Hiya PPMD, had some questions about Falcon because lately I've wanted to put my head through a wall after realizing it's easily my worst matchup in the game, and coming to the realization that I'm pretty confident Falcon is better against Marth than Sheik and maybe even puff. I have issues with every aspect of the matchup, and while I've sought solutions and even added entirely new tech to my gameplay specifically to deal with parts of the matchup I struggle with, my results have been the same, I would even say they've been slightly worse in some cases. I need to know if I'm overcomplicating things, if I'm simply utilizing tech improperly, etc. I have so many questions I'm not even really sure where to start, so I'll just start listing crap in no particular order.
1. WTF do I do in neutral: So falcon has an excellent dashdance, an excellent CC, and incredible grab punishes on marth. Marth's fair is weak against him up to an absurdly high percent even you can catch him in the air since you're likely to trade (though not AS bad if you do backwards shorthop and maintain backwards drift the whole time) Dtilt is an alright tool but never leads to anything meaningful in my experience since he can do a full di toward sh stomp and absolutely destroy you at any percent from like 40-100%. Hitbox on that move is insane and the punishes off it are worse. My question in this section is what should be my goal in neutral, what moves should I be prioritizing? The typical rule is DD whiff punish/cc grab a lot, use retreating and walling nair/fair, mixing up early double fair and late delayed fair, use overshot dtilt and run up crouch fsmash to punish people who dash back too much, and use nair in place to catch people coming in. This is all well and good, but I don't feel like any of these options are particularly good universally against falcon, and he has excellent answers to all of them. What should I be looking for in the falcon's play to determine what moves I should use more or less?
2. Dealing with overshot aerials, especially nair: So overshot nair is good for a million reasons, ignoring the fact that he can cover some entire stages with it in one shorthop or the fact if not CC'd it'll true combo into knee, which will either kill you outright or set up for an invincible ledgestall stomp > knee/reverse knee at stupid early percentages. After doing some research of my own I learned that using ASDI down in your dash dance is good against nair because it won't knock you up, and i now do this in all matchups, but it still leaves me with problems I don't have answers to. For example, it knocks you down instead of knocking you into the air for a combo, which is better and you won't die if you're on the stage, but it still puts you in a tech chase scenario and doesn't allow you to punish him, the way a true CC will. (though i suppose you could amsah tech it if you were super ready for it? Still doesn't net a punish though.) It also doesn't work nearly as well in the corner, since you end up sliding off the stage and again not really being able to do much. Is there some better grounded neutral option here? is traditional CC better? Moving onto other options for dealing with it, like catching him out of the air or antiairing him, marth doesn't have great choices. Utilt is laggy and unreliable to catch him with because falcon's nair is so fast, fair trades and has a small window that can be punished on reaction, on top of not leading to much if you fade back. I was told by the best falcon in my scene that marth's nair "beats" falcons and that it's a good answer, and while it works sometimes, falcon is simply too fast for you to react with it, so you have to "guess" the timing he'll come in with. Unreliable to say the least. To make matters worse, if the timing is off at all, Falcon's nair will straight up win, or will trade with the first hit of marth nair which is never a position you wanna be in. Are there any better choices? Or maybe one of the above i should be leaning on more?
3. Edgeguarding high recovery: Self explanatory really, a lot of times marth can do ladder combos with upairs uptilts and fairs that end on platforms, but against falcon in particular i find a lot of the time you can't reliably tipper him or ken combo him, this results in you ending the combo with a bair, fair, or nair somewhere in the middle of the stage, where he can easily recover with an early up B and the drift is extremely hard to react to. Obviously I know basic rules like fading into the stage to dissuade him from full DIing in, then when he drifts back you simply walk to the edge and fsmash or fair > fsmash, but in general I find you need some kind of read to keep him out. His fastfall is also SO fast that timing it in the first place is kind of difficult, even if he goes where you think he will. Any tips?
4. Edgeguarding sweetspot doublejump to ledge: I think i've gotten better about this one recently, but marth can't just dtilt/fair/whatever the ledge like he can in a lot of matchups because falcon techs and you get hugged. I asked gravy what to do in this scenario and he said if you have a read you can do runoff fair, runoff doublejump dair, or wd back off stage > fair > up b > dair. All of these sound good, I just wanted to get your take and hear if you thought anything was better, cause there's nothing more frustrating than a falcon at 160 who keeps making it back with his doublejump after you fair or dtilt him off.
5. Surviving these ****ING combos and edgeguards: This is really my biggest problem with the matchup by far. Let's say that i miss a reaction or that I lose a mixup and I get upaired, naired, stomped, grabbed, raptor boosted or whatever and I'm in the air. I find it ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE to determine what aerial he'll go for, and it feels like it doesn't even matter what he chooses. If you DI in, you're never close enough to the stage anyway to make it back with an airdodge and/or you just get kneed or upaired again after you DI in and die right then and there. If you DI out, it almost always sets up for an edgeguard. I've tried SDIing out, SDIing up and in, SDIing only in, in the hopes he'll knee right away, and I get nothing. When I get naired into knee and die at 30%, or raptor boost knee and die at 60%, or I get backaired and DI it out because if I di it in it'll connect to knee, but then he sets up an edgeguard and stomp reverse knees me anyway and I'm functionally dead regardless, I wanna tear my hair out. Is there some way to amsah tech the stomp knee? is there some way to tech the reverse knee from ledge? Is there any way I can reliably SDI to get out of his weak knee > knee or upair > upair or bair > knee or upair > knee combos without being dead at 40-70%? Any help you have in this section would mean a ton to me.
6. Comboing falcon: So people say marth combos the christ out of falcon and this is true in SOME circumstances, but not all. I find that sometimes if you tipper fair falcon (the one that pops him upwards) at any range from 40-80%, he reaches the platform too quickly and can tech in place and get shield up before you can upair him, unlike spacies/sheik. Additionally, if you ever weak hit him it'll get cc > shield drop punished and you'll likely die right away, or worse, he'll slideoff DI. I've been slideoff DI > upair > kneed at as high as 120% before after hitting with a weak upair hit, and died at 20%. This **** is ridiculous. Is it better to just immediately whack him off stage and to try to deal with his high recovery using a read than it is to go for ladder combos on platforms into tippers? Also, what do you do off grabs? Tech chasing is alright, but marth is too slow to cover tech roll away (iirc) upthrow doesn't lead to anything on full DI away, so is the best option a shorthop > wait > doublejump upair when he jumps out? I'd really like any advice you have here too.
and uh yeah sorry for all the questions but i hate this matchup, love ya pp! <3
On an unrelated note, asking someone like you for the answers to the test and everything is a nice way of circumventing the long trial and error process of improvement, and having someone like you around as a resource is obviously very valuable, but it's not practical to ask you for help every time I'm confused about something like this. Gravy recommended I focus more on thinking constructively, that is thinking about options, situations, and solutions to problems outside of the game in an environment where i have tools to play around with and infinite time. Do you have any advice in regards to me having a short attention span, and really struggling to even remember scenarios I struggled with, or random ideas i come up with for dealing with situations, long enough to get home and start grinding them out on 20xx? And/or where to find the motivation to spend time and effort doing that when I could be netplaying or watching sets or doing analysis or whatever. This is probably the biggest weakness of my game rn.
