Has Peach always been a technical character?

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

I remember picking up Peach right away when I first got Melee because I always played as her in Kart, Party, etc. I also remember a lot of people - including the Nintendo Power Player’s Guide I think - calling her a good character for beginners because of her float recovery. Upon discovering competitive I stuck with her because her wavedash was the shortest and so I felt it was inconsequential. Again, I appreciated not having to get super-“techy”, though I remember reading some GameFAQs guides about “float cancelling” and wasn’t really sure what it was or how to use it.

I picked her up again in Smash 4 as a secondary and loved the fact that she basically refused to be KO’ed, again with her great recovery/floating technique. Eventually dropped her for multiple reasons, one of which was people saying she was a major technical character. This surprised me based on everything I thought I knew.

So now Ultimate comes and both Peach and Daisy look intriguing to me, maybe not as mains but definitely up there. I hear a lot of people saying similar stuff to Smash 4 though that they are very hard to pick up. Again, I don’t necessarily see it right now but I admittedly have a long way to go when it comes to advanced play.

What have you guys heard about the princess’ difficulty curve in this game and what would be some things for me to focus on moving forward?

 

[NeoSeth]

Peach has always been technical, if you want to master her, because of how many options she has. Her float opens up tons of possibilities that other characters simply don't have. For example, you can immediately initiate a float low to the ground to fire off aerials incredibly quickly. This is pretty integral to her gameplan. Her turnips also have a wide variety of uses and there are a variety of combos you can perform by stringing together Peach's various techniques.

I'm not particularly advanced with her just yet, but if you wanted to get started I would practice staring your float on the ground (in this game you can do it just by jumping and hitting down on the control stick at the same time) and quickly performing each of your aerials at that height. You want to practice the timing for releasing the float to make sure you end your aerial at the right time for follow-ups and maximum safety on shield. You should also practice your dash-dance and performing your tilts out of it; d-tilt out of dash dance seems like an especially powerful tool for Peach.

 

[claystate]

from a melee perspective, the "textbook" peach playstyle isn't outwardly fast/technical, but she does have one of the highest technical ceilings due to how fast her floatcancel aerials are. in competitive melee, you'll see peach bust out high apm plays in close quarters all the time, but 80% of the time they're floating and waiting/zoning at mid range or pulling turnips at long range. just my 2 cents on the matter

anyway, to answer your question - compared to most other characters, there's definitely a higher learning curve with peach just to do baseline stuff. i'm not an expert by any means, but here's some basic stuff i've found useful to practice. the goal is to establish a sense of control before moving onto trickier stuff.

• optional but recommended: map your unused shielding trigger to be a jump button instead, get used to using that as your main way of jumping
• learn to ground float (as NeoSeth said, you can just hold jump and down to do this)
• learn to control your float height precisely (hold jump, tap down at the right timing)
• during float, learn to control your left and right drift precisely
• learn to do all 5 aerials under these conditions:
  • floating aerials, falling aerials, fastfall aerials
  • at various float heights
  • at various drifts (forwards, backwards, none)
  • hitting nothing and hitting an opponent (training mode bowser locked at 0% is helpful for this)
• on the ground, learn to control your positioning precisely with your dashes; become -very- familiar with your dash's length and lag
• learn to interrupt your dash with float

hope that helps! don't be discouraged if it takes a while, you can still learn how to beat most people without any of the stuff on this list lol

 

[cot(θ)]

Another technical aspect of Peach is that she can use aerials while floating, even while holding an item. This can lead to some powerful turnip combos, especially when you cancel the float to land faster after the aerial.

 

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

I forgot to mention about ground floating. I actually learned about that through a loading screen tip in 3ds - guess those were useful for something after all - and I’ve been implementing it ever since.

Now just gotta work on my options in that state. Thanks for everybody’s help so far

 

[Praxis]

Peach has always been technical. In Melee, she was kind of a "good beginner character" because her float cancelling allowed players who struggled with L-cancelling to bypass it, so she didn't have a reputation for being technical, but at high levels she was quite complicated. Definitely a lower input rate (APM) than characters like Fox and Falco though.

But in Brawl, she was in the upper echelons of the most technical characters in the game. She had crazy ability to output damage and control space utilizing glide tossing and free pulls etc. She was super technical, but she sucked because she had no reliable way to kill people and her best kill move was also her best ranged move (forward air) and Brawl's staling system meant that if you used it a lot you couldn't kill anymore.


In Smash 4, she was considerably less technical than in Brawl, but frankly, most of the cast was. She was still among the more technical and seen as having a ton of potential via really complex footstool gimmicks, but none of them sufficient to make her top tier.