Underused upair things

[ihasabuket]

I was playing around with pikachu for a bit and I came up with a few things that I dont really see Axe or pikachad do. The first is SH rising(instant) upair using a claw grip with your index on Y and thumb on c-stick. This has a few advantages as opposed to jumping with the control stick. Doing it this way allows you to analog jump away or towards your opponent. This makes the following techs more effective by allowing you to space yourself.

SH rising upair - The ability to analog jump it makes followups easier, making it a more rewarding punish and OoS option. Often I see Axe opt for a full hop rising upair OoS but it's much harder to followup.
Doing the SH rising upair also allows you to DJ, waveland, or upair/nair before hitting the ground. This gives pikachu a very effective walling tool in neutral with several mixups.

SHFF rising upair - Like a SHFFL'd aerial but with much less landing lag. This is actually amazing in the fastfaller MU's. Against Fox/falco it gives you an easy grab or upsmash followup at 0%. The best part is that it's extremely fast and low commitment when used in tandem with an analog jump.

Pivot SH rising upair - This is so useful in neutral. It lets pika throw out a disjointed, low commitment aerial in front of him out of a dashdance. The best part is that a pivot aerial is only 1 frame more and you can analog jump out of the pivot. It's technically demanding but it's a game changer.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I only use claw for these rising aerial shenanigans. I play normally but when i wanna do this i move my index on Y and my thumb above the cstick simultaneously. From here flick my index up grazing the Y button and hit up on the cstick. Afterwards i move my hands back into a regular position. At first it was hard but now i dont even think about it, it's just muscle memory.

 

[Kuralesache]

SH uair is amazing, but yeah it's pretty much impossible without claw grip. Definitely something I plan on using

 

[Psyant]

Yeah, it's great. I've been thinking much the same things about it. It's definitely underused right now and has some major potential, with just the kind of hard execution being the reason it isn't used much. In addition to what you said, SH Uair allows Pikachu to true 0-death Fox and Falco on FD, as SHFFL Nair > SH Uair at 0% on them puts them to about 12%, the point at which you can start chaingrabbing if perfect, and gives you the grab to set it up too, on anything but optimal DI on the Uair (which people almost always miss anyway due to it's speed).

Using it to defend yourself during your dashdance would be incredibly good if mastered. The hitbox on Uair beats almost all other aerials and the autocancel makes it super low risk to throw out.

 

[ihasabuket]

I want to see Axe incorporate this more. The only time i remember axe doing this is at summit herehttps://youtu.be/hU1lAc0EMfA?t=6m8s. He was able to do it with the A button because he was angling his shield up and in but this method is too situational.

 

[Kuralesache]

Okay so I've been practicing this and I realized that it's really really easy if you use the control stick to tap jump. Definitely gonna start using it as I play in the future!

 

[ihasabuket]

Tap jump is less useful though since you cant do an analog jump with it. If you dont want to use claw you can try this new method i thought about.

Basically instead of pivot upair you do a shield pivot and hit c-stick up which leaves the control stick free to choose the analog jump distance. Then reset the c-stick to neutral and hit up on the c-stick again for an upair. You can optimize this by holding c-stick up during your dash and before you shield. Once you do a shield pivot a jump will buffer. Since youre already holding cstick up you just need to let go, leaving the cstick in a neutral position much sooner and just in time to do an instant upair. It sounds hard but once you get used to it its the easiest and most comfortable way to execute it. Remember to light shield when using this method so that you dont buffer a tech.

When you do instant upair OoS I suggest you use claw instead of tap jump or the cstick to jump. The former doesnt let you analog jump and the latter doesnt let you do an instant upair if your shield is already out. Analog jumping is important in case they adapt and shield after crossing you up. In general it'd be best to switch to claw when you go into your shield and using the other method in every other situation.

 

[Kuralesache]

I didn't think about using it to approach, that does sound pretty good though... I don't think drifting while short-hopping (is that what you mean by analog jump?) is very important OOS, and it's still doable if you tap jump. I'll try the pivot approach though, that sounds dank.

EDIT: Nevermind I googled it, didn't know that term. But yeah it doesn't seem that important to be able to analog jump OOS.

EDIT2: Nevermind it might be amazing cause you can follow them if they DI away, hm. You can actually analog jump with tap jump though, it's pretty fast but I can do it fairly consistently after trying like 10 times.

 

[ihasabuket]

I didn't think about using it to approach, that does sound pretty good though... I don't think drifting while short-hopping (is that what you mean by analog jump?) is very important OOS, and it's still doable if you tap jump. I'll try the pivot approach though, that sounds dank.

EDIT: Nevermind I googled it, didn't know that term. But yeah it doesn't seem that important to be able to analog jump OOS.

EDIT2: Nevermind it might be amazing cause you can follow them if they DI away, hm. You can actually analog jump with tap jump though, it's pretty fast but I can do it fairly consistently after trying like 10 times.

Analog jumping OoS isnt that important against shine pressure but you cant really punish a spaced attack on shield without it. For instance a spaced fair from marth can only be punished this way.

While it is true that you can analog jump with tap jump, you cant do a full analog jump to the side because it is determined by how far the control stick is horizontally during the last frame of jumpsquat. Not only that but if you wanna analog SH instead of FJ(full jump) you have to reset the control stick to neutral which means you wont be drifting for the majority of your jump. When you jump using the cstick/X/Y you can immediately hit the control stick completely to the side triggering a full analog jump and drifting on the first airborne frame. Just to see how far you go stand in place, shield, and analog jump using X/Y/cstick.

Also I forgot to give a tip on jumping using cstick. Try to tilt the cstick up as little as possible so that you can do an upair sooner. You wont be able to do an instant upair but this method is only for shield pivot upair out of a dashdance. Like I said before using claw is optimal for OoS options.

 

[Kuralesache]

You can fully analog jump with tap jump - it's a fast input but you can reset to neutral and smash to the side within 2 frames. Like I said, I can do it fairly consistently after only practicing for a bit!

I've been practicing the pivot upair and your method is really good for that. I'm not quite getting it consistently but it makes a lot of sense and it's actually very lenient, frame-wise, since you can shield-stop instead of pivoting and it's the same effect.

EDIT: Actually you don't have to return to neutral, you just have to do a really fast quarter-circle from the top to the left/right, but I think you have to end up slightly below horizontal. It's actually really not very hard!

EDIT2: Video with input http://imgur.com/5D8sUvq

 

[ihasabuket]

You can fully analog jump with tap jump - it's a fast input but you can reset to neutral and smash to the side within 2 frames. Like I said, I can do it fairly consistently after only practicing for a bit!

I've been practicing the pivot upair and your method is really good for that. I'm not quite getting it consistently but it makes a lot of sense and it's actually very lenient, frame-wise, since you can shield-stop instead of pivoting and it's the same effect.

EDIT: Actually you don't have to return to neutral, you just have to do a really fast quarter-circle from the top to the left/right, but I think you have to end up slightly below horizontal. It's actually really not very hard!

EDIT2: Video with input http://imgur.com/5D8sUvq

Damn thats hella fast. Gonna work on that. Ty for showing me