Noa.
Smash Master
I made this thread because I was kinda bored and these boards need some life. It'll help beginners and maybe stir some debate.
Ok, every character in brawl has its weaknesses. Acknowledging your character's weakness in one of many steps to get better. After identifying weaknesses, it's important to decide methods and tactics around them.
The easiest place to find weaknesses for a character is to look at their bad matchups. A bad matchup is usually bad because the opponent can greatly or easily exploit many of the character's weaknesses. Repeating themes in bad matchups can be identified as a character's weakness.
So lets move on.
Bad Recovery
Right off the bat, everyone knows that Olimar has a bad recovery. Practically any character has a chance of gimping him when they attempt to edgeguard. Relying on a tether for recovery makes us very susceptible to edgehogging.
Tactics to get around this:
-Imo, the most important thing to avoid being gimped is to save your second jump. Oli's second jump has decent height and combined with his floatiness, just holding toward the stage and jumping gives him the distance he needs to make it. But more importantly, Oli's double jump gives him the ability to avoid direct conflicts with the opponent. If you do not save your double jump, getting gimped is much probable. It's usually best to use it when you're starting to get near the stage and your opponent is getting ready to leave the stage if they haven't already. Smart use of the double jump is necessary to make it back to the stage.
-Olimar's whistle is an amazingly useful tool. The super armor frames it grants makes him pass through an opponent's aerials. The whistle is great for avoiding gimping attempts. It’s important to learn how to time the whistle in accordance with your opponent’s attack. The whistle has super armor frames from frames 2-18 iirc.
-Try to recovery high. If your opponent tries to edgehog you, use UpB to push yourself onto stage. When the opponent is on the ledge there is often enough time to get on stage safely.
-Opponents that are experienced against Oli will at times just wait near the ledge. In these cases snap to the ledge when you’re sure they’re staying on stage. Now it’s just an attempt to make it back on stage from the ledge with your opponent there to punish. Depending on your opponent’s character and skill, the difficulty of this task varies. It’s best to just be very unpredictable with you options; getup attack, roll, normal stand up, jump airdoge, jump aerial, jump whistle, jump down to double jump aerial, pikmin toss, etc. Each option serves a specific situation. Make sure to use know which options go with which situations, and be unpredictable!
-Use aerials and purple pikmin toss to knock off any edgehoggers. Make sure to whistle purples to the front so they’re ready. Or you could just uair shuffle to the next purple. Whichever’s quicker. This makes it harder for your opponent to time the edgehog with you endangering them.
Olimar’s pikmin moves have abysmal priority. One of the worst in the game (though there are some moves you can outprioritize). Aerials with a lot of priority pose a threat to Oli.
Tactics to get around this:
-It’s important to know which of Oli’s move actually don’t have crap priority, and instead are pretty decent priority wise; nair, dtilt, ftilt, uair, pikmin chain. These moves are pretty important, and if you’re being rushed at with a lot of high priority moves, smart uses of these ones might be able to outprioritze them. Sometimes
-It’s important to know your opponent’s moves’ startup lag/ending lag versus your starting lag. Learning to attack the opponent in between their move strings is useful. Peach’s dair outprioritizes Oli’s fair greatly, but if you fair her before the dair hitbox comes out, you’ll hit her without being outprioritized. Using this tactic requires a lot of matchup experience against the particular character. If you’re wrong with the timing, you’ll probably end up horribly punished.
-Yellows are great for getting past priority. Yellows carry huge disjointed hitboxes. These disjointed hitboxes have a lot of priority. Yellow fair knocks a lot of characters out of their aerials.
-Purple toss has a huge amount of priority. Throw them at the opponent and you’ll see it go through practically everything your opponent tries. And usually your opponent will get hit in the process. Purple tosses are priority projectiles.
-Whistle to punishing move also gets past the priority problem. Shorthopping towards them and whistling can also heavily mess up their spacing, making it easier to punish.
Problem getting back on stage
Olimar is a floaty character, and when he’s sent very high over the stage, it can be difficult to land back on stage. Smart players will easily keep you off the ground. You can receive a lot of damage from your opponent this way.
Tactics to get around it:
-One of the best ways to get around your opponent is to do b reversed whistles. Heading toward your opponent and then quickly b reversing shifts your momentum and can definitely throw off your opponent.
-Land with an aerial. It makes it more difficult for your opponents to grab you. This option gets horribly countered by your opponent’s shield though, so it should be used sparingly.
-Using UpB close to the ground gives you a boost like the B reversed whistle does. Except you can boost also boost forward unlike with the whistle. Used with mixups it could definitely work against your opponent.
Slow Shieldgrab
Olimar has a slow shield grab. 11 frames. In some matchups, the opponent can easily pressure our shield with autocancelled aerials and fast jabs. They can mix up with autocancelled aerials to jab and autocancelled aerials to grab. This can make it difficult for Olimar to protect himself against the opponent’s approaches.
Tactics to Avoid:
-Pivotgrab instead of standing with shield. It avoids the situation entirely and gets your opponent grabbed in the process. For the most part it’s safe as well.
-Perfect shielding to jab works, albeit it can be difficult against characters with multihit moves. Learning the timing is part of learning the matchup, but this can greatly help your situation with a poor shieldgrab.
-Nair OoS may work depending on how fast your hands are and the priority of the opponent’s jab. It isn’t too reliable though and this is kinds slow, just not as slow as grab.
Ok, every character in brawl has its weaknesses. Acknowledging your character's weakness in one of many steps to get better. After identifying weaknesses, it's important to decide methods and tactics around them.
The easiest place to find weaknesses for a character is to look at their bad matchups. A bad matchup is usually bad because the opponent can greatly or easily exploit many of the character's weaknesses. Repeating themes in bad matchups can be identified as a character's weakness.
So lets move on.
Bad Recovery
Right off the bat, everyone knows that Olimar has a bad recovery. Practically any character has a chance of gimping him when they attempt to edgeguard. Relying on a tether for recovery makes us very susceptible to edgehogging.
Tactics to get around this:
-Imo, the most important thing to avoid being gimped is to save your second jump. Oli's second jump has decent height and combined with his floatiness, just holding toward the stage and jumping gives him the distance he needs to make it. But more importantly, Oli's double jump gives him the ability to avoid direct conflicts with the opponent. If you do not save your double jump, getting gimped is much probable. It's usually best to use it when you're starting to get near the stage and your opponent is getting ready to leave the stage if they haven't already. Smart use of the double jump is necessary to make it back to the stage.
-Olimar's whistle is an amazingly useful tool. The super armor frames it grants makes him pass through an opponent's aerials. The whistle is great for avoiding gimping attempts. It’s important to learn how to time the whistle in accordance with your opponent’s attack. The whistle has super armor frames from frames 2-18 iirc.
-Try to recovery high. If your opponent tries to edgehog you, use UpB to push yourself onto stage. When the opponent is on the ledge there is often enough time to get on stage safely.
-Opponents that are experienced against Oli will at times just wait near the ledge. In these cases snap to the ledge when you’re sure they’re staying on stage. Now it’s just an attempt to make it back on stage from the ledge with your opponent there to punish. Depending on your opponent’s character and skill, the difficulty of this task varies. It’s best to just be very unpredictable with you options; getup attack, roll, normal stand up, jump airdoge, jump aerial, jump whistle, jump down to double jump aerial, pikmin toss, etc. Each option serves a specific situation. Make sure to use know which options go with which situations, and be unpredictable!
-Use aerials and purple pikmin toss to knock off any edgehoggers. Make sure to whistle purples to the front so they’re ready. Or you could just uair shuffle to the next purple. Whichever’s quicker. This makes it harder for your opponent to time the edgehog with you endangering them.
Lack of Priority
Olimar’s pikmin moves have abysmal priority. One of the worst in the game (though there are some moves you can outprioritize). Aerials with a lot of priority pose a threat to Oli.
Tactics to get around this:
-It’s important to know which of Oli’s move actually don’t have crap priority, and instead are pretty decent priority wise; nair, dtilt, ftilt, uair, pikmin chain. These moves are pretty important, and if you’re being rushed at with a lot of high priority moves, smart uses of these ones might be able to outprioritze them. Sometimes
-It’s important to know your opponent’s moves’ startup lag/ending lag versus your starting lag. Learning to attack the opponent in between their move strings is useful. Peach’s dair outprioritizes Oli’s fair greatly, but if you fair her before the dair hitbox comes out, you’ll hit her without being outprioritized. Using this tactic requires a lot of matchup experience against the particular character. If you’re wrong with the timing, you’ll probably end up horribly punished.
-Yellows are great for getting past priority. Yellows carry huge disjointed hitboxes. These disjointed hitboxes have a lot of priority. Yellow fair knocks a lot of characters out of their aerials.
-Purple toss has a huge amount of priority. Throw them at the opponent and you’ll see it go through practically everything your opponent tries. And usually your opponent will get hit in the process. Purple tosses are priority projectiles.
-Whistle to punishing move also gets past the priority problem. Shorthopping towards them and whistling can also heavily mess up their spacing, making it easier to punish.
Problem getting back on stage
Olimar is a floaty character, and when he’s sent very high over the stage, it can be difficult to land back on stage. Smart players will easily keep you off the ground. You can receive a lot of damage from your opponent this way.
Tactics to get around it:
-One of the best ways to get around your opponent is to do b reversed whistles. Heading toward your opponent and then quickly b reversing shifts your momentum and can definitely throw off your opponent.
-Land with an aerial. It makes it more difficult for your opponents to grab you. This option gets horribly countered by your opponent’s shield though, so it should be used sparingly.
-Using UpB close to the ground gives you a boost like the B reversed whistle does. Except you can boost also boost forward unlike with the whistle. Used with mixups it could definitely work against your opponent.
Slow Shieldgrab
Olimar has a slow shield grab. 11 frames. In some matchups, the opponent can easily pressure our shield with autocancelled aerials and fast jabs. They can mix up with autocancelled aerials to jab and autocancelled aerials to grab. This can make it difficult for Olimar to protect himself against the opponent’s approaches.
Tactics to Avoid:
-Pivotgrab instead of standing with shield. It avoids the situation entirely and gets your opponent grabbed in the process. For the most part it’s safe as well.
-Perfect shielding to jab works, albeit it can be difficult against characters with multihit moves. Learning the timing is part of learning the matchup, but this can greatly help your situation with a poor shieldgrab.
-Nair OoS may work depending on how fast your hands are and the priority of the opponent’s jab. It isn’t too reliable though and this is kinds slow, just not as slow as grab.
