The Most Dangerous Snake said: Hey ness mains, I'm trying to pick up ness as a solid secondary among a few others (or possibly my main) because I have seen some sick stuff from him and enjoy playing him. My only problem is that I live somewhere where there aren't a ton of players, and therefore I don't get to practice against much of the cast.



So my question is, what are ness' bad matchups that I should absolutely avoid? And if I could get a brief rundown of what makes them so hard that would be great too. I can learn matchups and players fairly easy on the fly as long as it's not a super hard matchup or I have knowledge of what to do ahead of time. I'd really appreciate it! Click to expand...

Hello!In my opinion, Ness’ worst match ups are Sheik, Samus, and Zelda, with other difficult match ups including Marth, Mario, and Luigi. There are some others, but these are, in my opinion, the worst. Here’s why:Sheik:Sheik has some of the best edge guarding in the game, and her tools work extremely well against Ness. Her fair puts you below the ledge, forcing you to recover low. From that point, she can snipe you or your PKT with needles, causing you to fall helplessly. She can also edge guard you with bair super well and she has DI mix ups with dthrow and bthrow, one leading into a tipper up smash at kill percents. Getting in Sheik is extremely difficult and requires a lot of baiting and crouch cancel mix ups. Bright side is that once you get in, you can combo her super hard. I wrote a brief Sheik guide about two posts up.Samus:I wrote a quick guide for this match up somewhere also. I’ll try to find it. But to summarize, Samus is the worst combo weight in the game. She’s heavy and floaty, what this means is that she is less severely affected by gravity and she has less hit stun than lighter characters, as hit stun is directly correlated with knockback. You have very limited guaranteed follow ups on her. On the other hand, she can combo Ness quite well and harass him with projectiles off stage. He has an unfortunately linear recovery and ice mode fair will smack him right back off stage if he doesn’t sweet spot. Samus can also mix up recovery quite well, making edge guarding her a little difficult. You can kind of force her to recovery a certain way by throwing out PKT or PKFlash and then punish, but it’s easier said than done. Basically, to beat Samus, you have to play a lot of hit and run until you get something good. Just watch out because she can zone super well with zair and missiles.Zelda:People may disagree with me here, but I think this is one of Ness’ hardest match ups. Zelda has Din’s, which kind of forces Ness to approach, and that’s not what you want to do against Zelda. She’s a very defense based character and punishes approaches hard. Her kicks come out on frame 5 or 6, which is about as fast as your nair and they severely outrange most things you can do. Zelda’s midrange blind spot is still too far for Ness to punish on reaction. Plus, she is extremely floaty and difficult for Ness to combo. Edge guarding her is difficult because she can mix up her recovery and you really won’t know where a good Zelda player is going. Ness doesn’t have a lot of tools he can use here. Her nair also breaks up your pressure and she can force you to recover low with Din’s and dair you with ledge invincibility. The match up is just annoying.Marth:I really don’t mind this match up personally, but I know a lot of Ness players who find it difficult. Marth can outrange everything Ness can do, and a patient Marth is going to give you a hard time. Beating Marth is all about baiting his laggy moves and punishing. If he’s off stage, Ness can edge guard him very easily with rising nair>dair from the ledge. If Marth dash dances around a lot, he’s fishing for a hard commitment, in which case you need to respond by throwing out something with little end lag and trying to get him to approach. It’s tricky, but unless the Marth player is top level, they’re going to commit to something punishable eventually, you just need to take that as far as you can.Mario:This can be a very frustrating match up, let me tell you. I don’t have MUCH Mario experience, but Gallo whooped me by playing very well of Ness’ weaknesses. The cape will kill you, down throw fair is guaranteed until 130%, fireballs are chaotic to deal with and can kill your PKT. There are A LOT of things to watch out for. I can’t even begin to name them all…jab>down smash, dtilt>fair, up+b to get out of your combos, it’s tough. You can combo him reasonably well, but edge guarding can be difficult.Luigi:Same as Samus, really, where he’s difficult to combo and he can hit you hard. He has an extremely linear recovery so just jump out and dair him. It’s kind of hard to bait anything out of him because most of his tools allow him to weave in and out quickly or put him in the air, where his high priority nair will break up your combos. Just be patient, put him off stage and kill him. Don’t get grabbed, because he has guaranteed set ups at kill percents.Sorry if this is brief, I’m at work. Hope this helps though.Also, who is your main?