additionally, a mediocre projectile, a horrendous recovery, and bad KO moves. how can you possibly say there's potential in that? i'd love to be proven wrong because i have to improve my ivysaur but seriously trainers. i think both charizard and squirtle are more than a tier above ivysaur, individually.
I could say something similar for Squirtle. He's got terrible range, bad killing potential, and his recovery is pretty gimpable (Which limits his own ability to gimp). Both Squirtle and Ivysaur rely on the actual abilities of the player to perform perfectly in any given situation than Charizard will.
I will however agree that Ivysaur is far more dependant on this factor than Squirtle is. As I've already mentioned in this thread, Ivysaur's move balance is totally screwed over. It goes much farther than actual damage output. Ivysaur is a complete character, but it seems that most moves are extremes. No one will disagree when I say Bair is an incredible spacing move and is very useful for that purpose, but how far will the 4% put you long term? I know that I often get aggravated when I am doing an excellent job spacing with Ivysaur but my opponent gets in for just a few moves and they've already evened out the percentages again. Similarly, no one will try to disclaim the fact that Ivysaur's Usmash is one of the strongest smashes in the entire game. But its functionality is extremely limited because of how punishable it is and how slow it executes. It certainly isn't a kill move that you'll rely on. It seems that Ivysaur was balanced far
too well; so well, in fact, that PT players will actually have to make conscious decisions between spacing and doing damage. Ivysaur offers very few moves that serve as a "multi-purpose" move (Compare to Charizard, who actually has so many KO moves that the player has flexibility in choosing which ones to use for damage and which ones to use for KOs) and is therefore an extremely unforgiving character to play. You need the ability to land many moves from all over the spectrum to have any sort of success with Ivysaur.
Zephramill said it best thus far: I doubt many people would contend that Ivysaur is the worst on paper. Make no mistake, Ivysaur
is a complete character (Well, I suppose aside from recovery).
However, for all this talk I've done of the lack Ivysaur has to any sort of "middle-ground," I do want to mention that Ivysaur does display it in Nair. Nair is a very good attack. I remember a long time ago when Pope of Chili Town still frequented the PT boards and he said something to the effect of "Remember, Bair (Spacing) is only the means, not the objective." And I whole-heartedly agree. At the time I suppose I would have defaulted to Bullet Seed or Fsmash as the objective. But the more I play, the more strongly I feel that Nair is Ivysaur's most complete move. This move is quick, lagless, has spike properties, does 14% fresh, wears out shields, can cause the opponent to trip, is helpful during recovery (The spike), and even functions as a set-up (Bullet Seed
without the pop-up at lower percentages, back into itself at lower percentages, even Uair if your opponent makes a mistake). Seriously, this move is basically everything all at once and I use it more and more every time I use Ivysaur.
. He has so many killing options at any percent but they can be diffcult to land sometimes. For emergencies there is always ftilt, dtilt and sometimes dthrow. A grounded dair will also kill.
