what stages to strike and counterpick to

[Melonsismyusername]

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[DDRC]

Ness is pretty good on FD so go there?

 

[CAUP]

I am not a Ness main so am not really qualified to answer this question, but no one has given a good response so I'll try my best.

Ness is a low tier so no stage is going to purely compliment his strengths and minimize his weaknesses.

If you have a chaingrab on a character, or good follow ups on up throw, FD is probably where you want to go.

Beyond that, Ness has a pretty bad recovery, so I think smaller stages are often preferable in that respect. Also Ness has a hard time killing so I think smaller stages help in that way too (I"m talking specifically stages with smaller horizontal blast zones). I would think smaller stages can make defense harder for Ness though, as he might not have enough space to set up fair walls and his defense options out of shield aren't great. So I would say it depends on what you value. Yoshi's and FoD seem good because you can ride the walls recovering. Yoshi's has shy guys which can interfere with recovering but also has Randall which can help.

Simna ibn Sind would be significantly more qualified to answer.

 

[Zarathustra_SSBM]

I know this thread is 2 years old at this point but I might as well comment in case any future Ness nerds are browsing character discussion on Ness on Smashboards like I was.

I find that the best stages for Ness are usually either Yoshi's Story or Final Destination.
FD's good for a few reasons:

1. Ness can do his up-throw chain grabs on Fox, Falco, and Falcon and he can do his down-throw chain grabs on Sheik, Roy, and Falcon without being interrupted by platforms
2. The lack of platforms make juggling with uair and up-tilt easier. It also makes the Ness up-throw -> uair -> up-throw combo a lot more viable.
3. No platforms makes Ness much more able to pressure opponents with DJCFFL Fairs.
4. Along with most characters, Ness can much more easily combo on FD.

The only characters I don't recommend going FD against are: Peach, Puff, and Luigi.

Yoshi's Story is complicated for Ness, and while I'd say it's his 2nd best stage in most matchups it's still quite the mixed bag.
Yoshi's is good in that:

1. The tiny top blastzone helps Ness kill off his deceptively strong uair. Plus the tiny blastzones help Ness kill off his Bair, and off-stage Dair spike.
2. The walled sides makes this and possibly FoD the only stages where it might be even slightly useful as a recovery.
3. The claustrophobic tiny stage makes Ness's awful range better than on stages like the enormous Dreamland.
4. Ness can use fast platform movement aided by the small size of the stage to get hits.

Obviously there is the big issue with Yoshi's, where the shy guys can interrupt Ness's up-special, but there was a good chance the other player was going to do that anyways.

I recommend going Yoshi's against Peach, Puff, and Luigi.