Rhyme
Smash Lord
(Disclaimer: Might be a long and boring thread, read at your own risk. All information within is accurate to the best of my knowledge. Some of it is my opinion, and anything that isn't mine I will make an honest effort to cite who's idea/information it originally was.)
This thread serves only a slightly greater purpose (I've actually played the game now so my thoughts are more valid) than it used to. I wanted somewhere to write down what I know, a PaO blog or journal, if you will. I'm familiar with several of the good Olimar players and their work (AaronS, NC-Echo, DSF, and a little bit of TextbookNinja), and any information any of them has to offer is probably better than mine is (though I do hope to distinguish myself among them someday).
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04-06-08
Wow, it's been a while since I've updated. Worked almost fifty hours last week so I haven't had the time/energy for Brawl. Kinda running low on discoveries anyway.
Olimar seems to be able to chain juggle most if not all heavy characters at low percents with his Uthrow (unless you get a purple). Even with blues, I seemed to be able to grab, Uthrow, step forwards (literally one step), repeat. Depending on the character, you can get fifteen to thirty damage right away. It's an excellent way to start off the stock.
Olimar ***** Ike, lol. OverB completely stuffs his recovery, Ike is deathly slow and overly outranged. He must approach but he's bad at it...overB/Fair are his best options and Olimar can beat both of those...just seems like Ike is at odds in this matchup.
Purples are overrated. I can Uthrow kill with them, and occasionally I'll overB edgeguard with one but it almost never kills. Don't really see a use for them. Yellows and Blues all the way!
Got an OBC event this coming Friday, hopefully that'll go well. I'm also debating buying a Dazzle setup after this week of work netted me 500 bucks. If ever I was in the mood for smash then I could definitely afford an external memory bank and capture card, but I'm still indecisive.
Ooh, and egruntz likes my playstyle. :3
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03-21-08
=> You can edge cancel Olimar's nB. It only gives you one pikmin, but it's much faster than stopping to do it the old way. Given the level of play everyone seems to be at right now I find it hard to believe that this is a necessity, but it may turn out to be in the coming years or even months.
=> Pressing down while dangling from the pikmin chain causes Olimar to let go and begin to fall. This has only happened to me twice so I'm not positive, but I believe you can still regrab ledge if you're close enough to it.
=> Today I canceled out Zelda's entire Fsmash with the whistle armor. This was a shock to me because I had thought multi-hit attacks were immune to the whistle armor's effect. I'll be sure to update once I've got a more definitive answer.
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03-19-08
=> I started thinking about something only because of a thread Egruntz made about counterpicking stages with Olimar: what blast zones are advantagous to Olimar. This stems from something that I was forced to learn as a Samus main in Melee, which is to allow yourself your own advantages, and make your disadvantages felt by your opponent if possible. For example: Melee Marth can edgeguard anyone with ease. A practical solution to this problem is to take him to Mute City, a stage which doesn't have a ledge thereby emphasizing his own horrible recovery. If you make your weakness (difficulty in recovering) into his as well, it makes the match more fair. If you've got a Fox that keeps killing you off the top then take him to Dreamland64 or Kongo Jungle 64. With Samus, the idea was to pick a stage that was as large as possible. On Dreamland64, for example, Samus would survive longer than almost every other character in the game there. Many characters could survive blows far stronger than they could recover from while Samus could easily survive to 200%. You take Samus' rediculous recovery and emphasize it, letting you use the full force of your advantage while your opponent doesn't get any added benefit.
For Brawl, Olimar's at a serious disadvantage if he ever needs to use his upB. So what do you think the solution is? Pick a stage that hurts other characters' upBs as well. Let's say you pick Battlefield. Most of your recoveries may still involve the upB, but the blast zones are small enough where most of the hits that you actually survive will not require use of the upB to recover, which in turn suggests that most other characters in the game will not need their upBs. In effect, it's buffing the recovery of every character. Once you are no longer forced into needing your upB to recover, it makes the disadvantage that Olimar's upB gives you much less significant towards the outcome of the match.
=> I was messing around in the practice stage a couple days ago. Nothing ground-breaking, but I believe it's stuff that I'd meant to cover so might as well.
The yellow pikmin don't fly further. They might fly a longer arc, but I tested throw lengths and they actually travel less distance than red/blue pikmin do.
Olimar doesn't have a single aerial attack which auto-cancels lag, unlike other characters (Mario and his Uair for example). I don't know how significant that is.
I was messing around with the whistle. Reds and yellows were lining up in flower/bud/leaf order while blues lined up in leaf/bud/flower order. I have no idea why this might be the case, but it was happening to me every time.
Olimar's Uair can strike grounded opponents if you time it correctly, the intention being to hit with only the last hit as it sets up the opponent for a follow-up aerial/Usmash, depending on percentage.
The only attack which does not cycle pikmin order is the upB.
=> Recently I've been recording select matches via VHS. If I can find a way to copy any of the data from these to a video file then I might be able to get some matches online, which would be pretty boss.
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03-16-08
The brackets were a flop. Most people didn't show for their matches and at least half a dozen people were getting byes on the first round, some for the first two rounds. I got to play exactly one best of three in round one with the moderator who wound up placing first in the tournament (and I narrowly lost so that's cool).
I don't recall the technical term for this technique, but it's basically shield canceled dashing. Think CCdashing in Melee and you've got the basic idea. If at first you don't see a use for this technique then you need only look a little harder, for it's one of the greater spacing tools at your disposal in Brawl. Remember how you could dash dance in Melee? In Brawl, you can run in any direction as far as you choose, then click-and-release the shield button and start dashing in the opposite direction mere frames later. I find this works best for spacing aerials and getting your grab off, but whatever you plan to use it for is fine.
Speaking of shield techniques, I suggest that anyone reading this switch their control scheme up so that they do not have a "grab" button. Grabbing can be done by pressing "shield + attack" so there's no need for it. Doing so will force you into a habit that you're going to need to learn at some point or another anyway, and that's shield-canceled grabs. Just like JCing grabs in Melee, SCing grabs in Brawl gives you a standing grab mid dash, a necessity in high levels of play (less lag and more range for certain characters, like with D3 and his chain grab for example). Swiching your control scheme so that you have no "grab" button will force all Melee JCers to addapt, which it's recommended that you do. Note: if for some reason you need to throw an item (banana, bomb, etc.) that can be done by means of the same grabbing alternative, L/R+A (or whatever it is for your control scheme).
WBing (wave-bounching) was introduced recently. Though I haven't gotten the urge to try it out yet, I'm not particularly excited about it either. The only way I could see it being used is if someone figures out that you can gain horizontal recovery distance by up/downBing with the Cstick as opposed to the control stick, which I doubt is the case but at this point it's still up in the air. Either way, I can't see his pikmin spamming ability being benefited by WBing so it's really up to his limited/gimpable recovery to determine whether or not WBing will be Olimar's MST.
Some stuff from the past:
=> I had a battle on Frigate Orpheon where I appeared on the cloud (from after death) just before the stage's siren sounded. When the stage flipped, I appeared beneath the stage and couldn't recover. Some characters could have recovered from directly beneath Frigate Orpheon, but not a pikminless Olimar.
Anyway, if this little inconvenience happens in any manner of tournament then the stage will probably face banning, but not right now.
=> Ever since the NWT, I've been saying that MK would be low-tier for various reasons. Of course nobody back then believed me, and few would believe me now, but I'm just waiting for it to happen. I'm also interested to see if Ivysaur winds up being top tier, since that's something I'd claimed about two weeks before the Japanese release. I don't know exactly when, but it was the day following that '% needed to die from the center of FD from Mario's Fsmash' weight list came out.
Cool so uh...that's all I've got for now. More thoughts/impressions whenever they pop into my head. Later<
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03-15-08
OK, so I just got my first tournament experience with the good captain and I figured that now would be a good time for a journal entry. What I did today was just pools (OnlineBrawlCommunity, check it out sometime). I went 4-5 in that, and managed to claim two victories later in friendlies over two of the people who had beaten me in pools so that's cool.
First the recovery. I've found that even though people do know about gimping the recovery, it tends to not happen until I'm at at least 110%, so it's not so much a gimp as people tended to think originally. Just remember to always recover high, remember that you've always got the extra jump of the upB to clear an attack, remember about whistle armor, and remember that you've got to press the triggers until they click in order to air-dodge. Recovering high decreases the chance that you're knocked back away from the stage (at which point you'd almost certainly die). I was even managing to excede percents of 160, 180, even 200 against some characters (like Lucario for example).
Pikmin toss owns projectiles. I was fighting a Lucario with a strong aura (about 150%) and he shot a fully charged aura sphere in my direction just as I was throwing a blue pikmin. The ball collided with the pikmin, the pikmin fell to the ground, stood up, shook itself off, and ran back to join me. After that (seeing how it didn't die) I started using pikmin toss any time the Lucario used an aura sphere of any charge level, and every time it was absorbed. The only thing you must watch out for is that yellow pikmin arc and can be easily tossed over the projectile in question if you're not being careful.
Remember that the stong part of Olimar's Dsmash and Fsmash is closest to his body, and if you're going for the kill move that you should try to position yourself as such. There's a HUGE difference between parts of the attack--a Pit may be killed by a 'sweetspotted' Dsmash as early as 110% and survive a normal one at +150%.
Be careful about in-game habits. Some players will keep their back to you while preparing to charge, some may favor walking over dashing when they're looking to unload a smash attack, some players will even show by means of their 'approach' whether they intend to recover high or low, or whether they intend to edgeguard or edgehog. Everyone has habits--it's like a poker game--but you must learn to disguise them.
Don't spam pikmin toss. It's a horrible move. Good opponents are going to keep pressure on you, and any pikmin lost is a pikmin you're going to regret losing. Your opponent should be thanking you that you're so cooperative if you're going to overB spam.
After the tournament, I did some friendlies with a Sonic player and wow was that ever an adventure. Sonic's speed makes the precision of Olimar's weak aerial game all the more difficult, and Olimar's ground attacks are just a bit too lagy to use against the rapid approaches of Sonic. What I have found is that the Nair's priority will over-ride most anything that Sonic tries to do, and it just so happens to be a decent setup move as well. Sticking a pikmin to Sonic automatically locks up his spin attacks (besides Dsmash) as far as I've seen. Although using the pikmin toss is not recommended, it's neigh impossible for Olimar to approach most characters, let alone one five times faster than he is. If it is necessary for you to approach then Dair is your friend. It's go the lingering, sex-kick style hitbox that Melee Falco's Dair had, so you can drag it through the air where you believe Sonic will be and then try to land behind him. From behind you cannot retaliate but neither can he. All this accomplishes is getting you within smashing/aerial/grabbing range of the blue guy. Ooh, and unless you get the spacing perfectly, Sonic's Dair will always go through Olimar's Uair. Best defense against a Dair is a shield canceled grab, not a shield grab.
Hopefully I made brackets for this tournament, and if I did then expect more on Olimar then. Else wait until the actual tournament next weekend. : )
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03-12-08
=> The first stage I was able to do this on was Luigi's Mansion, but it's easy to see that it would work on most any stage. Remember how with Shiek/Link in Melee. if you ran towards the edge and right as your character hit the teetering animation, if you upBed then you'd 'slide' off of the edge? For Link this meant canceling out the upB for a quick edgehog, for Shiek it meant some invincibility frames followed by ony the teleporting jump of her upB. In Brawl, Olimar can do this as well. In mid-run just as his toes reach the edge, upB, and DI back towards the ledge as you slide. Olimar will shoot his chain at the default 45 degrees, then fall onto the ledge. You can shoot the chain either out away from the level or towards the level (the former being slightly more difficult to perform), and either way you will slide off the stage (if done correctly) and then grab edge.
=> I've found that elemental characters tend to counter themselves while fighting PaO. For example, if I'm fighting Squirtle, chances are much greater that the blue ones survive longer than any of the other colors. As the battle progresses, the number of blues in your posession compared to those of other colors will tend to increase, meaning more and more of Squirtle's attacks will be canceled out because you are now more likely to be attacking with a blue.
=> Most people seem confused as to what the flowers atop the pikmin's heads are for. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I did come across one key difference: the Fsmash. When pikmin are thrown via Fsmash, 1) they shoot straight forwards, 2) kinda slow to a halt, 3) then gently begin their decent (not a realistic arc, just the arc they are programed to follow). So let's assume that you're tossing one of these pikmin from the left platform of Battlefield towards the center of the stage. A leaf pikmin contains a hitbox (elemental if it's red or yellow) for all of step 1 but does not contain a hitbox for steps 2 or 3 (meaning it can hurt opponents while flying forwards but not while 'frozen' and not after it begins to fall). Flower pikmin have a strong hitbox for step 1, a very weak hitbox for step 2, and an extremely weak (like a nudge) hitbox for step 3. In other words, flowered pikmin would have a hitbox from when they're first tossed forwards until landing on the main platform. Note: for steps 2 and 3, only the flower contains a hitbox, the pikmin's body does not. Also, while I'm not entirely sure, it'd be my guess that budded pikmin would have hitboxes at steps 1 AND 2 but NOT 3.
I'm keeping an eye out, but so far as I can tell this is the only difference the budding process has on pikmin.
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03-10-08
=> Tether hogging: Not an official name, I'll just wait for someone else to come up with a better one. Basically, the tether recoveries occupy ledge. If your pikmin chain is attatched to the ledge then your opponent cannot grab it. This is really nifty as most characters, even with a ledge roll, are very hard to ledgehog against in Brawl as compared to Melee. With Olimar, if you just run off the stage (w/out hugging) and upB near your max chain length, you can hang safely beneath the stage while your opponent fails to grab ledge. I think it's kinda funny how something that used to be a complete disadvantage now has a slight advantageous property to it. So yeah...nobody's gonna notice that I added this in but I'll probably be linking it once I find that someone else has mentioned it.
=> Textbook Combo: Cheers to TextbookNinja for this one. From what I've heard, this is a highly situational combo (resulting from specific pikmin order and opponent's DI), but it's the first true 0-death I've seen in Brawl so that's quite a step.
=> NC-Echo: He's been doing this staple combo that is still unnamed so far as I know. Basically it's a Dthrow->Usmash->Uair combo and, depending on the pikmin used, it seems to work anywhere from zero until about sixty percent damage (sometimes more or less depending on the character you're fighting).
In regards to what I'd said earlier about hierarchies, I've found they're slightly different in Brawl. Aerial attacks seem to clank (cancel eachother out) just like any other attack, contrary to Melee where aerials couldn't clank.
Some attacks in Brawl auto-cancel, but I'm not sure of which ones right now. I'll be experimenting with Olimar to see if I can find out which of his do, but it'll be a slow process I'm sure.
DI:
From what I've seen so far, Olimar should always be DIing away from his opponent. DIing away prevents your opponent from persuing. Once your percent increases then it's your call which way to DI.
Comboing:
If your attack won't kill your opponent, choose a weaker one. This is a general principle that carries over from my Melee experience and I'm sure many pros would agree with me here. Basically here's the theory explained: if your move wouldn't kill, choosing a weaker move instead will allow you to follow up with another move, thereby increasing the total damage you can deal. If you then follow up with a weak move as well, you may get a chance to deal even more damage. As an example, with Falcon in Melee, it'd be better to shfflDair a sleeping Jigglypuff because it could lead to an Uair which could then lead to a sweetspotted Fair. The suggested combo (18 + 11 + 16 = 45%) is certainly much better than an embarrassing Falcon Punch (26%), wouldn't you agree?
With Olimar it's no different. If your opponent is at 70% (too low even for a purple Dsmash KO), you could instead Dtilt->Utilt->Uair combo. The Dsmash (which would do no more than 20%) can't kill so you might as well combo (Uair does about 20% on its own).
The only exception to this rule is if the strong attack could set up for a kill. With Melee Marth, smash attacks were recommended because missing a sweetspot at 40% could result in a tippered death for most characters. However in Brawl, with the super-buffed recoveries and auto-sweetspots, kill setups are far more difficult and I find it generally better to just increase damage so that you can have a chance at that Dsmash KO next time.
One thing that I've found interesting: if you Fthrow/Dthrow (low/high damage), you can usually connect with an upB if your chain is long enough. This has a specific damage range and DI dependency that makes it a true combo, but it's one more thing you can throw into your bag of tricks that your opponent must watch out for. I do it out of a full dash and my friends, usually waiting for an aerial, are caught off guard.
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02-04-08
Pikmin and Olimar:
Denounced (assumably by Sakurai) on the Dojo as a character who is 'geared towards advanced players, he will take practice to master'. The more I play as Olimar, the less accurate I find this statement to be. Who knows...I've spent literally the whole of last month watching match after match of Olimar playing so the character just makes sense to me. I'd hope it's the same for anyone else in this thread, though my friends tell me Olimar's dang hard to fight against. He just seems like a n00b character to me right now--only time will tell.
Recovery:
Olimar's upB can be edgehogged. If your opponent is holding edge than the chain shoots out at its default 45 degree angle, and it won't latch on even if it hits the edge. There's not much of a defense against this. Throwing purple pikmin can knock your opponent off the edge or prevent them from ever reaching it; you can use an aerial to try and knock your opponent off; the upB has a bit of a jump to it. Basically, for the last method, you're playing like Melee Falcon: always fullDI towards the stage no matter what, be ready to DI properly if your opponent attacks while you're in midair.
Pikmin Camping:
Often considered one of Olimar's staples, it's my opinion that the pikmin toss should be used sparingly. Good opponents will quickly learn that Olimar needs to be pressured in order to slowly decrease his supply of pikmin, and thus you're only making things worse for yourself if you'd willingly throw them where they can be killed.
There is an interesting point to all of this, though. If you throw one at your opponent, especially if it's a white, your opponent may choose to ignore it or attack it off. Option one results in the battle continuing with you taking the next possible free second to replace that lost pikmin. If your opponent decides they're going to attack it off well...let's just pray you were spacing correctly. If you were, you'd be nearby enough to launch either a running attack or a grab during your opponent's attack lag. Basically, your opponent attacking 'should' be giving you a free attack if you were spacing correctly.
Some characters playstyles naturally do better against others. Hierarchies in the would of Smash might include:
Projectile > Disjointed > Close
Grab > Physical > Aerial
Offense > Defense > Strategy > Offense ...(cyclic)
Gimpyfish has a respectable low-tier mentality, so I figured if I'm going to talk about strengths vs weaknesses in balancing, and if I'm going to run around this community preaching Gimpy's teachings, that I might as well direct you to some of his videos.
Accept Your Character's Weaknesses. This is a big one, 'specially since we may be doing that with Olimar's recovery very soon.
Art of Counter-picking Stages. Some people were suggesting counter-picking as a way around the recovery issue. Whether it's a stage with multiple edges to give you a recovery or one with no ledges to ruin your opponents (thus making you two equal in that regard), I figured this video would have something for someone.
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Resume:
-watched every Olimar video on Ytube in the five weeks between the Japanese and Americas release
-GameStop tournament on b-day (3/9/08)
-OBC Beta pools (3/14/08; 4-5)
-OBC Beta bracket (3/15/08; 0-2; stupid Smash Balls)
-OBC Main Event 1 pools (3/21/08; 6-1)
This thread serves only a slightly greater purpose (I've actually played the game now so my thoughts are more valid) than it used to. I wanted somewhere to write down what I know, a PaO blog or journal, if you will. I'm familiar with several of the good Olimar players and their work (AaronS, NC-Echo, DSF, and a little bit of TextbookNinja), and any information any of them has to offer is probably better than mine is (though I do hope to distinguish myself among them someday).
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04-06-08
Wow, it's been a while since I've updated. Worked almost fifty hours last week so I haven't had the time/energy for Brawl. Kinda running low on discoveries anyway.
Olimar seems to be able to chain juggle most if not all heavy characters at low percents with his Uthrow (unless you get a purple). Even with blues, I seemed to be able to grab, Uthrow, step forwards (literally one step), repeat. Depending on the character, you can get fifteen to thirty damage right away. It's an excellent way to start off the stock.
Olimar ***** Ike, lol. OverB completely stuffs his recovery, Ike is deathly slow and overly outranged. He must approach but he's bad at it...overB/Fair are his best options and Olimar can beat both of those...just seems like Ike is at odds in this matchup.
Purples are overrated. I can Uthrow kill with them, and occasionally I'll overB edgeguard with one but it almost never kills. Don't really see a use for them. Yellows and Blues all the way!
Got an OBC event this coming Friday, hopefully that'll go well. I'm also debating buying a Dazzle setup after this week of work netted me 500 bucks. If ever I was in the mood for smash then I could definitely afford an external memory bank and capture card, but I'm still indecisive.
Ooh, and egruntz likes my playstyle. :3
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03-21-08
=> You can edge cancel Olimar's nB. It only gives you one pikmin, but it's much faster than stopping to do it the old way. Given the level of play everyone seems to be at right now I find it hard to believe that this is a necessity, but it may turn out to be in the coming years or even months.
=> Pressing down while dangling from the pikmin chain causes Olimar to let go and begin to fall. This has only happened to me twice so I'm not positive, but I believe you can still regrab ledge if you're close enough to it.
=> Today I canceled out Zelda's entire Fsmash with the whistle armor. This was a shock to me because I had thought multi-hit attacks were immune to the whistle armor's effect. I'll be sure to update once I've got a more definitive answer.
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03-19-08
=> I started thinking about something only because of a thread Egruntz made about counterpicking stages with Olimar: what blast zones are advantagous to Olimar. This stems from something that I was forced to learn as a Samus main in Melee, which is to allow yourself your own advantages, and make your disadvantages felt by your opponent if possible. For example: Melee Marth can edgeguard anyone with ease. A practical solution to this problem is to take him to Mute City, a stage which doesn't have a ledge thereby emphasizing his own horrible recovery. If you make your weakness (difficulty in recovering) into his as well, it makes the match more fair. If you've got a Fox that keeps killing you off the top then take him to Dreamland64 or Kongo Jungle 64. With Samus, the idea was to pick a stage that was as large as possible. On Dreamland64, for example, Samus would survive longer than almost every other character in the game there. Many characters could survive blows far stronger than they could recover from while Samus could easily survive to 200%. You take Samus' rediculous recovery and emphasize it, letting you use the full force of your advantage while your opponent doesn't get any added benefit.
For Brawl, Olimar's at a serious disadvantage if he ever needs to use his upB. So what do you think the solution is? Pick a stage that hurts other characters' upBs as well. Let's say you pick Battlefield. Most of your recoveries may still involve the upB, but the blast zones are small enough where most of the hits that you actually survive will not require use of the upB to recover, which in turn suggests that most other characters in the game will not need their upBs. In effect, it's buffing the recovery of every character. Once you are no longer forced into needing your upB to recover, it makes the disadvantage that Olimar's upB gives you much less significant towards the outcome of the match.
=> I was messing around in the practice stage a couple days ago. Nothing ground-breaking, but I believe it's stuff that I'd meant to cover so might as well.
The yellow pikmin don't fly further. They might fly a longer arc, but I tested throw lengths and they actually travel less distance than red/blue pikmin do.
Olimar doesn't have a single aerial attack which auto-cancels lag, unlike other characters (Mario and his Uair for example). I don't know how significant that is.
I was messing around with the whistle. Reds and yellows were lining up in flower/bud/leaf order while blues lined up in leaf/bud/flower order. I have no idea why this might be the case, but it was happening to me every time.
Olimar's Uair can strike grounded opponents if you time it correctly, the intention being to hit with only the last hit as it sets up the opponent for a follow-up aerial/Usmash, depending on percentage.
The only attack which does not cycle pikmin order is the upB.
=> Recently I've been recording select matches via VHS. If I can find a way to copy any of the data from these to a video file then I might be able to get some matches online, which would be pretty boss.
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03-16-08
The brackets were a flop. Most people didn't show for their matches and at least half a dozen people were getting byes on the first round, some for the first two rounds. I got to play exactly one best of three in round one with the moderator who wound up placing first in the tournament (and I narrowly lost so that's cool).
I don't recall the technical term for this technique, but it's basically shield canceled dashing. Think CCdashing in Melee and you've got the basic idea. If at first you don't see a use for this technique then you need only look a little harder, for it's one of the greater spacing tools at your disposal in Brawl. Remember how you could dash dance in Melee? In Brawl, you can run in any direction as far as you choose, then click-and-release the shield button and start dashing in the opposite direction mere frames later. I find this works best for spacing aerials and getting your grab off, but whatever you plan to use it for is fine.
Speaking of shield techniques, I suggest that anyone reading this switch their control scheme up so that they do not have a "grab" button. Grabbing can be done by pressing "shield + attack" so there's no need for it. Doing so will force you into a habit that you're going to need to learn at some point or another anyway, and that's shield-canceled grabs. Just like JCing grabs in Melee, SCing grabs in Brawl gives you a standing grab mid dash, a necessity in high levels of play (less lag and more range for certain characters, like with D3 and his chain grab for example). Swiching your control scheme so that you have no "grab" button will force all Melee JCers to addapt, which it's recommended that you do. Note: if for some reason you need to throw an item (banana, bomb, etc.) that can be done by means of the same grabbing alternative, L/R+A (or whatever it is for your control scheme).
WBing (wave-bounching) was introduced recently. Though I haven't gotten the urge to try it out yet, I'm not particularly excited about it either. The only way I could see it being used is if someone figures out that you can gain horizontal recovery distance by up/downBing with the Cstick as opposed to the control stick, which I doubt is the case but at this point it's still up in the air. Either way, I can't see his pikmin spamming ability being benefited by WBing so it's really up to his limited/gimpable recovery to determine whether or not WBing will be Olimar's MST.
Some stuff from the past:
=> I had a battle on Frigate Orpheon where I appeared on the cloud (from after death) just before the stage's siren sounded. When the stage flipped, I appeared beneath the stage and couldn't recover. Some characters could have recovered from directly beneath Frigate Orpheon, but not a pikminless Olimar.
Anyway, if this little inconvenience happens in any manner of tournament then the stage will probably face banning, but not right now.
=> Ever since the NWT, I've been saying that MK would be low-tier for various reasons. Of course nobody back then believed me, and few would believe me now, but I'm just waiting for it to happen. I'm also interested to see if Ivysaur winds up being top tier, since that's something I'd claimed about two weeks before the Japanese release. I don't know exactly when, but it was the day following that '% needed to die from the center of FD from Mario's Fsmash' weight list came out.
Cool so uh...that's all I've got for now. More thoughts/impressions whenever they pop into my head. Later<
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03-15-08
OK, so I just got my first tournament experience with the good captain and I figured that now would be a good time for a journal entry. What I did today was just pools (OnlineBrawlCommunity, check it out sometime). I went 4-5 in that, and managed to claim two victories later in friendlies over two of the people who had beaten me in pools so that's cool.
First the recovery. I've found that even though people do know about gimping the recovery, it tends to not happen until I'm at at least 110%, so it's not so much a gimp as people tended to think originally. Just remember to always recover high, remember that you've always got the extra jump of the upB to clear an attack, remember about whistle armor, and remember that you've got to press the triggers until they click in order to air-dodge. Recovering high decreases the chance that you're knocked back away from the stage (at which point you'd almost certainly die). I was even managing to excede percents of 160, 180, even 200 against some characters (like Lucario for example).
Pikmin toss owns projectiles. I was fighting a Lucario with a strong aura (about 150%) and he shot a fully charged aura sphere in my direction just as I was throwing a blue pikmin. The ball collided with the pikmin, the pikmin fell to the ground, stood up, shook itself off, and ran back to join me. After that (seeing how it didn't die) I started using pikmin toss any time the Lucario used an aura sphere of any charge level, and every time it was absorbed. The only thing you must watch out for is that yellow pikmin arc and can be easily tossed over the projectile in question if you're not being careful.
Remember that the stong part of Olimar's Dsmash and Fsmash is closest to his body, and if you're going for the kill move that you should try to position yourself as such. There's a HUGE difference between parts of the attack--a Pit may be killed by a 'sweetspotted' Dsmash as early as 110% and survive a normal one at +150%.
Be careful about in-game habits. Some players will keep their back to you while preparing to charge, some may favor walking over dashing when they're looking to unload a smash attack, some players will even show by means of their 'approach' whether they intend to recover high or low, or whether they intend to edgeguard or edgehog. Everyone has habits--it's like a poker game--but you must learn to disguise them.
Don't spam pikmin toss. It's a horrible move. Good opponents are going to keep pressure on you, and any pikmin lost is a pikmin you're going to regret losing. Your opponent should be thanking you that you're so cooperative if you're going to overB spam.
After the tournament, I did some friendlies with a Sonic player and wow was that ever an adventure. Sonic's speed makes the precision of Olimar's weak aerial game all the more difficult, and Olimar's ground attacks are just a bit too lagy to use against the rapid approaches of Sonic. What I have found is that the Nair's priority will over-ride most anything that Sonic tries to do, and it just so happens to be a decent setup move as well. Sticking a pikmin to Sonic automatically locks up his spin attacks (besides Dsmash) as far as I've seen. Although using the pikmin toss is not recommended, it's neigh impossible for Olimar to approach most characters, let alone one five times faster than he is. If it is necessary for you to approach then Dair is your friend. It's go the lingering, sex-kick style hitbox that Melee Falco's Dair had, so you can drag it through the air where you believe Sonic will be and then try to land behind him. From behind you cannot retaliate but neither can he. All this accomplishes is getting you within smashing/aerial/grabbing range of the blue guy. Ooh, and unless you get the spacing perfectly, Sonic's Dair will always go through Olimar's Uair. Best defense against a Dair is a shield canceled grab, not a shield grab.
Hopefully I made brackets for this tournament, and if I did then expect more on Olimar then. Else wait until the actual tournament next weekend. : )
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03-12-08
=> The first stage I was able to do this on was Luigi's Mansion, but it's easy to see that it would work on most any stage. Remember how with Shiek/Link in Melee. if you ran towards the edge and right as your character hit the teetering animation, if you upBed then you'd 'slide' off of the edge? For Link this meant canceling out the upB for a quick edgehog, for Shiek it meant some invincibility frames followed by ony the teleporting jump of her upB. In Brawl, Olimar can do this as well. In mid-run just as his toes reach the edge, upB, and DI back towards the ledge as you slide. Olimar will shoot his chain at the default 45 degrees, then fall onto the ledge. You can shoot the chain either out away from the level or towards the level (the former being slightly more difficult to perform), and either way you will slide off the stage (if done correctly) and then grab edge.
=> I've found that elemental characters tend to counter themselves while fighting PaO. For example, if I'm fighting Squirtle, chances are much greater that the blue ones survive longer than any of the other colors. As the battle progresses, the number of blues in your posession compared to those of other colors will tend to increase, meaning more and more of Squirtle's attacks will be canceled out because you are now more likely to be attacking with a blue.
=> Most people seem confused as to what the flowers atop the pikmin's heads are for. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I did come across one key difference: the Fsmash. When pikmin are thrown via Fsmash, 1) they shoot straight forwards, 2) kinda slow to a halt, 3) then gently begin their decent (not a realistic arc, just the arc they are programed to follow). So let's assume that you're tossing one of these pikmin from the left platform of Battlefield towards the center of the stage. A leaf pikmin contains a hitbox (elemental if it's red or yellow) for all of step 1 but does not contain a hitbox for steps 2 or 3 (meaning it can hurt opponents while flying forwards but not while 'frozen' and not after it begins to fall). Flower pikmin have a strong hitbox for step 1, a very weak hitbox for step 2, and an extremely weak (like a nudge) hitbox for step 3. In other words, flowered pikmin would have a hitbox from when they're first tossed forwards until landing on the main platform. Note: for steps 2 and 3, only the flower contains a hitbox, the pikmin's body does not. Also, while I'm not entirely sure, it'd be my guess that budded pikmin would have hitboxes at steps 1 AND 2 but NOT 3.
I'm keeping an eye out, but so far as I can tell this is the only difference the budding process has on pikmin.
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03-10-08
=> Tether hogging: Not an official name, I'll just wait for someone else to come up with a better one. Basically, the tether recoveries occupy ledge. If your pikmin chain is attatched to the ledge then your opponent cannot grab it. This is really nifty as most characters, even with a ledge roll, are very hard to ledgehog against in Brawl as compared to Melee. With Olimar, if you just run off the stage (w/out hugging) and upB near your max chain length, you can hang safely beneath the stage while your opponent fails to grab ledge. I think it's kinda funny how something that used to be a complete disadvantage now has a slight advantageous property to it. So yeah...nobody's gonna notice that I added this in but I'll probably be linking it once I find that someone else has mentioned it.
=> Textbook Combo: Cheers to TextbookNinja for this one. From what I've heard, this is a highly situational combo (resulting from specific pikmin order and opponent's DI), but it's the first true 0-death I've seen in Brawl so that's quite a step.
=> NC-Echo: He's been doing this staple combo that is still unnamed so far as I know. Basically it's a Dthrow->Usmash->Uair combo and, depending on the pikmin used, it seems to work anywhere from zero until about sixty percent damage (sometimes more or less depending on the character you're fighting).
In regards to what I'd said earlier about hierarchies, I've found they're slightly different in Brawl. Aerial attacks seem to clank (cancel eachother out) just like any other attack, contrary to Melee where aerials couldn't clank.
Some attacks in Brawl auto-cancel, but I'm not sure of which ones right now. I'll be experimenting with Olimar to see if I can find out which of his do, but it'll be a slow process I'm sure.
DI:
From what I've seen so far, Olimar should always be DIing away from his opponent. DIing away prevents your opponent from persuing. Once your percent increases then it's your call which way to DI.
Comboing:
If your attack won't kill your opponent, choose a weaker one. This is a general principle that carries over from my Melee experience and I'm sure many pros would agree with me here. Basically here's the theory explained: if your move wouldn't kill, choosing a weaker move instead will allow you to follow up with another move, thereby increasing the total damage you can deal. If you then follow up with a weak move as well, you may get a chance to deal even more damage. As an example, with Falcon in Melee, it'd be better to shfflDair a sleeping Jigglypuff because it could lead to an Uair which could then lead to a sweetspotted Fair. The suggested combo (18 + 11 + 16 = 45%) is certainly much better than an embarrassing Falcon Punch (26%), wouldn't you agree?
With Olimar it's no different. If your opponent is at 70% (too low even for a purple Dsmash KO), you could instead Dtilt->Utilt->Uair combo. The Dsmash (which would do no more than 20%) can't kill so you might as well combo (Uair does about 20% on its own).
The only exception to this rule is if the strong attack could set up for a kill. With Melee Marth, smash attacks were recommended because missing a sweetspot at 40% could result in a tippered death for most characters. However in Brawl, with the super-buffed recoveries and auto-sweetspots, kill setups are far more difficult and I find it generally better to just increase damage so that you can have a chance at that Dsmash KO next time.
One thing that I've found interesting: if you Fthrow/Dthrow (low/high damage), you can usually connect with an upB if your chain is long enough. This has a specific damage range and DI dependency that makes it a true combo, but it's one more thing you can throw into your bag of tricks that your opponent must watch out for. I do it out of a full dash and my friends, usually waiting for an aerial, are caught off guard.
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02-04-08
Pikmin and Olimar:
Denounced (assumably by Sakurai) on the Dojo as a character who is 'geared towards advanced players, he will take practice to master'. The more I play as Olimar, the less accurate I find this statement to be. Who knows...I've spent literally the whole of last month watching match after match of Olimar playing so the character just makes sense to me. I'd hope it's the same for anyone else in this thread, though my friends tell me Olimar's dang hard to fight against. He just seems like a n00b character to me right now--only time will tell.
Recovery:
Olimar's upB can be edgehogged. If your opponent is holding edge than the chain shoots out at its default 45 degree angle, and it won't latch on even if it hits the edge. There's not much of a defense against this. Throwing purple pikmin can knock your opponent off the edge or prevent them from ever reaching it; you can use an aerial to try and knock your opponent off; the upB has a bit of a jump to it. Basically, for the last method, you're playing like Melee Falcon: always fullDI towards the stage no matter what, be ready to DI properly if your opponent attacks while you're in midair.
Pikmin Camping:
Often considered one of Olimar's staples, it's my opinion that the pikmin toss should be used sparingly. Good opponents will quickly learn that Olimar needs to be pressured in order to slowly decrease his supply of pikmin, and thus you're only making things worse for yourself if you'd willingly throw them where they can be killed.
There is an interesting point to all of this, though. If you throw one at your opponent, especially if it's a white, your opponent may choose to ignore it or attack it off. Option one results in the battle continuing with you taking the next possible free second to replace that lost pikmin. If your opponent decides they're going to attack it off well...let's just pray you were spacing correctly. If you were, you'd be nearby enough to launch either a running attack or a grab during your opponent's attack lag. Basically, your opponent attacking 'should' be giving you a free attack if you were spacing correctly.
Some characters playstyles naturally do better against others. Hierarchies in the would of Smash might include:
Projectile > Disjointed > Close
Grab > Physical > Aerial
Offense > Defense > Strategy > Offense ...(cyclic)
Gimpyfish has a respectable low-tier mentality, so I figured if I'm going to talk about strengths vs weaknesses in balancing, and if I'm going to run around this community preaching Gimpy's teachings, that I might as well direct you to some of his videos.
Accept Your Character's Weaknesses. This is a big one, 'specially since we may be doing that with Olimar's recovery very soon.
Art of Counter-picking Stages. Some people were suggesting counter-picking as a way around the recovery issue. Whether it's a stage with multiple edges to give you a recovery or one with no ledges to ruin your opponents (thus making you two equal in that regard), I figured this video would have something for someone.
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Resume:
-watched every Olimar video on Ytube in the five weeks between the Japanese and Americas release
-GameStop tournament on b-day (3/9/08)
-OBC Beta pools (3/14/08; 4-5)
-OBC Beta bracket (3/15/08; 0-2; stupid Smash Balls)
-OBC Main Event 1 pools (3/21/08; 6-1)