Meta Zero's Advice: General Matchup Q&A

[Terios the Hedgehog]

So I was playing for glory(which I know means next to nothing) and I actually played this matchup as Megaman. I way prefer that side of it!

 

[Fenrir VII]

Like most people, I utterly hate this matchup, because it really requires very base-level play from megaman... but yeah, all signs point to at least 6-4 in Mega's favor due to priority and zoning, as well as decent kill options (whereas Sonic typically has to play the "chip away" game)

 

[sphenco]

Sonic wants to play games? Oh we'll play games.

You could spam/ go long range...

OR you could go in hot with the close quarter combat. Use those short hops and change ups. And dont forget to Rush coil when things are sticky.
You locate, close with, and destroy that blue rat. ;-)

 

[K-45]

I think most people here forgot to say don't use the metal blade to much in this MU if at all he can punish us super easy.

 

[Locke 06]

What does sonic have that makes this a winnable matchup for him? Or is it skewed that much in our favor?

I'll add that as long as we respect his fsmash, BAir, and throws (especially back throw) we should live for quite a while. We can edge guard him well, lining up dair shouldn't be too hard against his vertical recovery.

Last day for sonic. If you have thoughts about what the next topic should be, leave a note at the end of your post or pm me.

 

[ChopperDave]

I think most people here forgot to say don't use the metal blade to much in this MU if at all he can punish us super easy.

I would amend this to say only use item Metal Blade, where possible.

Like you say, Sonic's speed and excellent dash attack make standard 8-directional MB use a losing proposition, most of the time. You're not going to be landing a Z1GMA upper in this match unless you successfully predict a ledge get-up.

BUT, as in pretty much every matchup, you'll generally have enough time to generate an item MB for yourself after a fthrow, bthrow, or uthrow.

It's good to get in the habit of this vs. Sonic, IMO, as he has a lot of tools that can help him reset to neutral, making most throw followups impractical. Sonic has to respect item MBs much more than normal MBs, because we can use the csticking trick to chain out of a lemon barrage into an item MB throw or z-drop, and we can generally play mindgames with lemons.

If you get into a groove you can cstick lemons, toss an item MB, follow up with a grab or usmash, toss yourself another item MB, rinse and repeat.

 

[Fenrir VII]

What does sonic have that makes this a winnable matchup for him? Or is it skewed that much in our favor?

I'll add that as long as we respect his fsmash, BAir, and throws (especially back throw) we should live for quite a while. We can edge guard him well, lining up dair shouldn't be too hard against his vertical recovery.

Last day for sonic. If you have thoughts about what the next topic should be, leave a note at the end of your post or pm me.

This is such a base-level analysis, but honestly, he has speed. With smart play, he can get in. He also has good followups and decent killmoves.

Sonic is a solid char in this game, so I have trouble saying any match is all that bad for him... but I would think we're among his worst.


Next discussion... CF please?

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

It's definitely not unwinnable for Sonic. He just gets the ****ty end. Megaman takes the neutral and we all know how important neutral is in this game. I'd agree with 6-4 Mega. Though among his worst is probably Sheik, Luigi and Rosa if you ever want a harder CP. lol

 

[Locke 06]

It's definitely not unwinnable for Sonic. He just gets the ****ty end. Megaman takes the neutral and we all know how important neutral is in this game. I'd agree with 6-4 Mega. Though among his worst is probably Sheik, Luigi and Rosa if you ever want a harder CP. lol

Then how do you win? Your advantage isn't that great unless you get into it from Spindash, and you get edge guarded pretty hard. Do you have any kill setups? I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but this is how I think of Sonic. You usually win neutral and you combo out of spindashes. I think it's a little bit more lobsided than 4-6. I'd put it closer to 25-75.

On a side note: seeing Rosa as a counter to Sonic is interesting as my Rosa friend has trouble with sonics. However, that's a discussion for somewhere else.

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

Do the Rosas keep luma close? It's hard to do stuff to her when he's around interrupts everything, blocks approaches and is hard to attack without getting smashed. Sonic needs that momentum.

It just doesn't seem that bad. Sonic does decent damage when he's in. Side b is invincible on startup so he can plow through some stuff and I'm fairly positive I've true comboed mega to death off one at about 40. 70something once he's off the top. Usmash also has invincibility and is great at catching landings. 75-25 is what I'd save for like..Brawl Ganon vs Icies or Blanka vs T.hawk.

I don't have a ton of experience in this matchup though so I guess I'll just concede until I do. It did seem easy from megamans side.

 

[ChopperDave]

I don't think it's THAT terrible for Sonic.

While it's true that MM's pellets shut down most of Sonic's approach options, they only do 1-2% damage per hit. Sonic, on the other hand, can easily lay on 30-40% damage in a single combo if he gets through just once, due to MM's weight. Against a perfect MM, Sonic would never get in, but even the best players make mistakes that can be punished.

Sonic also doesn't seem that easy for MM to kill. His fall speed, UpB, and spin dash tricks make him hard to trap with fsmash, usmash, and uair, and whiffing a utilt is always painful. Bair is super clutch in this MU, no doubt, and I think that's where MM gets his KO advantage. But all the same, relying on that one move for kills can get predictable and lead to long matches.

4-6 seems about right to me. MM has the advantage, but is plenty beatable if Sonic plays unpredictably, forces mistakes, and punishes them hard.

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

That is all the stuff I wanted to say but didn't have time to since I was on break at work!

 

[Fenrir VII]

This is kind of like.... every matchup vs Ganon. Yes we win the neutral. Yes it's by a significant margin.

But... when sonic gets a hit (which will happen), he can do a lot with it. Sonic is too fast with too many movement options to have 100% success at keeping him out.

The range, imo, is 6-4 to 7-3. Somewhere in there is correct.

I'll save my >7-3 matchups for the chars that literally do not have the speed to consistently get through pellets... that you could conceivably never get hit by.

 

[Red Shirt KRT]

I think he has some strange angled movements that are tough for us to stop. Especially his rolling curve ball attacks, even a diagonal Mb rarely hits.

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

Rolling curve ball?

 

[~Burst~]

The match up isn't that hopeless for Sonic. Sonic bodies megaman when he's off stage and when he's below Megaman. like most other match ups when they're in its free.
Homing attack and spin shot can be used to punish any mindless buster spam or poorly used metal blades.
Its barely in Megaman's favor but it is.

 

[Locke 06]

I guess I haven't seen much of Sonic's combo ability outside of spindashes. Or his offstage game. Our fair can be used as a disjointed wall to his fair, and, while his BAir hits hard, it is f13 and pretty easy to see coming. His up airs are a decent juggle tool, but mostly I see Sonics try to trap landings more than juggle. Since we have things like B-reverse MB's, rush camping, z-drop MB, a good fast fall/airspeed, and landing lemons, trapping our landing isn't the easiest task. That said, I'll defer as it seems I'm in the minority thinking it is a very solid advantage for MM. I'll look at the posts again when I write it up, but 60-40 sounds good.

Great discussion everyone. Special thanks to @ Terios the Hedgehog and @jordanm43444 from the Sonic boards. Feel free to come around and participate in more discussions. Everyone is always welcome. ^_^

Keeping on the speed discussion, his racing opponents see him as a blue blur as he drives by. He is. CAPTAIN. FALCON.

Yes!

Some videos to spur discussion:
@NinjaLink vs NickC at Smash Attack 2
@ ScAtt77 2 matches against Fatality
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSj41Kks-yU
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ahruBF0nc
@SSGuy vs Bwett at Shockwave 12

 

[Fenrir VII]

@ ScAtt77 get in here.

CF is, imo, a bad matchup for us.
Thing is... we're very solid in the neutral in this matchup, so it's easy to think we can shut him down. But we have to do SO MUCH in terms of punishment to match what CF can do. So the amount of power per hit, in terms of damage and killpower isn't even close to in our favor.

This is true mostly across the board, but is especially true in edgeguarding. We can hit him out of his recovery... no problem. but most edgeguarding situations require us to hit him like 5x to keep him from recovering. Yes, we have leafstool if he recovers low, but it doesn't do much for MOST edgeguarding situations. Yes, we have a spike, but it's very hard to hit him, as he can adjust his horizontal momentum very well. Our best case is probably to use z dropped blades in combo with dair or bair, but best case, it's a very adaptation-focused interface.
Meanwhile, if CF guesses our recovery positively ONCE, whether it be thru calling a jump, airdodge, ledge getup, etc; we die.

In neutral, pellets are very effective as you would expect, but he DOES have options to get around them, so it's not a blanket win-all. Leaf shield is effective at stuffing grabs, but he can just....hit us out of it pretty easily so it's not as useful as you'd hope. blades and such are useful as always, but again, if CF reads a jump, he can punish it. We can also crouch his grab, but he can just dash attack, etc, so that becomes a rock paper scissors.

So imo this is one of those weird cases where we win the neutral but very harshly lose the punishment game. we have to do SO MUCH correctly to keep up with him, damage-wise, that it's pretty lopsided, imo.

I think we have to focus on gimping a fairly hard character to successfully gimp. If we can find a way to do this reliably, we will win this, but that's going to be a challenge.

EDIT: I wanted to clarify that the real problem specifically with CF (as opposed to like Ganon or someone) is that he has the good punishments WHILE being mobile enough to get around spam. hard combination.

 

[ChopperDave]

I think this one is solidly in our favor. 4-6 at least.

Falcon's approach options are all simply dealt with. Lemons will stop pretty much all of them, and Leaf Shield will stop many of them too. If he commits to anything but a nair, uair, or jab, we can punish it. He's tall and likes to hop so dashing back and tossing a Metal Blade over your shoulder (or b-reversing) is always an option as well. IMO it's easy for us to wall Falcon and frustrate him into making a mistake.

He's also one of the most gimpable characters in the game. Z-dropped metal blades and Leafstools really shine in this matchup. Leaf Shield will stop both Raptor Boost and Falcon Dive and make Falcon whiff his ledge grab, so if he commits to a buffered ledge attack or ledge dodge, or simply fails to UpB again in time, he's toast. Falcon doesn't have a lot of options to change up his recovery, and we have a lot of ways to KO him when he's off stage, which is great for us and terrible for him.

Falcon does have one thing in his favor, and that's his combo game. Our weight gives him a few inescapable combos against us at low percents, I think. He can also be pretty nasty at baiting air dodges and then punishing them. However, we can reset out of a lot of these situations using Rush Coil, so it's not an insurmountable problem.

ETA: LOL, my experience vs Falcon is clearly very different than Fenrir's.

 

[Diamond Octobot]

Isn't this one of the MU's where we should consider Slide & Top Spin

More seriously, I just think the Captain feels like Sonic to me. He's not unbeatable, but he is sooo fast that keeping him away is way harder. Most of the time, I think SH Buster is the best way to slow him down. Maybe trying to Utilt him when he rushes in couls work...
Anyway, I really think we should try to esthablish some kind of strategy against fast caracters

 

[Locke 06]

Nair edge guard is dirty. It's becoming my edge guard of choice. So quick. So deadly.

Also, walled stages like DH give us an extreme advantage off stage as we can tech his up-B and punish with NAir for a kill.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: ADDED VIDEOS TO THE FIRST FALCON POST. I looked for helpful posts in the general MU thread and only found ChopperDave's post, which he talks about in his post here.

 

[K-45]

I think this is in megamans favor mostly becuase he's one of if not the easiest characters (other then little mac) for megaman to gimp. But one he gets a string of up airs going we might as well start the battle with 40%+. Its like what @ Fenrir VII said megaman has the lowest damage out put in the game and it really hinders us for every match up especially this one.

Isn't this one of the MU's where we should consider Slide & Top Spin

This match up we shouldn't approach him with Dtilt or dash attack. But they are really good when he's approaching us also its really good for reseting the game back to neutral.

One thing I think everyone forgot to take into account is hit stun. Caption falcon has very little hit stun so he's able to escape move combos megaman trys to pull off. So caption falcon is one of the few characters that can still approach he's he's taking damage from pellets.

I do think this is in megamans favor if we mix it up enough. I also think we are playing the match up wrong if we let him take to much damage and let his rage build up.

60/40 or 55/45 megamans favor

 

[Locke 06]

One thing I think everyone forgot to take into account is hit stun. Caption falcon has very little hit stun so he's able to escape move combos megaman trys to pull off. So caption falcon is one of the few characters that can still approach he's he's taking damage from pellets.

60/40 or 55/45 megamans favor

I had @ juice.Zucco 's stream on the other day while I was doing some reading and he said that metal blade > grab, which is standard on most characters, can be interrupted by Captain Falcon's jab due to less hitstun (weight) and a frame 3 jab. Confirm?

 

[Lanzoma]

I'm not comfortable assigning numbers this early in the game's life.

That said, I agree with (mostly) everything said so far. Megaman wins the long-range / mid-range neutral, Falcon wins the CQC. Aerial strength is very similar, both are heavy characters with strong kill options, but Megaman can gimp Falcon for days. Metal blade is a great way to force low recoveries, b-air and n-air are both pretty much the end of Falcon if hit out of his second jump, and up-b is predictable as hell.

The main ways Falcon racks up damage is grabs and not letting the opponent touch the floor by re-juggling. The answer for the first is basically fundamentals, for the second Megaman has many options (RC, Leaf Shield, disjointed d-air + the usual options).

If it wasn't for the offstage game, I'd say the matchup was down to player skill (and patience). But alas...

 

[K-45]

I had @ juice.Zucco 's stream on the other day while I was doing some reading and he said that metal blade > grab, which is standard on most characters, can be interrupted by Captain Falcon's jab due to less hitstun (weight) and a frame 3 jab. Confirm?

Ya caption falcon has very little hit stun witch helps his rush down game alot. I know R.O.B has the most hit stun in the game (poor guy) but I lost the list on who has the least amount of hit stun I just remember that pikachu and captin falcon have almost no hit stun. Not sure who has the least amount.

If I find it again I will put a .

 

[meleebrawler]

I'm pretty damn sure every character suffers the same amount of hitstun, they
don't have innate "hitstun modifiers" as they were. The only real exception is Bowser
at low percents with his "tough guy" attribute shrugging off 1% hits at low percentages.

Falcon is heavier than average and falls very fast, this can cause some combo moves
to fail at lower percents like Mario's Dthrow.

 

[BigLord]

I was summoned here by mere megamen who wanted to discuss the match-up!

My 2 cents: when up against a good Falcon, most of all, be careful on your missed attacks. Whatever you miss (and HOWEVER you miss) you can and will be punished. Dash-grab, dash-attack, uAir, even the knee, doesn't matter. A good Falcon with good reaction time WILL get you. You should keep the pressure on at all times. Use your projectiles. If you're grabbed and thrown, be careful when airdodging. If the Falcon is expecting it, you'll be punished with a Knee. You could try to counter our uAir combos with your own uAir (after fastfalling), if properly done it could be an early KO.

As some other people have said, our weakness is indeed our recovery (that's why I love custom moves; falcon strike is awesome). You can gimp us easily (not as easily as little mac, obviously). One thing to have in mind while trying to gimp Falcon: practice your techs! You WILL get grabbed, and if you're unlucky you'll be in a proper spot for a stage spike...

Hope I helped! Love Megaman too, took some time but I'm finally able to use it very decently in a duel.

 

[juice.Zucco]

its not that he has less hitstun, its that his fall speed makes him drop to the ground fast enough to get a jab out. I play anti alot in teams and he does this with many characters, whether it be interrupting with an attack or just rolling away because its not always air tight.

 

[~Burst~]

lets not forgot that Cap can just hold the A button to destroy all of our projectiles (Though leaf shield doesn't get destroyed entirely it does clash so he still doesn't end up getting hit) We can aim for his head but it turns into a high low game once they catch on. His jab causes the most problems from me. I find myself getting popped out of grabs from his jab more often than not, unless I'm punishing something with horrendous lag.

 

[ScAtt77]

So, Fenrir pretty much summed up what this match-up is REALLY like; honestly I believe it's Falcon's favor, easily.

Mega Man indeed wins the neutral game, but the problem comes in when winning the neutral game as Mega Man results in him getting around 10-14% at most on Falcon; however, if Falcon wins in neutral 2-3 times, it results in death for us. A good Falcon will simply take the pellets to the face and either: dash attack, short hop u-air, short hop b-air, or simply use Falcon's amazing dash grab to approach. Here's where it gets really tricky; Mega Man can duck under short hop u-air and dash grab approaches, while losing to dash attack and b-air, which arguably punishes Mega Man harder than getting hit with u-air or dash grab. Falcon's dash attack is also stupid good against most of Mega Man's tools; It easily clanks/ beats MB, it beats out slide/ trades with slide, and it outright kills Top Spin. Mega Man's only saving graces against it are shield, and pellets. Up close, jab simply destroys Mega Man so you really need to keep your pellet spacing up.

Sub 40%, do not d-throw -> fair falcon; it's unsafe on hit and if the falcon is quick enough, he can u-air/ jab you right after the fair. From about 0-15%, d-throw-> u-smash is a frame trap on Falcon and puts you in a much safer position than f-air. From about 15% -> 30% , d-throw -> RAR b-air is also great against Falcon.

When edgeguarding against Falcon, you really want to harass him with Leaf Shield, and MB. I usually don't bother with attaching crash bomb since Falcon is usually fast enough to run up to Mega Man. Contrary to the appearance of linearity in Falcon's recovery he's surprisingly difficult to outright gimp. I've found that simply staying on stage with leaf shield, grabbing , and throwing Falcon out of his ledge options to be the best way to rack up damage. Rinse, wash, and repeat until you kill falcon from a b-throw, or put him into a bad enough position to get b-aired off stage.

Personally, I don't think that this match up is any better than 40:60 in Falcon's favor; it could quite possibly be one of Mega Man's hardest match-ups.

Here's a few videos of the match-up. Excuse me for getting destroyed in more than half of them though. :l

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSj41Kks-yU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ahruBF0nc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqWk0WbQSew

Also, here's a video of NinjaLink playing that mu in a much more recent time period:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp057RUXDEI @ 10:28

 

[sphenco]

I played a alright Falcon the other day. One thing I was able to get was to chase them off stage and use the flame sword to keep them from using the ledge before they did Up B.
Might not work for or on everyone.

Plus it will get predictable, just like everything. Maybe try chasing them off stage and doing a back air instead, bouncing them off the side of the stage.

The match up works for me in a couple of other ways. One being abke to use the charged shot with out worry. Falcon is fast but with random charge shots he can be kept away.

And another is doing the cat and mouse. Most Falcon players I have gone against went in fast and aggressive. I would chip away at them until a good kill shot could be executed. And those Falcon players would chase me like crazy. Had to pull some real sly techniques and random moves.

 

[Greward]

I'm quite experienced in this matchup (he's heavily played in my region) and I've gotta say it's one of those i never ever want to face lol
In this matchup we have a win condition, and that is to gimp him. While this is somewhat easy, a smart falcon can and should recover high as long as possible even if we get a free punish, because a hard knuckle can end his stock relatively easy. Bair edgeguarding is pretty good here too, but it shouldn't kill at low %. He can use side B recovery as a mixup and if he gets a spike it's a kill, so watch out for that.
His jab is hella broken and he'll use it like all the time. Both 3 hits and multihit are pretty good against us. He can also camp us if he gets a lead because his jabs stop every projectile but Fsmash (which can be reacted). Jab as an edgeguard tool is pretty insane too, making our best strat to get back to the stage going from high (all options but roll and drop ledge are beaten by jab, and if we roll he can just react, stop jab and punish). Drop ledge -> UpB is the way i usually have the most success.
Down B goes through projectiles most of the time (sometimes i stop him with pellets by i'm not sure why or how) and he can use it to approach. Side B is easily stoppable by pellets so its avoidable.
Most of the time I'm looking for grab so I can put him offstage and try to make something happen. He can gimp us too but it's risky on his side. If he gets a good read we can easily lose a stock at very low %. If we don't kill him by gimping then he's quite the heavyweight with little lag on his attack so its extremely hard to get a kill on him, fortunately bair gimps work wonders at higher %.
It's also a bit hard to hit him with no retaliation at very low %, and trading hits its not something we want. Jab stops ****ing everything, although sometimes it's beaten by dtilt so we can trade. Metal blades aren't that good in this matchup so I usually go with a mixup of pellets, dtilt and grabs.

I'm not sure how to give the numbers to this matchup but i feel it heavily on Falcon's advantage. I feel like i have to do like 7 outplays for each outplay he does, and that's not a good matchup. It's winnable tho because of how easy he is to gimp.

As far as stages go, I'd say Castle Siege is kinda good for us for a counterpick. FD / SV are also ok. I don't really like duck hunt because it's harder to gimp there (I can't see him lol) but it should be good too.
I'd avoid Delfino / Halberd, and strike BF and T&C.

 

[Abortion Doc]

Zan, a Toon Link player from SoCal just went on record saying that Mega Man is a free win for Toon Link mains. I'd like to request some discussion on this matchup.

 

[Fenrir VII]

Regarding toon link, that seems like a ridiculous statement without evidence, or really a strong logical argument behind it as far as I can tell.

Back to CF, I made a bit of a discovery that may drastically affect the matchup, but I'm not sure how reliable it is...

Basically, I used a slide towards the edge as he recovered from below, and I hit him out of his ledge snap. I pulled this off on 2/3 attempts, so I'm not sure whether it's dependent on his spacing or mine... Or possibly timing, etc.

Obviously if we could reliably hit him out of snap, that would be a big thing for us, but I don't have a good way to test it out. Anybody know how reliable this is?

 

[ChopperDave]

Regarding toon link, that seems like a ridiculous statement without evidence, or really a strong logical argument behind it as far as I can tell.

Back to CF, I made a bit of a discovery that may drastically affect the matchup, but I'm not sure how reliable it is...

Basically, I used a slide towards the edge as he recovered from below, and I hit him out of his ledge snap. I pulled this off on 2/3 attempts, so I'm not sure whether it's dependent on his spacing or mine... Or possibly timing, etc.

Obviously if we could reliably hit him out of snap, that would be a big thing for us, but I don't have a good way to test it out. Anybody know how reliable this is?

That sounds like the 1-frame vulnerability window that happens with all ledge snaps. Dtilt and dsmash are both good for hitting people out of this vulnerability frame due to their low, lingering hitboxes. I've occasionally gotten people with dair too, but your timing has to be really on point (or lucky) for that.

 

[juice.Zucco]

Zan, a Toon Link player from SoCal just went on record saying that Mega Man is a free win for Toon Link mains. I'd like to request some discussion on this matchup.

I'm pretty sure NinjaLink beat Jash today, and both are great with Megaman and Toon Link Respectively, so I dunno.

 

[Sorichuudo]

I was summoned here by mere megamen who wanted to discuss the match-up!

My 2 cents: when up against a good Falcon, most of all, be careful on your missed attacks. Whatever you miss (and HOWEVER you miss) you can and will be punished. Dash-grab, dash-attack, uAir, even the knee, doesn't matter. A good Falcon with good reaction time WILL get you. You should keep the pressure on at all times. Use your projectiles. If you're grabbed and thrown, be careful when airdodging. If the Falcon is expecting it, you'll be punished with a Knee. You could try to counter our uAir combos with your own uAir (after fastfalling), if properly done it could be an early KO.

As some other people have said, our weakness is indeed our recovery (that's why I love custom moves; falcon strike is awesome). You can gimp us easily (not as easily as little mac, obviously). One thing to have in mind while trying to gimp Falcon: practice your techs! You WILL get grabbed, and if you're unlucky you'll be in a proper spot for a stage spike...

Hope I helped! Love Megaman too, took some time but I'm finally able to use it very decently in a duel.

Great Goruden Farucon, any advice on how to DI to help avoid the Knee of Justice ?

 

[CopShowGuy]

I am less enthusiastic about this match up. Falcon is fast and he hits hard. Gimping and early kills is kind of what Mega Man has to rely on for some matches. It's too much of an uphill battle keeping Falcon out while staying close enough to get good damage in. I'd say the advantage in this matchup is in Falcon's favor.

 

[Locke 06]

I was hoping to play some more matches with Fenrir's Falcon to get more experience, but didn't pan out this weekend.

The whole ducking under grab/uair or shielding DA/BAir/NAir... isn't that in our favor? While we are being reactive, if we guess right, our reward is a utilt. That's pretty good, no?

I have this as an even matchup. We can do a lot to Falcon in terms of shutting him down in neutral, edge guarding, and also countering his approaches while he hits hard and does a lot of damage with combos. A mistake by either at kill% will be a stock.

 

[Sleek Media]

Someone in my crew mains Falcon. Online, I've had no difficulty defeating Falcon's in FG, but his is different because he plays a very strong grab game. Forget everything else Falcon does. His grab, and his ability to use it to punish virtually anything we throw on block due to his insane speed, is the biggest danger in the match. Because of his overwhelming ability to punish, you have to keep moving, mixing up, and forcing him to move around and ideally make a mistake. Short hop your pellets while retreating, and don't always fire three. Keep metal blades in the air, but be mindful of his dash attack, which will catch the blade and punish you at the same time. As mentioned by others, hard knuckle makes short work of his recovery, but a dropped metal blade can stage spike, and in general, metal blades and pellets can force him to recover low where you can get a read. The main thing you have to do is not let him KO you early with a fSmash or spike. Don't be afraid to play it safe and get grabbed when the alternative is losing the stock.