Regarding everyone about the jab, I checked with Brawl and Luigi and probably anyone with a frame 3 Nair or jab can still hit Brawl Falco out of it. Here's the issue though, you can only do it if you're in the air and mashing attack.
In Brawl: A grounded Luigi cannot Nair Falco during a full jab - that's if you hold A or tap A to go from jab 1, jab 2, and rapid jab without any stuttering or pauses. A Luigi in the air can Nair Falco during a full jab only if Falco holds rapid jab too long and Luigi is able to move away from the rapid jab. At that point, Luigi can Nair Falco and get a clean Nair or a late Nair. For partial jabs, like jab 1 or jab 1 and jab 2, on the ground, Luigi can jab back or in the air, he can Nair back. This only happens if you're (Luigi) mashing attack. In low level play, button-mashing is common, but that also extends to low level Falco players mashing their jab, so you won't see them doing jab mixups like at high level play. At high level play, mashing buttons and having the opponent realize this means they're just going to wait, they're just going to wait out your pointless mashing, punish the end lag, and only go for safe options. Jab mixups against a button-masher? Hell no, I'd rather get the safe damage from a full jab or just stay away and pelt him with lasers.
Against Fox, I wasn't able to get him to Nair during either, but I was able to mash attack and get him to jab back at Falco. Same with Mario. I'm going to assume Luigi's floatiness and slightly longer limbs allows him to do what Mario cannot.
What should be noted are 3 things: jab's hit angles, jab's total frames, and rapid jab's transition. Brawl Falco's jab 1 and jab 2 kind of look like they hit shallower than Smash 4 Falco's. In Brawl, hitting a grounded Luigi kind of made him lift off the ground slightly before getting grounded. An airborne Luigi would just get closer to the ground, but still off it while Falco hit him - I don't know where I can find Brawl Falco's hit angles. In Smash 4, Falco jabbing anyone lifts them slightly higher off the ground; jab 1's hit angles are 68, 77, and 80 and jab 2's are 80, 50, and 40. This does have impact as that means someone's going to be in the air longer and they can have longer time to get an aerial out. Against Captain Falcon? Probably won't matter as he might not able to Uair you, but against Yoshi and Luigi? It's going to matter more as they have much more time to Nair you and their clean Nairs are strong.
In Brawl, Falco was able to act at frame 16 for jab 1 and 19 for jab 2; in Smash 4, Falco is able to act at frame 23 for jab 1 and frame 26 for jab 2. That's an increase of 5 frames to his jab 1 and increase of 7 frames to his jab 2 end lag. It does not matter for going from jab 1 to jab 2, but it does matter for when going to jab 1 to Dtilt or jab 2 to Down Smash. What's happening here is what's called "posing". In boxing, when you punch, you don't want to just stand there for a split second, instead you want to punch, pull back from a confirm to followup or with a miss, pull back, and think again. Jabs in Smash aren't like in traditional fighters. In most cases, jabs are meant to followup into the rest of the combo. Hell, even the in-game tips call it a "standard attack" or "standard combo". We call them jabs because that's what they look like and pretty much do... This does mess Samus's jab philosophy, but that's another story. This is one reason why Falco's jab mixups are really risky to do compared to Sheik, Ryu, Fox, Luigi, and even Captain Falcon. Brawl Falco being able to jab to a free option wasn't much of a big deal and like I said, you can mash attack to counter Falco's option pick. It's at higher levels where people think twice and try to react that it becomes a strong tool that can still be countered - just DI out since Falco can't jab lock like pre-patch 1.1.0 Fox could.
Main issue to all of this: rapid jab's transition. It's not a true combo either in Brawl. If you have two monitors or a 3DS with Smash 4, load up Brawl and Smash 4. Pick Falco on each system and fully jab with Falco. Jab 1 will connect at the same time, jab 2 as well - maybe a frame off -, and rapid jab doesn't connect at the same time. It's not even a frame off, but more like maybe 2-4 frames off. Before patch 1.0.8, it took Falco 9 frames to transition from jab 2 to rapid jab. Patch 1.0.8 made it so it took 8 frames to transition. I don't know where you can find transition stuff for Brawl, but Xey's frame data on it suggests that Falco's jab 1 and jab 2 are the same, so in both games, jab 1 to jab 2 hits at the earliest at frame 2 and 10. All right, cool, but for rapid jab, it gets messier. Both jab 1 and jab 2 take 8 frames to transition to the next part and there's 2 frames of startup for rapid jab. In Smash 4, Falco's rapid jab hits on frame 17. In Brawl, I don't know. There isn't anything for rapid jab's transition frames. Going off of what I saw, it looks like at least 2 frames of a difference - clearly isn't 1 since that would be like seeing a stutter between the two games. Assuming so, Brawl Falco's rapid jab should hit on frame 15 or 13. The animation differences clearly show this too where in Brawl, Falco just spins after jab 2, but in Smash 4, Falco winds up before the first hit even registers. This is the same for Fair and notoriously, Dair. Source for Brawl Falco:
smashboards.com/threads/in-depth-falco-frame-data.308016/.
Falco's jab is at a point where regardless if you commit to the full jab, decide to stutter it, or choose to jab mixup out of it, he's notably screwed against these characters: Mario, Dr. Mario, Luigi, Sheik, Fox, Little Mac, Marth, Lucina, ZSS, and Captain Falcon. In the air, if someone has a frame 3 or lower aerial, they can just hit Falco if he chooses to stutter or jab mixup. On the ground characters with a frame 3 jab or below can just jab back. It's less of an issue since you can just mash jab to start a clank war if they share the same jab speed or Falco can just outspeed them like against Captain Falcon if he somehow drops his jab 1 to jab 2. Now, against other characters, jab 1's end lag puts him at a disadvantage when he doesn't confirm it. After shield drop, it's -12 and on-hit at 0%, it's -4. You're better off using Dtilt which is at most, -10 on shield, +10 with the sweet-spot, and +2 with the disjoint or use Ftilt where Falco throws out a hitbox, but quickly retracts his hurtbox instead of moving forward like with jab. In the special cases of Mario, Dr. Mario, Marth, and Lucina, they can just Up Special through his jab.
Luigi and presumably anyone with a frame 6 grab can also grab Falco if he doesn't fully jab on the ground. Jigglypuff can also Rest punish Falco if he in between jab and during rapid jab if he holds it too long and let's Jigglypuff not get hit, but still near enough to hit him.
If Falco's jab had his Brawl jab end lag - jab 1 total frames would be 15 and jab 2's would be 18 -, his on-hit and on-shield frame advantages would be this. Note: shield drop is a +7 to frame advantage. On-hit formula is (h-(t-s)) where h is hit stun, t is total frames, and s is startup. Shield stuff from here:
http://sixriver.web.fc2.com/ssb4/Guard_Hitstop.htm. Translation of what the boxes mean:
http://puu.sh/hUBGk.png.
Move|On shield|Shield Drop|On-hit (0%)
Brawl jab 1|-12|-5|+3
Brawl jab 2|-15|-8|-1
Smash 4 jab 1|-19|-12|-4
Smash 4 jab 2|-22|-15|-8
Notice difference, huh?
Falco's jab, dash attack, and even standing grab... I don't know what's the reason for any of their changes. Jab? Falco's jab was pretty tame compared to what happened at launch with Smash 4 Fox's jab and the freakout of Link's pseudo infinite. All he did was what Sheik, Luigi, Captain Falcon, and Fox do: jab to grab or another move. Oh, yes, he was able to jab to confirm a chain-grab setup, but jab wasn't the reason for chain-grabs... And rapid jab? Look, if he can't jab to whatever as quickly, then why make his rapid jab punishable on hit? It's like you're telling us to not even bother using his jab and not telling us like with Samus's in-game "tip". Dash attack? Uh... not abusive on a character with that kind of running speed and I have no idea why his gatling combo worked in Brawl, but it did and even so, assuming there was a way to prevent that, a fast dash attack wouldn't do anything to make Falco abusive. Now, Sonic with a frame 4 dash attack, yeah, that would be abusive. Standing grab... Ganondorf's also the "slow version" of Captain Falcon, but his standing grab is the same. All "Marths", Marth, Lucina, and Roy share the same grab frames despite how fast they move, especially Roy. Luigi's grab frames were never touched despite how people have complained about his ability to get grabs. Chain-grabs are gone, so why the frame 8 standing grab? Frame 7 would have been fine as it was his Melee standing grab. So why, a lightweight and pretty much a melee fighter should have such a slow melee grab? Even Duck Hunt's frame 8 grab and Little Mac's frame 9 raises questions for me.
They could easily fix rapid jab by allowing Falco to transition quicker or they could do the stupid thing where they put a new, random hitbox like for Fox. Here's the thing, that works for Falco since he's spinning, but not for Fox when it's an actual phantom hit. Fox moves his leg to start his rapid jab and there's a hit out of nowhere that does 0.3%. He doesn't kick like say, he does a Ftilt and then readies a side kick. Okay, maybe animation change is necessary, but nobody is going to notice unless they play in slow motion. Was Fox's rapid jab even problematic? I don't know since not a lot of people use his rapid jab before patch 1.1.0 since everyone was using his double jab. Falco didn't have that luxury.
Unrelated to all of this, for those of you who have 2 3DSes or the game on both systems, could you check what 1.0.4's patch even meant for Falco's Blaster? People found he could "shoot faster". I don't know if that means his startup was changed or his "trigger" pull was changed. So, an unpatched Smash 3DS and a patched one would be able to show this easily. It's pretty trivial, but I'm curious and a bit confused as to what it meant. It'd be very "hilarious" if it was a placebo that nobody destroyed... >_>
