Ness

Ness is currently ranked 23rd (4th worst) on the most recent (thirteenth) SSBM tier list, above only Zelda, Pichu, and Bowser. The best placement a Ness has gotten at a major tournament was 13th by Simna ibn Sind at EVO World 2007.

Ness is one of only four characters in the game with the ability to Double Jump Cancel (DJC). The others being Peach who also has float, Yoshi who has double jump armor, and Mewtwo. His access to double jump cancel allows him to perform a technique known as Psi Dashing.

Ness also has sole access to the Yo-Yo Glitch.

His special moves include PK Flash, PK Thunder, PK Fire, and Psi Magnet. His Dash Attack (PK Shove) is also very quirky.

Surprisingly, Ness is able to do fully invincible Hax Dashes, however, that is near impossible without notches or playing on a boxx controller.

Everything on this wiki assumes the 1.02 NTSC version of Melee unless otherwise stated. There are a few differences in Ness between the versions.

Ness has some cool stuff he can do in doubles.

Some takes on ness by Ness mains:

Ness is a complex, input heavy, glass cannon type character that really strives by making the most of his hits. Ness's best traits by far are his movement, jab reset game, and juggles with u-airs on FFs.

Ness to me isn't viable but I think anyone playing him should really disregard that idea as he can do plenty well still, though, he'd really need to overcome an absolutely horrid disadvantage state if he'd want to get any further as you can get punished pretty hard for some of the smallest things.

I personally think all of his special moves --besides magnet and maybe PKT-- have the potential to go further as I see them as pretty underdeveloped moves. Flash is an absolute monster for bait and really good at punishing imperfect recoveries while PK Fire has the potential for edgeguarding, jab resetting, and just filling in an angle he can't attack sometimes.

His recovery isn't as bad as people say it is too

Ness is the jack of all trades trickster. He has good but not great tools at his disposal (Solid aerials that both combo and kill, quick tilts, decent dash-dance and WD for example).

IMO a viable Ness would have to play extremely cracked, but I believe it's at the tail end of humanly possible level of cracked. He has solid combo tools and finishers. Ness's issue will always be neutral and finding that first opening.

I believe Ness still has a lot of room to grow. The amount of tools he has along with his DJC means that Ness has more than one way to approach a given scenario. All it takes is some creative thinking. Right now I'm looking into extending combos and edgeguarding with PKT, and winning neutral without burning DJ.

Ness is not a conventional SSBM character. He is a grappler with DJC movement/aerials as well as projectiles. This makes his kit a bit confusing although very fun to experiment with. He has a pretty cool punish game off a knockdown, although he struggles finding openings in neutral.

Ness needs to show good tournament results in order for me to think he’s a viable character in this meta. At the moment he lacks the ability to effectively deal with camping opponents.

Ness’s punish routes have potential to become more streamlined. IMO He seems to have a sort of “magic series” that isn’t quite fully understood/utilized yet. PSI Dash and DJ(C) momentum have still not reached their full potential either. Expanding our understanding of these techniques would give us a little extra help in disadvantage. This help is much needed when recovering, escaping pressure OOS and trying to land on platform/ground.

Another awesome resource: Onett | The SSBM Ness Resource | W.I.P.

This is a wiki about Ness in SSBM. If you'd like to contribute, please join the Nesscord and let us know you'd like to contribute.