Pika's potential?

[PsychopathicEmus]

can pika compete at a professional/top professional level?

i've always kind of wondered about this and at one point totally considered the answer to be "no," but i kind of want some of the more experienced pikas' opinions.

i mean sure, there's chu dat playing pika but i've only really seen his pika do well against cort's peach as far as prominent opponents go. though the community isn't what it used to be, am i going to be seeing matches of pika vs pc chris, dashizwiz, m2k and doing well?

even locally (north CA), i haven't heard of any pikas going up against and doing well against people like zhu, falcomist and silent spectre

so yeah, what do you guys think?

 

[KirbyKaze]

chu plays pika vs cort because his pika was already ridiculous and he can't beat cort with ice climbers because honestly even if peach beats pika by a little bit, it's still a massive upgrade from the horrible **** she inflicts upon the ic.

i don't think pikachu has enough potential to make it up there. i think he falls just short of it.

he's a very basic, subpar character. he doesn't really have anything unique or special or broken going for him. what made luigi, dk, and link suddenly viable for mid tier positions were that people realized how broken dk's grab range and cargo u-throw combos were and that he had some very good moves on him, just in short supply. luigi's always been underrated; longest wavedash, nair, takes no hitstun, etc. and then link has spam, the amazing nair, disjointed hitboxes, and other nonsense. they all have some randomly broken areas that help compensate for their crippling flaws.

pika doesn't really have anything like that. his only real good features are tailspikes and after that i really can't think of anything else. his u-smash is good, his uair juggles are good, but then after that everything about him is average or worse.

he gets absolutely clobbered by the top tiers. this is also problematic.

 

[Kiwikomix]

He's pretty good against Fox and not terribly poorly matched against Falco, so I can see him being a counterpick if you know how to use him. But yeah, the other tops kind of screw him over. Marth's grab > Pikachu, Sheik's chaingrab is death, etc.

And I would definitely agree that he doesn't have one certain technique that really helps him in matchups, no guaranteed combos worth practicing.