The Knee as an approach is a big no-no. That *****es lightning kicks end your knee of justice, unless she has bad timing. But don't count on that. U-air is your best bet against her, as her downward protection REALLY sucks (dair ftl). I have had success against Zelda (the character I play against the most ) using several un-Falcon like techniques. For starters, say you shield her lightning kick. You'll be too far away to shield grab, and a f-smash will be coming very shortly to bust your shield or harm you severely. More times than one, a wavedash out of shield into a grab had worked for me, into u-throw uair spam, as stated above. However, the Zelda caught onto that pretty quick and busted out the super quick d-smash into fair/ nair pain, so I started nairing out of shield, which does just enough to screw up her timing, initiating a combo.
One last bit of advice that has really helped me, is about Din's fire. Zelda players are NOT stupid, they know their **** if they're playing Zelda competively. They will not use Dins fire on Falcon unless he is offstage or REAL far away (Your too slowwww). Not much you can do about the latter except play your character less like Samus without missiles, but the key here is in the former. Offstage recovery for Falcon is predictable. For Zelda, a din's fire to an offstage kick or dair will kill you real well, since Din's fire pops you up and your DIing towards her. So at the moment of contact of Din's fire, Di away from the stage slightly, then up-B back. If done correctly, she will have whiffed a kick/ missed completely, and be in her super slow Zelda recovery mode. Now you can accordingly edge hog, edgeguard or punish her slow landing times on stage for a good amount of death. Cause Zelda's recovery is quite like Shieks. Take away the edge, and that ***** is laggy. Sorry for the rant, I have a lot of Zelda play time and nobody to share it with.
