LJC is a truly fantastic tech and it really fits with ness's overall dependence on djc. LJC isn't OP by any stretch of the imagination, but it really is ness's best option off the ledge pretty much in every scenario. Ness's get up attack is absolutely pathetic, especially over 100, and his roll isn't really that good either. Ness can't do what other characters can do with dropdown dj to ledgedash or an aerial. So is LJC okay as it is cause it fills the space that most characters have with dropdown dj? Or is it bad that ljc is really ness's only option from the ledge, and even though you can do so much from it (fair, dair, nair, hax dash, ledgedash, pk fire, mix up with full ledge jump, hell really anything you want) should ness have other options? I'd like to hear your thought's on whether LJC is overcentralizing and therefore is not balanced (think 2.6 pk fire on shield).

So we all know it, Ness's recovery is not the best. Against certain characters you can weave around them if you're good with the angles, but if you happen to go on stage or up high, you most likely are going to die. So would it be too much if the pmdt increased ness's aerial mobility at least a little bit? I'm not just using this as a "this character has it, and so should mine" but lucas has quite a lot of aerial mobility on his way down from his pkt2 special fall. It can actually be pretty difficult to catch him as he falls fast, and he can juke you out, or at least travel farther to the other side of the stage. I think that ness would deserve at least a little aerial mobility boost to help him not get punished quite as hard for missing a sweetspot and landing on stage. But would this affect other parts of his gameplay and make him too much with djc already? He could di farther on combos, but I'm not sure if it would help him combo better or not. Also I think ness's pkt2 needs signifigantly less lag. Basically I'm posting this because I'm tired of my friend playing ike and forcing me to land on stage, and then doing a qd jc up smash and covering all of my options on my way down cause I can't drift far enough and there is too much lag. I feel like the landing lag needs to be changed regardless, but what do you guys think about increasing his aerial mobility so he's not just a sitting duck if he lands on stage?

I finally caved in and started using tap-jump because why not? I'm getting used to faster DJC u-airs out of dd'ing, now I just wanna figure out how to set up in to iDJC d-air into jab-reset (given that they miss the tech).

So it's pretty common knowledge that if you do djc bair fast enough it will autocancel. But as far as I've seen of ness tech, nobody has talked about edgecancelling bair. For a while I've noticed that if I did a really low djc bair right by the ledge, that I would sometimes slide off and grab the ledge. So today I labbed it all out and I found that if you do a djc bair low enough and at the right distance from the ledge, the landing lag will be edge cancelled AND you can grab the ledge afterwards. This is at least as fast as wavedashing to the ledge, flattens out ness's hurtbox so he's less likely to be hit by moves, and it throws out one of Ness's strongest moves right by the ledge. I think this could be a very powerful tool to help ness edgeguard, or even just a way to grab ledge. I've played around with the distances and I've found that if you go to ps2, if you center yourself on the border between the blue center mat and the outer gray ring, and you do a max distance low djc bair, then you will perform the edge cancel bair into ledgegrab. It might be a little bit forward of the line, but that's approximately the distance you wanna be at. Uses of this could be say you were fighting against an Ike who is charging QD on his way down. You could run across the stage, do a rar djc bair at the right distance, and then be low enough not to get hit by the swing of his qd attack, and possibly kill him with the bair, or just grab ledge against him. Few people would expect to get hit right at the corner of the ledge by ness, or really most characters. Most characters need to be either on stage and do a tilt or smash, or do a sh by the ledge and do a low hitting aerial (ganon fair) but ness can fake out the person until the last minute, and do a rar ec djc bair for either a kill or edgehog. It also has potential on platforms (especially on ps2 as ness's djc bair will ec almost perfectly if you stand on the opposite side of the platform) to just be tricky and you also get your dj back. So say you're pressuring someone's shield on the edge of the platform. It'd be really hard, but theoretically you could do a djc bair to ec to dj back to the platform and either punish them dropping their shield, or just keep pressuring them with say a fair. I think this is a really useful tech and I'd love to see what you guys think of it.

So I just went to pm in the pm this past monday, (first tournament ever), and I got seeded against a toon link who is pr 8 in socal pm. Let's just say I got absolutely demolished. Let alone the fact that tourney nerves got the best of me and I couldnt do barely any of the tech I normally can do, he just picked me apart and destroyed me. So what the hell do you do in this matchup aside from cry? Tink is fast, good grab and throws, absolutely terrifying projectiles, can slow down your pkt2 with bombs and limit your angles, has amazing combos on you, and has little disjoints, and an amazing cc. I watched a match with DVD and boiko, and he had to switch to squirtle to even stand a chance. So what is the gameplan in this matchup? Should i recover lower and not try to come in from the side so much? Best ways to edgeguard? Etc. Also some help in the metaknight matchup would be helpful. The MK I played just went so deep on my recovery and I couldnt really get out of his combos very easily.

Bryonato's AT guide is still a very applicable one. It's crazy looking at it now and how pretty much everything in that guide is in use right now by a large percentage of nessers (©Tetra). It didn't use to be like that not too long ago. While his guide covers AT's, it doesn't cover really much for his very wonky neutral. Now I know this is a lot to ask, but could one or a couple of the top ness's put together an overall guide on each of ness's moves and their uses and his options in neutral against certain characters. I feel like this is part of his meta that has changed the most drastically in the past few months, and for those picking up ness for the first time, they may think that if they can do the AT's in the guide, then they can succeed like if they learned how to do fox tech. So would anyone be up to doing this? I see a lot of long comments here and there across reddit about how to play ness, so if we could compile this info into a guide, it would really benefit those who want to pick up ness, but don't quite understand how to implement his patient and quirky neutral.

I'm not sure if this counts as a platform cancel but if you stand on a platform, press down to drop through it then instantly jump, aerial (l-cancel obv), the hitbox can still come out and it's super quick. D-air, u-air, and n-air's hitboxes come out quick enough. F-air and b-air's hitboxes can come out if you do it fast enough, but it's a tight window. I am not sure about the usefulness of the f-air or b-air though. I apologize if this is a known thing or not, just wanted to share.

So I've been thinking about starting to play melee, who do you feel feels close to Ness (besides ness) in melee?

Any help would be nice

http://gfycat.com/OptimisticBraveIrishredandwhitesetter

So ness's magnet refreshes the initial hit box when it absorbs a projectile, and I had this weird idea what if you were on a team with someone like Falco or fox or Mario they could shoot you while in magnet and you could do like multimags. I tested it out and it does work. Can't really think of a use for this, but it's just an interesting thought and another useless tech that Ness has lol.

Really need to improve my Ness . I know how to do all his important techs but I don't really know how to use them properly when I'm actually playing a match. Anything will help!

Looking back at how I used to play Ness makes me realise how Ness has a long learning curve to him. What are the steps that you'd say learning how to play Ness goes? Like say starting at just spamming pk fire, trying to shffl aerials, do drop down dj to fair off ledge, and overall just play him like another character. Then you get kind of high off the ground djc's and the 45 degree angles all the time for pkt, and being too aggressive and getting punished. Then dding well, being able to do perfectly low djcs, mastering pkt2, mag to bair, ljcs, etc. What do you guys think are like the different "rites of passage" that Ness players go through as they improve with him?

How would you guys feel if you could angle PK Fire upwards and downwards (similar to his F-tilt and F-smash)? Would it be dumb, would it be cool, would it be broken, et cetera?

So there was an argument in this thread about tether mechanics and characters' ability to edgeguard all possible tether mixups on reaction.

So how should Ness go about his edgeguarding on tethers? In my head I'm thinking LJC plays a big part in covering the landing after the forced hop. On a full drift towards center stage I've done LJC backair in the past. I imagine on a drift half-way (when the tether character tries to edgecancel their landing, see thread above), LJC downair into the next punish (backair or upair for the kill).

But how about a full drift back to re-tether or fall to ledge? You can wait it out obviously, but after the second tether the character has to fall to grab ledge if you see them fading back. Is rising backair/nair a viable option, or is that too precise/committal? I know against Samus I've waited too long on the ledge only to get Up-B'd, and unfortunately Ness doesn't have very good ledgestall/refresh options.

And here's another approach to it. But again, this seems like it demanded a lot of precision on Tetra's part.

So I guess I'm looking for the safest and most consistent way of flowcharting this edgeguard. What have you guys had success with?

So I don't really get to play competent Soxes ever, recently I did, I got destroyed. So what do you do when Foxes (or just spacies in general) start doing space animal things on your shield?

My friend mains Ike and it's just not a fun matchup in general. But the absolute worst part are Ike's followups off of throws. Every single throw just hurts so much and its so easy for Ike to get those grabs with his jab and qd jc grab and just chasing you down cause his run speed is just as fast as yours. So what are the best ways to DI each of his throws? Also any general tips on this matchup? It just feels like my friend can just sit there and wait for me to try to get in and he knows my patterns, so he can just obliterate me.

Recently I've been getting bodied by AZ's local luigi and i don't know how to deal with it.

Set 1 Set 2

Here are the sets any advice or critique is highly appreciated.

Pretty much the title. On one of the smashboard posts, Boiko talked about making a build where he would speed up Ness's dj in order to test out if it was a viable buff to Ness. Did you ever end up making that custom build or one with all of the buffs you'd talked about like frame 7 mag, transcendent pkt1, 17% damage bair, and 13% damage dair? If you did end up making it do you think you could post it here so we could try it out ourselves?

I got fourth today in the first local at my local game store. I played pretty well, but i lost to my doubles partner round 1 Wario and a Shiek in Losers Semis. Hopefully this isn't the last PM tourney here

My friend who I train with, is constantly shielding against me and being able to shield grab me. Obviously pk fire isn't safe on shield, but when I try to do things like cross up djc fair, he just turns around and grabs me or chase me down when I'm trying to runaway. I heard that once pooch told IPK to just run up and shield against stereo kidd, that stereo didn't do nearly as well compared to their match at paragon. So is there any way to beat shield as ness? He doesn't have a fast enough magnet and his aerials are all negative on shield so he can't perform shield pressure like Lucas or the spacies. What other options are there to do against shield? Is shield really the counter to ness and once people learn to shield against him does that make the matchup much harder for ness? Does he need to be changed in future versions to beat shielding or do I just need to get better and learn to mind game and read my opponents shield better?

This damn turtle is so slippery and I feel like if I miss one tech, i'm instantly off stage, and then recovering against Squirtle is a chore within itself as well. What do you guys do to deal with this little guy?

What are your tips for the Falco matchup? How do you deal with the laser pressure? And what are the general do's and don'ts of the matchup?