Fourstar, BK said it perfectly - we're not deliberately saying pikachu is this or pikachu is that, it's more like playing devil's advocate to get you looking into frame data and hard evidence to construct your point - and at this early a stage (you've been around for about 3 months now, yup?) I can totally understand why you'd be hesitant to do so.
Basically saying 'you just have to play smart' applies to every character in the game. I could go ahead and say 'the ICs are better than MK, you just have to know how to play as them.' And while at a super theoretical ridiculous level that's probably somewhat true, it doesn't reflect the current meta game and there's near to no evidence backing it up. Result? No one considers ICs to be above MK in any way, or even in his tier lol. I could even pull up a video of Mekos vs. Gluttony or PF vs. Logic and say 'well they were playing smart, this is the example' but then there's factors influencing THAT, like how the players are, stress, a mess up or several, knowledge of the meta, any gigantic number of things.
Basically to say 'Pikachu is a fantastic character' we need more than just the age old statement of 'everyone just plays him bad'. People get around this issue different ways. Dark Peach for example prefers to use frame data, whereas Gheb puts a very heavy emphasis on results. There's many different ways to go about proving your point.
So what i'll do is, construct a small argument in opposition to your one to give you an idea of what you could do. Feel free to respond or leave as is. If you want my before-hand opinion, I personally think Pika's about fine where he is. If he does great then sure I don't mind where he goes. Otherwise he's reasonably stable-ish. So without further ado, i'll try this and I suggest that if you respond, dig up some matches, find flaws in my argument, look up frame data or whatever suits you. And if you're not up to it, that's totally fine, we all eventually learnt the ropes at one stage or another and even I have trouble constructing good arguments a lot of the time. In fact, this argument will have its holes (some are deliberate!) so feel free to look for them! ^^
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In Pikachu's case specifically, ESAM hasn't been doing as well with him in the current meta and he uses ICs as his primary focus now. This leaves very few other Pikachu players around to rep him and show people he is worthy of where he is - I should point out that America seems to be the only place he does well because in Japan he is mid tier, though I confess myself that I haven't actively gone and searched matches to see how he's doing over there. He doesn't get a lot of rep in other countries either - I can't think of a notable European pika main or a notable pika main from any other main region either.
Now that we've established this, we have to look at results. And as I touched upon, Pikachu seriously needs a reviver on this one. He's currently at 'wario' status IMO - that is, he's theoretically a good character and he's done stuff but recently it's dropped off a bit and we need to see more. Won't speak too much more on this though as there's not too much else to say.
In terms of theoretics and frame data, this is where everyone likes to say 'oh my character just needs to be used this way'. But the reality is it doesn't quite happen as regularly as we'd like to. Players make mistakes. Even top players (i'd like to quote the famous MM between 'captain america' DDD - oh goodness was it Seibrik or someone else? - against Gluttony). Pikachu's weaknesses of disjoint but short range, shield, grabs and other such cripple him in some match-ups such as the Olimar MU where Olimar can laugh at his attempts to camp and can hold his own very effectively.
So in all, Pikachu suffers from certain weaknesses that prevent him from going up particularly. If he gets the results to back his position up or certain techniques and strategies become known to the community that allow him to bypass these weaknesses in certain instances then yea, he certainly has a chance of going up. But until that point we have little to go on save for Pikachu players' good faith that he will show us the money. So where are the goods?
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So obviously there's some stuff wrong with this argument and it's fine to point that out. For instance, the DDD I refer to in the money match was actually Atomsk and you could have asked the 'me' making that argument to get his facts straight and research more before presenting that as hard evidence. It's not like I actually said the outcome of that match either (though as it happens I know Gluttony ended up winning that).
And videos is a fine example to point out. You ought to ask me for the actual links to videos to confirm what i'm saying. Some of the most convoluted stuff gets said on here because people go from memory (which by itself is actually ok
if you actually say you're going by memory first!) so don't always take what everyone's saying at face value if you're unsure on their point unless they can bring up evidence... and videos are great pieces of evidence to use.
Now with all that said, remember to introduce your own points - an argument that only says how the other person is doing their argument all wrong is rarely effective. Bring up counter points, raise up videos of your own, look into match-ups, etc etc.
Then all you need to worry about is structuring it correctly but here on an internet forum, we're not going to mind if you don't get that quite right the first time.
And you've been here long enough to know the rest - you'll get used to specific and good examples to use in your arguments and such.
So with all that, I hope you take something from this and i'd love to see what you have to offer within the foresee-able future!
Gosh, I wasn't originally expecting to write a random practice argument when I started this!
I'm off to bed peeps. Feel free to suggest stuff I left out or did badly. Anywayyyyyy....
And Shaya, Lucas/Ness are said to be good at edge-guarding (it's meant to be the major reason why the marth MU is a -3 and not a -4 and why they're said to be able to harass MK offstage, etc), I was super sad that you left them out. :'(
Or you just decided that they couldn't edge-guard that well, which may be valid - I dunno, i'm pretty bad at it for some reason. :-/
