MU Disscussion: IKE

How do we win?
What do we watch out for?
Stages to BAN/CP?
Tips/Tricks when fighting this character?
Videos?
MU classification?




Remember, we are not using the "mu ratio" scheme anymore. Describe the MU using the following MU classifications:


Heavy Disadvantage
Disadvantage
Slight Disadvantage
Even
Slight Advantage
Advantage
Heavy Advantage

I personally don't have enough matchup experience and especially recent experience with this matchup since I find Ikes pretty rare to add personal insight to this. But I do think that your and San's friendlies represent the potential of both characters well enough and from that (you won roughly 30% of the 18 I saw posted) I'd say that Ike may have a slight advantage at high levels depending on how the areas are defined in terms of win percent. Both sides have shown they have a reasonable chance of victory though which is more than you can say for other matchups at high levles.

Your still going to beat most Ike's you see just from the skill differential between you and most Ikes you see at tournament but that doesn't really change what the matchup ratio should be I think :/, it should remain in Ikes favor slightly until we can consistently prove otherwise at the potential of both characters, in order to avoid the case where both sides have a logical argument for their character having an advantage since you can beat most Ikes and San can beat most Samuses. On an equal skill level I don't think Ike is as bad as we have portrayed him in the past, sure he gets spammed hard, his recovery is very gimpable, and spamming him whenever he tries his over b is lol but the amount of damage we have to deal to him in comparison to the amount of damage we ourselves can take is basically way in his favor and even if we beat the crap out of him with an outgoing dmg ratio of 1.5-2:1 its still basically near even, when he does approach he can rack up damage very quickly and our spam isn't as infallible as we'd like to believe and doesn't compare to, say, Olimar. Good players will be able to see patterns and find ways to approach. Another area he racks up damage well is when we have to land ko moves ourselves, most of our ko moves put us in very risky positions unless we've killed him offledge. This battle is basically about pitting both characters horrible weaknesses against each other. We immediately focus on his ability to recover and avoid spam walls, and he focuses on our ability to land kill moves and fight at close range. One area where its pretty evened out imo is on the ledge he has some very decent ledge guard options in relation to our ledge game.

This is obviously just based on that data, and the matchup is totally and even likely to change in the future as we get more high level interaction between Ikes and Samus that shows the characters at their capacity. Before that I even thought Samus had the advantage, we might still depending on how the two characters interact with each other in the future. Actual interaction between high level players between the two has been very rare in the past though, so there is a lot a room for variation before we settle on something solid, but in the meantime I think this is the best indication of the matchup we have.

The problem with using on an equal skill level arguement and not considering what level of skill that applies to is that it is very hard and completely subjective what determines on an equal skill level for both characters and is usually influenced by the average skill level which is a very bad indication of equal skill due to differing learning curves for characters and different skill distributions throughout that characters community. This causes variation of the matchup on what level you are talking about too, between an equally skilled and sucky Ike v Samus we can assume Ike will win bc Ike is very strong at the beginning of the learning curves, on an equally skilled but mediocre-good level samus samus will win because those level Ikes have trouble with the spam walls and recoveries that are easy to abuse for samus at that level. So yea on an equal skill level Samus will most likely beat Ike because average samuses beat average Ikes. But this kind of analysis is misleading. If M2K brought 15 bad mks with him to every tournament average samuses would beat the average mks too but I would be very disappointed if we reach the level of analysis where we concluded that samus was a better character as a result. Our outlook of matchups really does revolve a lot around what the top players with those characters are doing.

What we need to look at is the potential of each characters and the players acting at reasonable capacity. This not only creates a more objective system for looking at the matchups, but is a better reflection of which characters succeed more at tournaments. And tbh I don't think the skill gap between San and Xyro is that large. Xyro could be argued to be unrepresentative of the typical samus too, he does do better than most others with the Ike matchup. I think it was just probably surprising to see an Ike at a similar level.

I am at a weird stance on this MU to be honest with you. I have played Doom/Mr Doom/Inui/M2k/Lee/Bored/Teh Brettster/Burrito.....ect and all won the majority. All these ikes have different skills/mindset/experience and i still over came them. Then i play San and yea i win some matches but i lose the vast majority of them.

My issue is this, i did not lose to Ike. I lost to SAN.

Seriously, look up Sans videos vs me. He simply is smarter or baits better or predicts better or punishes my habits/mess ups. When i look at a MU i look at the CHARACTER vs the CHARACTER. What does ike have that samus doesnt? Is it useful in the MU? If so, can it be punished by samus? No where in there does the player come into mind. WHY though? Here is an example:

Falco vs Ganon
Mk vs Ganon

Assuming both players "know the MU" and both players are at the top of their respective field.......we all know the winner of the fight. Its not WHO uses the two characters its the fact that GANON gets shutdown/restricted/outclassed by mk or falco in every way. get it?

That is how i feel about ike vs samus. overall, samus beats ike(slight advantage). San is the "exception to the rule" aka the m2k of ike.

Which of those players there are Ike mains though? Yea m2k, lee, doom, and inui are all great players in general (probably elevated somewhat by their character), but that doesn't necessarily mean that its representative of Ike's capacity in the matchup. It would be like if Link decided samus was an advantaged fight with them because Legan was able to beat Ally, DEHF, Reflex, and X playing samus (just an example btw, not that this actually happened). Yea they are great players, and maybe even good with samus, but not really representative of what she can do at the highest levels like they are with their mains. Also mks are not very good with dealing with spam walls in my experience when they have to switch to characters that take skill to get through it, because of how easy it usually is for them to approach (i.e. tornado goes through almost our entire moveset, their aerial approaches, low height, speed, etc...).
If you do write off what san has shown Ike can do though in the matchup I think its only fair that we at least write yourself off too. ADHD could say in the same way that Diddy has an advantage on Mk if it weren't for m2k, etc.... without taking both out of the matchup it tends to skew the matchup because we are pitting an extreme example of our character to a player of theirs that is adjusted for that.
I have seen the videos though (some pretty kwl wins on your part btw), and I really do think you guys are pretty close to even in skill, but I suppose that is hard to prove really :/ How really can you tell if one person is on an equal skill level in general? Its a really subjective definition. I think the reads he did were typical of what you'd expect at that level really, and their were times where you were clearly outpredicting him too in his approaches and offledge game (and you had some really beautiful ledge guards btw as he tried to get back up ). Yea he punished some of your habits/messups well but that really is an area that all Ikes really have to learn to evolve, a lot of their matchup strengths involve taking advantage and doing heavy dmg when the opportunity finally comes up. I understand that like your mk v ganon example it really comes down to what the characters can do to each other, and that's true, but its about the players too because that is what allows us to see the capacity of those characters. Characters rankings do usually come down to what the highest representative of the classes are able to do against others (as you can see from Ikes move this tier list) and I think the matchups should reflect this too, and I don't think we have a lot of data on the matchup yet and I think our perception of the matchup is still evolving. I don't think we should write off those matches as just being San. I really think they need to contribute to our perception of the matchup, or at least motivate us to beat him up next time

with both ike and link and other low tiers you shouldn't be surprised that you beat most of the ones you've faced though beforehand. When character matchups are at least slightly close disadvantages for the losing character are only really apparent to a high level player against the very top players. On a side note, watching all those vids makes me want to play san now lol it looked so fun, maybe someday he'll come to norcal someday heh

Edited*

wtf is Hive talking about LOL legan never beat me

lol i was just using it as an example of why saying xyro beat certain well known players playing ike isn't necessarily a good reflection of what ikes metagame is heh. I know you didn't actually lose to legan playing samus lol sorry for the confusion though.

Xyro77 said:

Falco vs Ganon
Mk vs Ganon

Assuming both players "know the MU" and both players are at the top of their respective field.......we all know the winner of the fight. Its not WHO uses the two characters its the fact that GANON gets shutdown/restricted/outclassed by mk or falco in every way. get it?

Click to expand...

Falco is WAY, WAY harder for Ganon to deal with that MK.
Just sayin'.

Both are hard as hell, though.

Just going to say this:

I would hope Xyro could beat Inui's Ike. His Ike plays at a 2008 level: a bad 2008's Ike at that. His only saving grace is his reaction time. On a purely technical level, I'd have to say I edge him out. And I completely and utterly fail at this game. Dude wasn't doing any jab cancels, and was only using Fair even though Nair is better in many cases. You shouldn't consider him at all for this MU discussion. Last time I saw M2K's Ike, it was also at a 2008 level, using Quick Draw of all things as an attack, but I've heard he's gotten better since then so I'll hold off judgement on his Ike. No clue about Lee's Ike though I've heard good things about it.

It's in the range of Samus's slight advantage to even. Stupid Zair outranging our Fair.