Evolving the pika meta 1 step at a time

While trying to master Pikachu, I took down notes for myself to remember. Posting it here; hope you guys'd find it helpful.


Pikachu:

-Edge-Guard deeper? Think how to.
-In Neutral: Dash-Dance? Up-B Cancel? Dash into D-Smash?
-Fast-Fall N-Air. N-Air out of Shield.
-Use D-Tilt to Combo.
-Don't use Dash Attack while trying to D-Tilt out of Dash.
-Chase with N-Air/ D-Tilt/ D-Air, not Grab.
-Jump off Stage with Aerial, then come back with Down-B.
-Up-B into U-Tilt?
-Can Walk after U-Throw to U-Smash. Can Jump-Cancel Dash U-Smash to slide farther.
--F-Air Land-Cancel into grounded move.
--Fast-Fall Side-B.
--Style: Up-B Edge-Guard from Ledge.
--Sliding Up-B: Walk off edge and Up-B slide back.
Vs. Fox:
-D-Throw into F-Smash.
-D-Air, Side-B to launch off Stage.
Vs. Zelda:
-Diamond Storm: Direction Influence upwards to escape, then come back down with D-Air or Up-B. Same with U-Smash.
-U-Air or Down-B her Up-B.
-U-Smash to KO early.
Vs. Sheik:
-Intercept Recovery before teleport. Take advantage of Start-UP Lag on Up-B before intangibility starts.
-D-Air.
Vs. Samus:
-U-Smash.
-Intercept Recovery before Up-B.
-Down-B Edge-Guard.
Vs. fast-fallers:
-Combo. U-Smash. U-Tilt. D-Tilt. Grab...Finish with Down-B or D-Air.
-Side-B, D-Air to low-trajectory KO.
Vs. floaty characters:
-D-Tilt into U-Smash.
-Down-B to anti-air.
On DreamLand: Can Up-B Cancel on top Platform.

Hold these sixty realquick.

Pikachu lookin slick af in Beta

Pika, Pika! (Oh god , the horror!)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvvDjWWSBxQ

's bad mu's (NOT FINAL)








(Maybe)
This is up for discussion

I think Peach loses to pikachu

pikachu has such high movement capabilities that peach can't really hake him off of her. all she can do is n-air for defense, but then it gets beat out by pika d-air

Idk, Nair and peach being light and having a float makes it hard for Pikachu to combo peach. Those along with her decent counter makes it a bit harder for pika edgeguard her. At the very least I think peach can hit Pikachu about as much if not slightly more than pika hits her.

I was very confused at first. I thought that was a list of characters who have bad match-ups against Pikachu.

Because that's what it's much closer to being. Not that they're weak to Pika, but I don't think Pika loses significantly against any of them.

Pikachu destroys DK. You combo the tar out of DK, DK can't really edgeguard you, electric attacks beat everything, Thunder Jolt is amazing at shutting down DK's neutral, Thunder destroys Spinning Kong, and Pikachu is just too fast for DK to keep up with.

Well I guess I'll explain my mentality behind these mus, some are theorycrafts
Dk: he out ranges pikachu and can 0-death pikachu about as easily as pika 0-deaths him
Mk is about as fast as pikachu and has disjoints on a lot of his moves
Zss makes it very hard for Pikachu to approach
Zelda can cover her self pretty well too and slightly out ranges pikachu
Link is mostly theory craft with others opinions that he could projectile camp all day and some sword swings but I'm starting to question it myself
Lloyd is fast and you already know sword=disjoints and he can combo pikachu very well
Marth is same but can also break out of pikachus combos with his fast aerials
Peach I guess I could take off because tac convinced me
Ichigo is maybe because while he has that big butcher knife of a disjoint to use to our space pika it kinda swings slow and pika could 0-death him easily


It's not really hard for dk edgeguard pikachu, one good fair in the general area pika is gonna upb or even use dks sweet spot upb to counter it would work. Not that dk would even have to worry about edgeguard that much because he can kill pika early. Dk dtilt snuffs out jolt and most of pikas approaches can be beat by dks oos options

Down-Throw > Dair is nearly guaranteed, and at 20%+, setups an edge-guard with Nair, Skull-Bash or another that can kill most of those characters at 60%. Pikachu has really atrocious base-knockback that makes kills at 70% seem average. On light-weights, Fthrow > Nair > Uair is an easy conversion that puts them in a poor recovery position.


DK: Easier combos, juggles, chain-grabs, vulnerable recovery. DK's range is no challenge against Pikachu's speed and priority.
Marth: Light-weight. Easy to get off-stage and edge-guard. No projectile makes it simple for Pikachu to go against him in neutrak. QAC also allows Pikachu much faster maneuvering around the stage.
ZSS: If Zamus has a disadvantage MU against Meta-Knight, she doesn't beat Pika as he and MK's neutral is very similar. Except Pikachu has stronger aerials, and better tilts for combo.
Link: Juggling, and getting him off-stage is easy. Edge-guarding is simple as well with his poor recovery options.
Ichigo: Similar to Link. Use better mobility to control neutral at mid-range. Quite easy to combo, and poor recovery does half or your work for you.
Zelda: She struggles against any character faster than her because they can control neutral and the flow of match easily. Pikachu's KO potential easily rivals Zelda's with easier kill setups from grabs than Zelda.

Lloyd and Meta-Knight are possible the only character that go even with Pikachu, but I'm still not convinced. Pika is probably the most broken character but has very, very little usage competitively with no high-level mains; and the former statement might be why.

Pikachu is pretty strong but IDK about most broken lol

I main him, so does Tyler and Blossom; I know Auraka has extensive experience with him and DescendedSun has him as a secondary. He's really solid but yeah, he has his own share of problems lol; he has no option to cover behind him while in the air (Side-B exists, but lag lol) and has basically next to no aerial maneuverability outside of Up-B. Projectile is useful but is slow enough to a bit too risky against most faster opponents. Tiny arm Grab range is tiny lol His non-Smash attacks (including D-Air) actually don't have very high Priority and gets beats out by Disjoints; F-Smash is nice Disjoint but it can't be used to win Neutral lol

MetaKnight/ Lloyd can go even with or beat Pikachu; with ZSS it's probably close to 50-50, and a skilled Marth probably wins vs. Pikachu.

I guess the rest of the Match-Up analysis makes sense :v

But yeah, I'd agree is still legit strong though

The main advantage Pikachu has over the other super-high-priority-neutral-winning characters (MK for example) is his insane kill power. I've played games against Pikachu when I never go above 80% the whole game, because a single read into Thunder (the body hitbox), fsmash, or offstage dair can kill super early, not to mention usmash, electricity hitbox of Thunder, or tail spikes.