Hey guys, I've always played mostly Diddy and Shiek but I have pocketed Pikachu since Brawl. I think Pikachu may end up being a great counter to Diddy Kong post patch for a couple of reasons and I'd like to hear what you guys think. Going through some of the same points we were talking about on the Falco boards.
1. Pikachu's mobility is better than Diddy's so Diddy will not be able to get away and get 1 or 2 seconds to himself whenever he wants to safely pluck a peel in this matchup. Since the damage and KB nerfs Diddy needs to get in cleanly many more times than before and the banana is how he does this. You need to be able to stop Diddy from setting up by either patiently plucking it behind him and immediately jumping, z-catching, and fast falling back to the ground, or aggressively b-reverse plucking the banana towards the opponent from mid range and approaching with fair, dash grab, nair, and empty hop mixups as the banana falls and traps. If you can stop Diddy from setting this up successfully enough he will not get the damage output he now needs.
This is a lot harder to deal with than it sounds on paper. Even if you defend against the banana really well, say, by z-catching it and immediately throwing it away or back at Diddy, or quickly jumping and destroying it, you're still being forced into a situation where you have to do something and the grab/fair mixup is on the way. It's like how Dedede mains use gordo, it can be defended against but you have to do something, which allows Dedede to come at you the way he wants.
Except Dedede's are explaining why Gordo isn't trash. Diddy's use this strategy to make bananas the best projectile in the game. There are dozens of of ways to approach with bananas in Smash 4 because now we can repluck a banana out of our hand after the initial spawn pluck, in addition to four directions to throw and a z-drop. Different setups require different defense maneuvers. Because the Diddy player will know which way he will approach out of many setups and the opponent has to guess or react, skilled banana approaches are the most free mix up in the game. And Diddy gets a lot of reward for getting in. So use your superior mobility to either catch or destroy the banana on aggressive plucks you can punish and get in Diddy's face on patient plucks to stop these mixups before they can be set up.
As far as taking the banana away goes, air speed is good but foot speed trumps it. Because a foot speed character can just sprint across the ground as far as he needs to before jumping and z-catching the peel if its in the air. Additionally "z-scooping," or z-catching an item that is on the ground, is now a thing. Simply running up as close to a grounded banana as you can without tripping and jumping with an immediate z-scoop is a fast, lagless way to pick peels up off the ground. But it's going to be a bad idea if you have slower foot speed than Diddy, because again, Diddy's entire playstyle now revolves around using bananas to force the opponent into situations where he has the advantage. He will use grounded bananas as lures and you will get faired if he catches you going for this.
Characters like Fox, Pikachu, Falcon, Sonic and such are better at taking bananas from Diddy off the aggressive pluck and off the ground for this reason. Someone like Falco probably cannot handle this situation like that. A Diddy who knows how to get the most off of every banana and setup as many times as he can will actually force an approach himself. Which he can also use to lure people into hits, so watch that too.
You're other option is to overpower Diddy's neutral by approaching while simultaneously destroying the bananas Diddy tries to pull out to set you up. Someone like Pikachu can do this well, destroying aggressive b-reverse plucks with jumping thunderjolts and fairs on the way in. But again, if you're too telegraphed with how you try to destroy bananas the Diddy Kong will cover it and you will get faired or worse.
2. Pikachu is good enough at disadvantage to not get bodied too hard when Diddy does get in cleanly. Nair is fast enough and QA helps with landing and escapes in general in a lot of ways. You don't have to worry about getting comboed and juggled for days like some other characters do. So that's good.
3. Pikachu now beats Diddy in terms of kill power and ease of kill setups. Since the patch, Smash 4 Diddy's Achilles heel is the fact that he has terrible kill power outside of hard reads and perfect banana setups. He has reasonable moves for this though, in his F-smash which is now only a little bit more unsafe, and the second hit of his D-smash which is actually quite powerful. With customs on rocketbarrel attack is a risky yet brutal coin flip mixup that will destroy people early if Diddy can bait an air dodge, but Diddy will get hit if he misses.
If you can avoid these three things and draw stocks out for as far as you can and use your superior kill power to close stocks before Diddy lands his kill you will have a much easier time.
4. Many characters can gimp Diddy fairly easily if he has to charge the barrels because he is too low to recover with monkey flip, the hard part is actually forcing Diddy to recover low.
What I've been practicing is using Pikachu's B-reverse thunder just off stage to create a disjointed wall which will block the monkey flip from reaching the ledge and force Diddy to charge the barrels low where he is easily gimped by thunder jolt and quick attack.
But even that's hard. Monkey flip is a fast, safe, and confusing recovery since Diddy can wait to leap halfway into the stage and back to neutral where he dominates for as long as he wants. Coupled with the fact that the peanut cancel makes his movement even more crazy, I don't think most characters will be able to stop this recovery enough to put Diddy under the stage where he's screwed. Pikachu has a real shot, but you'll have to practice and have reasonable reads.
I thought Pikachu may have ended up winning this matchup pre patch if the Pikachu mains really nailed it down. Pikachu is one of the few that can can expose both Diddy's poor recovery and the banana's awful durability well, and Pikachu is also more mobile. Post patch i think Pikachu definitely wins, at least 65-45, as now Diddy has to work significantly harder.
I think Pikachu completely flew under the radar and may be the best in the game, by the way. There were no real changes for Pikachu in the patch because she is hard enough to play correctly that not many people were complaining about her like Diddy or Shiek. I'm hoping to see Pikachu mains doing work now.
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