MookieRah
08-26-2005, 07:13 PM
I am picking up Pika, and I wanna do it right. So what I am gonna do is spill out all my current strategies, combos, and etc. so you guys can fill me in on what I don't do. Unlike any other character in the past, I did no research into Pika, I just started ****in around with him and now I like the lil dude.
Basic Combos I use:
Fair to Up smash - this seems to work in some situations, but at the moment it doesn't work as often as it should. I typically only do this versus floatier characters and it seems to work the best against Peach.
Up throw to U airs (and sometimes thunder) - pretty basic, but doesn't do much damage. I have also tried other things, like combo an uair to down or bair, but I usually risk trying to tack on extra juggling damage and the like. I try to incorporate thunder in if it's against a fast faller due to how slow they recover from vertical hits.
Actually those are the only things I can think of. Everything else is just situational, and from my experience Pika is capable of a lot of fun combos.
Edgeguarding:
I mainly do three tricks for edgeguarding at the moment. One is the downsmash. I dunno how common knowledge this is, but at the edge of the downsmash it will spike the opponent. Since the downsmash lasts fairly long this is an easy route of they are going for the ledge, and very effective to boot.
The other thing I use has a low kill rate; however, it racks up a good deal of damage. I will run and jump off of the stage and jumb back. Once I use my second jump I will imediately thunder and cause the lightning to go right down by the ledge. So far this has served to really piss off my opponents and I can usually do it multiple times before they get through it. I have also thought of a riskier idea, although I haven't really tried applying it to a real fight. It involves jumping vertically from the ledge and thundering. When the thunder hits Pika kinda stops falling and for about a half second anything that touches him will get blasted it seems. Well by doing this from the ledge you will pretty much have the ledge covered and if they are hit it will knock them away from the ledge and prolly to death.
If I am playing Fox or Falco and they are going for firefox I simply jump out and use Agility to hit them out of it and grab the ledge.
I know of tail spiking too, but I don't understand the physics behind making it spike, but that is my bad for not practicing it :-P.
General Strats
So far it seems that Pika is built around his upsmash and thunder for getting kills, to me at least. The thunder compliments his vertical attacks very well and allows for kills when an upsmash isn't enough and what have you. So my current strat is to just trick in some upsmashes like I would try to trick in downsmashes with Mewtwo (cept upsmash with Pika is much much easier to hit with due to how fast it comes out).
Grabbing with Pikachu doesn't seem all that effective and other than up throw I don't really see many combos to perform out of them. Keep in mind though I am going on memory hear and I haven't played in a few days, I might have done a few combos out of down throw, but at the moment nothing comes to mind.
Against Fast fallers
I try to rack damage at first. In the beginning I do annoying **** and throw out lots of nuetral Bs (electro-jolt???) I like how it's easy to combo lots of things into upsmash. Later on I upthrow to whatever combos and deal with them that way. For edgeguard I use the thunder trick and try to hit them with Agility if they firefox or simply downsmash spike them. I haven't really played much against them with Pika so far (I only play with one friend at the moment, Moogle, and he is more proficient with other characters than Fox/Falco).
Floaties
Like I said earlier fair to upsmash works good early on, especially if i catch them in a fair right before they land, it pops them off the ground so they would still suffer landing lag and easily allows my upsmash to plow into them. This doesn't work sometimes, and it's prolly a percentage thing, but I don't have much experience with Pika at the moment so I will find that out eventually. If I am dealing with someone like Peach I try to avoid being in the air too much, unless I am underneath her and nail her with uairs. I tend to spam her a lot with neutral B against her and other methods to tack on damage till I get to the kill zone. Against Marth I play kinda like how I use my Mewtwo against them. Stay outside his range and capitalize when he does stupid **** all the while taunting him with the occasional projectile. Upsmash kills marth pretty early and puts Mewtwo's upthrow to shame. I don't know why anyone in the Pika forums are *****ing about this matchup, cause it's a lot harder for Mewtwo and nobody is whining about that in those forums :-P. For everyone else I pretty much uses the starts I have here, but just sorta mix and matched.
That is about it. I know this is a lot, but I would love to find out about stuff that I haven't thought of and start perfecting it.
And yeah, I am currently thumbing through Pictish Freak's guide, but there are strats out there that are not in that guide of Pictish's, and that is the kind of info I am trying to get. I like to get info straight from the source and since I will be away for a few days this would be the easiest way to get information from these peepz (normally I would just contact them via AIM, but like I said, I won't be here).
Basic Combos I use:
Fair to Up smash - this seems to work in some situations, but at the moment it doesn't work as often as it should. I typically only do this versus floatier characters and it seems to work the best against Peach.
Up throw to U airs (and sometimes thunder) - pretty basic, but doesn't do much damage. I have also tried other things, like combo an uair to down or bair, but I usually risk trying to tack on extra juggling damage and the like. I try to incorporate thunder in if it's against a fast faller due to how slow they recover from vertical hits.
Actually those are the only things I can think of. Everything else is just situational, and from my experience Pika is capable of a lot of fun combos.
Edgeguarding:
I mainly do three tricks for edgeguarding at the moment. One is the downsmash. I dunno how common knowledge this is, but at the edge of the downsmash it will spike the opponent. Since the downsmash lasts fairly long this is an easy route of they are going for the ledge, and very effective to boot.
The other thing I use has a low kill rate; however, it racks up a good deal of damage. I will run and jump off of the stage and jumb back. Once I use my second jump I will imediately thunder and cause the lightning to go right down by the ledge. So far this has served to really piss off my opponents and I can usually do it multiple times before they get through it. I have also thought of a riskier idea, although I haven't really tried applying it to a real fight. It involves jumping vertically from the ledge and thundering. When the thunder hits Pika kinda stops falling and for about a half second anything that touches him will get blasted it seems. Well by doing this from the ledge you will pretty much have the ledge covered and if they are hit it will knock them away from the ledge and prolly to death.
If I am playing Fox or Falco and they are going for firefox I simply jump out and use Agility to hit them out of it and grab the ledge.
I know of tail spiking too, but I don't understand the physics behind making it spike, but that is my bad for not practicing it :-P.
General Strats
So far it seems that Pika is built around his upsmash and thunder for getting kills, to me at least. The thunder compliments his vertical attacks very well and allows for kills when an upsmash isn't enough and what have you. So my current strat is to just trick in some upsmashes like I would try to trick in downsmashes with Mewtwo (cept upsmash with Pika is much much easier to hit with due to how fast it comes out).
Grabbing with Pikachu doesn't seem all that effective and other than up throw I don't really see many combos to perform out of them. Keep in mind though I am going on memory hear and I haven't played in a few days, I might have done a few combos out of down throw, but at the moment nothing comes to mind.
Against Fast fallers
I try to rack damage at first. In the beginning I do annoying **** and throw out lots of nuetral Bs (electro-jolt???) I like how it's easy to combo lots of things into upsmash. Later on I upthrow to whatever combos and deal with them that way. For edgeguard I use the thunder trick and try to hit them with Agility if they firefox or simply downsmash spike them. I haven't really played much against them with Pika so far (I only play with one friend at the moment, Moogle, and he is more proficient with other characters than Fox/Falco).
Floaties
Like I said earlier fair to upsmash works good early on, especially if i catch them in a fair right before they land, it pops them off the ground so they would still suffer landing lag and easily allows my upsmash to plow into them. This doesn't work sometimes, and it's prolly a percentage thing, but I don't have much experience with Pika at the moment so I will find that out eventually. If I am dealing with someone like Peach I try to avoid being in the air too much, unless I am underneath her and nail her with uairs. I tend to spam her a lot with neutral B against her and other methods to tack on damage till I get to the kill zone. Against Marth I play kinda like how I use my Mewtwo against them. Stay outside his range and capitalize when he does stupid **** all the while taunting him with the occasional projectile. Upsmash kills marth pretty early and puts Mewtwo's upthrow to shame. I don't know why anyone in the Pika forums are *****ing about this matchup, cause it's a lot harder for Mewtwo and nobody is whining about that in those forums :-P. For everyone else I pretty much uses the starts I have here, but just sorta mix and matched.
That is about it. I know this is a lot, but I would love to find out about stuff that I haven't thought of and start perfecting it.
And yeah, I am currently thumbing through Pictish Freak's guide, but there are strats out there that are not in that guide of Pictish's, and that is the kind of info I am trying to get. I like to get info straight from the source and since I will be away for a few days this would be the easiest way to get information from these peepz (normally I would just contact them via AIM, but like I said, I won't be here).