Guide Pac Attack - Advanced Techniques and Strategy Guide

[Nu~]

Guys, What do you think about this edgeguarding? I did this on a tournament

NIIIICCEEEE!!!!

Took my battlefield ledge setup and made it even crazier XD.


I have a hard time believing that any character has a better ledge set up game than us.

 

[Kitzu]

I'm curious as to how I can use the Hydrant and Trampoline to get opponents into certain areas, I need a further explanation.

 

[Splebel]

I'm curious as to how I can use the Hydrant and Trampoline to get opponents into certain areas, I need a further explanation.

Well the water pushes opponents away and the trampoline forces a jump to get over it; unless it's Wario. You use these tools to force opponents to go in a certain area so you know where they are going to be and punish them. It's rather simple. Although I find setups are more rewarding to figure out for yourself because honestly there are a lot of them and they are all situational.

Edit: There are some basic setups you can learn but to truly get good with Pac-Man you need to be dynamic and able to improvise setups on the spot because like I said, they are all situational and can be easily countered.

 

[Nu~]

Until you learn to optimize...

I don't think it's fair to say ALL of them are.

 

[Splebel]

Until you learn to optimize...

I don't think it's fair to say ALL of them are.

True. I was thinking up B at ledge is hard to avoid and some bell setups seem hard to counter as well but the vast majority of his setups (mostly to cooler looking ones) are and I don't want that guy getting his hopes up looking at those videos and then never pulling them off during a match. Honestly for me if someone is real good at powershielding, catching fruit, or spams Mario's cape. I tend to do real bad. However most of those problems are on me rather than Pac-Man. Also most of my effective combos tend to be variations of a setup that I was doing or I happen to fall into a setup that I didn't plan on but it happened to work out and I think that is where Pac-Man's greatest strength lies.

 

[Huge]

Splebel

If you aren't using the Trampoline against shield, then start using the Trampoline against shield. At first it might look like you aren't getting much bang for your buck (7% for winning neutral), but the real purpose of the move is to condition your opponent into not shielding when they should be. They're going to be very wary of just sitting there in shield as you approach if they know that the Trampoline must be respected. Mixing up the trampoline, fairs/bairs/nairs, the hydrant, fruit, and even tomahawk grabs is the only way to get past the "my opponent is a brick wall" problem that Pac-Man often suffers from.

Also, being able to ALWAYS get the fair to key combo that's true from ~115 (rage, middleweight)/~130 (no rage, middleweight) to ~150 is absolutely essential, especially against reflector characters. You can't just throw your key out there and pray hit hits, unless you see that your opponent's options are limited or that they've committed to something. You've got to make them think you're going to grab or trampoline, hit them with the fair to key combo for the K.O., and end their career!

edit: and if your opponent is very good at catching fruit, try to get your fruit in hand.

melon: throw and run after it; catch it from an opponent's shield (risky if you don't pressure them); drop a hydrant, run off, and, a bit before you hit the ground, b-reverse it, jump up, and catch it; or jump off the stage, throw the melon at the wall underneath, and catch it that way.

cherry/strawberry: just throw and catch

apple: throw into a water gush coming your way, it'll drop on the ground and stay there.

bell/galaxian: fairly straightforward, practice these until you always get them perfectly.

key: practice catching on FD and Smashville. the timing is 1 bair, you can look this up. I hear it's also possible on the left side of Battlefield, don't have that down, though.

orange: same as key, I hear that it's sometimes possible to get it off the hydrant but I haven't been able to do this yet. (edit: possible, see BSP 's post below!)

 

[Splebel]

My problem with the trampoline is you have to be on top of them to use it and then also against some characters even if you hit them and leave they can chase you down and hit you. Now you're just back to square one.

 

[Huge]

Try doing it near the ledge and landing on it, landing on platforms, and landing on hydrants. Also, don't make your horizontal momentum predictable. You've gotta mix up your landing! Anyway, at higher percents, you can always reach the ground before your opponent can. The trouble is whiffing, to which I can only say... don't whiff. It sucks, but, hey, no pain no gain. Just try to land behind your trampoline so that your opponent has to jump over it to get to you. Also, don't forget that you can still choose when to fastfall.

 

[Froggy]

On the ktar Stream I over heard the commentators saying that the trampoline is an unblockable if it's done near your opponent. sometimes my opponents are able to block the trampoline is it just because I'm not close enough to them? could anyone confirm?

 

[Huge]

On the ktar Stream I over heard the commentators saying that the trampoline is an unblockable if it's done near your opponent. sometimes my opponents are able to block the trampoline is it just because I'm not close enough to them? could anyone confirm?

The trampoline attack isn't unblockable; the trampoline is, and the trampoline covers a smaller area than the attack itself (vertically definitely, not sure about horizontally.) Make sure to practice falling and doing the trampoline as close to the ground as possible without touching it and incurring extra lag. If you do it halfway up someone's shield, the attack will be blocked and you'll be left wide open.

A good indicator for practicing this is the color of your trampoline after you hit someone with it (this is good for training mode.) If you successfully get the unblockable hit, both you and the opponent will have jumped on the trampoline, and it will be yellow. If you screw up, it'll still be blue!

 

[Froggy]

The trampoline attack isn't unblockable; the trampoline is, and the trampoline covers a smaller area than the attack itself (vertically definitely, not sure about horizontally.) Make sure to practice falling and doing the trampoline as close to the ground as possible without touching it and incurring extra lag. If you do it halfway up someone's shield, the attack will be blocked and you'll be left wide open.

A good indicator for practicing this is the color of your trampoline after you hit someone with it (this is good for training mode.) If you successfully get the unblockable hit, both you and the opponent will have jumped on the trampoline, and it will be yellow. If you screw up, it'll still be blue!

this is great news. whenever I'm beside my opponent I often up be out of shield but it is not safe when shield against some characters(Shiek for example), if this is just happening because I'm not close enough then I can correct that. I am attending my first mass weekly today so I guess I'll try to factor this in.

 

[BSP]

Huge You can catch orange off of your hydrant if you throw it at it while you are falling towards it. You need to be drifting to the hydrant, throw the orange before you hit the ground, and still drift forward a bit. If you do it correctly, you'll barely make the recatch.

 

[PEPESPAIN]

OK, I must tell how I'm playing now, and my win ratio.

The last 2 weeks I started playing "really safe". I try to avoid the neutral, I just run from one side to the other one chasing the enemy on the middle and doing every "true combo" at the exact %. When I reach the % I need to kill (110%+- light weights, 140%+- heavy weights) I try to have a key on my pocket. At that % I stop running and I attack my enemy on a "safe mode" (Not like a crazy) I do the fair to key combo at every stock. It is the best option to kill.

When I'm really close to the killing % and my enemy is avoiding me, I go for 2 or 3 trampolines to reach that % and go for the fair to key combo (Run + Oos UpB on his face) . I have a 95% ratio success doing that combo and killing. I think it is the fastest method to kill with pacman. Yeah, you can kill someone at 100% with the bell but it is really hard to perform, but the fair to key combo is guaranteed a true combo. If you do it correctly, it is impossible to avoid.

I lost less than 10 matches on 2 weeks. I recommend everybody to understand how to do fair to key combo. My next video will be a fair to key guide. I think it is the most important killing method for PAC-MAN.

 

[Norkas]

You are right, fair to key is probably our most consistent kill confirm and a very important one. Holding the key as an option to punish and a kill confirm off of a quick move forces the opponent to play perfectly safe. Still I am surprised about your avoidance playstyle. In my playstyle I usually try to focus on grounded stage control and challenging approaches with bair, uair, uptilt and upsmash, using shield and z-dropped fruit as mix-ups. While fair to key is a consistent killconfirm at high percent that I often use if I can't find another way to close out a stock, I try to focus more on hitconfirms by z-dropped fruit. To punish a grounded attack we can short hop and drop the galaxian to combo it into a footstool to galaxian rehit to side-b which kills most characters at about 70% near the ledge, with rage at even less. A z-dropped apple can combo into footstool allowing us to regrab and drop it again which is another side-b hitconfirm. Doing this with a bell allows footstool to regrab to downthrown bell, giving us time to fully charge a side-b.

I think side-b hitconfirms have really high potential and might prove to add a lot to our killpower if we learn to consistently get the footstool after a z-drop and are able to anticipate our opponents knockback and hitstun.

 

[Direspect only!]

Can somebody explain how to do the z drop into down throw combos? I can't seem to do it on 3ds. I can throw to catch, but then the catch gives me an air dodge because on 3ds, they treat the L shoulder like a shield plus a, meaning it's an air dodge, since you can't shield in the air...

 

[PEPESPAIN]

You have to catch the fruit with (grab) without doing and airdodge. You don't need to shield in the air.

If you buffer a (grab) again it does an airdodge instead of throwing the item. You need to do this unbuffered

 

[Direspect only!]

So it's grab grab down a?

 

[PEPESPAIN]

No. You can do like..... grab, grab (HOLD GRAB PRESSED) , A

 

[Froggy]

No. You can do like..... grab, grab (HOLD GRAB PRESSED) , A

He is playing on the 3ds, not the Wii U. Doe that method work on the 3ds?

 

[Splebel]

He is playing on the 3ds, not the Wii U. Doe that method work on the 3ds?

I don't know what any of this stuff is but I know on the 3ds if you jump and immediately hit the grab button after you don't do an airdodge. Makes getting the key easier.

 

[PEPESPAIN]

He is playing on the 3ds, not the Wii U. Doe that method work on the 3ds?

Yes it works, it is known as "insta throw"

 

[dragontamer]

I finally managed to play a PacMan in For Glory last night. Pretty good stuff, good low-lag matches. He was using Apple and Melon to punish my wakeup options off of a ledge. I don't think I've seen that before.

Basically, he'd bait the wakeup by dashing backwards and then jumping. I'd think that waking up would be safe, so I neutral-getup off the ledge, but he's jump and b-reverse Apple at the right timing to punish me. I thought it was a little tech that I'd share with everyone, especially since Apple is one of PacMan's few KO options.

He used a lot of trampoline-on-ledge setups. And while threatening, those weren't the ones that really "got" me (probably because I knew that getting up from the ledge was suicidal at that point). I'm thinking that integrating more "baits" by running backwards from the ledge is more important.

It seems obvious in hindsight, and yet I've never done it before. Ah well.

 

[Huge]

I feel like, because Pac is such a complex character, these boards would benefit from a "weekly breakdown"-type thread. If we made it a community effort to completely dissect a certain move or concept each week, I feel like we could really deepen our utilization of Pac's tools.

Some ideas that I think we really need to explore further:

- of course, that trampoline ledge jank; because of Pac's hydrant and good aerials, it's really easy to lose focus of Pac's ledge getup punish game and just go for gimps all the time

- optimizing the side B offensively; I feel like this is a really awesome tool for attacking opponents trying to recover from both above and beside the stage. Think Mario's up B; lots of angles and timings open the move up to a lot of creativity. I want to see people reacting to and reading airdodges more with it.

- hydrant gushing; not "IMA CHARGE A SMASH" hydrant gushing but "I'm going to Dtilt with the water to increase my momentum and then cancel it for an immediate nair followup by falling off the ledge" hydrant gushing.

- a solid, experience-backed community elaboration of BnB strategy, common combos/strings, useful hydrant angles, stage control/walling methods, common mindgames, fruit catching, how to actually get a grab, etc.

- actually using dair to do things (luma...?)

 

[dragontamer]

SH Dair is the best "Attack Wakeup from Unteched Knockdown" punish from the running state. If you notice that the opponent is rolling instead of Attack Wakeup, you fast-fall asap. (SH Dair does NOT autocancel, so just fast-fall to end the attack early).

IE: You Nair the opponent at ~40%, and the opponent misses the Tech. If you just dash-attack, the opponent's wakeup attack may stuff you. If you run-up and shield, you lose more than half your shield (I've gotten shield broken that way before...)

Of course, Stutter Step FSmash is the best punish due to outranging most opponent's "Attack Wakeup".

- optimizing the side B offensively; I feel like this is a really awesome tool for attacking opponents trying to recover from both above and beside the stage. Think Mario's up B; lots of angles and timings open the move up to a lot of creativity. I want to see people reacting to and reading airdodges more with it.

When it works, its a great tool. I miss far too often and get punished. The ledge changes everything however, because you can snap to the ledge before your recovery frames are complete, essentially cheating your way out of recovery frames (somewhat).

The best use of it that I've found is the Galaxian in hand -> Side B combo. A properly spaced double-hit Galaxian true-combos into a side-B (barely charged). In the air, its a bit tricky to get the double-jump -> Side B off, but it is definitely a true combo at like 30% to 70%. But the positioning of the foe is all over the place, and varies greatly based on the % the foe is at and the distance you were when you threw Galaxian.

 

[WeirdChillFever]

Dair's last hit sends opponents at a diagonal angles, possibly setting up for Bell combos.

 

[Froggy]

When it works, its a great tool. I miss far too often and get punished. The ledge changes everything however, because you can snap to the ledge before your recovery frames are complete, essentially cheating your way out of recovery frames (somewhat).

I disagree with this. the Side B is really only very punishable if you use it on the ground or if you go way high up into the air. If you use it to edge guard(facing away from the ledge), it's safe enough. In addition if you use to horizontally while your opponent is falling it's safe enough as well(I recommend jumping in front of your opponent a bit below them and then using it to turn around to hit them, you can angle it slightly diagonally up or down depending on what the situations calls for)

 

[Direspect only!]

I use side b to rub and to launch hydrant to send me and the hydrant at opponents... I've been curious about the optimal uses for dair and side b and stuff..

 

[BSP]

- hydrant gushing; not "IMA CHARGE A SMASH" hydrant gushing but "I'm going to Dtilt with the water to increase my momentum and then cancel it for an immediate nair followup by falling off the ledge" hydrant gushing.
)

Messing around on For Glory, I've been experimenting with using hydrant water more for its push value. The devs made the water unblockable for a reason, and we already know that people are going to shield vs. us. Trying to use that to my advantage, I've been:

-trampoline near center of the stage, retreat, throw down hydrant -> if my opponent follows me after the trampoline and doesn't aggressive follow me for planting the hydrant, I let the water push them into the trampoline for a bell, Apple, side B, or Key hit while they're focused on me. Smarter people will see this coming, but the answer to this is not sitting in shield, which opens them up to other strikes.

-When I have rage, I'll plant the hydrant so that the water will push a shielding opponent off of the ledge. I almost hit a Fox on FG yesterday because of this since he was shielding while I floated around his head with an apple stocked. It's a very hard snipe, but I feel it's something that can work. We can also try it with edge cancelled smashes when we have some rage. Like the above strategy, the optimal opponent response is something we can punish.

-I'm sure we all know the classic Abadango combo of apple/melon up throw into trampoline. When people see this coming, they'll roll away from you to avoid this. What I'm trying now is to plant a hydrant and use my superior knowledge of the water to coax my opponent into shielding -> getting pushed into me doing the abadango combo right next to them.

-We can ledge cancel everything with our hydrant water. I still think we need to look into edge cancelled Blinky and Pinky/Clyde when covering ledge getups because they are 100% safe. Even if you miss, you know that the second water spurt will cover your return.

-I'm sure one of the other guys pointed this out a long time ago, but an up thrown apple from hand bounces and stays active for quite a long time. I've been getting a lot of value of uthrowing it in front of my hydrant and baiting people into something stupid for the delayed apple to come smack them. Next I'm going to try using it to go for raw smash attacks out of runs utilizing the auto phantom fruits we get from the bouncing apple.

 

[Nu~]

Using the water near the ledge to push someone off works well with side B too.

Standing on top of the hydrant while the water pushes the opponent out of their ledge getup can lead to disastrous results for the enemy. If they get up into sheild, they get pushed off and we direct side B downward if they jump, they get hit directly. We can catch rolls with this if we space ourselves, but having a trampoline in front of you to catch their rolls is even better.

Normally the hydrant water will go upwards if you stand in it, but short hopping can help you stop that from happening.

If we mix this with fruit gushing, it can get crazy

 

[Direspect only!]

Why is trampoline good for stage control? It forces them in the air giving them the same neutral advantage of an empty hop. If you're close I can see the benefits, but other than that I don't understand.... are they at all vulnerable during the jump ?

 

[Splebel]

Why is trampoline good for stage control? It forces them in the air giving them the same neutral advantage of an empty hop. If you're close I can see the benefits, but other than that I don't understand.... are they at all vulnerable during the jump ?

It depends on the character. Little Mac doesn't like the air so it's effective while the trampoline won't slow down Jigglypuff. For characters like Mario that don't have a bad air game, it ruins their ground game and that can be huge for Pac-Man. Also with trampoline Pac-Man knows where the opponent will be but the opponent won't know where Pac-Man will be. That's a huge advantage.

 

[BSP]

Why is trampoline good for stage control? It forces them in the air giving them the same neutral advantage of an empty hop. If you're close I can see the benefits, but other than that I don't understand.... are they at all vulnerable during the jump ?

If you and the opponent are far from the trampoline, then it's not doing much of anything.

They can't do anything while they are actually on the trampoline, but they can make inputs very soon after they go airborne.

 

[Froggy]

BSP Sounds like you're believing in Pacman again :D

 

[Nu~]

Hard not to after the Z drop revolution and Hydrant gush innovation

 

[BSP]

BSP Sounds like you're believing in Pacman again :D

Eh, IDK. I really don't want all the effort put into him so far (200+ hrs) to go completely to waste, so I'm going to try to pull everything out of him before I drop him. I need to see how pushing people off of ledges with water works against good people.

 

[Prometheus_98]

So does anyone have clue how to z drop catch z drop? z drop catch throw has already been answered but all variations of the technique dont seem to result in a second z drop? For reference Im talking about abadango's key zdrop video.

 

[Norkas]

I am starting to heavily implement some hydrant and trampoline setups into my ledgegame lately.
I think setting up a hydrant on the ledge really helps us in many matchups. We can run off bair it, allowing us to jab it down the ledge or launch it with a trampoline. After using the trampoline we can mix up with ledgetrumps or at some stages land on a nearby platform. If our opponent reaches his recovery limits we can stand on the hydrant and cover most low recoveries with side-b while the hydrant water can push off opponents recovering high. Trampoline on its own is useful too but I only use it against chars with good recovery which can easily reach the stage without having a strong projectile to punish us setting the trampoline up.

It's still really difficult to focus on charging fruit, catching it when I charged to the one I need, keeping trampoline or hydrant out and walling out the opponent though. Does someone know of a way to quickly catch the bell? I start to really love this one for its uses when z-dropped and the possibility to throw it out of shield. I think we could get much more out of defensive z-dropping than we already do. It's yet another tool to extend our grounded stagecontrol, espiecially combined with some hydrant setups.

So does anyone have clue how to z drop catch z drop? z drop catch throw has already been answered but all variations of the technique dont seem to result in a second z drop? For reference Im talking about abadango's key zdrop video

I don't think we have any techniques for an immediate fruit redrop, I just redrop them by pressing the z-button again.

 

[Direspect only!]

Norkas, just throw and grab it?

 

[Direspect only!]

Also as far as the z drop to Insta throw combos, I find it much easier to perform the combos on mid air opponents, if they air dodge, you can immediately recatch and throw it at them. If they don't well at low percents they get hit by both anyways. This strategy loses to up air though, luckily we have some of the best aerial mobility in the game.

 

[Nu~]

I am starting to heavily implement some hydrant and trampoline setups into my ledgegame lately.
I think setting up a hydrant on the ledge really helps us in many matchups. We can run off bair it, allowing us to jab it down the ledge or launch it with a trampoline. After using the trampoline we can mix up with ledgetrumps or at some stages land on a nearby platform. If our opponent reaches his recovery limits we can stand on the hydrant and cover most low recoveries with side-b while the hydrant water can push off opponents recovering high. Trampoline on its own is useful too but I only use it against chars with good recovery which can easily reach the stage without having a strong projectile to punish us setting the trampoline up.

It's still really difficult to focus on charging fruit, catching it when I charged to the one I need, keeping trampoline or hydrant out and walling out the opponent though. Does someone know of a way to quickly catch the bell? I start to really love this one for its uses when z-dropped and the possibility to throw it out of shield. I think we could get much more out of defensive z-dropping than we already do. It's yet another tool to extend our grounded stagecontrol, espiecially combined with some hydrant setups.

I don't think we have any techniques for an immediate fruit redrop, I just redrop them by pressing the z-button again.

A lot of these are already known...but nice job for implementing them into your gameplay.

I say to not try to focus on each individual part. Let it flow. You can have a plan of what to do, but don't "freeze the match" by trying to focus on one set up.

The bulk of your playstyle shouldn't have to revolve around walling is what I'm trying to say. Change it up.