So I posted this on reddit as a response but I don't think people will see it as it's hella massive. It turned into this sort of weird means of summarizing my thoughts about the 3.5 changes as a whole, so this will probably be my final criticisms on the matter and then I'll put 100% into actually adapting. Read if you want, might take you a while
QAC is still very good, and it can be done from the ground – you don’t have to short hop. You can still do most cancels including jump, waveland, aerial, and specials so the options are still there. The only things that were removed was Fair and pratfall, but that’s more because of the animation change than the zip restriction. And you never wanted to use it as a main approach option in the first place – it’s too vulnerable to anticipation and linger hitboxes.
What actually sucks is the meta implications of the nerf – the increasing tech floor’s effect on the community perspective on Pika and QAC and the PMDT’s opaqueness about their plans are for Pika are much greater dangers than the nerfs of QAC itself. This may take a bit of time to explain so level with me here.
So first what does the second zip restriction mean? Combined with the animation change, Pika:
- Can no longer recover relatively safely on stage
- Can no longer chase opponent from one side of the stage to the other
- No longer has strong platform movement that allows Pika to soft-counter the opponent's stage control
- Has slightly tighter and earlier QAC timing
- Can no longer use QAC -> Fair or QAC -> pratfall
Based on what the PMDT said, it felt like the nerfs were only keeping the recovery aspect in mind, maybe with a little bit of the whole nerfing burst movement thing too. Obviously, being able to recover onstage when your recovery is already fast, far reaching, and unpredictable is broken, so the change for the reason alone is justified. As you noticed though, Pika’s ability to move to any part of the stage is now limited, which directly nerfs his neutral and stagger game. In neutral, it removes Pika's ability to apply movement pressure/intimidation - the one benefit of QACing all over the stage is making your opponent unsure of where and when you'll go next, assuming you're being unpredictable. The simplest form of QAC bait (QA1 forward-> QA2C back) is no longer possible, and you can longer gain elevation onto platforms safely. For stagger, Pika is now limited in range for being able to chase opponents. The primary restriction is the length of one QA, which combined with QAC waveland at just the right angle can get comparable length to a dashed aerial. This means that the moves Pika uses must keep his opponents within this range and still staggered, so the moves must minimize knockback while maximizing hitstun all while also being horizontal as Pika can’t chase above anymore.
For an expert or specialist, these issues can be dealt with. Neutral game just means the player should properly rely on Melee-esque dash dance baits, jolts, d-tilt and uair spacing, as well as exploring bait options limited to single zip QAC. For stagger there’s more lab work needed to figure out what moves work on what characters at what percents, and whether QAC-QAC strings can be used to compensate for higher knockback moves. It’s just problem solving. However, this shows you the trend of an increasing minimum effective tech execution that is already very high from QA angles and targeting, Uair/Nair/Fair timings, and limited effectiveness of general fundamentals due to short range. Pika’s high tech floor is only getting higher and discouraging more people from trying to learn Pikachu, and that is where the problem really lies.
An increasing tech floor upsets his game balance and makes his weaknesses outmatch his strengths. Those strengths already need a high amount of technical skill to be even called strengths. His great recovery needs precision aiming to always sweetspot, and needs multiple approaches in order to stay unpredictable. His SHFFL aerials must be executed quickly and acted out of just as quickly to avoid getting shield grabbed. And while this is usually something that you accept for chars like Fox or Lucas, Pika also has the worst weakness – range. A short range and no disjoint immediately makes your spacing and zoning potential inferior, forcing you to use more tech (dash-dance, wavedash) to compensate. QAC similarly would help his range issue by giving Pika a faster means of getting in where he actually had options, but that was still a high tech skill. It was nerfed in a way that forces more emphasis on tech precision tactics, which is of course encouraged for Pika’s archetype, but because of the combined low range and low damage output, Pika has very few options that are safe and worth it, so it’s hard for Pika to shift the balance to a greater extended advantageous position at the same extent as how his light weight and commit-heavy moveset make him easily fall into a disadvantageous position.
Long-story short I want to say that’s the underlying reason why no one picks Pika up and just think badly of him in general. Most of the community would probably think “why would anyone play a more tech precision demanding, less rewarding Fox?” The biggest thing Pika had for him before was all of the QAC shenanigans, but since this version discourages shenanigans his main appeal disappeared. You could default to why Pika was good in Melee, but you have to remember that Pika was only mid-tier, and the rest of the PM roster has more characters that are less gimpable than spacies. At the moment, his worst MUs are chars like ICs and Olimar which are just as uncommon as Pika is, but as their metagames develop it will only get worse for a character that’s had a fair bit more time over meta development without really going anywhere with it.
So then the question of “what is the PMDT doing?” is my biggest concern. Whether or not Pikachu is being cared for by the PMDT at the same level as other chars is something rather hard to tell. Pika's changes are of course trying to get closer to Melee as they have been since he was introduced, but at the same time aspects of him from Brawl that were also good (second zip QAC and ledge grab skull bash in particular) are getting removed. Sure, there were aspects of Brawl like chaingrabs and jab lock/QAC lock that would be discouraged, but it’s still debatable whether Pika was considered at his best in Melee (which of course he wasn’t because 64, but that’s another monster). His past PM style buffs (64 Bair, extended range on Fair/Dair, Uair damage increase) have been very helpful but they felt subtle. The other good things about Pika in this version is that his u-throw release point is fixed and his wavedashes are smoother/longer, but those are more universal than anything. The rest of Pika's moveset was not changed that much at all - everyone else not from Melee got minor damage/knockback adjustments that really felt like they were getting optimized, and Pika not receiving any of that just gives the impression that he’s either being played safe design wise or just outright ignored.
There is circumstantial evidence of both more and less care than implied though. On one hand, if you look at the QAC aerials and see how QAC Uair perfectly fits into its allowed frames, or how QAC Fair doesn't activate but can autocancel into F-smash - all that seems way too perfect to be a fluke. But on the other end you see that dash attack and skull bash are still relatively unviable or extremely niche options, or how the victory CSP for Pika’s party hat is still blue instead of purple, and that makes it seem like Pika is constantly being overlooked. Hell, I don’t even know who is in charge of Pika on the team, or if any of the developers main him, so the lack of transparency is rather frustrating when you can see greater love/overall responsiveness from the PMDT about other characters on Smashboards (Charizard, Game and Watch, Ice Climbers are all good examples of this). The point is it’s hard to tell what the PMDT is thinking in terms of what their goals are with Pikachu, and their relatively low amount of tweaking we can see just gives a bad impression of negative bias towards Pika, even though that’s probably not true. Of course, you have to remember that 3.5 wasn’t necessarily a balance patch – it was more about bringing everyone done to the same level. So this all could have been really really trying to nail QAC down to a T.
But hey, Pika himself isn’t that transparent to most people either, so we as the Pika mains have to get him out there! The bottom line is Pika was nerfed, but whether or not it's truly character breaking is not known yet, but we still need to work with the changes we were given instead of always ranting about it. All I see now is people dropping Pika or saying he sucks solely because of the QAC nerf and not putting in effort to find new solutions. No longer feel comfortable approaching? Then don't - try camping or baiting with dash-dance/QAC in place. Still want platform movement? Learn QA edge cancel – it’s still as good as it was in Melee. Miss QA tricks? Single zip QA still has almost the full arsenal and benefits from even better wavelands. And there are still shenanigans with Uair and b-reverse/wavebounce t-jolt that still need to be commonplace. We as Pika mains can adapt, and frankly, it's pretty great that Pika didn't have a complete playstyle overhaul like some other characters. If you really really think Pika needs changes, it's either give Pika the love ourselves, push Pika as far as he'll go, really understand his core attributes and normals (which should be the biggest point of this version), become technical monsters of unparalleled precision, and get him out there in the community's eyes so that his playstyle, his moves, and his effort to reward ratio are understood by everyone. Or we let him die out and force the PMDT to make possibly too radical changes to make Pika relevant again, but I for one would rather not let that happen.
Okay rant over, but TL;DR it’s not only about QAC people!
