Infinite Combo with Pikachu

[MrTeddyBear]

Hey guys, I just wanted to show you a recent video from My Smash Corner that shows a potential infinite with Pikachu using the Thunder Wave and Meteor Quick Attack Custom.

What do you guys think of this? Do you think that it's going to be a problem for the metagame or do you think that it will be less effective once more people learn about the combo? Personally it reminds me of the chain grabs with the Ice Climbers in Brawl in that it isn't really easy to do, but very devastating, and even though this combo can be avoided in low percents, Pikachu racks up damage so easily that it is hardly an issue with him. So I think this may soon become a pretty big problem once people know how to pull this off with consistency.

 

[ZtaG]

This will be very helpful :O

 

[Kaladin]

...But you lose actual quick attack, which is easily Pika's best tool. Idk.

 

[ZtaG]

We can use different sets, for different match ups, or adapt to find different set ups

 

[JayWon]

Jesus Christ. Pikachu's customs were already a bit broken. Now Pikachu became straight up unrepairable

 

[AncientCode42]

Okay as a Pikachu main I must practice this. lol This looks utterly broken, and I thought his customs were broken before. lol Though I'm not sure about losing the initial Quick Attack, but this does have uses in a different playstyle. So I'm going to try practicing this when I can. I use his Thunder Wave custom a lot so now I have another reason to try and practice.

Considering Pikachu's great combo game this adds a lot of how you can use him. This may take a while to practice though. This greatly not only adds more diversity to Pika's already good combo game, but that spikes adds a potential KO option. This looks great for mix up.

 

[Pikabunz]

I hope thunder wave doesn't get banned, not that I like playing with customs.

 

[Choice Scarf]

I feel like this is something that you practice against only the one character you struggle with, since the infinite appears to be very character dependent. And even then it would probably be harder against opponents who are already good at keeping Pikachu away from the point blank range necessary for it to work. I'm not going to go for it since I like QA1 and it requires I own a Wii U to practice it lol.

Also 2X2X isn't in the official custom project ruleset (most likely it would be 2321), meaning you'd have to manually customize this in tourney. So whoever wants to try mastering this, let us know if it's still worth it in a couple of months!

 

[Ogopogo]

Interesting.

probably worth learning for niche uses but nothing more than that. Meteor up-b sucks (especially since regular up-b is one of the best moves in the game) and if you let yourself get hit by the thunder shock at that close of a range you didn't lose just because of an infinite.

 

[JayWon]

I hope thunder wave doesn't get banned, not that I like playing with customs.

I only always want to play customs with Palutena, but for Pikachu, I just don't like using them. It just feels like doing crack or something and completely changes my playstyle and I just end up playing very sloppy/greedy cuz HSKB is just too good & addicting.

I won't be surprised if his customs get banned eventually. But if it does then, I hope Rosalina's customs get banned also. I feel like I'm training to get gold medal in gymnastics for the Olympics against Rosalina cuz I literally have to bend over backwards and do insane acrobatics to get close to her.

 

[Soul.]

Looks incredibly situational to me. Meteor QA sucks (is this general consensus?). Of course this thing is going to have its uses, but it just seems very situational.
Customs are full of... jank.

 

[JayWon]

Looks incredibly situational to me. Meteor QA sucks (is this general consensus?). Of course this thing is going to have its uses, but it just seems very situational.
Customs are full of... jank.

Not really situational at all. The set ups (getting hit by thunder wave) already happen naturally in the neutral relatively frequently. You're not obligated to do it infinitely forever back and forth stage. I would be more than content just getting them near the edge of the stage and finish with forward/up smash or HSB or grab. If it doesn't kill then oh well, lots of good easy damage and probably stressed the crap out of them. If it does kill then well.. Sucks for them.

But if you're priority is to do it indefinitely on guaranteed any/all characters thus need the reliance of meteor quick attack to keep it going then yes it's situational.

 

[Soul.]

I can't see anyone using Meteor QA just for this; you give up Up B 1 which is amazing and I'm not sure about Thunder Wave. It's interchangeable with Jolts and the latter is used more. How exactly can you get them near the edge?

It's things like this that make me want to not use customs at all. If you ban a certain character's custom moves, you're giving them less options than the rest of the cast. And to clarify.... no, I don't hate customs.

 

[JayWon]

How exactly can you get them near the edge?

?? Thunder wave chain them all the way to the edge as demonstrated in the video?

 

[Soul.]

And how can you expect to chain Thunder Wave.
lol I'm not going to bother with this anymore.

 

[A10theHero]

The fact that we could also go into Heavy Skull Bash after a jab lock makes this a really potent strategy. The question is now, do we want to give up the versatility of the recovery move that's super helpful on the stage as well? Probably not, but it wouldn't hurt to learn different custom sets. There's the obvious 1311 that's our go-to set and then the 2321 set that we can use for special-case scenarios (maybe difficult matchups?).

 

[JayWon]

And how can you expect to chain Thunder Wave.
lol I'm not going to bother with this anymore.

I don't quite understand what is giving you conflict. I expect to chain Thunder Wave when the opponent simply gets hit by Thunder Wave from whatever various circumstances he may get Thunder Waved in the neutral. Landing a Thunder Jolt/Wave is common and not unheard of like landing a war lock punch or something. Have you ever hit people with normal thunder jolt before? Probably right? It should be maybe a tiny bit harder than that. Did you see the video? There were a lot of examples of "set ups" but I wouldn't even call it set ups. Many of those set ups happen naturally all the time in the neutral.

I guess my "holy crap this is OP" mentality is just simply knowing the fact that this option exists and is relatively easy to pull off considering the trade off. My life does not depend on this. I won't go out of my way to pull this off. I'll play normally, and if the very common situation of my opponent getting hit by thunderwave happens around the percentages suggested and if Pikachu is in the right position to start doing this, I'll go for it and chain them across stage. I'm not too confident to turn around and go back and forth yet so I will be more than satisfied just dragging them to the end of the stage and finish with a slightly charged HSK. HSK pretty much kills at 35% on all characters at the end of the stage. No need to go back and forth tbh.

I personally am impressed/disgusted by this. This is more than good enough. But I guess from the looks of it from reading the comments others aren't that easily impressed.

 

[Thor]

Someone want to briefly explain to me why Meteor QA sucks? I'm not asking for a "It's not QA" sort of explanation, but what is the downside to it [more lag, less distance,...?]

I'm somewhat disappointed there isn't a 2321 setup, but if there's a reason Meteor QA sucks, I'll content myself with seeing about learning the first half of the lock and taking my free 20-40% into partially charged heavy skull bash at the ledge.

 

[A10theHero]

Someone want to briefly explain to me why Meteor QA sucks? I'm not asking for a "It's not QA" sort of explanation, but what is the downside to it [more lag, less distance,...?]

I'm somewhat disappointed there isn't a 2321 setup, but if there's a reason Meteor QA sucks, I'll content myself with seeing about learning the first half of the lock and taking my free 20-40% into partially charged heavy skull bash at the ledge.

I haven't used it a lot, but Meteor Quick Attack is slower and travels less distance than Pikachu's normal Quick Attack. And the startup lag is noticeably longer as well. Also, it might just be me, but it feels like inputting the second direction is slightly harder to pull off.
All in all, it kinda reminds me of Pikachu's Quick Attack from Smash 64 (with added meteor effects, obviously).

 

[Thor]

I haven't used it a lot, but Meteor Quick Attack is slower and travels less distance than Pikachu's normal Quick Attack. And the startup lag is noticeably longer as well. Also, it might just be me, but it feels like inputting the second direction is slightly harder to pull off.
All in all, it kinda reminds me of Pikachu's Quick Attack from Smash 64 (with added meteor effects, obviously).

64 QA was awesome because invincible startup and it could go super long if you did a rather easy trick with the analog stick. I doubt Meteor QA has that though.

Thanks for the quick response!

 

[A10theHero]

64 QA was awesome because invincible startup and it could go super long if you did a rather easy trick with the analog stick. I doubt Meteor QA has that though.

Thanks for the quick response!

Oh, right. The only thing I remembered from 64 Pikachu's Quick Attack is its kinda slow startup.
Glad to be of assistance!

 

[Makai Wars]

I feel like people who don't use Pikachu is like will scream and shout about how broken this is, but those who actually main/second Pikachu can tell this isn't going to work most of the time considering how easy it is to shield that move from the air and it also seems to not work on a chunk of the cast?

It's not that this is a particularly bad combo, but Meteor Quick Attack is just so.....I don't feel like it's worth it just to pull something like this off.
If someone is slow enough to get caught in TWave then you're often better off going for a grab/usmash kill than trying to whip this out is what I'm saying.

 

[A10theHero]

I feel like people who don't use Pikachu is like will scream and shout about how broken this is, but those who actually main/second Pikachu can tell this isn't going to work most of the time considering how easy it is to shield that move from the air and it also seems to not work on a chunk of the cast?

It's not that this is a particularly bad combo, but Meteor Quick Attack is just so.....I don't feel like it's worth it just to pull something like this off.
If someone is slow enough to get caught in TWave then you're often better off going for a grab/usmash kill than trying to whip this out is what I'm saying.

I think the main problem is the people who don't understand that infinites have always existed. (And then there are the anti-custom people, who are using those scrubby cries to their advantage). People who are more knowledgeable than that--even the ones who don't main or second Pikachu--understand the fact that this isn't broken.
But yeah, I think that getting that initial Thunder Wave is gonna be a little hard, especially since: 1) Shielding is a thing, 2) You have to be somewhat closer to hit them because of Thunder Wave's shorter range, and 3) They know about this infinite and will try to avoid it.
However, it does look like it can work on the majority of the cast. You just have to mix footstooling with the not-so-great Meteor Quick Attack. From what I heard, it only doesn't work on Shulk when he has Shield equipped.
At the most, this might only be a secondary custom set that I would use. Maybe just for my difficult matchups.

 

[Makai Wars]

I think the main problem is the people who don't understand that infinites have always existed. (And then there are the anti-custom people, who are using those scrubby cries to their advantage). People who are more knowledgeable than that--even the ones who don't main or second Pikachu--understand the fact that this isn't broken.
But yeah, I think that getting that initial Thunder Wave is gonna be a little hard, especially since: 1) Shielding is a thing, 2) You have to be somewhat closer to hit them because of Thunder Wave's shorter range, and 3) They know about this infinite and will try to avoid it.
However, it does look like it can work on the majority of the cast. You just have to mix footstooling with the not-so-great Meteor Quick Attack. From what I heard, it only doesn't work on Shulk when he has Shield equipped.
At the most, this might only be a secondary custom set that I would use. Maybe just for my difficult matchups.

I see what you mean! A very good post, actually.

In a way I feel this is advertised incorrectly-- instead of focusing on the 'infinite' part, it would've been better to show ways to land the first TWave and what percents the cast needs to be for you to finish off a chain of 2/3 Twaves with an F/Usmash.

Chaining a few Thunder Waves sounds useful, plus when you cut out the infinite part you also remove the need to get Meteor Quick Attack. That being said, I think the infinite is silly and overly complex and we should just try to stick small chains which are super flashy in their own right and style is why people play Pikachu in the first place

 

[A10theHero]

I see what you mean! A very good post, actually.

In a way I feel this is advertised incorrectly-- instead of focusing on the 'infinite' part, it would've been better to show ways to land the first TWave and what percents the cast needs to be for you to finish off a chain of 2/3 Twaves with an F/Usmash.

Chaining a few Thunder Waves sounds useful, plus when you cut out the infinite part you also remove the need to get Meteor Quick Attack. That being said, I think the infinite is silly and overly complex and we should just try to stick small chains which are super flashy in their own right and style is why people play Pikachu in the first place

Yeah, I see what you mean. I agree that just because it's called an infinite doesn't mean that you should chain it as much as possible and bring in Meteor Quick Attack. From the video, it looked like you could do at least 30% damage before some of the characters could start teching. This still needs to be tested, but we should see how much can be done to each character without the need for replacing Quick Attack. I would still like footstooling though, but only to follow it up with a jab lock and Heavy Skull Bash.

 

[Uncle Honey]

Seems good up until 60%-80% because by then I'm sure skull bash should be able to kill anyone after a thunder wave.