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Official Pac-Man's Amazing Full Colour Fan Club! - Pac-Man General Thread

Froggy

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Actually almost everyone has at least one move that can. As long as their hitbox hits the hydrant before the hydrant hits their hurtbox, the hydrant will be negated (So basically any disjoint, except Rosa Uair for some reason?).

That said you are right that it makes them a little more predictable. It's still a habit that good players can easily punish.
I hate feeling like I am explaining very basic things to people.

Very few characters can simultaneously negate the hitbox of the hydrant and hit you at the sametime, and for the ones you can(excluding the examples I mentioned in my prevous post) its almost never with the move that they actually wanna punish you with and the risk reward for challenging the hydrant is often not in their favor. Its understanding things like this that is essential to playing Pacman effectively.
 
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fromundaman

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I hate feeling like I am explaining very basic things to people.

Very few characters can simultaneously negate the hitbox of the hydrant and hit you at the sametime, and for the ones you can(excluding the examples I mentioned in my prevous post) its almost never with the move that they actually wanna punish you with and the risk reward for challenging the hydrant is often not in their favor. Its understanding things like this that is essential to playing Pacman effectively.
I very much understand what you are saying, I am simply disagreeing with it. When I get back from work I can list at least one move from most of the cast that can do both.

HOWEVER, you are right that it does require the opponent to be in specific positions for a good portion of the cast, which does make it a bit telegraphed.

EDIT: To reiterate, I am NOT saying throwing hydrant at someone is a bad option, just that it is good to be aware that most characters have at least one move that can punish you for it if they are in the right position.
 
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Nu~

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I agree that almost every character has a move that can beat it out, but it is hardly worth the risk. Some moves take a lot stricter timing than others and can be easily baited and punished.

We're still in control in the scenario because they can't react to our frame 9 hydrant drop unless they are very far away from us.

They would have to know when we drop the hydrant before it even comes out which is very hard to predict against a competent pacman.
 
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BSP

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MLG really did a lot to damage your Pacman esteem didn't it?

I think Pacman can keep up with any character who isn't Shiek. It just requires you to get them to play your game. Even characters like Fox who love jump over trampoline and reflect fruits, it's all still fairly telegraphed. It important that you understand what there counter to your strategy is likely to be BEFORE HAND, and then punish them appropriately.

I have never been as confident in Pacman as I am right now.
I thought so too, but smart people and fast characters will not give you the time to set up your game. When I played friendlies with Megafox, Nakat, Dan_da_man (fox and falcon for the other two), they immediately rushed at me the moment the announcer said "Go". If I did a hydrant or Trampoline to attempt to establish some control, they were in my face. If I did anything to challenge them outright, they flat out have better buttons than me, and they know I don't have a good answer to shield. I didn't get destroyed every game, but it was quite difficult to do anything productive safely because all of Pac-Man's stuff takes time. Time is what we need (set hydrant, set trampoline, charge whatever fruit we need), and time is what the faster and relevant characters like Sonic, Fox, Falcon, ZSS, etc. won't give us. Heck, even Ryo's Ike didn't give me any time to set up, and hydrant was more of a liability because Ike can launch it so quickly.

Even against the not so fast characters, we still have a glaring KO'ing issue. When I did friendlies with Mr R, any time I went for a fruit gushed setup, he'd jump and wait it out because he knew my punish for him doing that wouldn't be lethal + he'd avoid the setup entirely.

I know I'm essentially saying we have problems with the rushdown characters. That would be ok and a fair character weakness in general if the faster, rushdown characters weren't also the ones dictating the metagame.

Oh and fromundaman fromundaman I felt what you were talking about w.r.t. the shielding changes. IDK if Pac-Man is flat out unviable now, but it's going to be really tough to hang with any competent opponent that knows the MU.

Agreed. Besides, if you didn't realise, mobility, whilst useful, is not actually 100% compulsory to have in order to be a 'top tier' character. Ness has such strong tools despite the curse of his poor mobility, and he's considered to be an excellent character whom is viable for competitive play. Even Villager has mobility issues yet he still remains to be a solid character.

In Pac-Man's case though, our mobility isn't too bad. A good air-speed coupled with the fact Pac-Man's movement is somewhat floaty is a good start, and usually Pac-Man is difficult to juggle which negates most weak points of his slow fall speed. His ground movement isn't terrible either, although it might be said it's on the lower end of the spectrum. It's below-average, but workable.
I'm sorry, I should've been more specific when I said "fast". What I meant is that all of our setups/jank take time, but they take too much time to setup + be executed without any character with a shred of mobility being in range to threaten you. We need time to charge to whatever fruit we need/want, more to get it into our hand, more to set a hydrant, and even more to set up a trampoline safely. While attempting to do this, we have average to below average tilts, range, smashes, aerials, and a near non functioning grab to defend ourselves from whoever we're fighting. This isn't that big of a problem vs. slow people, but fast people will mess us up very easily once they know the MU.

While Ness has avg to below avg. mobility, he doesn't take as much time to be threatening as we do, has a normal grab, has one of the few reliable KO'ing throws in the game, and easy conversions off of grabs.

Villager has limited mobility as well, but his mid range pressure game is second only to mega man IMO. Additionally, he doesn't need setup time unless he's going for a tree setup or trying to get the ax. Villager's effective range is huge, and he's got a great set of aerials and tilts to back him up. Yes, he has a awful grab like us, but he has consistent mid range pressure that doesn't require setup time while forcing responses.

Pac-Man is the weakest of the zoners when he's not set up, but he's arguably the strongest once he is. However, that takes time. Time that smart people will not give you. Another thing to consider is that among the zoners, he's the one that is most capable of having his tools used against him. Villager's moveset can't be turned on him. You can take Mega Man's metal blade and hold it all you want while he sends a barrage of lemons and crash bombers your way. You take Pac-Man's fruit when he's down? He's in trouble. We can avoid being hit by our own hydrant pretty easily, but we still have to deal with it as a pressure tool against us if it's launched smartly.
 
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Wintermelon43

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Froggy

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I feel that this is an important thing us pacmains have to talk about.

Sinji Sinji
ToxoT ToxoT
fromundaman fromundaman
Froggy Froggy
K Kaiyedy
@Spirst
Huge Huge
Splebel Splebel
@SafCar
ZeoLightning ZeoLightning

What are your thoughts on PacMan's future viability?
Pacman is a probably at the high end of being a mid tier in this game. In a game like this where the tiers are hardly stratified its not a terrible big hindrance and you can still compete at the highest level(see mlg results)

That being said as a mid-tier character you're going to run into a lot of trouble if you try to solo-main him, its important to have a strong secondary or co-main. Esam does a pretty good explanations of how tiers work in this game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMiI-sxxSOY

BSP BSP : I have the utmost respect for you but I think constantly loosing to Mr and Nakat has more to do with them being a better player than you as opposed to the limitations of Pacman. Living in Louisiana is fair to say you're really exposed to a wide variety of playstyles, then you went to a national and stumbled into hyper aggression and you had no answer for it. I believe if you theorycraft on it you'll see it's really not so hopless after all.

On a side note contrary to popular Pacman logic I have started banning Smashville and FD(Yes FD!) outright against fast characters. If you don't you're going to run into the same problem BSP has in not having time to charge anything. Of the Neutrals I think Battlefield(yes battlefield) and Town and City are the best stages for Pacman.
 
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ZeoLightning

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I feel that this is an important thing us pacmains have to talk about.

Sinji Sinji
ToxoT ToxoT
fromundaman fromundaman
Froggy Froggy
K Kaiyedy
@Spirst
Huge Huge
Splebel Splebel
@SafCar
ZeoLightning ZeoLightning

What are your thoughts on PacMan's future viability?
I'm confident that PAC can stay a high tier, I mean Abadango does work on Characters like Fox and Pikachu who is always in his face. Its coming down knowing what to use when, Abadango is the best person to watch, But i think PAC will ALWAYS have matchups that are like 30/70, so its best to main him with another character that can cover his bad matchups. in my case i had luigi or mario but im waiting to see if they confirm wolf to be my official Co-Main
 
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NimbusSpark

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I feel that this is an important thing us pacmains have to talk about.

Sinji Sinji
ToxoT ToxoT
fromundaman fromundaman
Froggy Froggy
K Kaiyedy
@Spirst
Huge Huge
Splebel Splebel
@SafCar
ZeoLightning ZeoLightning

What are your thoughts on PacMan's future viability?
I'd have to say that Pac-Man within the future will potentially be within the lower-mid specturm of high-tier, but be within the point of people considering him as a viable character within competitive play.
He clearly has no matchups that he gets hard-countered simply because of his ability to adapt to almost every single situation possible in the game, but as stated before, Pac-Man is a character reliant on time-management - not one second can be wasted for him to set-up or a fatal mistake can be made.
Not to mention players are starting to learn to play against him whilst we're trying to expand our own playstyles.

Also, it must be noted that Pac-Man defensive game plays like a similar manner to a short term vaccine rather than a cure - something almost no other character has.
An example: Whilst a decent amount of characters can fight against characters after being grabbed (i.e. a frame 3 Nair against Mario's D-Throw), Pac-Man's amazing neutral can prevent the grab from happening in the first place due to trampoline forcing the opponent into the air and Hydrant keeping them away.
 

BSP

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Pacman is a probably at the high end of being a mid tier in this game. In a game like this where the tiers are hardly stratified its not a terrible big hindrance and you can still compete at the highest level(see mlg results)

That being said as a mid-tier character you're going to run into a lot of trouble if you try to solo-main him, its important to have a strong secondary or co-main. Esam does a pretty good explanations of how tiers work in this game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMiI-sxxSOY

BSP BSP : I have the utmost respect for you but I think constantly loosing to Mr and Nakat has more to do with them being a better player than you as opposed to the limitations of Pacman. Living in Louisiana is fair to say you're really exposed to a wide variety of playstyles, then you went to a national and stumbled into hyper aggression and you had no answer for it. I believe if you theorycraft on it you'll see it's really not so hopless after all.

On a side note contrary to popular Pacman logic I have started banning Smashville and FD(Yes FD!) outright against fast characters. If you don't you're going to run into the same problem BSP has in not having time to charge anything. Of the Neutrals I think Battlefield(yes battlefield) and Town and City are the best stages for Pacman.
I know the top players are better than me, but it's not hard to analyze what Pac man can and can't do then draw conclusions.

I am no stranger to aggro playstyles. Brawlman rushes me down constantly.

If it isn't clear, I think Pac-Man is 16-25th, but I don't know exactly where. He is certainly capable of messing you up if you don't know the MU, but he has weaknesses that become very apparent and exploitable once you know the MU. Fruit can be caught and used against him. Hydrant can be launched against him. Trampoline forces air approaches, but also gives our opponents lagless aerials.
 
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ToxoT

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Nu~ Nu~
considering how exploitable our own tricks are against us id say we'll be around mid tier since we suffer to characters with reflectors and those that can otherwise neutralize projectiles easily. we're pretty good for a projectile character and possibly the best, but i think ROB is a bad matchup for us simply because of that stupid gyro having infinite priority as well as having superior frame data on his normals, same can be said for villager. we have our trampoline that forces aerial approaches which can really mess with our enemies, but again, its not like it cant be exploited in our opponents favor. id like to be more optimistic and say pac could be high mid, but i really dont know at this juncture.
 

Kaiyedy

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Honestly I feel that Pac is not going to leave the high mid tier range as he is now. He is a very good character, but I feel he lacks things that one needs to be considered "top tier."



If you look at characters used a lot in competitive play (aka the "top tiers") such as Sheik, ZSS, MK, Pikachu and Mario, they all have a couple of things in common that make people considered better. Their speed, their ability to combo, their tools, their grabs, and the fact that they all have combos that can kill at 30%. Of those Pac has tools and a small combo ability with some fruits.


Basically I think that he's viable to those of us that know how to use him, but unless he gets faster, a good grab, more aerial combos or a gimmick to consistently kill before 135% (besides the super situational one I found... Although now if we can figure out how to easily break shields it could become a bit better) then he will never be considered top tier.
 

Huge

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Pac's solid, obviously... he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. If we're talking true 20PacPac here than we can assume that the top Pac-Man will consistently DITCIT perfectly, abuse trampoline to the fullest, know every fruit combo and confirm, nair Foxes out of up-B, etc. Pac's got a lot of potential, but, as others have said, there's also a lot of potential for counterplay. I think he'll definitely perform well as a pocket/secondary character, but solo maining pac is quite the uphill battle. Definitely upper mid, then!
 

Nu~

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Mario, pikachu, and sheik suck at killing early

so...wut??

I also think it is a rather ignorant assessment to suggest that we have to be rushdown to do well in this meta.

BSP BSP
I don't see how trampoline giving opponents "lagless aerials" is relevant considering they can only do it on that specific part of the stage, and we have to be high up to actually get hit by them. You can simply wait on the other side and utilt their landing.

Call me crazy, but I still believe that we will end up in top 15. We have counterplay to our tools, but the amount of options we have outweighs the amount of counterplay in the long run.

When it comes to killing opponents in shield...Look at the way fox and pikachu deal with shields. They can't kill at all when an opponent is shielding, but they work around it with various mixups and pressure. We can do the same thing with z dropping and DITCIT confirms. Fair to key, DA to bell to side B, DA to key at the ledge...we have more and I know you guys know this. And please don't use fruit gushing as a kill set up. It's incredibly obvious. It's best used for pressure win nuetral since it forces the opponent to react when we approach them, and makes our approach a bit safer.

We have so many possible ways to screw over our opponent that I think it's dubious to think that the opponent will always have an answer. They can know that matchup, and we'll still have a way to mess them up because they can't account for every possible scenario if we keep throwing out new set ups.

Counterplay all you want, you still have to guess what I'm going to do next with said tool. Its like sonic with his spin dash; you have to keep guessing how he is going to escape or go in next.


I think the lack of optimism in our character stems from the fact that many of you aren't used to a character that can't do X 500 times and still succeed (ness back throw, meta knight DA, zss down throw to uair).
We are essentially a perfect example of mixups: the character, and can succeed if we look at pacman in that frame of mind.
 
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Kaiyedy

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Mario, pikachu, and sheik suck at killing early

so...wut??

I also think it is a rather ignorant assessment to suggest that we have to be rushdown to do well in this meta.

BSP BSP
I don't see how trampoline giving opponents "lagless aerials" is relevant considering they can only do it on that specific part of the stage, and we have to be high up to actually get hit by them. You can simply wait on the other side and utilt their landing.

Call me crazy, but I still belive that we will end up in top 15. We have counterplay to our tools, but the amount of options we have outweighs the amount of counterplay. And when it forms to killing opponents in shield...Look at the way fox and pikachu deal with shields. They can't kill at all when an opponent is shielding, but they work around it with various mixups and pressure. We can do he same thing with z dropping and DITCIT confirms.

We have so many possible ways to screw over our opponent that I think it's dubious to belive that the opponent will always have an answer.
Talking more about that they have the ability to catch you up into combos that kill early. Mario can do either uair to uair to up b or nair to up b off of down throw, Pikachu can do utilts to uairs to up b, and Sheik can do fairs to bouncing fish and kill you at 30...
 

Nu~

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Talking more about that they have the ability to catch you up into combos that kill early. Mario can do either uair to uair to up b or nair to up b off of down throw, Pikachu can do utilts to uairs to up b, and Sheik can do fairs to bouncing fish and kill you at 30...
Those are highly situational and only work on specific stages, (sheik and smashville) opponents with bad DI (Ally vs 6WX), or...never (pikachu can't kill with up B...)

I also personally feel that we should be less hesitant to go on the offensive.

Compare Dee to abadango. While abadango gets forced off of his character when people get through, Dee goes on the offense against characters like ZSS and pikachu when he has an opening...and wrecks.
 
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BSP

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Alright, keep hoping. Taking a look at Big House 5, let's see how many characters in top 64 have tether / bad grabs that aren't ZSS, who can legit KO from grabs at fraudulent %.

If you give the not specified character slots the benefit of the doubt...5/64.

Hmm, I wonder why that is?

I wonder how many characters in top 64 have above average mobility too.
 

Kaiyedy

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Those are highly situational and only work on specific stages, (sheik and smashville) opponents with bad DI (Ally vs 6WX), or...never (pikachu can't kill with up B...)
Shoot, meant down b... And the thing is, most of Pac's kill moves are situational, even more so than these sonetimes.
 

Froggy

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I must say I am really sick of hearing people talk about how much harder our fights become once our opponents know the matchup.

Yes Pacman does benefit from other players not knowing how to fight him, but if you're loosing its quite likely less because your opponent knows the matchup but more because he out played you.

The point I am trying to get across here is that the opponent knowing the matchup is almost a moot point because you should know the matchup as well.Contrary to whats often discussed here, I think the true power of Pacman lies not so much in his wide array of mixups but in his uncanny ability to adjust your playstyles to counter the character design of your opponent. Between the hydrant, trampoline and 8 set of fruits, Pacman(more so than any other character imo) can suit his playstyle to match the situation that is needed. If your opponent knows Pacman's mixups then so the **** what? In the particular matchup you should be focusing on the mixups and strategies that counters the character and NOT what has been effective in general.

BSP BSP : There are only a handful of characters with tether grabs, so you remove ZSS from the list and yeah you're not going to end up with much. An I'm not sure what you'r classifying as above average mobility, Rosalina and Mario are not notably more mobile than Pacman is
 
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MachoCheeze

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Yo a lot of negativity lately (and that's something AAcoming from me who's been pretty negative before).

On the contrary to a lot of people since the new patch recently my play and, IMO, Pac-Man has gotten tons better. One thing I've been utilizing a lot is dash dancing to help create space and psyche out the opponent. Especially the combination of dance dancing into perfect pivots. Usually what will happen is if someone is in shield I'll start dash dancing right in front of them and try and read when they're going to drop and go for a pivot F smash out of the dash dance. I don't know how many times I've scored kills with this lately.

Actually, this leads into something I want to talk about with shields. Our grab is ass. You know, your mom knows it, your dog knows it, hell, the goldfish knows it. If someone is blocking you out with shield and you can't stop them just... just don't attack them. Let them stay in shied until it drops. Back off from them. Be patient. If you aren't touching them then they have to have 7 frames of shield drop. Go for empty hop mix ups into Up Smash or Bell. Trip them up with dash dancing like I said earlier. Hell, dash dancing in the hydrant water makes our grab go SO FAR and SO FAST. Just like everything else with Pac-Man: Be WEIRD. Respect the shield is what I'm trying to get at. If your opponent is stuck in their shield they have to commit to SOMETHING and that's when you strike.

There's also a technique I've been working on a little bit with the Melon I call Dribbling. It's basically Z-Drop Nair recatching the Melon over and over again when someone is stuck in their shield. I was playing with my friends tonight and (especially with big characters) they had a hard time reacting to the pressure. Mix it up with hydrants to keep them in shield. Pac-Man can really mess up shields now if he wants. I still say having the opponent commit to shield is better than attacking it, but this is a fun mixup that puts on a lot of pressure.

Another thing I think that's helped my game is making sure I have a powerful fruit in my hand before I plan to use it. Melon, Galaxian, and Bell are all scary if the opponent catches it. I'm not scared if they catch a cherry or a strawberry, or an orange if they can manage that. They just remove the opponent's options with usually little payoff. It takes time to set up but it removes the counterplay. Key I use super sparingly (I frankly think it sucks unless we get it in the hand). Use the key as a mix up (word of the day). Charge for it offstage when the opponent isn't necessarily paying attention to you (this sounds stupid but there's so many times where I've struck people with the key and they're like "I didn't know you had the Key").

I used to think shield utterly destroyed us and that when people found Pac out it was the end of the road, but I just had to adapt. I'm a very aggressive Pac-Man. I'm up in people's faces more so than not. No fear and never stopping movement. Always be doing something. I know some people have had trouble adapting to the patch and maybe it just benefited my style of Pac-Man, I dunno. I've gotten 1st and 5th (the 5th placement was with our states best players so I was super happy about that) in my last two tournaments I've been in. Pac feels really great to me right now.

Sorry if this is so rambling-sounding. I hadn't been on the boards for a while and I wanted to get some thoughts out.
 
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fromundaman

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Wow a lot happened in here today.

Before I get into the issue of my views on Pacman, allow me to post a short video I made before work about some delayed fruit/hydrant tricks for you guys.


I know this stuff all takes a bit to set up, and it is all fairly situational, but also incredibly strong if you get it set up, as well as being a VERY good way to break a timeout situation.

Of these the galaga one is the easiest to set up, but also the easiest to see coming (Galaga launches hydrant slowly and has more audio indicators).

Strawberry setup is also very useful and very easy/safe to set up.

The bell one is neat, but honestly I've never found a way to set it up mid match, especially since the version in that video is the quickest launch. The slower launch, which is even harder to time, can allow you to combo into side B, but good luck ever getting it in a real match.

The ones I used Melon for work with any fruit that doesn't pierce, although only melon and apple will launch the hydrant unless you stick around to hit the hydrant before the fruit comes back down. That said those setups are very useful against other characters that need to set up, characters with non-threatening zoning, or to corner someone trying to time you out. You can also do these setups with the piercing fruits, but it's trickier.


_________________________________

Anyway it's really interesting how vastly different a lot of our opinions are. TBH I both agree and disagree with every single person to have posted on this topic so far.

EDIT: By the way, reading through this I see what I am saying starting to sound really gloomy. To reiterate before I get super blown up, I do not think Pacman is bad by any means. In my mind he just slipped into mid tier or maybe the low end of high tier, but it is important IMO that we accept some of these weaknesses so that we can either learn to get around them or join hands in a prayer circle and beg papa Sakurai for a buff or two.

HERE COMES THE USUAL WARNING, WALL OF TEXT INCOMING (You know how I do). This one is long though, even for me. Still, lots of info in here and I would really like to discuss these things:

__________________________________



I want to preface this by saying that I do think Pacman is viable, but not anywhere near as much as he used to be. Pre-patch, I thought solo-maining this character was feasible, MAYBE needing a secondary for 1-2 MUs. Post-patch, he is definitely not solo-mainable and from what I've seen has significantly more MUs where you could benefit from a secondary.

Now I am NOT saying this in response to poor tournament placements (My placements since the patch dropped have actually been good, getting to GFs in every local I played and making top 32 at the regional I was at), but just how I feel things have become from playing more people, especially the ones who play me often enough to not be tripped up by the basic Pac stuff.

Pros:

-His trap game is without equal. It really helps that a lot of setups look similar, making it hard to judge what we are about to throw out.
-His ledge traps are ridiculous (Seriously, more of us need to abuse this. It is one of our biggest strengths.)
-He has a very good combo game. Anyone thinking otherwise needs to live in training mode for a while. You should be tacking on anywhere between 10-80% anytime you land a hit on someone below 140-ish% IMO (Excluding pokes like Ftilt/Dtilt and jabs... although those moves can start big damage combos too). Despite mentioning going into training room to explore your combo potential, I do mean this should be happening in real matches.
-Very good recovery. Even if the opponent knows how to stuff it, we have so much leeway in how we recover that while gimping us is possible, it is not feasible to do consistently if we are playing smart.
-Our tools allow us to change the rules of the game/neutral.
-More gimmicks than anyone can keep track of.
-Great frame data in terms of move startup and endlag for most of our kit.
-Lots and lots of kill confirms, both situational and reliable.
-Decent mobility.
-Good punish tools
-Frame 3 Nair (AKA C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!)
-Key is one of the better punishing moves in the game.
-While our B-reversals suck, we do have tools to get back to the ground thanks to hydrant
-Pretty flexible playstyle.
-Lots of mixups.

Cons:

-Becomes infinitely more effective with set up time. The reason this is a con is because it means we are much less effective when we don't have breathing room.
-Most of his normals have no disjoint or priority.
-Most of his normals (Hell, specials too) are unsafe on block.
-His grab is frame 12-39, AKA really really active but also super duper slow.
-Some of his moves are punishable on hit in certain percent ranges (Trampoline and Fair at low %s, DA at higher %s sometimes, Dair hits 1-3 all the time).
-While his punish game is very good, it did get weakened by the shield mechanic and none of his main punish tools kill early (Nair/Jab/Trampoline/Ftilt)
-Due to the above combination of factors, Pacman is one of the characters IMO to suffer most from the opponent knowing the MU (I will get into this later as this requires much more explanation than I can put in this list).
-All traps can be used against you.
-It can be hard to deal with zoners holding on to your fruit.
-More of a player thing, but due to how the character works and how much thinking/planning he takes, going on auto-pilot with him is far more detrimental than it would be with other characters.
-A lot of characters can punish a whiffed trampoline if they are anywhere near you, with a few doing it from anywhere on screen.
-Some of the better characters can punish a grounded hydrant drop on reaction from anywhere on the stage.
-Our mobility, while not bad, is also not good.
-We have some very VERY bad glitches. Like glitches that can cost us our tournament life, sometimes randomly and for no apparent reason (Yes I am still salty Lylat... And Castle Siege...)
-Our B-reversals suck
-It is super easy to spike us out of Side B.

____________________

I said I would explain why I think MU knowledge hurts us more than other characters, so here we go:

Let's say I play someone for the first time and do Fair>Nair>UpB on their shield. Most people think this is a true blockstring, or at least not punishable. Hell, I used to think few, if any, characters could. It took a LOT of games for the people I play constantly to realize that not only is it punishable, but Fair is actually super punishable on block, and most decent OoS options will beat any Fair follow up whatsoever.
This isn't like saying that we can punish a mis-spaced Sheik Fair with trampoline if we know about it, where the solution for the attacker is simply to space better; this is an issue of our move is punishable any time it hits shield for any reason. The solution: Either don't use it, or use it sparingly enough that hopefully the opponent will either not shield it or not react to it.


Another example would be Fsmash. Tipper Fsmash is + on block IF it's the 1st hit. If it's not tippered, it's unsafe. Okay, so space it right and you should be good right? Somewhat. Sourspot is SUPER unsafe on block, and it is unsafe on whiff. This means we have a move that needs to be tippered to be safe, but can't be *too* tippered or it becomes as punishable as a whiff. Keeping in mind the first hitbox takes 18 frames to come out and is only active 2 frames, with the sourspot being active 8 frames, and you have yet another move where the solution is "Don't use it or pray they don't react fast enough to punish".

Okay, so Fair is a problem, but w/e, smash attacks are meant to be strong and unsafe. So we have an unsafe aerial and a few unsafe smashes.

Oh yeah, Nair and Dair have the same problems. Nair is punishable by most shield grabs and strong OoS options that cover behind the character. Not even sure why either because frame data sort of implies it shouldn't be punishable and yet it is.

Uair has the same problem near the ground.

Every jab is punishable, although the opponent has to read a jab cancel to punish. That said pressing buttons to punish a jab cancel is *almost* always worth it (Unless it's in front of a hydrant) since you can get some hefty punishes on a right read and only eat 4-7% (If jabs are fresh) on a wrong read. This would mean jab should realistically be used as a punisher and not a poking tool.

Trampoline is not safe on hit at low percents, and not safe on whiff against a good portion of the cast from within half screen unless ledge canceled.

Fruit has 12 frames of startup and is horribly unsafe in close range.

I *think* Utilt is safe on block, but it is still negative, meaning that while you usually can block an attempted punish, you're pressure is over.

Hydrant is not safe on shield either near the ground.

DA, while harder to punish now (And impossible for some characters I think?), is still punished by strong OoS options.

*****

This leaves us with Ftilt, Dtilt, Bair, somewhat Utilt and... that's it. Those are our *safe-ish* options. Of those, Utilt and maybe Bair are the only ones that might win trades against moves with decent amounts of disjoints.


Now this sounds worse on paper written out like this than I mean it to be, but here's the point:

If I learn to play against Mario, that doesn't change the fact that most of what he does is safe. If I learn the Sheik MU, it won't magically make her more punishable. Learning MUs will however teach you to punish whatever IS punishable. In our case, it's almost everything.

Now yes, we do in fact have VERY good mixups, some of the best in the game IMO, along with everything else I've taken note of up above, and playing unpredictably does definitely help us BUUUUUUT mixups are not exclusive to us and benefit everyone. When you look at our mixups vs the ones of better characters, while we do have a very good reward for a successful mixup, we also have a much higher risk tacked onto it than most good characters.

While other characters have recently gotten safer, we are still unsafe on almost our entire kit, and once people catch onto that, it makes everything we do carry much more risk.
Now yes, we can in fact make ourselves safe with our setups and traps (Sometimes ridiculously so), but these all require setup time, which in turn requires us to have breathing room. This used to be easy to create, but unfortunately the latest patch hurt our ability to do this. Now the best way to create space is still to bait and punish, but to do it without using shield against most moves while keeping in mind our safe moves lose to disjoints while the moves that beat disjoints/trade favorably are unsafe.

_____________________


Okay, enough on that, I do want to reply to a few things though:

Mario, pikachu, and sheik suck at killing early

so...wut??
Mario has throw combos into kill moves at specific percents before 100% though. Pika and Sheik have some admittedly more situational shenanigans.
BSP BSP
I don't see how trampoline giving opponents "lagless aerials" is relevant considering they can only do it on that specific part of the stage, and we have to be high up to actually get hit by them. You can simply wait on the other side and utilt their landing.
It becomes relevant when you realize that if you are nowhere near that specific part of the stage, they can simply ignore the trampoline altogether. We also don't need to be high up at all for that. FF a disjoint aerial that normally has landing lag on trampoline, like IDK Wario or Sonic's Bair, then be back in the air with all of your jumps for free? Not too bad. We can punish these options for sure, but it's not like they CAN'T use the trampoline either. I know my training partner hits them whenever I can't punish them just to leave red trampolines in my way (As Kirby he stays in the air forever doing this too).

Not saying trampoline is bad, but be mindful of the counterplay or it will blow you up.

When it comes to killing opponents in shield...Look at the way fox and pikachu deal with shields. They can't kill at all when an opponent is shielding, but they work around it with various mixups and pressure. We can do the same thing with z dropping and DITCIT confirms. Fair to key, DA to bell to side B, DA to key at the ledge...we have more and I know you guys know this. And please don't use fruit gushing as a kill set up. It's incredibly obvious. It's best used for pressure win nuetral since it forces the opponent to react when we approach them, and makes our approach a bit safer.
I disagree with like 12 things in just this paragraph.

1) Pika and Fox have safe shield pressure that can convert into kill moves on hit so the comparison is bad. They work around it by abusing that and their good grabs which set up situations where they can tech chase into a kill or kill an opponent trying to land. We have literally none of these things. Our ways to deal with shielding is vastly different from theirs.
2) DITCIT confirms are awesome, but how exactly does that help with shielding opponents?
3) This is like the 4th time I've heard things about fruit gushing being obvious... You guys are aware that all fruits have between 3-8 gushed arcs and speeds when normal B-thrown and even more than that when you have it in hand right? Pretty sure I explained/showed some of this before, but I can do a few quick recordings of these if need be. When mixed in well, I do think gushing is valid, especially when mixed with all of our many other options when a hydrant is behind us.

Okay fine only 3 things...

We have so many possible ways to screw over our opponent that I think it's dubious to think that the opponent will always have an answer. They can know that matchup, and we'll still have a way to mess them up because they can't account for every possible scenario if we keep throwing out new set ups.

Counterplay all you want, you still have to guess what I'm going to do next with said tool. Its like sonic with his spin dash; you have to keep guessing how he is going to escape or go in next.
This is COMPLETELY true WHEN we have time to set up our tools. Not saying we can't; it's not too hard to charge fruits, set up a hydrant, etc. What's tough is having a competent opponent let you do it without punishing you, especially when you consider how bad our neutral is UNTIL we get set up, and that some of our neutral tools get us punished when we set them up.


I think the lack of optimism in our character stems from the fact that many of you aren't used to a character that can't do X 500 times and still succeed (ness back throw, meta knight DA, zss down throw to uair).
We are essentially a perfect example of mixups: the character, and can succeed if we look at pacman in that frame of mind.
I am a recognizable name in 2 separate games with this exact type of character, both of which were low tiers; my attitude is NOT from unfamiliarity with this character archtype. In fact it's kind of the opposite: Since the patch I am recognizing the same issues my other characters had, even if on a lesser scale.

Trap based mixup characters are incredible, but you need a decent neutral to make it work. I know I'm probably the only person to have played Injustice in here, but this was Joker's problem. Yeah sure, when I landed the hit I could set up a trap where you would instantly stand up (Avoiding wakeup invulnerability) into an overhead and 2 lows which could hit in any order I wanted them to while gaining armor on myself for the ultimate mixup. It didn't matter since Joker's terrible neutral meant that against top tier characters he could go an entire match without getting in range to set himself up.

Now that's an extreme example as Joker was bottom tier and Pacman is far from that, but it's the same issue, except instead of needing to get close enough to set up, we need to make enough breathing room to set up.



*****


BSP BSP Not going to quote it all, but Ike gave you trouble you said? (I know it's Ryo, but I trust we're talking tools moreso than the player)

While the ones I've played weren't on the same level, it did seem to me like Ike's lack of OoS options actually made our rushdown game viable as he didn't seem to have anything to punish crossup aerials/DA on his shield, nor to get us off of him once we start comboing him other than that super slow counter.
That said Ike was wrecking me when I tried to play a more defensive playstyle for all the reasons you listed.

Do you think against a better player like Ryo an aggressive trap style would be more effective, or did you already try that?

__________________________

I know some of you skipped straight here but here you go, final thoughts:


Extreme TL DR/moral of the story:



What we need is to find a better way to make space to set ourselves up. If we can do that consistently, then we can be a great character. Until then though, we hover at good.
 
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Huge

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jul 14, 2014
Messages
77
Wow, man, awesome post. You absolutely eviscerated Pac-Man... a lot of things I hadn't considered before here. The section on blocking was kind of depressing, though; is fair really that unsafe? It's become B&B for me, even against people who know the matchup. Stinks to think I've been using scrub strats.
 
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dragontamer

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Wow, man, awesome post. You absolutely eviscerated Pac-Man... a lot of things I hadn't considered before here. The section on blocking was kind of depressing, though; is fair really that unsafe? It's become B&B for me, even against people who know the matchup. Stinks to think I've been using scrub strats.
Fair can be safe. I like going for Fair->Fair->Nair offstage around 65%. It gimps a good chunk of the (low-tier) cast. Everyone (except Luigi) in high-tier has enough recovery to actually come back from that however.

Be very careful when you choose Fairs. Practice in training mode and know when Fair goes into a real combo. I'm pretty sure that Fair is negative frames on hit (let alone on block) until higher percentages.
 
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Nu~

Smash Dreamer
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Wow a lot happened in here today.

Before I get into the issue of my views on Pacman, allow me to post a short video I made before work about some delayed fruit/hydrant tricks for you guys.


I know this stuff all takes a bit to set up, and it is all fairly situational, but also incredibly strong if you get it set up, as well as being a VERY good way to break a timeout situation.

Of these the galaga one is the easiest to set up, but also the easiest to see coming (Galaga launches hydrant slowly and has more audio indicators).

Strawberry setup is also very useful and very easy/safe to set up.

The bell one is neat, but honestly I've never found a way to set it up mid match, especially since the version in that video is the quickest launch. The slower launch, which is even harder to time, can allow you to combo into side B, but good luck ever getting it in a real match.

The ones I used Melon for work with any fruit that doesn't pierce, although only melon and apple will launch the hydrant unless you stick around to hit the hydrant before the fruit comes back down. That said those setups are very useful against other characters that need to set up, characters with non-threatening zoning, or to corner someone trying to time you out. You can also do these setups with the piercing fruits, but it's trickier.


_________________________________

Anyway it's really interesting how vastly different a lot of our opinions are. TBH I both agree and disagree with every single person to have posted on this topic so far.

EDIT: By the way, reading through this I see what I am saying starting to sound really gloomy. To reiterate before I get super blown up, I do not think Pacman is bad by any means. In my mind he just slipped into mid tier or maybe the low end of high tier, but it is important IMO that we accept some of these weaknesses so that we can either learn to get around them or join hands in a prayer circle and beg papa Sakurai for a buff or two.

HERE COMES THE USUAL WARNING, WALL OF TEXT INCOMING (You know how I do). This one is long though, even for me. Still, lots of info in here and I would really like to discuss these things:

__________________________________



I want to preface this by saying that I do think Pacman is viable, but not anywhere near as much as he used to be. Pre-patch, I thought solo-maining this character was feasible, MAYBE needing a secondary for 1-2 MUs. Post-patch, he is definitely not solo-mainable and from what I've seen has significantly more MUs where you could benefit from a secondary.

Now I am NOT saying this in response to poor tournament placements (My placements since the patch dropped have actually been good, getting to GFs in every local I played and making top 32 at the regional I was at), but just how I feel things have become from playing more people, especially the ones who play me often enough to not be tripped up by the basic Pac stuff.

Pros:

-His trap game is without equal. It really helps that a lot of setups look similar, making it hard to judge what we are about to throw out.
-His ledge traps are ridiculous (Seriously, more of us need to abuse this. It is one of our biggest strengths.)
-He has a very good combo game. Anyone thinking otherwise needs to live in training mode for a while. You should be tacking on anywhere between 10-80% anytime you land a hit on someone below 140-ish% IMO (Excluding pokes like Ftilt/Dtilt and jabs... although those moves can start big damage combos too). Despite mentioning going into training room to explore your combo potential, I do mean this should be happening in real matches.
-Very good recovery. Even if the opponent knows how to stuff it, we have so much leeway in how we recover that while gimping us is possible, it is not feasible to do consistently if we are playing smart.
-Our tools allow us to change the rules of the game/neutral.
-More gimmicks than anyone can keep track of.
-Great frame data in terms of move startup and endlag for most of our kit.
-Lots and lots of kill confirms, both situational and reliable.
-Decent mobility.
-Good punish tools
-Frame 3 Nair (AKA C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!)
-Key is one of the better punishing moves in the game.
-While our B-reversals suck, we do have tools to get back to the ground thanks to hydrant
-Pretty flexible playstyle.
-Lots of mixups.

Cons:

-Becomes infinitely more effective with set up time. The reason this is a con is because it means we are much less effective when we don't have breathing room.
-Most of his normals have no disjoint or priority.
-Most of his normals (Hell, specials too) are unsafe on block.
-His grab is frame 12-39, AKA really really active but also super duper slow.
-Some of his moves are punishable on hit in certain percent ranges (Trampoline and Fair at low %s, DA at higher %s sometimes, Dair hits 1-3 all the time).
-While his punish game is very good, it did get weakened by the shield mechanic and none of his main punish tools kill early (Nair/Jab/Trampoline/Ftilt)
-Due to the above combination of factors, Pacman is one of the characters IMO to suffer most from the opponent knowing the MU (I will get into this later as this requires much more explanation than I can put in this list).
-All traps can be used against you.
-It can be hard to deal with zoners holding on to your fruit.
-More of a player thing, but due to how the character works and how much thinking/planning he takes, going on auto-pilot with him is far more detrimental than it would be with other characters.
-A lot of characters can punish a whiffed trampoline if they are anywhere near you, with a few doing it from anywhere on screen.
-Some of the better characters can punish a grounded hydrant drop on reaction from anywhere on the stage.
-Our mobility, while not bad, is also not good.
-We have some very VERY bad glitches. Like glitches that can cost us our tournament life, sometimes randomly and for no apparent reason (Yes I am still salty Lylat... And Castle Siege...)
-Our B-reversals suck
-It is super easy to spike us out of Side B.

____________________

I said I would explain why I think MU knowledge hurts us more than other characters, so here we go:

Let's say I play someone for the first time and do Fair>Nair>UpB on their shield. Most people think this is a true blockstring, or at least not punishable. Hell, I used to think few, if any, characters could. It took a LOT of games for the people I play constantly to realize that not only is it punishable, but Fair is actually super punishable on block, and most decent OoS options will beat any Fair follow up whatsoever.
This isn't like saying that we can punish a mis-spaced Sheik Fair with trampoline if we know about it, where the solution for the attacker is simply to space better; this is an issue of our move is punishable any time it hits shield for any reason. The solution: Either don't use it, or use it sparingly enough that hopefully the opponent will either not shield it or not react to it.


Another example would be Fsmash. Tipper Fsmash is + on block IF it's the 1st hit. If it's not tippered, it's unsafe. Okay, so space it right and you should be good right? Somewhat. Sourspot is SUPER unsafe on block, and it is unsafe on whiff. This means we have a move that needs to be tippered to be safe, but can't be *too* tippered or it becomes as punishable as a whiff. Keeping in mind the first hitbox takes 18 frames to come out and is only active 2 frames, with the sourspot being active 8 frames, and you have yet another move where the solution is "Don't use it or pray they don't react fast enough to punish".

Okay, so Fair is a problem, but w/e, smash attacks are meant to be strong and unsafe. So we have an unsafe aerial and a few unsafe smashes.

Oh yeah, Nair and Dair have the same problems. Nair is punishable by most shield grabs and strong OoS options that cover behind the character. Not even sure why either because frame data sort of implies it shouldn't be punishable and yet it is.

Uair has the same problem near the ground.

Every jab is punishable, although the opponent has to read a jab cancel to punish. That said pressing buttons to punish a jab cancel is *almost* always worth it (Unless it's in front of a hydrant) since you can get some hefty punishes on a right read and only eat 4-7% (If jabs are fresh) on a wrong read. This would mean jab should realistically be used as a punisher and not a poking tool.

Trampoline is not safe on hit at low percents, and not safe on whiff against a good portion of the cast from within half screen unless ledge canceled.

Fruit has 12 frames of startup and is horribly unsafe in close range.

I *think* Utilt is safe on block, but it is still negative, meaning that while you usually can block an attempted punish, you're pressure is over.

Hydrant is not safe on shield either near the ground.

DA, while harder to punish now (And impossible for some characters I think?), is still punished by strong OoS options.

*****

This leaves us with Ftilt, Dtilt, Bair, somewhat Utilt and... that's it. Those are our *safe-ish* options. Of those, Utilt and maybe Bair are the only ones that might win trades against moves with decent amounts of disjoints.


Now this sounds worse on paper written out like this than I mean it to be, but here's the point:

If I learn to play against Mario, that doesn't change the fact that most of what he does is safe. If I learn the Sheik MU, it won't magically make her more punishable. Learning MUs will however teach you to punish whatever IS punishable. In our case, it's almost everything.

Now yes, we do in fact have VERY good mixups, some of the best in the game IMO, along with everything else I've taken note of up above, and playing unpredictably does definitely help us BUUUUUUT mixups are not exclusive to us and benefit everyone. When you look at our mixups vs the ones of better characters, while we do have a very good reward for a successful mixup, we also have a much higher risk tacked onto it than most good characters.

While other characters have recently gotten safer, we are still unsafe on almost our entire kit, and once people catch onto that, it makes everything we do carry much more risk.
Now yes, we can in fact make ourselves safe with our setups and traps (Sometimes ridiculously so), but these all require setup time, which in turn requires us to have breathing room. This used to be easy to create, but unfortunately the latest patch hurt our ability to do this. Now the best way to create space is still to bait and punish, but to do it without using shield against most moves while keeping in mind our safe moves lose to disjoints while the moves that beat disjoints/trade favorably are unsafe.

_____________________


Okay, enough on that, I do want to reply to a few things though:


Mario has throw combos into kill moves at specific percents before 100% though. Pika and Sheik have some admittedly more situational shenanigans.


It becomes relevant when you realize that if you are nowhere near that specific part of the stage, they can simply ignore the trampoline altogether. We also don't need to be high up at all for that. FF a disjoint aerial that normally has landing lag on trampoline, like IDK Wario or Sonic's Bair, then be back in the air with all of your jumps for free? Not too bad. We can punish these options for sure, but it's not like they CAN'T use the trampoline either. I know my training partner hits them whenever I can't punish them just to leave red trampolines in my way (As Kirby he stays in the air forever doing this too).

Not saying trampoline is bad, but be mindful of the counterplay or it will blow you up.



I disagree with like 12 things in just this paragraph.

1) Pika and Fox have safe shield pressure that can convert into kill moves on hit so the comparison is bad. They work around it by abusing that and their good grabs which set up situations where they can tech chase into a kill or kill an opponent trying to land. We have literally none of these things. Our ways to deal with shielding is vastly different from theirs.
2) DITCIT confirms are awesome, but how exactly does that help with shielding opponents?
3) This is like the 4th time I've heard things about fruit gushing being obvious... You guys are aware that all fruits have between 3-8 gushed arcs and speeds when normal B-thrown and even more than that when you have it in hand right? Pretty sure I explained/showed some of this before, but I can do a few quick recordings of these if need be. When mixed in well, I do think gushing is valid, especially when mixed with all of our many other options when a hydrant is behind us.

Okay fine only 3 things...



This is COMPLETELY true WHEN we have time to set up our tools. Not saying we can't; it's not too hard to charge fruits, set up a hydrant, etc. What's tough is having a competent opponent let you do it without punishing you, especially when you consider how bad our neutral is UNTIL we get set up, and that some of our neutral tools get us punished when we set them up.



I am a recognizable name in 2 separate games with this exact type of character, both of which were low tiers; my attitude is NOT from unfamiliarity with this character archtype. In fact it's kind of the opposite: Since the patch I am recognizing the same issues my other characters had, even if on a lesser scale.

Trap based mixup characters are incredible, but you need a decent neutral to make it work. I know I'm probably the only person to have played Injustice in here, but this was Joker's problem. Yeah sure, when I landed the hit I could set up a trap where you would instantly stand up (Avoiding wakeup invulnerability) into an overhead and 2 lows which could hit in any order I wanted them to while gaining armor on myself for the ultimate mixup. It didn't matter since Joker's terrible neutral meant that against top tier characters he could go an entire match without getting in range to set himself up.

Now that's an extreme example as Joker was bottom tier and Pacman is far from that, but it's the same issue, except instead of needing to get close enough to set up, we need to make enough breathing room to set up.



*****


BSP BSP Not going to quote it all, but Ike gave you trouble you said? (I know it's Ryo, but I trust we're talking tools moreso than the player)

While the ones I've played weren't on the same level, it did seem to me like Ike's lack of OoS options actually made our rushdown game viable as he didn't seem to have anything to punish crossup aerials/DA on his shield, nor to get us off of him once we start comboing him other than that super slow counter.
That said Ike was wrecking me when I tried to play a more defensive playstyle for all the reasons you listed.

Do you think against a better player like Ryo an aggressive trap style would be more effective, or did you already try that?

__________________________

I know some of you skipped straight here but here you go, final thoughts:


Extreme TL DR/moral of the story:



What we need is to find a better way to make space to set ourselves up. If we can do that consistently, then we can be a great character. Until then though, we hover at good.
I agree with just about everything in this post (amazing analysis) but there are a few things I want to say.

Nair -> trampoline is only punishable by 5 frame OoS attacks. The landing lag is 12 frames and the shield stun is 7 frames. That said, you have to to hit their shield as soon as you touch the ground.

And when I referred to pikachu and fox, I didn't intend to say that we can deal with shields in the exact same way they can. I meant that we can pressure shields with z dropping and hydrants as opposed to poking with normals. Also, DITCIT melon -> trampoline is a nasty kill confirm when done right.

I like that you said that our position in the tier list is still malleable. I believe that we'll be able to find ways to set up faster in the future, that's why I believe that we'll end up in high tier (nothing higher)
If we have no answer, that's when mid tier city starts calling.
 
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Splebel

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Aug 7, 2015
Messages
398
Location
Maryland
It seems I'm late to the party. Although I do feel honored for being in that list of Pac-mains. I'm in agreement with everyone here on the tier placement but I still think I can solo Pac-Man in a tournament if my skill level was higher. The biggest threat to Pac-Man in my opinion are the people who can consistently negate/ catch the fruit from anywhere (I tend to be fruit heavy). This could just be me needing to mix-up more or something but I think we are in a good place. Grab could be better and I would like more shield stun on some moves but overall I'm content.
 

fromundaman

Henshin a go-go Baby!
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Fromundaman
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Wow, man, awesome post. You absolutely eviscerated Pac-Man... a lot of things I hadn't considered before here. The section on blocking was kind of depressing, though; is fair really that unsafe? It's become B&B for me, even against people who know the matchup. Stinks to think I've been using scrub strats.
I know, I had the same revelation when players started catching on to how punishable it is...

That said, I would not say using Fair is a scrub strat. It's still a frame 5 aerial that starts some big damage combos and has decent range. Just you can't hit shields with it against opponents with good/decent OoS options. Against opponents like Bowser, Ike, etc, you can be safe on their shields (I think?), but against say Villager or Shiek you're eating a Nair every time.

Fair is still really good for controlling airspace though (Since it will come out before most other aerials and we can retreat with it rather safely on whiff), and it's such a good combo tool. With fruits or hydrants it can also be used for safe pressure.

Also an interesting thing to note is that while Fair is punishable on block, some characters need to punish it differently depending on how we space it, meaning that we can trip them up by varying the spacing on their shield to avoid punishes sometimes.

I personally still think Fair is one of our better moves, but I've definitely cut down on my use of it pretty drastically recently (I used to pretty much spam that move) against opponents who know they can punish it. Against people who let me get away with it though, it's open season!


fromundaman fromundaman : You have any videos from your recent placings? I'm sure we'd all love to watch!
I can try to record some stuff from my weekly today. That said would anyone be able to upload any replays I send them? Otherwise I'd have to wait on an elgato to get here (Planning on ordering one tonight).

Honestly though I don't think I'm as good as some of the other Pacman players on these boards; I'm just a lab rat (Sakurai please buff training mode... We're in 2015, why the hell can't we get a functional training mode?!) who's pretty good at expressing himself and familiar with this character archtype from other games.



EDIT:


One of the best PACMAN guides I have ever seen:

http://esports-runner.com/ssb4/pacman_koneta/

It is on japanease, but there are like 30 vines, AMAZING vines
Wow! Thank you so much for sharing these. I'm going to be in training mode a lot this week.

That ledge trump bell looks ridiculously useful.
 
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Aaron1997

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Well if you where doing Dthrow into Fair Jab locks you just got a new toy
 
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Splebel

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Anybody ever do a footstool right after a Zdrop melon hit? It seems cool until you do it on an opponent that has the "red bars of death" and you just saved them during a high tension moment and almost cost you the match. It was funny though.
 

Sinji

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I feel that this is an important thing us pacmains have to talk about.

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What are your thoughts on PacMan's future viability?

As long as they don't nerf him again and they fix his grab he will remain high tier. We have the only move in the game that can challenge Rosalina's Up air. A frame one up b thats unblockable and we are able to shield poke out of our opponents range. However, I feel like PacMan has to play every match up a lot differently than the rest of the cast. It causes us to think more then the average character which becomes a stigma. We have so many options, but to pick the right one at the right time can be hard (especially in mid match against a tough opponent). Stage positioning, percentage, this and more all has a lot of details behind it. It's a lot to think about. I think Pacman has the potential to beat any character. I was playing against a shiek players at a tournament the other day, and I dtilt the shiek to negate the grab and when the player try's to roll to cross me up and grab, I up b away. The shiek player couldn't get any grabs that match and shiek needs grabs to rack up damage. An example like this shows the potential of our character. I appreciate all styles of Pac-Man. Whether it be Abadango, Dee, Pacman9, PackageFruits, T, Ginko etc. I think we just need to cultivate all that data and take what value each player shows with Pac-Man.
 

BSP

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One of the best PACMAN guides I have ever seen:

http://esports-runner.com/ssb4/pacman_koneta/

It is on japanease, but there are like 30 vines, AMAZING vines
The only problem with the on stage cherry ones (or any of them involving z dropping while the opponent is on the ground) is convincing people to not shield when we have it in hand. The cherry on the ledge is a viable mixup because we can also go for a trump instead -> ledge drop jump + z drop cherry -> Bair for death at high %. If we do the Uthrow, it should catch jumps and standard getups like shown.

That Uthrown Apple gushed by the hydrant is great. We can definitely get something off of that. Since the apple is bouncing for so long, we get auto phantom fruits that entire time. Because of that, we could run to the opponent and spam smashes since we know the apple is coming for cover. The apple should cover a grab. We just need something to cover a high jump...

Melon trampoline -> ledge trump looks good, I can't believe none of us thought of that (and if you did, you should've been more vocal about it). I would say we need to start it early than presented in the vine, lest the opponent can ledge drop and hit us before we force the trump.

Melon covering the 1F - 2F window of vulnerability, whichever one it is, is great too.

Ledge trump bell is so smart, why didn't this ever cross my mind.

BTW if it hasn't been figured out already, we have an easy, consistent orange recatch method on stage. It's similar to the apple recatch. Throw your orange into your hydrant while you are drifting towards it right above the ground, and you should be able to make it to the orange in time for the catch. This works with hitting the opponent and their shield too, but hitting their shield is unsafe of course.

Why is this worth learning? Orange semi spikes. An item that will fly in any cardinal direction or can be z dropped and semi spikes on hit is quite useful against recoveries with no hitbox. Plus, getting hit by an orange offstage is death for most of the cast.

Holy crap, we have Brawl MK's dair in our hand.
 
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Froggy

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I can try to record some stuff from my weekly today. That said would anyone be able to upload any replays I send them? Otherwise I'd have to wait on an elgato to get here (Planning on ordering one tonight).

l.

The tournaments you attend don't have a livestream?
 

dragontamer

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The only problem with the on stage cherry ones (or any of them involving z dropping while the opponent is on the ground) is convincing people to not shield when we have it in hand. The cherry on the ledge is a viable mixup because we can also go for a trump instead -> ledge drop jump + z drop cherry -> Bair for death at high %. If we do the Uthrow, it should catch jumps and standard getups like shown.
The double-drop technique might be useful, but the shieldstun on cherry / strawberry is downright irrelevant. Given the range of the z-drop, I find the whole cherry setup to be impractical as a whole. But there are definitely other setups in that page that look interesting.

I've never gotten double-drop Melon done in battle against a moving opponent though. I can only really do it vs Hydrant for a quick launch. Anyone else have luck with double-drops?

A double drop is when you catch with the air-dodge button, then push A slightly after the air dodge to drop the fruit again. ZDrop Melon -> Hydrant -> Double-drop is probably the 2nd fastest hydrant launch (after key-launch)... seems to be even faster than galaxian z-drop hydrant launch.

Melon trampoline -> ledge trump looks good, I can't believe none of us thought of that (and if you did, you should've been more vocal about it). I would say we need to start it early than presented in the vine, lest the opponent can ledge drop and hit us before we force the trump.
I've done down-thrown melon -> ledge trump before, but never thought of combining it with a Trampoline like that.

The other trampoline setups look interesting. If the opponent knows whats up, they can just sit there on the ledge. I'm guessing that a hydrant -> jab setup should be executed after the red-trapoline on ledge.

Why is this worth learning? Orange semi spikes. An item that will fly in any cardinal direction and semi spike on hit is quite useful against recoveries with no hitbox. Plus, getting hit by an orange offstage is death for most of the cast.

Holy crap, we have Brawl MK's dair in our hand.
Orange is definitely amazing.
 
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fromundaman

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The tournaments you attend don't have a livestream?
Not my locals. One of them is just a small affair where no one has bothered to set it up, and the other is in an arcade where there are tournaments for like every fighting game ever made, and that place sadly has only good enough internet for 1 stream to be run at once. Usually it's melee or MKX. Used to be Marvel and Injustice as well, but those kind of died out.

Unfortunately due to my job being difficult about scheduling, traveling has become more difficult lately. I am planning on attending a few Out of State events between now and January though so we'll see how that goes.


Also the few times I have made it to big tournaments and gotten to a point where I could be streamed, something has always happened. In France I was onstream for 3 matches, all of which I won, and the entire stream archive was corrupted. At Dismantle, my only streamed match was the one where False wrecked me so hard my grandchildren will tell tales of my dishonorable defeat. At TTT3, I had 2 streamed matches, but it turned out they forgot to record the matches. All Mid, the stream equipment wasn't working for some reason.

Hell even in Injustice this **** happened, where at multiple tournaments I placed high enough to get stream time but somehow I always ended up offstream, one time even because someone misread the lineup of streamed matches XD


I am starting to think it's just not meant to be...
 
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