ihasabuket
Smash Journeyman
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2015
- Messages
- 321
I used 20XX 3.02 to lab some followups on Peach and discussed various options in the MU with other players. I've tested it out on the newest version of 20XX(4.05) and everything seems to check out. The neutral options discussed are somewhat experimental but I think they valuable options. If you have 3.02 practice against a level 9 CPU, if you have 4.05 the CPU level doesnt matter.
Upthrow followups
Upair: Will true combo at pretty much any % below 100%(around there). at 0% - 40%(ish) you can just do a Full jump rising upair and it will true combo into the tailspike hitbox. After around 40%, peach goes too high for you to reach with just your full jump so you simply have to DJ upair to get the combo. I tested it in 20xx training mode and it is indeed a TRUE combo.
Nair: To land nair off of upthrow you need to full jump and then DJ rising nair. I believe this true combos for a very small % range but it is guaranteed until around 50%. When I say guaranteed I mean that peach isnt in hitstun the entire time, but she can't actually put any move out to interrupt or avoid the attack.
She cant jump out because the start of her DJ makes her dip downwards. Bair comes out frame 6 and dair comes out frame 12; These moves are much too slow for breaking out of combos. Peach only has 1 real option that's fast enough to interrupt combos, her nair which comes out frame 3.
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It's a little hard to see because of her dress, but her legs are completely exposed. Pikas nair comes out so fast that you can hit her legs before you reach the hitboxes on her body. It's important to do a nair right after the DJ so use Y/X and Z if you need an easier input method. Practice your upthrow followups against a level 9 CPU. The CPU will avoid your followup if youre too slow and it will nair you if you mispace. It shouldnt be too hard though, I got it pretty fast.
Fair combos
Yeah you read that right, Fair can actually combo. Since it has set KB it combos at every %. I tested several followups in 20XX(3.02) training mode and against a lvl 9 CPU. The timing is tight so remember to practice this with color overlays and the flashing L-Cancels(both red and white) against a level 9 CPU. If youre too late peach will nair you. If you mispaced she will airdodge. Anyway these are the followups:
Fair -> ftilt and jab are true combos
Fair -> Grab, dtilt, uptilt(if crossed up), turnaround uptilt, upsmash, nair, upair, and bair are all guaranteed assuming they hit on the first frame theyre out.
The only two followups I can consistently land are upsmash, ftilt, and dtilt becuase the others require tight spacing.
Remember that Fair is susceptible to CC and ASDI at any %. These followups are basically pikachu's version of jab upsmash. Try to use it when your opponent is out of nair CC %s and/or are expecting a strong move.
Here's a video of me doing fair -> upsmash
I ****ed up one of em because I didnt dash
Uptilt combos
Its a hard move to land but if you hit with a crossup fair you can uptilt.
Uptilt -> JC upsmash from 0% - 20%(maybe 1 or 2 % more I forgot)
Uptilt -> aerial from 0% - 70%(around there, its probably more)
Uptilt -> thunder at any % where theyre too high to reach with an aerial
The great thing about uptilt is that it sends up and behind pikachu, making combos easier to land. Uptilt leads so well into thunder because of it's send angle, low endlag, and the fact that youre low so that thunder hits them sooner. This move is also incredibly low commitment having very similar frame data to dtilt.
Upair: Will true combo at pretty much any % below 100%(around there). at 0% - 40%(ish) you can just do a Full jump rising upair and it will true combo into the tailspike hitbox. After around 40%, peach goes too high for you to reach with just your full jump so you simply have to DJ upair to get the combo. I tested it in 20xx training mode and it is indeed a TRUE combo.
Nair: To land nair off of upthrow you need to full jump and then DJ rising nair. I believe this true combos for a very small % range but it is guaranteed until around 50%. When I say guaranteed I mean that peach isnt in hitstun the entire time, but she can't actually put any move out to interrupt or avoid the attack.
She cant jump out because the start of her DJ makes her dip downwards. Bair comes out frame 6 and dair comes out frame 12; These moves are much too slow for breaking out of combos. Peach only has 1 real option that's fast enough to interrupt combos, her nair which comes out frame 3.
It's a little hard to see because of her dress, but her legs are completely exposed. Pikas nair comes out so fast that you can hit her legs before you reach the hitboxes on her body. It's important to do a nair right after the DJ so use Y/X and Z if you need an easier input method. Practice your upthrow followups against a level 9 CPU. The CPU will avoid your followup if youre too slow and it will nair you if you mispace. It shouldnt be too hard though, I got it pretty fast.
Fair combos
Yeah you read that right, Fair can actually combo. Since it has set KB it combos at every %. I tested several followups in 20XX(3.02) training mode and against a lvl 9 CPU. The timing is tight so remember to practice this with color overlays and the flashing L-Cancels(both red and white) against a level 9 CPU. If youre too late peach will nair you. If you mispaced she will airdodge. Anyway these are the followups:
Fair -> ftilt and jab are true combos
Fair -> Grab, dtilt, uptilt(if crossed up), turnaround uptilt, upsmash, nair, upair, and bair are all guaranteed assuming they hit on the first frame theyre out.
The only two followups I can consistently land are upsmash, ftilt, and dtilt becuase the others require tight spacing.
Remember that Fair is susceptible to CC and ASDI at any %. These followups are basically pikachu's version of jab upsmash. Try to use it when your opponent is out of nair CC %s and/or are expecting a strong move.
Here's a video of me doing fair -> upsmash
Uptilt combos
Its a hard move to land but if you hit with a crossup fair you can uptilt.
Uptilt -> JC upsmash from 0% - 20%(maybe 1 or 2 % more I forgot)
Uptilt -> aerial from 0% - 70%(around there, its probably more)
Uptilt -> thunder at any % where theyre too high to reach with an aerial
The great thing about uptilt is that it sends up and behind pikachu, making combos easier to land. Uptilt leads so well into thunder because of it's send angle, low endlag, and the fact that youre low so that thunder hits them sooner. This move is also incredibly low commitment having very similar frame data to dtilt.
Before I actually get into the options themselves I want to give a brief explanation on how reaction time works so that you can make sense of these options. There are 2 types of reaction types, simple reaction and choice reaction.
Simple reaction is when you know what option youre going to use and you just react to a stimulus. This type of reaction takes roughly 12-15 frames. This would be like if you're dashdancing to get a grab in.
Choice reaction is when you have to distinguish the stimulus and use a corresponding option. This takes something like 30 frames(maybe more). This would be if youre edgeguarding or techchasing.
In smash, if you employ a mixup, your opponent cant change their option in time without a read. Im sure you get the gist of it.
I'll explain this part by putting peaches options and then the some practial counterplay tactics.
Crouch cancel and ASDI down
One of peach's biggest strengths in most MUs. We've all seen how pika struggles against this but there are some moves that counter it directly.
Fair: When fair is CC'd peach will go into the spike hitstun animation like fox's nair at low %s. The great part is that since the KB is set you can always do this. Remember that multihit moves cannot be CC'd so you have to do single hit fair(which isnt really that hard) to do this. CC'd fair will give you a 0 frame advantage on hit. This gives you 5 frames to dash away from or jump over peach's dsmash. This forces the peach player to reconsider dsmash as you can easily whiff punish from this position.
Oddly enough, peach has a better frame advantage ASDI'ing down because the KB is not low enough to send into spikestun. This either happens if peach is not crouching while she's holding down or if you hit more than once with fair. Though the frame advantage isnt as good you can generally still buffer shield to block dsmash and punish it after.
This gives peach an incentive to shield when pika jumps, creating openings for grabs and tomahawks.
Shielding
If you've seen Axe's set vs Armada at eclipse you've seen Armada shield camp pika(wobbles even talks about it). He does this because Axe didnt really do any guaranteed followups off of a throw and his crossup nairs were becoming a problem. Crossup nairs may be relatively safe on shield, but doing this often gives up stage control; It's a good option to stop peaches movement and force them into shield but I dont think pika should be doing this so often as nair can get stuffed or shieldgrabbed if the peach is facing backwards. It's important to keep your opponent guessing to create openings. Here are some alternatives to crossup nair.
SH rising upair: Basically you do a rising upair and hit with the front part. After you hit shield and crossup your actionble much sooner than you would be doing a crossup nair. You can do a second upair before you hit the ground, FFAC(fastfall autocancel), DJ, or WL. I really believe this is the most reliable mixup to crossup nair.
Here's a video of me doing this to a 20xx CPU set to shieldgrab
Notice that I punished peach's frame perfect shieldgrab before she was actionable. I also demonstrated the upthrow -> upair true combo after getting that grab.
Late nair: it has a frame advantage of 0 on shield which means you can pressure her into an OoS option. You can dash out to wait for an OoS option space tilts on her shield(if you can do those sick ass pivot dtilts) or stuff her OoS options with your fast startup moves. Plup is a great example to watch to learn this kind of pressure. Even though sheiks fair is negative on shield, Plup still pressures effectively by dashing out of grab range, stuffing OoS options, and grabbing when they decide to stay shielding. Keep in mind that peach's fastest OoS option is grab which comes out frame 7.
Tomahawk: This is a more common one. It works especially well as a mixup if you've been doing crossup nair and upair afterwards to stuff them. Crossing up to tomahawk makes this safer since peach's SH bair comes out frame 11. I recommend crossing up unless you plan to tomahawk in front of them to space a move(useful if theyre in the corner). Otherwise crossup so that things like tomahawk dsmash/upsmash are safer. Typically you'll want to grab though, especially since there are newfound upthrow followups. N0ne is a great example to see how effective tomahawking is. Falcon and pika have similar SHFFL speeds and both tend to do many crossup aerials to condition their opponents into shield.
Tomahawks are effective because your opponent is timing their OoS options as if you were hitting their shield. When you hit a shield the player incurs shieldstun + hitlag. Pikas weak nair inflicts 6 frames of shieldstun and 6 frames of hitlag. So you have an opponent who is timing their OoS option 12 frames later while you can act sooner than usual because of normal landing lag.
As I mentioned before, some players(plup and M2k) have opted to shield pivot preemptively to shield grab crossups. Late nair and SH empty crossup DJ upair are really good to counter this. Tomahawk can work if you noticed theyre turned around and land behind them so they cant grab you.
FC(float canceled) and float aerials
Allows peach to throw extremely low commitment aerials or spaced aerials that either stuff or trade with pikas nair. This is what most peach's would opt for if pika is doing a lot of crossup nairs. Peach nair doesnt have too much disjoint but bair will beat out pikas nair reliably. Luckily pika has fair and ftilt to outspace these moves.
Fair: It actually has more disjoint than both peach's nair and bair. If peach thes moves are already out an approaching fair will beat them out. Peach nair can sometimes trade because her hitboxes come out at the same time as she extends her arms but it shouldnt be too much of a problem. If you land a fair while she's in the air it's a guaranteed followup so this is very rewarding.
Tilts: You can outrange and/or stuff her aerials like Axe has done before with a simple WD to get in range. Not much else to say. I will say that pivot dtilt can optimize pika's dashdance game allowing you to stuff peach after retreating with a dash back and making your options out of dashdance more ambiguous.
Dashdancing and floating
Peaches might try to outspace you but pikas movement options really shine here. Just overshoot aerials or throw out some tilts.
Turnips
Peach's turnip throw is lower than it looks and pika's SH is pretty high. So high that you can just jump over turnips when youre within a pretty big range. Even if you drop low enough you can nair or fair through all turnips except doteyes and stitch iirc. As soon as you see peach pull a turnip you can jump at her with an aerial. Her CC and OoS options are limited when holding a turnip as she can only throw it(frame 10) or upb(7). Technically she can do a float aerial but that will be about as slow as a turnip throw.
Simple reaction is when you know what option youre going to use and you just react to a stimulus. This type of reaction takes roughly 12-15 frames. This would be like if you're dashdancing to get a grab in.
Choice reaction is when you have to distinguish the stimulus and use a corresponding option. This takes something like 30 frames(maybe more). This would be if youre edgeguarding or techchasing.
In smash, if you employ a mixup, your opponent cant change their option in time without a read. Im sure you get the gist of it.
I'll explain this part by putting peaches options and then the some practial counterplay tactics.
Crouch cancel and ASDI down
One of peach's biggest strengths in most MUs. We've all seen how pika struggles against this but there are some moves that counter it directly.
Fair: When fair is CC'd peach will go into the spike hitstun animation like fox's nair at low %s. The great part is that since the KB is set you can always do this. Remember that multihit moves cannot be CC'd so you have to do single hit fair(which isnt really that hard) to do this. CC'd fair will give you a 0 frame advantage on hit. This gives you 5 frames to dash away from or jump over peach's dsmash. This forces the peach player to reconsider dsmash as you can easily whiff punish from this position.
Oddly enough, peach has a better frame advantage ASDI'ing down because the KB is not low enough to send into spikestun. This either happens if peach is not crouching while she's holding down or if you hit more than once with fair. Though the frame advantage isnt as good you can generally still buffer shield to block dsmash and punish it after.
This gives peach an incentive to shield when pika jumps, creating openings for grabs and tomahawks.
Shielding
If you've seen Axe's set vs Armada at eclipse you've seen Armada shield camp pika(wobbles even talks about it). He does this because Axe didnt really do any guaranteed followups off of a throw and his crossup nairs were becoming a problem. Crossup nairs may be relatively safe on shield, but doing this often gives up stage control; It's a good option to stop peaches movement and force them into shield but I dont think pika should be doing this so often as nair can get stuffed or shieldgrabbed if the peach is facing backwards. It's important to keep your opponent guessing to create openings. Here are some alternatives to crossup nair.
SH rising upair: Basically you do a rising upair and hit with the front part. After you hit shield and crossup your actionble much sooner than you would be doing a crossup nair. You can do a second upair before you hit the ground, FFAC(fastfall autocancel), DJ, or WL. I really believe this is the most reliable mixup to crossup nair.
Here's a video of me doing this to a 20xx CPU set to shieldgrab
Late nair: it has a frame advantage of 0 on shield which means you can pressure her into an OoS option. You can dash out to wait for an OoS option space tilts on her shield(if you can do those sick ass pivot dtilts) or stuff her OoS options with your fast startup moves. Plup is a great example to watch to learn this kind of pressure. Even though sheiks fair is negative on shield, Plup still pressures effectively by dashing out of grab range, stuffing OoS options, and grabbing when they decide to stay shielding. Keep in mind that peach's fastest OoS option is grab which comes out frame 7.
Tomahawk: This is a more common one. It works especially well as a mixup if you've been doing crossup nair and upair afterwards to stuff them. Crossing up to tomahawk makes this safer since peach's SH bair comes out frame 11. I recommend crossing up unless you plan to tomahawk in front of them to space a move(useful if theyre in the corner). Otherwise crossup so that things like tomahawk dsmash/upsmash are safer. Typically you'll want to grab though, especially since there are newfound upthrow followups. N0ne is a great example to see how effective tomahawking is. Falcon and pika have similar SHFFL speeds and both tend to do many crossup aerials to condition their opponents into shield.
Tomahawks are effective because your opponent is timing their OoS options as if you were hitting their shield. When you hit a shield the player incurs shieldstun + hitlag. Pikas weak nair inflicts 6 frames of shieldstun and 6 frames of hitlag. So you have an opponent who is timing their OoS option 12 frames later while you can act sooner than usual because of normal landing lag.
As I mentioned before, some players(plup and M2k) have opted to shield pivot preemptively to shield grab crossups. Late nair and SH empty crossup DJ upair are really good to counter this. Tomahawk can work if you noticed theyre turned around and land behind them so they cant grab you.
FC(float canceled) and float aerials
Allows peach to throw extremely low commitment aerials or spaced aerials that either stuff or trade with pikas nair. This is what most peach's would opt for if pika is doing a lot of crossup nairs. Peach nair doesnt have too much disjoint but bair will beat out pikas nair reliably. Luckily pika has fair and ftilt to outspace these moves.
Fair: It actually has more disjoint than both peach's nair and bair. If peach thes moves are already out an approaching fair will beat them out. Peach nair can sometimes trade because her hitboxes come out at the same time as she extends her arms but it shouldnt be too much of a problem. If you land a fair while she's in the air it's a guaranteed followup so this is very rewarding.
Tilts: You can outrange and/or stuff her aerials like Axe has done before with a simple WD to get in range. Not much else to say. I will say that pivot dtilt can optimize pika's dashdance game allowing you to stuff peach after retreating with a dash back and making your options out of dashdance more ambiguous.
Dashdancing and floating
Peaches might try to outspace you but pikas movement options really shine here. Just overshoot aerials or throw out some tilts.
Turnips
Peach's turnip throw is lower than it looks and pika's SH is pretty high. So high that you can just jump over turnips when youre within a pretty big range. Even if you drop low enough you can nair or fair through all turnips except doteyes and stitch iirc. As soon as you see peach pull a turnip you can jump at her with an aerial. Her CC and OoS options are limited when holding a turnip as she can only throw it(frame 10) or upb(7). Technically she can do a float aerial but that will be about as slow as a turnip throw.
I decided this needed its own section because I realized how important it is in this MU. Its not something one would normally consider given how bad pikas item throw is but its actually super useful.
catching the turnip
There are a couple of ways you can catch turnips. You can use a grounded move to catch the turnip if its in range or clang with it unless its a doteyes/stitch. You can do this with aerials except your aerial wont clang, it'll just plow through the turnip. You can also catch it in the air with Z.
If you think the peach has a strong turnip you can always shield the turnip and catch it if it happened to be a weak one. If a turnip hits a shield it will always go straight up. Because of this you can reliably catch turnips by shielding jumping OoS and Z catching them.
It might be useful to know for whiff punishing so heres peaches turnip frame data:
Veggie throw ground
Total: 23
release: 10 (forward, back)
Release: 11 (up)
Release: 9 (down)
-------------------------------------
Veggie throw Air
Total: 23
Release: 10 (down)
Release: 11 (up)
Release: 10 (forward)
Release: 9 (backward)
-------------------------------------
Vegetable Pull
Total: 29
Vegetable lasts: 141 frames in air
Using the turnip
Know that Pika's turnip throw takes a bit long and doesnt have too much range. This doesnt mean its useless, it just means you need space to use it effectively. Luckily Pika is so much faster than peach that it isnt an actual problem. Just hold on to a turnip until an opportune moment instead of throwing it right away. If you want to use an aerial you can simply jump, Z drop(the whole animation is 1 frame) and do your aerial. Keep in mind that you have to let go of Z before you can press A so you might have to hit just the corner of the Z button to do this fast. C stick will work even if you havent let go of Z though.
Anyway, you wanna throw the turnip from a safe distance or by fading if youre close to her. Throwing it from above is safe because peach's vertical movement sucks so abuse platform movement when you have a turnip in hand.
Turnip throw upsmash true combos, so any move as fast or faster than 8 frames(tilts, grab, upair, nair...) is guaranteed. Turnips can be CC'd or ASDI'd easily, so if you think peach is aiming for that just poke her with it.
Z drop can also combo into nair and upair.
catching the turnip
There are a couple of ways you can catch turnips. You can use a grounded move to catch the turnip if its in range or clang with it unless its a doteyes/stitch. You can do this with aerials except your aerial wont clang, it'll just plow through the turnip. You can also catch it in the air with Z.
If you think the peach has a strong turnip you can always shield the turnip and catch it if it happened to be a weak one. If a turnip hits a shield it will always go straight up. Because of this you can reliably catch turnips by shielding jumping OoS and Z catching them.
It might be useful to know for whiff punishing so heres peaches turnip frame data:
Veggie throw ground
Total: 23
release: 10 (forward, back)
Release: 11 (up)
Release: 9 (down)
-------------------------------------
Veggie throw Air
Total: 23
Release: 10 (down)
Release: 11 (up)
Release: 10 (forward)
Release: 9 (backward)
-------------------------------------
Vegetable Pull
Total: 29
Vegetable lasts: 141 frames in air
Using the turnip
Know that Pika's turnip throw takes a bit long and doesnt have too much range. This doesnt mean its useless, it just means you need space to use it effectively. Luckily Pika is so much faster than peach that it isnt an actual problem. Just hold on to a turnip until an opportune moment instead of throwing it right away. If you want to use an aerial you can simply jump, Z drop(the whole animation is 1 frame) and do your aerial. Keep in mind that you have to let go of Z before you can press A so you might have to hit just the corner of the Z button to do this fast. C stick will work even if you havent let go of Z though.
Anyway, you wanna throw the turnip from a safe distance or by fading if youre close to her. Throwing it from above is safe because peach's vertical movement sucks so abuse platform movement when you have a turnip in hand.
Turnip throw upsmash true combos, so any move as fast or faster than 8 frames(tilts, grab, upair, nair...) is guaranteed. Turnips can be CC'd or ASDI'd easily, so if you think peach is aiming for that just poke her with it.
Z drop can also combo into nair and upair.
Peach has a hard time reaching the top platform so I played around with some quick attack angles and found that you can reach the top platform from pretty far away. I dont have any way to record but I can make a small diagram. If anyone with a recording setup could do me the favor of making gyfs it would be greatly appreciated.
The yellow circles on the left are spots where you start your up b. The yellow lines are the quick attack paths. The blue line is the DJ path from the ledge. The bottom left spot is the one that axe usually uses. The top left one is the one ive been experimenting with. I included the ones from the ledge because it seems to me like Pika has a harder time getting out of the corner than getting down from the platform. It might benefit you to DJ and do an invincible quick attack to one of the platforms and look for some stage control from there. Just some food for thought.
The yellow circles on the left are spots where you start your up b. The yellow lines are the quick attack paths. The blue line is the DJ path from the ledge. The bottom left spot is the one that axe usually uses. The top left one is the one ive been experimenting with. I included the ones from the ledge because it seems to me like Pika has a harder time getting out of the corner than getting down from the platform. It might benefit you to DJ and do an invincible quick attack to one of the platforms and look for some stage control from there. Just some food for thought.
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