Neutral:
This is one of the toughest parts of the MU. Falcon is just so fast and his shield pressure is formidable. I also feel like his ariels have more reach over all. Imo our neutral game should focus on 3 elements: Baiting, Zoning, and Trading.
Baiting-- ZSS does have a great dash dance game and many falcons are too aggressive. So baiting an ariel with dash dance and then grabbing can be very effect in some circumstances. I think its crucial to get grabs because I ultmately think ZSS will win this match up on sheik esque tech chasing, so any time we can bait a grab we should go for it. However there are two counters that falcon can do to this approach.
The first is gentleman after falcon misses an ariel, which is hard to deal with. Any body have an idea how to counter gentleman? Should we try CC'ing the gentleman and trading with jabs our own, or dtilts? (I don't know the frame data really). Or read the gentleman and punish it with side b or dsmash or nair??
The second is Falcon Nairing across the stage to intercept our dash dance. This has been really problematic for me in tournament; I always try to dash away and i get hit (especially on shorter stages). Or I try to back air in place, and the nair often beats it. My suggestion to avoid this, in terms of baiting, is rolling center to gain a more advantageous position, since falcon has already committed to nairing accross the stage. I'll have more suggestions to deal with nair across stage in my zoning section.
Along with baiting, avoiding is super important. I have found that running and crouching with ZSS can sometimes duck falcon ariels.
Zoning-- I believe this will be crucial to the MU. Without Zoning falcon, he will just flat out beat us in neutral because he is faster and he has great ariels. I think we need to utilize stun gun to its full potential in this MU, and I mean it in a zoning way. When Falcon is far away, I do think Full hop charge shots (that are fast falled) can put ample pressure on falcon. If it hits him, then let the combos pursue. If he shields it, we can condition him into jumping or staying in shield. And if he power shields it (which is plausible), its problematic but I still think its worth the risk. The big problem is i think his nair will clank with it (?). Overall, I think fully charged shots, especially from up close, in this MU will carry serious risks and can be heavily punished if we get too predictable with it. That being said, I think uncharged shots are the way to go in this match up.
Imo, uncharged shots will be the secret weapon in this match up. By themselves they aren't that effective; they don't lead into anything most of the time, so we can't treat them like falco's laser. However they are great for stopping momentum. It would be advantageous for us to stop or slow down falcon's dash dance game whenever we can. I suggest that we shoot grounded uncharged shots, when he is far enough away, to force him to either shield or go into the air. We can also shoot shffl uncharged shot if that seems more advantageous, and we can shoot uncharged shots at various ariel positions if the falcon player is jumpy. I think we need to fully explore all of stun gun's possibilities in this match up. My idea is that when we slow or stop falcon, it gives us time to make micro adjustments, such as wave dashing back or turning around so we can bair him.
Once we get center stage then we need to zone falcon out with spaced bairs, uncharged shots, fairs in place, or nairs in place. Whatever it takes, we really need to keep falcon from taking center stage and preventing his movement options. I would love any additional suggestions on how to do this. Spaced bairs in place don't always work in this match up because nair comes in too quickly. What I recommend is to do a retreating bair away to beat nair or knee across stage. It is unfortunate that you will be giving up positional advantage when doing so; however, an over agressive falcon should get hit by it as long as you are retreating the bair.
Trading-- Since falcon has better reach than us, we need to trade at disadvantageous positions to hopefully get a grab tech chase out of it, or an ariel combo. I think uptilt is our saving grace for this; it will trade with nair at lower percents. Dtilts should also be helpful, but I don't know necessarily when yet.
Overall, its imperative that we win neutral in this MU, so any other suggestions please let me know. I will be posting about tech chasing and edge guarding soon
Myst007_teh_newb
i can always get him to last game but uthrow knee killing me at 80 20 times a set breaks my soul ;___;
