Underused upair stuff

[ihasabuket]

Rising upair's frame data is so good but it is hardly ever exploited. Axe often uses Full Jump rising upair but I think SH rising upair is better most of the time because you're in a better position to stuff or retreat after whiffing and you dont give up center stage or let the opponent get under you. Here are a few things you can do with rising upair.

SH double upair
This can be really useful to space attacks on a shield after a crossup nair. You can also use it as a mixup to crossup nair to approach with the front part of the first upair and hit with the second upair after you cross them up.
You can opt to do a Nair instead of a second upair. This is a really cool way to setup a late nair which is 0 on shield.
It is also a really effective and noncommittal stuffing tool in the spacie and peach MU's(maybe falcon too). It is important to use aerial drift at all times. When stuffing It is best to drift right after the hitbox comes(instead of initially jumping away) so that it causes drag, leaving a hitbox where you previously were and giving up as little space as possible. This can be countered by a fulljump aerial if they read your drift, so remember to use Full Jump upair as a mixup, but SH rising upair should be your default stuffing tool since its less committal.

SH upair waveland
This is mostly just a mixup for when you're using SH rising upair as a stuffing tool. It can also be used to followup in case you land the first rising upair and you want to get into a better position.

Other options - Alternatively you can DJ after the first upair to land or waveland on a platform. You could also just FFAC the upair to minimize your lag.

You can also set up SH rising upair by approaching with a run canceled dtilt. Preferably with the dtilt spaced better than in my example; In my example I was a little slow on the jump after dtilting, it can be done a lot sooner. Anyway, the upair doesnt really have to connect (in case you spaced the dtilt as far as possible), its more to catch OoS options. I they roll back or spotdodge you should have enough time to punish it or at least space another tilt to force them into shield again.

It may help to use the following input method that Trix uses to get the soonest possible upair

ve been looking into this stuff too and you don't necessarily need to claw grip. If you the stick at a perfectly 45 degree angle, will you aerially drift as far as normally possible, and can still upair. This means that you can use z without holding up having any effect on your drift, as long you slant the upwards hold where you want to go. (If you were to say hold it 44 degrees, you would not drift as far as possible by a very slight amount. If you hold it 46 degrees you won't do an uair. So you have to hold it somewhere in the 40-45 degree range to still do an upair while having little to no aerial drift loss.)

This method uses X/Y to jump while angling the control stick at an upwards angle and hitting Z on the first airborne frame.

Even though this is a really useful tool, Pikachu's strength is his mobility and whiff punishing should be your main focus. As you may have seen, Axe uses Full Jump upair as a mixup to dash back to stuff moves. This is simply a less committal way of doing just that. It is also a really effective way to hold space after approaching with a tilt.

EDIT: To further illustrate my point, here's a match where Axe uses Full jump rising upair and gets punished because it gives Plup too much room and time for plup to approach. Pikachu also has a hard time when enemies are under him because he's not good at threatening space below him because his aerials lack horizontal and vertical range. Anyway, heres the match.

Whiffed full jump rising upair gets punished at these times: 3:00, 5:04, 5:37, 7:18
These are situations where SH rising upair could have given Axe more options and less airtime so that Plup would not have had such a good position to punish. It would have also allowed Axe to keep some of his stage control after whiffing.
One thing I do wanna point out is that at 7:50 Axe does a Full Jump upair and then DJ WL's to the top platform. This is an excellent option after whiffing so its not as if Full jump upair air is super risky, just that SH rising upair is a lot less risky.

 

[Dunner]

This is something I've messed around with but still can't find the situations in neutral do to them. Definitely something of value as it's fast and safe.
Isn't clawgrip super unhealthy and hard getting used to? You can hit the c-stick up with your left thumb just fine if you have decently big hands/long fingers, at least thats how I do it. You also barely lose any aerial drift time and it won't mess up your grip/hands

 

[_trix_]

I've been looking into this stuff too and you don't necessarily need to claw grip. If you the stick at a perfectly 45 degree angle, will you aerially drift as far as normally possible, and can still upair. This means that you can use z without holding up having any effect on your drift, as long you slant the upwards hold where you want to go. (If you were to say hold it 44 degrees, you would not drift as far as possible by a very slight amount. If you hold it 46 degrees you won't do an uair. So you have to hold it somewhere in the 40-45 degree range to still do an upair while having little to no aerial drift loss.) And yeah this stuff is super good, I've been working on it a lot for the last few days. I think it's best done out of dash forward turnaround insta-sheild uairs.(AKA aproaching shield turnaround upairs, Pewpewu uses similar things with marth a lot.) It's basically the same thing as approaching pivot upairs, except that its a hell alot of easier and also gives you the option to hold shield for a little bit as a mixup. Def would reccomend, especially vs spacies and espeically if you can do this stuff too.

 

[_trix_]

It super good for take space and for approaching vs spacies that like to wall out a lot. It's also one of the hardest thing to punish in the entire game, as upair comes out frame 3, outpriotizes everyhting, auto-cancelled, and can be further mixed-up with fastfalls, wavelands, another uair(SH double uair), a nair, or a DJ(into like a rising uair or platform waveland). SH uair waveland back is nearly unpunishable on its own, not to mention how hard it is to punish if a pikachu is properly mixing up all this other stuff as well. Especially since getting hit by one uair can mean 50%+ or death for a majority of the cast, and leads to guaranteed death at any percent vs almost half of top tier on FD. I'm really glad stuff like this is coming to light, I've always believed that upair, not nair, should be the centerpiece of pikachus neutral vs every character expect maybe marth and puff.

 

[ihasabuket]

If you hold it 46 degrees you won't do an uair.

You could just use cstick up, but my main problem with using the control stick to jump is that its a bit more controller dependant to consistently SH using it.

 

[_trix_]

I'm not saying using control stick to jump. I mean that you can do it by doing a normal SH with x or y and then using z to do the uair

 

[ihasabuket]

I'm not saying using control stick to jump. I mean that you can do it by doing a normal SH with x or y and then using z to do the uair

Ohhhhh. Thats way better than the other two methods. If you could record that on 20xxTE and made a thread about it that'd be great. I think this is gonna be an essential tech if you wanna use upair to its full potential.
Good **** man.

 

[atara]

How do you get the stick into the 45º upwards angle? If I just push it there won't I tap jump? Or is tap jump a tighter angle?

 

[_trix_]

It's a tighter angle i believe. like 60 degrees or higher

 

[atara]

Could this change the Pikachu-Jigglypuff matchup? Usually Jiggs can kind of run over Pikachu, since whiffing a fullhop rising upair leaves you pretty vulnerable. On the other hand if you can dashdance and sh-uair on reaction it might make it impossible for her to approach

 

[ihasabuket]

Could this change the Pikachu-Jigglypuff matchup? Usually Jiggs can kind of run over Pikachu, since whiffing a fullhop rising upair leaves you pretty vulnerable. On the other hand if you can dashdance and sh-uair on reaction it might make it impossible for her to approach

It would help a bit but i dont think it'd be groundbreaking in the puff MU. Puff still has more aerial drift and more horizontal disjoint. Upair might be able to beat out high bairs because it comes from under, but even then you'd only get 3%(or 4% if unstaled) and position. Fullhop upair gets you a combo but is high commitment.
Furthermore, it's difficult to do this straight out of a dashdance but i think its entirely possible to pivot-shield SH rising upair out of your dashdance. Even then because the risk reward is so skewed the Puff MU is still gonna be hella hard.
In short, I dont think it'll really change the puff MU. You still have to chip away at puff until really high %s or risk going in for a raw upsmash to kill her.

 

[ChivalRuse]

Yeah short hop uair in general is not used enough, probably because it's semi-difficult to do short hop instant uairs consistently (for those who have not devotedly practiced it). I feel that overall, it's probably strictly better than the full jump version, since a short hop exposes you less to being sharked from below than a full jump.

 

[ihasabuket]

Yeah, and dtilt turnaround uptilt is pikachu's version of marth dtilt fair walls. Id really like to see that used for zoning, corner pressure, and even spaced shield pressure.