Weekly Matchup Discussion - Pikachu

DtJ Hilt · Aug 14, 2009

Pikachu

One of Olimar's simpler matchups, not that it's a huge advantage for Olimar. Pikachu doesn't limit Olimar's options as much as some characters (such as peach, who Olimar isn't able to use most of his smashes against or shield grab in most situations). Pikachu, however, does a pretty good job at gimping Olimar and putting pressure on him while he's off stage, with many tools to edge guard with. But what all does pika have on Olimar? What could he use to turn the matchup around?

Discuss!

Llumys · Aug 14, 2009

I'll start the discussion.

Yellow Pikmin.

Tin Man · Aug 14, 2009

thunder wall edgeguard hurts, yellow pikmin are uselfull, guaranteed to get them each stock, reliably getting 2 , more then 2 at a time is pushing luck.

Greward · Aug 14, 2009

We outcamp him easily, thats nothing new.
When pikachu is approaching, he will usually SH to TJ and then come to grab. We can fsmash the thunderjolt and then fsmash the pikachu.
Another approach is using the QAC. Pikachu will come to us with this and then bair or nair or uair us to juggle or gimp us. Just watch out, we beat the quick attack with most of our attacks.
Pikachu has a hard time getting the kill, he will mostly use his nair or his upsmash/uptilt. The fsmash is difficult to land and the dsmash is not used for kills (even we can "go out" of it with SDI)
Whistle is good here. We can go through thunders with the whistle and we can avoid the thunder after usmash/utilt/dsmash with the whistle most of the times.
Yellow pikmins beats everything pikachu has.
Watch out for his tilts, they are great, dtilt to grab, utilt to juggle /thunder and ftilt to put us outstage.

6-4 for us, maybe more.

BOB SAGET! · Aug 14, 2009

Pikachu has a lot of ways to combo, luckilly since olimar is light he can easilly escape. We cant get chaingrabbed (thank god!)

We have greater range on our attacks and grabs, we outcamp pikachu aswell.

What kills us is that pikachu is very versatile, VERY versatile. He has a lot of options when it comes to spacing, getting the ko, comboing, and evaisiveness. (QAC, thunder, smashes, tilts...) So its best to watchout and remeber pikachu has a lot of options so u must predict what he'll do sucessfully in order to win. Once u do, the match is yours.

Thats all ill say for now.

Llumys · Aug 14, 2009

Pikachu has a great edge game, so I'll definitely mention staying the hell away from the ledge. Also, it's a good idea to understand how QAC works if you don't. I've never had trouble with this match-up, so just play it smart.

Dotcom · Aug 14, 2009

it just sands to mention, that Pikachu's say it's one of their top 5 hardest MU's in general. A lot of people move it up to top 3.

Llumys · Aug 14, 2009

I can't disagree with that. Pikachu just doesn't have the range to deal with Olimar properly.

BombKirby · Aug 14, 2009

Llumys said:
I can't disagree with that. Pikachu just doesn't have the range to deal with Olimar properly.

Agreed. Plus the yellow pikmin never let go because half of Pika's moves have electric properties. Its the only time they r useful!

Dotcom · Aug 14, 2009

BombKirby said:
Its the only time they r useful!

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!

it just so happens that, in this match up they get highlighted as probably the best pikmin to have around. purples are very good to, because they mess up Pikachu's game, and usually end up surviving really long in this MU. It seems that after a decent amount of time, your line will usually end up looking like the Lakers, as in purple and yellow. this is good.

Llumys · Aug 14, 2009

They're always extremely useful...

The extra range is such a bonus.

Dabuz · Aug 14, 2009

pikachu vs oli, 60-40 oli favor, maybe 65-35

pikachu will have to approach in this matchup like most characters, pikachu has 3 main ways to approach, SH/FH thunderjolt, which is easily stopped by yellows, purples, or the easiest is just shield the thunderjolt and punish accordingly

he can QAC, nothing special, if he QACs you can EASILY hit him during it with an upsmash

last is just dash grab/SH aerial/ upsmash, pikachu isn't exactly a fast character so it shouldn't be too hard to react and punish accordingly

if he gets inside olimar he isn't as dangerous as most characters, his main moves are dsmash which can be DI+SDI out of, uptilt which is like a lesser version of foxes uptilt, and shorthop aerials which can be shielded and punish, his grab game at low % can be damaging but his grabs won't kill and at higher %s don't pose any follow up combos (ill put exception down later)

pikachu's spotdodge->dsmash is like a lesser version of rob's, punish accordingly

pikachu's ONLY good shield pressure game on olimar is using dsmash which won't do much to a decent sized shield, and its unlikely he will shield stab either

his killing options:

upsmash

it can be seen coming but is relatively quick)

nair: think of an aerial upsmash with less power+more cooldown

fsmash: he will probably use this as a mixup when olimar is near the edge, pretty powerful

thunder: a setup a lot of pikachu's do with this is too throw you offtstage/ into the air and thunder you in those positions, its really powerful but is easy to see coming, try to move out of way if you can but otherwise just time the whistle, if your risky you can try to airdodge but i don't recommend

olimar just needs to stick the the ABC's of camping correctly and pikachu isn't really a big threat IMO

also, llumy's, so help me god if you post something else that is completely irrelevant/ contributes nothing new/ is just a way to get last post again to this thread i WILL erase this entire post

*summons anther to help us hoping he name searches*

Noa. · Aug 15, 2009

This matchup is 65:35. Olimar counters Pika very heavily as he limits most of his options.

Pika can't camp in this matchup, can't chaingrab, and doesn't do a good job at approaching. Thunder is extremely easy to deal with for Olimar because we have whistle.

These are pika's approaches.

First is Tjolt and an attack. Shield the tjolt and grab if they do a grounded approach when it's not grab. Shield the tjolt and pivot grab an aerial approach. If they do tjolt to dash grab, jump over the tjolt and nair Pika when you land.

QAC can be usmashed by Olimar.

Fair to dsmash can not be shieldgrabbed until after the dsmash. But if the Pika conditions you to hold your shield up for dsmashes duration, they can do fair to grab. Remaining unpredictable and aware is important for both Olimar and Pikachu.

Any grounded approach can be stopped with spaced fsmashes.

Learning to SDI out of dsmash is very important in this matchup. It makes a big difference whether or not you can SDI out of it. To SDI out of Pika's dsmash, hold up on the control stick and repeatedly tap up on c-stick. SDIing out of dsmash makes it harder for Pika to set up for thunder kills. When you SDI you will be sent at a low horizontal angle either to the left or the right. Be careful of when you SDI out of dsmash near the ledge.

Dyyne · Aug 15, 2009

I wouldn't call it 65:35
Pika still has a strong ledge camping game in this, and he is much faster and nair gets pikmin off fast, so he can aerial camp pretty efficiently.
Still probably 60-40.

DanGR · Aug 15, 2009

I find this matchup fairly even actually, with a slight advantage to Oli. Pika has trouble approaching, but he's got ways to get in there by being really patient (which Pikachu is mobile and safe enough to be), and by abusing Oli's diagonal weakness. Pikachu can hover around in that area pretty well, using the occasional tjolt to protect his underside and using QAC for retreating. When pikachu does get in a hit or a grab or something that leads to juggling, he's got a lot of good ways to keep Oli in the air. He's very quick on the ground and through the air, and has enough range to make it easy to not worry about getting hit himself as well- all of his electrical attacks are surprisingly very disjointed.

I'll probably post more later.

DtJ Hilt · Aug 15, 2009

I definitely don't think it's 65:35. 60:40 definintely, maybe 55:45, but I'm starting to see it moreso going towards that 60. I've played the matchup probably more than any other matchup, but most of what Dabuz said is true and I'd basically be repeating him lol, so no wall of text for me :x

However, I will say that although we beat pikachu's usmash with shield and his dash grab with other options, that doesn't mean we stop his ground approach completely. We still have to predict what he does. Pikachu does have a legit gimping game though. However, not many Olimars do this, but so does Olimar. For one, Olimar's pikmin stop skull bash, as does fair off stage. Fair will also beat out his quick attack if we predict well where he's going to travel/appear. Granted though, pikachu's gimping game is much much better than ours, with tjolt, thunder (not as big of a problem as some think), uair, and fair.

One thing Anther does to me like every time he knocks me off stage that most pikas I haven't seen do, is he immediately skull bashes off stage. I have no idea why the **** he does this and, but it a lot of the time puts him at a better position to gimp me, considering he either becomes closer (much closer) to me, or sometimes even behind or above me. Also it throws me off because I'm just trying to figure out why the **** he just did that @_@

BombKirby said:
Its the only time they r useful!

BOB SAGET! · Aug 15, 2009

This match is a lot about prediction. I say 60-40 because pikachu has many options. We must predict sucessfully in order to win. But because of all his options its not that easy.

Plus thunder edgeguarding works well on olimar. Escpecially when pikachu jumps off the edge and thunders.

Expect pika slide when u see dtilt.

Noa. · Aug 15, 2009

I really can't see why Pikachu would be 60:40, yet. All of his tools are limited or stopped. We have the advantage in every situation minus the one offstage, and that isn't so bad.

Pikachu isn't that much of a gimping threat. Tjolt is only scary when recovering low, and thunder is extremely easy to whistle. His aerials are what actually do the gimping, but it isn't too difficult to manuver around him.

His approaches are limited and he has to be extremely patient to find an opening, and even when he does he might get some damage while he's in there.

The Pika has to vastly outplay Olimar to win. This is one of Pika's hardest matchups since we negate so many of his tricks. We outcamp, thunder gets whistled, we don't get chaingrabbed, and we can usmash QAC.

There's also the fact that we kill MUCH earlier than Pika. His usmash kills at 120 or a little higher, while ours kills at 100.

The Truth! · Aug 15, 2009

This is pikachu's worst match-up. It was more or less confirmed by the pika community a couple days ago. Admittedly this might simply have something to do with pikachus play style, but short of a major revolution on pika's tactics for this one match-up and practically speaking this is a terrible match-up for pika. Honestly though it hurts it has little to do with yellow pikmin or olimar being better at camping or how strong his kill moves are, it's entirely to do with his ridiculous grabs. If he had a normal grab this match-up would be more or less even.

Oh yeah, olimar is pretty bad offstage though against pika. Like, I find him the easiest or second easiest character to gimp and one of only two characters that pikachu's weak tailspike actually works on (the other character being link). Also, I wouldnt recommend olimar's whistle unless you are bad at di'ing, and I've never seen anyone pass through a thunder from one side to the other for any reason, so if you encounter a thunder coming back to the edge just hang out and wait till its gone. Basically if you can be hit by a thunder you will be, if you can avoid it the best way to do so is with good di and just staying away from it.

Also QAC isnt something worth emphasizing, anyone is capable of punishing a QAC if theyre not vulnerable and its predicted.

There are a few things that prevent pika from being hard countered though. The first is that olimar is freakin' slow and pika is very fast. Pikachu's awesome spot dodge helps him to punish olimar's laggy attacks and slow (but amazing) grabs. In contrast to what I read in here, if pikachu get's inside he is indeed dangerous. A simple uptilt, fair, uair, and sometimes dtilt or grabs can lead to a long string of attacks, and olimar is incredibly easy to juggle (which I double checked with your frame data). A simple fair , utilt, nair alone can do 25%, but the strings can but longer depending on how technical the pikachu is. A good pikachu will limit the fair/spot dodge or really any use of dsmash since it is easy to di out of, it's more of a quick punishing move for things that need an extended hitbox like spot dodges, landed air dodges or fairs that hit weakly.

Also it's not a big deal but its worth noting, fair and dair go through olimars upsmash. Probably not yellow, and Im not sure what other moves or smashes that applies for.

Greward · Aug 15, 2009

65-35 for olimar. I think its an extremely easy matchup when ur done to it.
He has some nice setups from grabs at low percents that can put as at 30% easily. But seriously, he is not going to gimp us. And we will life up to 150% while pika will die at 90-110%.
We have tons of answers to everything he has. Pikachu has no reliable approaches on us. It needs some time to get used to the QAC, but when u do, pikachu has nothing more. His main approaches are not good, if u pain attention to the QAC (usmash or nair beat it incredibly easily) , he will try to approach with fair FF to Dsmash? Pivot grab, its really easy to evade his aerial approaches and ground approaches are simply beaten with some fsmashes. Pikachu cant run, spotdodge and grab us if we space the fsmash correctly.
Also, pika has not good ways to killing us. I usually get killed with an utilt at high percents or nair at 140%. Usmash is difficult to set up on olimar. Pika will mostly kill us with QAC to nair or some utilt/ftilt.
I try recovering from high, pikachu's uair can gimp us and thunder is nothing against our whistle (even i actually never need to do the whistle XD)
We outcamp pikachu and kill him way earlier, he has no solid approaches, problems getting the kill and starting the combos and gimping us is not easy for him.

The Truth! · Aug 16, 2009

Pikachu can easily run, spot dodge, and punish if all you're going to do is fsmash, no matter how well spaced it is. I think most olimars are more clever than that though.

Also something to be careful about when camping, Olimars generally have to jump if theyre going to get their pikmin across the stage, but QA can cover a lot of distance while youre in the air and has very little lag when ended on the ground. Olimars camping is still affective, just something to keep in mind.

Olimar doesnt hard counter pika, but its definitely a really tough match-up. When fighting pika punishment is pretty powerful even at high percents, and he can combo into kill moves; but as mentioned getting inside is very difficult, but by no means impossible. I you keep up the grabs and stuff pika should have a hard time.

Llumys · Aug 16, 2009

The Truth! said:
Pikachu can easily run, spot dodge, and punish if all you're going to do is fsmash, no matter how well spaced it is. I think most olimars are more clever than that though.

MUs are based on the meta game, not individual people.

Greward · Aug 16, 2009

The Truth! said:
Pikachu can easily run, spot dodge, and punish if all you're going to do is fsmash, no matter how well spaced it is.

Obviously no good players are going to do always the same, we are going to mixup our options like grabs fairs etc, but with 2 spaced fsmashes u cant come into olimar by running-spotdodge-run-grab.

Dabuz · Aug 16, 2009

Greward said:
Obviously no good players are going to do always the same, we are going to mixup our options like grabs fairs etc, but with 2 spaced fsmashes u cant come into olimar by running-spotdodge-run-grab.

PERFECT SHIELD PERFECT SHIELD

/argument

Llumys · Aug 16, 2009

POWER SHIELD POWER SHIELD

/this isn't melee

Greward · Aug 16, 2009

dabuz said:
PERFECT SHIELD PERFECT SHIELD

/argument

the pika said

Pikachu's awesome spot dodge helps him to punish olimar's laggy attacks and slow (but amazing) grabs

If they perfect shield the spaced fsmash we can grab him, i know that, we probably can grab him after his spotdodge if we space right xD

Dabuz · Aug 16, 2009

Greward said:
the pika said

If they perfect shield the spaced fsmash we can grab him, i know that, we probably can grab him after his spotdodge if we space right xD

perfect shield=his frame advantage+we get more cooldown for our move, if he perfect shields he can DEFINITELY attack us before we can grab if he is quick, pretty much a guaranteed grab on us if the pikachu is quick

there is no reason for pikachu to spotdodge after perfect shielding fsmash, no reason at all

Noa. · Aug 16, 2009

The Truth, I read your matchup tier list thread. Are high tier bad matchups considered 45:55 or 40:60? And what ratio are the top tiers matchups?

The Truth! · Aug 16, 2009

Greward said:
Obviously no good players are going to do always the same, we are going to mixup our options like grabs fairs etc, but with 2 spaced fsmashes u cant come into olimar by running-spotdodge-run-grab.

lol. Pikachu's spot dodge has 2 frames of cooldown and one frame of start up, it's the best in the game. Space it as well as you want, if the pikachu times it correctly he won't get hit by that. I don't even know why youre arguing about it when olimar has much better options to deal with it then just standing there spamming fsmashes.

Draconoa I hate the ration system but I would say olimar stops just short of being a hard counter in the way snake counters ICs or ICs counter kirby. So whatever you think that ratio is, lol. Also the match-ups within each tier isnt necessarily in order, for the most part they are but Im almost certain looking at the votes and sentiment that if I spent more time getting information to order within the tiers I made that olimar would be pikas hardest matchup. I'll try and explain more later.

Noa. · Aug 17, 2009

Thanks Truth.

Ratios are pretty arbitrary. I'll just say that Olimar counters Pika. He's not a hard counter but not a soft counter either. A match between two players of equal matchup experience, the more skilled player will win. Even if the Pika does have to work a little harder than the Oli. Not unwinnable by any means.

Fino · Aug 17, 2009

I think it's in the realm of 55-45 to 60-40, more leaning towards 55-45. Pikachu has some moves that just eliminate all of olimar's options, other that just shielding or avoiding the attack altogether, which can really hurt us when used efficiently (such as fair, which beats out our entire move set, and is a combo set-up). That being said, pikachu has a lot of trouble when dealing with certain aspects of olimar such as his range and yellow pikmin priority. If pikachu is flying around and being fast, as tag pointed out, there shouldn't be an issue of grabbing, but apparently there is one @.@.
Pikachu can just jab whenever he sees a grab come out, and olimar won't grab pikachu. Pikachu's jab range is ********.

~Fino

Stealth Raptor · Aug 18, 2009

55-45 easy. what truth misses with the spot dodge is the fact that the fsmash slows down as it travels and can hit you after it ends. trust me fino has hit me with this tons of times. pikachus mobility gives him many options to not only approach but to chase olimars. combined with utilt to thunder at 120-130, it wont be taking long for us to kill you. with proper di + dair usmash wont be killing us till over 100 unless you hit with purple, plus pikachus fair breaks all usmashes except the if frames that a purple fsmash has. in this matchup the key pikmin for olimar are purple and yellow. yellow attacks will break through our electrical attacks and hit us, while purple pikmin that are thrown break through most of pikachus aerials. its really hard to deal with olimar at a distance, but once we get in and get you off the ground you guys are taking a lot of damage. getting you offstage isnt that bad, and if you think you can just whistle every attack we have, we can also wait for teh whistle and punish with another attack after the sa frames end. basically a hard matchup for pika, but olimar definitly does not counter pika and in no way is it his worst matchup, i dont care that every other pika better then me and a few worse then me say different lol.

DtJ Hilt · Aug 18, 2009

Gonna have to agree with Fino and Stealth. Like them, I play with pikachus often, including Anther. Olimar doesn't completely shut down pikachu camping wise. It's not like us camping Lucas where we just entirely counter his projectile game. Pika has legit ways to get in through Olimar, legit approaches. Not saying the matchup is good for pikachu, just that it's in no way 65:35 @_@

Anther · Aug 18, 2009

Pika's way better at approaching Olimar than metaknight x.x, I don't know how they do it lol.
The ratio's a lot closer for pika's that know the matchup. Pika can't just spam ownage in the exact same way he does vs johnny every other character in the game since Olimar has such high payoffs for his attacks, a sexyly messed up grab game, Pika has to play at a pace that's similar to playing against good snakes... and hope olimar kills himself at least one stock..

Edit: Tag doesn't give an eff! XD

BOB SAGET! · Aug 18, 2009

-Hilt- said:
Gonna have to agree with Fino and Stealth. Like them, I play with pikachus often, including Anther. Olimar doesn't completely shut down pikachu camping wise. It's not like us camping Lucas where we just entirely counter his projectile game. Pika has legit ways to get in through Olimar, legit approaches. Not saying the matchup is good for pikachu, just that it's in no way 65:35 @_@

exactly.. Plus pikachu has the great kill setups aswell, such as fair upsmash. And the the quick pummels r great for refreshing pikachus kill moves.

Ya, olimar doesnt completely counter pikachus projectile game. Dsmash is a great spacing tool for pikachu. Even when olimar DI's out of it.

DtJ Hilt · Aug 18, 2009

BOB SAGET! said:
exactly.. Plus pikachu has the great kill setups aswell, such as fair upsmash. And the the quick pummels r great for refreshing pikachus kill moves.

umm... not really >.>

Zori · Aug 18, 2009

-Hilt- said:
umm... not really >.>

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaah *****

i love how bob will post after a wall of text in state the same things over and over again that was just said

BOB SAGET! · Aug 18, 2009

Zori said:
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaah *****

i love how bob will post after a wall of text in state the same things over and over again that was just said

When was what i said stated before?

Tagxy · Aug 18, 2009

Stealth Raptor said:
55-45 easy. what truth misses with the spot dodge is the fact that the fsmash slows down as it travels and can hit you after it ends. trust me fino has hit me with this tons of times.

That's because your spot dodges are sloppy =P.

Stealth Raptor · Aug 18, 2009

LOL i am actually a very good spot dodger. trust me when spaced properly you cant dodge the fsmash.

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