Yeah, bit of an overstatement on my part, but in most matchups his neutral has never felt threatening to me. Maybe because it seems pretty straightforward. His disadvantage is baaaaaad though, so maybe it just takes the edge off his neutral in practice.
Disadvantage is
atrocious. No questioning it. He's a fast faller with a subpar recovery. Getting hit hurts. But neutral is one of his strong points. Very good foxtrot makes dance trotting a very good option and that alone really boosts his already pretty solid neutral. How he transitions from neutral to advantage is pretty simpple, it's either gonna be a bair, dash attack, or dash grab but who's to say simple isn't effective? Bair is safe on shield, dash attack is usually used as a mix-up so that if you've been grabbing maybe a bit too much you can still get pretty much the same combos started.
Surely Little Mac playing hyper-aggressive is a terrible gameplan for him. The man can't exactly camp, but it seems like most of his play-style is built entirely around bait-and-punish (knowledge of fighting terms is weak, but hasn't he been described as a super footsies-oriented character?). He has very little shield safety and can so rarely ever afford to hit disadvantage. Iunno, could be wrong, but he never seemed like a true offense-oriented character to me.
Also will say I think patient Falcon is best Falcon for similar reasons. Play safe until you break into advantage, then go hard with what you can get. (ninja'd)
For the record I think the most offense-oriented character in the cast is Bowser Jr. Doesn't mean he does it the best, but his entire kit seems 100% built around pressing advantage constantly, since most of his defensive options are really lacking (if only up smash had a bit more horizontal reach...) and he doesn't have enough mobility to play much of a baiting game.
Actually, that's something. Would love to hear who people think the most offense-based characters are.
Mac's pretty safe on shield when spaced optimally. Cornering someone on the ledge and pressuring shield is definitely one of his stronger areas, especially after the downward angled Fsmash buff. Much more reliable for breaking shields. Jab 1&2 > dtilt > down angled Fsmash can be pretty effective.
The only thing Mac and Falcon have in common is grounded mobility. Outside of that, they play very differently. Falcon capitalizes of burst options like dash grab and run-in n-airs while Mac focuses on spacing with tilts and smashes. Mac can't space with aerials at all and his burst options are simply bad and punishable(side b, dash grab/dash attack). You'd also never see a falcon spacing around with tilts or playing super patiently like good macs do.
Maybe not as patient but spacing around with ftilt in neutral, yes. It's a decent way to transition to advantage because it sets up for grabs. And both Mac and Falcon like Dance trotting (especially Mac). They're actually have a good amount in common playstyle wise. It's why I find it so much easier transitioning from Mac to Falcon or vice versa rather than Marth to Falcon.
If we look at the 4BR tier list, Falcon's MUs vs the top and high tiers go a little like this:
Sheik: 30:70 Sheik's favor. Look at all the characters around Falcon's placement on the tier list, what's one thing they all have in common? A lackluster MU with Shiek.
ZSS: 40:60 ZSS' favor. She's so safe on shield now, and she wins offstage. Both can combo each other fairly hard.
Rosalina: 60:40 Falcon's favor. We don't care much about Luma, he's pretty easy to swat away. Rosalina kinda likes to put up walls, Falcon's good at breaking those walls with sheer speed and power. Both die offstage to each other fairly easily. She's a light weight too which means Falcon's got some early-mid percent Knee set ups he can utilize out of dthrow. Uair to Knee is a solid combo on most of the cast at certain percents, but it applies a little more here.
Ryu: 45:55 Ryu's favor. Fast faller combos. They hurt.
Pikachu: 35:65 Pikachu's favor. Fast faller combos. Pikachu's small and annoying. Not as bad as Shiek, but fairly annoying.
Sonic: 5:5 Falcon can keep up with Sonic. If you time it right, jab clanks with spin dash, but just simply holding out jab doesn't work.
Fox: 5:5 Fast faller combos on both sides. They both destroy each other. Fox isn't very well known for his edge guards in this game though.
Mario: 5:5 or 45:55 Mario's favor. Mario's combos are pretty easy to avoid. You can shield utilt after Mario dthrow til about 18%, but Mario gets less utilts on Falcon at that point than he would have before. Mario also kind of struggles to kill reliably outside of smashes.
Diddy: 40:60 Diddy's favor. While not necessarily a 'hard' MU, Diddy's neutral and frame data are exceptional. He's not as scary as he was pre-nerf though because you can actually contend each other's uairs.
Meta Knight: 5:5 or 55:45 Falcon's favor. Don't get death comboed and you'll have no problems what so ever.
Villager: 5:5 break through his walls, don't over extend, mix up your recoveries offstage.It might take a while, but it's very much doable.
Cloud: I don't entirely know whether it's just me having issues with Cloud or if he actually wins but I wanna say 60:40 Cloud's favor. Huge disjoints are annoying,and he's got pretty good frame data to get out of combos. Nair is too annoying. Really weak to edge guards but this really applies to just about every character vs Cloud.
Ness: 60:40 Falcon's favor. Ness has lackluster mobility specs, PK fire is pretty easy to avoid, so Falcon . Normal Ness disadvantages that everyone can exploit.
He doesn't lose to anyone below him except maybe ROB and possibly Olimar but as was the case with Cloud, I don't entirely know if that's just a me problem or a Falcon problem, but I could easily see it being both. ROB's gyro is annoying, Olimar is just weird to fight and thus hard to judge.
I think Falcon's right around where he should be on the tier list, but I do think Greninja is better than he is, and Ike's around the same level as him. Over all his MU spread is pretty solid, just Shiek being a big issue but that's just kind of the life of being a Mid tier character.
