Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!
You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!
We're still only a year in, so it's hard to say for sure. I think the meta is developing towards characters that have easy, repeatable setups into kill moves, and Ness certainly has those.
Ness will never be utter trash lol, when people talk about him falling off a little bit they mean having him fall from being a top 8 character in the game to being around 10-15th place (out of like 50something characters). IMO Ness right now is probably better than MK but worse than Fox, although both of those characters have a lot more room to grow than Ness does. Ness is probably also the easiest of those three characters to get results with, if you're not going to be super dedicated and practice a lot then Ness will always be a better choice than Meta Knight. I advise you to play whichever characters you enjoy, just don't get it into your head that Ness is a bad character.
People get paranoid about where Ness stands in the metagame because has has a history of "becoming worse" in the metagame in previous games. The best example of this is in Smash 64 where he goes from third best character to bottom five. The reason this kept on happening was because the design for Ness was polarizing in his weaknesses and strengths. This question has been asked so many times that it's not funny now. This version of Ness is the most well-designed and balanced, especially in relation to the rest of the cast. He has weaknesses, but he's not going to become significantly worse because the design of his character is not that poor.
I do know what you mean when you say Ness will offer the best results. I seem to understand the character the most out of the others I play (Just Fox really). I'm just more comfortable with him, landing his combos, all his aerials and just overall moveset. Not to say it's astronomical, I do well with Fox sometimes. But yeah this raises the question..I know there's a high skill cap behind every character, but Is Ness the most noob friendly character then? I mean the fact that he can be picked up and have results so quickly. Kind of is a bummer if he's considered that.
He's one of them for sure. Mario, diddy, pre patch luigi, sonic kinda are "nooby" characters. But that's not a bad thing. There's a reason you don't see a lot of ness' at a high level: cause he's hard to use at that level, where Mario becomes a little easier relatively.
So Ness is the easiest character to play in the game then? How? And yea his recovery is bad but isn't he much better in this game in a lot of aspects than the past ones? He has some of the best kill moves out of any character and racks up damage ridiculously fast. I don't understand why you're bashing the character so much with little evidence. You can't compare to last games, he was weaker in every aspect. Recovery is also more forgiving in smash 4 not to mention. And no, a good ness won't get hit while PKT2, I've barely seen that in a tourney. He's definitely gimpable off stage but he is a monster in other respects.
Yes. Ness is certainly one of the five easiest characters in the game. There's nothing remotely challenging or in depth about him. I actually thought most Ness mains agreed with that. Can anyone pick up Ness and win competitively? No... But for a competitive player who has all the aspects of a competitive player, this character is so dang easy, by which I mean he has no depth, has nothing he has to compensate for with a heightened play level, and has a general game plan that does not resemble intense high skill when compared to what 95% of the cast does. Even Sheik.
Okay, well the fact is that in this meta (so far) people let Ness come back to the stage a lot. Maybe they are afraid of the risk, but the fact is that easy peasy gimps on Ness don't happen that much. Sure, maybe people will start being more proactive, but as for now it just doesn't happen. And honestly I agree that it's possible that his recovery is bottom 10, but in my opinion Ness still has a workable recovery. Why are you getting so worked up? Fine, call it bad, go ahead and gimp every Ness you meet. I really don't appreciate your condescension. Also I feel like you are misinterpreting the intention of my original post; I was just trying to get other Ness mains to experiment with his options.
VRun0
has made a good wall. It is impressive, but it has a good amount of interesting ideas. I have doubts about off-stage PK Jump because of PK Fire's endlag, but it could work as a mixup I guess. Going for a PKT in the middle of a DJ can still help grab the ledge, since Ness can't grab it during his DJ. I think I'll try some of your ideas, they should be explored a bit. (I'm bad, but who cares)
Sometimes I like to offstage PK Jump when I'm recovering high, but I agree that it is pretty situational. Also, it's worth noting that PKT2 is invincible for the first half of the attack, so if you are close to Marth when he counters you actually go straight through him.Just one thing : M MARTH_IS_BAE forgot to mention something... A simple counter can be enough to gimp Ness if he tries to cover himself with an attack, which creates a 50-50 situation (FSmash > Airdoge to the stage; Counter > attacks & PKT2). Most of us know it, but that's an important point. And remember, you aren't looking at things from a Ness perspective, so you can be a bit biased... When we try to find ideas, we just lab them and see if they are good or not. You know it I guess, but being aggro doesn't help. (I just hope this isn't agressive tho...)
I must admit that
How does Ness have no depth and have nothing to compensate for a higher play level? Why are there so many people who main Ness in tournaments even top level. I don't see what you mean where you say he has no depth. He's a smash character just like the rest. There's nothing I see which could mean he has way less depth than the others. He has a move set and it's not like he has some spammable moob you can win with. Yes, I see how he's definitely one of the easier characters to pick up but the way you're making him sound out to be is just a bad character all around, as if someone like little mac is a more respectable character.
And what is so hard about Ness?
I think it's been mentioned above, but, imo, he has a lot of tools that need to be used perfectly against any of the high tiers. The "hardness" of Ness at a high level isn't about his combo game, just that a lot of the top tiers simply outspace/outpace him. But a Ness like Shaky or FOW is not an easy Ness to play and if you think so you're deluded. If it was we'd be seeing a lot more of him.
Who ever said that he was hard to use ?..
not likely.
Hopefully always top 15/20?
pretty much.
You really think Ness will drop as low as ROB is in brawl or as low as mario in melee? Keep in mind the predecessors have a smaller roster. So Mario being 15 in melee means hes in low tier, in regards to melee. If a character was 15 in smash 4, then he'd be relatively high on the tier list. So in which context are you referring too? If you mean Ness will always be at least top 20 in smash 4 (which means he'll always be in at least the high-mid tier area) that makes sense, but if you're suggesting his placement to drop to those similar to smash 64 or Mario in Melee, that means hes going to be pretty garbage. From what I'm to understand, Ness is way stronger in sm4sh than he was in any other smash game. I played as ness in melee the other day and he was so weak compared to what I play in smash 4. His attacks are lack-luster in melee. In smash 4 I can say he's super powerful outside his recovery. He racks up damage incredibly fast, not to mention all the options he has. FOW on stream was mentioning something technical about smash 4 that makes Ness that much better... I can't remember exactly what he said but it was something about the mechanics of the game with get-up or grab release. Anyways, I hope he doesn't drop THAT low- as your examples were with ROB and Mario.
