a solo main, and has been putting a bit more to Samus lately, while Tetra has always been a dual main. This is maybe the biggest factor as to why the Ness metagame has come pretty far. Most of these players have been soloing Ness forever, and haven't switched from or to the character, meaning they've gotten the chance to experiment with the depth that exists for that character. Contrast that against someone like Wolf or Roy, for example, who have high ceilings but are basically used MOSTLY as secondaries by the prominent players in today's metagame.
B. Ness is popular. I named 10 players just now who use the character at a high level, and didn't even mention RedSP, Eli, and others. It's hard to name 10 good players for any character. Purely on the basis of statistics, the affinity between popularity and solo maining means some people out of the woodwork will unlock that character's potential in special ways.
C. Ness has been mostly unchanged since 3.02. I guess his core traits were heavily changed when pkfire was nerfed in 3.5, but all of the Nesses I mentioned besides Reslived were pretty pkfire light going into 3.5. As a result, you have a character who has had a pretty steady set of tools for a few years now, without disruption.
I personally don't buy into the Ness exceptionalism argument at all. I don't think Ness players are better than other players. But I do challenge the idea that Ness has some hidden potential
we cant even see. I know you won't take me for my word, but things like invincible ledge approaches, full jump djc dair combos to maximize frame advantage and give us enough time to reaction tech chase, dtilt to djc dair loops, djc uair combos, magdash combos--hell, even things like "if you fair someone off the ledge but land right on the edge, you can often force a DI in from the opponent into a lower angled bat" are being implemented (and netted Stereo some amazing Gfy moments this weekend). There are two separate frame perfect techniques that Nesses have started to employ (Double Jump Landing, and EX Fire). All Ness players can get a lot better than they are, but I DO think the core problems we analyze are REAL and are only going to become bigger (and are becoming bigger) with time. It might seem crazy when we say "you can just SDI that and prevent followups", since that can be applied to anyone. But when the bulk of a characters approach is essentially two moves (Dash attack and fair), its not ridiculous to presume any good player can crouch cancel the former, and SDI the latter ON REACTION.
Finally, there is the element that Ness (similar to GnW) has a potent game plan against those who seem unable to abuse his deficiencies, and he's actually a beast when players lack that matchup knowledge. @
Rachman
you made the claim that good nesses are everywhere so we have to stop dismissing things on the basis of experience--however, I'd ask you to point out what high level Nesses is IPK playing against? Three or four of the notable Nesses that went to paragon were way out of region. That helps at the highest level, and can be the difference between three wins in bracket versus four wins in bracket (which placings wise, is huge).
TL:DR - One tournament indicates very little about character balance and metagame. Tournament victories seem to be great at casting a spotlight to begin discussion on something (GnW's power, Ness's power, etc.) but they do very little as evidence in and of themselves. </NZAsaltfactoryisclosed>
