ilysm
sleepy
A Little Background
I’m no expert by far (this is probably my first noteworthy contribution to these boards as I’m rather embarrassingly shy, haha) but it seems to me that Final Destination, contrary to common belief, is not technically the best Ice Climbers stage in this game.
Since When?
FD has long been considered the Ice Climbers’ best stage flat out. This whole belief started way back, when ChuDat first began making waves with the character in Melee and would take all his opponents to FD. Since then, the doctrine to Icies mains has always been “go to FD if you can, it’s your best stage” while other players are told “always ban FD against Icies if you can, it’s their best stage”. There’s a lot of good evidence as to why this is true. FD lacks a feature that can make Icies play very difficult: platforms. Platforms are tricky for a few reasons. The most obvious one is the condition of the character’s design: the Climbers have a good wavedash and punishing grab followups, while sporting poor air mobility and aerials that aren’t too flexible in most situations. They’re a ground-based grappler, and generally lose pretty hard to platform camping. This is a problem because their worst matchups generally break down to how they get outcamped and separated, in Melee (Peach/Samus) and Brawl (Metaknight/Snake) and now more recently Project M (Toon Link/Ivysaur). They’re not great at chasing people down, and platforms complicate that process significantly. Plus, their walling game with desync ice-block/blizzard/aerials/smashes arguably gets a lot worse when platforms are thrown into the mix, as platforms tend to give more mobile characters different routes and options to approach the Climbers safely. All of this means that in general, people think that platforms = not good for lil’ eskimos. And this is pretty much true.
What’s Changed?
An important thing to keep in mind is why the Ice Climbers are considered so good in Melee and Brawl: they have the single most devastating punish off a grab out of any other character in the entire game. Grab the opponent -> kill the opponent. This is part of the reason why FD is such a go-to pick, particularly in Melee where other useful chaingrabs are unreliable with DI. It doesn’t matter where you grab your opponent on the stage; they’re dead if you grab them, easy breezy. But the most major thing that’s changed from these games to Project M is that the Icies no longer have access to these infinites. They still have a very good punish game off of their grab, but when you take infinites out of the mix stage positioning becomes a much bigger factor.
In Project M, the most major component of the Ice Climbers’ punish game is not wobbling or chaingrabbing, but arguably lies in ledge handoffs. The most significant buffs that make this the case are Nana’s improved AI that won’t randomly pummel and the spike hitbox on forward-air, which makes killing off the side much more reliable and even adds a cute little DI mixup at the end of a handoff (DI in to survive smash attack, DI out to avoid f-air spike). Handoffs are free, inescapable damage that can be looped a surprising amount of times for a heavy punish. Generally, an Project M Icies player should be focussed on (among other things) pressuring an opponent into the corner and then landing a grab.
This changes the stage dynamic up somewhat.
The Deal With Stage Size
Now here’s the truth: Final Destination is a big stage.
![]()
In Melee and Brawl, this doesn’t matter much. After all, a grab anywhere on the stage is going to result in a guaranteed KO. Position is immaterial. So you might as well cut out the platforms if you can, right? Right.
But what if I’m playing PM, and I happen to grab the opponent right here?
![]()
Look at how far I have to go to push an opponent to the ledge. If my opponent is awake and knows what DI is, a chaingrab is not going to put me where I want to be in order to set up a KO, especially if they’re small or floaty or a combination of the two. Even worse, it’s all dependent on which direction I’m facing.With the reverse hitbox of d-air removed from Melee, there’s no reliable way to switch directions during a chaingrab and continue the combo. *I have just been made aware that I am in fact wrong about this, but the fact remains that reverse dair is a tricky tool that only works reliably on a few characters to my knowledge. There are a few ways I've discovered to switch directions out of a grab, but one only works on spacies and both have very tight and difficult windows to pull of with varying degrees of success, and to boot make it difficult to continue the actual chaingrab without the opponent mashing or DI'ing out.)
Now consider a smaller stage. I’ll pick Yoshi’s Melee (we’ll get to my reasoning and discuss other stages a bit later). Yoshi’s is a small stage. Let’s say I’m playing against my opponent and get a grab right here.
![]()
Look at the difference between the distance I need to travel to get to the ledge. It’s a lot more doable, yeah?
You can see this principle of stage size illustrated among stage choices of top Melee Icies players. While players like Chudat, Nintendude, Dizzkidboogie, etc. like FD just fine as a counterpick, players who rely less on wobbling, like Fly Amanita and more recently Wobbles, tend to take their opponents to FoD or Yoshi’s, because it’s easier to get to the edge from any given point on the stage. (As a side note, small stages also benefit Icies just as they benefit every other character with a good wavedash due to the sheer amount of space they can threaten from a single area. To get an idea of this, a good guide to read is Everywhere At Once by the wonderful BluEG. It’s written for Luigi, but the same concepts also apply to the Ice Climbers and other characters with similar movement options. It’s a very helpful read.)
But it’s not just a simple matter of smaller stages being better for Icies because of size alone. This is where platforms come into play.
Platforms and Grabs
Handoffs themselves have been considerably buffed from Melee to Project M in a few ways (AI improvements, spike hitbox on f-air). Another notable change is the area in which Nana begins to throw predictably in a way that can be exploited for a handoff. It’s commonly known that, when near the edge of a stage, Nana will always throw the opponent towards that ledge. Her AI treats platforms like ‘mini-stages’, if you will. She’ll throw towards the closest ledge of the platform, regardless of where the platform is positioned above the ground of the stage itself. So d-throw/f-throw handoffs are possible in certain zones of platforms (it doesn’t matter if they’re outer platforms or the top platform, or which way you're actually facing).
In Melee, this range was very strict. In the middle of a platform, or facing away from the closest edge, Nana would b-throw, making handoffs impossible. To give an idea of this area I’ll use an Dreamland platform, but the areas are pretty much the same for every platform (scaled with platform size; smaller platforms having proportionately smaller zones). In Melee, your window looks something like this:
![]()
(This is an approximation, but I'm mainly illustrating a point.)
In Project M, your window looks something like this:
![]()
Wow.
For whatever reason, Nana’s AI in Project M is a lot more lenient about f-throwing on a platform (if this is intentional, then let me take this chance to give my undying thanks to whatever dev had this idea). That red sliver in the second image illustrates an approximate location that is very difficult to occupy intentionally (I’ve only seen Nana b-throw on a platform maybe twice, each time when her back was very close against the edge). This makes platform handoffs a lot more powerful in PM. They’re a lot less specific, so they’re easier to set up, and they can also last longer, allowing for more damage and potential kills. On top platforms (or stages with low ceilings), handoff -> up-smash is a great platform setup, especially on floaties. On stages like Yoshi’s Melee, FoD, Battlefield, and sometimes Smashville, where the outer platforms are very close to the edges of the stage itself, handoff -> f-air spike is also a viable kill option. And of course there’s always f-smash and d-smash to set up edge-guard opportunities. Handoffs are the Icies’ best option out of a platform grab in almost every situation (much, much better than in Melee), since they’re guaranteed damage into a variety of setups.
This has some pretty implications for Icies stage choice. Any stage with a platform, regardless of size, gives the Icies one more opportunity to set up a handoff.
To give a visual representation of this flexibility, Here are your (approximate) potential handoff zones on Final Destination:
![]()
On Yoshi’s Melee:
![]()
On Fountain of Dreams:
![]()
On Smashville:
![]()
On Battlefield:
![]()
You get the idea. Since handoffs are impossible midstage, but possible on midstage platforms, any platform adds a degree of flexibility to the Icies’ punish game.
Sounds good, right? Well, it’s important to bear in mind that most if not all of Icies’ platform weaknesses carry over from Melee and Brawl to Project M, and they still need to be worked around. This analysis is mainly looking into whether the pros of platforms outweigh the cons, which is a slightly complicated and very matchup-specific question that I’m gonna scratch the surface of. But I also believe that there are ways Icies players can start to work around some of the issues posed by platforms.
Dealing With Platforms
Platforms are not the end of the world. This is starting to become more evident in the Project M meta where infinites are a thing of the past. But the metagame of PM is still very, very grab-centric for a few different reasons, and triply so for Ice Climbers. Nevertheless, there are a few non-grab-related options that Icies have to pressure opponents on platforms.
A few tools that the Climbers have are old-school, original Melee stuff. First, the obvious: u-air is a very good sharking tool. It’s disjointed, comes out fast, and can poke through platforms into opponents’ feet. It can even shieldstab smaller shields. But it’s important to be smart about u-air, and only use it at the right times. In Melee especially, a good strategy is to threaten space below the platform, and make your opponent nervous enough to move. If they’re smart, they’ll decide to jump, because nobody wants to willingly go to the ground next to the Ice Climbers. Try to predict or react to their jump, then snatch them with a u-air and start a juggle. Wobbles and especially Fly Amanita are old pros at this, and watching VODs of them will definitely provide ample footage of this strategy in use at high-level play.
In scenarios like this, staggered aerials are a very valuable tool that I don’t see too many players making use of. A dash dance below a platform will displace the secondary climber a short distance behind the lead. This displacement carries over to the air if you jump afterwards, allowing a staggered u-air to effectively threaten twice the space of a synced u-air. This also applies to other aerials, as well as jump-cancelled u-smash (which can be a useful option on stages like FoD where an u-smash can poke through a platform). Kyu Puff has a useful section on staggering in his advanced movement options guide. There’s some very interesting stuff.
Here’s where PM-specific tools come into play. In Melee, u-air sharking isn’t as powerful. The mentality is, “I got poked by an u-air, big whoop. At least they didn’t grab me.” And for the most part, that’s true. Typically you can’t get more than a short juggle off of an u-air, and outside of a certain percent range, there’s no reliable way to convert that hit into a somewhat significant punish (especially in Melee, where converting into punishes off of stray hits is very important in top-level play). That changes in PM for one reason: Belay and its wonderful buffed kill power. If your opponent is careless about getting clipped by too many u-airs nearer to the top of the stage, up-b will kill them dead—especially if they’re one of those dratted floaties. One or two unexpected Belay kills is usually enough to rattle an opponent, make them more worried about being right above the Climbers, and force them to respect their punish game outside of a grab.
Another tool I’ve found useful at scaring opponents on platforms is a desync into charging an u-smash with the secondary Climber. A charged smash attack with the secondary climber is a strategy I think is really powerful, because it eliminates some of the main overcommitments of charging a smash attack with other characters (namely, you can’t move or perform any other attack) but still retains all the benefits. Charging a smash attack and then just walking around can threaten a surprising amount of space, not to mention dashing, wavedashing, and performing other attacks with the lead climber. U-tilt can also be a nice option if you do read that they’re going to drop down, and sets up for grabs really nicely if they don’t SDI it to escape the multiple hits.
All of this is mainly scare tactics. A scared opponent on a platform is very, very beneficial. If you can pressure them into picking defensive options in a reliable manner, you’ll have time to waveland onto the platform and hopefully net a grab into a handoff into whatever. So the value of non-grab platform pressure doesn’t just lie in the punishes themselves, but in the conditioning that can result from the pressure.
So Where Does This Leave FD (And Other Stages)?
Don’t get me wrong. FD is still a very good Icies stage. After all, it has no platforms, which gives them very significant advantages...in the neutral. That is the real question: do you pick a stage that benefits your punish game or your neutral?
This is partly down to matchup. You have to consider how many times over the Icies need to win neutral in order to score a KO as opposed to the other character. Marth, Falco, Fox, Wolf, Lucas, Captain Falcon, and other ‘kings’ of FD with explosive, combo-oriented punish games realistically only need to win the neutral a couple times (sometimes even once) in order to kill their opponent, while characters like Kirby, Ganon, Ivysaur, Olimar, Dedede, R.O.B, Pit, etc. who do not rely on long, combo-oriented punishes need to win the neutral a few more times in order to net a KO. Now that wobbling and infinite handoffs are no more, the Ice Climbers can potentially need to win the neutral many times over on a big stage like Final Destination in order to gain a lead. Weigh the amount of times the opponent needs to win the neutral against how many times the Icies do. Keep other matchup knowledge in mind as well: for example, Final Destination is much better against fatties and semi-fatties than other characters because is allows for easier camping while their size helps the Climbers to gain more distance off of a single chaingrab.
At the end of the day, though, it’s also down to player preference. Some people play a wall-based Icies. Some people focus on grabs. Some people out-neutral their opponent more than their opponent out-neutrals them and they win. The same is true of any given opponent. This should also be considered when picking stages. The way I look at it, the Icies are a very high risk/high reward character, and I’m more comfortable on stages that are skewed towards attaining the rewards. I tend to play toward the ledge and towards platforms for this reason, but I want to work a lot on my neutral. Other more knowledgeable players will undoubtedly have a different opinion than mine, and I really want to put these theories out there to be refined by the community.
I think that because of the large stagelist in Project M and because of the changes to the character and the meta discussed above, the Icies have a wider range of stages that they can theoretically work on. What’s the best Icies stage? That’s a question I’m not nearly experienced enough to answer definitively. My personal favorite is Fountain of Dreams, but others may prefer Yoshi’s, PS2, or what have you. I would say, going on all this information, that Dreamland and Delfino’s Secret are probably pretty definitively bad for Icies given their combination of size and platforms (especially the weird platforms on Secret which can probably ruin any handoffs). Jury’s still out on Lylat; it’s big and has plenty of platforms but they’re all pretty small, the ceiling is pretty low, making handoff -> u-smash and u-air -> up-b more reliable finishers. Yoshi’s Brawl is also odd, because of its size/kooky slopes and because there’s only one platform but it’s pretty big, meaning that a grab at the correct side of it will probably lead to a KO. Smashville seems pretty damn good to me as a starter, because it has all the unobtrusiveness of FD with a platform that’s small enough so as to be difficult for an opponent to totally abuse but is large enough to allow for longer handoffs on it, with the added chance of recovery benefits and a positional f-air spike off the platform. I don’t even know what to begin to think about Green Hill Zone. There’s a lot of room for discussion here, and I’d love to get other players’ opinions! So what do you think? Is there merit to any of this at all?
(
Hylian
Phresh123
I’m particularly interested to hear what you two have to say, simply because to me you guys represent two opposite ends of the Icies playstyle spectrum, one which is incredibly neutral-focussed and one which is incredibly wall/punish-focussed, respectively. Your advice and thoughts would be very much valued by myself and others, I think.)
Consider this my formal ‘hullo’ to the Icies boards. I hope to be more involved in the community in the coming years, change my tag to something not terrible, get more active, play against more people, learn about my character, level up, commentate, etc. I hope this is a good start. ^_^
Hullo, there! This explanation is just so that you know who’s doing this analysis; I’m not a top player, a dev team member, a notable TO/commentator, or even an old hand at Icies. I’m just a thoughtful player and a good deal of this is theory-crafting so take it as you will. Project M was my introduction into the competitive Smash scene over a year and a half ago I actually forgot, this is almost two and a half years now! Yikes, it's been a while. Since then, I’ve fallen in love with all the games in the series, but it wasn’t until recently that I finally got my hands on a copy of Melee and began to play around with the character I found the coolest by far: Ice Climbers. My philosophy was (and still is) that when it comes to Melee players playing Project M, they would generally learn more and have more fun if they picked a character other than their Melee main (at least the top-tiers that received few significant changes). But as I toyed with Icies as a secondary in PM, I started to see how different their playstyle was as opposed to Melee. They truly play like a Melee/Brawl hybrid, with some special PM flair. So when I decided to main Ice Climbers I was thinking a lot about the differences between their Project M incarnation and their Melee/Brawl incarnations.
I’m no expert by far (this is probably my first noteworthy contribution to these boards as I’m rather embarrassingly shy, haha) but it seems to me that Final Destination, contrary to common belief, is not technically the best Ice Climbers stage in this game.
Since When?
FD has long been considered the Ice Climbers’ best stage flat out. This whole belief started way back, when ChuDat first began making waves with the character in Melee and would take all his opponents to FD. Since then, the doctrine to Icies mains has always been “go to FD if you can, it’s your best stage” while other players are told “always ban FD against Icies if you can, it’s their best stage”. There’s a lot of good evidence as to why this is true. FD lacks a feature that can make Icies play very difficult: platforms. Platforms are tricky for a few reasons. The most obvious one is the condition of the character’s design: the Climbers have a good wavedash and punishing grab followups, while sporting poor air mobility and aerials that aren’t too flexible in most situations. They’re a ground-based grappler, and generally lose pretty hard to platform camping. This is a problem because their worst matchups generally break down to how they get outcamped and separated, in Melee (Peach/Samus) and Brawl (Metaknight/Snake) and now more recently Project M (Toon Link/Ivysaur). They’re not great at chasing people down, and platforms complicate that process significantly. Plus, their walling game with desync ice-block/blizzard/aerials/smashes arguably gets a lot worse when platforms are thrown into the mix, as platforms tend to give more mobile characters different routes and options to approach the Climbers safely. All of this means that in general, people think that platforms = not good for lil’ eskimos. And this is pretty much true.
What’s Changed?
An important thing to keep in mind is why the Ice Climbers are considered so good in Melee and Brawl: they have the single most devastating punish off a grab out of any other character in the entire game. Grab the opponent -> kill the opponent. This is part of the reason why FD is such a go-to pick, particularly in Melee where other useful chaingrabs are unreliable with DI. It doesn’t matter where you grab your opponent on the stage; they’re dead if you grab them, easy breezy. But the most major thing that’s changed from these games to Project M is that the Icies no longer have access to these infinites. They still have a very good punish game off of their grab, but when you take infinites out of the mix stage positioning becomes a much bigger factor.
In Project M, the most major component of the Ice Climbers’ punish game is not wobbling or chaingrabbing, but arguably lies in ledge handoffs. The most significant buffs that make this the case are Nana’s improved AI that won’t randomly pummel and the spike hitbox on forward-air, which makes killing off the side much more reliable and even adds a cute little DI mixup at the end of a handoff (DI in to survive smash attack, DI out to avoid f-air spike). Handoffs are free, inescapable damage that can be looped a surprising amount of times for a heavy punish. Generally, an Project M Icies player should be focussed on (among other things) pressuring an opponent into the corner and then landing a grab.
This changes the stage dynamic up somewhat.
The Deal With Stage Size
Now here’s the truth: Final Destination is a big stage.
In Melee and Brawl, this doesn’t matter much. After all, a grab anywhere on the stage is going to result in a guaranteed KO. Position is immaterial. So you might as well cut out the platforms if you can, right? Right.
But what if I’m playing PM, and I happen to grab the opponent right here?
Look at how far I have to go to push an opponent to the ledge. If my opponent is awake and knows what DI is, a chaingrab is not going to put me where I want to be in order to set up a KO, especially if they’re small or floaty or a combination of the two. Even worse, it’s all dependent on which direction I’m facing.
Now consider a smaller stage. I’ll pick Yoshi’s Melee (we’ll get to my reasoning and discuss other stages a bit later). Yoshi’s is a small stage. Let’s say I’m playing against my opponent and get a grab right here.
Look at the difference between the distance I need to travel to get to the ledge. It’s a lot more doable, yeah?
You can see this principle of stage size illustrated among stage choices of top Melee Icies players. While players like Chudat, Nintendude, Dizzkidboogie, etc. like FD just fine as a counterpick, players who rely less on wobbling, like Fly Amanita and more recently Wobbles, tend to take their opponents to FoD or Yoshi’s, because it’s easier to get to the edge from any given point on the stage. (As a side note, small stages also benefit Icies just as they benefit every other character with a good wavedash due to the sheer amount of space they can threaten from a single area. To get an idea of this, a good guide to read is Everywhere At Once by the wonderful BluEG. It’s written for Luigi, but the same concepts also apply to the Ice Climbers and other characters with similar movement options. It’s a very helpful read.)
But it’s not just a simple matter of smaller stages being better for Icies because of size alone. This is where platforms come into play.
Platforms and Grabs
Handoffs themselves have been considerably buffed from Melee to Project M in a few ways (AI improvements, spike hitbox on f-air). Another notable change is the area in which Nana begins to throw predictably in a way that can be exploited for a handoff. It’s commonly known that, when near the edge of a stage, Nana will always throw the opponent towards that ledge. Her AI treats platforms like ‘mini-stages’, if you will. She’ll throw towards the closest ledge of the platform, regardless of where the platform is positioned above the ground of the stage itself. So d-throw/f-throw handoffs are possible in certain zones of platforms (it doesn’t matter if they’re outer platforms or the top platform, or which way you're actually facing).
In Melee, this range was very strict. In the middle of a platform, or facing away from the closest edge, Nana would b-throw, making handoffs impossible. To give an idea of this area I’ll use an Dreamland platform, but the areas are pretty much the same for every platform (scaled with platform size; smaller platforms having proportionately smaller zones). In Melee, your window looks something like this:
(This is an approximation, but I'm mainly illustrating a point.)
In Project M, your window looks something like this:
Wow.
For whatever reason, Nana’s AI in Project M is a lot more lenient about f-throwing on a platform (if this is intentional, then let me take this chance to give my undying thanks to whatever dev had this idea). That red sliver in the second image illustrates an approximate location that is very difficult to occupy intentionally (I’ve only seen Nana b-throw on a platform maybe twice, each time when her back was very close against the edge). This makes platform handoffs a lot more powerful in PM. They’re a lot less specific, so they’re easier to set up, and they can also last longer, allowing for more damage and potential kills. On top platforms (or stages with low ceilings), handoff -> up-smash is a great platform setup, especially on floaties. On stages like Yoshi’s Melee, FoD, Battlefield, and sometimes Smashville, where the outer platforms are very close to the edges of the stage itself, handoff -> f-air spike is also a viable kill option. And of course there’s always f-smash and d-smash to set up edge-guard opportunities. Handoffs are the Icies’ best option out of a platform grab in almost every situation (much, much better than in Melee), since they’re guaranteed damage into a variety of setups.
This has some pretty implications for Icies stage choice. Any stage with a platform, regardless of size, gives the Icies one more opportunity to set up a handoff.
To give a visual representation of this flexibility, Here are your (approximate) potential handoff zones on Final Destination:
You get the idea. Since handoffs are impossible midstage, but possible on midstage platforms, any platform adds a degree of flexibility to the Icies’ punish game.
Sounds good, right? Well, it’s important to bear in mind that most if not all of Icies’ platform weaknesses carry over from Melee and Brawl to Project M, and they still need to be worked around. This analysis is mainly looking into whether the pros of platforms outweigh the cons, which is a slightly complicated and very matchup-specific question that I’m gonna scratch the surface of. But I also believe that there are ways Icies players can start to work around some of the issues posed by platforms.
Dealing With Platforms
Platforms are not the end of the world. This is starting to become more evident in the Project M meta where infinites are a thing of the past. But the metagame of PM is still very, very grab-centric for a few different reasons, and triply so for Ice Climbers. Nevertheless, there are a few non-grab-related options that Icies have to pressure opponents on platforms.
A few tools that the Climbers have are old-school, original Melee stuff. First, the obvious: u-air is a very good sharking tool. It’s disjointed, comes out fast, and can poke through platforms into opponents’ feet. It can even shieldstab smaller shields. But it’s important to be smart about u-air, and only use it at the right times. In Melee especially, a good strategy is to threaten space below the platform, and make your opponent nervous enough to move. If they’re smart, they’ll decide to jump, because nobody wants to willingly go to the ground next to the Ice Climbers. Try to predict or react to their jump, then snatch them with a u-air and start a juggle. Wobbles and especially Fly Amanita are old pros at this, and watching VODs of them will definitely provide ample footage of this strategy in use at high-level play.
In scenarios like this, staggered aerials are a very valuable tool that I don’t see too many players making use of. A dash dance below a platform will displace the secondary climber a short distance behind the lead. This displacement carries over to the air if you jump afterwards, allowing a staggered u-air to effectively threaten twice the space of a synced u-air. This also applies to other aerials, as well as jump-cancelled u-smash (which can be a useful option on stages like FoD where an u-smash can poke through a platform). Kyu Puff has a useful section on staggering in his advanced movement options guide. There’s some very interesting stuff.
Here’s where PM-specific tools come into play. In Melee, u-air sharking isn’t as powerful. The mentality is, “I got poked by an u-air, big whoop. At least they didn’t grab me.” And for the most part, that’s true. Typically you can’t get more than a short juggle off of an u-air, and outside of a certain percent range, there’s no reliable way to convert that hit into a somewhat significant punish (especially in Melee, where converting into punishes off of stray hits is very important in top-level play). That changes in PM for one reason: Belay and its wonderful buffed kill power. If your opponent is careless about getting clipped by too many u-airs nearer to the top of the stage, up-b will kill them dead—especially if they’re one of those dratted floaties. One or two unexpected Belay kills is usually enough to rattle an opponent, make them more worried about being right above the Climbers, and force them to respect their punish game outside of a grab.
Another tool I’ve found useful at scaring opponents on platforms is a desync into charging an u-smash with the secondary Climber. A charged smash attack with the secondary climber is a strategy I think is really powerful, because it eliminates some of the main overcommitments of charging a smash attack with other characters (namely, you can’t move or perform any other attack) but still retains all the benefits. Charging a smash attack and then just walking around can threaten a surprising amount of space, not to mention dashing, wavedashing, and performing other attacks with the lead climber. U-tilt can also be a nice option if you do read that they’re going to drop down, and sets up for grabs really nicely if they don’t SDI it to escape the multiple hits.
All of this is mainly scare tactics. A scared opponent on a platform is very, very beneficial. If you can pressure them into picking defensive options in a reliable manner, you’ll have time to waveland onto the platform and hopefully net a grab into a handoff into whatever. So the value of non-grab platform pressure doesn’t just lie in the punishes themselves, but in the conditioning that can result from the pressure.
So Where Does This Leave FD (And Other Stages)?
Don’t get me wrong. FD is still a very good Icies stage. After all, it has no platforms, which gives them very significant advantages...in the neutral. That is the real question: do you pick a stage that benefits your punish game or your neutral?
This is partly down to matchup. You have to consider how many times over the Icies need to win neutral in order to score a KO as opposed to the other character. Marth, Falco, Fox, Wolf, Lucas, Captain Falcon, and other ‘kings’ of FD with explosive, combo-oriented punish games realistically only need to win the neutral a couple times (sometimes even once) in order to kill their opponent, while characters like Kirby, Ganon, Ivysaur, Olimar, Dedede, R.O.B, Pit, etc. who do not rely on long, combo-oriented punishes need to win the neutral a few more times in order to net a KO. Now that wobbling and infinite handoffs are no more, the Ice Climbers can potentially need to win the neutral many times over on a big stage like Final Destination in order to gain a lead. Weigh the amount of times the opponent needs to win the neutral against how many times the Icies do. Keep other matchup knowledge in mind as well: for example, Final Destination is much better against fatties and semi-fatties than other characters because is allows for easier camping while their size helps the Climbers to gain more distance off of a single chaingrab.
At the end of the day, though, it’s also down to player preference. Some people play a wall-based Icies. Some people focus on grabs. Some people out-neutral their opponent more than their opponent out-neutrals them and they win. The same is true of any given opponent. This should also be considered when picking stages. The way I look at it, the Icies are a very high risk/high reward character, and I’m more comfortable on stages that are skewed towards attaining the rewards. I tend to play toward the ledge and towards platforms for this reason, but I want to work a lot on my neutral. Other more knowledgeable players will undoubtedly have a different opinion than mine, and I really want to put these theories out there to be refined by the community.
I think that because of the large stagelist in Project M and because of the changes to the character and the meta discussed above, the Icies have a wider range of stages that they can theoretically work on. What’s the best Icies stage? That’s a question I’m not nearly experienced enough to answer definitively. My personal favorite is Fountain of Dreams, but others may prefer Yoshi’s, PS2, or what have you. I would say, going on all this information, that Dreamland and Delfino’s Secret are probably pretty definitively bad for Icies given their combination of size and platforms (especially the weird platforms on Secret which can probably ruin any handoffs). Jury’s still out on Lylat; it’s big and has plenty of platforms but they’re all pretty small, the ceiling is pretty low, making handoff -> u-smash and u-air -> up-b more reliable finishers. Yoshi’s Brawl is also odd, because of its size/kooky slopes and because there’s only one platform but it’s pretty big, meaning that a grab at the correct side of it will probably lead to a KO. Smashville seems pretty damn good to me as a starter, because it has all the unobtrusiveness of FD with a platform that’s small enough so as to be difficult for an opponent to totally abuse but is large enough to allow for longer handoffs on it, with the added chance of recovery benefits and a positional f-air spike off the platform. I don’t even know what to begin to think about Green Hill Zone. There’s a lot of room for discussion here, and I’d love to get other players’ opinions! So what do you think? Is there merit to any of this at all?
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Hylian
Phresh123
I’m particularly interested to hear what you two have to say, simply because to me you guys represent two opposite ends of the Icies playstyle spectrum, one which is incredibly neutral-focussed and one which is incredibly wall/punish-focussed, respectively. Your advice and thoughts would be very much valued by myself and others, I think.)Consider this my formal ‘hullo’ to the Icies boards. I hope to be more involved in the community in the coming years, change my tag to something not terrible, get more active, play against more people, learn about my character, level up, commentate, etc. I hope this is a good start. ^_^
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