Main concern for me is that dash attack has quite some lag, and Pika isn't a very heavy character-- so it's not like we can eat punishes too well. I guess I'm staling dash attack too much, or my opponents have good DI.
Pika's dash attack is best suited to punishing your opponent's moves and recoveries, rather than as an approach. Its hitbox materializes almost instantly, it lingers as Pika moves, and the animation is pretty abrupt when you perform an instant dash attack, so you can very frequently just tackle people who are standing still or charging a smash or something, since it's a bit faster than most people can react to. You can even kill people with it at higher percentages, which comes up surprisingly often with Pika if your gimping game isn't spot-on and they're too dodgy to land that Usmash / Fsmash on. Its problem lies in its lengthy recovery--you really have to make sure you're going to hit with this before you try it, or you'll eat a smash from practically everyone.
TLDR; it's a highly rewarding move, but if Mario blocks it, you're going to eat an Usmash to the face and die.
I still don't get the thing about dsmash interrupting moves , since dsmash has this tiny hitbox that's around Pika-- I feel like Pika would be the one interrupted first.
You're probably thinking about "interrupting moves" as in "two hitboxes collide and then nothing happens/mine eats his", but I think @
Jay-kun
is referring more to how fast and meaty Dsmash is. You can often roll along with an opponent and just throw this thing out--somewhere between its speed, meatiness, and its oodles of hits makes it a pain to counter properly if you're not used to them, especially if you start Dsmash early and whiff the first few hits to throw off their count. You can get away with random Dsmashing way more than anyone should in For Glory, but experienced players will eat you alive for this, so I favor Utilt, instead... and Utilt is bigger than Dsmash, too.
Also, a question on rushdowns and approaches. What is the difference?
I'm going to give you the long version, so apologies in advance for wordiness. In fighting game terms, a
rushdown refers to a situation in which you have an
aggressor who, by exploiting speed or good frame data or what have you, attacks from either a
frame advantage, i.e. he gets to press buttons first, or a
positional advantage, i.e. Ness is under you and can PK Thunder you into oblivion. This limits the options of the
defender and forces him to react to what the
aggressor is doing, rather than following his own game plan. The
aggressor then tries to maintain this advantage for as long as possible before returning to a
neutral situation, where neither player has an advantage and you have to go to
approaching.
Approaching, then, is when both players are in a
neutral situation, and a player is attempting to move towards their opponent with safe or fast attacks in an attempt to get a position they find
advantageous. So as far as Pikachu is concerned, he wants to
approach through careful usage of TJolt, QAttack, dash-grab, dash attack, or his plentiful good aerial moves in an attempt to get close enough to employ his
rushdown game, where he tries to leverage his
positional advantage and
frame advantage to bully his opponent and prevent them from freely acting for as long as possible.
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