Pikachu needs a buff (ESAMvs Zero)

[Antonykun]

i was gonna say maybe make his dair a meteor smash because its animation looks like one but then people started talking about "frame data" and "CEO" and i got scared

tbh i rather have d-air be a spike than a kill move buff just because it makes more sense for the character

 

[Afrobean]

EDIT: in all fairness though esam kept fairing zero's sheild and kept getting shield grabbed.

Yeah, ESAM didn't play his best. It was weird, probably the huge pressure of it all going up against ZeRo. The whole time I was watching him, I just kept yelling "That's not safe!" at myself. Didn't help that he didn't get much opportunity for QACs.

LMAO TOP TIER GETTING BUFFED

HAAAAAH GET OUT

This can be done, it just needs to be balanced. For example, if in the next patch, they made Sheik's fair slower and weaker, maybe they could buff Sheik's bair into a solid kill move? Pikachu lacks kill moves too, so if a buff is made in that department, they'd could nerf in another. That's all. It's all about balance and fairness, not about tier placement. Low tiers can get nerfs, high tiers can get buffs. I don't know HOW they would buff Pikachu like this and I'd say it's probably better if they don't even try, but they could totally do it and still be fair.

At least, Sheik has a clean 50/50 with dthrow>uair/upb. I wish Pikachu had a setup like that but uthrow>thunder doesn't come close to being 50/50.

Good mixups can make Thunders work better. ESAM even did it against ZeRo at one point I think. If they're getting good DIs out of up throws into Thunder (and most top players should be), this can be thrown off by using different throws. You shouldn't stick to just up throws, especially since that's the weakest one. If you can predict your opponent well enough, you can even use a downthrow near the edge, and often, people will DI the downthrow inward, expecting an upthrow, thinking that DI in will keep them onstage, and DIing the downthrow in toward the stage lines them up perfectly for a Thunder spike.

 

[Uncle Honey]

Also, dthrow > uair is not a true 50/50 with sheik. At high percents, you can just DI away and sheik's only followup becomes fair, which doesn't kill until very high percents near the ledge.

What percents are we talking exactly? If it's 150%, big deal. Pikachu will die to ftilt in 10% more anyway.

 

[Angiance]

Most of you should stop complaining and actually put forth effort and spirit towards being able to stand your ground against anyone...please, stop complaining and making excuses to cover your lack of belief in your own skill

That's all...

 

[busken]

We're simply discussing the character, and nobody is making excuses. It's not like we fought ZeRo and lost and think it's due to character selection.

 

[Soul.]

People are people; they won't stop 'complaining.' You see people asking for buffs because the character's KO potential is not enough (even if light = weak: design is a thing). This is a discussion, not some argument thread.
No one is trying to cover their skill by "making excuses." It's one thing to discuss the character, and the other one is think the player's skill is questionable because of excuses.

Me? I think the character is fine as is, at least right now. I'd let the meta stabilize for a bit before making a patch. It's good for sure, but the fact that landing that KO might result in a punish and take out a stock is a turn off.

 

[Macchiato]

That's why we should all work together and help get Zelda buffed.

Whos with me?

No one?

No?

Ok

 

[Gibbs]

That's why we should all work together and help get Zelda buffed.

Whos with me?

No one?

No?

Ok

I'm totally down for zelda buffs. And for Marth/Lucina, and Falco, and Ganon, and Bowser. Let's start a campaign PIKAS FOR PARITY

 

[Angiance]

Pikachu is the only one that matters

 

[Gibbs]

Eeh the less that low tiers are kinda free, the harder we have to perfect our Pikas

 

[RODO]

Pikachu is fine esam was just off of his game and it was apparent with the way he was just throwing out f-smashes constantly with almost no thought. Pika can do work and with customs on he becomes arguably the best character in the game.

 

[RunawayPanda]

I don't even think Pikachu is top 5, but he doesn't need buffs. He does have a killing problem though. If you were watching ESAM's matches in the top 8, a lot of his kills came from uthrow thunder. If that's your most effective kill setup then something is wrong. In his set against Larry's Fox, which is apparently one of Fox's hardest match ups, Larry pretty much just stayed in shield when he was at kill percent making him live forever and ESAM got 2 stocked because of that. Larry even recovered from off stage just fine because he knew how to avoid Pikachu's edge guarding. Edge guarding Fox isn't as simple as people say it is. At one point during the match, Larry was below the stage trying to recover with upb. So Pikachu can just bair offstage and easy gimp, right? Nope! Fox's upb beat out Pikachu's bair and Fox recovered safely. A lot of other characters would've gotten the kill. When even Pikachu's edge guarding isn't reliable, which is supposed to be his best aspect, something is terribly wrong. The reason ESAM did so well with Pikachu is because ESAM is just an amazing player. He even got a win using Samus which was his only win on Larry that set.

Fox's up b only beats bair if you start it up too early.

 

[Pikabunz]

That doesn't sound right. I think it's just semi-random. Bair doesn't have a constant hitbox out like dair or nair, so it's possible to be hit out of it during bair's empty frames that are between the hits. I think dair or nair are much better moves to use when edge guarding low recoveries. It mostly depends on the character though.

 

[Angiance]

You should all invest in using U.Air during egdeguards for a stage spike

 

[Tenretsujin10]

Pikachu lacks finishing power. He's also relatively slower and deals less damage than the rest of the top tiers.

However, he is well balanced. I'd prefer the people in charge of making tweaks in the name of balance to not touch Pikachu as it would most likely result in a negative change. Pikachu is quite simply perfect just the way he is. His only problem is not so much that he is underpowered, but rather that other characters are overpowered. Namely, Sheik and Rosalina.

I read this and it made me a little upset. "Pikachu lacks finishing power. He's also relatively slower and deals less damage than the rest of the top tiers."
Pikachu's movement speed and frame data are stupidly fast/good,
has gauranteed combo strings until 80%, great smash attacks with an upsmash comparable to fox's,
insane recovery and edgeguarding,
and good matchups against most character (I feel pikachu goes even with sheik, think that pikachu win rosalina.)
- I feel that Esam beat Dabuz because the matchup favored his character, lost to ZeRo because ZeRo is just a better player.

 

[Pikabunz]

I feel that Esam beat Dabuz because the matchup favored his character, lost to ZeRo because ZeRo is just a better player.

I feel like it's the opposite.

 

[Tenretsujin10]

I feel like it's the opposite.

The pikachu vs rosalina matchup? or the comment about ZeRo?

 

[Pikabunz]

Both things you said. I think ESAM outplayed Dabuz and Zero won because Sheik is just really good.

 

[Tenretsujin10]

Well, I think it's true that ESAM outplayed Dabuz, I gotta say Pikachu has the tools needed to fight rosalina effectively. Although I think Zero is just a better player than ESAM, I feel ESAM just psyched himself out during the set and did unsafe options/got caught by Zero's traps.

I personally think the Sheik vs. Pikachu matchup at the very most is slightly in Sheik's favor, but relatively even.

 

[Angiance]

Shiek vs Pikachu is most definitely not even-she has superior speed compared to us, which means we have to put forth more effort

 

[Tenretsujin10]

The frame data doesn't seem too skewed in sheik's favor compared to pikachu, I don't think the movement stats are that much more superior (ESPECIALLY since pikachu gets to work with Quick Attack, one of the safest moves in the game imo), pikachu has a small hurtbox while sheik's is larger.
http://kuroganehammer.com/Smash4/Pikachu
http://kuroganehammer.com/Smash4/Sheik

 

[Dee-SmashinBoss]

That's why we should all work together and help get Zelda buffed.

Whos with me?

No one?

No?

Ok

Im with you man, the lower tiered characters need more buffs, give this girl much less laggy ariels and boom mid-tier xD
lol but seriously, fix her ariels they all have lag

 

[carlos11]

I read this and it made me a little upset. "Pikachu lacks finishing power. He's also relatively slower and deals less damage than the rest of the top tiers."
Pikachu's movement speed and frame data are stupidly fast/good,
has gauranteed combo strings until 80%, great smash attacks with an upsmash comparable to fox's,
insane recovery and edgeguarding,
and good matchups against most character (I feel pikachu goes even with sheik, think that pikachu win rosalina.)
- I feel that Esam beat Dabuz because the matchup favored his character, lost to ZeRo because ZeRo is just a better player.

First of all, I feel that Esam beat Dabuz because he's a better player and lost to ZeRo because Sheik is better than Pikachu.

Second of all, keep in mind that what I said about Pikachu is not meant to be a comparison between Pikachu and the entire cast, but rather only the best characters in the game. For example, let's just look at a couple of the top tiers here for a moment. When I say Pikachu lacks finishing power, I mean that relative to the other top tiers, Pikachu's most powerful moves are not as strong as that of other top tiers. For example, in one of Esam's matches against ZeRo we saw Pikachu land the second hit of Thunder and Sheik survived at about 126%. At that same percent, Sheik could read a jump and Uair it, read an airdodge and use Vanish, or throw you offstage and use Bouncing Fish. No amount of DI would save you from that. Rosalina has Luma, and I don't think I need to explain how powerful Luma is.

When I say Pikachu is not as fast as the other top tiers, I'm not talking about his running speed or airspeed. I'm referring to a couple moves such as Fair and Nair. There's no denying these are great moves, but relative to other top tiers, they're not as fast, safe, or powerful. For example, there's Sheik, Luigi, and ZSS just to name a few characters that have better Fairs and Nairs.

Lastly, in regards to damage output, it's not bad at all. But, again, and I can't stress this enough, relative to other top tiers it isn't great. All of Pikachu's smashes deal a good amound of damage. DownB, neutralB, Ftilt, Nair and Dair all deal a good amount of damage. However, moves such as Fair, Nair, Utilt, and Quick Attack, which are his combo tools, don't deal a fair amount of damage in my opinion. You can string those moves all day, but there are other characters that can get the same results by putting in half the work because they only need to land half as many hits since they dish out twice as much damage.

Now, Pikachu is OUTSTANDING at racking up damage, but some characters can just do it better. I think Pikachu is a top tier character, and one of the best in the game. In order to analyze a character, everything you look at has to be analyzed in the context of where it stands relative to the other top tiers.

 

[JosePollo]

Watching this match at CEO 2015, there were time when ESAM should have killed Zero, but Pikachu's attacks are far to weak to do so. For instance, in the first set ESAM hit Zero with a forward Smash on FD t 110%.......and it didn't kill him. Another instance was when ESAMhit Zero with a close thunder near the top of FD and it didn't kill him at over 120%. I di a test on the former and Marth can kill Sheik at that percent with a sourspot forward smash. I think the team needs to look at Pikachu in the next patch.

Not saying Zero won because of that, but that maybe these should be looked at for buffing Pikachu. Also, damages are from memory so I may be mistaken. Thoughts?

ZeRo has insane DI. Did you see how many times he survived ZSS's double up air to Boost Kick while IN the upper blast zone? By that logic ZSS should get a buff, too, but we all know that shouldn't be the case. Pikachu is fine as he is.

 

[Tenretsujin10]

ZeRo has insane DI. Did you see how many times he survived ZSS's double up air to Boost Kick while IN the upper blast zone? By that logic ZSS should get a buff, too, but we all know that shouldn't be the case. Pikachu is fine as he is.

God bless you, I am so tired of hearing "pikachu needs a buff" just because of the Esam vs Zero.

 

[Angiance]

First of all, I feel that Esam beat Dabuz because he's a better player and lost to ZeRo because Sheik is better than Pikachu.

Second of all, keep in mind that what I said about Pikachu is not meant to be a comparison between Pikachu and the entire cast, but rather only the best characters in the game. For example, let's just look at a couple of the top tiers here for a moment. When I say Pikachu lacks finishing power, I mean that relative to the other top tiers, Pikachu's most powerful moves are not as strong as that of other top tiers. For example, in one of Esam's matches against ZeRo we saw Pikachu land the second hit of Thunder and Sheik survived at about 126%. At that same percent, Sheik could read a jump and Uair it, read an airdodge and use Vanish, or throw you offstage and use Bouncing Fish. No amount of DI would save you from that. Rosalina has Luma, and I don't think I need to explain how powerful Luma is.

When I say Pikachu is not as fast as the other top tiers, I'm not talking about his running speed or airspeed. I'm referring to a couple moves such as Fair and Nair. There's no denying these are great moves, but relative to other top tiers, they're not as fast, safe, or powerful. For example, there's Sheik, Luigi, and ZSS just to name a few characters that have better Fairs and Nairs.

Lastly, in regards to damage output, it's not bad at all. But, again, and I can't stress this enough, relative to other top tiers it isn't great. All of Pikachu's smashes deal a good amound of damage. DownB, neutralB, Ftilt, Nair and Dair all deal a good amount of damage. However, moves such as Fair, Nair, Utilt, and Quick Attack, which are his combo tools, don't deal a fair amount of damage in my opinion. You can string those moves all day, but there are other characters that can get the same results by putting in half the work because they only need to land half as many hits since they dish out twice as much damage.

Now, Pikachu is OUTSTANDING at racking up damage, but some characters can just do it better. I think Pikachu is a top tier character, and one of the best in the game. In order to analyze a character, everything you look at has to be analyzed in the context of where it stands relative to the other top tiers.

Pikachu isn't as fast, however, what he has is insane fluidity. The only thing that's slow in comparence to other characters is the beginning of our attacks; the ending of our attacks is swift and allows us to create devastating traps and allows us to flow from attack to attack like a butterfly dancing on the spring breeze.

Yes, what we have is fluidity, and because of it we can control the stage to an insane degree and upon landing a hit we can combo the opponent all the way offstage to a possible stage spike or side KO.

Pikachu >is< indeed fast in his own right, it's just not obvious

As for the power, once again, we have the ability to fluidly attack and combo until the opponent is either offstage or knocked very far away-the lack of power is an intentional design, because if we had more power than we would undoubtly be the strongest in the game

Ex. if our Thunder had it's power from Brawl...yeah, y'see where I'm goin with this

The one improvement I could agree with is making it easier to combo into our Thunder Cloud-it'd be simplier to do things like U.Air > U.Air > U.Air > Cloud~T2

Pikachu in the official Pokemon games is classified as "agile but lacking in strength," what we are given is a flawless representation of this Pokedex entree...so, there ya go

 

[Pikabunz]

ZeRo has insane DI. Did you see how many times he survived ZSS's double up air to Boost Kick while IN the upper blast zone? By that logic ZSS should get a buff, too, but we all know that shouldn't be the case. Pikachu is fine as he is.

Your opponent having good DI isn't a good excuse for saying a move isn't weak. All good players will DI correctly. It's not a hard thing to do. If you want to live ZSS's UpB, just hold down and away and you won't die off the top. Literally anyone can do it.

 

[Antonykun]

Your opponent having good DI isn't a good excuse for saying a move isn't weak. All good players will DI correctly. It's not a hard thing to do. If you want to live ZSS's UpB, just hold down and away and you won't die off the top. Literally anyone can do it.

i think he was using satire

 

[neohopeSTF]

Pikachu is fine as is. Maybe nerf Shiek? If its that much of a problem? Also pretty sure ZeRo winning, is ZeRo being ZeRo.

 

[Angiance]

What he said ^^^^^

 

[Uncle Honey]

I would like better options against shielding opponents.

 

[Thor]

People are people

SO WHY SHOULD IT BE
YOU AND I SHOULD GET ALONG SO AWFULLY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzGnX-MbYE4

That's why we should all work together and help get Zelda buffed.

Whos with me?

No one?

No?

Ok

She literally only needs SH AC fair bair as far as I know. Maybe knock 5 frames off the landing lag too, but that'd be godlike for Zelda to actually be able to approach and space with those.

"Falco jabs buffs when?" is the real question.

-------------

Pikachu doesn't need more KO power. Brawl thunder power at the base might be nice, but I've grown to love Smash 4 Thunder (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXHH9kCiBbU go to 4:00 for one example - while he does later airdodge the setup, you can also mix people up with a higher double jump and immediate thunder to catch airdodges, or even just double jump nair - but the fact you can do something like that makes people respect thunder offstage - you can also check 2:10 for the strength of HSB if anyone isn't acquainted in here).

Pikachu fsmash/usmash is pretty strong as is, and trying to buff top tiers strikes me as a little silly. Brawl nair would be cool but it's probably a bit too much.

I would like better options against shielding opponents.

I think you can space fair around shieldgrabs, I'd love for someone to confirm/deconfirm that you can use the not-last hit [which seems to have more range] to space around shieldgrabs [and if you can use SH AC fair to do it... most of my fairs where I avoid shieldgrab seem to rely on a fastfall on the last hit to hit the very edge of the center of their shield]. I'll probably try to do so myself.

SH dair is also a good option [cross them up or retreat, it's got decent pushback] and if you seem them drop shield and dash in you can fastfall it [careful of doing this often]. You can also always fullhop nair or QA through them, and our speed is high enough to where a simple dash grab works at least sometimes.

 

[LunarWingCloud]

*hits blunt* Yeah man Pikachu totally needs to be better. In fact let's just make the whole roster Pikachu.

But in all seriousness I think Pikachu is fine as is and I have no idea why anyone would think he needs to be even BETTER.

 

[Deleted member]

I wish Pikachu was stronger too. But those are selfish thoughts that I try to repress. Pikachu does not need a buff.

In all reality, if Rosa, Luigi, and Sheik were nerfed (mainly Sheik), you would have close to 15 characters with a ton of strengths, each having one or two major weaknesses (besides Mario). Each character would have their matchup strength and weaknesses, and the top third of the roster would be very well balanced. As much as I hate to see nerfs, nerf those three, buff the bottom thirty or so...?

Having said all that, it made me really sad to see Zero repeatedly hold shield against ESAM at high percents (especially in game one), knowing full well that as long as he DI'd, he wouldn't be killed anytime soon. Really smart strategy though.

 

[Tenretsujin10]

I think Sheik (I'm a Sheik main lol), Rosalina, Luigi, AND pikachu all need nerfs. Playing certain matchups against pikachu is just straight up oppressing.

 

[Deleted member]

I think Sheik (I'm a Sheik main lol), Rosalina, Luigi, AND pikachu all need nerfs. Playing certain matchups against pikachu is just straight up oppressing.

Show me any other pikachu besides ESAM at the top that gets good tournament results and I might agree with you. Hes an extremely good character. But he's not on the level of the top three.

 

[Tenretsujin10]

same can be said about rosalina, but with dabuz being the sole rosalina representative. doesn't mean the character doesn't need a nerf. and LoF NAKAT took a set off of Mr. R's Sheik before playing pikachu.

 

[LunarWingCloud]

Show me any other pikachu besides ESAM at the top that gets good tournament results and I might agree with you. Hes an extremely good character. But he's not on the level of the top three.

He is good enough to be top 3, more people need to pick him up and actually devote to him. Anyone else who is decent with Pikachu (like Nakat), doesn't actually use them in top level tournament. But that doesn't mean he isn't top tier potential.

Besides the fact that ESAM places well with only Pikachu when he isn't even arguably in the Top 10 of best Smash 4 players right now, should tell you something about the character. ESAM is amazing yes, but if Pikachu wasn't as good as he is he also would not be as good.

 

[Tenretsujin10]

People just hop on the bandwagon of "this character needs to be nerfed", then pick up the next top tier character after said nerf. There were not as many sheik mains and no one gave a sh** about her until diddy got nerfed. If Sheik gets killed with nerfs, people are gonna play Luigi and Rosalina, then eventually Pikachu.

 

[Pikabunz]

Besides the fact that ESAM places well with only Pikachu when he isn't even arguably in the Top 10 of best Smash 4 players right now, should tell you something about the character. ESAM is amazing yes, but if Pikachu wasn't as good as he is he also would not be as good.

You have it the other way around. ESAM is easily a top 10 smash player and he's the reason Pikachu is even considered good. He even makes Samus look good.