Matchup Thread Export: Olimar

Quick Tips

• Down-smash after down-throw? YES
• Bucket anything? NO
• UpB will remove 99.9% of attached pikmin.
• Yellow pikmin will outprioritize a lot of G&W's attacks.
• Blue/Purple pikmin will kill you easily if you get grabbed at high percent.

Videos

• Leepuff vs RichBrown - UCLA Game 1 UCLA Game 2 UCLA Game 3 UCLA Game 4

General Matchup

• Olimar's claim to fame is his ability to force his opponent to approach him by throwing the pikmin onto his opponent. This can quickly rack up a lot of damage if the pikmin go uncontested and can easily assist olimar into landing very early kills.
• Olimar's most frequent kill move is the upsmash. Its his fastest smash, is the strongest (for killing gw), and is the easiest to setup. It has a decent sized hitbox in front of him allowing for it to be used almost like a second forward smash. When at higher percents, purple pikmin can really hurt in the form of fairs/bairs and fsmashes. Also watch out for his back/up grab kills which, especially if blue/purple pikmin are used, can hurt pretty early on.
• Olimar's recovery is potentially one of the worst in the game, which isn't news to most people. GW's ability to gimp this recovery is readily available through the use of his quick disjointed tilts and aerials.
• Because olimar is so bad off of the stage, you won't find olimars edgeguarding you too often. If they do try, go very low and you shouldn't have much trouble avoiding them.
• Olimar's combo game mostly revolves around him landing grabs. A down throw can very easily set up to a dashing up smash (and then up airs and even an up b maybe) or another dash grab. Although mostly overlooked, falling nairs to uptilts/upsmashes and then up airs can also rack up a lot of damage too.
• GW's combos on olimar don't look too different compared to most other characters. Olimar has super armor frames in the down b whistle attack, which could help him to power through some of your single hitting attacks and then make a quick counterattack. Down throw to dsmash works unless they tech per usual (olimar can't buffer a roll fast enough). Also, olimar has a hard time dealing with up air pressuring from below, considering his slow down air and lack of momentum shifting moves.

Basic Strategies

• The most imporant thing in this match to keep in mind is to always be nullifying his attempts to land sneak damage. If he gets distance, he'll probably start chucking pikmin, which you should always dtilt or nair away.
• Try your best to keep olimar in the air. His best moves are done on the ground, so having him in the air takes away his best attributes. His aerials have low priority/range so you should be mostly uncontested.
• The dtilt will go through all of olimar's approaches except for the grab. Even the fsmash is trounced by the mighty dtilt. Because olimar's aerials have poor range you will find yourself beating him almost all the time (olimar's up air will go through the key about half the time, keep this in mind). Use the dtilt to push olimar to the edge of the stage, where he doesn't want to be. This puts him in a bad position, either go in the air to get around you back to the middle, or offstage trying to counter an attack, both of which can hurt oli.
• Olimar players are very used to using the upward priority of their upsmash to ward off opponents approaching from above. The key will always go through the upsmash, and most of the time you can catch the olimar off guard. However, the up air goes through your key, so watch the olimar player carefully.
• Most of your kills will be landed through tech chases from the dsmash, random smashes you might be able to set up, but mostly through gimps. Learn to take away the olimar's double jump whenever they use it thought up b's/fairs/bairs/keys/dtilts. Once their jump is gone just hog the edge and get ready to tech/roll to the stage. Never go back onto the stage until you are absolutely sure he is dead, the up b reaches farther than you think.
• If spaced correctly, the turtle can outreach the standing grab from olimar, however if they dash away and then back he will likely grab you. Try to avoid using fairs on their shield as the grab will usually punish you. Make good use of nairs and dodge to grabs from the air to approach. Any grab landed will likely end in a smash, and the nair will probably catch them and pop them up for further combo'ing.
• I've heard rumors that the standing grab will reach below the stage, and has the potential to grab you out of your up b. If this does happen, then you will lose your stock as you are unable to up b after someone grabs you out of it. If this is true, the timing would be quite difficult I imagine, so just keep in mind although i don't think you will see it very often.

Stages

• Any stage with reduced amounts of ledges, or moving stages really hurt olimar a lot. Stages like rainbow cruise and frigate orpheon come to mind.
• Avoid stages with excessive amounts of ledges, like norfair. This makes it almost impossible for you to edgehog them on a stage like this makes the battle quite a bit harder.

Frame Data

• Neutral B: 3
• Side B: 9 (hits every 30 frames)
• Up B: 12
• Down B: (super armor 2-16)
• Fsmash: 11
• Dsmash: 10
• Usmash: 8
• Ftilt: 9
• Dtilt: 6
• Utilt: 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48
• Nair: 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42
• Fair: 7
• Bair: 10
• Uair (red/blue/purple): 8, 15, 22, 29, 36, 43, 50
• Uair (yellow/white): 8, 14, 20, 26, 32, 28, 44
• Dair: 9
• Jab: 4, 13, 21
• Dash Attack: 8, 16
• Standing Grab: 11
• Dash Grab: 11
• Pivot Grab: 11

There is no way Olimar can grab you out of Up-B unless you seriously suck at sweetspotting.

And anyhow, pretty good analysis. Basically you will be N-air/D-tilt camping a lot and poking him until he gets into the air.

This matchup is one of the reasons why I keep using G&W. He's so good in it.

Why are we going through all the match-ups so quickly? I know doing this allows players to touch-on a particular characters in any of the threads, but to me the number of exports out at once can distract the input on the ones already in discussion. I think it would have been a better idea to release a set of three character MU's every week, not every day/other day, that way we have laser-focus and extensive information in each new topic.

@Neb: I was actually going to stop here (with the exception of adding Toon Link later). I wanted to export all of the top discussion characters so we would have a place to talk about them outside of the messy single thread approach. Take however much time you want to add to any of these discussions. I didnt mean to make it feel like we needed to "Rediscuss" ALL of these matchups again.

The purpose of these threads is to supply G&W players with vital information in the matchup, such as "Quick Tips" "Videos" and "Frame Data"

K, I probably misinterpreted how you were approaching this, specifically.

Just fyi, the whistle lasts a total of 20 frames. So he's got SA frames 2-16, with 6 total frames of vulnerability.

Also, here's a good set of matches for the video section: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqO-DTriUM
It's Leepuff v RichBrown.

Also, keep in mind that pivotgrabs do outrange the turtle. (if it's not a purple, obviously)

After being grabbed by Olimar i was Bthrown. I Faired during the Bthrow and hit Olimar during the Throw.
Or just after the throw. Can't really tell.

Olimar might try to Uair through the stage if he's on the edge. If manageable jump down and Bair Stage Spike him. Otherwise a timed Key on the edge (where you run offstage and Dair back on) will hurt(spike?) him.

IMO if you dont gimp/spike/KO/whatever Olimar when you get him offstage, you aren't abusing the MU enough. Also the Whistle is similair to a Spotdodge. The timing is a bit different, but try to bait it.
If an Olimar is trying to whistle through my Usmash to grab me, I wait for the invincibility frames of the first whistle to pass.

Spot Dodge grabs if you know they will happen, then jump, footstool, key. I dont pull this off a lot but im pretty sure its viable. ???

Watching Leepuff videos, i think Pictochat is a very good stage for Olimar, very large, so ideal for spamming, high ceiling so its harder to KO upwards for G&W, and very little off-stage space with the edges really low, which helps Oli's recovery and not being too much time offstage. Norfair is usually banned anyways so Pictochat colud be a nice option to ban

Sorry for double post
When edguarding Olimar, and you hang the edge, but the invicibility frames are gone, will every pikmin stagespike (?) you from Olimar's up+b? i think only purple pikmins have enough knockback so you can't up+b into the edge again, but i maybe wrong

I think it depends on which Pikmin hits you (depends on the angle) and on your percentage. You shouldn't be stage spiked if you're at ~30% or less (just made that number up, don't quote me on it).

This matchup seems like 50-50 to me. Onstage he destroys you. Offstage you destroy him. You can't really approach him, he racks up damage as well as the Meta's and Snakes of the world. If it weren't for his recovery he'd be the third best character in the game.

llamapaste said:

This matchup seems like 50-50 to me. Onstage he destroys you. Offstage you destroy him. You can't really approach him, he racks up damage as well as the Meta's and Snakes of the world. If it weren't for his recovery he'd be the third best character in the game.

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I'm not so sure that he destroys you on stage. You can nair/upb to get most pikmin off you and you can approach better than he can (well, he doesn't need to, but your approaches aren't that bad). Well-spaced turtles should be a lot helpful, but you do have to take into account his pivot grab.

Also, once he's in the air you can expect to deal out a decent amount of percentage.

I think this seems pretty even but I think GW does have the upper hand. Maybe 55:45. What keeps this from being 60:40 is that Olimar has great kill moves and awesome combos out of a grab.

Jungle Japes
Pirate Ship
Delfino Plaza
Pokemon Stadium 2

I hear these are ALL good CPs Vs Olimar from the Olimar boards and people who i know who are good at this game.

Can i get peoples opinions on CPing these stages Vs Olimar?

And neutrals, what to strike and what to strike towards? (personal help)

I think Oli has slight advantage. G&W has no truly safe approach.

Nobody has a truly safe approach vs Olimar, so?

G&W's SH N-air is pretty safe against Olimar, and works quite well. It does three things. Avoid Olimar's grab, deflect pikmin, and provides some offensive pressure (properly spaced N-air is able to hit Olimar on the ground and is safe on block since G&W can jump away after N-airing). With some patience and some smart use of this along with D-tilt, this is all G&W needs in order to get in safely against Olimar. Yeah if you're lucky, you can punish that with Up-B or a random aerial attack, both of which are decently unsafe if you miss (which can be pretty likely when you consider G&W is rather mobile).

This is the most boring matchup in the game when played correctly, but Olimar is ultimately a lot more limited in the air than G&W, and G&W has existent aerial options for pressuring Olimar's ground game, and has all the tools he needs to shrug off Olimar's camping. Simply because Olimar is in more risk when he takes to the air than when G&W uses D-tilt to deflect pikmin, and because Olimar's ground options ultimately aren't diverse enough to reliably deal with G&W's air game, that's why I think G&W has the edge. If only slightly.

While Olimar has a pretty good grab game, G&W's grab game is also very good. G&W's techchase game on Olimar is very good since Olimar's techroll is fairly easily punished. Doing a neutral tech is of course risky if he D-smashes, and missing a tech of course guarantees a D-smash and if he predicts which side you land on, he can land F-smash too (extremely lethal if you try to DI behind him as he D-throws you near the edge). Even being U-thrown or F/B-thrown by G&W automatically gives Olimar a major headache since he's terrible at dealing with G&W's juggling. He's floaty and slow, making him very easy for G&W to chase in the air and punish.

Crossup B-air and D-air are also safe on Olimar's shield.

Splice those are pretty good CPs. You could also try Rainbow cruise to keep olimar jumping in the air which is bad for him versus G&W.

For neutrals I try to avoid FD and SV because they're flat which further helps out olimar's camping game. Just try avoiding flat stages and aim for stages with platforms

Olimar's mindset especially in this matchup is usually to stay on stage at all costs. theres no doubt Olimar beats G&W on stage so your mindset should generally be to get him offstage far enough to simply ledgehog, so its pretty much a constant battle of stage control.

Tips:
* when ledgehogging, try to time your invincibility frames so his UpB doesnt hit you, or if you invincibility frames have run out predict when he will use UpB and Roll back on stage (works better when your % is above 100 so its slow get up animation), also if your low % and hes trying to UpB just take the hit, because he will die.

* Dtilt is really good for defence against olimars non grab moves and also hits him perfectly horizontally offstage.

* alot of Olimars tend to use alot of smash attacks when under pressure, so if you think that you've done well in pressuring olimar and he somehow starts winning when it feels like he shouldnt be, its probably because your playing too agressively and running into his badly spaced smashes and grabs, which you could simply spotdodge -> punish.

* if you DI away after Olimar Dthrows he will only combo you with Usmash at very low %s.

Stages:
Jungle Japes and Rainbow Cruise are prob your best bets with CPing.

Delfino Plaza, Pokemon Stadium 2 and Norfair i would imagine would be decent.

Pirate Ship and Frigate arent as good as you would think.

Pirate Ship: hard to gimp olimar on pirate ship, even though his pikmin die in the water atleast he doesnt get edgehogged.

Frigate: Olimar gets lots of Yellow and Purple pikmin. The second part of the stage is comfortable for olimars to fight in.

My mindset isn't to get Olimar offstage. It's to juggle him. Then get him offstage. Getting him offstage is sorta useless if you don't send him far enough.

A2ZOMG said:

My mindset isn't to get Olimar offstage. It's to juggle him. Then get him offstage. Getting him offstage is sorta useless if you don't send him far enough.

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didnt i say that?
i said:

so your mindset should generally be to get him offstage far enough to simply ledgehog,

Click to expand...

XD...

Oh right, I'm terrible at reading. Sorry.

Anyhow G&W doesn't merely get beaten onstage by Olimar. G&W can be very difficult for Olimar to punish with his ground game when you factor that he can pretty safely space SH N-airs vs Olimar. One N-air is all it takes to put Olimar in a bad position and from there, it gets ugly if the G&W is good with his juggles.

It's a close matchup, mainly because it requires incredible patience on both ends however. I just think overall G&W has more options to mix it up and counter than Olimar does both onstage and offstage. Olimar's camping is good, but not infallible, and with very good spacing, G&W ultimately has the options to avoid and punish it. Olimar has a bit more trouble maintaining control if G&W lives to higher percents than the other way around since most of his control game works best at low percents. G&W's juggling and techchase game works pretty regardless of percents (U-air and D-throw do the same thing regardless how much damage the opponent has).

Would you guys ban battlefield?
The olimar i played enjoyed camping under the side ledges. I was forced to approach diagonally.

Lightning Tiger said:

Would you guys ban battlefield?
The olimar i played enjoyed camping under the side ledges. I was forced to approach diagonally.

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Battlefield is a good Olimar stage, but also a good G&W stage. i would say to ban Yoshis or FD out of the neutrals, but just go with what your comfortable with XD.

If you hold slightly up on the directional stick while edgehogging, even if his up-b hits you, you'll avoid the stagespike and only be sent slightly up. It might be possible to follow up after this with further edgeguarding as well.