The Thundershock

[Deleted member]

I've barely, if not, never seen this used ever in competitive play. And as a Pikachu main, I really wanna know when a good time to do that is. Though I DO know that it is used to get out of a tight situation... (getting ganged up on in doubles, etc And how do I remove this emoticon?

 

[Comet7]

it's okay as a mixup maybe once a set in neutral. you can full hop jolt immediately after back throwing a spacie to cover immediate illusion / phantasm / firething. you can throw them out vs a lot of other characters like samus when they're recovering, though you have better options most of the time. you can also full hop toward an edge of a platform (toward the edge), jolt toward the center of the stage, and slide of the edge of a platform after landing for a second on that platform and grab the edge on battlefield, dreamland, and maybe yoshi's. this is completely useless though. you can throw out a jolt or two while recovering to attempt to protect yourself. you might also be able to use them for team saves in doubles.

 

[Deleted member]

Righ

it's okay as a mixup maybe once a set in neutral. you can full hop jolt immediately after back throwing a spacie to cover immediate illusion / phantasm / firething. you can throw them out vs a lot of other characters like samus when they're recovering, though you have better options most of the time. you can also full hop toward an edge of a platform (toward the edge), jolt toward the center of the stage, and slide of the edge of a platform after landing for a second on that platform and grab the edge on battlefield, dreamland, and maybe yoshi's. this is completely useless though. you can throw out a jolt or two while recovering to attempt to protect yourself. you might also be able to use them for team saves in doubles.

Hm, right. Thanks.

 

[Kuralesache]

Are you talking about down-b, or just b? It's kind of ambiguous to me from your first post.

Both of those moves are used very often in competitive play though. Down-B (Thunder) is used to knock opponents off the top of the stage after an upsmash (or sometimes upair). Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgocyJ5Kb-o

Neutral-B (Jolt) is used mostly to cover some recovery options of your opponents, especially against Fox and Falco who have predictable side-b recoveries, and slow enough up-b recoveries that you can react to them if the jolt misses. It's also good to throw out as you're recovering to distract your opponent and prevent them from positioning optimally to cover some of your recovery options. Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPL9RK82NEc

I've posted both videos without timestamps cause I think they're worth watching all the way through. Really really good sets to study, but look for the things I've mentioned!

As a side note, I find jolt to be useful in low level play when you want to stop somebody from ledge stalling. Axe knows better than I do how to deal with ledge stalling, so I trust that there's a better way since I never see him do it, but if I see someone just regrabbing the ledge I'll shoot some jolts at them to help convince them to get back on the stage.

 

[N64]

The main issue with jolt in neutral is pikachu has a lot of recovery frames on it, so he can't act very soon after throwing out jolt. This makes it pretty mediocre for approaching, as they will have dealt with the jolt already by the time you can rush at them. If you full hop forward and jolt it can be ok because you'll travel with the jolt, but you have to have enough space to do this and not get hit before you land. Many characters have moves that will beat jolt anyways (and then hit you in the face if you're running with it), so it isn't even great if you travel with it and your opponent stays grounded, which is about as ideal as it gets. It's also kinda slow so you can't really hope to catch the opponent offguard with it while they're on stage.

It's mostly used as has been mentioned, for edgeguarding and counter edgeguarding. It's good in edgeguarding because it lets you threaten offstage without actually committing to going offstage, and the recovery frames on jolt don't matter as much because you'll be standing there waiting for them to choose a recover option anyways. Similarly, while recovering from far/high you're just floating towards the stage anyways, so you can spare the frames to throw a jolt or two and help protect your recovery.

 

[Deleted member]

Are you talking about down-b, or just b? It's kind of ambiguous to me from your first post.

Both of those moves are used very often in competitive play though. Down-B (Thunder) is used to knock opponents off the top of the stage after an upsmash (or sometimes upair). Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgocyJ5Kb-o

Neutral-B (Jolt) is used mostly to cover some recovery options of your opponents, especially against Fox and Falco who have predictable side-b recoveries, and slow enough up-b recoveries that you can react to them if the jolt misses. It's also good to throw out as you're recovering to distract your opponent and prevent them from positioning optimally to cover some of your recovery options. Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPL9RK82NEc

I've posted both videos without timestamps cause I think they're worth watching all the way through. Really really good sets to study, but look for the things I've mentioned!

As a side note, I find jolt to be useful in low level play when you want to stop somebody from ledge stalling. Axe knows better than I do how to deal with ledge stalling, so I trust that there's a better way since I never see him do it, but if I see someone just regrabbing the ledge I'll shoot some jolts at them to help convince them to get back on the stage.

Down.

 

[N64]

Oh. DownB is really, really laggy, and a bit slow to come out. If you don't connect with it, your opponent gets to do pretty much anything they want. If you let thunder hit you and whiff, you can get like Falcon punched on reaction. Too risky.

 

[Deleted member]

Oh. DownB is really, really laggy, and a bit slow to come out. If you don't connect with it, your opponent gets to do pretty much anything they want. If you let thunder hit you and whiff, you can get like Falcon punched on reaction. Too risky.

I figured...