C.Falcon vs Kirby

[TheSausXL]

So I just got it handed to me by a Kirby.

It seems like there is nothing you can do against Kirby. For example, you can't grab it because of that crouch, and even if you do you cant get anything off of it because the character is so light, you can't gimp it because of those jumps, and most importantly, if you get grabbed, you lose. I've been 0-death'd many times by a Kirby because C.Falcon is combo food. That dair is unbeatable offstage AND onstage and the u-tilt strings last forever. All attacks are safe on shield AND do decent damage. So I'm sitting here thinking that the only way to possibly beat a good Kirby is to hope for a read whenever you aren't getting comboed to hell, which is never.

So, anybody got any tips? This has to be the one of the hardest match ups for the Captain. I feel like garbage because this dude was toying when is was actually trying. Pls help, the pain hurts too much.

Captain Falcon be with you

 

[Sirocco]

This is why our grabs missing is so bad. Some mid tier and even low tier characters are able to exploit it and punish it hard. Stuff like G&W's down tilt seems unpunishable at times...

Kirby is kinda like a worse Pikachu, I guess. I haven't fought too many, but I always prepare for the worst when I do encounter them. The landing on some of his aerials will dodge all grabs, and I think that is true for just landing in general. If you do get a grab, all you are really going to get is an up air. I don't think he has a true combo down throw to knee on Kirby, though I'm not certain. Being that Kirby is light, down throw to up air will eventually kill him. Back air is strong, and he'll die to Raptor Boost reasonably early as well, but good luck landing that.

As for Kirby's combos, the fast faller struggle persists. If you get hit, you just have to take the beating. I'm not sure what the regrab combo is, maybe it was f-throw, but it was some throw into fair that let Kirby get a regrab and continue as he pleased. No amount of DI in the world could get me out, so that sucks. In this matchup, and against smaller characters in general, I use a lot of bairs since those will reliably hit them as well as being possibly our safest option. Against characters like Kirby or Jigglypuff who abuse their aerial speed to drift out of danger, I find that getting under them is usually one of the best things just because of how good Falcon's up air is. In addition to that, if you can catch on to their jumping patterns, calling out their jump and running in with a nair works well. It's risky, but Falcon's air speed is really good too. You can use it to pull back on your nairs or other aerials and retreat to safety.

Trying to punish with a grab is going to be difficult, and it's probably only going to work if your opponent messes up. You're going to have to set it up in some way, like with a bair. Otherwise, I find myself using more dash attacks and stomp against these characters since they are the next best options for punishing landing with, also having followup potential in themselves. It's worth noting that Raptor Boost will still be able to hit them too.

I don't think edge guarding Kirby is that bad though, even with all the jumps. You can catch his up b with a stomp, provided he goes for that in the first place. Putting pressure on him offstage is good, and I think people are more apt to air dodge in that position. Once again bair is one of the best moves for this. You can throw it out immediately, read his air dodge and then attack, or space out a counter attack and respond. Kirby's up b is not the best, and you can capitalize on a low recovery pretty well. If all else fails, you might have to try ledge trump shenanigans. If they start mashing to avoid being trumped, you can potentially read their option choice and punish it. In my experience, most people like to mash roll if they expect to get trumped, but better players will think twice.

Overall, you have to play really safe and patient. Falcon is forced to play a war of attrition with many characters in this game because he isn't able to convert off of punishes as well as we would like. Landing those punishes in the first place is very inconsistent against characters like Kirby, who can easily avoid 80% of our moveset. On the plus side, Kirby can be KO'd pretty quickly due to his lightweight, and I believe down throw to up air is always an option for it. And getting Kirby decently airborne can mitigate our problems on the ground. I will say that I don't really believe that Kirby is what you would call a good character, but given the way Smash 4 works in comparison to Brawl and Melee, the game just mechanically favors him over Falcon. I'm not saying that he beats Falcon though, I just mean that Falcon is unfairly disadvantaged from a design standpoint, not a matchup one.

 

[Shamsy]

Kirby is in my opinion our worst matchup by a huge margin. If he's not running into your Bairs, letting you dash attack, or just forgetting to crouch or hop there's nothing to do.

My honest opinion if you have a good Kirby main placing in your scene you need to pick up a Kirby counter just for him (There are many).

 

[Swagmaster]

The crouch to avoid grabbing is really annoying, but I think I have a solution. Dash attack has a big hitbox that should reach all the way down to a crouching character. You can possibly use this for some up air combos at low percents. If you start dash attacking and hitting Kirby, he will either lot learn and let you keep hitting him, or be forced into shield. If you see him start going into shield, your dash grab can work again. Just make sure to keep mixing up dash grabs and dash attacks to keep Kirby guessing. Also if you ever find yourself close enough to crouching Kirby, remember your down tilt has twice the range of Kirby's.

When Kirby is above you, my best advice is to either up air, or to read an air dodge into up air or something else (knee, d-air, raptor boost etc.). Like Sirocco said, Raptor boost when not staled can kill Kirby very early, also if you're getting comboed, rage will make it kill even sooner.

Captain Falcon is combo food, so in combos just try your best to DI away or up in you still have your second jump. If you haven't I recommend watching Beefy Smash Doods How to Mash Fast video. It helps a lot.

While recovering, just do your best to avoid getting gimped by mixing up up-b with side-b, air dodging when necessary, and not wasting your second jump. It's not easy, but it's doable.

But the fun part is when Kirby is offstage. I think edge guarding Kirby is very important and not too difficult. The key is, Kirby can recover with his jumps, but Kirby is very slow while recovering. I'll start listing the scenarios. First off, during any scenario, you can always get an air dodge knee, dair, of bair. If Kirby recovers high, use the same technique I stated earlier for when Kirby is above you. Remember to be patient. He will always eventually come down, so don't go for anything if he is too high. If Kirby recovers in the middle, b-air and d-air are your best options depending on where he is in the middle. Also remember that if he recovers in the middle straight to the stage, down tilts and up tilts are very effective. They can hit him out of his up-b too. I think Kirby's worst option is recovering low. D-air will work fine and b-air will into a stage spike. Remember the spacing for the run off knee. It is hard to see coming and an almost guaranteed kill at all percents if Kirby's already used his jumps to get there. Up and down tilt will only work if he doesn't grab the ledge, or stays in the ledge too long (or regrabs the ledge). And if Kirby recovers very low, footstools are amazing. Just remember that you might have to read an airdodge to do some of these things.

If you ever see a Kirby inhaling, and I do this a lot when I play Kirby, if he's onstage, jump over the wind box, and you have a free d-air. If you see him inhaling offstage, wait for him to release it, and punish. Never challenge the mouth side of the inhale without a projectile.

I hope this advice helps, and to finish off, I have a story. I was fighting a Kirby who was pretty good. He get me in some up tilt strings several times. But I hit him high off the left side of the stage. I run over to that side and wait as he floats down. At the perfect time I jumped offstage and started a reverse Falcon punch. Kirby reacted by airdodging right into the fiery fist. He flew from under the left side of the stage, all the way off of the right side of the stage. It's my best Falcon kill to date.

Edit: Wow, didn't realize how long this became. Sorry for the lecture, but I think it oughta help.

 

[Agent Emerald]

Kirby main here, dropping some stuff.

At this point it's pretty much understood that Kirby (along with Jiggs and G&W) makes Falcon's life hell with his duck. On those rare moments you do get a grab, try to keep Kirby in the air as long as you can with that fat Up air. Kirby's airspeed is overall kinda poor, which means he has a bad time getting back to the ground.

In general, Kirby is kinda slow, which is one of his two biggest weaknesses (other is his poor range) and has to wait for an approach option. Falcon has the second fastest runspeed, so you can dance around and get hits in as Kirby struggles to catch you.

Personally, I think Kirby's recovery is carried mostly by his jumps , since Final Cutter is overall meh. When Kirby uses FC, try to punish, but don't get spiked by the falling hitbox.

Remember this, Kirby is light and Falcon is heavy, so rage is you friend in this matchup. The Falcon matchup in my experience is "Duck everything, punish and and combo hard, die at 60-80% because of Rage Falcon Fsmash or Side B." This kind of a general thing for lightweights in this game, so note that.

With Inhale, don't expect it anywhere but when you're at the ledge. Inhale eats up (heh) regular getup, jump, and sometimes attack. Unless Kirby is about to go for a hilarious disrespect, he will spit you back offstage.

And to finish it off, a list of things Kirby can duck:
Gentleman Jab (rapid jab is fine)
Grab (all of them)
Dash attack
Ftilt and Fsmash (when not angled down)
Falcon Punch (You absolute madman)
Raptor Boost (Weird, I know.)
Falcon Kick (Up to a certain point. At about falcon's knee it hits.)

Hope this helps.

 

[miniada]

55:45 since kirby is so short falcon will have a hard time attacking him. He can combo falcon to hell and back with his Up tilt and aerials which he can also use to edgeguard falcon.he has a better recovery to. And falcon will have a hard time gimping of stage due to his short recovery.

 

[_Magus_]

Wanna know how to beat Kirby?

Spoiler

Go Ganondorf

 

[miniada]

Wanna know how to beat Kirby?

Spoiler

Go Ganondorf

kirby beats ganon.

 

[_Magus_]

kirby beats ganon.

Actually, Ganondorf's aerials and range make him dominate the air a lot more than people give him credit for. And that was the case before the patch, and before NAir got buffed to be an even better punish and OOS option. Plus Ganondorf has flame choke, a dash attack that hits under him, and an incredibly powerful and quick poke in his Down Tilt. All of these are tools that Falcon doesn't have in the MU. Also, Ganon only needs 5 hits to kill kirby. How does kirby kill Ganon?

IMO kirby doesn't have the tools that the other top tiers do to give him a hard time, like Shiek's fair and needles or ZSS's insane juggles.

 

[Agent Emerald]

Sure, Kirby has a slightly harder time against ganon for the reasons you mentioned, butknow this; Ganon gets combo'd harder than Falcon. One bad read and it's 30-40%. Kirby also has the fun of being the faster one in the matchup, so he can slip away. Offstage is even worse for ganon, since Kirby can gimp him more easily than Falcon.

 

[Swagmaster]

And to finish it off, a list of things Kirby can duck:
Gentleman Jab (rapid jab is fine)
Grab (all of them)
Dash attack
Ftilt and Fsmash (when not angled down)
Falcon Punch (You absolute madman)
Raptor Boost (Weird, I know.)
Falcon Kick (Up to a certain point. At about falcon's knee it hits.)

I tested some of these, and yes, Falcon punch, grab etc. all miss. But dash attack does not have to. If you dash attack right next to Kirby, it misses completely, but if you dash attack slightly earlier, the larger ending hitbox does hit Kirby. I think this is very important considering it gives you a substitute for the lost dash grab.

 

[TheSausXL]

This really helps you guys. I played that same Kirby last night and took some games off of him. Like you all said, all i did was space with bair and the occasional dtilt, and approach with dash attack and condition them to shield. This safe yet aggressive mindset takes a little off of Kirby's edge. It is also interesting to note that dash attack stuffs inhale and can really turn the tide of the match. He also started camping offstage, hovering just beyond the ledge and throwing out fairs. I found that keeping track how many jumps he used and anticipating the Final Cutter and punishing with the all mighty Falcon Stomp was very effective against this strategy. Dtilt also wrecks them if they are at higher percents or almost out of jumps.

But what I'm still having a lot of trouble with is getting out of combos. The whole dair -> uptilt string or the dair -> dtilt -> fthrow -> get wrecked combo REALLY destroy C.Falcon. I've seen that most of the damage comes from dair, and I think it's kinda difficult to deal with. It's got a good hitbox, good damage, and is almost lagless so it's kinda hard to punish. If you shield it there's a grab waiting for you upon landing. So what I've seen as the best strategy for avoiding that is to just challenge it with uair. Any tips about that? Or tips about what to do when you're getting bodied by massive combo strings? My performance has gotten better but I feel like I could still do better and you guys are really helping.

 

[Swagmaster]

But what I'm still having a lot of trouble with is getting out of combos. The whole dair -> uptilt string or the dair -> dtilt -> fthrow -> get wrecked combo REALLY destroy C.Falcon. I've seen that most of the damage comes from dair, and I think it's kinda difficult to deal with. It's got a good hitbox, good damage, and is almost lagless so it's kinda hard to punish. If you shield it there's a grab waiting for you upon landing. So what I've seen as the best strategy for avoiding that is to just challenge it with uair. Any tips about that? Or tips about what to do when you're getting bodied by massive combo strings? My performance has gotten better but I feel like I could still do better and you guys are really helping.

I think challenging it with up-air is your best option. Kirby's down air is a ruthless move that has a little bit of startup lag, almost no end lag, meteors, and sets up for combos. I would only challenge it with your safer moves with range or priority like Falcon kick, down tilt, and up-air (back-air if you can space it right). As said before, Falcon is combo food, so once he's in a combo, it's very hard for him to get out. Once Falcon is in a combo, save your second jump and use it wisely. DI and airdodges can help too. What I always do instictively is mash A whenever I am in a combo. If the combo is not true, Falcon's quick jab or n-air interrupts the combo. Remember your fast fall is one of the best in the game when recovering from high up. You might also want to try timing a raptor boost upon Kirby's landing from down-air. Good luck.