Pikachu and Bidou

[zerossoul]

Has anyone experimented with Pikachu and Bidou? Does Pikachu get a big benefit from using Bidou?

 

[Pedrosupersmashbrosfan]

I'm not sure..

 

[A10theHero]

Bidou is a mixed bag. Perfect Pivots and Extended Dash Dancing are useful in Neutral so being able to do them consistently with relative ease is a huge benefit. Up Throw to PP Thunder also becomes easier to perform. Additionally, Pikachu can reap benefits from Bidou tech involving Crouching or Spot Dodges. Instant Wall Jumps could make killing with Fair after a Ledge Trump a viable option (though this is still possible with Tilt Stick and Smash Stick Bidou). As for the trade-offs, switching to Bidou requires giving up C-Stick Aerials. This is pretty important for Pikachu because it makes it easier to use SHAC Dair, SH Uair, and retreating SH Fair, to name a few. You also have to give up easy pivot Forward Smashes (which required either Smash Stick or A + B Smash). In addition, you'd have to practice your Up Tilts if you relied on Tilt Stick for that. Regardless, it's not impossible to somewhat compensate for all this through practice. For example, ESAM does SHAC Dairs without relying on any form of Double Sticking, I believe. In the end, it's up to you. I do encourage playing around with Bidou for a while and experimenting. Since Pikachu's playstyle is pretty mixup-based, there's plenty of room for variation and Bidouchu might feel more natural to you. I hope this helps!

 

[DeaDea]

The main disadvantages are tilts are slightly harder to do (but this is quite easy to adjust to to be honest, but be prepared for an adjustment period) and short hop up air is harder to do. Doing SHAC Dairs is super easy by just sliding your finger from y->a (same as FAIR), but with uair this will cause Pika to do an upsmash.

Really good advantages are perfect pivot down tilts (and just empty perfect pivoting back for microspacing) becoming super easy to do and dash dancing is very doable. Advantages with b-sticking such as aiming up-b's becomes easier as you can dedicate the left analogue to directions without needing to initially hold up, as well wavebouncing down-bs to edgeguard becoming way easier.

Perfect pivoting and smashing + tilting is useful too, but I have found not as much as the above.

Things I have yet to figure out how good they are: perfect pivoting spot dodging, perfect pivot up throw thunder, RAR'ing up air (the last two require clawing so I can instantly c-stick + jump which I haven't got down yet).

 

[lmntolp]

The main disadvantages are tilts are slightly harder to do (but this is quite easy to adjust to to be honest, but be prepared for an adjustment period) and short hop up air is harder to do. Doing SHAC Dairs is super easy by just sliding your finger from y->a (same as FAIR), but with uair this will cause Pika to do an upsmash.

Really good advantages are perfect pivot down tilts (and just empty perfect pivoting back for microspacing) becoming super easy to do and dash dancing is very doable. Advantages with b-sticking such as aiming up-b's becomes easier as you can dedicate the left analogue to directions without needing to initially hold up, as well wavebouncing down-bs to edgeguard becoming way easier.

Perfect pivoting and smashing + tilting is useful too, but I have found not as much as the above.

Things I have yet to figure out how good they are: perfect pivoting spot dodging, perfect pivot up throw thunder, RAR'ing up air (the last two require clawing so I can instantly c-stick + jump which I haven't got down yet).

I've been using bidou for a couple months and I was going to say almost exactly the same things. After a couple weeks, the difficulties of bidou become less and less noticeable. I want to mention that I don't activate bidou for the entire match, but instead I go from off to on as the situation calls for it, since specials are pretty important. It's also cool that Captain L uses bidou and ESAM recently started learning it, so there's some high level bidou Pikachu representation!

By the way I found this video on the competitive bidou thread that talks about Pikachu's benefits:

Instead of using claw grip or a pro controller for those jump techs, I use Tap Jump On. As for the difficulties of Tap Jump, holding any direction with R-stick while bidou is on disables Tap Jump for you and cancels full hop into short hop. This means utilts, falling uairs, and short hop uairs are easy even if you're not used to Tap Jump.

 

[Dadrik]

I've been using bidou for a couple months and I was going to say almost exactly the same things. After a couple weeks, the difficulties of bidou become less and less noticeable. I want to mention that I don't activate bidou for the entire match, but instead I go from off to on as the situation calls for it, since specials are pretty important. It's also cool that Captain L uses bidou and ESAM recently started learning it, so there's some high level bidou Pikachu representation!

By the way I found this video on the competitive bidou thread that talks about Pikachu's benefits:

Instead of using claw grip or a pro controller for those jump techs, I use Tap Jump On. As for the difficulties of Tap Jump, holding any direction with R-stick while bidou is on disables Tap Jump for you and cancels full hop into short hop. This means utilts, falling uairs, and short hop uairs are easy even if you're not used to Tap Jump.

Thanks for the video man ! Pretty informative, I will definitely try it out