Pikachu Tech FAQ

[Sapphire Dragon]

Have questions about how to do something and in what situations? This is the place to be! I've compiled an archive of the most useful posts from the old Pikachu social that would be beneficial to those looking to master Pikachu's technical aspects.

*******This -does not- cover bread and butter techniques from Melee like Wavedashing- please look at the general P:M techniques information for detailed info on the basics that are not Pikachu-specific.

In General:

How do I QAC/What is QAC?:

QAC means Quick Attack Cancel- an extremely useful technique introduced from Brawl. It is achieved by using Pikachu's upb into the ground (tilt the control stick down right after pressing upb) and then flicking it up immediately afterwards in order to jump off the ground and then perform any aerial move. It is very tight at a 3 frame window so it requires lots of practice. If you have never played Brawl before, using the buffer option in P:M is recommended, as this allows you to practice it with some leniency (1-3 frames) before diving full into the default frame buffer (which is 0). When mastered it enables both speedy movement across stages and very tricky mixups (including wavedashing out of QAC) and it is one of the most useful assets that Pikachu has as a character.


Extra tips and tricks on QACing in general:

Spoiler

Just some input on using QAC in non-recovery situations.

IMO QAC can be a very stressful mix-up and intimidating gap closer when used offensively. It's true that you can't spam it since most times you're risking adding ~1-3% damage to them while they're throwing out random fsmashes or something of the sort. BUT, that ends up being the power of it. QAC essentially gives pikachu his longest distance attack over a short period of time, and if you quick attack behind someone and uair, you've added another thing that you opponent has to worry about in regard to your approaches (especially since uair can lead to combos and kills). The counter to QA is often to use relatively laggy moves (if they start to panic) which means you open up some extra punishment opportunities.

So.. there are often plenty of situations where you're on the ledge and say DK uses a fair that's going to obviously miss you, but you don't normally have time to punish him. You can quick attack through him and probably punish with a uair.

At the very least it lets your opponent know there are some opportunities that you can take advantage of that they previously didn't think they'd have to worry about! Risky, but definitely worth trying to utilize in practice.

You can wavedash/aerial right above the ground after performing a carefully angled, grounded QA. No QAC needed. The biggest benefit, from what I can see, is QAing once to an instant aerial to continue combos or approach. Feels almost like Mewtwo with the teleports.
So how to do it? Angle your grounded QA just a tad below the straight right or left level and do your aerial just when you're about to land. Have fun!
I wish I could record it but it shouldn't be too too hard to try out on your own. Also if this is new, please inform me. :3

EDIT: Did some more testing and found out that you can just straight up WD/Attack out of QA as long as you aim it at the ground. This should be pretty big for Pika.

Double EDIT: Grounded QA to Nair is godlike.

ajajayjay: Another use for quick attack cancelling - it can act as a jab reset (just a reset?).

Start off low and quick attack at an angle towards the ground and you basically slide the full length of quick attack across the ground (as opposed to melee in which the quick attack stops upon contact with the ground). This resets anyone lying on the ground.

Go parallel to the stage and then at an angle to the ground and you can jab reset someone 2/3 of the way across FD.

I've had the best luck wavelanding out of it and punishing appropriately (reset -> grab on fast fallers, reset -> up-smashing at high percents


TheDevicer: I know I've previously said otherwise, but blatantly QACing into people has become somewhat of a viable option for a few reasons.

1. You generally use it to space and get around people and not as a mechanism to put you directly where your opponent stands. This makes QACing into your opponent unexpected.

2. Increased hit-stun leaves more leeway for cooldown.

3. Something I don't expect to be too useful but shattered my expectations is the ability to wave-land out of Quick Attack. QAC into someone>wave-land so you overlap or your opponent is directly behind you>U-tilt>U-air chain

This string relies on not using it too much because QAC remains easy to intercept. Characters with large disjointed hitboxes perform this especially easily. This is a great way to set up for tail spikes and other shenanigans.

Spot-dodge to D-smash remains an effective "panic button". I would avoid using if possible because of how easy the move is to SDI. Nonetheless, it's a great way to force opponents off your back.

Reversing thunder is a great way to perform the move offstage and make it back safely. The conservation of momentum from jumps makes this particularly useful. Try on enemies recovering high.

On weak hits, especially at low percents, DI away and high. This is especially useful against characters that lack the ability to extend far beyond the ledge. QA remains a stellar recovery but requires some serious mixups. Don’t fret about aiming to sweetspot the ledge even when someone is hanging on it. Most of the time, they’ll anticipate you to extend onto the stage.

His U-smash remains amazing. Run at someone and about a character length away from the target, slam on the C-stick for some guaranteed fun. Nonetheless, never forget about the F-smash. It’s a great finisher simply because of how little use it gets. I also find it useful to extend the sweetspot slightly away and above the ledge to shut down recoveries. Wavelanding into this is hella flashy and satisfying.

Something that I love about Pika is that the landing lag of quick attacking into the stage has been decreased. In Melee, that lasted about a good second. This makes failing to QAC less punishable.

One N64 trick that I've picked up from Isai's Rat is the one hit fAir. It pretty much *****. Put's you into hit-stun while you L-cancel and proceed to grab/U-smash/U-tilt or whatever else meets your fancy. Also, the single best aerial to do out of QAC if you're not sure what to do is uAir.

The other QA info has to do with the ledge.

Anyone that's seen Axe play knows he sweetspots the ledge with QA very well. In Melee to perform this you pressed forward so that you'd go off the stage, then you'd go back to the ledge with a diagonal down input, then you'd release the control stick because if you don't Pikachu will continue to QA passed the ledge and end up suiciding.

This still works in P:M. But there's a little more.

In Melee one of the drawbacks of having to do this was you couldn't do it too close to the ledge, otherwise you wouldn't be able to sweetspot. In P:M this isn't the case, but it requires a different input. If you're close to the ledge (almost as close as you can possibly be) you can just input forward+down toward the ledge and let go of the control stick. You'll instantly grab the ledge. No more needed to be the right distance away.

You do however have to check where you stand. If you're far you have to do the original method from Melee, otherwise you usually won't even make it to the ledge, and if you do make it to the ledge you'll end up not catching it and suiciding. However if you're close and you do the original method from Melee you'll also end up suiciding.

Now for something neat.

There's a strange in between spot for these two methods. If you do the Melee method with this in between (I think) you'll still grab the ledge like normal, but if you do the new method (which is probably from Brawl) at the in between you'll edge-cancel the QA and fall. This could be useful for quickly going after people who are recovering low, though I'm unsure how practical this really is. But the only way to find out is to try it, so if you're feeling flashy give it a go.

Just some input on using QAC in non-recovery situations.

IMO QAC can be a very stressful mix-up and intimidating gap closer when used offensively. It's true that you can't spam it since most times you're risking adding ~1-3% damage to them while they're throwing out random fsmashes or something of the sort. BUT, that ends up being the power of it. QAC essentially gives pikachu his longest distance attack over a short period of time, and if you quick attack behind someone and uair, you've added another thing that you opponent has to worry about in regard to your approaches (especially since uair can lead to combos and kills). The counter to QA is often to use relatively laggy moves (if they start to panic) which means you open up some extra punishment opportunities.

So.. there are often plenty of situations where you're on the ledge and say DK uses a fair that's going to obviously miss you, but you don't normally have time to punish him. You can quick attack through him and probably punish with a uair.

At the very least it lets your opponent know there are some opportunities that you can take advantage of that they previously didn't think they'd have to worry about! Risky, but definitely worth trying to utilize in practice.

Auto-Cancelling QAC tips:

Shortly after making a post about auto-cancelling the QAC in the Social thread I come with some advice on auto-cancelling the QAC easily.

It's much easier to auto-cancel it with f-air it seems. F-air's auto-cancel window is longer than b-air's.

If you're going diagonally into the ground you can very easily auto-cancel it by holding diagonal down and just pressing A. It will cause a f-air to come out and you'll be in motion again.

If you're going straight down, it's still easier to use the C-stick.

EDIT 1
I'm going to start shelling out QAC info and tricks I find as well as some possible applications. I'm just gonna edit this post for them until someone else posts here.

So one neat trick, which comes with something kind of funny, if you QA on a platform you can fall through, just hold down and you'll fall through the platform. However if you don't do an input while you're falling, and you land on the ground you'll get the landing lag from the QA, so make sure you do some kind of action before hitting the ground. You can also time an auto-cancel a f-air to make this have no lag from QA.

EDIT 2
QAC is pretty useful for baiting out attacks. Jumping toward or away from your opponent out of a dash dance or run then QAing diagonal down + toward/away from your opponent can be a neat trick, especially when coupled with auto-cancelled QAC as it allows you to go right back into a dash-dance.

Doing this along with mixing up auto-cancelled QAC and the jump cancelled QAC can make Pikachu a little harder to read and can help create openings.

Personally I've had more luck jumping at my opponent then QACing away, double jumping out auto-cancelling depending on how they react to you QAing. I'm sure it can be used offensively though, I just need to practice getting the auto-cancel consistently on top of doing actions out of it other than shield.

A non QAC related note that everyone probably knows though. U-Smash OoS is your God.

So upon testing the QAC auto-cancel f-airfor applications I noticed going to the left I would do d-airs more often. I'm still not 100% sure about this, but it seems to be because I'm using down+left+A to QAC which makes d-air come out. Now the reason I say this is dumb is because if you do the QAC with down+right+A a f-air comes out. It may be better to just practice using the c-stick for consistency, but if you like using the buttons you can always press all the way to the left/right and press A to make a f-air come out every time.

IMO using the c-stick is probably the better method as it's not hard to hit forward on the c-stick then do another c-stick command, but it can be difficult to use forward + A and follow it up with an u-tilt (which could prove very useful as well). It's also just easier to hit forward on the c-stick than it is to change your inputs on the control stick to press A in general, especially when you're already going to be zipping around. It's all just a matter of preference though. Another alternative though is, you can press forward+Z as Z lets you perform aerials as well.

After QAing into the ground you can time a Bair to where you land before the hitbox comes out and during the pre-hitbox auto-cancel window. This will make you have only 4 frames of landlag, which is faster than WDing down and then acting.

Can I JC (jump cancel) grab out of QAC?

Spoiler

Zappo: I know you can't JC grab out of a QAC, because it's a second jump. However, you can wavedash out of it with a little practice. QAC nair looks pretty **** too, especially for followups off a platform.

Magus: You can't JC grab, but you can autocancel f/b-air into grab or anything else you want (the aerial doesn't hit but it makes you cancel into empty landing instead of special landing). It's faster than waveland grabbing.

More to come soon!

 

[Strong Badam]

After QAing into the ground you can time a Bair to where you land before the hitbox comes out and during the pre-hitbox auto-cancel window. This will make you have only 4 frames of landlag, which is faster than WDing down and then acting.

 

[Sapphire Dragon]

That is awesome, I did not know that. :O Putting at the top of the QAC tips.

 

[tripwire]

Ugh I wanna try Pika again but all that QAC stuff is hard to pull off.

 

[Sapphire Dragon]

Well, if you're having trouble, you can always try practicing with the frame buffer until you get used to the relative timing. I used to play Brawl and had no trouble transitioning to P:M so starting with a little more time to do it can help.

 

[B.W.]

Shortly after making a post about auto-cancelling the QAC in the Social thread I come with some advice on auto-cancelling the QAC easily.

It's much easier to auto-cancel it with f-air it seems. F-air's auto-cancel window is longer than b-air's.

If you're going diagonally into the ground you can very easily auto-cancel it by holding diagonal down and just pressing A. It will cause a f-air to come out and you'll be in motion again.

If you're going straight down, it's still easier to use the C-stick.

EDIT 1
I'm going to start shelling out QAC info and tricks I find as well as some possible applications. I'm just gonna edit this post for them until someone else posts here.

So one neat trick, which comes with something kind of funny, if you QA on a platform you can fall through, just hold down and you'll fall through the platform. However if you don't do an input while you're falling, and you land on the ground you'll get the landing lag from the QA, so make sure you do some kind of action before hitting the ground. You can also time an auto-cancel a f-air to make this have no lag from QA.

EDIT 2
QAC is pretty useful for baiting out attacks. Jumping toward or away from your opponent out of a dash dance or run then QAing diagonal down + toward/away from your opponent can be a neat trick, especially when coupled with auto-cancelled QAC as it allows you to go right back into a dash-dance.

Doing this along with mixing up auto-cancelled QAC and the jump cancelled QAC can make Pikachu a little harder to read and can help create openings.

Personally I've had more luck jumping at my opponent then QACing away, double jumping out auto-cancelling depending on how they react to you QAing. I'm sure it can be used offensively though, I just need to practice getting the auto-cancel consistently on top of doing actions out of it other than shield.

A non QAC related note that everyone probably knows though. U-Smash OoS is your God.

 

[B.W.]

Ms. Sapphire Dragon added my last post to the OP so I'm gonna double post so that this info is found easier.

Lots of QA testing in general today found some neat and some stupid stuff. Guess I'll knock off the dumb QAC stuff I found first.

So upon testing the QAC auto-cancel f-airfor applications I noticed going to the left I would do d-airs more often. I'm still not 100% sure about this, but it seems to be because I'm using down+left+A to QAC which makes d-air come out. Now the reason I say this is dumb is because if you do the QAC with down+right+A a f-air comes out. It may be better to just practice using the c-stick for consistency, but if you like using the buttons you can always press all the way to the left/right and press A to make a f-air come out every time.

IMO using the c-stick is probably the better method as it's not hard to hit forward on the c-stick then do another c-stick command, but it can be difficult to use forward + A and follow it up with an u-tilt (which could prove very useful as well). It's also just easier to hit forward on the c-stick than it is to change your inputs on the control stick to press A in general, especially when you're already going to be zipping around. It's all just a matter of preference though. Another alternative though is, you can press forward+Z as Z lets you perform aerials as well.

The other QA info has to do with the ledge.

Anyone that's seen Axe play knows he sweetspots the ledge with QA very well. In Melee to perform this you pressed forward so that you'd go off the stage, then you'd go back to the ledge with a diagonal down input, then you'd release the control stick because if you don't Pikachu will continue to QA passed the ledge and end up suiciding.

This still works in P:M. But there's a little more.

In Melee one of the drawbacks of having to do this was you couldn't do it too close to the ledge, otherwise you wouldn't be able to sweetspot. In P:M this isn't the case, but it requires a different input. If you're close to the ledge (almost as close as you can possibly be) you can just input forward+down toward the ledge and let go of the control stick. You'll instantly grab the ledge. No more needed to be the right distance away.

You do however have to check where you stand. If you're far you have to do the original method from Melee, otherwise you usually won't even make it to the ledge, and if you do make it to the ledge you'll end up not catching it and suiciding. However if you're close and you do the original method from Melee you'll also end up suiciding.

Now for something neat.

There's a strange in between spot for these two methods. If you do the Melee method with this in between (I think) you'll still grab the ledge like normal, but if you do the new method (which is probably from Brawl) at the in between you'll edge-cancel the QA and fall. This could be useful for quickly going after people who are recovering low, though I'm unsure how practical this really is. But the only way to find out is to try it, so if you're feeling flashy give it a go.

 

[B.W.]

Triple post to the sake of updating again.

Would anyone like me to make a video showcasing some QA stuff with explanations on how to do things?

Also I'd like to de-confirm what I said about the diagonal to the left problem for auto-cancelling the QAC. I guess I was slightly more down than diagonal before.

 

[dRevan64]

a video showing off some stuff including perhaps a frame by frame deconstruction of qac timing would be really neat
qac is one of those techniques where I never quite feel like I 'deserved' to land it every time I do if that makes any sense, I don't quite know the timing in anything but my muscle memory and even then it's less than perfect

 

[GingaBread]

How do you guys use QAC most often in matches though? I've seen it in a lot of videos for brawl and tried using similar techniques but it seems that with the increased speed of PM you can't really get away with using it as much as you could in brawl. I'm mastering the technique itself and was wondering if there were any important applications to note other than what's in the updated first post.

 

[B.W.]

Use QAC to mix up recovery and make it safe. Other than that it's not really great for anything else.

It has almost no offensive capabilities. I guess you could use it to run away, but jumping back while shooting Thunder Jolts will usually work better than trying to QAC away.

 

[Anther]

Just some input on using QAC in non-recovery situations.

IMO QAC can be a very stressful mix-up and intimidating gap closer when used offensively. It's true that you can't spam it since most times you're risking adding ~1-3% damage to them while they're throwing out random fsmashes or something of the sort. BUT, that ends up being the power of it. QAC essentially gives pikachu his longest distance attack over a short period of time, and if you quick attack behind someone and uair, you've added another thing that you opponent has to worry about in regard to your approaches (especially since uair can lead to combos and kills). The counter to QA is often to use relatively laggy moves (if they start to panic) which means you open up some extra punishment opportunities.

So.. there are often plenty of situations where you're on the ledge and say DK uses a fair that's going to obviously miss you, but you don't normally have time to punish him. You can quick attack through him and probably punish with a uair.

At the very least it lets your opponent know there are some opportunities that you can take advantage of that they previously didn't think they'd have to worry about! Risky, but definitely worth trying to utilize in practice.

 

[EIiitti]

Hey, I think I just figured something out that I couldn't find here. It may or may not be new technology but it should definitely help Pika out against the other characters.

You can wavedash/aerial right above the ground after performing a carefully angled, grounded QA. No QAC needed. The biggest benefit, from what I can see, is QAing once to an instant aerial to continue combos or approach. Feels almost like Mewtwo with the teleports.
So how to do it? Angle your grounded QA just a tad below the straight right or left level and do your aerial just when you're about to land. Have fun!
I wish I could record it but it shouldn't be too too hard to try out on your own. Also if this is new, please inform me. :3

EDIT: Did some more testing and found out that you can just straight up WD/Attack out of QA as long as you aim it at the ground. This should be pretty big for Pika.

Double EDIT: Grounded QA to Nair is godlike.

 

[B.W.]

This is actually known, but thanks.

Certain aerials don't come out fully and auto cancel which is the fastest way to get Pikachu moving. Easiest way to do this imo is hold forward+down and press A. Easy peesy

 

[EIiitti]

This is actually known, but thanks.

Certain aerials don't come out fully and auto cancel which is the fastest way to get Pikachu moving. Easiest way to do this imo is hold forward+down and press A. Easy peesy

Oh so it was known? I thought so at first but then I didn't see any sign of it in the TECH FAQ thread so I figured I should mention it. The tech is too easy to pull of to be unknown though. Thanks for letting me know anyways.

 

[Sapphire Dragon]

@ EIiitti , I'm quoting your post in the faq so that it will be known to anyone who reads it now. Thanks for writing it up!

If there's any Pika tech that I am missing here, everyone should feel free to do a writeup so I can put it in the faq.

 

[B.W.]

Pikachu info is unfortunately scattered throughout his forum and it hasn't all been brought together.

Sapphire Dragon is partially to blame for this

 

[Sapphire Dragon]

Sapphire Dragon is partially to blame for this

D: Then let me know where all the discussions are so I can lurk there and add things here as needed? Or if that was just kidding, then it's all good XD

Or if you mean the fact that there's a lot of separate threads here instead of one huge one like in Pika's Brawl section, that's mainly because it's easier to keep up with discussion on separate topics within the threads. There aren't really many info threads, just the stages, faq, matchup, and video threads. Honestly there's a lot less discussion on Pika than I thought there would be here so my bad on that :/

 

[B.W.]

It is mostly kidding/teasing.

The front page doesn't have everything Pikachu can do though, and it is maybe just a little unorganized. But nobody mains Pikachu in this game in real life anyway so it's okay.

 

[Sapphire Dragon]

But.... but...

Well, I'm not sure what else Pika can do, as I don't get a lot of practice and thus it's harder for me to improve. I rely on contributors and posters to write up what they know so the thread can be more complete. Let me know what's unorganized so I can fix it.

I am actually thinking of starting a large thread like in Brawl where all of Pika's info is in one place, but have it locked and link to my other threads for any discussion, and then have it stickied so it's the first thing people see next to the video thread. I will need to talk to a mod about this though.

 

[B.W.]

Do you have a decent PC? I've been hitting up netplay and it's pretty legit.

I've seen Anther in there so he must think it's pretty legit too.

 

[Sapphire Dragon]

I actually recently got a new laptop so it might be able to netplay but I will have to look at the minimum requirements. How exactly does it work, just in general? I won't have a good display if I do this though, because I don't have an HDMI -> component cable for my CRT and of course any HDTV will lag. My laptop screen is only 13 inches... :/

 

[B.W.]

It's all on your computer with a dolphin emulator.

If you don't mind the smaller screen, and your computer can handle it, you'd be fine. The only other issue is getting an adapter if you want to use your GCC.

 

[Sapphire Dragon]

Yeah, I would definitely need to get an adapter. Next time I have a spare $23 I will see if I can get one from Amazon and practice with you all on netplay.

 

[Anther]

Do you have a decent PC? I've been hitting up netplay and it's pretty legit.

I've seen Anther in there so he must think it's pretty legit too.

It's all of the legit!


I had been sitting on my adapter for a while and decided to set it up on new years after I saw a video in reddit posted by SOJ of him vs EmuKiller. It's been AMAZING. I feel like I can actually practice real reads and strategies as opposed to trying to take advantage of having better forethought when compared to Nintendo's depressing online network.

It's definitely a lot more motivational to play without having to deal with friend codes and such. The community has all of the main types of smash personalities lurking around. It's hard to get a good feel for how big it is, but I've played about 80 different people between melee and project m in just these 3 weeks (.. I guess I've played a lot ;] ) BUT IT'S COLD OUTSIDE SO.. ;;... That's about the total matches I could tolerate on wifi from august to december =P, so yeah.

As far as setup, my hdtv handles gaming inputs pretty well, so I tend to duplicate my pc monitor display and play full screen on my tv. I haven't even hooked up my wii since the last tournament I carried it to.

But yeah, it requires a pretty decent or at least modern a modern processor, BUT you can always test it out with on your computer without buying the adapter just to see if it'll run alright.

Here's the guide I used: http://www.reddit.com/r/SSBPM/comments/1t4iab/project_m_30_netplay_guide/

 

[B.W.]

You're in the MW aren't you Anther? I think we've played Melee before. We should play on netplay sometime, I could go for some practice from some really good players.

I'd also like to get a good feel for what Pikachu can do.

 

[Anther]

Oh really :o!? When would that have been. I don't recognize your name as B.W. .

You should message me sometime, I can do some pikachu things ;;.

 

[B.W.]

Long time ago at some internet cafe in Chicago. Cosmo still played, and I don't think he even played Zelda at the time.

But yeah I'd love to play sometime. T.Link vs Pikachu isn't a match that gets played often I'd imagine. Might be a good way to get actual Pikachu footage too since I can probably record with fraps