Octave's Pika (Critique)

[Octave]

Well, I'm totally new to Pikachu but with a little knowledge of the game already I feel like I'm on a fast track to getting much better. Here's the video I took last night. Make sure you read the info on the side if you hate the noise of clicking buttons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bJUNzFz6pQ

I'm open to criticism and advice, here. I got Falcons to beat, y'know.

 

[N64]

The main thing you need to work on is being more mobile. Practice dash dancing for a bit, then dash dancing into aerials, etc. Just get used to moving around a lot, pika is good at it and it makes things more difficult for your opponent.

You seem kinda new to competative smash, which is cool to see. Practice some 'basic' techniques, like dash dancing and jc usmash/grabbing. I advice watching Wak's 'Advanced How To Play' vids on youtube if you haven't already.

Those are the main things I see atm.

 

[Octave]

Yeah, I would say I'm fairly new. Not 100% up on the abbreviations yet, either

I've watched the vids before but I will again. Also, any tips on shorthopping with Pika? I feel like I really have to barely tap X and I find that sometimes I'm trying to tap so lightly I don't even press the button. Also, should i be sweetspotting the ledge on a quick attack recovery every time? I can barely do it once :[

Thanks for the reply. I'll probably practice for about a week and then post my progress or something.

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

Once your used to up-B it will be easy more so for pikachu than pichu because pf your retartedly big sweetspot compared to pichu.

Here is some easy ways to get better
When you go to running grab you can have more range and less lag by a simple tech called the jump cancel grab. All you have to do is press X(y or up will work too) and Z at the same time(or X a little bit sooner) it's pretty easy to get the timing down but if you mess up you will do a fair(forward air)

DOn't roll very much it's rarly used at higher level people like fox, falcon,luigi, and the ice climber can and will punish you if they get the chance.

Learn to watch your foe what are they doing? You can learn their habits. My brother hates fighting me a lot of times because I can F-smash in place sometimes because I know he is going to run right into it. You can get people to chase you and randomly SHFFL in place and they would run right into it. But yeah learn who your fighting habits become easy to punish.

Learn your basics it will take some time. You have to humble your self at times if you have to miuch pride and your always right this game needs you to humble your self.

 

[tdk_Samurai]

now I'm no n64, but some things I noticed

I agree with everything n64 said, I noticed sometimes you would stand still, and you should try to DD(dash dance) if you have nothing to do IMO. He also mentioned to JC(jump canceled) grab things.

About the sweetspotting and sh(shorthop) - sweet spotting is usually better because if you land on the stage, pika has some lag from up b, so your easily punished, not shiek easily, but pretty easily. But if someones holding on to the ledge, then you gotta anticipate them staying on or not, cause if they roll of or something similar, you completely miss the sweet spot and die. But basically, sweetspotting = your friend.
And the short hop thing, back when I had only been playing for a month or so, I used to practice it. Thats really all you can do is practice it, cause your muscles just have to get used to it, just a concept of muscle memory. I used to practice like 100 short hops a day when I was new, now I'm pretty concistent with short hopping IMO.

Other things I noticed -
Nice tech at 3:33 b4 I say anything and you finished that match quite strongly, you kinda froze on the edgegaurd, but that will go away, (lol I freeze on edgegaurds all the time so don't fell bad)

you thunder cancle(down b) a bit much, I think you'll find that down b is not the safest option in most cases, I'm pretty sure its really only the best possible option of all options when it follows an upsmash(Like at 2:50, a thunder coulda came out as soon as possible after that upsmash), but if I'm wrong, n64 or someone else please feel free to say so.

A couple times throughout that game, you would keep doing something and making it predictable like in the beginning, f smash got predictable, and towards the middle, you kept full hop nairing, mix it up.

And let me just say I'm pumped that so many new people are coming in here, and I'm sure n64, chad, and all the other high level pikas feel the same. Pikachu is truly going to take 2010 by storm.

also, clicking doesn't bother me, for some reason it relaxes me, guess its just my inner nerd.

 

[N64]

Yeah, I would say I'm fairly new. Not 100% up on the abbreviations yet, either

I've watched the vids before but I will again. Also, any tips on shorthopping with Pika? I feel like I really have to barely tap X and I find that sometimes I'm trying to tap so lightly I don't even press the button. Also, should i be sweetspotting the ledge on a quick attack recovery every time? I can barely do it once :[

Thanks for the reply. I'll probably practice for about a week and then post my progress or something.

You don't have to sweetspot the ledge every time for recovery, but you should be trying to get to exactly where you are trying to go every time with the upB. That is to say, you should be able to sweetspot the ledge every time if you wanted to (but actually doing so would become predictable and get you ledgehogged, so mix it up). Have good upB control : )

As far as shorthopping with pika, you can either try lightly tapping or quickly tapping. The X/Y buttons only have 'pressed' and 'not pressed' modes, so a short hop happens when it's pressed for a very short amount of time. Lightly pressing can accomplish this, because you're pressing it so close to the median that it will register being pressed for a pretty short time if you're quick and gradual. What i've seen other people do is flick their thumb across the X/Y button, fully pressing it but moving their thumb off the edge (as opposed to pulling their thumb back up) immediately after so that the button springs back to 'not pressed' with no resistance. Personally, I jump with the control stick (DON'T DO, it's a bad and limiting habit imo >_>) so I don't have much other advice on that.

GL : )

Edit: also, DownB (thunder) has very limited uses. Most commonly, it should be used after a usmash on a high percent opponent. Its next probably most common use is to make your opponent look silly by "lol you got hit by thunder". Third is limited edgeguarding uses. So yeah, probably don't use it as much except for the first reason (and third if you are really interested in exploring 'thunder walling' and other edgeguarding options with it).

 

[Octave]

@ICG - Its so difficult for me to not roll. I've been playing this game since it came out and rolling always worked I don't know how I'll break that habit..

@Samurai - Sometimes Thunder just comes out. Mostly a habit from playing Pikachu a long time ago, when people I knew ran into thunder and all I had to do was spam it. Good tiems..

Same with the techs. Once I learned how to do them there was no stoppin' me. But at 2:50, he DI's away so a thunder couldn't have come out right away. It would've whiffed.

@N64 - How do you recommend I practice Up B control? I was doing it in training at half speed and still couldn't seem to get it :/

And I'll try that shorthop trick, thanks

 

[tdk_Samurai]

yea, I know, I got my habits too, I always use to down smash if I felt pressured, and other stuff too, but I'm sure you'll rid it.

And my suggestion instead of rolling is wavedashing around, it works for me, but idk what n64 would recomend. And just keep on keepin on. glad to see more pikas.

 

[defsithe]

general comments:

the need to jump cancel them grabs was the first thing i saw.

i used to practice up-b'ing by just jumping off the and getting back from various distances and angles. (when i didnt have someone to play against) if i did have someone to play against i would just play a crap load of friendlies. also keep in mind you do not need to use both jump of the up-b, you could just go forward in some instances in your matches.

for the short hop its not about how lightly you tap the button its how quickly u do it. keep that in mind. i used to just practice short hopping with both control stick and x/y until it became muscle memory. once you learn to short hop well start SHFFL'ing (look it up in thread with all the acronyms). do we still have the compendium of knowledge?

for the rolling habit/any bad habit: i think the only way to get past that is by playing someone who will punish you enough for doing these things. you will eventually learn, that its a bad thing to do.

at

00:35 i would not have forward b'ed that, u could have just up b'ed to the ledge and not wasted your second jump. or if u did jump up b at that angle (which will require practice). cuz you would have gotten caped then b-air'ed by a better doc. and at 3:10 same thing.

1:15ish spamming random thunders will never work lol, spam jolts when your at a distance from your opponent. i like to use thunder after u-smash like already stated and after u-air chains on certain characters/percents when they are stunned. another rare instance i use it is i when a character attempt to recover without sweetspoting like fox's illusion/firefox but most everyone sweetspots now and there is better edgeguards.

3:28ish i would have down smashed instead of down tilting. i used d-tilt for some spacing stuff but at this instance that would have been basically free damage/got him out of the corner but thats all just preference.


so yeah basically what everyone else already said. and play people who are much better than you, thats how i learned really quick and went from complete noob to semi decent scrub to whatever i am now (pretty good i guess).

also did anyone notice at 3:10 the weird *** up smash. was it super DI?!? or invisible ceiling or something lol.

 

[Octave]

@def - Yeah I think I might have been trying to l-cancel that side B at 3:10 (accidentally, of course) and possibly teched it immediately. Idk though.

And about playing better people, I might be going to DarkDragoon's place on Monday. He says that Yedi is supposed to be there and he's a good Fox/Falco/Falcon so I'll be able to get a lot of practice in there to break my roll habit.

 

[defsithe]

^^ yeah when i start playing with the other guys around the area, i was broken of my rolling and side stepping habits. i now never try to side step sheik down smash lol. rolling around peach also got me down smashed(seriously no fun when i play people like xelic and doh).

playing against marths taught me how to recover better.

playing against falcons/sheiks made me better at DI and teching.

etc. etc....

just playing better people in general will force you to adapt your playing to stop you from getting destroyed.

 

[V3ctorMan]

play w/axe that guy's amazerin! =p

 

[tdk_Samurai]

play w/axe that guy's amazerin! =p

dude you never miss a chance to plug axe do you? like even if there isn't a plug axe moment, you make one up :-P

 

[defsithe]

play w/axe that guy's amazerin! =p

this man speaks the truth. playing axe was the only time i ever enjoyed pika dittos. cept i still lost but it was still fun :D



also octaves name is too kool. ur tag in melee should be P8. unless ur not talking about music at all then i sound dumb.

 

[#HBC | Mac]

And about playing better people, I might be going to DarkDragoon's place on Monday. He says that Yedi is supposed to be there and he's a good Fox/Falco/Falcon so I'll be able to get a lot of practice in there to break my roll habit.

i don't remember playing a pikachu

 

[AXE 09]

alright! so let's see...

well basically to sum things up... you pretty much just need practice with advanced moves all together. before i can get into pikachu specific things, the first thing i can recommend to you is just practicing your overall movement. if you haven't seen these already, watch and practice everything you can that's shown on these 3 videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n4s5yB7ZkE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiZLs2doK8E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFmGIOcWdsM

please keep practicing man. i love pikachu mains

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

How come pikachu players get advice? I never get any as a pichu player Well at least you have it lucky. I would give advice but my computer crashed and on this one I see every other 20 frames.

 

[N64]

because pikachu players exist.

how many pichu players are there that actually post on these boards?

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

OOooo in your ICG(I can green). Yeah pity you can't play as pichu and pikachu it's nearly inpossible I never play as pikachu mostly because I just don't like playing as him and most of my johns are about piakchu.