New to Pika, new to Brawl. Plz help!

[leekslap]

So after 2 years of neglecting Brawl, I've gotten back into it. I tried the whole cast and two characters really spoke to me: of course, Pikachu and also Pit. I've chosen Pikachu because he's higher on the tier list and he has slightly more offensive playstyle and techniques. I've tried to experiment as much as I can and I figured out up air juggles, properly using Thunder, fox trot movement, and even QAC! I also figured out that you can jump out of QAC. Anything else I should know? Combos, the neutral, edgeguarding with anything other than Thunder, and DACUS are all things I want to understand. I know Brawl is a very read based game, so me being very good at that helped a little.

 

[KVLTofMetal]

I recommend going to the pikachu boards and reading the Pika guides first. And then go look up some good Pikachus. Esam is a great example. I don't know jack about Pikachu but that's a good place to start

 

[Tagxy]

So after 2 years of neglecting Brawl, I've gotten back into it. I tried the whole cast and two characters really spoke to me: of course, Pikachu and also Pit. I've chosen Pikachu because he's higher on the tier list and he has slightly more offensive playstyle and techniques. I've tried to experiment as much as I can and I figured out up air juggles, properly using Thunder, fox trot movement, and even QAC! I also figured out that you can jump out of QAC. Anything else I should know? Combos, the neutral, edgeguarding with anything other than Thunder, and DACUS are all things I want to understand. I know Brawl is a very read based game, so me being very good at that helped a little.

Very cool. I would definitely suggest looking at the Generating a Win guide below even if its a bit old, as well as "The pokelab" thread, the Q&A thread, and the MU chart thread under Brawl competitive discussion. All good sources of info for starting out!

 

[Thor]

If you're playing to win in tournaments and whatnot, definitely find the thread that explains the dthrow CG in detail, and look up the fthrow CGs as well. The characters you should be confident in dthrow CGing are MK, Snake, and Falco, and being reasonably familiar with the fthrow CG is a good idea as well (Except against Marth and I think MK, fthrow -> usmash works on basically everyone at 0%, and that's a free 23% off a grab, which is very solid and can be followed further if you can read them after the usmash - though against most, you should do more fthrows).

None of this, of course, is meant to distract you from strong fundamentals, but if you want to maximize your wins in the early going, being able to CG will help you do that. That said, it's definitely not a terrible idea to ignore the CGs at first - you can learn and apply them later when you have better MU knowledge, and this will also probably help you avoid fishing for grabs (which can occur when you know the CG and almost nothing else).