Doctor X
Smash Lord
So I've been thinking about writing a guide for a while, and keep putting off starting it so I figure I'll lay the foundations now.
Let me start off by saying that this guide is not intended to usurp/ignore the helpful people who already exist on the Pit boards. The Ultimate Pit Guide already exists, I know, but I want to focus on specifics in what to do and when-- situations, reactions, etc.
I will also note that one of the problems with the Pit boards is that there's not a lot of meaningful consensus and discussion can get overcrowded with ideas, some of which are good, some of which aren't. I'm willing to take input, but in order to keep things focused I'm not including anything until it has been subjected to the rigors of regional-level or higher tournament play and discussed at length with me personally (to avoid clutter send me PM's first please, and if needed we can move the discussion to the thread).
If you did really well in a local tournament, good **** and all, but things can be a lot different when you leave your town. Sorry to say it, but If you haven't played anybody outside your town, I'm not going to be very inclined to listen to you. If you don't like that, then that's all the more reason for you to get out there and start getting involved!
As for who made me boss of all this-- cause I know some people are going to ask that-- I will admit that my tournament placings are not stellar. Not sure what my final MW circuit placing was yet but I think it will be somewhere around 15th in singles and 9th in doubles. Doubles is ranked weird around here so I'm very much not sure of that. But I do have a strong showing in pools matches, MM's, and friendlies and from time time have really close matches against people who I know are like 10x better than me. More than any of that, though, I'm willing to put in the work, and I can tell you there is going to be a lot of it. I want to share/discuss very specific knowledge about a character I feel is greatly misunderstood by a good deal of people in the smash community. I'm also looking to improve by doing lots of analysis, so we'll see how far that goes.
I don't know how good it works as a starting point, but I have to pick something first, so I'll start with something I feel is very important not only to Pit but to any character in general:
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SECTION ONE: Ground Movement
Even moreso than traditional fighters, smash is a very position-based game. We have a blanket term "spacing" that includes but is not limited to simply controlling your position. Sweetspots, disjointed hitboxes, smash DI, and tech-chases all mean that even the slightest difference in spacing can change the outcome of the game dramatically. Being able to accurately maneuver your character through all this stuff will go quite a long way. So, without even getting into Pit's own attacks just yet, I'm going to talk a bit about movement options. When I get some money I hope to eventually have some animations to demonstrate this stuff like the Ultimate Pit Guide thread has for individual attacks.
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Section Two: Aerial Movement.
This is a pretty big deal, as well, and for the same reasons ground movement is important.Aerial spacing is particularly key for Pit because his best kill move (back-air) is an aerial move, and he doesn't have quite as much priority as you might think. Random nairs that go through basically everything regardless of spacing is really more of a Snake thing. -.-
Pit has a whole lot of ways of moving around in the air, most of which will be discussed further in the Recovery/Edgegame section, since that's where his many options have the most utility.
Let me start off by saying that this guide is not intended to usurp/ignore the helpful people who already exist on the Pit boards. The Ultimate Pit Guide already exists, I know, but I want to focus on specifics in what to do and when-- situations, reactions, etc.
I will also note that one of the problems with the Pit boards is that there's not a lot of meaningful consensus and discussion can get overcrowded with ideas, some of which are good, some of which aren't. I'm willing to take input, but in order to keep things focused I'm not including anything until it has been subjected to the rigors of regional-level or higher tournament play and discussed at length with me personally (to avoid clutter send me PM's first please, and if needed we can move the discussion to the thread).
If you did really well in a local tournament, good **** and all, but things can be a lot different when you leave your town. Sorry to say it, but If you haven't played anybody outside your town, I'm not going to be very inclined to listen to you. If you don't like that, then that's all the more reason for you to get out there and start getting involved!
As for who made me boss of all this-- cause I know some people are going to ask that-- I will admit that my tournament placings are not stellar. Not sure what my final MW circuit placing was yet but I think it will be somewhere around 15th in singles and 9th in doubles. Doubles is ranked weird around here so I'm very much not sure of that. But I do have a strong showing in pools matches, MM's, and friendlies and from time time have really close matches against people who I know are like 10x better than me. More than any of that, though, I'm willing to put in the work, and I can tell you there is going to be a lot of it. I want to share/discuss very specific knowledge about a character I feel is greatly misunderstood by a good deal of people in the smash community. I'm also looking to improve by doing lots of analysis, so we'll see how far that goes.
I don't know how good it works as a starting point, but I have to pick something first, so I'll start with something I feel is very important not only to Pit but to any character in general:
-
SECTION ONE: Ground Movement
Even moreso than traditional fighters, smash is a very position-based game. We have a blanket term "spacing" that includes but is not limited to simply controlling your position. Sweetspots, disjointed hitboxes, smash DI, and tech-chases all mean that even the slightest difference in spacing can change the outcome of the game dramatically. Being able to accurately maneuver your character through all this stuff will go quite a long way. So, without even getting into Pit's own attacks just yet, I'm going to talk a bit about movement options. When I get some money I hope to eventually have some animations to demonstrate this stuff like the Ultimate Pit Guide thread has for individual attacks.
- Walking:
A lot of lower-level players have an tendency to overlook the utility of simply walking out of the way of an attack instead of shielding, rolling, or even dashing, but it really is an invaluable skill.
How: You should already know this. >.>
Why: Shielding can be pierced with certain moves and can lead to broken shields, while dodging creates lag and lasts a specific amount of time. Dashing creates lots of distance between you and your opponent, but sometimes you only want to create just enough distance so that his attack will miss and you can punish him. For this, you walk. Plus you can avoid tripping at really inopportune moments.
When: I'd try to make a list of situations where this is a good idea, but it would go on forever. You want this to be your main way of dealing with an approach, saving dashes, shields, and rolls for all-out rushes like snake's dash attack/mortar slide or MK's tornado.
-Related Technique: Pivot Slide
Pit has the fortunate quality of sliding a little bit whenever he turns with his forward momentum-- in other words he can pivot slide. Combined with walking, you have some very powerful and unpredictable spacing tools. Some of you may know this as part of the "angelic step" that UndrDog invented, but it works just fine without the spot-dodge.
How: While walking forward, you press back very slightly, then start walking forward again. The distance you slide will differ based on how fast you're moving before the pivot and how long you wait between directional changes (there's a very small window, however).
Why: Similar to dash-dancing from Melee, though a bit less effective, this movement can be very difficult to predict an can be used to approach or move away with very little visual indication as to which. Use it to manipulate your opponent, dancing around the edge of his attack range to draw out punishable responses.
When: Works wonders against Marth's fsmash, Snake's ftilt, most smash attacks. Some players will fall for it more than others so you want to be able to adapt your use of it to suit your needs. - Dashing:
A lot of players dash almost everywhere they go, which is a pretty big downfall because it has a lot of drawbacks. This absolutely doesn't mean you should never dash, but understand that dashing is not always or even usually better than walking.
How: Again, you should already know this. <,<
Why: Even with the trip chance and the limitations it puts on your options, it's still generally better to get away from an attack than to shield it or spot dodge it. Also people naturally tend to expect attacks whenever you dash towards them, so it also has its uses in terms of manipulating people.
When: Again, there would be a long list if I actually made a list. Defensively, it's your backup option for when walking away from an approach just isn't fast enough. Offensively, you'll always want to be ready to cancel your dash in some way because Pit's dash grab and dash attack both suck really bad as approaches. One way of doing this is to simply let go of the dash, though this comes with some lag. Other techniques for doing this will be discussed below.
-Related Technique: Shield-Cancel
Shielding ends your dash. This is useful for almost every character in the game, and no less so with Pit. Since his grab range sucks, you don't want to dash grab usually. Shield-cancel into grab is more helpful.
How: Shield while running. Drop your shield as soon as you possibly can if your opponent isn't hitting it. You can lead into a dodge, grab, or drop your shield into any attack. You can also drop your shield into another dash, continuing in the same direction or doubling back in the opposite. If you time the shield perfectly (powershield), you can utilize the slide that occurs during the shield to quickly punish just about any move in the game, so this is definitely something you want to practice.
Why: Like pivot-sliding, this can make your movements very unpredictable. Using it a lot will keep your opponent guessing because it's as much an offensive move as it is defensive.
When: Almost always. This should be your main way of getting out of a dash.
-Related Technique: Wingdash (ADVANCED)
Ok, this one brings up a lot of "WTF's" among untrained eyes, I realize, but whether you believe it or not wingdashing is very useful. Watch my videos, Sage's videos, Rogue's videos... anybody good, really. I've lost count of how many times I've needed to explain it, and I think I understand why... It's just irritating.
I will say, however, that this is not something a new player should focus on learning. This has been said before and remains true. It requires a lot of experience to apply correctly. When we say "advanced technique" we mean "stuff you should worry about later" not "stuff you should try doing right away so everyone will think you're a super cool guy." Believe me, it's not so important that you cannot be good with Pit if you don't do it.
How: So what you do is jump, then open your Wings of Icarus (up B) before you leave the ground completely. You then perform a down-air (easiest if you use the c-stick), which cancels the wings and cancels itself on the ground with zero lag. During this you have the option of moving left or right slightly, and as long as you initiate the wings close enough to the ground you'll immediately renew them, so getting hit won't kill you.
There is some amount of leeway in how long you wait to perform each part of the move. Varying the timing of the dair can be used to adjust the distance you move a bit, but you have to be careful not to wait too long or the wings will finish opening and change the move properties up a bit, making it harder to cancel. If you wait a little bit to start the wings, you can perform a sort of "wing triangle jump" which may throw your opponent off, but if you go too high for too long you risk getting hit without regaining your up-B, which is probably the worst thing you could possibly do.
You need to be able to do this all in one fluid motion, and you need to be good enough at it to not mess up because it can really screw you over if you do. Don't bother otherwise. It will hurt your game a lot if you're doing it wrong.
Why: The applications are a bit nebulous and require a lot of experimentation to really get down-- this is why I would call it an advanced technique-- but if you played Melee and used wavedashes well-- key word here being "well"-- you're already 90% there. It's almost the exact same thing, just a little more awkward to execute.
First and foremost, it can be used to cancel a dash, which is why I'm including it as related to "dashing" for now. This is invaluable. In Melee you might have seen players, in addition to dash dancing (which is not really possible anymore), cancel their dash and double back simultaneously by wavedashing. I think CunningKitsune called it "pulse walking" or something weird like that in his Fox guide, I don't think the term ever caught on. This is the same thing. It's faster than shield-canceling and safer than jumping, and it also gives you a couple other benefits.
Second, it allows you to basically shorten the height of Pit's jumps to any height you require provided you have a surface to end it on, just like wavelanding from melee. To do this, you wait until you reach the surface you wish to jump to before opening your wings, but otherwise it works the same way. Use it to move between platforms quickly or cut a ledgehop short if your opponent isn't expecting it.
Third, the wind push effect is capable of parrying some attacks and can really mess up a player's spacing by putting him a bit farther from you than he expects. Be careful with this, as it's not nearly as reliable as other methods of defending yourself, but it has it's place.
Fourth, it also auto-catches item projectiles. This is pretty tough to do and requires some practice but seeing as Pit has a ridiculous glide toss (described later) it's pretty worthwhile to be able to catch things.
When: Snake's dash attack, Meta's dash attack, Rob's gyro, G&W's smashes, charged smashes in general, non-tether grabs, and fakeouts like crazy. Use it as a mixup with dashing away into turning arrows and your opponent will be afraid to chase you. If you knock someone way above a platform they tend to decide whether or not to land on it based on what you're doing, so if you dash underneath it, they'll often try not to land on it, allowing you to wingdash back and catch them off guard. It can also help a lot when edgeguarding because you can make your opponent think you're running to the other side of the stage and they'll think it's safe to try to come up when it's really not.
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Section Two: Aerial Movement.
This is a pretty big deal, as well, and for the same reasons ground movement is important.Aerial spacing is particularly key for Pit because his best kill move (back-air) is an aerial move, and he doesn't have quite as much priority as you might think. Random nairs that go through basically everything regardless of spacing is really more of a Snake thing. -.-
Pit has a whole lot of ways of moving around in the air, most of which will be discussed further in the Recovery/Edgegame section, since that's where his many options have the most utility.
- Air Jumps:
Pit has three aerial jumps, one less than Metaknight, two more than most characters. Unlike MK, however, you absolutely need these for your recovery. Always keep track of how many you've used, and be very, very careful about using the last one. Getting hit between your third jump and landing is a great way to lose stocks.
How: Press the jump button. I'm wondering if I should just start skipping this whole "how" bit for a lot of these. >.>
Why: Vertical spacing is no less important than horizontal, but it is much more limited. Air jumps are your only safe way of gaining height once you're already in the air, and the safest way of delaying above your opponent, which can provoke punishable attacks and trick your opponent into letting his shield run out, allowing you to poke through when you do decide to attack.
- Gliding:
Pit's Glide is really about the same as Meta's. The only difference is he generally needs it to safely recover while MK still has like five other options without it.
How: Use an air jump but continue holding the button to initiate a glide, and you control your speed and vertical movement with the control stick. If you smash the control stick down at the right moment during the initiation, Pit will fall slightly as the glide begins. This is generally known as a "glide shift" and can be useful from time to time for throwing your opponent off, but more often than not won't accomplish much. If you pull up enough to stop your forward movement, you'll cancel the glide without too much lag. If you glide on your third jump, however, you'll go into fallspecial (the flashing "oh noes!" state where you can do nothing but fall, not even airdodge-- something you generally want to avoid, and Pit really has no reason to ever enter it unless you mess up).
Why: When Gliding, you're capable of moving very quickly both horizontally and vertically, and you can vary your speed as needed by pulling up or diving. This is useful both as an unpredictable approach and for recovery. It also gives you access to Pit's glide attack, which is one of the more decent vertical KO moves in the game.
When: Gliding makes you vulnerable to large, fast, and/or high-priority hitboxes (MK's shuttle loop being a major example of all three here and generally the bane of Pit's existence, along with G&W's stupid fair) because you cannot airdodge without first cancelling the glide. Couple this with the limitation of only being able to glide once before landing or grabbing an edge, and this becomes something you need to learn to use wisely. If getting knocked out of this doesn't kill you outright, follow up gimps when you're forced to use your Wings of Icarus probably will. So don't let this happen, and always play it safe with your glides, especially against MK, G&W, and Marth.
- Wings Of Icarus:
One if this character's most important and defining features, Wings of Icarus (WoI) is very much a move of extremes. It gets you far more distance with far less predictability than just about anything else, but unlike every other up-B, you do not regain it upon getting hit. You do, however, lose all of your air jumps when you initiate it as normal. There are a lot of little exceptions to this rule which I will explain in further detail here in a bit, but the main thing you should remember-- getting hit after initiating your WoI is the worst thing you can possibly have happen in a game, barring outright self-destructs. Your opponent can take a stock at *any* percent with *any* move if you give them the chance, so be very, very careful with this move. Read the following and note it well. It's one of the most important things for a new Pit player to focus on.
How: Press up-B and move around. Seems pretty simplistic on the outside, but this thing is a lot more complicated than meets the eye. First of all, it has two separate starting animations with unique properties-- one in the air which is faster, and one on the ground which forces Pit to spend some time launching himself into the air-- and if Pit is hit out of either of these animations before they're completed, it's not counted against you. In other words, you don't lose any of your jumps and can use WoI again. These opening animations also cause Pit to automatically catch come projectiles, and create a circular gust box all around Pit that pushes physical things away, including other characters. I'm unsure if there's any difference between the grounded and aerial gust boxes, so if anybody has any information on that I'd be happy to discuss it.
The physics for WoI are very strange, even for smash. It'd be a misnomer to even call what it exhibits "physics." It's more like some crazy bizarro-world half-physics with random loopholes. Before I get into the specifics, it's important to realize that vertical and horizontal inputs are independent-- when I say "up," for example, I don't mean exactly up. Any direction that has an upward component (even slightly above horizontal) will do.
First off, if you used the aerial opening, you can input an "initial direction" by quickly holding left, right, or down after pressing up-B (think of it like aiming Wolf's up-B, except hitting up doesn't do anything). Momentum will be conserved only in directions that match up with this initial direction. In other words, unless you're in the air already moving left, right, or down and holding that direction, Pit will come out of the opening animation at a dead stop.
Following the opening animation, Pit will move wherever you tell him to and will stop instantly if you input a direction opposite to that, but it still takes him a while to build up speed in his new direction (basically inertia only applies for speeding up, not for slowing down). Building upward speed takes a lot longer. If you let go of the stick, he will continue in the last direction you input for a short while, coming to a gradual stop as he does so.
Pit will also allow himself to fall, slowing his descent gradually as he does so, until you input some vertical direction (your "initial direction" from the starting animation not included). Once you give him some vertical input, he'll basically behave independently of gravity until you let go of the stick, at which point he'll do the usual thing of coming to a gradual stop, then falling.
Some illustrations:
All of these are assuming Pit is in the air when he opens his wings. The white arrow indicates his direction before opening them, while the red arrow indicates any "initial direction." The green arrows show controller inputs following the opening animation (with "O's" indicate letting go of the stick) and the blue arrows indicate Pit's path in reaction to those inputs (with slowed horizontal movement highlighted in orange).
A. Up-B then holding due right the whole way. The "initial direction" means Pit's moving at full speed when the wings come out, and because there's no upward input, he naturally falls as he moves to the right.
B. Up-B then pressing up and right slightly, and holding due right, and letting go of the stick. The initial direction starts him off at full speed while the short upward input counteracts his natural tendency to fall, so the following due right input causes him to move straight to the right. When the stick is let go, his movement slowly dies off and then he begins to fall.
C. Up-B then holding diagonally up and to the right for a while, and letting go of the stick. The initial direction has him start at full horizontal speed, but because upward momentum stops it takes him a while to build up his vertical climb, causing the curve you see. When the stick is released he continues diagonally up and to the right, slowing down as he does so, and begins falling when he stops.
D. Up-B, waiting for the wings to open, then pressing up and right slightly, then holding due right. This is similar to B, but because the initial direction was pointing up (which does nothing) or doesn't agree with his momentum, Pit starts off at a standstill and thus takes a bit to build up his full horizontal speed.
Yeah... I hope this all makes sense to somebody. I spent hours trying to figure this crap out, and longer trying to put it into words. >.<
Alright, once you get to where you want to be, you've got three ways of getting out of your WoI, the first being to simply wait until it times out. This puts you into fallspecial (the "oh noes!" state again, the only other way to get into is to glide with your third air jump described earlier), and is therefore not something you ever want to do intentionally. Note, however, that this will occur much earlier than usual if you've recently performed and canceled another WoI not long before the current one (you really need to watch out for this if you use Wing Renewal described below and Wingdashing described earlier).
The second way is to attack, which puts you into a state where you can no longer jump or WoI, but you can airdodge and attack again if need be. Note that when you attack, you'll come out facing whatever direction you're pressing on the control stick, so if you want to do a back-air you have to use the c-stick. The third is to grab an edge, which is undeniably the safest option if available, since grabbing the ledge simultaneously regains your jumps, WoI, and makes you inincible for a short period of time. Even better, Pit's ledge grab range while in WoI is ridiculously long and thus gives you a pretty wide target to aim for. On some stages he can even grab it from the opposite side, causing an invincible "teleport" kind of deal that's borderline impossible to do anything about.
Why: Most of the time when you WoI to move through the air, you're doing it out of necessity because you literally have no other choice. Barring Wing Renewal (a neat trick I'll describe in a bit), it's much too risky to use otherwise, although the increased ledgegrab range and momentum manipulation give it some less obvious uses than simply moving through the air.
When: Recovery, of course, useful in any matchup on any stage as long as you know when to use it and where to go when you do use it. This is stage and matchup specific and I'll discuss it more at length in a later section. Also, when you're in range of an edge, you can open them so that they immediately cancel and stick you on the edge much more quickly. There's really not as much risk in doing this as you might think, because even if the opponent hits you before you grab the edge (incredibly unlikely) they'll only be hitting you out of the opening animation which won't kill you any worse than getting hit normally would. Do be extra careful not to mess this up, though. Learn the ranges in friendlies before you try it in any serious matches.
Oh, when you want to start your wings on the ground (not sure why you'd want to beyond Wing Renewal below), jumping and *then* opening them is always better. Never do the grounded wing opening. Ever. It sucks. I can't think of a single reason why you'd want to do it. If anybody else knows one, I'd be happy to discuss it. >.>
-Related Technique: Wing Renewal
As if WoI wasn't complicated enough already, let's add in one more little loophole. If Pit's feet touch the ground at any point during your WoI, it counts as touching the ground normally for the purposes of regaining your jumps and everything. Basically, this is your way of getting past that annoying limitation of dying whenever you try to use your WoI to approach anybody. Unless you cancel it with an attack or ledgegrab, a renewed WoI will still end in fallspecial. Be weary of this.
How: The quickest way to do this is to jump and WoI before Pit leaves the ground. You're then free to move as usual. Just make sure not to mistime it or you're done for.
Why: WoI as an approach is basically suicidal without this. Learning to Wing Renew properly gives you a whole new avenue of aerial movement.
When: With a running start, you can cover a ridiculous amount of horizontal distance very quickly with this. You can do it at much shorter notice than gliding, and it doesn't use any of your airjumps. Use it to catch people who are recovering relatively low, and pressure others into recovering higher than they might normally like. I wouldn't recommend trying to use it for vertical movement, though. It takes Pit a really long time to get moving upward, so you're usually better off simply jumping or staying on the ground.
