So I’m spending the summer overseas, and because of the lack of melee here I am unable to prove my theories vs puff myself. However, the top falcons are more frequently playing Hungrybox and I am pissed at how badly they get rocked every time. I can’t hold it in anymore; I have to talk about falcon – puff.
It’s my belief that falcon wins the matchup if you know what to do, however it looks like no falcon knows what to do. Here’s a list of what you don’t do.
DON’T
· Challenge bair walls – it’s puff’s only advantage in neutral, she pokes with bairs, then floats away to safety. It’s what she does.
· Spam bairs yourself – why are you trying to outwall her wall. Have you seen her bair’s hitbox? Because your aerial mobility isn’t nearly as good as puff’s, all she has to do is float into your wall with bair and poke you for damage
· DI bairs in at mid percents offstage – you’re probably dead anyway, but don’t go out with six bairs man. Falcon is heavy and puff’s bair stales. If you DI down, you can at least get out of the combo, where you’ll still die, but have a 3% chance of living, and we falcon mains take that 3%.
· Get grabbed – puff’s a rotating balloon of doom who spends 80% of the match in the air, how you gonna let her win the ground game too. Grow some balls and please avoid tomahawk grabs. She’s a floaty, just react. Did you know, if you time the jump OoS as she lands, you can stomp over her grab? Do it always please, sick of seeing Juan’s ass get free grabs.
· Come back to the stage with a double jump stomp – why are you like this. Do you know how easy it is to avoid this and punish falcon. Getting it once out of ten tries isn’t worth it man snap out of it.
· Fight her offstage – you’re a fast faller with one double jump. Once you use that to try and hit her, she can drown you with her other four jumps. She dies early anyways, just let her come back, keep the pressure on, and get a hit from onstage.
Falcons today are just trying to hit puff. They swing and swing with up airs and jabs, but puffs still live to 130% every stock. Watch s2j vs a puff, his proficiency at scrapping isn’t good vs puff, you need a different game plan. The problem is the falcons are playing the puffs’ game. Puff wants to build damage with aerial walls, get you offstage, and ez edgeguard you. Falcons try to challenge her aerial walls despite having worse aerial mobility and slower, more committal aerials. They try to fight her from the corner and fly offstage to hit her, only to lose the exchange and get edgeguarded. This is day one falcon stuff my mans, you need to play smarter.
Okokok. So here’s the game plan.
You need to avoid taking percent, and kill puff early. You do this by cutting down on the risks you take in neutral, and by being smart about how you kill puff. Here’s how you do it.
You have three reliable ways of killing puff.
· War of attrition - You go for damage. You poke and poke and poke with up airs and back airs until you can kill puff with a stray hit. This is a good option only if you’re winning neutral a majority of the time and you’re up in stocks. To make this method easier, be mindful of stage control and DI mixups. An upair in center stage wont kill puff at 120% but it will kill a puff at the edge at 90%. Likewise, an upair won’t kill till 140% with good DI, but it will kill at 70% with bad DI. Keep center stage and look for hits when she’s at the edge. You’re looking to outplay her for the hit, not just spam moves she can easily evade. And if you can, say, delay your upair to hit her as she’s retreating, you can catch her DI-ing poorly.
· Combo into knee or stomp offstage – You can combo puff if you’re trying to combo puff. You just can’t if you’re only trying to poke. It’s so important to combo puff because you can kill her at 60%. You’re basically resting her. Here’s a rule of thumb.
· Downthrow>knee – this works at most percents, and is the most reliable way to kill puff at high percents. Here’s where the juicy mind games come in. Puff can crouch your grab, we know. She can also shield your stomps and late aerials on reaction when she’s crouching. So what we need is to apply pressure, sniff out that shield, and grab that ass. N0ne is good at this and got a lot of grabs on Abu this weekend.
Falcon is a scary character to play against. He’s the love child of air jordan and the flash. If you’re winning neutral, you’re poking effectively, and you’re avoiding the puff who’s doing the same crap over and over, then you can run circles around puff.
This is how you neutral.
· Get under puff – Puff wants to jump? Good. Get under that ass and upair her life away. You couldn’t ask for freer damage. Just don’t fly offstage with your dashing full hop up airs, when puff’s at 0, there isn’t much knockback.
· Get over puff – you can jump higher than her and more quickly. You can mix up jump timings and heights, fastfall timings. I like falling onto puffs with knees. The hitbox stays out, unlike the aerials she has to contest you. If she jumps to hit me, she’s getting a hard knee. If she doesn’t, she’s getting a soft knee, which combos into a hard knee. Try it out.
· Dash dance – falcon doesn’t have better aerial mobility than puff, but he is faster. You need to stay on the ground when you’re zoning puff. Stupid ass falcons are trying to zone with falling aerials, and getting baired upon landing. Dash dance and look for opportunities. You can hit them if they’re always retreating after bair, you can hit them if they jump twice, you can hit them if they jump once. If the puff is always doing the same thing, you can do something to punish it. Don’t get stuck in your shield and let puff shark you, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.
· Late aerials – Your faster aerials can combo into knee up to 75% if you do them as late as possible. Wizzy is good at this and can get magical punishes on puff. If you’re sharking puff with your vertical movement (variation of jumps and drift), you can confirm whether or not an aerial will whiff based on where she is and how she’s moving. If your aerial isn’t going to connect, don’t throw it out. Puffs are looking to catch your landing lag. Doing an empty hop into dash away or another aerial is huge in staying stafe. If puff can’t get away from your big ass up air in time (if she whiffed, if she overextended and is trying to retreat, if she’s drifting into you), you can throw it out safely and get a combo if she’s not DI-ing correctly.
· Knee – Knees in neutral can be good. It has a pretty good disjoint, it stays out really long, and it can kill, especially since they’re moving and more likely to have bad DI. You can mix up falling knees, late knees, fast knees, retreating knees, forward drifting knees. If you can introduce some chaos into puff’s zoning game, you can get a knee off of just reading her movement.
So now that you know how to neutral good and how to kill puff good too...
What should your game plan be?
1. Keep stage control – staying in the center means you aren’t going to get cheesed very easily. Falcon’s only easy to kill when he’s offstage or getting rested. And puff is easier to kill when she’s in the corner. Putting her there means forcing her to have to retake stage, giving you a chance to shark her approach.
2. Pressure her always - You’re faster than her, so make it known. Use that speed to avoid hits and find your own. Weave in and out of her zone. She doesn’t control that ****, you do. Once she’s shielding a lot and failing to shield out of crouch on reaction, you know you’re doing a good job.
3. Kill her quickly - Puff stocks aren’t made to last. Get her to like 40%, then only go for hits that will combo into an early KO, see if she gives it to you. If you’re not winning neutral reliably, you’re putting yourself at risk every time you swing. The least you can do is swing only if it will lead to a kill. Be aware her death percents are different on different stages. You’ll need puff at like 80% on the edge of dreamland in order for knee to kill.
4. Mix her up and find that grab – You don’t have to grab puff in order to beat her, but it sure does help. Stomp that crouch, do late bairs and upairs, poke at her stupid deflated body. Convince her that she needs to shield. Then mix in tomahawk grabs, sniff out rolls and spotdodges, continue to poke with aerials. Make it really suck to be puff.
Think that’s most of it. Happy hunting!
It’s my belief that falcon wins the matchup if you know what to do, however it looks like no falcon knows what to do. Here’s a list of what you don’t do.
DON’T
· Challenge bair walls – it’s puff’s only advantage in neutral, she pokes with bairs, then floats away to safety. It’s what she does.
· Spam bairs yourself – why are you trying to outwall her wall. Have you seen her bair’s hitbox? Because your aerial mobility isn’t nearly as good as puff’s, all she has to do is float into your wall with bair and poke you for damage
· DI bairs in at mid percents offstage – you’re probably dead anyway, but don’t go out with six bairs man. Falcon is heavy and puff’s bair stales. If you DI down, you can at least get out of the combo, where you’ll still die, but have a 3% chance of living, and we falcon mains take that 3%.
· Get grabbed – puff’s a rotating balloon of doom who spends 80% of the match in the air, how you gonna let her win the ground game too. Grow some balls and please avoid tomahawk grabs. She’s a floaty, just react. Did you know, if you time the jump OoS as she lands, you can stomp over her grab? Do it always please, sick of seeing Juan’s ass get free grabs.
· Come back to the stage with a double jump stomp – why are you like this. Do you know how easy it is to avoid this and punish falcon. Getting it once out of ten tries isn’t worth it man snap out of it.
· Fight her offstage – you’re a fast faller with one double jump. Once you use that to try and hit her, she can drown you with her other four jumps. She dies early anyways, just let her come back, keep the pressure on, and get a hit from onstage.
Falcons today are just trying to hit puff. They swing and swing with up airs and jabs, but puffs still live to 130% every stock. Watch s2j vs a puff, his proficiency at scrapping isn’t good vs puff, you need a different game plan. The problem is the falcons are playing the puffs’ game. Puff wants to build damage with aerial walls, get you offstage, and ez edgeguard you. Falcons try to challenge her aerial walls despite having worse aerial mobility and slower, more committal aerials. They try to fight her from the corner and fly offstage to hit her, only to lose the exchange and get edgeguarded. This is day one falcon stuff my mans, you need to play smarter.
Okokok. So here’s the game plan.
You need to avoid taking percent, and kill puff early. You do this by cutting down on the risks you take in neutral, and by being smart about how you kill puff. Here’s how you do it.
You have three reliable ways of killing puff.
· War of attrition - You go for damage. You poke and poke and poke with up airs and back airs until you can kill puff with a stray hit. This is a good option only if you’re winning neutral a majority of the time and you’re up in stocks. To make this method easier, be mindful of stage control and DI mixups. An upair in center stage wont kill puff at 120% but it will kill a puff at the edge at 90%. Likewise, an upair won’t kill till 140% with good DI, but it will kill at 70% with bad DI. Keep center stage and look for hits when she’s at the edge. You’re looking to outplay her for the hit, not just spam moves she can easily evade. And if you can, say, delay your upair to hit her as she’s retreating, you can catch her DI-ing poorly.
· Combo into knee or stomp offstage – You can combo puff if you’re trying to combo puff. You just can’t if you’re only trying to poke. It’s so important to combo puff because you can kill her at 60%. You’re basically resting her. Here’s a rule of thumb.
o Below 50%: stomp>knee works, bair>knee works, 3rd hit of gentleman>knee works (but it’s pretty easy to SDI the first two hits), upair and 2nd hit of nair>knee works. 50% is a hard cutoff, anything in the 50s% you’re not getting anything off stomp (so stop stomping)
o 50%-75%: think it’s around mid 70s%. late upair and 2nd hit of nair>knee works. Weak bair/knee> knee works
o Above 75%: weak bair/knee>knee works. This is underrated, as it’s the only aerials that will combo into a kill past just 70%. It works at like any percent, but it’s hard to connect as different DIs and percents cause you to do a different run/jump combination to get the knee. Practice it in 20xx, it’s really fun.
o If your combo gets the puff offstage and knee isn’t going to kill, go for a stomp (this might not actually be a good idea cus of puff’s auto-meteor cancel BS, try it out and lemme know how it goes l0l)
o If knee won’t kill, if you’re nuts you could go for a stomp onto stage to keep up the rhythm of the game and continue your pressure on her on the ground. Otherwise, just get the knee for damage, and try to keep puff above you and at the edge. This doesn’t mean try to edgeguard her or fight her offstage. You’re at a disadvantage there. She’ll die in two more hits anyways.
· Downthrow>knee – this works at most percents, and is the most reliable way to kill puff at high percents. Here’s where the juicy mind games come in. Puff can crouch your grab, we know. She can also shield your stomps and late aerials on reaction when she’s crouching. So what we need is to apply pressure, sniff out that shield, and grab that ass. N0ne is good at this and got a lot of grabs on Abu this weekend.
Falcon is a scary character to play against. He’s the love child of air jordan and the flash. If you’re winning neutral, you’re poking effectively, and you’re avoiding the puff who’s doing the same crap over and over, then you can run circles around puff.
This is how you neutral.
· Get under puff – Puff wants to jump? Good. Get under that ass and upair her life away. You couldn’t ask for freer damage. Just don’t fly offstage with your dashing full hop up airs, when puff’s at 0, there isn’t much knockback.
· Get over puff – you can jump higher than her and more quickly. You can mix up jump timings and heights, fastfall timings. I like falling onto puffs with knees. The hitbox stays out, unlike the aerials she has to contest you. If she jumps to hit me, she’s getting a hard knee. If she doesn’t, she’s getting a soft knee, which combos into a hard knee. Try it out.
· Dash dance – falcon doesn’t have better aerial mobility than puff, but he is faster. You need to stay on the ground when you’re zoning puff. Stupid ass falcons are trying to zone with falling aerials, and getting baired upon landing. Dash dance and look for opportunities. You can hit them if they’re always retreating after bair, you can hit them if they jump twice, you can hit them if they jump once. If the puff is always doing the same thing, you can do something to punish it. Don’t get stuck in your shield and let puff shark you, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.
· Late aerials – Your faster aerials can combo into knee up to 75% if you do them as late as possible. Wizzy is good at this and can get magical punishes on puff. If you’re sharking puff with your vertical movement (variation of jumps and drift), you can confirm whether or not an aerial will whiff based on where she is and how she’s moving. If your aerial isn’t going to connect, don’t throw it out. Puffs are looking to catch your landing lag. Doing an empty hop into dash away or another aerial is huge in staying stafe. If puff can’t get away from your big ass up air in time (if she whiffed, if she overextended and is trying to retreat, if she’s drifting into you), you can throw it out safely and get a combo if she’s not DI-ing correctly.
· Knee – Knees in neutral can be good. It has a pretty good disjoint, it stays out really long, and it can kill, especially since they’re moving and more likely to have bad DI. You can mix up falling knees, late knees, fast knees, retreating knees, forward drifting knees. If you can introduce some chaos into puff’s zoning game, you can get a knee off of just reading her movement.
So now that you know how to neutral good and how to kill puff good too...
What should your game plan be?
1. Keep stage control – staying in the center means you aren’t going to get cheesed very easily. Falcon’s only easy to kill when he’s offstage or getting rested. And puff is easier to kill when she’s in the corner. Putting her there means forcing her to have to retake stage, giving you a chance to shark her approach.
2. Pressure her always - You’re faster than her, so make it known. Use that speed to avoid hits and find your own. Weave in and out of her zone. She doesn’t control that ****, you do. Once she’s shielding a lot and failing to shield out of crouch on reaction, you know you’re doing a good job.
3. Kill her quickly - Puff stocks aren’t made to last. Get her to like 40%, then only go for hits that will combo into an early KO, see if she gives it to you. If you’re not winning neutral reliably, you’re putting yourself at risk every time you swing. The least you can do is swing only if it will lead to a kill. Be aware her death percents are different on different stages. You’ll need puff at like 80% on the edge of dreamland in order for knee to kill.
4. Mix her up and find that grab – You don’t have to grab puff in order to beat her, but it sure does help. Stomp that crouch, do late bairs and upairs, poke at her stupid deflated body. Convince her that she needs to shield. Then mix in tomahawk grabs, sniff out rolls and spotdodges, continue to poke with aerials. Make it really suck to be puff.
Think that’s most of it. Happy hunting!
