Critique my Falco? (With video)

[Obi1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVoQTlgjknM Obi

I've been playing smash for about year and i feel like I hit a plateau. Some people say it's because I only play smash on netplay, but I think it's just because I can't find my habits. If someone experienced can tell me what I'm doing wrong that'd be great

 

[hphk]

Your Falco is pretty sick honestly, very crisp movement (especially those wavedashes OoS) and nice conversions. But I can see your bad habits come into play in this video. You seem to either shoot 1 laser and then aerial, or just naked aerial in neutral which I don't think you should be doing against Fox, they also seem very telegraphed. Falco should be playing defensive in the neutral lasering foxes approaches and shining out of shield frequently. Everytime you hit with shine in this match you got into a massive advantage or just ended up taking the stock. You have a good shine combo game, abuse it.

Random notes from just watching this set: You could improve on reading your opponent's playstyle. I noticed you didn't take much advantage of his aggressive style and tendency to do unsafe aerials into your shield which, optimally, you could've shined OoS and punished hard out of that. He also seemed to have gotten into your head a bit and you seemed hesitant after the first game. You could've baited many of those approaches and punished accordingly but you played into his plan a few too many times. Also you could've chosen better smash attacks in a few situations (if you want I can give you specific examples).

I hate to give criticism without giving as many compliments though. Your tech skill is fantastic and there isn't much to polish in that area of your game. While you did miss a few edgeguards I think that you chose the option that would've given you the biggest chance of success the majority of the time. You have great spacing and I think if you get a little better at reading opponents then you could really get results with those shine grab mindgames. I think you are also great at escaping pressure and when you get into the higher level that skill will definitely help when you try to get back into neutral.

My biggest piece of advice Watch and Study High level Falco's. PPMD is your go to source for neutral and Mango is amazing at choosing the best options in any situation. Study study study those videos, especially the Mango analysis videos, way more than you should play the game. You have a lot of talent and I hope you get over that plateau, it gets the best of us

 

[Obi1]

Those suggested smash attacks would be much appreciated since I don't really incorporate them into my game much, unless it's super guaranteed. Also yea, my edgeguards could use a little help lol. However, thanks for the criticism

 

[FE_Hector]

I'm going to be a bit more harsh with this just because it's what I noticed. Also, I'm not gonna pretend I'm good in all these areas, either.

Your neutral game seemed kinda lacking. I'd say you should focus on your movement a lot more in the neutral game. DD and WD around to make your intentions ambiguous and yourself inherently harder to hit. Mix in a lot more lasers, too. If Fox is across half of Battlefield, there's nothing wrong with shooting a laser and trying to establish dominance through more lasers if the first one connects or your opponent fails to handle them well.

Your playstyle also looked kinda jumpy and your approaches weren't too solid. If you're going to dair, go in ready to do a low SHFFL dair on shield that is immediately followed by a shine. It's the only safe dair you can do on somebody's shield. When you go in with nair, you're going to want to do a mid-height or low SHFFL nair, also into shine. When you get them out of their shield or manage to get a shield stab, do everything in your power to get in a followup shine, as that leads into a super easy 50% before custom combos come in and start being extremely fun. If you're going to jump in the neutral game without intent of lasering or attacking, make sure you generally only use one jump and FF. You messed that up a bit.

When you got a punish, I only saw two or three followup hits, even off of a shine. The easiest way to combo fully on reaction is to WD down as soon as you land a shine. Also in terms of the punish game, the commentators said you did a lot of b/fthrows, which are good as mixups. Uthrow shine is, provided you can react quickly to their DI, pretty much guaranteed against low% fast fallers, and it sometimes works at higher%s as another mixup. Uthrow shine falling bair onto platform for another easy followup is actually super solid. Just something to practice.

I don't have much to say on this front, but... please work on teching more. It seemed like he punished you a lot for missing techs.

As far as the edgeguard game goes... it seemed like he shortened everything so he could get the ledge. After they successfully get two or three shortens for the ledge, just start WDing off to get him. It's a practically impossible reaction, but it was super readable after the first few times.

When your recoveries come in, you seemed to love to just ledgehop Phantasm, and got read for it. One of your options is to mix in lasers from the ledge. I know that they're not safe, but the highest laser you can do from ledge actually hits the side plats on BF, so you can catch him there. If you've got space, they're also safe. If they're all up on you, you can do a ledgehop aerial, generally a lower nair or dair (fast fallen), to keep them honest. Also, if you're confident enough, you can do a ledgedash utilt, shine, or even fsmash. Yes, ledgedash fsmash sounds stupid, but you're actually invincible until the move's active, so it's not actually as big of a risk as you'd think. Another thing you can do for your recoveries is just sideB less. I understand that it's faster, but it's actually really easy to react to and punish, unless your shortens are as good as those of Westballz. If you can, try to upB a bit above and away from the stage, so as to make it super difficult for your opponent to shine spike you. Once you do that, you have a TON of recovery options, and it's far harder to react to them. Not impossible, but definitely difficult.

Nothing else I can think of immediately after just watching the set. Your techskill and basic combo sense weren't that bad, though. It's not like you're just a completely crappy player, you've gotten a lot of fundamentals down pat.

One last thing: Solely playing netplay isn't too good of an idea unless you can play with a low enough ping that there's no lag. Try to find people that live nearby you and are around and slightly better than you to practice against regularly. Against players that are better than you and you think could point out your errors (generally smaller things like those I pointed out above), then there's nothing to lose by asking them to do so.

Good luck in your journey with Falco!

 

[Obi1]

Hey dude the harsher the better, I'll take a lot of this into consideraton

 

[FE_Hector]

Hey dude the harsher the better, I'll take a lot of this into consideraton

I agree with the "the harsher the better" part provided they're not rude. Most of my knowledge right there comes from having heard a lot of that advice myself recently and because top-level analysis has helped me understand a lot of fundamentals without being at that level myself. Have you done much video analysis yet?

 

[Obi1]

I usually only watch mang0's analysis. I believe the natural has the best choices

 

[FE_Hector]

Well, I won't deny that Mang0's analysis is good, but you should be able to do some stuff of your own, too. Generally how I do it is like this: (for whatever character I'm attempting to learn more about) I just start off by watching a TON of top-level sets on Youtube. I start off by looking at the bare-bone fundamentals of the character, what works, when does it work, and how does it work. Just little things like the punish and neutral games at their very lowest level. After that, I start looking into the smaller aspects of the game so that I can properly understand the character. Once I understand the character, I watch good sets at half speed and analyze small exchanges. It might even just be why one DI trap worked and stuff like that. I'm currently nearing the point where I can watch a set at normal speed and FULLY understand what's going on and why little things work. The problem, however, is that I'm not adept at applying all of this knowledge to an actual match because it's difficult right now for me to play as well as I can while also calling out my opponent for little things. Cognizance is difficult to come by.

 

[Obi1]

Ah yea I think my problem is your ability to recognize different options and know the solution to prevent the situation. My own video analysis could help, but sometimes I drift off after like 15 minutes and that really only covers like 3 minutes of a video. I just assumed everything would come by with experience

 

[FE_Hector]

My ability to recognize options in specific situations comes from doing so much video analysis over the last four months or so. I won't say that you can't get pretty good as a player by just playing, but proper analysis is something that will almost always separate the really great players from the good players. To be honest, I get bored of doing analysis after a while, too, but if you just look at one game and move through the tiny exchanges within that, it should help you out a lot. There's no need to move through an entire 15-minute set at half speed, often replaying parts of it, in one sitting, but you should aim to learn from what you're watching. I was watching an Oakland local on Twitch the other day and was actually verbally calling out all the mistakes of Falco's that appeared on stream, some big, some small. I can't recall what set it was from anymore, but I was actually really happy the other day because I was watching one of PPMDs sets that I hadn't yet noticed and was able to follow one of the little Falco-Fox close-range skirmishes properly at full speed and understand why everything that was done was and wasn't working. What I will say, however, is that the flipside to that is that while my theorycraft isn't too bad, my play itself is suffering from a lack of actual practice. I'm hoping that'll change as we have more locals, though.

 

[Quarry]

When you go in with nair, you're going to want to do a mid-height or low SHFFL nair, also into shine.

I'm going to try to argue against using nair on shield at mid height, after doing a whole of three minutes of research.http://smashboards.com/threads/falco-hitboxes-and-frame-data.300397/
Falco's nair has a landing lag of 7 frames if you L Cancel it. It also only gives 7 frames of shield stun (if you get the strong hit), so unless you hit their shield less than 4 frames before you land, they can buffer a roll and get away (if you do it at mid height I would assume Fox can Shine OoS in some cases as well).

Then again I might be wrong about this, considering how much time I put into this.

Sources:
http://smashboards.com/threads/falco-hitboxes-and-frame-data.300397/
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Shieldstun#In_Super_Smash_Bros._Melee

 

[FE_Hector]

I'm going to try to argue against using nair on shield at mid height, after doing a whole of three minutes of research.
Falco's nair has a landing lag of 7 frames if you L Cancel it. It also only gives 7 frames of shield stun (if you get the strong hit), so unless you hit their shield less than 4 frames before you land, they can buffer a roll and get away (if you do it at mid height I would assume Fox can Shine OoS in some cases as well).

Then again I might be wrong about this, considering how much time I put into this.

Sources:
http://smashboards.com/threads/falco-hitboxes-and-frame-data.300397/
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Shieldstun#In_Super_Smash_Bros._Melee

Hmm, after looking into a bit of stuff myself, there's a chance that you're right. The biggest point, though, is that dair is -2 on shield and therefore unsafe, whereas nair is +/- 0 on shield, so it's relatively safe on shield. Also, you're assuming that people always know how long their stun is going to be. A lot of people react rather slowly after getting lasered by Falco even though its overall stun lasts for a grand total of 1/5 of a second.