PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[unknown522]

alright, I completely read that wall of text by PP.

good work

 

[KirbyKaze]

Do you have any examples of this? That'd be really cool if you did. =)

No, I don't.

 

[tarheeljks]

not sure why but i lol'ed at the above

 

[genkaku]

Last time I came on here with a question it was about getting grabbed a lot, so I fixed that.
My friend's sheik just got way better out of nowhere and now I'm getting frustrated. There's like this range that if I get caught in I can't get out without losing my stock or getting like 40+%. I keep getting trapped in my shield just in her ftilt range and it all goes terribly from there.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Last time I came on here with a question it was about getting grabbed a lot, so I fixed that.
My friend's sheik just got way better out of nowhere and now I'm getting frustrated. There's like this range that if I get caught in I can't get out without losing my stock or getting like 40+%. I keep getting trapped in my shield just in her ftilt range and it all goes terribly from there.

Yeahhhhhhhhh

that's kinda the ideal situation for her LOL.


The best advice I can give on this situation is don't get into it.

Think about how you got into that situation. If you whiff a move then shield, then stop whiffing so much(or stop shielding afterward so much). If you tech and then shield then try to not shield or tech away more. If Sheik is taking stage from you and forcing you into your shield then maneuver around her or hit her first so she can't threaten with her moves.

Avoid shielding so much, basically.

This situation still occurs, so when it does there are a couple things you can do....

-roll(best in general but worst used all the time)

-hold shield and punish her move

-Dair OOS(can eat/trade with her moves which can be okay)

-WD away OOS(pretty quick but not invulnerable like rolling. however, you can defend against anyone chasing you after retreating though, plus you can reverse momentum if they don't react right away/react to the wrong thing[thought you were going to do something else])

-FH(unless it's on FD but if it's on FD hopefully you're ****** LOL....not as safe on smaller stages but it's something to keep in mind....Dair is threatening here)

 

[Roneblaster]

Yo lets talk about how black Moose is again. Im sad i missed that.

you probably shouldnt dwell on mistakes. Just make a big enough deal out of it that u dont so it again then let it go.



Ah wtf im so far behind i thought pi/unknowns/pps post was most recent.

 

[Bones0]

Yo lets talk about how black Moose is again. Im sad i missed that.

you probably shouldnt dwell on mistakes. Just make a big enough deal out of it that u dont so it again then let it go.



Ah wtf im so far behind i thought pi/unknowns/pps post was most recent.

This is the Falco boards, son.

Us black people move FAST.

 

[Rubyiris]

Stuff from last weeks tourney:

vs Forward:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWl67TXAMBA&feature=feedu

vs Nicknyte:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leGAfo4Tn88&feature=feedu

chokesies vs forward.

 

[Dr Peepee]

I'll get on more critiques today or tomorrow hopefully.


I Fsmashed the mess outta Twitch today LOL. I think it's so good because people like staying in Fsmash's range to bait/pre-punish Falco's other moves that he does in that range(you know, that bad range that makes laser kinda worthless). It's a good move to trade with in general too.

Thought I'd mention it haha.

 

[Roneblaster]

This is the Falco boards, son.

Us black people move FAST.

Slow down! Im fat and white!

 

[9Kplus1]

Didn't see a particular thread for this kind of post, so I'll just ask it here:

I went to Shell Shocked yesterday, and because it my was first tourney -- not literally, just my first time playing Melee with technically competent players -- I made it a priority to ask for advice after getting ***** by someone considerably better (and for that matter confident than me). Eventually, after literally going through the entire cast, I asked for recommendations regarding a 'starter' main, and someone tossed out Falco as a choice; I played a few matches and found Falco being a natural fit for my "aggressive-passive hybrid" style of play (using whatever frame advantage that I can while squeezing out some extra percent whenever possible), prompting me to pick him up as my main once again. I'd picked up Falco long before Shell Shocked -- and I can still do some technical stuff such as waveshining, double shining and pillaring -- but eventually dropped him after watching some of PP's vids (lost my confidence big time >.>). I'm hoping to get some of my friends to drop Brawl and play Melee with me, but for now, I'm focusing more on what can make my Falco more unique than others. To do such a feat, I plan on optimizing Falco's psychological game to make up for my mediocre reaction time and technical inferiority when compared to most players.

So, my question towards this thread is: What are Falco's psychological advantages and disadvantages? Moreover, how do most Falco players utilize and deal with them?

To be more specific, how does Falco being a glass cannon give players the edge and / or hindrances in a match?

 

[Divinokage]

I'll get on more critiques today or tomorrow hopefully.


I Fsmashed the mess outta Twitch today LOL. I think it's so good because people like staying in Fsmash's range to bait/pre-punish Falco's other moves that he does in that range(you know, that bad range that makes laser kinda worthless). It's a good move to trade with in general too.

Thought I'd mention it haha.

Do you like to use Falco's jab? When do you think it would be good to use it the best? For me, I realized it's pretty good to hit someone while he's in the air and then follow up with a smash. Do you use it like that too?

 

[Winston]

I'm hoping to get some of my friends to drop Brawl and play Melee with me, but for now, I'm focusing more on what can make my Falco more unique than others. To do such a feat, I plan on optimizing Falco's psychological game to make up for my mediocre reaction time and technical inferiority when compared to most players.

So, my question towards this thread is: What are Falco's psychological advantages and disadvantages? Moreover, how do most Falco players utilize and deal with them?

To be more specific, how does Falco being a glass cannon give players the edge and / or hindrances in a match?

Why do you need to make your Falco more unique than others? You should just focus on playing well. This may lead to your Falco being unique or it may not, depending on what answers and tactics you find to use in various situations.

What do you mean by psychological advantages? Do you mean ways that you can outthink/trick your opponent in the context of the game? Or do you mean stuff like making them feel pressured?

If you can make it over to UMCP I'd be happy to play you and talk theory

 

[9Kplus1]

Why do you need to make your Falco more unique than others?

Playing in unique fashion gives me the mentality that I've doing something worthwhile, thus giving me much more confidence until I'm at an acceptable level.

You should just focus on playing well. This may lead to your Falco being unique or it may not, depending on what answers and tactics you find to use in various situations.

Noted and thanks. I'm essentially a noob, so I'll be sure to keep that in mind whenever I'm improving my game as opposed to making it more unique.

What do you mean by psychological advantages? Do you mean ways that you can outthink/trick your opponent in the context of the game? Or do you mean stuff like making them feel pressured?

Both, as I don't really have much of a clue how Falco mains should think about approaching, trapping opportunities and when to start pressuring their opponents. It's actually boggling to me whether it's instinct or quick thinking that gives Falco the advantage in a match. Whenever I try either, I get indecisive about what I should be doing, and my game suffers drastically, which leads to me choking or just not doing anything at all.

If you can make it over to UMCP I'd be happy to play you and talk theory

If like every other Saturday is fine with you, I can make it .-.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Didn't see a particular thread for this kind of post, so I'll just ask it here:

I went to Shell Shocked yesterday, and because it my was first tourney -- not literally, just my first time playing Melee with technically competent players -- I made it a priority to ask for advice after getting ***** by someone considerably better (and for that matter confident than me). Eventually, after literally going through the entire cast, I asked for recommendations regarding a 'starter' main, and someone tossed out Falco as a choice; I played a few matches and found Falco being a natural fit for my "aggressive-passive hybrid" style of play (using whatever frame advantage that I can while squeezing out some extra percent whenever possible), prompting me to pick him up as my main once again. I'd picked up Falco long before Shell Shocked -- and I can still do some technical stuff such as waveshining, double shining and pillaring -- but eventually dropped him after watching some of PP's vids (lost my confidence big time >.>). I'm hoping to get some of my friends to drop Brawl and play Melee with me, but for now, I'm focusing more on what can make my Falco more unique than others. To do such a feat, I plan on optimizing Falco's psychological game to make up for my mediocre reaction time and technical inferiority when compared to most players.

So, my question towards this thread is: What are Falco's psychological advantages and disadvantages? Moreover, how do most Falco players utilize and deal with them?

To be more specific, how does Falco being a glass cannon give players the edge and / or hindrances in a match?

You're in the right place. =)

Also Fox and Sheik are good at exploiting frame advantage and they both can get considerable damage from projectiles in the meantime. Fox is more suited to offense than Sheik, but if it's passive-aggressiveness then maybe Sheik works for that too? I dunno lol just throwing it out there.

In order to do well in the long run, you'll want to be technically sound as well as smart and unique. You can focus on some of this more than the rest but that's what it comes down to.

Falco's psychological advantages.....

He's able to ride momentum extremely well from anywhere on the stage thanks to lasers, and this can help him transition to a solid shield pressure game, where the big threat of his damaging combos comes into play. lasers make all of this very threatening, but if you can execute on all of it then people will fear each step individually without you having to transition from lasers always.

so I guess...

-laser control

-shield pressure

-big combos on anyone

You could also say that, because he locks people down so well, that anyone forced into their shield against Falco should be pretty scared too because of his solid grab game and shield pressure as well as his big Bair and uptilt which can stuff tons of OOS options(and uptilt will start combos usually).


psychological disadvantages....

he usually just suffers hard from getting behind. He has to shoot lasers to get momentum back, then try to do a new approach/bait because the old one didn't work, and he usually can't force an approach(right away at least) because his ground mobility is fairly poor. So sometimes it is tougher to just come back in general as Falco, as well as knowing you can die in one hit or be gimped easily. Those things can get into your head if you fight a character like Marth that is fine just throwing you off and gimping you after you do a technically demanding combo and evening the game out.




I just ignore that the disadvantages exist. Or, rather, I keep the being gimped thing in mind and use that to stay away from the edge sometimes, but I accept any of Falco's problems as my own in a way so I don't blame the character. For example, if I miss an L-cancel on a shield and get grabbed, I could get frustrated and blame how technically demanding Falco is, or I could say "well I shouldn't have missed that L-cancel" and just remember that I need to work on hitting L-cancels on shields for future reference. The combo that follows will be tough to handle but it's worse if you beat yourself up during all of it. Just accept it as a part of playing the character(much like Bowser/Ganon mains would have to handle being comboed hard LOL except their character is much worse) and things don't get to you as much.

As for abusing his strengths, well understanding when someone feels pressured by how they react or move around(or stay still) is important when determining how in control you are of a given situation. Learn when to try and steal jumps with lasers, or when someone is stuck in shield and feels like they can't move so your pressure or grabs are that much scarier. Everything that cuts off their options or limits their mobility is usually very good for you and how you can influence someone to behave in a way that makes you the faster character or the one in control, even if only temporarily.



As for your last question, I suppose Falco being a glass canon can allow him to wreck people pretty quickly without him being figured out, but if he gets slowed down or intimidated then he'll drop stocks quickly until the player controlling him figures out why they're dying so quickly(has to be done quickly as well because Falco can die off of one read much like he can kill off of one read).

Do you like to use Falco's jab? When do you think it would be good to use it the best? For me, I realized it's pretty good to hit someone while he's in the air and then follow up with a smash. Do you use it like that too?

I don't like jab much vs Fox unless I'm comboing or something, but I like jab in Falco dittos after I take lasers sometimes, and vs floaties so I can jab upsmash and yell FOOOOOOX. And yeah people liked doing lots of jab to dsmash by the edge back in the day, and I think you can even get away with jab to Fsmash occasionally as well(lol p5 finals).

I could probably think of more ways to use jab. I don't use it much currently and it's so fast I really should use it more haha. Gonna wavejab I think and see wtf happens(may just Ftilt instead *shrug).

 

[ShroudedOne]

I just ignore that the disadvantages exist. Or, rather, I keep the being gimped thing in mind and use that to stay away from the edge sometimes, but I accept any of Falco's problems as my own in a way so I don't blame the character. For example, if I miss an L-cancel on a shield and get grabbed, I could get frustrated and blame how technically demanding Falco is, or I could say "well I shouldn't have missed that L-cancel" and just remember that I need to work on hitting L-cancels on shields for future reference. The combo that follows will be tough to handle but it's worse if you beat yourself up during all of it. Just accept it as a part of playing the character(much like Bowser/Ganon mains would have to handle being comboed hard LOL except their character is much worse) and things don't get to you as much.

I feel that I should comment on this, cause it's something that had been weighing on my mind for the past couple weeks, which is dealing with the disadvantages/shortcomings of your character. For example, whenever I fool around with Ganon and I'm being hit with lasers, it doesn't bother me, because I already have this notion in my head that I should expect to be hit by a LOT of Falco lasers. But I tend to get really frustrated when using my main (Peach) cause I don't think that I should be getting comboed/stuffed/lasered by this character. But the fact is that she's slow, and it happens.

This is probably one of the most important things to take away: being comfortable with your character's weaknesses, and being able to mitigate those.

 

[9Kplus1]

@PeePee and ShroudedOne - Your posts are without a doubt helpful to what I'm practicing now and will definitely assist my game in the long run, especially considering that my performance is heavily based on how much momentum I have, get and lose. Making such a weakness less noticeable and focusing more on Falco's strengths won't be an easy task, but it's easing to know that I'm on the right track, so big thanks.

And yeah, I'm likely going to pick up Sheik along the way once my Falco is able to hold its own against better players because she helps me keep my confidence vs mid/low/Pichu tier characters. Also, a result of previously being an MK main, I don't have much shame in playing gay at times to get the advantage :V

 

[Winston]

Falco is soooo good vs. mid/low/bad characters.

 

[Divinokage]

Wavejab? Who do you think you are, Ganon? rofl. =P

 

[Dr Peepee]

LOL if it's good it's good man.

Wavedash happens on the ground and jab is a fast ground move so you can gain lots of space and then have a move out quite quickly. It could catch someone off guard, you never know. =p

Edit: F GANON

 

[Divinokage]

LOL if it's good it's good man.

Wavedash happens on the ground and jab is a fast ground move so you can gain lots of space and then have a move out quite quickly. It could catch someone off guard, you never know. =p

Edit: F GANON

Indeed, that's the key to victory sometimes. Seemingly random **** that will work in the moment even if it seems like nonsense, it will work. lol. I guess my falco is still old school somehow.. I like jab -- downsmash, it's so good near the edge, can't tech it lol.

 

[Sinji]

I think taking falco in a methodical approach is a solid route.

 

[genkaku]

everyone knows the falco MU so compared to others it's not really all that psychological explicitly.
However, I like falco's meta stuff because it's subtle. A falco that's in control is scary as **** and can really throw you off mentally because it's really easy to feel outplayed. If you aren't feeling outplayed by the falco, then you're probably doing fine 'cause it's just a spacie and you can combo him to death no problem. The mental MU is all about confidence and feigning control.
It's not like puff or peach, which get really specific and can get trollish sometimes, it's about momentum and trying to break your opponent with straight up pressure.
I remember reading what PP and zhu said about playing mango, how he just kinda' probes you mentally and wins as soon as you break down under the pressure. I feel like that's where falco's mental game shines.

I really wish there were enough people to play with around me that I could put all my thinking into practice, haha

 

[ShroudedOne]

I think I understand what you're getting at, genkaku, but could you elaborate on what you mean by Peach and Puff being "specific and trollish"?

 

[KirbyKaze]

Kage's playstyle is exactly 50% extremely solid, well-spaced Ganon play. And 50% lackadaisical nonsense ft. copious amounts of purple.

 

[Sinji]

everyone knows the falco MU so compared to others it's not really all that psychological explicitly.
However, I like falco's meta stuff because it's subtle. A falco that's in control is scary as **** and can really throw you off mentally because it's really easy to feel outplayed. If you aren't feeling outplayed by the falco, then you're probably doing fine 'cause it's just a spacie and you can combo him to death no problem. The mental MU is all about confidence and feigning control.
It's not like puff or peach, which get really specific and can get trollish sometimes, it's about momentum and trying to break your opponent with straight up pressure.
I remember reading what PP and zhu said about playing mango, how he just kinda' probes you mentally and wins as soon as you break down under the pressure. I feel like that's where falco's mental game shines.

I really wish there were enough people to play with around me that I could put all my thinking into practice, haha

Same here. Falco is designed to pressure the opponent and to make the opponent feel a sign of fear. I remember when Shiz taught me how not to be outplayed by falco. I dont know what you mean by trollish, but I agree with you for everything else.

 

[Bl@ckChris]

PP DON'T YOU STEAL MY WAVEJAB.

guhhhh you stealin all my ****.

imad.

 

[Dr Peepee]

you can steal my falco tricks if you want man =)

 

[Bones0]

Btw guys, remember when everyone was wondering about how to DI out of Falco's uair? Well we just tested it and holding down can make the second hitbox miss, but it usually will only work if Falco goes really far into their body (spaces it high, that is).

As you can see the hitbox goes much higher than it does lower, so that makes sense. I'd also guess that the first hitbox can be SDIed left or right in the same way you can SDI out of Fox's uair. This doesn't really help I guess, but I thought it was interesting and if anyone ever SDIs your uairs intentionally at least you would know what to do (stay further below them and compensate for any left/right SDI with your movement).

 

[bolt.]

Cool Bones! Thanks

 

[Druggedfox]

To DI out of falco's uair just SDI anywhere, you'll probably get out. It's 100x easier to SDI out of than fox's; just like fox's you have to base it on where they are relative to you.

If you're using falco's upair, you should almost strictly be trying to second hit: it's really not difficult and its not worth the risk of using it if you're landing both hits.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Interesting. Thanks for the post, Bones.

edit: nvm druggedfox answered my question LOL.

second hit it is, as I figured

 

[JPOBS]

upair is falco's worst move.

 

[Druggedfox]

Falco's upair is pretty good if you can exclusively second hit... It's ridiculously good in situations where combos would otherwise be awkward, imo. A lot of the time even if you're not second hitting, it's really really good when they're landing on platforms after missing a tech but you can't shine waveland and get a followup.

 

[choknater]

i wanna try shield pressuring with uair haha

and triple hit sh fairs

 

[bolt.]

Even if up air is falco's worst move(I think upsmash is worse), its still very useful. Falco has no bad/not useful moves.

 

[Pi]

his UB is useless imo.
on par w/ ganon uptilt.

 

[silentSWAG]

i think it would be somethinf like:

3 fair
2 uair
1 usmash

 

[JPOBS]

fair is absolutely amazing.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

uthrow -> fair

dair -> shine -> dair -> shine -> fair -> fsmash



fair = great combo move even if i never use it myself