Q&A Ask about Pikachu! Hosted by Axe and N64! feat. dkuo!

[AXE 09]

Believe it or not, I've ready every single post in this thread lol. You have no idea how much I lurk around these boards

 

[oukd]

See people, heres the thing about giving advice about low tier characters, the average player has no idea what they're talking about, so when noob A: Posts giving advice based on his experience against level 9 Fox, noob B reads this and takes it too his drawing board, aka against level 9 Falco on FD and ***** ****. Both Noobs are happy, A is because he gave advice and was thanked for it and now feels intelligent, Noob B now has a new strategy and becomes excited to **** all them Falco's on FD at his first tournament. Thus, the life of maining a character that only like 6 other people main. Thank God the Pika boards have Jeff and N64, unfortunately they're not around too often, so bad advice slips by.

Anyways I'm done.

yeah that's like the perfect description lol. people have to build off each other because no low-tier is at the top/high level to copy off (sans the amazing axe and a few others)

i think most of the low tier characters have a decent rep or two though to act as an anchor, so at least there's some foundation for low tiers there. the age of lvl 9 practice is coming to a close and almost everyone is at least a mid-level player even if they play a low tier

i don't think the advice i gave was necessarily wrong though, just really bad for helping people improve if that makes sense
thankfully i never gave advice based on lvl 9s or posted something like this XD

 

[Bing]

You made the "This page cannot be found 'site'" or whatever you want to refer to it as?

Jeff you so silly, go back to theorycrafting up-smash on yoshi's lmfao.

Hi Adam! Nice to see you lurking the Chu boards.

 

[soju]

Wooh, I finally get to touch a gamecube controller since the past 4 months, now it's time to generate smashers in the Air Force :] Imagine all them falco's :'>

Well now I can get some improvements in >:3 I'ma coming back beby~

 

[oukd]

3rd seed at RoM5, all pika!

Time to put in work for bracket...

edit - Also watching KK effortlessly clear my pool was pretty awesome.

edit - pretty sure i got 25th ~_~33rd* but there is entirely too much drama to warrant placement discussion right now
and again, good seeing you in person smuckers

edit - i was wrong

 

[iRobinhoood]

Just realized that every character I've mained somewhat seriously are all grouped together in the tier list from Rank 7 - 12 with the exception of Ganondorf.

 

[Voltz]

What are you going to do about hbox? -Axe

 

[Divinokage]

You kick his ***! lol.

 

[AXE 09]

What are you going to do about hbox? -Axe

I'm gonna try really hard lol

 

[Voltz]

I'm gonna try really hard lol

I feel bad that you are the only top pika, which must make matchups that much harder to learn, but you still do pretty well. I hope you get top 5 at Apex.

 

[Voltz]

I feel pretty good that I can QA to the ledge now :D (but I still suck at pika).

 

[Shadocat]

i got better at the marth match-up over the weekend. all about them t-jolts and edgeguards.

but i still suck vs falco. stupid dair and shine and more dair and more shine............ just stupid faclo.

 

[iRobinhoood]

How I feel after playing bad at local friendlies, going home and the next week practicing general movement and tech skill by myself for hours, going back to said local friendlies and completely styling on people.

 

[Captain Smuckers]

Had a lot of fun at Rom, it was really cool to finally meet you too, Dkuo. At least you made bracket lol. My pool was really weird, the top 4 were eggm (well known fox), Phish-it (very solid DK), Ether (A good marth from the south that doesn't travel much I don't think), and knut (a samus player D: ). It went like this:
Eggm lost to phish it and ether
Phish it lost to either ether or knut (I'm not certain which)
Ether lost to phish it and knut
Knut lost to eggm (barely) and either phish it or ether

To the best of my knowledge thats what happened and, to be honest, I wish I had been in a different pool lol. I guess it doesn't really matter that much since it's not like I was gonna win anything <_<. I almost definitely would've gone 2-0, but it's certainly deflating to not make bracket for the third rom in a row...

Still had tons of fun though, and I learned a lot about what I need to work on, which I'll definitely be touching up on for apex. Gettin wrecked is always a great experience and it's made me want to improve even more and certainly even faster.

 

[oukd]

You had a hell of a pool man, I don't know if I would have made it out of that. I think about 6~7 months ago Ether 3-stocked my Pika in a friendly. Echgh. (Also he's a VA Marth not South I'm pretty sure)

I also watched Knut play you and thought his edgeguard zoning was really well-executed - I think as Pika you should feel comfortable picking recovery options outside of what he's trying to force you into with missiles, but I can't think of any examples since I don't have much Samus experience other than that Knut used his homing missile to bait a double jump many times where you could have held back and saved your dj vs whatever else he was trying to do...maybe recover from below. You could also use your upB to recover far up and far past the edge if Samus doesn't have a charge shot to punish you with - she's pretty damn slow. Of course a power missile might hit if she's really accurate.

I don't think the pools were made with a lot of pre-knowledge of the players - a lot of MDVA was assumed to not make it out of pools and were actually placed with each other, where in reality almost all of us made it out. I don't blame them though, it's tough keeping track of all the players.

Good job taking a game off Eggm, keep that up and you'll go places

Oh yeah, almost forgot...
Strong Bad: I see you with dat Pika. I approve.

[COLLAPSE="self-rambling/theorybros-bs'ing, don't mind me"]I think I realized during the tournament that I have a lot of difficulty calling when people will shield my nair approach, which is why I almost only nair when I'm certain it'll hit. While this is usually good, it also creates a pretty easy pathway for others to bait me since my approach becomes based solely on punishing perceived lag or perceived bad movements, something that can be triggered pretty easily imo. In fact, I have the same habit with dd grab, and I find a ton of people spotdodge out of that. On top of that, I almost always do instant/early nair in these 'perceived guaranteed hit' instances which makes followups a little weaker since I'm often hitting with a weaker hitbox - however, nair > dsmash is pretty reliable in these situations so it's not too bad of a punish since dsmash is unusually easy to follow up on...but it can be better...

I want to work on watching for shield tendencies on crossup nair setups, something I think I emphasize a lot in my random advice posts. When done right I find well-placed crossup nairs very difficult to punish mid-trajectory, and I already have a tendency to go for nairs in safe situations, so at this point I want to start calling defensive reactions to them. I want to start with calling shield/spotdodge within a few stocks, and I want to base it off consideration towards my urge to approach and my perception of opponent conditioning (also need to work on that with dd patience) - this seems quite impossible to be consistent off of, but I want to try it anyways lol. On top of that, I want to start calling OoS options off crossup nair and turn it into a genuine uair/grab/dsmash mixup on opponents whose punish on pika are reasonably equal or less than my punish on them...otherwise it's not really worth it and uair would always be preferable x_x

An alternate approach to calling shield may be reacting off a shorthop approach into either a waveland vs outspacing or late crossup nair on shield/vulnerability, but at crossup length it's quite hard to react in these situations. Maybe I'll try both and see the results. You can't have everything in Melee ~_~

Another thing I want to work on is tacking on a quick 30~40% to fresh stocks to prevent cc on rising uair. Against cc-happy people it's quite frustrating, but I'm thinking jolt (which I never use) may create some interesting setups for this.

Also, I think KK mentioned something about dtilt > grab. I actually tried to think about my hit > grab game last-minute right before the tournament (since funnily I do this all the time with my nonexistent Shiek) but forgot about it during matches because it's really hard for me to implement theory right off thinking about it - I have to practice it in friendlies consciously before I actually feel comfortable doing them naturally. Playing Hazz's Marth I started the match with this mindset and placed a lot of spaced tilts to achieve grabs, but quickly forgot about it about 2 stocks in. So the next thing to *start* implementing is hit > grab...and maybe perfect sh wavelands > jank.

Playing friendlies at big tournaments really helps me get in the zone, I love it. I don't think I've played this well since a long time ago, and this is considering that I haven't played much during the month prior to the tournament. Feels good man

If anyone actually bothered to read this it'd be cool if anyone had feedback on whether these points are worth working on, or if I should try another approach. This is mostly just me trying to put my thoughts down on paper though.[/COLLAPSE]

 

[Strong Badam]

I will continue to work on my Pikachu. ^_~

 

[Spyro]

Strong Bad, you have a Pika? I approve :D

 

[Bing]

I approve of this too!

Also Dkuo, congratz, 25th with Pika. Solid.

I wish I could of gone, but money, Passport, etc. Oh well, see you guys at Apex!

 

[oukd]

I made a mistake, actually got 33rd x( thanks anyways lol

 

[~Tac~]

Just gotta get those Uairs in better shape, dkuo~ I'm gonna start making it to more tournies after December. Hopefully I'll get to see some of these pikas up close. ika:

Also. I wanna go to MDVA so bad. I use to live there. ;_;

 

[Tee ay eye]

Believe it or not, I've ready every single post in this thread lol. You have no idea how much I lurk around these boards

**** loser

get a life

I'm gonna try really hard lol

dass wassup

btw im prob gonna subscribe to this thread so i can occasionally pop my head in and complain about how broken pikachu is LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

not going to contribute anything useful

just gonna QQ about that **** hard all day

ALLLLLL DAY

 

[N.A.G.A.C.E]

@dkuo, and captain smuckers.

As someone who plays with knut frequently can i just say that pool was incredible hard. Knut might not be well known but he is insanely technical nd should honestly should place higher in tourneys then he often does. Also i will also add, i might not have a very good pika but whenever i use my pika vs knut his samus shuts me down hard. (But that might be more about me being a bad pika then him being good vs the character)

 

[Bing]

Yo Tai, Pikachu Dittos at Apex? You Down? Jeff can commentate.


We need to get a tv to ourselves and just do Pikachu vs Pikachu Only. Maybe some free for alls and teams. Double Pika each.

 

[Tee ay eye]

gonna have to say no on that one

why would i want to play pikachu dittos

when i have three days to get in valuable practice with competition from around the world

 

[Captain Smuckers]

Get shutdown...lol

@nagace, yeah, I had a feeling he was pretty good when I watched him almost beat eggm twice in a row before playing him lol. Thanks for tellin me though, it makes me feel better about losing lol.

 

[Bing]

gonna have to say no on that one

why would i want to play pikachu dittos

when i have three days to get in valuable practice with competition from around the world

aha fair enough... you still owe me Marth ditto's from last year! But thats okay, Im ****ty so you can forget about it. lmfao

 

[MooseEatsBear]

So, I've got a quick question. What do I do about a laser spamming Falco? Should I be more aggressive and try to shut him down?

Also, how do I deal with Falco in general?

 

[KirbyKaze]

edit - Also watching KK effortlessly clear my pool was pretty awesome.

Your Pika was mad cute.

 

[oukd]

lol thanks KK

So, I've got a quick question. What do I do about a laser spamming Falco? Should I be more aggressive and try to shut him down?

Also, how do I deal with Falco in general?

You should be able to move around Falco's lasers pretty easily. Wd/run/crouch under high lasers, sh/fh over low lasers, etc. Also use platforms to weave around lasers, but if you do make sure Falco still has some horizontal distance whenever you're on a platform so he can't do rising aerials - he has very fast vertical jumping but is much slower than you on the ground. Same goes for when you're higher than him in general. More importantly, don't let Falco set up for a laser approach into getting comboed. Ideally, learn to powershield consistently. The point is to close space while being on the main stage to discourage his lasers. Even better if you get him to go onto platforms.

Alternatively, maintain your space and and wait with jolts. This is easier to do sometimes since your primary concern is solely avoiding lasers until Falco gets close to you, and punishing an approach near the edge with bthrow is an amazing gimp setup.

Vs Falco in general, focus on counterattacking and making your combos efficient - by that I mean you want to focus on moving Falco to the edge with your combo and creating as many edgeguard setups as possible...but you can also go for big damage combos if you choose to. You want to avoid getting pressured, but generally it's much more preferable to have opponents pressure the back of your shield to uair oos. Also, nair crossup on shield can create many openings for Falco to try and regain momentum, and in turn provides many opportunities for counterattacking...mainly nair crossup uair against oos movement, but other options are available too. If you watch Axe, he barrages everybody with crossup nair for a reason.

edit: added stuff

 

[Smokey Huntz]

Get shutdown...lol

@nagace, yeah, I had a feeling he was pretty good when I watched him almost beat eggm twice in a row before playing him lol. Thanks for tellin me though, it makes me feel better about losing lol.

Advice for anyone fighting Knut in the future, (just his samus specifcally though), He's hella gimicky if you just stay away from all his baits and hit him with basic **** he starts to freeze up.

I will continue to work on my Pikachu. ^_~

Strong Bad's pika is pretty real I played it in a money match and the only thing that saved me is the fact that I lurk this thread

 

[Captain Smuckers]

The whole character of pikachu is a gimmick, I don't have basic stuff to hit him with . Also whats with your tag, I thought it was bluntz.

 

[Smokey Huntz]

The whole character of pikachu is a gimmick, I don't have basic stuff to hit him with . Also whats with your tag, I thought it was bluntz.

1. TBH I think you woulda been better off with fox/falco or even falcon against Knut becuase you for some reason are worse at the pika- Samus matchup than I am but Whatevs

2. Knut tries to bait approaches for a good 10-15 seconds and when that doesn't work he gets agro and goes in for more physical not projectile attacks I think you could capitalize on that and really beat him down for a good couple seconds

3. lastly I have no idea I signed in as Smokey Bluntz and when I looked at it again it was this

 

[oukd]

the mods probably thought it was profane

 

[WIDL]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW5Vzr_noY0&feature=relmfu#t=02m38s

How do you do this moonwalk with Pikachu? x_x I can't seem to figure it out.

Also, what are the core difference between NTSC Pika and PAL Pika? I play PAL, and I hear that Pikachu is lighter in PAL, and it looks like the tailspike is slightly different, but not sure. Going to a tourney in a few days, and I think I wanna try Pika in singles. While Pika isn't better than my Peach, I still feel Pika is my most confident character, so I wanna improve. I think I can place basicly similar to what I normally would with Pikachu.

 

[oukd]

^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeuPyWsFdIE

As far as I know Pika is the same for both PAL and NTSC, but nobody's really tested this intensively.

Good luck at the tourney.

 

[WIDL]

Nailed it! Thanks. ;D

 

[Inty17]

Can someone give me up throw chaingrab percents for Fox, Falco, and Falcon? I seem to have forgotten them.

 

[N64]

10-100%ish

 

[Inty17]

10-100%ish

Really? That's pretty broken.

 

[Tee ay eye]

Can someone give me up throw chaingrab percents for Fox, Falco, and Falcon? I seem to have forgotten them.

there isn't much to know

i don't know when it starts exactly, but it lasts long enough to where you can kill with usmash before they can escape the CG. it's not like marth/sheik CGs where it only goes up to like 30-40 and then you have to do other stuff

The whole character of pikachu is a gimmick, I don't have basic stuff to hit him with . Also whats with your tag, I thought it was bluntz.

if pikachu was a gimmick, axe wouldn't be top 1/2 in arizona

sure, pikachu gets a LOT of reward from people being caught off guard by his shenanigans, but axe still manages to whoop people after they catch on (e.g. him doing pretty well against dr.pp at kings of cali even though dr.pp had studied up a bit and was feeling pretty confident going into that set, him beating SFAT even though they've played like 4 times)

also, i'm pretty sure pikachu does okay against samus if you're good at playing around her CC. axe has done fine in that matchup against taj xX420Xx_W33DDR4G0N_xX420Xx's samus, hugo's samus, and he did reeeeeeeeeaaaaaalllllyyy fine against duck's samus LOOOOLLL