Pikachu Matchup help

[JustYuck]

Hey guys, so my roommate plays Pikachu and he beats me every single time. Here is a video of us playing from earlier, can anyone tell me what it is that I am doing wrong? It seems like no matter what I do I can't beat him.

Please excuse the camera-pointed-at-tv quality.

 

[AirFair]

Do you know any AT's? You don't use much of Marth's awesome movement, but if you just started playing then that's fine, but you should learn it, and stop rolling so much out of habit. You should be grabbing and throwing more to juggle Pikachu. Don't go in so much, and use moves like dtilt and fair to whittle down pika. Don't fsmash randomly.

 

[JustYuck]

Do you know any AT's? You don't use much of Marth's awesome movement, but if you just started playing then that's fine, but you should learn it, and stop rolling so much out of habit. You should be grabbing and throwing more to juggle Pikachu. Don't go in so much, and use moves like dtilt and fair to whittle down pika. Don't fsmash randomly.

I try to take advantage of some of his movement like wave dashing or wave shielding when I can. I wave shield into grab a lot. Are there any tutorials that talk about Marths movement capabilities and how I can capitalize on them?

Also, juggling is really tough for me. If I can get pika in the air then I can usually fair him a couple of times, dash attack if he misses tech, and get a couple of nairs on him in a good game. But I struggle with keeping him up in the air, especially chain grabbing. Is pika chain grabbable? If so how do I do it?

 

[AirFair]

I don't think Pika is chaingrabbable. What you need to do is learn some of your own good movement tho. Marth's movement is awesome, like I've mentioned before. I don't really know of any tutorials off the top of my head. Check my guide/resource post for some hep. It's on this board.

 

[Preacher]

You have a few bad habits you should break immediately.

1) Don't approach with forward air. He can just shield grab you.
2) Don't roll back when you land a move, there's no point to it.
3) Never roll into your opponent. Ever...ever...bad idea, especially if he begins spamming down smash.

You should learn dash dancing and crouch canceling. It's so easy that I'll explain it now!

Dash dance - the process of dashing toward your opponent then dashing away then dashing toward your opponent. Makes it so that they don't know when you're going to actually attack them. You can grab or dash attack or stop or continue or whatever.

Crouch cancel - Holding down to crouch when you're about to be hit at low percents. The knock back from the attack will be reduced when it hits you and if the attack isn't a really strong one you're not knocked down and can act almost immediately.

Things to try -

1) Walk, don't run. Then use forward tilt. This is good when you're starting out and is more reliable than forward smash.
2) Go off the edge and hit him. Just jump once, back air, jump back to the ledge. You can do this with any aerial though recovering will be different.
3) Use tilts more (guess this is 2.5).

Side notes -

You can't chain grab him.
Try to prevent your opponent from getting to the center of the stage and keep them as far away from it as possible.

Guides - Everything you need to know, want to know, will forget, and will rediscover here

Marth specific - http://www.meleeitonme.com/sharpening-your-sword-tais-marth-guide/
Competitive stuff - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_6o5NHvI9P8-qHp2M8w1gDzL_-JNonEE81Mh4ulY1PY/edit#

 

[Wooper]

Maybe try approaching with Dtilts instead of Fairs and also work on your short hopping. Best of luck :D

 

[JustYuck]

You have a few bad habits you should break immediately.

1) Don't approach with forward air. He can just shield grab you.
2) Don't roll back when you land a move, there's no point to it.
3) Never roll into your opponent. Ever...ever...bad idea, especially if he begins spamming down smash.

You should learn dash dancing and crouch canceling. It's so easy that I'll explain it now!

Dash dance - the process of dashing toward your opponent then dashing away then dashing toward your opponent. Makes it so that they don't know when you're going to actually attack them. You can grab or dash attack or stop or continue or whatever.

Crouch cancel - Holding down to crouch when you're about to be hit at low percents. The knock back from the attack will be reduced when it hits you and if the attack isn't a really strong one you're not knocked down and can act almost immediately.

Things to try -

1) Walk, don't run. Then use forward tilt. This is good when you're starting out and is more reliable than forward smash.
2) Go off the edge and hit him. Just jump once, back air, jump back to the ledge. You can do this with any aerial though recovering will be different.
3) Use tilts more (guess this is 2.5).

Side notes -

You can't chain grab him.
Try to prevent your opponent from getting to the center of the stage and keep them as far away from it as possible.

Guides - Everything you need to know, want to know, will forget, and will rediscover here

This is good stuff!

How would you recommend dealing with his lightning projectiles? He likes to throw them out in the neutral ground game and they always cause me to jump/roll which he can usually punish. I can't just stand there and take the damage, and I can't really get out of the way without risking giving him an opportunity. How do I deal with those?

 

[Preacher]

If you hit the lightning with a forward tilt at the right time you will parry it. This is Marth's best way to get around most projectiles.

 

[AirFair]

Well, for Falco lasers, wavedash OoS would be better no?

 

[JustYuck]

Maybe try approaching with Dtilts instead of Fairs and also work on your short hopping. Best of luck :D

Any advice on approaching in general. For some reason he always has the jump on me when it comes to approaches. I can't get close enough to him to hit him, and he always seems to gun it for me and gets a hit in. Is dash to dtilt a tech skill I need to practice or am I just having a hard time getting it to work?

 

[JustYuck]

If you hit the lightning with a forward tilt at the right time you will parry it. This is Marth's best way to get around most projectiles.

I am usually dashing when he hits me with one of the bolts. He sees me coming, hits me with one of the lightning bolts, and then dashes in for a grab or fsmash. I can't get close enough to him to do any real damage without him slowing me down and turning the tables.

Another thing to recognize is this is not a guy with a whole lot of tech skill. He is not really into competitive smash, and I can beat all of my other casual-ish friends with no real trouble, but he always gets me. Is there a dirty trick I could learn that he might not know how to prevent being a player without a whole lot of knowledge of tech skill?

 

[Wooper]

Any advice on approaching in general. For some reason he always has the jump on me when it comes to approaches. I can't get close enough to him to hit him, and he always seems to gun it for me and gets a hit in. Is dash to dtilt a tech skill I need to practice or am I just having a hard time getting it to work?

When you're dashing at him hold down and press A. Practice the timing before you go do it to him though, because if you to it too late he can hit you with that Fsmash

 

[ObdurateMARio]

just a few things I noticed.
1) you need to work on spacing your uairs. Try to tipper them. you aren't which is what makes it so hard to juggle. You can tell by the sound.
2) You should be grabbing when in neutral. Every time Pika is close, instead of fsmashing or something, grab him. you want to keep pika at arm's length at all times.
3)Use Dtilt more. Instead of just running in with an aerial, run up, crouch just outside of pika's range, and dtilt.

 

[JustYuck]

just a few things I noticed.
1) you need to work on spacing your uairs. Try to tipper them. you aren't which is what makes it so hard to juggle. You can tell by the sound.
2) You should be grabbing when in neutral. Every time Pika is close, instead of fsmashing or something, grab him. you want to keep pika at arm's length at all times.
3)Use Dtilt more. Instead of just running in with an aerial, run up, crouch just outside of pika's range, and dtilt.

My uairs could use some work. The issue with the dtilts is that pikas fsmash outranges my dtilt. I haven't actually looked at pikas hit/hurt-boxes (which is something that I probably should do) but his fsmash seems to outrange me in EVERYTHING. I have incorporated a lot of strategy posted above into my game but the dtilts just never work because of pikas fsmash range.

The main reason this bothers me is because of how important Marths dtilt is in his neutral game, I can edge guard with dtilt occasionally, but I can never get those dash to dtilts that I want.

 

[ObdurateMARio]

I play vs Pika a ton, and have for years. So I can tell you, tipper dtilt will outspace pika's fsmash, BUT of you overextend on the dtilt and miss, marth moves forward just enough to get fsmashed. It gives the illusion of being outspaced, but it's really just because Marth misses and Pika hits him since Marth moves his hurtboxes forward enough. The other approach you should use is dash dance grabbing. It's pretty good vs Pika. If he is Fsmash happy, bait them out by either running in/shielding, or running in, falling back. Then you should get a pretty easy punish.

 

[tonic]

The matchup itself is the least of your problems. Don't approach with fullhop fairs. You have a really telegraphed approach where you dash in, get stuck in your dash, and then jump backwards. Do you use tap jump to jump? It's imprecise and if you used the digital buttons y and x you would open up access to much more movement options.

 

[ObdurateMARio]

tonic is also right. if you get stuck in your dash, use wavedashes to break out of it. A great one vs pika is run in and WD back to bait fmash, then free tipper punish. But in general, Marth shouldn't be fullhopping very much in general, and approaching with aerials should only be done enough to make your opponent respect that you CAN approach.

 

[JustYuck]

tonic is also right. if you get stuck in your dash, use wavedashes to break out of it. A great one vs pika is run in and WD back to bait fmash, then free tipper punish. But in general, Marth shouldn't be fullhopping very much in general, and approaching with aerials should only be done enough to make your opponent respect that you CAN approach.

The matchup itself is the least of your problems. Don't approach with fullhop fairs. You have a really telegraphed approach where you dash in, get stuck in your dash, and then jump backwards. Do you use tap jump to jump? It's imprecise and if you used the digital buttons y and x you would open up access to much more movement options.

I understand. Approaching with the fairs was something I tried to do more because ken does it so well. My shffls aren't quite where I want them to be yet so it is difficult for me to hit the short hop'd fairs consistently. I am going to put all of this advice to use next time we play and I may post a follow-up video for critique/further improvement.

 

[ObdurateMARio]

Yeah, Ken back in the day got away with it a lot, but now a days he pretty much just throws them out hoping for the other player to attack into the fair/nair. If you fair approach in 2015, you just get shield grabbed all day erry day.

 

[Sleepy Driz]

Practice short hopping and dash dancing. Pikachu is very good below an airborne opponent, so don't blindly jump at him and risk getting hit by lightning or getting shield grabbed after you full hop fair. Use down tilt to approach, it comes out much faster than Pika's forward smash so you have time to run up and dtilt or wavedash in and dtilt then dash at him and grab. He probably can't DI that well, so I think forward throw to forward smash should work at low percents as well.

 

[7dogguy]

Don't fall for Pikachu's edge of stage baits Pika players want you at the edge of the stage so they can gimp you for a quick kill. You also don't punish hard enough the Pika player made a lot of mistakes and you didn't capitalize on the laggy opportunities. You look fairly new so I'm not being hard on you but where you are out now experience and practice is the most important thing here. with better reflexes and knowledge of game mechanics you'll be fine .