Alright guys, here I am to give you my impressions of Olimar's current state... What did you actually think I wasn't going to test his changes after all the data gathering and grinding out the character in other versions? Anyway here goes.
3.6b at first glance is a buffed Olimar in tons of ways. The damage swapping with Red and Purple gives Red a purpose. It's great. Purple flowers are insane again, but literally only when they're flowers. But that's okay because their HP is high, they'll almost always get there if your not stupid.
Nearing the end of 3.5 I was starting to really like Yellows. They're a great defensive Pikmin thanks to their speed (U-Smash OoS is great with them), and my favorite to use F-Smash with. Now with the hitbox size buff they're usually my second most wanted Pikmin, especially with his I've been playing him in 3.6b. More on that later.
His grab change is technically a bigger nerf than it is a buff. It's much easier to punish Olimar when he whiffs a grab now, but honestly from a design perspective, that's a good thing. It's not too unsafe, but it's just the right amount. That said, the grab box coming out faster is really helpful, making grab OoS much better. The grab itself is still stupid amounts of active too.
Now onto the biggest change we got, and most of you are going to disagree with me when I talk about this, but I've also had people very much agreeing with me when I was playing in tournament last night.
Recovering is actually worse. Yes, that's right.
Even Kels (who I managed to take a game off of in tournament with Olimar last night woo woo!) kept shouting "It's so BAD!"
So let me go ahead and say what we gained from this recovery first.
-It's not reliant on Pikmin: This is huge. Pikmin falling apart when you recovered was a big issue in 3.0. Honestly, they did manage to fix it up a lot in 3.5. When I was experimenting with it in the last few days I did find out the causes of them falling apart as well as how to prevent it. But I won't go too deep into that unless someone asks about it.
But the big thing here is that the jetpack doesn't rely on Pikmin, and that IS a good thing as far as buff things go. I'll leave my opinions about overall design out of this.
-It has a hitbox: This is nice... Honestly though the hitbox isn't worth a damn. Hitting someone with it rarely buys you time to land on the stage correctly, and there's a problem with this recovery that actually makes it pretty much not matter at all.
-We can land on stage as a mix up: Sounds better than it actually is... More on that when I explain other stuff.
-We can Up-B as many times as we need: Nothing to add to this. This is fantastic.
So that's basically it for our gains... Our losses... Well...
-Jetpack is more linear than tether: And it sucks. It has 3 different trajectories opposed to Tether being able to recover in almost a half circle shape. I will say, a lot of this fact is negligible because edgeguarding a Tether was as easy as just sitting there and waiting. But the reason Tether was better is because of this reason coupled with the next two facts.
-Jetpack is A LOT slower: one major upside to the Tether if how fast it was. If you got hit, and you could Up-B before the opponent could make it to the ledge, you were back. The speed of the jetpack allows for a lot of characters to get to Olimar for the edgeguard before he can get back.
-Jetpack sweet spotting the stage is pretty bad: So, one thing I noticed immediately is how hard it is to sweet spot the ledge. The jetpack has to be on its last few frames (basically the move has to be over) to sweet spot. This, along with its slow speed and linear angles is not good news. To make matters worse, Olimar's head hurtbox actually sticks up above the stage before the sweet spot happens. I got D-Smashed on recovery quite a few times last night. It's bad.
-Landing on stage with the Jetpack is incredibly unsafe: I don't know the frame data yet. I didn't have it for the tether either, but I think I still have 3.5. I'm going to get that data eventually, but I'm certain that the jetpack has more landing lag than tether did. It almost feels like it's as much landing on stage after someone edgehogged your tether. You can make this not matter too much though, if you hit a platform and slide off the edge of it. That saved me a few times, but thanks to the move's slow travel speed I usually got hit before even making it to the platform.
-Olimar's recovery as a whole doesn't go as far: Aerial pluck was given more end lag. You still get good horizontal distance with it, so it's not terrible, but you do actually lose a little bit of height with it, it's not that big a hit to be honest. But the jetpack also doesn't go as far as the tether did. I died a lot going for edgeguard that worked in 3.5 that no longer work in 3.6b. The jetpack goes about as far as 4 Pikmin, but without the little hop from 3.5 Up-B, I'm pretty sure. But I do know the other reason I wasn't making it back is because of the fact that the can't recover from as many angles as the tether could. Be careful when you're trying to go deep in this version.
So now I'll talk about my new way to play. I don't think I'll be sticking to Olimar this version. Mostly because I liked being able to jump out into the bubble to edge guard people and can't do that anymore. That said I do have a new way I personally enjoy playing him now.
Two Pikmin. It makes organizing your tools much better and allows for excellent combinations. I usually try to keep a Purple handy because any throw leads into Purple F-Air, U-Smash, whatever. Yellow is probably my favorite to have as my second. Remember how people used to say it had great combo potential and I used to argue that it didn't matter much because organizing a Yellow hit wasn't worth? It still wasn't worth because it usually led to another Yellow, which ruined the combo, a Blue which lacked power, a White lol, but when it leads to Purple it's devastating. And now you can do that consistently. And Yellow throws are fine combo starters. Not to mention their defensive ability is amazing now with the speed and the hitbox size increase. F-Smash works great as a wall with Yellow and paired with Purple as a projectile. It's so good.
I saw you guys talking about this before too. Someone mentioned having more Pikmin is necessary because of how reliant Olimar is on Side-B. This has some truth. But trying to throw more than one Pikmin on the opponent doesn't always work out so well. If I want to chuck a Pikmin at my opponent I just pluck a third and use the new one, but you can usually make due with the two. Using whistle to manage your Pikmin you can bring them back to safetysafety and Whistle is faster and more mobile than pluck so Side-B is still there. Some matchups jI still pluck 4 though and I'll just run and toss, like Jiggs and Peach. Or if I need more for projectile blocking, I'll do that too. But I've been having a lot of success with just running two Pikmin most of the time.
So closing this out. All in all, Olimar is better off than he was in 3.5. Despite his recovery technically being a nerf his on stage game is much better. His neutral is pretty much the same, but his punish game is much much muuuch better. He also has a chain grab on a lot of the cast now and his D-Throw is a bit better, though U-Throw will be your go to in most early damage situations. His matchups will probably go mostly unchanged as well save for the ones that have an easier time with his new recovery.
steelguttey
I appreciate your obvious love for olimar but I disagree wholeheartedly about 3.6 being overall a buff. Also, why is "it's too hard to program" an excuse for a huge nerf? I'm sure you can find a way to work around it without resorting to adding 10 frames of endlag. Anyway, I would rather have people break free 1 time in 10 than eat a charged f-smash to the face every time somebody jumps, rolls, or spotdodges my grab. Upthrow->jump upair->djump upair leads into nothing but up-b, there is no other option. Haha that d-taunt, our taunt game just went through the roof. 
Shokio
I agree the purple and red buffs are nice. 
