QA development Thread(current) : breaking down QA to practice level.

[isaiah :)]

INTRO TO DEVELOPMENT?
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Alright let's see, Quick Attack or QA is the move that make's pikachu a Fearsome character in the current meta, but i feel like it's a really under developed move, so i think some type of development thread can make this brilliant move shine, see as simple as it is, the move play's a large roll in developing a strong play style for this character.
Now i'm not saying hey let's spam QA all over the place like dirty little electric rat's, i mean you can, and it's great practice but it doesn't give you the kill. i've decided i wanna develop a thread dedicated to developing a few part's i believe are essential in using Quick Attack, however as much as i wanna contribute, there are mechanics of QA that may be hard for me to elaborate on and i am hoping the rest of the community can contribute to this thread to bring this rat to godhood once again.

and i really don't wanna read any "well I knew that already", because not everyone understand's the basic use of the move. if you are to post, please just contribute.

first everything i post as of now will be notes, i wanna keep the front page updated. so all thread post's should information and all that is found essential will be updated on the front page.
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A Basic understanding of what to do with pikachu's Up-B
- QA essentially is a 2 part move allowing Pikachu to go one direction(16 choices) on the on the stage with the first ZIP and another direction(15 choices) with the second ZIP.there are two things you wanna make sure happen(so practice them in game) when you are using Quick attack.
* 1st: when you 1st Quick attack make sure you hit a cancel or you hit landing lag away from your opponent in a safe spot and make sure you get as close to a the ground or a platform as possible. so to practice this all you really have to do is pay attention to what you can QA in to, to get you the farthest away from your opponent or the safest position possible. however this does take many hour's in the lab getting use to all the QA angel's, i recommend big battlefield for practice
*2nd: always get the first direction right!. the most essential part of QA is getting the first direction where you wanna go right. if you get a safe angel with proper spacing, QA become's extremely difficult to punish and even can allow you to punish your opponent for trying to punish you( can and will be elaborated on later). So If you're playing offensively with QA and running in to your opponent with it, you wanna make sure you space the first Zip far enough to either cancel on the ground in front of you(with the second ZIP) or run to another direction you see as safe(this is if the first zip gets power shielded. if that happens don't challenge them with the second zip, you will get bodied).

-overall you will sit in the lab for a while if you expect to do anything with the move, we are not basic mario player's we are tech heavy pikachu player's
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so essentially you have to keep in mind your environment while playing this character, so pikachu player's let's step up our meta game and get grinding in the lab.

 

[carlos11]

Quick Attack has 32 angles, not 16.

 

[Parkachu0]

What is the most effective way to lab? This could apply to any character I guess but specifically Pikachu and QA. Do you just practice the same one angle 1000 times and then move on to a second angle 1000 times, or are there methods to labbing that people use? I've spent lots of time in training mode but I feel like I'm barely making any progress.

I guess I'll add something too. do NOT use for glory for trying to apply QA tech. The lag totally messes up the timing and you'll have a bad time

 

[isaiah :)]

Quick Attack has 32 angles, not 16.

hmm elaborate on that pls

 

[Gibbs]

Ok so I found a pretty reliable QA mixup on battlefield from the ledge. This starts by dropping ledge by holding away, immediate DJ and drifting the DJ hard away from the stage. After pika back-flips about twice, nor quite at the apex of his jump is when we input QA.

From here we have 3 pretty safe options:

1) We should be able to land an easy QALC on the inside of the nearest platform by inputting the 45degree up and 45degree down QA.

2) 45 degree up then horizontal to the stage will land us on the top platform. Timing this to avoid pika going helpless and falling a bit to the top platform is very difficult, but is optimally safe.

3) Horizontal to the stage and then 45 degree down. This is essentially fox's BnB ledge jump illusion.

Now a Sheik that hard reads the ledge drop away might be able to runoff fair you, but this mixup should be safe against the majority of the cast up until you choose your QA option.

Haven't tested this on dreamland yet.

 

[Pikabunz]

 

[Sinister Slush]

K prime, find obscure silly stuff for Yoshi like this.

 

[isaiah :)]

wait we need a better way to explain angling because that didn't make much sense in practice terms. 45 degrees up-left or up-right?

 

[Gibbs]

wait we need a better way to explain angling because that didn't make much sense in practice terms. 45 degrees up-left or up-right?

I'm going to make a video of a some of these set ups, but some close reading and logic it should be obvious what angles were mentioned, as pretty much every possibility allowed by my vagueness is an SD. (Hint it's always towards the stage since these are options from the ledge)

 

[isaiah :)]

oh, well idk because i tend to QA cancel off of the ledge as a turn around to gain stage control, but alright

 

[Zanku]

i'm a perfect pivot heavy pikachu user, and a technique/ strategy that always gets the best of my opponents is perfect pivoting towards or away the opponent after using QA.

reasons for this is micro spacing. you can throw off their approximation of how far they think your pikachu can go with your QA, and also blend into other QA angle approaches. also major mind games.

Be sure to mix it up!
i play on the 3ds though, so if you guys want to see some footage, you just gotta handle the quality of the ds.. :x

 

[NobleClamtasm]

wait we need a better way to explain angling because that didn't make much sense in practice terms. 45 degrees up-left or up-right?

I'm going to make a video of a some of these set ups, but some close reading and logic it should be obvious what angles were mentioned, as pretty much every possibility allowed by my vagueness is an SD. (Hint it's always towards the stage since these are options from the ledge)

Here's just a rough sketch of what I think we should use as guidelines. This is obviously inspired by FGC terminology, where a hadouken is represented by "236P" on a numberpad. The numberpad terminology doesn't exactly work with us though, since we work with finer angles.

For example, if you want to describe Pikachu's standard vertical quick attack recovery, you'd call it "QA1-2". The standard horizontal recovery is "QA2-3". If you want to catch nearby opponent into a quick attack combo (assuming he's to the right of you), you use "QA3-6".

 

[Gibbs]

^^ should be the new standard, will edit my post to include this later ^^

 

[isaiah :)]

well if it can be broken down to a level in which anyone can practice it then yes i think it can do(but it can always be developed)

 

[stealthgun]

As a new Pikachu player, what is a Quick Attack Cancel and what are it's benefits and practical usages?

 

[Shram]

As a new Pikachu player, what is a Quick Attack Cancel and what are it's benefits and practical usages?

As a new Pikachu player you should first be worried about regular quick attacks, QAC is pretty advanced

But to answer your question, QAC is just like a restricted regular QA but is faster, safer, and allows for quicker movement than a regular QA. It is done by QA'ing off the edge of a platform (Like off of battlefield's) but can also be done on some stages like dreamland or halberd depending on the direction you QA. Check out ESAM's videos for more info cuz it would take forever to explain in words and it would be confusing lol.
It can combo more effectively because you have no ending lag, even comboing into thunder at higher %.