Does Falcon need something new?

[-Key-]

Despite his flaws, I really enjoy the way Falcon plays right now overall. While I don't expect him to undergo any significant changes in future builds, I would be thrilled if any of these issues were improved at all:

Grab range (reaching lower would be great as you guys have said, but his horizontal reach is pretty poor too)
Up-B Landing Lag (not sure about the actual data here, but it feels like his is among the longest in the cast)
ONE solid Tilt or Smash (as they currently stand, I'd argue that even his better ones only have highly-situational viability, though maybe players more capable than I am have figured out ways to use them somewhat regularly)

I also think it'd be nice if they somehow made Up-B useful when it connects. A lot of the times when I actually hit with it, I end up either getting punished or put at a stage position disadvantage because of how long that backwards/vertical trajectory takes. It's currently super-high risk (given the punishability of it when it misses) with virtually no reward, and it seems like ideally it wouldn't be that way. Even if they didn't buff it enough for it to be useful as an offensive tactic, they could at least make it so it doesn't disadvantage Falcon. Maybe just giving it a more vertical knockback trajectory (or even fixed knockback of appropriate distance) would do the trick? At least in that situation, Falcon would actually land on the stage before the opponent does instead of handing out free juggling vouchers to low-medium percentage opponents.

Or they could just give it Falcon Punch knockback and make it into a super-high risk/super-high reward option (only semi-kidding).

 

[Da-bomber]

Lets remove whiff on the knee!

 

[-Fatality-]

Omg that would be completely ridiculous...ly awesome!
But it will never happen *sheds a tear*.

 

[tan(90]

Some buffs I think would be cool for falcon to have is:

Walljump out of side-b (mario can walljump out of recovery, so I don't think it would be THAT op)
and a better nair, because his nair doesn't feel like melee's in the sense that in melee, the two kicks land smoothly together, like the first kick will bring the opponent in enough for the second to connect, whereas the first kick pushes them away in PM, I feel like the nair is kinda outclassed by Falcon's u-air

And 2 that would probably be op is:
Possibly jump canceling out of raptor boost, making his agility somewhat like Ike, and so he could wavedash into new options

and a pretty joke option: super armor frames during Falcon Punch. aint nobody wanna get near him (of course, they could just punish him during the endlag)

 

[Da-bomber]

Give his back throw killing ability over 130%.

 

[tan(90]

Another great option is to change up is downsmash to be like Ike's, in the sense that you can press it once and he will kick forward, then press it a second time to do the second kick.

 

[Smurfymike]

Another great option is to change up is downsmash to be like Ike's, in the sense that you can press it once and he will kick forward, then press it a second time to do the second kick.

That's interesting, so his downsmash would come out faster and it would be easier to cover more options rather than stomp.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

I would love to see that down-smash change, maybe together with 64 up-smash (also another step to declone him from Ganondorf)

 

[tan(90]

The first kick of the downsmash is actually pretty damn strong, and I sometimes use it for edgeguarding. I felt that it was a very good move but the back kick is what makes the move so situational. So if the second kick was toggleable, it would a a very solid ground move for Falcon.

 

[-Key-]

I was watching this silly video just for entertainment, but I noticed something really interesting in the midst of it.

http://youtu.be/uH89rDS5QQ4?t=1m44s

Watch the blue Falcon on the right side as he tries to recover. If Up B in PM was able to operate like that, I think it'd be really neat. Notice not only the horizontal movement of the Up B prior to the grab, but also the major knockback associated with the attack. I still maintain that making the attack aspect of Up B not completely worthless should be among the most-prioritized Falcon tweaks. As an attack, Falcon's Up B has among the worst cooldown lag in the game despite having horrible knockback.

 

[Giygacoal]

weak superarmor

You mean light knockback armor, right? I think super armor is the kind that always works, and the light/medium/heavy armors are the ones with definite tolerance.

 

[Mokumo]

Give his aerials disjointed hitboxes! Like the way peach's bair is in melee. His moveset is too well known to be drastically changed, so buff his aerials

 

[GeZ]

The most obvious solution is to change his shins and feet into swords.

 

[Shin_Mazinkaiser]

Improved grounded normals and specials.

His smashes are all impractical and overall not very good outside of a hard read.

His tilts are kind of lacking in usefulness as well.

I do have some suggestions for improving his moves. . . but I don't wanna type a wall of text only to have my ideas shot down because "lol Melee"

 

[-Fatality-]

You mean light knockback armor, right? I think super armor is the kind that always works, and the light/medium/heavy armors are the ones with definite tolerance.

Yes, I thought I wasn't using the proper terminology then too, thanks for the clarification.
On topic, all of Falcon's moves are at least semi useful, you guys just need to work on identifying the situations in which they're preferable to something else, which is a good bit more often than you would think, get creative!
Lower hitting Jab/Nair/Grab are the only realistic buffs that I think Falcon really wants, but even those can be reliably worked around with smart play.

 

[Ginamudkipz]

I think it would be nice to implement a jump reset on kill thing on falcon making him able to go even deeper and optimize his options offstage like we love from falcon

 

[Ginamudkipz]

Also to be able to jump cancel falcon kick would be so cool

 

[Kati]

-He can rar
-He can go farther when intercepting
-He can moonwalk infinitely now, as well as instantly turn and dash in the other direction
-He can reverse his falcon kick and raptor boost.

Falcon doesn't need anything new, Falcon players have yet to fully utilize his new abilities.

 

[-Key-]

-He can rar
-He can go farther when intercepting
-He can moonwalk infinitely now, as well as instantly turn and dash in the other direction
-He can reverse his falcon kick and raptor boost.

Falcon doesn't need anything new, Falcon players have yet to fully utilize his new abilities.

None of these are very significant buffs imo. Sure, you'd rather have them than not have them, but what matchup in PM is more in Falcon's favor than the same matchup was in Melee? That's why he needs something new. It seems to me like the rest of the cast has caught up with him to varying degrees. Other than Side-B as a recovery option, nothing has really been fixed about Falcon from Melee.

 

[tauKhan]

Here is something new for you falcons: http://smashboards.com/threads/new-movement-technique-moonturning.355977/#post-16775427
It might not be that useful, but at least it looks SWAG.

 

[j-slo-3]

They should give Falcon a DACUS. Gannon has one, and they have similar dash attacks and up smashes, so why not? I also think it would be cool to see them give Falcons up b similar knock back to that of N64 so it could be used as a combo finisher, and it would also probably help his recovery a little bit.

 

[yohoos]

Falcon Punch should be his new chargeable sidesmash and give him a usable neutral B for once. But then we would lose the sacred combo

 

[Taka.]

I really don't think he needs changes. He recovery and movement has been improved from Melee. Up-B grabs ledges higher than in Melee. Also the new tech in PM allows Falcon to do some craazy ****. It's the players that needs buffs

 

[yohoos]

His recovery is still #1 crap arguably the worst in the game. His movement has not been improved whatsoever dunno where that is coming from, in fact the slower game engine hurts him because it makes it easier to react to and his basic wavedash is less effective with bigger character models. Also the only new tech I can think of that gives Falcon anything new is footstool. Not to mention every character in the game has been crafted to screw Falcon over because he is the closest in weight/fall speed ratio to the space animals.

 

[rpotts]

They should give Falcon a DACUS. Gannon has one, and they have similar dash attacks and up smashes, so why not? I also think it would be cool to see them give Falcons up b similar knock back to that of N64 so it could be used as a combo finisher, and it would also probably help his recovery a little bit.

He does have a DACUS, technically, but it doesn't actually improve his momentum. They'd have to change his dash attack animation, traction (weight/falling speed) and other modifiers to have a DACUS implemented. There's no DACUS yes/no toggle switch, unfortunately.

 

[-Key-]

I really don't think he needs changes. He recovery and movement has been improved from Melee. Up-B grabs ledges higher than in Melee. Also the new tech in PM allows Falcon to do some craazy ****. It's the players that needs buffs

In a vacuum that makes sense, but the rest of the cast is made of up characters who are either still better than him or have been significantly buffed (thus closing the gap Falcon once had over them). Why do you think virtually none of the top Melee Falcons play him in PM? If Falcon was actually was better, those players would have stuck with him. How many viable characters in Melee have good projectiles? And in PM? I can give more examples if you'd like, but the truth is that Falcon's flaws stand out more in this game than they did in Melee.

 

[Phan7om]

Faster Falcon Punch!!!!! The obvious decision.

 

[Taka.]

In a vacuum that makes sense, but the rest of the cast is made of up characters who are either still better than him or have been significantly buffed (thus closing the gap Falcon once had over them). Why do you think virtually none of the top Melee Falcons play him in PM? If Falcon was actually was better, those players would have stuck with him. How many viable characters in Melee have good projectiles? And in PM? I can give more examples if you'd like, but the truth is that Falcon's flaws stand out more in this game than they did in Melee.

I agree with you on this. However he is supposed to be the high-risk/high-reward character. The way he is now made him the People's Champion. I think we are all afraid of changes that might tune him out-of-character.

It's true he hasn't recieved any significant buffs, but that doesn't mean he is a worse character than others.

 

[yohoos]

I hate it every time someone tries to justify Falcon with the Glass Cannon/High risk High reward argument because it is complete BS. Falcon is super high risk, I believe we can all agree on that because his defensive options SUCK. However, IN PM Falcon's punishes are just as good as anyone else's and not much better. This is in part due to because he can not punish recoveries too effectively/ cannot gimp and also because everyone else's punish game has now caught up to him. We have stuff like Zelda's lightning kick combos, Mario's Fair combos, Pit's arrow/fair combos, Lucas Upsmash combos, Space Animals, Kirby gimps, Marth super edgeguards, DK grab combos, Olimar UpSmash combos, etc. There is no way you can convince me that Falcon's punish game is SOOO much better than everyone else's that he deserves to be crap in literally every other respect aside from his movement.

Edit: Reserve the Glass Cannon/ High Risk High Reward argument for the space animals as they are the true glass cannons of this game.

 

[CBO0tz]

I hate it every time someone tries to justify Falcon with the Glass Cannon/High risk High reward argument because it is complete BS. Falcon is super high risk, I believe we can all agree on that because his defensive options SUCK. However, IN PM Falcon's punishes are just as good as anyone else's and not much better. This is in part due to because he can not punish recoveries too effectively/ cannot gimp and also because everyone else's punish game has now caught up to him. We have stuff like Zelda's lightning kick combos, Mario's Fair combos, Pit's arrow/fair combos, Lucas Upsmash combos, Space Animals, Kirby gimps, Marth super edgeguards, DK grab combos, Olimar UpSmash combos, etc. There is no way you can convince me that Falcon's punish game is SOOO much better than everyone else's that he deserves to be crap in literally every other respect aside from his movement.

Edit: Reserve the Glass Cannon/ High Risk High Reward argument for the space animals as they are the true glass cannons of this game.

And with this, I gotta say they should definitely test out some of the ideas for fixes to C. Falcon from this thread.

I personally think the SSB64 Falcon moveset is where they should be looking to find some buffs for him.
From what I hear it seems he was in his prime in 64.

 

[Foxy K]

He doesn't need anything anyone has said.

All he needs is to be able to double jump cancel aerial falcon kick.

Then he can recover like Lucas.

Then he will be a true Project M character.

 

[ViewtifulHoe242]

One of the reasons falcon did so well in melee was because he was a big fish in a small pond. we all know melee had 8-10 viable characters each with amazing to not-so-great to trash-tier recoveries, approach options, and neutral games. he could force you into a bad recovery spot and punish accordingly with a knee from the ledge.
Now in Project:M all these viable characters have viable tools and all of a sudden falcon's a kinda big fish in the atlantic ocean. Tethers, better recoveries better approach options, glides, bananas, spirit bombs the increaased gimping options to shut down falcons crap tier recovery and all the beefed up offensive and defensive options all spells falcon's damnation. Even if he learns the matchup, even if he "GIT'S GUD" will that be enough for the falcon player? i dont think so
i think falcon could definitely use a tune up maybe in regards to his grab range and poor dash grab. 64 upsmash/f-smash sounds hella fun too so i fully support the Cap getting some love come next update. And for goodness sake give him a better techroll!

 

[-Scorp-]

Im new here, and really not so good in english, and im sooo sorry for this.
But I feel like there is some little things I got in my head that need to come out here anyways (on my point of view of course..)
I got my little list of changes, I think, need to be change before speaking of nerfing or buffing.But maybe you have good reason to not have change those specifics things :
1- too long character freezing (falcon and the opponent) after a connecting THE knee
2- the wall tech is really slow, and no frame of invincibility? (compared to melee)
3- after l-canceling the Fair (only when connecting the gentle knee, i feel like is almost impossible to l-canceling it to the down tilt, he kind of freeze enough to make the "combo" impossible and i dont know why cause the Dtilt look alright everywere else )
4- raptor boost is not projectile invincibility ? (cause in melee he is, if not invincible he's dodging them, if not too big)
5- the "soft knee" is not really usefull as in melee (in air yes it is, but on grounded opponent, in melee, it place the opponent in a semi-state of hit-stun long enough so you can follow with something really usefull, like THE knee )
6- i think (but im not really sure) that the start up on his jump is not as fast as it should be

On the other side WOW great job did it really well thanks again.

okay !!!!! here is my ****ed up change list:
of course when I see the air raptor boost, there is something intesting to do with it:
1- make the move more quick
2- i think it wont be too over power to unlock Falcon after a succesfull hit : after his little pop up why not make him able to follow up with a attack (combo),

and for a little fantasy why not give him a counter like marth (read to the end plz loll XD) like when he start up the grounded raptor boost and hold a little flame in his hand without mooving, I can easly see a little counter hit that goes to auto-connect a raptor boost attack if opponent is in front, simple as that and in a way.. it goes with the high **** high reward character thing

and.. no one .. no! one !!! evvvvver use the upsmash attack .. (not really true but, there's a but .. )

 

[-Key-]

Raptor Boost goes underneath Samus' Super Missiles and Falco's Lasers in Melee. If they want Falcon to be essentially a Melee copy, they should bring back this attribute. It's not much, but it's better to have it than not have it.

 

[0RLY]

I would make it so that Falcon no longer flips during the ending of his up-B. This flip is the reason why Falcon is so easily dtilted by Marth or dsmashed by Sheik or float dair>nair'd by Peach. That way he grabs the ledge sooner after executing up-B and can actually sweetspot.

Lastly, I would make it so that Falcon does not go into special fall if he hits somebody with side-b. Almost every character with a similar side-b doesn't go into special fall. Ex: Luigi, Pikachu, Ike w/wall jump, Peach, Diddy.

That should be enough.

 

[Kati]

Making aerial raptor boost stronger would be more interesting than making it a safer move. It's more difficult to hit with than Falco's phantasm but has less of a reward.

 

[kyaputenfarukon07]

nvm 10 chars

 

[-Scorp-]

ho and i think the startup for his jump could me lightly speed up .. (more combo better wave dash and i think melee falcon jumps faster than in PM but slightly )
and of course falco sideB is effectively more easy and more rewarding ... nice point, veeeeeeery nice point there Kati

 

[Praxis]

Wallkick out of up-B plz kthx.

 

[-Fatality-]

The only thing Falcon needs is better players.