Pikachu Match-Up Discussion

[Paradoxium]

Do you have any tips on the Zss match up? I always end up getting spanked and have to switch to Marth or Falco

 

[Vlade]

Do you have any tips on the Zss match up? I always end up getting spanked and have to switch to Marth or Falco

There's a ZSS in my area who I play every now and then so I can give you a couple of tips. Crouching under her uncharged neutral b is a good start, she can beat this just by using side b though but at least that gives you more room to work with in the neutral. Also remember that she can't kill unless she lands a bair or dsmash, so stay mobile and exploit this. When she's tethering to the edge at higher %s you can score kills just by ledge-drop nairing before she reels in.

 

[Kaysick]

There's a ZSS in my area who I play every now and then so I can give you a couple of tips. Crouching under her uncharged neutral b is a good start, she can beat this just by using side b though but at least that gives you more room to work with in the neutral. Also remember that she can't kill unless she lands a bair or dsmash, so stay mobile and exploit this. When she's tethering to the edge at higher %s you can score kills just by ledge-drop nairing before she reels in.

Hopefully I can use these tips against Oro?!'s ZSS but that man is 2gud.

I personally think the Pit MU is 50/50. Pit still loves his dthrow so you need to mixup your DI and stop him from CG'ing you then punish him for it. Also make sure you're grounded since he has disjoints if you try to hit him on the way down if he sends you in the air.

Zelda MU seems more in Pika's favor (60/40?) because of his sporadic movement and good options to kill. I found dthrow > uair pretty safe and fair> usmash pretty free around 70-80% depending on the level. She can definitely space you out and camp but you can easily use Pika's movement options and uair to stop it.

 

[Boondocker]

Anyone have some tips to fight floaties? Particulary Luigi, Puff, and Peach. I just cannot seem to combo them much or get much off of grabs.

 

[Psyant]

Do you have any tips on the Zss match up? I always end up getting spanked and have to switch to Marth or Falco

Not a master at that MU, I find it kind of hard too, but the ones I've played against tend to really favour using their Side B often against Pikachu. It's annoying to deal with, but you can take advantage of that a bit. Fastfall Fair > Usmash is a really good punish for it if you can predict it and jump above and towards them just before they do it.

She's also quite a fastfaller and generally Pika has an easy time comboing and killing her. That's pretty much how you win this MU. Once you get in on her you can destroy her. You can chaingrab her with Dthrow a few times before going for the followup up smash. Up tilt juggles her really well. She's also incredibly easy to edgeguard; just hold the ledge, then when she pulls in her tether she'll be forced into a laggy animation, then you can normal get up/waveland on stage and do whatever you want. Up smash is an easy kill if she's at kill %.

Anyone have some tips to fight floaties? Particulary Luigi, Puff, and Peach. I just cannot seem to combo them much or get much off of grabs.

Peach is a MASSIVE pain in the ass for Pikachu imo, even in PM. She can CC you all day long and trying to trade with her in the air will usually go badly. She can combo Pikachu really hard as well.

For both Puff and Peach I would recommend watching some of Axe's sets vs Hungrybox and Armada. It's Melee, but you can still take a lot from it as the MU is similar in PM, just Pikachu is a bit better.

Luigi...I've played against him a fair bit. I don't think there's any real way to cheese him or anything. You just have to be patient and outplay him. Up smash will KO him pretty early at least, and he's also easy to edgeguard. Punish the hell out of his Side B recoveries. He has low horizontal air momentum and no horizontal distance on his Up B whatever so he has to Side B to the stage if he's off to the side. You can watch for the green flash while he's charging to tell if he's going to misfire or not. If he is, back up onto the stage and get ready to Fsmash his landing, ideally. If it's a normal Side B, try intercepting with Bair or even just taking the hit so he can't recover is okay sometimes, if you're at low %.

 

[ilikcereal101]

What about pikachu vs Marth it may just be me, but does anyone else struggle with him? Or any tips on the match up?

 

[PandaPanda Senketsu]

Ok so I feel like the only Pikachu main who thinks Pikachu vs Falco is even

what are your thoughts on the match up guys? If anyone is interested I'd be willing to share my opinion on why I think the match up is even.

 

[Choice Scarf]

I get this impression too, but the only guy near me who plays Falco doesn't play optimally being his tertiary and all. Still I feel like has enough speed and edgeguarding potential to hold his own, and it helps that Falco doesn't have an overbearing amount of range on anything that isn't his laser. Both chars combo each other hard here, so whoever takes advantage of their stage positioning the most wins. Not sure if stage choice helps for either side, and I'm curious what changed from melee that makes the MU feel more even.

I also struggle somewhat against Marth, whom every other person here has a good Marth, but I feel like I just need practice figuring out when to punish his moves and properly DI'ing his F-throws to F-smash. His U-tilt is the bane of my existence though - it always seems to be ready when I try to punish other things and more often than not leads to a lot of juggle damage. If I can just be more patient then once Marth is offstage the MU becomes much easier.

 

[Psyant]

Falco is still at an advantage against us imo. Being able to gimp him actually isn't a big deal; he's used to dying just from being hit off stage without people having to do anything to interrupt his pathetic recovery. In terms of how important our offstage game is, it matters a lot more vs say Fox, who can actually often come back unless you intercept his recovery, than it does Falco, who'll automatically die once he gets hit a certain distance off stage anyway.

Anyway, Falco is generally harder than Fox because his neutral is just hard to deal with and he combos Pikachu extremely hard. Pikachu is complete combo fodder for pillar combos. I definitely don't think it's even if the Falco is good. He's noticeably harder to beat than Fox imo. I've played a lot of dual spacie mains and they always end up giving up on Fox and just playing Falco against me.

As for Marth, that's the matchup I have the most experience in and I'm pretty good at it now. Yeah, the up tilt really is annoying. One of the best things he has against us I think, both in low % juggles and the neutral game. As you said, Marths will often cover a whiffed move with an up tilt right after and it can be difficult not to run into it. That said this MU is relatively even in Melee and easier in PM thanks to Pikachu's buffs. Notably, you can actually make good use of thunder-jolt in PM if he wants to sit there throwing out hitboxes and waiting for you to approach.

Mostly I find fighting Marth is kind of a conditioning game more than anything. Way more of a mental battle. For example, If you CC Dtilt a lot, it will condition him to start down tilting himself in response to control the ground; then you can jump over it and hit him in the face with a SHFFL Nair. On the other hand if you Nair a lot it will condition him to stop it with Utilt/Ftilt/Nair/Fair, which you can bait out and punish with good movement and timing, depending on which he likes to use.

It mostly revolves around both players guessing the other's next option, and whoever does that better wins, which is why it's a really fair and honest matchup imo. Of course, in a spacing and baiting game, Marth has an edge over us, but this is balanced out by the fact that he simply can't kill Pikachu at reasonable %s unless he lands a tipper smash attack. Marth relies a lot on edgeguarding to get kills and you can almost completely prevent that as Pikachu. We on the otherhand have no problem killing him. Focus on never letting him land a forward smash on you and you'll probably do alright just because of how long you'll last on each stock. Also, picking big stages which highlight his killing weakness even further does help.

 

[PandaPanda Senketsu]

Ok so the Falco Pikachu match up in melee is pretty much this

Falco dominates the neutral and combos the crap out of Pikachu, while Pikachu combos Falco even harder and edge guards him for free.

So Falco's advantage in the match up was his neutral game, but now I think Pikachu has gained enough neutral game tools to negate that advantage.



The big changes that effect the match up are the existence of bair, thunder jolt having less endlag and quick attack.

Bair gives Pikachu a powerful option that allows him to be airborne, which is huge. The airborne characters are generally able to avoid Falco's laser game altogether. So now Pikachu can safely jump or rising uair in the neutral and Falco is forced to respect it. Also, bair adds a lot of killing power to Pikachu in this match up. For one, uair combos directly into bair, which will either kill Falco or send him offstage for an edge guard scenario.

Next is thunderjolt. When you full hop early thunderjolt, the lag ends right before you hit the ground, so now Pikachu has a projectile that he can actually use against Falco. One thunderjolt can take back huge amounts of stage control and it will force Falco to react in someway since it goes through his lasers.

Lastly we have Quick Attack Cancelling. Although not as important as the bair, it does boost the power of jumping in a way. Falco already has to respect the bair/uair, but now he also must respect a movement option that can be activated in the air. Pikachu can either bail out and retreat or go forward on the offensive.

So pretty much I think that bair, thunderjolt, and quick attack stop Falco from completely dominating the neutral, which was his main advantage in the match up. But on top of that, Pikachu's punish game on Falco is much much stronger than Falco's punish game on Pikachu. Pikachu can reliably zero to death Falco from anywhere on the stage off of 1 grab.



Ok now these are very minor but I do think they're worth noting.

- Shine invincibility removed
Upair will trade with shine now, so it slightly opens the window for breaking shield pressure.

-Falco's dair hitbox decreases in size
Very minor, but dairs are now easier to punish, and you can also trade or beat them out easier.

-Laser damage decreases over time
Less damage potential.

-up air damage has been increased
Your combos now rack up damage faster

-New stage list
more chain grab levels, less tiny levels

-power shielding
Yea I know it was in melee, which boggles my mind because I see such a small amount of people actually going for them. When you shield a laser you want to be shielding as late as possible every single time. You can literally bank on power shields in the neutral if you're good enough at them, you'd be surprised what you can get off of a power shielded laser.


This isn't me theory crafting, this is all experience from playing many different Falco mains. Thoughts?

 

[666blaziken]

I would also like to say that pikachu has somewhat of a chain grab on semi-fast fallers and almost normal fallers (assuming ike has normal falling speed) kind of like falcon does both of which use down throw. If the opponent di's towards you, then you can up smash or nair/bair instead. The characters pikachu can chain grab using down throws (assuning no DI) are
ZSS
Gannondorf
link
toon link
diddy kong
roy
bowser (up to 40%)
DK
sheik
gannondorf
lucas
metaknight

Overall, this makes pikachu a threat against these characters even though most of them have good range against pikachu.

 

[Psyant]

Pikachu's chaingrab game is definitely extensive and one of the things every Pikachu player should put priority on learning. Seriously, knowing which characters you can chaingrab with Fthrow/Uthrow/Dthrow and for how long will get you more easy mileage in matches than almost anything else you can learn.

Anyway, to get some discussion going, I thought it'd be interesting to ask who you guys think Pikachu's toughest matchups are. Who are the characters you really dislike playing against as Pikachu? As a bonus, anyone you think we really destroy?

Personally I find Roy, Mario, Peach and Wario more difficult than most. In terms of easy matchups I think Ganondorf is one of our best.

 

[666blaziken]

Pikachu's chaingrab game is definitely extensive and one of the things every Pikachu player should put priority on learning. Seriously, knowing which characters you can chaingrab with Fthrow/Uthrow/Dthrow and for how long will get you more easy mileage in matches than almost anything else you can learn.

Anyway, to get some discussion going, I thought it'd be interesting to ask who you guys think Pikachu's toughest matchups are. Who are the characters you really dislike playing against as Pikachu? As a bonus, anyone you think we really destroy?

Personally I find Roy, Mario, Peach and Wario more difficult than most. In terms of easy matchups I think Ganondorf is one of our best.

I personally think that Ike and marth have a good time against pikachu because of his range. However, I might not be using his mobility well enough. I think that pikachu destroys Lucas because pikachu can shake him off with up air OOS, as well as having an easy chaingrab. Lucas also lacks the range to keep pikachu from respecting him. I also think pikachu potentially has a good matchup against sheik too.

 

[AuraMaudeGone]

Are there any Pikachu mains around that would submit a rough idea of a MU spread to the Community MU chart?

 

[Capt. NeckBeard]

Do I've heard that sheik is a bad matchup for pika. Can anyone elaborate as to why?

 

[666blaziken]

Do I've heard that sheik is a bad matchup for pika. Can anyone elaborate as to why?

In melee, she had a chaingrab on pikachu, but even without that (somewhat) pikachu has a hard time beating out sheik, she can outcamp him with needles, her disjoints are hard for pikachu to beat (lol f-tilt) has easy comboes on him, but pikachu's new tools (qac is a godsend in neutral), dthrow to upsmash at low percents, the 3.6 up throw DI mixup, and bair can help him perform upair to bair combos. Overall I'd say the matchup is in pikachu's favor slightly, but it requires a lot of the matchup knowledge from melee as well.

 

[666blaziken]

I think the bad matchups for pikachu are kirby, squirtle, Rob, mario, falcon, ivysaur, falco, ZSS, Ice climbers, my reasons are that either these characters are hard for pikachu to combo (like ROB and squritle who can kind of slip away from his combos) and have an easy timeto combo pikachu, or characters that are too fast for pikachu to use his QAC in neutral and can out beat him in general. By no means are these matchus unwinnable, it's just going to be way harder than using other characters like axe does with marth in PM when his pikachu doesn't do the job.

 

[Capt. NeckBeard]

What are Pika's top 5 best and worst matchups?

 

[Tobb99]

Are characters with good off stage game difficult for Pika? Since one of his biggest strengths is his recovery and edgeguard game; and characters with good recovery can avoid getting gimped by Pika, as well as challenge Pika's recovery.

 

[Kneato]

Matchup from 's Perspective (+3 has Pikachu winning)

+3:
+2:
+1:
0:

-1:
-2:
-3:

What do you guys think? Anything wildly inaccurate?

This is for updating the (outdated) community matchup chart.

 

[EZえん]

Matchup from 's Perspective (+3 has Pikachu winning)

+1:

Pikachu beats link? I thought he had a 0-death chaingrab on pikachu?

 

[666blaziken]

Pikachu beats link? I thought he had a 0-death chaingrab on pikachu?

Well to be fair, pikachu has a near 0-death on fox in melee yet fox still wins that mu

 

[hype machine]

Imo i think the hardest mu's for pikachu are metaknight, pit, lucas, diddy kong, roy, peach, Mario and sheik. ive also been struggling aginst captain falcon recently but im not sure if its the mu or the lack of mu exp.

 

[Mechaglacier]

So how does the mew2-pika MU go down?

 

[Comet7]

So how does the mew2-pika MU go down?

i'm so late.

it's been forever since i've played PM but i'd imagine that it's fairly even. mewtwo would force you off the ground with down tilts but that's okay since he has to read you to punish a nair approach. i suppose that RAR bair would be a decent approach option too? for a KO option, fair to up smash is guaranteed.

 

[Thor]

Speaking of being late...

Pikachu isn't supposed to beat Link, at least not from what I know of. A lot of Links think Link beats Pikachu as far as I know.

Pikachu's approaches can all be CC'd by Link [save usmash and dsmash?] for a while, and Link's grab game on Pikachu is devastating [though landing them is obviously not easy]. Pikachu has pretty solid gimp tools on Link, but Link can actually just nair QA a lot, which won't usually result in a KO, but Pika offstage can be free extra damage.

I believe Link's strong nair beats Pikachu's strong nair, but I'm not certain [although Link's strong nair certainly beats PIka late nair]. Having played the MU with a couple Pikachus, most admit they find the MU annoying to deal with.

Here's 3 games of Axe vs Blue... you can see the end results for yourself, by watching or skipping to the end if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r57AequbfUA&t=6m40s

 

[bboss]

Super late lol and completely off topic but Snake beats Pika, and i believe that Fox / Pika is +1 for Pika. Pika puff is good, Marth Pika is good bc of the edgeguards, and diddy pika is bad. those are some of my thoughts on pikachus matchups