Snake matchup discussion

Main Mathcup Thread: [LINK]

I'm too tired now to think of a starting point, you all start discussing and I'll catch up with you later.

Nade countering. I hate it. I've sort of started to find ways around it but if the Snake really knows how to use those nades it can get really annoying to the point where I lose my nerve and start making mistakes.

Anyone know any consistently useful ways of getting around Snake's use of nades as Ike?

I'm not an expert on this match-up so I'll just sort of be the discussion starter and then let you guys rip. I may chip in on an aspect I'm more familiar with, but I need help with the nades myself so yah...

Dude, just power through the nades. Don't even consider they exist until they're about to blow up. Otherwise you'll never approach. I let nades hit me (not the exploding part) if I get a clear approach in.

Juggle. Juggle. Juggle. Get Snake offstage and make sure you punish every time he recovers. Uair is GREAT in this match-up, and if you are comfortable enough in reading your opponent, Aether can be used here and there as a surprise damage booster.

FAIR TO DAIR WORKS. And although situational, it is DEFINITELY not one of those things that won't ever happen.

Ummm. I'm doing homework right now, so I should really stop. So I will. I shouldn't get too far into this at the moment.

A lot of the Snakes I've faced (particularly the one who took me out in the tournament) don't use nades as projectiles but as bait and counters when they see me approaches or whatnot. They'll lob a grenade at me to get me going at them and then nade -> shield my Fair or whatever, blowing me up.

I don't seem to have any real problem with any other aspect of Snake, I just can't work those darn nades. It's funny because a lot of people I've played have commented that I use the nades well when I play as Snake, so why can't I play against the friggin things?

And yah, punishing Snake's recovery is a must. Get him far off-stage and jump out as far as you can to hit him. That way he's forced to eat the aerial if he doesn't want to AD (thus losing his upB and dooming himself). Snakes will often realize your ability to do this and float high up above you when recovering. I've found that Snake is at a severe disadvantage to Ike when Ike is grounded and he is not. Just ground stalk him and bait/punish air dodges.

And yah, KEN COMBO!!! I've pulled it off once, it is one of the most satisfying things in the world.

Ike has no projectile but Snake does and Snake is a great camper. He has a lot of moves that can finish Ike, especially the up tilt, forward tilt and possibly the F smash since Ike is laggy. They both have bad air games but overall I think Ike has better air games and a powerful meteor smash. If he's brought up to air, he could have some time to air dodge Ike since Ike has sluggish air games like Snake but if Snake is brought off stage, he'll use his high but easy to edgeguard recovery. Snake can easily punish Ike on ground a lot but not on air but if whoever
is playing as Snake is cautious about getting brought up to air, I guess Ike is in bad disadvantage.
55:45 Snake or 60:40 Snake

berserker01 said:

Ike has no projectile but Snake does and Snake is a great camper. He has a lot of moves that can finish Ike, especially the up tilt, forward tilt and possibly the F smash since Ike is laggy. They both have bad air games but overall I think Ike has better air games and a powerful meteor smash. If he's brought up to air, he could have some time to air dodge Ike since Ike has sluggish air games like Snake but if Snake is brought off stage, he'll use his high but easy to edgeguard recovery. Snake can easily punish Ike on ground a lot but not on air but if whoever
is playing as Snake is cautious about getting brought up to air, I guess Ike is in bad disadvantage.
55:45 Snake or 60:40 Snake

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You have to be an idiot to get killed by F-Tilt because...

Snake players use it more as a damaging more than kill, so the chances of it being refreshed are slim.
Just DI up, and you are guaranteed to live past 150% for sure.

But it's at Snake's favor 55:45
(I meant the 2nd hit of the f tilt to finish but it still seems wrong)

Yay, one of the few people we can use DACIT against....provided Snake was nice enough to toss an uncooked nade at us. At a minimum its an option Ike has that Snake needs to keep in mind, if he's careless he'll met Snakedash's bigger, meaner brother. (lol sliding Fsmash FTW). As it's an option Ike has, it in a way forces Snake to not use as many uncooked nades and thus slightly limits his options.

I thought a perfectly spaced Fair would avoid the shield grenade explosion, though I could be wrong. It's been a while since I faced a Snake.....either way it's annoying, but not very deadly for Ike due to his weight. Heck at higher %s if they both get blow upwards and close together, it could place Snake in the right position to eat an Uair. Not fun. Of course, vise versa can happen as well.....

Tilts are a freaking pain in the rear. I mean, Ike has the same strength in his tilts, but at least 3 times the wind up and Snake's tilts ever so slightly out ranges our tilts? What the heck is that about? Luckily, due to Snake's weight and size he's jab bait. But be careful about jabbing: don't give him the one or two frames he needs to pull out a nade. Because that sucks.

Both characters really screw over each others recoveries. Cypher is lol Ragnell food. Aether is lol explosives/tilts food. But we get to Ken Combo him so it's better for us.

Snake's best stages are sadly neutral stages. Yet another stupid thing: stage control. Hello moving bomb platform on Smashville, hello closed off half of BF and FD, hello tilting bomb platform on Yoshi's. We can deal with the explosives on their own fairly easily (Counter, Angled Ftilt), if Snake's anywhere near by, we'll get punished. But if we don't deal with them, we'll eventually get hit by them.

If Pirate Ship is legal in your area (as it should be), and Snake doesn't strike it, he should be dead the moment he touches the water. No fast aerial moves + slow recovery out of the water + Ike's strong moves = dead. If your area is a sissy area and doesn't like real CP stages.....Rainbow Cruise can be a good choice. But be careful about it, Utilt on the upper part is murder.

6:4 Snake's Advantage.

Nidtendofreak said:

Tilts are a freaking pain in the rear. I mean, Ike has the same strength in his tilts, but at least 3 times the wind up and Snake's tilts ever so slightly out ranges our tilts? What the heck is that about?\

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What sucks is that Snake's UTilt out-ranges our UTilt .

I don't really know much about the match-up though, so I'll go back to lurking.

Juggle him and win.

Get camped and lose.

Voila.

Out of all the matchups I have played throughout my Brawl career, Snake is the matchup I have the most experience with and the character that I'm most confident about playing. This is one of my favorite matchups.

Contrary to what Niddo said, I don't think DACIT doesn't come of real use here. If you pick up one of Snake's uncooked grenades, you have to start a running animation and use the right button configuration and throw it back at Snake within the 4 second span in which the grenade finally explodes. Not only that, if you pick up a grenade, Snake can simply pull out another nade, shield drop it, and as a result, it forces Ike to drop his grenade. This is called grenade stripping, and it's one of the main reasons why unless you normal throw a nade back at Snake, you can't use Snake's projectiles to your advantage. Snake can grenade strip you and prevent you from throwing it back at him if you pick it up within the last two seconds before you throw it back at him, or he can force the nade to fall down straight away from its trajectory by "stripping" a grenade. I recommend throwing nades normally if he throws an uncooked grenade at you as DACIT requires you to start a running animation and input the button configuration correctly.

In close quarters combat, I think Snake has the advantage slightly over Ike here. Although Ike has his jab cancels, Snake's jab, tilts, and nades really do give him the advantage here. His jab follows up are amazing, and the range of his tilts as well as his nades really do force you to not be reckless in rushing in. Know when he'll slam past you with his DACUS when you try to approach him outside of his nade camping. Predict it, and either grab him out of the animation, or shield it and punish him with a dash attack out of the landing lag of the Usmash. Ike has several things going for him in this matchup though. For one thing, most of Ike's grabs/throws, if not all, put Snake into a bad position. Up throw/Down throw puts Snake up into the air, a place where Snake is pretty vulnerable. Grab -> Grab release -> Dash attack, Fthrow or Bthrow can throw Snake offstage, another place where his recovery makes him vulnerable. Bthrow offstage to Fair particularly is useful, but make sure to know when your opponent catches onto this and saves his second jump. Watch out when he tries to trick you into getting too close though. Many Snakes like to save their second jump when they know they can get back onto the stage with it and they like to use their Uair, or Nair when they try to get back onto the stage. Space yourself, and use your Ftilt or Fair to punish his aerials. Another advantage that I wish to reiterate are Ike's jab cancels. Snake is one of Brawl's heaviest characters so you can jab cancel Snake with the jab jab -> canceling fairly easily. You can also follow up your jabs with Ike's grabs for even more damage.

In terms of your moveset, all of Ike's up moves are very helpful. Usmash, Utilt, and Uair all work fantastic against Snake. Since Snake is a slow faller, fast falling your Uair while he's trying to get onto the stage works great against his aerial dodge. Utilt is great for punishing Snake's Nair if he misses and jab -> Utilt works decently. Usmash is great for punishing Snake's aerial dodges and works pretty well for those "clutch" kills. For approaches, you'll want to never approach with Fair when Snake can shield it, especially at high percentages. Even spacing Fair perfectly is punishable by Snake's incredible range with his tilts. Use it mainly when Snake is in the air and if you don't hit him with it, fast fall immediately and get ready for Snake's counterattack. Retreating Fair however works great if you can't get close enough to Snake because he's using his shield nade defense. Retreating Fair also punishes careless DACUSes. Nair, Bair, or shield dashing work pretty well for approaches. Don't be afraid to abuse Nair to juggle Snake if he's in the air and he's constantly trying to air dodge back safely onto the ground. Adding to what Brett said, try to ignore the nades he throws at you when you're approaching. What might make handling the nades easier is to know when they will explode. As I stated before, nades generally explode after 4 seconds. Shorthop aerial dodge also works sometimes as an approach as well. What Ike doesn't really want to do is to approach aerially unfortunately. Unless you mix up your approaches and use mindgames with your aerials, an aerial approach will be punished, hard. A ground approach mixed with some aerial approaches I think is the most effective.

Some other hints: Don't be afraid to get creative with your own methods of countering Snake's arsenal of projectiles. Some ideas that I've come up with is if I know when a nade will explode and I'm close to Snake and he's shielding, I use Counter so if he drops his shield right when his nade explodes, he'll get hit by my Counter or my Counter hits Snake's shield away far enough so he can't punish me. Countering his C4s and not hitting Snake also allows Ike to create the "wind hitbox" that iirc, Pierce7D mentioned. Also, don't be afraid to challenge Snake's nades sometimes, especially on stages with platforms. Although Snake limits what Ike can do with his moveset when he's shieldnading, there are some instances where you'll know that you'll hit Snake, even if he's holding a nade. I think the reason why most Ikes have trouble with this matchup is because they're afraid to mix up their game. Be creative, it'll honestly help out a lot. Bored did great against Razer's Snake, because he mixed his game up.

Some Ike vs Snake matches
Kirk vs Akashi
Renegade vs Rykoshet
Kimchi vs Rykoshet
san vs mikeray4
Kimchi vs Master Raven
Old, but Renegade vs Ally
Red-X vs Rykoshet
Rykoshet vs Hax

ilovekimchixD said:

Out of all the matchups I have played throughout my Brawl career, Snake is the matchup I have the most experience with and the character that I'm most confident about playing. This is one of my favorite matchups.

Contrary to what Niddo said, I don't think DACIT doesn't come of real use here. If you pick up one of Snake's uncooked grenades, you have to start a running animation and use the right button configuration and throw it back at Snake within the 4 second span in which the grenade finally explodes. Not only that, if you pick up a grenade, Snake can simply pull out another nade, shield drop it, and as a result, it forces Ike to drop his grenade. This is called grenade stripping, and it's one of the main reasons why unless you normal throw a nade back at Snake, you can't use Snake's projectiles to your advantage. Snake can grenade strip you and prevent you from throwing it back at him if you pick it up within the last two seconds before you throw it back at him, or he can force the nade to fall down straight away from its trajectory by "stripping" a grenade. I recommend throwing nades normally if he throws an uncooked grenade at you as DACIT requires you to start a running animation and input the button configuration correctly.

In close quarters combat, I think Snake has the advantage slightly over Ike here. Although Ike has his jab cancels, Snake's jab, tilts, and nades really do give him the advantage here. His jab follows up are amazing, and the range of his tilts as well as his nades really do force you to not be reckless in rushing in. Know when he'll slam past you with his DACUS when you try to approach him outside of his nade camping. Predict it, and either grab him out of the animation, or shield it and punish him with a dash attack out of the landing lag of the Usmash. Ike has several things going for him in this matchup though. For one thing, most of Ike's grabs/throws, if not all, put Snake into a bad position. Up throw/Down throw puts Snake up into the air, a place where Snake is pretty vulnerable. Grab -> Grab release -> Dash attack, Fthrow or Bthrow can throw Snake offstage, another place where his recovery makes him vulnerable. Bthrow offstage to Fair particularly is useful, but make sure to know when your opponent catches onto this and saves his second jump. Watch out when he tries to trick you into getting too close though. Many Snakes like to save their second jump when they know they can get back onto the stage with it and they like to use their Uair, or Nair when they try to get back onto the stage. Space yourself, and use your Ftilt or Fair to punish his aerials. Another advantage that I wish to reiterate are Ike's jab cancels. Snake is one of Brawl's heaviest characters so you can jab cancel Snake with the jab jab -> canceling fairly easily. You can also follow up your jabs with Ike's grabs for even more damage.

In terms of your moveset, all of Ike's up moves are very helpful. Usmash, Utilt, and Uair all work fantastic against Ike. Since Snake is a slow faller, fast falling your Uair while he's trying to get onto the stage works great against his aerial dodge. Utilt is great for punishing Snake's Nair if he misses and jab -> Utilt works decently. Usmash is great for punishing Snake's aerial dodges and works pretty well for those "clutch" kills. For approaches, you'll want to never approach with Fair when Snake can shield it, especially at high percentages. Even spacing Fair perfectly is punishable by Snake's incredible range with his tilts. Use it mainly when Snake is in the air and if you don't hit him with it, fast fall immediately and get ready for Snake's counterattack. Retreating Fair however works great if you can't get close enough to Snake because he's using his shield nade defense. Retreating Fair also punishes careless DACUSes. Nair, Bair, or shield dashing work pretty well for approaches. Don't be afraid to abuse Nair to juggle Snake if he's in the air and he's constantly trying to air dodge back safely onto the ground. Adding to what Brett said, try to ignore the nades he throws at you when you're approaching. What might make handling the nades easier is to know when they will explode. As I stated before, nades generally explode after 4 seconds. Shorthop aerial dodge also works sometimes as an approach as well. What Ike doesn't really want to do is to approach aerially unfortunately. Unless you mix up your approaches and use mindgames with your aerials, an aerial approach will be punished, hard. A ground approach mixed with some aerial approaches I think is the most effective.

Some other hints: Don't be afraid to get creative with your own methods of countering Snake's arsenal of projectiles. Some ideas that I've come up with is if I know when a nade will explode and I'm close to Snake and he's shielding, I use Counter so if he drops his shield right when his nade explodes, he'll get hit by my Counter or my Counter hits Snake's shield away far enough so he can't punish me. Countering his C4s and not hitting Snake also allows Ike to create the "wind hitbox" that iirc, Pierce7D mentioned. Also, don't be afraid to challenge Snake's nades sometimes, especially on stages with platforms. Although Snake limits what Ike can do with his moveset when he's shieldnading, there are some instances where you'll know that you'll hit Snake, even if he's holding a nade. I think the reason why most Ikes have trouble with this matchup is because they're afraid to mix up their game. Be creative, it'll honestly help out a lot. Bored did great against Razer's Snake, because he mixed his game up.

Click to expand...

Oh.

Rykoshet said:

Juggle him and win.

Get camped and lose.

Voila.

Click to expand...

I like this one better.

Contrary to what Niddo said, I don't think DACIT doesn't come of real use here. If you pick up one of Snake's uncooked grenades, you have to start a running animation and use the right button configuration and throw it back at Snake within the 4 second span in which the grenade finally explodes. Not only that, if you pick up a grenade, Snake can simply pull out another nade, shield drop it, and as a result, it forces Ike to drop his grenade. This is called grenade stripping, and it's one of the main reasons why unless you normal throw a nade back at Snake, you can't use Snake's projectiles to your advantage. Snake can grenade strip you and prevent you from throwing it back at him if you pick it up within the last two seconds before you throw it back at him, or he can force the nade to fall down straight away from its trajectory by "stripping" a grenade. I recommend throwing nades normally if he throws an uncooked grenade at you as DACIT requires you to start a running animation and input the button configuration correctly.

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I know about Grenadestripping. What I don't know is how long you have to be running. I think it's possible that if Snake throws both grenades without cooking, and Ike grabs the first one as Snake tosses the second one that he can DACIT in time and be safe by throwing it upwards.

I never said it would get used often, just that it takes away one of Snake's many options with his nades, which is always a good thing. :D

What's the best way to counter a DACUS spammer, by the way?

Hit him. The mortar has no priority and he goes in a straight line, just punch him.

Okay. I kept trying to pivot grab and Bair and neither option worked.

I'll just jab next time.

Teh Brettster said:

Okay. I kept trying to pivot grab and Bair and neither option worked.

I'll just jab next time.

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If you don't feel like jabbing, shield grab. The shield will slow Snake's slide down, giving you enough time to grab him.

SuSa said:

Although you may be able to DACIT > Counter, and have it trigger the counter. I think that'd be pretty epic and flashy looking, and MAYBE useful.

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and then beat the Snake player as he looks on in awe?

100/0 Ike's advantage. Nothing more needs to be said.

Instant throw is fun with nades

M2k plays Ike so that comparison wasn't that incorrect

SuSa said:

I have yet to be 3 stocked by M2K (haven't played him) and I have yet to see recorded videos of his Ike, so I will assume I am correct. MogX's Ike is that good.

Also I figured you'd like to know this if you guys don't:
http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=8344688#post8344688

I don't know how often any of you die because of jab -->nair buffer

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>_>

<_<

Mainly on wifi luckily for me.

Ike has a better aerial game than snake and can easily gimp Snake's recovery. ike can jab cancel him easily due to snake's heavy weight and size. i think this is 55-45 Snake

Narigo1 said:

Ike has a better aerial game than snake and can easily gimp Snake's recovery. ike can jab cancel him easily due to snake's heavy weight and size. i think this is 55-45 Snake

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60-40 is fine. Giving only a 10% advantage is being too lenient on us Ike mains. Besides, Snake mains have to be stupidly ******** to get gimped with their recover. Yes, you can proceed to do extra damage and knock back when they are recovering from offstage, or falling back onto stage, but gimping? Please...

The Sleepy One said:

♪ It feels more like 45-55 Snake to me. Only thing that gives Snake the extra edge would be him able to camp us along with his annoying mines. The way that Snake can gimp us with would be his projectiles, which has a chance to hit and a chance to miss. †

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No, Snake can land his KOing moves a lot easier then us, and his grenades force us to eventually approach. He has a noticeable advantage.

On another note: From what I saw in the Brawl tier list discussion topic, we should be able to avoid the second hit of Ftilt by DIing towards him....as can most characters. O_o

Not if he spaces correctly.

No amount of SDI can get you behind him if he hits you with the tip of the hitbox...like he should be doing in the first place.

Somebody said in that topic though that everyone except like, two people can DI behind him. SaSu I think. I don't have time to dig it up right now, but it's around page 515 IIRC.

But if you SDI away from it when hit by the very end of the hitbox, you can avoid the second hit.
Not sure exactly why this is going into the match-up discussion, though.

I think it's agreeable that Snake has a 6-4 advantage... it's about the general consensus. A little worse than 55-45, but not worse than 6-4.

This discussion has raised some very interesting prospects of the matchup, congratulations everyone.

P.S.: I should publish my write-up next week. Susa, do you know your username means “Serene” in Portuguese?

I beat mogx's ike in tournament a few weeks ago.

On topic:
Back air to get them off the ledge is sooo good, i love it. Just hold a if they are DACUSing.

So, which stage should be banned when fighting Snake?

Halberd seems to me a very good stage to Snake. It has a close ceiling (which is ideal for a Utilt finishing) and a large, “Yoshi Islandish”, platform right in the middle that compiled with the stage intersections in which the floor opens up during the stage intersections, provides some formidable C4 concealing. The stage second transformation is also very wide, maybe even more than FD.

EDIT: Oh, I just remembered how Snake's explosive placements can be bothersome at Battlefield...

Snake loves BF, SV, Halberd, Brinstar, Norfair, JJ, FD, RC to a lesser extent (Utilt at top part = scary)....I think he likes basically every stage.

wtf this match-up is more than just 6/4 in Snake's favour. Snake should never lose to Ike if he knows the match-up and he doesn't even need the grenades, the match-up is much simpler than that. All Snake has to do is wait for Ike to hit his shield then he can punish with either ftilt or dash attack (dash attack for fair, ftilt for everything else). Also Ike can't punish the first hit of ftilt. If Snake stands in place and uses ftilt1 there's nothing Ike can do before Snake gets to react. If you try to get in close to grab he'll just use the 2nd hit of ftilt before that and all other moves can be shielded before they hit. The only way Ike can do something about it is if Snake hits Ike's shield with both hits of the ftilt but you shouldn't assume Snake to make such an obvious mistake.
And I'm not even considering the fact, that Snake can CP **** Ike on a bunch of stages.

EASILY 7/3 for Snake

Yes sir, there is nothing Ike can do about Ftilt1 spamming in one place. We can't SHAD and punish Ftilt2 on landing, or running shield -> Jab/Grab, or bait for Ftilt2 with a SHCounter, we can't run up to just outside of Ftilt1 range and then shield the ever so predictable Ftilt2, or even better: we sure can't SDI in order to have Ftilt2 miss like everyone but two characters can which is actually quite doable with practice.

OH WAIT.

Seriously: Get a brain in that thick head of yours. If ANY Snake just sat there spamming Ftilt all day they would be ***** from one side of the stage to the other. If you're going to suggest such stupid ideas as that, I'd recommend that you just leave this topic before you embarrass yourself more.

Then again, you're one of the crazy people who think Ike is the fifth worse character in the game. I shouldn't be expecting much from you in this discussion. What next, you suggest something crazy like Snake beats MK?

I actually think Brinstar and Battlefield are fine to play against Snake. The ceiling on Brinstar isn't that low. Also, can we try to refrain from referring to Pirate Ship as a counterpick for most matchups? It's not going to be useful if that particular stage is banned in one's region.