Meaningful buffs since there's random stuff like, "Oh, look, Falco's 0.040 faster in run speed from Brawl's 1.432 to Smash 4's 1.472." At launch: Dtilt's higher knockback (and disjoint), the foundation of his present-day Up Smash, Down Smash (kind of), Nair's final hit having much higher knockback, and Fair. First 4 are simple with Down Smash being the most minor and ends up also being slightly buffed in knockback growth, +2 from its 76 to 78 in 1.1.4. That being said, I'd still take a Melee-esque Dtilt for higher power and more consistency over range which Ftilt should be doing. Fair was a "should have been done in Brawl." For whatever reason, Brawl Fair was not only weak and had poor connection issues, but also had questionably high landing lag, 33 frames, when it's not like Bowser's Dair, Captain Falcon's Fair, or the Links' Dair, y'know, KO moves, lack of any set knockback to help its loop hits, and questionably high frame gaps at 7 frames between hits. And then you look at Fox's and his connects fine allowing it to do 27% reliably, has low(er) landing lag, and helped with his recovery by lifting him up.
With patches: Up Smash, Nair, Fair, and Dair. Notice how I didn't say anything about Uair. Up Smash was explained already, so to Nair; Nair was given auto-link angles making it connect much better, but for me, this comes at a cost: overlapping with Fair. I'll discuss that later... Fair was straight up buffed: lowered startup, lower frame gaps from a workable 6 frames to 4 frames, and much lower landing lag at 25 frames to its inexplicably carried over from Brawl, 32 frames. Dair not spiking grounded targets helps since Dair's clean, spike hit has very high hit lag, a multiplier of 2, which makes can give people more time to react to the spike not to mention the problem of hit lag and shields where higher hit lag moves were much more unsafe -- this was changed in 1.1.0 and further altered in 1.1.1 if recall correctly. Post-1.0.8, grounded opponents are launched up 80 degrees which gives me an idea... to discuss later.
Let's move changes that didn't buff, but didn't exactly nerf Falco: the only really moves are Dtilt, Nair, Uair, and Bair. Dtilt was explained already. The rundown is that it shifted Falco from having a short-ranged, but very powerful Dtilt that KO'd to a sort of Melee Fox Dtilt with Roy Dtilt hitboxes and range. Nair started off in Brawl as something similar to Samus's Uair where it didn't guarantee a full connection, but its low landing lag, 9 to Smash 4's 15, allowed Falco to setup and mixup with it. With it becoming a regular multi-hit that connects well, it overlaps with Fair where Nair's main advantage is speed, lower landing lag, no landing hit, so that when frame synced, Falco can follow up instead of having a landing hit to send his opponent flying, and a property that sends his opponent flying wherever he faces allowing Falco to control where he wants his opponent to be while Fair is slightly stronger -- raw KO power-wise, they KO at around ~200% center-stage --, has more active frames, and is slightly disjointed or heavily disjointed regarding its landing hit.
Pre-1.0.8, Uair was a strong Uair that could KO from the ground at 160%. The only problems it had was carried from Melee: a body sour-spot that was about as weak as Zelda's Bair and Fair sour-spots. Why it existed when his normal knockback on Uair was significantly lower than Fox's, I don't know. Even with his high jump, it still wouldn't KO until later and in Melee where gravity didn't affect vertical knockback and characters had higher fall speed, it probably didn't KO until late like his Brawl and pre-1.0.8 Smash 4 Uair. The only thing that needed to be fixed was the sour-spot which still had a used to confirm into a Bair at higher percents. Lower startup was just a buff. The knockback changes from 27 base and 100 growth to 35 base and 90 growth? Nerf. Pre-1.0.8 Uair didn't have a good hit angle, 68 degrees, but 1.0.8 made it even worse by making it convoluted and on a "short-ranged move"; 1.0.8 made it so the lower leg and foot had a 65 degree hit angle, the upper leg had a 75 hit angle, and the body had an 85 hit angle. Hitting with the legs, you would not be able to KO on the ground without DI until 194%. That's in the range of Mario and ZSS's Uair KO percents both of which do much lower damage, but have better angles and very high growth to offset their lower damage. Add in DI and there you go, that's why even high up, Falco's Uair doesn't KO. Hitting with the body, you could KO at lower percents, at around 178%, but there's the problem of the body hitbox being small and the fact it's on his body. Most people would go for the legs to be safe. Going right next to someone with his low air speed and trying to hit with a small hitbox? All of this is why I feel like 1.0.8 did more to nerf his Uair than buff. It also forced a Uair that kind of doesn't work with Falco and doesn't play on he's got a good jump, he Uair shouldn't be strong, but strong enough where if he's high up, he can send you into the blast zone or his jump plays with his Uair to allow him to juggle kind of like how Corrin, Fox, Marth, Roy, and Yoshi juggle with single hits and chasing rather than Uairing multiple times like Capt., Mario, and ZSS which Falco can't really do because not only is he slower, but his Uair having high base and high damage means that like after 20% to 30%, he can't do even do 2 Uairs.
Bair's simple. It was tuned from a versatile, but offensive move to a purely offensive move that's not really versatile as it lacks range, coverage, and high active frames on it strong hit. Not really a buff or a nerf; it can be viewed as either, but for most, it's a buff since it addressed a problem of Brawl where Falco was really weak in KO power -- didn't help that one of the reasons Falco was weak in Brawl was Bair being nerfed in the first place. At times, it is overrated as people don't factor in its short-range and it being tuned purely for offense making it highly-specialized move and while it does fantastic at hitting fast and hitting hard, it doesn't do other things poorly like being a good jump-in aerial or a poke like Bayonetta, (Dr.) Mario, Fox, Samus, or ZSS's. Still, because it's so different compared to his old Bair and being designed to work with Falco, you can't really say buff or nerf, but rather, change or overhaul.
Ah, the sad parts: nerfs. Some of these will overlap like Nair's going to be here because of its landing lag increase and when considering that nothing had changed other than that and its knockback increase, it being similar to Brawl, but having higher landing lag preventing its old setups from working as well as it did. So, jab, Dtilt, Nair, Uair, Dair, Blaster, Fire Bird, and Falco Phantasm. Jab was explained already, but some other things include its rapid jab damage going down from 1% to 0.4% and possibly some knockback changes making it not do enough hit stun for the rapid jab finisher to connect. Dtilt's just the inconsistent hitboxes because of the new, middle sour-spot, Nair and Uair I just explained and Fire Bird, and Falco Phantasm will also be skipped.
For Dair, it's mainly the massive startup increase and it becoming a generic, slow spike Dair -- there's also the landing increase from Brawl's 12 to Smash 4's 23. For the record, Falco's Melee, especially Melee, and Brawl Dair were broken. Fast, high damaging, good knockback Dair with low landing lag either by default in Brawl, 12 frames, or L-canceled, 9 frames in Melee with Melee also basically being a divekick and crossup aerial. Spiking with Dair is a Falco thing, but what if doesn't work for whatever reason? Falco jumps high, a fast Dair or even average Dair that could spike would be insane and with its high active frames, the late hit would still be able to gimp people. Cloud works a "balanced Falco Dair" because Cloud's jump is low. Falco could work it too if his jump was low, but it's not; a Falco thing is his high jump. Falco's Dair with average startup, 10 frames, would kill Luigi's. Luigi would have jack on Falco's other than low recovery and lower landing lag. 1.0.8 making it so Falco's Dair doesn't spike grounded opponents made me think of something: "What if Falco's Dair wasn't a spike anymore? What if it was a Dair that instead of sending people down, sent people up?" They could have done that, made it frame 11 on startup where its clean hit sent people up 80 degrees and its late hit stayed the same as the 361 degree hit. Would need some other changes like it should probably not do 13%, maybe the late hit shouldn't be active for 14 frames, and maybe slightly lower landing lag. Knockback is fine; 10 base and 80 growth clean and 20 base and 90 late wouldn't kill people. Anyway, I'm rambling, but it could give Falco a unique Dair, a new Falco thing, and be interesting to see how it could be used.
Blaster... Blaster's problem stems from both Smash 64 where it was Fox's and Brawl. A projectile that can continuously fire and does hit stun is difficult to balance. What also doesn't help is that from 64 to Brawl, it had infinite range -- went from one end of the stage to the blast zone --, it auto-canceled giving it very little recovery, and it had a high rate of fire. It's history was 64: broken, Melee: broken, and Brawl: broken. Now? Broken, but in terms of like a broken car instead of a broken move that limited an opponent's options heavily. Nobody wants to deal with a projectile like that, but of course, people want a projectile like that to use. Brawl did something that had it not, could have kept Blaster at least in decent shape: lowering it startup. Brawl lowered is startup from Melee's 23 to 12. Note how the total frames was not touched at all. Brawl had the same high recovery as Smash 4's on the ground; Brawl had 45 recovery frames to Smash 4's 48. Brawl Falco was able to get away with it since with the faster rate of fire, he could hit you multiple times, keep you in hit stun enough, and go through with its high recovery without much of a problem. Oh, and the insane range helps to. Smash 4 Falco can't do that, he's likely going to hit you once, cause only 1 laser's worth of hit stun, and go through the high recovery. If the startup was never changed, Smash 4 Falco (and Brawl too), could have ended up with 35 frames of recovery. That's pretty decent for a projectile in Smash 4. Smash 4 alone, however, removed auto-canceling for all projectiles and in most cases, didn't compensate for them, with Falco's being hit the hardest since it had insanely high recovery for its hit stun and damage, decreased the range from "infinite" to about 2/3's of Final Destination, lowered the fire rate -- not sure on Brawl's, but Melee's was 24 frames per trigger pull grounded and 16 in the air while Smash 4's is 40 grounded and 33 aerial --, and also increased the total frames for aerial Blaster from Brawl's 41 frames to 49 raising the aerial recovery from 32 frames to 41.
I, too, agree it's not worse than 55-45 in either character (I'd give it to Fox based solely on the matches I've seen and played though).
