Piski’s in Depth Pikachu vs Peach Guide

Cafe?! | Piski! - March 16, 2020

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This was originally published on 19/11/2019, it's releveant for Patch 7.0.0. If some gifs are wacky or don't look 100% try viewing the original document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rf3qZs6SyJpgteJiZE-5RyR71qj1tOWvMPuN7wrppvw/edit#

underscored text are links (except for this one)

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Introduction

Welcome to this guide! I’ve recently been playing a really good Peach so to help me (and you!) understand this MU I’m writing this guide. I’ve only played them a few times so there may be small gaps here and there but I’ll be going into great detail about what I’ve picked up so far, I’ve also provided clips (as hyperlinks) to help explain what I mean in detail.

With that said let’s get started!

All of Peaches hitbox visualisation are taken from https://ultimateframedata.com/peach.php

All resources used are listed at the bottom of the guide.

Peach Vs Daisy

First thing you should know is that as of version 3.0.0 there are no differences between Peach and Daisy this means that you should be playing the MU identically when fighting either of the princesses.

Neutral

In this match up your goal is not to run over Peach with your incredible tools but to camp and work passively around Peach. You do not want to challenge Peach’s boxing game. If you run in without much thought you’ll get hit and comboed to 60%. Watch out for her throws too.

Keep an eye out for Peach’s main combo starters:

Landing back air->dtilt
Falling Nair
Dtilt -> Nair
Dtilt -> upair
Down throw -> Bair
Back throw -> Nair

It’s important to recognise as well that trading is not a good in this MU, she’s not only heavier than us by 10 units but her aerials do big damage, especially when trading with our multihits

Peach nair: 13% initial hit
Peach bair: 12% initial hit
Peach fair: 14% initial hit

The exception to this is trading our up air (disjointed single hit) with her down air (non-disjoint multihit) as it can only be used for stage positioning (see Being Above/Below Peach segment)

If you’re behind in percent you can approach with fair as it beats turnips (Clip) but Peach can still whiff punish you if you space badly. Staying down low and playing evasive is important, not falling for her deceptive movement.

Side b (skull bash) on shield is hard to punish for Peach. This doesn’t mean you should spam it (she can whiff punish it before it touches her shield or move out of the way completely) but don’t panic if you miss-input it.

Trying to grab Peach is difficult - do not fish for this, her bair walls us out and she spends a lot of her time hovering which not only increases her ability to whiff punish incredibly well but raises her hurtbox off the ground making it more difficult to connect.

Overall your main goal is to look for an opening before attacking her - a big opener will be how she likes to use float

Peach Floating

Something very important in the match up is knowing her Peach’s float works:

Peach’s float timer is 2.5 seconds and she won’t get her float back unless she touches the ground - if she uses her jump, grabs the ledge or gets hit it won’t be refreshed.

She can control when she chooses to float, meaning that:

Jump -> float -> double jump -> up special

Jump -> double jump -> float -> up special

Runoff -> float -> double jump -> side special

Are all things she’s able to do.

She isn’t able to shield while floating and her airdodge is slow so t-jolt is an excellent tool to use while she’s floating.

Peach’s Shield Pressure

Peach has incredible shield pressure against Pikachu, all of her aerials are better than -10 on shield if done correctly: (Strong hit/Sour Hit)

Nair: (-2/-4) on shield
Fair: (-8/-8) on shied
Back Air: (-6/-8) on shield
Up air: (-4/-4) on shield
Down Air: (-6/-5) on shield

Even Side Special (Peach bomber) is very difficult to hit oos, it’s -13 but it launches her quite far away. Peach Bomber startup is frame 2 upon reaching a target, it has 18 frames of endlag on hit.

This doesn’t mean that her pressure is impossible to punish but you have to pick the right moment, for example her back air shield pressure is not something you should challenge as she can safely jump away if space properly or continuously use the move (Dash backing in this situation is recommended). If she isn’t spacing her moves properly a quick out of shield option will work well to her (bair/upair/nair) if it’s really badly spaced you can upsmash out of shield (this is frame 10 though so it has to be pretty bad). You can also punish some of them on parry

Pikachu’s fastest 3 Options out Shield

Note: Pikachu’s upair hits only behind (first), relative to model

Peach’s fastest 3 Options out Shield

Note: Peach’s bair hits only behind (first), relative to model

Being above/below Peach

I found that in this MU being below Peach is really good, being above is horrible.

Pika can actually trade with one of his aerials with Peach when he’s below her - upair works wonders against her dair. Since Peach’s dair is a multihit move with each of the initial 3 hits doing about 2% each and the final hit about 5% Pika’s disjointed upair can hit her well, if you don’t space it properly and you trade, Pika’s upair still does more damage than Peach’s dair so it’s a trade worth having. The knock back taken from the upair/dair is also worth it for the stage position you’ll both be in after (she'll send you downwards).

Being above her isn't fun. She is quite capable at stopping us from landing easily with her lingering hitboxes. Landing directly on top of her is an issue too as upsmash and parasol are dangerous for the kill.

Basically whoever is above the other player is in disadvantage

Peach Dair Pikachu Up air

Turnips

Peach has 39 active frames when pulling a turnip. This means that Peach shouldn’t be pulling one when you’re close, if she does then you can run up and punish her: dash grab/fair/rar upair should do the trick.

Despite having different aesthetics “smiling”, “irked”, “shut-eye”, “spooked” and “anime turnip” all have the same damage and knockback. “Winky”, “dot-eyes” and “stitch-face” all have their own individual damage and knock back angle.

Keep in mind that Mr. Saturn will break your shield instantly and the explosion from the Bob-Omb she pulls won't damage her (when thrown). Sounds obvious but don't get hit by the bomb because it will kill you very early.

Graphic taken from Peach/Daisy character discord created by AxoEmile

Table taken from http://kuroganehammer.com/Ultimate/Peach/

This damage is without the 1v1 multiplier

Advantage

In this match up, if we have a stock/percent lead part of our advantage is thunder jolt camping making her approach us, our advantage is not limited to comboing Peach

One of our other best advantage states in this matchup is trapping her landings. Peach struggles to land especially if she doesn’t have her jump. She doesn’t fall too fast, her dair is a multihit (which we can trade with using up air) and even though she has a counter it’s fairly slow. Using upair is a good way to extend this lead. If she is shielding on a platform, wait for her to take an action and react/punish accordingly. Her priority will be getting back to the stage if she's being juggled so don't get greedy if she's holding shield on a platform and you don't have to commit to an option.

We’re also able to keep her at the ledge effectively, using t-jolts and reacting to her get up options (remember that her fair has a 16 frame start up so we can react to drop down fair fairly easily). Almost all of Daisy’s second stock in this clip was keeping her at the ledge/offstage or stopping her from landing. Just because you can’t seal the stock off doesn’t mean you’re not in control of the match.

Edgeguarding:

Look out for her 3 main options when she’s offstage:

Recovering High:

If she’s recovering high use your aerials to keep her off stage
Keep close watch on if she has used her float/jump
React to her options

Recovering horizontally

If she is recovering horizontally it’s likely she’ll use Peach Bomber to snap to ledge. This can be punished vertically with dair or horizontally with t-jolt
On Lylat she isn’t able to grab the ledge with Peach Bomber unless she is (very) far away from the ledge, she’ll either slide onto the stage or slip under the ledge.

Recovering Low

When she recovers low it’s common for her to use her up special to snap to ledge.

Float Low -> Parasol
Drift low -> Parasol

Peach's vertical recovery is relatively poor without her double jump so she relies heavily on parasol when she’s burnt it already
Pika can potentially dair spike or bair pressure if you read the space just before she wants to use Parasol

If going off stage, bair and fair is fantastic at catching her as it's active for a long time and we can drift easily during the move, it consistently sends her in behind you.

When punishing Parasol you need to keep in mind that her drift can be surprisingly good when using parasol so plan where she will be not where she is when going for fair/dair. If you are prepared for the drift and know its drift parasol can be punished easily horizontally or from below her especially if she’s burned her jump/float and is forced to use it to drift back to stage.

I’ve also heard that dair can go through parasol when it’s rising/in start up but I’m yet to confirm this.

Fair can interrupt Peach Bomber - if you hit beneath her (risky but possible)

Tjolt can interrupt Peach Bomber

Nair Loops

You have to be confident with your nair loops when fighting Peach, her nair is active from frame 5 and deals 13% based damage. This means it can combo break if you’re slack and it’ll deal a good chunk of what you would have done to her. If you are good at your loops go for it, ESAM is able to pull them off in these 2 clips (Clip 1, Clip 2) just don't hesitate.

Peach’s Nair

Overall game plan

Knowing all that about neutral and advantage state, Pikachu’s overall game plan should be:

Avoid her boxing game
Avoid holding shield too long and get pressured
T-jolt camp her to get her to unsafely approach

Stop t-jolt camping if the stage is too big and she starts turnip farming

Do your best to stop her landing if she’s above you
Keep her at the ledge not letting her recover for free

Disadvantage

Getting Sniped off stage and landing

When you’re far off stage one way Peach can get her kills is by sniping pika with Turnips. In the clip below I wanted to hold onto my resources and I underestimated the effect of being hit offstage and I nearly lost the game because of it. I was lucky in that Peach pulled a regular Turnip, if she had pulled a “winky” or stronger turnip, I would have lost my stock.

Clip of near-death turnip

Clip of Hero dying offstage to a dot eyes turnip - note that Hero is further away from the blast zone, at a lower percent and heavier than Pikachu yet still dies due to the dot eyes

There are a few counter plays to this:

The first of these being that you can simply recover high. When you do there’s a few actions the Peach player might do, the first of these is to try and follow you in the air and kill you with a bair, fair or up special but keep in mind that skull bash is very punishable, often not a good landing tool and that Peach’s up special is somewhat of a burst option.

Clip of Samsora killing ESAM’s high recovery

Alternatively (and more likely) she’ll try and punish your landing on stage. Peach has lingering hitboxes (nair, upsmash and upair to some extent) that will catch pikachu when quick attacking back to stage. Because of these moves be careful when landing on stage with QA. In the clip below I almost got hit by Peach’s upsmash but the Peach had mistimed it. If I had done down angled QA2 into Peach and Peach stalled her attack I would have gotten hit and put in disadvantage

Clip of Pikachu narrowly avoiding Peach’s upsmash

Another counter play, if you want to recover low, is to grab/avoid the item with airdodge, an attack or a rising attack. These will burn one of your resources with the exception of grabbing the item by timing the attack perfectly so keep note on what you chose. One more thing, don’t land directly onto Peach she has upair and upsmash (upsmash will kill at ~92% on Smashville)

A bit more on quick attack back to stage:

Here are 3 clips taken from ESAM vs Samsora at SSC 2019 (Clip 1, Clip 2, Clip 3)

In Clip 1 ESAM tried too hard to push back to stage with QA and got punished with Peach nair, he went back to ledge straight after which Samsora couldn’t have covered due to his stage position.

In Clip 2 ESAM was able to use QA to hit and punish Samsora before Samsora was able to use Peach fair to kill ESAM. Risky move that paid off for ESAM.

In Clip 3 ESAM used QA defensively to reach the platform and return to stage safely before Samsora could catch him.

Overall I’m just saying something that’s an early thing for Pika players to learn - QA is a good tool but you must be careful with how and when you use it to return to stage, especially against Peach.

Holding on to the ledge

While the Peach might not like to go offstage to punish, if she decides to hover and dair near the ledge you can be in trouble.

Peach’s dair will hit Pikachu holding onto the ledge as seen here, depending on Peach’s drift the final hit may force a tech situation, if Pikachu tech jumps Peach can link it into a fair (In the clip ESAM does misses the tech). A tech situation will occur if Pikachu is sandwiched between the stage and Peach.

Dying to a no-tech dair stage spike at 77%

If Peach’s drift makes her closer to the stage (Pikachu is away from the ledge) or doesn’t hit you with the final hit of down air be careful not to input an airdodge, Pika will not be sent into the stage and you will airdodge to your doom.

If Peach is floating on stage:

Peaches love to hover around this area (red/white box) when you’re on the ledge. In this situation they are baiting a neutral get up/ get up attack and will be able to react and punish these options (possibly roll on too) with bair/ fair - depending on the way they are facing. In this situation it’s best to drop down jump or jump from ledge. Alternatively you can risk doing neutral get up -> shield (as seen here) but again, this is a dangerous thing to do.

Note: If Pikachu loses ledge invincibility due to a regrab or holding on for too long, Peach is able to hit you with a tipper-golf club f-smash. This can also 2-frame characters.

Being comboed:

Being comboed can feel overwhelming - each one of her moves does about 10% or more and so damage racks up fast, but when getting comboed keep a cool head and save your resources until you’re absolutely sure you can escape. This means not jumping too early or getting frame trapped with bad air dodges; If Peach gets your jump and throws you off stage you may need to skull bash to recover which will be an easy punish for her.

Remember her main Combo starters are:

Landing back air->dtilt
Falling Nair
Dtilt -> Nair
Dtilt -> upair
Down throw -> Bair
Back throw -> Nair

Throws

Peach down throw:

Down throw:

Out of downthrow mix up DI
Watch out for downthrow (DI Up and away) into back air. It can potentially be a kill confirm if Pika does has bad DI.

The clip shows good DI (up and away)

On DI in down throw will cleanly link into up air at high percents (clip of 112% connection)
Watch out for the back throw mix up - no di will kill Pikachu on FD ledge at ~123% so bad DI will kill much earlier

Up throw (Practically useless)

Downthrow combos better
Forward and back throw kill better

Forwarthrow

Used for killing but back throw kills ~30-40 earlier

Back throw:

Killing throw at late percents
Can be used as a combo throw at earlier percents

Back throw->nair

Stages

Stages picks is the thing I’m least confident in recommending. Personally I’m a fan of Battlefield and Lylat and want to avoid Town and City/Final Destination but Pika is strong on every stage (and so is Peach).

Each stage has its pros and cons so just evaluate what kind of Pika player you are, the type of player your opponent is, what went right and wrong between games and you should be fine to go. (With the exception of Lylat always go there if you can)

Here are the pros and cons of each stage:

Battlefield:

+Platforms help pika landing return to stage

+Juggling Peach/keeping her above you is assisted by the stage

+Stage Length is small which helps you keep her at the ledge

+Big Blast Zones means you die later to her raw kill power

+Thunder Jolts can be easily placed onto/beneath platforms to keep her out

-Small stage length also means that you can get cornered easily

-Can be difficult to seal off the stock if you don’t kill her offstage early enough

-Platforms can make it easier for her to escape nair loops (she can SDI up and platforms interfere.)

Three different places to shoot thunder jolt to interrupt Peach’s approach and the pattern they will follow

Lylat:

+Slants can mess up Peach’s float cancels

+Platforms allow easier landing

+Platforms assist juggling

+Small stage length

+Peach cannot use side special (Peach Bomber) to grab the ledge unless she is very far away from it. She will either slide onto the stage or fall below the ledge. If she is below the ledge without a jump she won’t be able to recover.

-Pretty standard side blast zones meaning that Peach’s fair will kill early-ish

This stage will probably be insta-banned by the Peach player, if not take her here.

Unova:

+Walls help Pikachu’s recovery

+Small-ish stage length

+High platforms off the ground assist with landing

+Can T-jolt camp

-Peach’s can set up traps on the side platforms using turnips

Smashville:

+The Platform allows Pika to have an easier time landing

-The platform also allows her to restore her double jump and hover high in the air

Final Destination:

+Easy to nair loop

-Hard to land

-Hard to escape the corner (no platforms to retreat to)

-Peach’s combo game is very strong on this stage

-hard to get of ledge

Kalos:

+ Wall assists with recovery

- Hard to land

- Blast zones are very large, killing her is very difficult

- Platforms are only on the side where we’re more likely to die to her aerials

- Peach’s fair can go through both the platform and cover neutral/attack get up

Town and City:

+Transformation 1 allows us to camp

+Transformation 2 and 3 are good for nair looping

-Small side blast zones in relation to the ledge

-Transformation 2 (FD form) makes landing difficult

-Transformation 3 (2 side platforms) make it dangerous to t-jolt camp as these platforms are very close to the edges of the stage and with Peach having such strong aerials (fair/bair in particular) we can die very early.

-Peach has a strong combo game on this stage

PS2:

+Good for t-jolt camping

+Blast zones don’t favour Peach too much

Note:Not a lot of pros or cons from what I can see but ESAM counter picked Samsora here game two at SSC2019 so if you need more space but still want to t-jolt camp choose this stage of Town and City and Kalos

Yoshi’s Story:

+Slants will make float cancelling difficult for Peach

~These slants are a significantly smaller problem for Peach on this stage then on Lylat

+Walls help recovery

- Small blast zones mean we die super early (especially off the side)

Peach’s Prefered Stages (Outside the Pika MU)

Something you may also be interested in is what Peach’s stage preferences are outside of the Pikachu MU and why she likes those stages. According to Crown#8342, an admin in the Peach discord, her preferences (and reasoning) are:

Best Stages:

Kalos Pokemon League:

+Platforms help Peach recover/land/create traps

+Fair can go through both the platform and cover neutral/attack get up

Unova Pokemon League

+Platforms help Peach recover/land/creat traps

+Small enough to help corner foes trying to camp

Good Stages

Smashville

+Fair kills early

+Flat surfaces allow for combo extensions

Town & City

+Same as SV but bigger blast zones help her live longer

+Platforms in transformation 3 can help end stocks very early

Yoshi’s Story

+Tiny side blast zones mean early kills

+Slants don’t cause significant issues for Peach (unlike lylat)

+Small stage size means that she can corner slow opponents (less applicable to Pikachu)

MU Dependent Stages:

Final Destination

~MU dependent because a long flat stage can mean great combos or she can get projectile camped/juggled easily (Pika won’t be able to do these things as effectively as other characters such as Toon Link or Cloud)

Battlefield

~MU dependent because Peach can get juggled here quite badly (eg: fox, zss)

~Very average stage for her

~Can be hard to chase characters down

Bad Stages

Lylat

- Long downwards slants can trip up Peach Combos

- Peach Bomber does not work at the ledge she will always drop down and go below the stage, unless the move is used a significant distance from the ledge.

Final Tips

Staying low to the ground is very useful, can make it hard for Peach to hit you

Be patient - never approach when you don’t have to

Peach is very good at whiff punishing so be careful!

Thanks for reading this guide! I might not be ESAM but I hoped this helped some of you out there. It took a lot of effort to compile and write this so if you’re interested I have a twitter that you can follow me if you like at @JPiskopos. I have loose plans to write another guide eventually but that might be in quite a while.

If there’s anything you would like to add contact me at my twitter.

Also want to make a quick thank you to Catburger (@_catburger) for fact checking and reading this document! He was a big help when writing this document, gave heaps of Peach info I simply didn’t know about! Oh and give the Aus smash scene some love, follow Couch Warriors on their twitch https://www.twitch.tv/couchwarriorssmash

Last updated: 19/11/2019

Resources Used

Peach Frame Data & Visualisations:

https://ultimateframedata.com/peach.php

Turnip Damage

http://kuroganehammer.com/Ultimate/Peach

Character Weight

http://kuroganehammer.com/Ultimate/Weight

Turnip Graphic and Peach Stage information (found on Peach/Daisy Character Discord)

https://discordapp.com/invite/J2Gbdza

Pikachu Hitbox Visualisation - Linked to me through Pika Discord

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hgWS-yzVKXGoBJgFFBJNYvT5pqS19ntN