Discuss Pikachu specific game-play here.

Why is the last frame of uair Pikachu's best "tailspike"? It can actually kill people.
Normal tailspike is too weak now.

More importantly, why did they make Pika's Bair so dodgy now

Pikachu got some small nerfs across the board, (less dair knockback, decreased range on his up special and the op thunder spike changed to melee's version of thunder thankgod), but imo pika is still more than viable he still got most of his core strength's with his high movement capabilities and neutral

Most frustrating thing for me is that it's gotten a lot harder to get the Uair sweetspot now, I usually miss and get the upwards hitbox instead of the horizontal one, so I've been using more Dair and side b for edgeguarding instead, also I have to relearn most of his grab converts and folowups becouse in beta you can di away from them more frequently. I don't see the new Bair from 64 being particuarlly usefull or why you should use it over Nair but the old one wasn't all that usefull either and I guess this one looks more flashy

I'll give more thoughts when I've played more people online in like a week. But for sure feels to me like he's always been quite undeveloped in 9b so I hope he gets some more love in beta

I'm not sure about "small nerfs." I feel that it is harder for Pikachu to secure kills (except on spacies, ofc).

In 0.9b, Pika had dthrow-->usmash (and bthrow/fthrow-->usmash for DI mixups).
Obviously, Beta Pika doesn't have access to these options (in general) anymore.
*I suppose this makes Pikachu less cancerous. (Finally.)

At least the killing capabilities of many other characters have been toned down, as well; so I don't think that the nerfs to Pika's kill set-ups are significantly detrimental.

As Auraka said, Pikachu still maintains his strong mobility and decent neutral game.

Pika actually feels awful in the current version- mobility still good but took a hit since QA seems a bit worse than the old version, and between his kill power nerfs and the overall range of not only the new characters it seems like everyone outranges him easily in the new game.

That being said I also miss the old thunder (smash 4 version) since I feel like it made the edgeguarding game a bit better. Usmash is still decent at least.

If you actually miss 0.9b Thunder then there is no hope left for you lol


But I gotta agree about the general nerfs. Uair, what have they done to you? Outside of mobility and recovery this character feels pretty meh now

Pika's Thunder is now a definite killing option off the top though. He already has many ways of bring his opponent up, and it's pretty much a 50/50 chance of hitting the opponent from there (whether or not he air dodges/you read the air dodge)

This isn't Smash 4: you can't airdodge out of hitstun, so there aren't really 50-50's so much as "if you get comboed you die, if you're out of hitstun you can pretty much always get out by mixing up aerial drift along with airdodging or not, or using a reflector".

honestly i prefer the 64 Bair than the Bair of 0.9b......i dont know probably just reminds me of the old days.

if pikachu multijabs your shield it does so much hitstun that he can contiue until its broken and you have no option of excape

You can Shield DI away or in passed Pika.

On another note: I think Pika is under-utilized. He's not "free" as v0.9b, but still has really good rushdown and mix-ups to approach. But I think he suffers from more of the same, "better/easier characters to use competitive." Not much of reason to want to use him when you get all your offensive-style needs from Fox, Falco, Lloyd, Meta-Knight, etc.

AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO NOTICED PIKACHU'S AWESOME 8TH COSTUME!
Retro Pikachu!


Mains:
Seconds:
For Fun/Practicing:
Hate To Play As:

Yes, because we don't bother looking into the other costumes of every character.

Or no, because we knew about Retro Pika since the Dev Blog #6