Pichu is the true glass cannon of Smash Ultimate. Once he gets started, he is an absolute terror both during the punish game and once he hits the opponent off the stage. He has one of the best projectiles in the game, is very difficult to edgeguard, has a variety of kill moves, and is extremely evasive. But all of these strengths are balanced by two very distinct weaknesses: 1) Pichu has a very short range on most moves, and 2) Pichu is the lightest character in the game… by far.

This is the first edition of the Max Yield series being applied to Smash Ultimate. Most readers are probably new to the series, so I’ll break down the underlying concept.

Each character in Smash has strengths and weaknesses, and each player has a set of skills that they apply to the characters they play. In these analyses, I attempt to break down what I see as the skills you need as a player in order to maximize your skill with a given character. Typically, these skills are not the same as your characters’ strengths. For example, if I were to say, “Pichu has high damage output,” I wouldn’t recommend “practicing your punish game” as a skill for this analysis. Pichu’s punish game is what I’d call a “given” – it’s an inherently strong attribute of the character and is generally one of the first things you learn when picking up Pichu.

Instead, this analysis is geared toward intermediate-and-above players who are trying to break past their current skill level. I would still recommend this write-up to beginners, as I’ll be explaining a lot of important concepts you need to know as a competitive Smash player.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Opening Your Opponent Up

This is the skill for Pichu players and is comprised of many components. If you’re able to open your opponent up, Pichu can wrack up to more than 50% off a single hit depending on your opponent’s character and how refined your punish game is. Even a simple Dthrow à Uair, land à Uair, double-jump à Fair will net you more than 30% every time. Fair by itself does 16%. So it really only takes a handful of solid openings in neutral (and fewer if you’ve landed any Thunderjolts) to get your opponent into kill percents or off-stage to set up for an edgeguard. And once you’ve got an edgeguard setup, Pichu can go extremely deep thanks to his top-tier recovery. He can also threaten low recoveries with the crazy steep angle on his projectile and can catch airdodges with either of his multi-hit aerials. Not to mention he has a spike, the weak hit of which is a horizontal kill move.

If you follow me on social media, you know that Pichu is one of the first characters that really stuck with me when Ultimate first came out. I described Pichu as “the Melee Falco” of Ultimate – they both have a strong projectile they can use to control neutral, both benefit heavily from a healthy mix of aggressive options, and can both die very easily. Just like Melee Falco, by mastering the art of opening up one’s opponent, you will more frequently reap the benefits of your character’s strengths, as I described in the previous paragraph.

The Basics

There are a lot of basic tools you’ll need to know before you can start applying them effectively, the first of which is an intimate knowledge of Pichu’s Thunderjolt (Tjolt). The angle it comes out is quite steep, making it easy for Pichu to come down on top of an opponent. But you also need to know when double-jump Tjolt can be punished, which platforms will block your Tjolt from which angles, and when to not use the move at all, since electric moves cause self-damage.

You’ll also need to know how to control your grounded movement options so that you can threaten to whiff-punish moves with Pichu’s fast short-hop aerials like Nair and Fair, and grounded combo starters like Grab and Dtilt.

I won’t go over these basic tools in detail. If you aren’t familiar with any of these options, I recommend you play around with them before moving on in this guide.

Knowing Your Opponent’s Effective Range

A character’s effective range is the space that they immediately control. Chrom’s effective range, for example, might be described as his jab, SH Nair, and SH Fair range. King K Rool’s effective range might be described as his Crown Throw and tilt-range. Palutena has SH Fair, SH Bair, SH Nair, Ftilt, Dtilt, and sideB. You should also note burst options that your opponent can throw out, such as Ridley’s dash attack and an approaching aerial from Roy. Note that with good use of your grounded options, you can increase your “effective range,” as can your opponent. This is why dash-dancing is so prominent in Melee – you threaten a larger amount of space and open up the possibility of baiting and punishing just through movement. Think about how much more threatening Palutena becomes if she’s threatening late Fairs and Bairs out of a dash-dance as opposed to standing still.

In general, Pichu wants to space just outside of the opponent’s effective range. Not too far, and not too close. If you’re too far, you can threaten Tjolt, but you’ll take damage and it’s easy for an opponent to block and react until you decide to approach. If you’re always starting too close, then your opponent can throw out hitboxes knowing you’ll be running into them every time. You want to stay outside their effective range so you can threaten a whiff-punish if they pre-emptively throw out an attack in neutral.

Because Pichu is very short, he is difficult to hit. If you choose not to be overly aggressive, your opponent will have to throw out very specific hitboxes in order to hit you at all. This includes big, grounded hitboxes like Palutena Ftilt, higher-commitment moves that will hit the ground like Lucina late (landing) Fair, or projectiles that can be punished on whiff like Link’s boomerang. You’ll want to keep your opponent in a threatening range while making it difficult for them to hit you and take note of how they try to earn damage.

If you aren’t feeling confident in a whiff-punish, Pichu can opt for full-hop back Tjolt. You sacrifice a bit of positioning, but you give yourself a chance to rack up damage (the aerial hit of Tjolt does over 10%) and can possibly restart pressure if you mix up your Tjolt timing (e.g. go for a late, falling Tjolt out of a full-hop back).

Some characters’ effective ranges are too oppressive to reliably challenge head-on, so you’ll need to utilize multiple angles of attack. Most often you’ll either be approaching from the ground, or from above with a Tjolt. Once you force your opponent to try and fend off more than one angle of attack, you can start finding holes in their defense. If you’re threatening an aerial approaching, are they backing up a great deal? If so, you can take the ground and restart your pressure game with a center-stage advantage. Are they trying to combat your aerial approach with a full-hop game of their own? You can try to beat their hit with your own high-priority aerial or projectile, or you can bait out the full-hop and anti-air them from below (Pichu’s Uair will combo into Fair or Bair). Try experimenting with from where you’re approaching without actually committing and take note of how your opponent’s posturing changes.

I recommend studying videos of Mang0’s Falco and Axe’s Pikachu from Melee. Both are masters at understanding the opponent’s effective range and forcing the opponent to either throw out a hitbox that will be punished or forcing the opponent into picking a defensive option that they pounce on. This type of play is how I see Pichu’s meta developing in the future.

Changing Beats

When playing neutral, you’ll find that both you and your opponent fall into certain rhythms. This might show through in the duration of jumps, the number of dash-dances before commitment, or the number of moves thrown out on shield before backing up and conceding space. In fighting games, you want to try and get a sense of what your opponent’s rhythms are and take advantage of them. Using this concept, you can take note of how your opponent reacts in one situation and make an educated guess on how they’ll react in a totally different situation. Some players will always change their option on the third iteration, and some will never do the same thing twice. True veterans have many layers that you'll have to navigate in order to find a hit at all.

While trying to get a sense of your opponent’s rhythm, you are trying to stop them from getting a sense of yours. You can constantly make your play ambiguous, or you can pretend to be following one rhythm and throw your opponent off-guard by making a dissonant play. For example, let’s say you have been following up your Tjolts with a Nair every time. Your opponent may catch onto this and try to attack your Nair through the Tjolt with a high priority move, or maybe dodge the Tjolt and try to punish your Nair. An example of a beat change would be going for Tjolt, dashing in as if to Nair like normal, and then delaying your Nair by either waiting, doing an additional dash-dance, or jumping with the same timing and delaying your Nair input.

Mastering this concept will help you overcome Pichu’s stubbiness and aid you as you navigate your way inside your opponent’s range. Making yourself hard to get a read on is one of the ways in which you can force your opponent to pick their panic options. Once an opponent becomes flustered, then you push your advantage. For many players, it takes some time to find their footing once their rhythm has been disrupted.

Staying Plugged In

The idea I want to promote when I say “staying plugged in” is that you should always be using a healthy mix of aggressive mix-ups. You have to be bold in your decision-making and not let yourself get too comfortable with the same few tools. A smart opponent will know that it only takes a handful of reads to kill Pichu, so approaching in the same way every time (even if it works several times in a row) can be a very dangerous game to play for Pichu. As a Pichu player, you may be able to rack up quite a bit of damage for every interaction you win, but your opponent doesn’t need to hit Pichu with anything fancy to put you in the red.

It helps if you think about it in terms of net gain over the course of a game or set. You want to keep your opponent guessing for as long as possible. With how evasive Pichu is and how strong his punishes are, this can get frustrating for your opponent. In general, you should never default to autopiloting, but this is especially true when you’re piloting a character like Pichu.

Defeating Pichu

Pichu hasn’t dominated tournament play too much yet outside of VoiD, but I suspect that Pichu will become more menacing in bracket as Pichu players master more matchups. Here are a few notes on how to beat Pichu, and what Pichu players should watch out for in seasoned opponents.

Two things are not in Pichu’s corner: time and space. Pichu wants to end stocks, and he wants to do it while minimizing how much damage he takes. Don’t underestimate how much damage Pichu actually does to himself - in a normally-paced match, Pichu can easily take more than 50% or 60% (~20% per stock). Playing patiently and keeping Pichu at bay will inevitably work in your favor. In general, I would say fighting for center stage in increments is the way to go, as all-out approaches typically won’t work well against such a small character.

And, as mentioned, Pichu is quite stubby. He has to get in your face to hit you, and he’ll be mixing up his angles and timings in order to make that happen. The first layer of his offense, in many cases, will be his Tjolt. If Pichu is approaching with it, you’ll have to respect his mix-up. Many attacks will go through Tjolt and go on to hit Pichu, but as I described earlier, Pichu players should be mixing up their timing on how they approach with Tjolt. If Pichu is just using Tjolt as a zoning tool in neutral, it’s in your interest to extend neutral play, as each Tjolt will damage Pichu. If you think you’ll want to dash after nullifying the projectile, then try parrying it into dash. If you think you’ll want to jump, then just normal shield and jump, as that’s less laggy than parrying (the frame advantage you get from parrying does not apply to projectiles because Pichu doesn’t go through parry freeze frames). You can also roll through, pre-emptively jump over, or attack through the Tjolt.

Edgeguarding Pichu can be a challenge with his very fast, very long UpB. He can also change the angles he uses to get back. But there’s no hitbox, so you can usually throw out a hitbox with little risk, unless Pichu is in a position to take center from you for overextending. In general, though, you’ll get your kills from solid hits rather than edgeguarding. Sticking to the patient gameplan and keeping Pichu out for as long as possible will push him into higher % ranges where stray hits become lethal.

Applying This Analysis

My goal here is to provide some frameworks to help competitors internalize these fighting game concepts. They may not work for everyone, so feel free to come up with your own, and let me know what you come up with. Otherwise, take one or two frameworks at a time, watch your own sets or sets of other Pichus, and measure each action against them. Then go out and try to implement them in your gameplay. Over time, these concepts will start to make more sense.

Thanks as always for reading! The game is still young and I’m sure some of my opinions will change, but these ideas should be universally helpful. Let me know if you found this helpful, and what other characters you’d like to see this type of content for!

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