Trying to make Thunder spiking consistent~

[Shadestars]

I'm interested in the Thunder spike.

I'm trying to see if I can get it to spike off-stage fairly consistently. I understand it's not going to be the most viable thing ever, but my god you'd be stylin' when you pull it off!

Anyway, I'm having trouble figuring out where exactly the spike happens, it's in the cloud part right? I've been getting as low as possible off-stage before hitting Thunder, getting both the timing AND spacing is pretty hard. I'm open to any advice or theory on Thunder spiking off-stage if you please <3

 

[Choice Scarf]

If you're talking about the meteor, I think it's the bottom portion of the cloud and the topmost part of the bolt that causes the meteor.
What's been classically known as the "Thunderspike" is when you use Thunder to kill off the top, so that name actually makes no sense but you can do that too with the top portion of the cloud.

Anyway this is less theory and more guesswork since the game is still new:

• As for viability, theoretically it can be air dodged and meteor cancelled but it's probably the most stylish edgeguard Pika can potentially do in this game, so hell yes to trying to develop it.
  
• I imagine that first we'd need to find the optimal height where the opponent is recovering from. Too high and they can VI towards the stage for a ledge grab or ledge tech, and too low and you won't be able to recover even with Quick Attack.
  
• The worst part would that going low offstage when they are higher than you probably telegraphs that you're attempting to Thunder them, so you'd probably feign an aerial follow-up->fastfall->Thunder (if Thunder cancels the fastfall, otherwise nevermind) or just toy with your double jump.

For now it's too early to tell what the best timing is, so I'd say just see how deep you can go before you can't recover back to the ledge and just work with that distance consistently.

 

[chainmaillekid]

I just got a nice one last night, I forget exactly what happened, But Link was recovering hight, I went in with an uair, he airdodged, and I landed on the edge of the stage, and did a thunder, right as he exited the dodge.

I was skeptical of ever getting an off stage thunder spike, but it came together.

 

[One Tilt]

I've gotten a handful in the past few days after picking up Pikachu, but admittedly only one was anything but dumb luck or 'spamming a safe move' when they recovered high. Was on Battlefield vs a ZSS, and I did a quick double-jump to thunder spike them out of a high recovery. Were both just barely offstage, so they went just past the ledge. Baiting them to try going over it seems to work, as does threatening lower recoveries with attempted Bair stage spikes and the like. Other than that, upthrow somewhere around 100%~ seems to combo nicely, but that's not the gimp you're looking for (sorry that I don't know the exact % range, though it does vary by character and DI, I'm sure-- I might backpedal and test for all that later).

 

[Hoe4u]

I've found that thunder setups are usually a lot better when you close out the blastzone spaces as small as possible.

From pikas Uthrow you can follow up with full hop Uair or double jump Uair, chances are your opponent with either airdodge or double jump. If your opponents DI isn't great from the initial Uthrow I've followed up with these scenarios:

Uthrow > Full hop Uair: with this setup your opponent will have room to airdodge/doouble jump. if they airdodge, fall with them and Uair > FF thunder. above around 70% it gives you enough distance to spawn the thunder cloud where your opponent will be.
If they double jump, your Uair will catch them out of it as they won't have enough frames to execute Uair + Airdodge in time. Here's where they lose momentum to move in the air, they're higher, your higher, so follow up with thunder and when thunder hits you you'll be higher and the blatzones closer to you vertically. Providing you chase your opponents movement in the same direction you can thunder and skim the momentum you need to move and sweetspot thunder.

You can also replace pikas full hop with double jump and use the same sort of setup, but full hop gives you the option for another jump incase you want to bait an airdodge and hard read with thunder.

None of this is guarantied, especially if your opponent gas good DI, I've only tried this on Sonic and been successful about 5 out of 12 times. But this is also from a Sonic player who won't ever be caught by Uthrow or Dthrow thunder as he just holds away from me when I get a grab at high percent.