No shit, Ditto--online and offline are not the same thing, and I think your observations about SW are spot on.
I have a general philosophy with CS/SS: throw it out at as many opportunities that I can, lol. At times, I even try to make it part of a combo. Now, I am not suggesting that for everyone because my play style is high-risk, high-reward when it comes to the throws, but I land quite a few of the command throws in matches against even skilled players.
But here is something that I used from the last game with CS that I have applied to this game, and I am surprised at how well it works--even against opponents that I have played regularly: I use B as a "flow-chart" (I know Linkrkc used A in the last game, but I used B, and I still use B). What I mean is that if B connects or is blocked, then there are a series of options left for me (in terms of how to get the command throw to land). If an Ivy player has a good buffer, then just using B becomes a mix-up. For example, B from SW can be followed by iCS/CS quite often. The natural combo with B is B. Most players expect B to be followed by B. So buffering iCS/CS after a single B works very well, especially if you've trained the opponent with B to be used with the natural combo. But there are other options as well, obviously. B~iCS/CS, BB~iCS/CS, B 3K~iCS/CS (or BB 3K~iCS/CS) B 2A/2K~iCS/CS...(et al) are all viable when it comes to getting the command throw to land. The nastiest one that I have is CL B~SS. When I use this one, it lands at an incredibly high percentage for me--even more than CS lands for me (partly because I am such a CS whore that I have trained my opponent to break A, lol). This one works because the opponent doesn't have much time to react--especially if he thinks that another B is coming (it's actually easier to land than iCS/CS).
But, overall, I think the best way to get the command throws to land is to throw them out in spots where the opponent is off-guard (doesn't expect the throws or doesn't believe that it's possible to land the throws in a situation when he gets hit with them)--just as it's always been. And just like Ivy players from each game already knows, the best way to do that is to learn how to buffer the throws from every possible situation...