Tier List Speculation

[Player -0]

Nair, F-Smash, Bair. DACUS is lol, fast turn speed. Slash dash speed.

 

[steelguttey]

If thunderjolt Is used at the beginning of your jump you can waveland out of it. And plus, with a good dash dance and approach you dont really need a projectile.

Pikachu has range with his down tilt and up airs. i would also say that dash dance and shffl length both count as range.

Vertical kill power... Uh isn't it kinda obvious? Well I'm just gonna assume you meant horizontal kill power, where he has the uair hit confirm into bair. But even without it Pikachu has one of the best gimp games in pm, I would count that as kill power.

And being combo food... like every character has that problem except for the floaties, Pikahcu at least has the recovery to make it back if he isn't outright killed.

you said "isnt lacking in anything" and youre just saying ways to get around his problems. its perfectly fine but m aking statements like that iskinda ridiculous

also, uair and dtilt are good range when compared with therest of pikachu's moves. most characters have longer uairs and dtilts than pikachu.

uair into bair doesnt make up for it. bair kills at 130~% at center stage, that isn't anything to write home about.

 

[didds]

pika is moreso combo food than say, fox or squirtle though. He's kind of in the grouping of characters like diddy who have poor horizontal aerial drifting, and don't fall fast enough to tech out of combo situations so he eats a lot of damage.

though again, this weakness can be worked around easier than say being really fat and slow

 

[Choice Scarf]

As someone trying to put in the effort for Pika, I say because he's cute as **** and I live on the salt from gimping people at low percent. And for actual reasons I like the uniqueness of his specials, how unpredictable his recovery can be, and how he has a taunt for every occasion.

Pika's cons don't massively outweigh his pros - they look as though they are supposed to balance. Short grab range vs good throw damage and follow ups. Low damage vs being able to output many attacks quickly. Small shield vs good OoS options. Low weight vs great recovery, etc. It just feels like Pika's cons just slightly outweigh his pros in a game where most characters have pros that slightly outweigh their cons.

The underpowered feeling is definitely there though, as though his kit (with all of its tools) doesn't quite come together, but I don't really know what that means. Is his neutral pressure weak? Is his combos lacking considering his archetype? Is his ability to set up for edgeguards just not there? And what made him not underwhelming last patch when he was midtier? I don't think QAC pressure was that pressuring since its startup and movement patterns could be adapted to and the QAC options can (still) be stuffed out easily. Or was the movement pressure just not adapted to then?

And "too much effort" shouldn't be an excuse. His spacing requirements and precision needed for QA sweetspots would always require more effort than necessary no matter how broken he was.

 

[Paradoxium]

you said "isnt lacking in anything" and youre just saying ways to get around his problems. its perfectly fine but m aking statements like that iskinda ridiculous

also, uair and dtilt are good range when compared with therest of pikachu's moves. most characters have longer uairs and dtilts than pikachu.

uair into bair doesnt make up for it. bair kills at 130~% at center stage, that isn't anything to write home about.

I provided you with straight answers and workarounds, there's nothing ridiculous about that.

Also I want to here your opinions on why a character needs ranged attacks? Because for poking and pressuring Pikachus downtilt and up air are very good, they get the job done. What characters have moves that out range them that would make a difference?

and lastly, when Pikachu bairs you and you don't die you're offstage, Pikachu's whole gameplan is to get you offstage because his gimp game is so strong. You're pretty much as good as dead out there.

 

[Scatz]

Pika is one of those characters where you can get easily blown up for not understanding your fundamentals like Marth or Falcon.

It's obvious where his pros resides in, but when you look at things closer, he gets a few hefty tradeoffs that force him to crave for early kills to keep up.

His horizontal kill power is a little worse than average imo. While you get hit confirms from Uair > Bair, he doesn't have other reliable killing options that doesn't require harder reads. Nair doesn't kill fast enough unless you're near the edge of the stage. It's why he relies on Usmash and/or thunder so much. Once you understand Pika's pressure game, his Usmashes become harder to outright kill to maintain an appropriate tradeoff of taking damage.

His speed nets him great neutral play, but it gets slung down hard coming from disjoint characters. Marth, Roy (slight exception), Ivysaur, Ike, & ZSS all can give Pika a nightmare if he can't get in their face. Pika praises on being able to move within your grab range to being slightly outside your range to make you feel like it's impossible to slow him down. Because he has no range on moves, he can't willingly rush in to provide good pressure without first letting the disjoint chars fall for a bait. Messing up the bait means he takes hefty damage.

While he has one of the best recoveries, it's essentially nerfed with the entire roster getting an overall boost. ROB, Peach, Zelda, Mewtwo, & G&W (maybe ZSS & Lucario?) have strong (or slightly stronger) recoveries that definitely makes Pika stuggle harder to maintain the best recovery in the game (which I think is questionable with the lack of QAC2 now). His gimp game is harder ironically compared to melee. Might be because of the range of the move or size of the characters, but getting the actual tail spike is more difficult in PM.

He's a clean character, but weakened with a stronger cast endangering his best traits (speed, edge-guard, and recovery games). Because his normal game is still intact, and he's strong enough to get what he wants, but fails kinda hard when he goes against chars that can make his best trait(s) seem insignificant.

Edit: Also, it doesn't help for illustration purposes when most Pikas outside of Axe or Anther are absurdly slow. Pika has to move, and playing Pika as if you're playing a heavy is contradictory to Pika's entire gameplay. lol

 

[didds]

Pika is one of those characters where you can get easily blown up for not understanding your fundamentals like Marth or Falcon.

It's obvious where his pros resides in, but when you look at things closer, he gets a few hefty tradeoffs that force him to crave for early kills to keep up.

His horizontal kill power is a little worse than average imo. While you get hit confirms from Uair > Bair, he doesn't have other reliable killing options that doesn't require harder reads. Nair doesn't kill fast enough unless you're near the edge of the stage. It's why he relies on Usmash and/or thunder so much. Once you understand Pika's pressure game, his Usmashes become harder to outright kill to maintain an appropriate tradeoff of taking damage.

His speed nets him great neutral play, but it gets slung down hard coming from disjoint characters. Marth, Roy (slight exception), Ivysaur, Ike, & ZSS all can give Pika a nightmare if he can't get in their face. Pika praises on being able to move within your grab range to being slightly outside your range to make you feel like it's impossible to slow him down. Because he has no range on moves, he can't willingly rush in to provide good pressure without first letting the disjoint chars fall for a bait. Messing up the bait means he takes hefty damage.

While he has one of the best recoveries, it's essentially nerfed with the entire roster getting an overall boost. ROB, Peach, Zelda, Mewtwo, & G&W (maybe ZSS & Lucario?) have strong (or slightly stronger) recoveries that definitely makes Pika stuggle harder to maintain the best recovery in the game (which I think is questionable with the lack of QAC2 now). His gimp game is harder ironically compared to melee. Might be because of the range of the move or size of the characters, but getting the actual tail spike is more difficult in PM.

He's a clean character, but weakened with a stronger cast endangering his best traits (speed, edge-guard, and recovery games). Because his normal game is still intact, and he's strong enough to get what he wants, but fails kinda hard when he goes against chars that can make his best trait(s) seem insignificant.

The only thing I really disagree with is the recovery aspect. I'd say that the difference in recovery at that point is pretty much negligible, but speaking purely from a recovery stand point. When we start looking at things like movement and offensive capabilities, and the ability to put your character in a position to successfully edgeguard your opponent, that's when pikachu's recovery begins to shine. His ability to gimp, but then regain ledge rapidly is an underrated asset to a character; same with the ability to quickly grab ledge from center stage. From this perspective, I only see character like M2 who have equally versatile recoveries.

Lots of good insights overall though

 

[Scatz]

Compared to melee where only Fox(lol), Peach, and Jiggs mattered for recovery sake, PM brings more to that list. It's one thing to get back to the edge, but it's another when the conversions are easier (in which, ROB, Jiggs, and Mewtwo are now in that list) to get the edgeguards with the recovery. There's more to the table that Pika has to deal with, and with the same toolkit (with a slightly harder tail spike in terms of consistency), Pika's recovery and edgeguarding definitely takes a hit. It's not a strong hit, but it matters in the long run imo.

Edit: ROB, Jiggs, and Mewtwo all have the ability to place opponent's in edgeguardable situations a lot easier like Pika. Peach (only cause Armada lol), & G&W fall slightly behind that imo.

 

[Seagull Joe]

It takes 5 minutes to make a list lol

It takes 5 minutes to make a list without character icons, which I must post with. I invented that smashboards phenomena in 2010/2011. Good to see my methods are still being employed .

 

[Psyant]

IMO Pikachu's best trait in PM, besides his recovery, is the ease with which he gets kills. He has so many setups into kill moves; his PM Dthrow is bonkers (pretty sure it would be getting some complaints if it was on a better character) and combos into a Bair at kill % on many chars off non-optimal DI. Uair > Bair is a thing (having a kill confirm off a frame 3 OoS option is amazing), Fair > Usmash is a thing (god forbid you get hit by Thunder afterwards and end up dying all because you got clipped by a Fair at like 55%). His gimp game is exceptional and doesn't really need to be talked about. Fsmash is also pretty damn strong if you're talking about horizontal kill power. Overall, with QAC fakeouts and his general movement speed, he has no problem baiting out a mistake or lack of reaction to land these options. I never have a problem closing out stocks with this character and he really can kill very early considering his size and speed.

His weaknesses imo lie more in racking up damage in the first place. His reward for getting in on many characters in PM is simply not very good considering the difficulty he often has getting close. Pikachu's kit is so heavily built towards juggling vertically; it works very well against true fastfallers, but is massively less effective against characters of even average fallspeed, forcing him to go by the thousand cuts hit-and-run style against many characters when he doesn't have a dominating enough neutral game to do so easily. Unlike Melee there are many respectable floaties and semi-floaties that are not only hard to get in on without trading to their favor or eating their crouch cancel options, but will also combo Pikachu harder on average than he combos them. Wario is an example of a character that despite being slower and not having a significant range advantage over Pikachu still gives him a hard time. Pikachu struggled with Peach and Jigglypuff in Melee and that trend of weakness against floaties is more relevant in PM. Yes, his Usmash kills them early, but that's more like the one real lifeline he has against them rather than something that tips the scales in his favor.

He doesn't actually do too badly against disjoints imo. Pikachu is considered to have a relatively even matchup against Marth even in Melee, and probably slightly beats him or at least goes completely even in PM, though it's mainly just because Marth can't kill Pikachu to save his life. I'll admit Roy is actually a massive pain, but it's more because he can actually kill Pikachu reliably and has such a strong CC game, in addition to the sword. I think long lasting hitboxes are more of a pain for Pikachu than quick, disjointed attacks with abusable end lag, overall.

Anyway, to his credit, Pikachu can perform better than most against many popular good characters like the Spacies, Marth and Falcon. When he struggles it tends to be more against the Brawl characters and the buffed veterans that weren't really relevant in Melee. Still, Pikachu has a ton of tools that can be bent for most any matchup. I rarely feel like a matchup is easy, but at the same time I always feel like I have the tools to overcome each individual opponent. Nothing feels impossible and Pikachu is definitely held back more by the player than anything. Some characters aren't as well balanced to take on any threat, so Pikachu is fortunate in that regard. It's rarely easy, but it is always doable.

 

[Player -0]

The QAC out of QA2 was a nerf to his footstool followups. RIP Up-Air -> QAC around them -> lolcombo.

Edit - Pretty sure no one used it though.

 

[Paradoxium]

wow its like every time someone mentions something about pikachu just a flood of random Pikachu mains comes in and starts spouting paragraphs worth of stuff.

Maybe you guys should start performing well and actually discussing things in the Pikachu section instead of remaining hidden until some random starts talking about Pikachu on the tier list thread.

 

[GabPR]

wow its like every time someone mentions something about pikachu just a flood of random Pikachu mains comes in and starts spouting paragraphs worth of stuff.

Maybe you guys should start performing well and actually discussing things in the Pikachu section instead of remaining hidden until some random starts talking about Pikachu on the tier list thread.

Its actually like that for most character mains.

 

[Scatz]

It's the same people that's posting here about Pika that post on the boards. Go start some discussion that hasn't devolved into "What can we get to boost pikachu in the next patch," or "Why did the PMDT remove QAC2?"

 

[Deleted member]

It takes 5 minutes to make a list without character icons, which I must post with. I invented that smashboards phenomena in 2010/2011. Good to see my methods are still being employed .

The amount of time it has taken you to reply to me is also enough to make a beautiful tier list with brawl character icons

Nice job "inventing it" and never using it again

 

[Seagull Joe]

The amount of time it has taken you to reply to me is also enough to make a beautiful tier list with brawl character icons

Nice job "inventing it" and never using it again

I go around smashboards via namesearches. I also have a full time job Monday-Friday so I can't always check these sorts of things kiddo. I'll be your 11th grade Chemistry teacher. Moving to Texas.

 

[Ripple]

I'd like people to talk about Charizard. what does he really need in order to compete with the rest of the cast?



I've been playing him for about 2 months now but I never played him in 3.0 so I have no baseline of a good zard but I feel as though a couple changes here and there would work well for him. having flame breath be less punishable, glide starting faster and sweetspot nair being 1% stronger.

although I feel as though with his current nair, he'll never be a good character

 

[NWRL]

The one thing that really irks me about this thread is the amount of complaining about character specific things that are strong. Every character should have something that's like "oh wow, that's really good" see: Roy's dtilt, Ike's QD/grab, Spacie's shine, Falcon's knee.

All of the things I listed are very strong tools that are still very healthy design-wise. It's not like we're looking at 3.02 Mewtwo, Lucas, Pit, Diddy, Mario, etc.

 

[Boiko]

The one thing that really irks me about this thread is the amount of complaining about character specific things that are strong. Every character should have something that's like "oh wow, that's really good" see: Roy's dtilt, Ike's QD/grab, Spacie's shine, Falcon's knee.

All of the things I listed are very strong tools that are still very healthy design-wise. It's not like we're looking at 3.02 Mewtwo, Lucas, Pit, Diddy, Mario, etc.

I don't agree with that. If you give a character one tool that completely outshines all others, why are they going to use anything but that tool?

For example, PK Fire in 3.02. It made zero sense in almost any circumstance to use something over PK Fire.

Balancing a character around one move can lead to some stale game play.

 

[Player -0]

Really good =/= Overcentralizing.

TLink's Bomb = Really good but not overly centralizing.

 

[Thor]

The one thing that really irks me about this thread is the amount of complaining about character specific things that are strong. Every character should have something that's like "oh wow, that's really good" see: Roy's dtilt, Ike's QD/grab, Spacie's shine, Falcon's knee.

All of the things I listed are very strong tools that are still very healthy design-wise. It's not like we're looking at 3.02 Mewtwo, Lucas, Pit, Diddy, Mario, etc.

Spacie's shine very health design-wise

No.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Player -0.

 

[Jacob29]

I go around smashboards via namesearches. I also have a full time job Monday-Friday so I can't always check these sorts of things kiddo. I'll be your 11th grade Chemistry teacher. Moving to Texas.

Whoa man don't cut me with that edge. Also nice special snowflake sig mate

I'd like people to talk about Charizard. what does he really need in order to compete with the rest of the cast?



I've been playing him for about 2 months now but I never played him in 3.0 so I have no baseline of a good zard but I feel as though a couple changes here and there would work well for him. having flame breath be less punishable, glide starting faster and sweetspot nair being 1% stronger.

although I feel as though with his current nair, he'll never be a good character

I dunno. What's actually Charizards problem? Whenever I played against a good zard player I get bopped so hard.

 

[Player -0]

- Hard to deal with in your face pressure because no reliable/quick aerial to gtfo.
- Recovery is still rather gimpable.
- OoS options are egh.
- Something something broken something? Does that not apply here?
- Gets out DD'ed I think.

 

[NWRL]

I don't agree with that. If you give a character one tool that completely outshines all others, why are they going to use anything but that tool?

For example, PK Fire in 3.02. It made zero sense in almost any circumstance to use something over PK Fire.

Balancing a character around one move can lead to some stale game play.

And none of those moves I listed are overcentralizing, do you see Ikes doing nothing but spamming QD and winning neutral and then proceeding to win major tournaments? No.

Does Roy's dtilt outshine all other possible options in neutral? No

 

[mimgrim]

If you think Knee isn't over centralized then I would like to know what kind of Falcons you play against.

Also if you think a frame 1 hitbox that covers the whole body that is JCable on like frame 4 is healthy... well I weep for you.

 

[NWRL]

Yeah, shine makes Fox into some weird crazy unbeatable beast that parries everything you throw out with his frame 1 hitbox.

And then you grab him out of shine because it's not intangible on frame 1 anymore, and then you proceed to do grab throw things to him and gg. Shine isn't what makes Fox dumb, it's his dash speed, aerial speed, and guaranteed stocks from throws.

 

[.alizarin]

Yeah, shine makes Fox into some weird crazy unbeatable beast that parries everything you throw out with his frame 1 hitbox.

And then you grab him out of shine because it's not intangible on frame 1 anymore, and then you proceed to do grab throw things to him and gg. Shine isn't what makes Fox dumb, it's his dash speed, aerial speed, and guaranteed stocks from throws.

Are you telling me that shine isn't one of the best tools and conversions in the game?

 

[mimgrim]

I'm not even talking about just Fox when I talk about Shine. I'm talking about all 3 characters but that is only as a byproduct of talking about Sine. I'm talking about the move itself, the characters it is attatched to are just there inderiectly.

There is nothing good or healthy about a frame 1 hitbox, intangible or not, that can be JC'd on frame 4 that can start combos, extend combos, lead into kill moves, and/or out right kill by gimping. Oh it aoso halts momentum. And it can reflect too. That is unhealthy on any character and if any character had it beside the furry trio people would scream in bloody murder.

If I wanted to talk about just Fox I would be ******** about how he has such a great neutral game and how easy it is for him to approach but can also get away with not approaching either and how it id stupid a character with such a great offensive game also has such a great defensive game.

 

[NWRL]

I never said that it wasn't, but to say that it's not healthy is pretty dumb considering the tool itself isn't the problem, it's Fox's ability to move around the map putting out hitboxes wherever he wants with low lag aerials and a great DD game.

If you take away shine's hitbox do you want to know what happens to Fox? He loses shield pressure and follow ups out of waveshine, but still keeps his dashdance, low lag aerials, throw-> kill confirms and lasers. Boy that sure solved the Fox is OP problem!

 

[PlateProp]

I go around smashboards via namesearches. I also have a full time job Monday-Friday so I can't always check these sorts of things kiddo. I'll be your 11th grade Chemistry teacher. Moving to Texas.

Couldn't be bothered to do it in the 5 salty minutes it took you to write that post I see

I never said that it wasn't, but to say that it's not healthy is pretty dumb considering the tool itself isn't the problem, it's Fox's ability to move around the map putting out hitboxes wherever he wants with low lag aerials and a great DD game.

If you take away shine's hitbox do you want to know what happens to Fox? He loses shield pressure and follow ups out of waveshine, but still keeps his dashdance, low lag aerials, throw-> kill confirms and lasers. Boy that sure solved the Fox is OP problem!

He never said that it solved everything, just that shine is a PROBLEM

 

[.alizarin]

Obviously shine is not the SINGLE, ONLY THING that makes Fox stupid, but overlooking the move's stupidity just because you don't think that it's central to what makes Fox a problem character is nonsensical.........

 

[Thor]

I never said that it wasn't, but to say that it's not healthy is pretty dumb considering the tool itself isn't the problem, it's Fox's ability to move around the map putting out hitboxes wherever he wants with low lag aerials and a great DD game.

If you take away shine's hitbox do you want to know what happens to Fox? He loses shield pressure and follow ups out of waveshine, but still keeps his dashdance, low lag aerials, throw-> kill confirms and lasers. Boy that sure solved the Fox is OP problem!

You are aware that as Melee Minus has been produced [or rather is being produced, still in early stages], many people figured the starting point to making everyone broken was to just give them all shines, right?

Dev team shot it down because they didn't want to over-centralize character design on one move.

 

[JOE!]

I'd like people to talk about Charizard. what does he really need in order to compete with the rest of the cast?

For his wings to not have weird ass floating hurtboxes the size of mario for one [/bias lol]. They're strange in that they allow random stray hits to hit at like full force as well as well as some hits to zip right through, while only being relevant on Jab, Utilt and Usmash:

Spoiler

I'd rather have the hurtboxes be as they are here in green, but this is all just super nitpicky rambling lol

I've been playing him for about 2 months now but I never played him in 3.0 so I have no baseline of a good zard but I feel as though a couple changes here and there would work well for him.

I feel Zard is on the cusp of being great but mainly suffers from "big character" problems like projectiles, but also has a bit of a tough time with an approach as he really doesn't have any moves that aren't committal in some fashion nor really anything that is safe on a shield.

having flame breath be less punishable,

I recently broke down Flamethrower and gathered that it is generally totally inferior to his Heatwave side B in nearly every way:

Heatwave hits for 25% up close and 10% from afar while being a massive transcendent disjoint that hits 4 times with actual raw power, moves Zard back a bit for spacing shenanigans, and has IASA on frame 59. Flamethrower with a single press of the B button hits 5 times for either 10% with hit stun or 5% with no stun, is clank-able, is ALWAYS punishable when you hit with it, and has IASA on frame 77.

Its a shame it is so.... lackluster this patch. Granted, its a weird problem because you can still catch people with it at it's best use (at the edge facing out) and absolutely roast 80% or so in one go, so buffing it could be awkward. I'd personally rather see it be made just much faster overall if it keeps the current set up of having no stun from afar, or have some sort of rework.

glide starting faster

Glide used to be essentially instant in 3.0 but was changed to have the new animation to avoid "Glide Braking", which allowed Zard to alter and reverse momentum. The Zard boards discovered this can be fixed so it's probably being worked back to the way it was just sans momentum cancel?

sweetspot nair being 1% stronger.
although I feel as though with his current nair, he'll never be a good character

Going from 11-13-10 to 12-14-11 would be a neat buff, but Im just curious why you feel like the current Nair keeps him from being good? In 3.0 it was beyond godlike and was made more reasonable this time around, but it is still an amazing move.

 

[BluntedMask]

Just want to say that Nair did get buffed in that it combos more into upair/upb with the reduced knockback.

Aside from glide being the way it is I think Charizard is in the perfect spot. Nothing is really too good or overbearing. (Except maybe jab, that is busted)

 

[941]

And none of those moves I listed are overcentralizing, do you see Ikes doing nothing but spamming QD and winning neutral and then proceeding to win major tournaments? No.

Does Roy's dtilt outshine all other possible options in neutral? No

I agree that just because a move is "really good" doesn't mean that move should be nerfed, but there are some moves that are too strong. If there are moves that characters have that work well even with poor execution, those moves can reward players for making not-so-good decisions. Right now Roy's D-tilt is a little too strong because of how rewarding it is to land, even with suboptimal spacing, as well as not being easy to punish. Not to say Roy is broken or his D-tilt is broken, it's just slightly too rewarding for the amount of risk it has.

 

[PlateProp]

Zard's dthrow tho

pls

 

[JOE!]

Oh, forgot to mention that New Glair makes me sad. Its like it sometimes doesn't even link properly into the last hit anymore :<

That will probably be fixed by the instant angling ability of a non-laggy glide start though lol

 

[Soft Serve]

Zard talk?

zard pivot jab is still the fuel of my nightmares

God damn is jab combined with his good dash scary. it's a good thing he extends his body when he dashes because otherwise his dd game would be borked

 

[Juushichi]

I have some nightmares about Charizard's Jab to this day.

I think he has poor OoS, but great anti-air. This is still super good.

 

[Blank Mauser]

After the nair nerf, Jab and Usmash pretty much make the character imo. Also Pivot Dsmash is good for reactionary techchases.

Viable but nothing special really. Less stage presence than before, no way to safely pressure anybody, and the disjoint nerf on ftilt really killed his ability to threaten mid-range. Long, active hitboxes destroy jab used for that purpose, so he must commit to grab.