Falco Pillaring Useless?

[UltimateMooch]

BEFORE THE HATE COMES FLYING AT ME I am not that great of a Melee player, despite my ego telling me otherwise. Most of the videos of tournaments I watch with Falcos in them have almost no pillaring at all. Is it because people found how to get out of it? Is it too obvious?

 

[CeeLew]

Pillaring is not uselesss, but it is situational. Depends on the character, percent, skill level, stage, and more. Depending on the situation, there are more optimal or useful options.

 

[imaginary]

Watch Falco against fast fallers on FD. Lots of pillaring going on, except they're not as vertical as some people are used to seeing them in sample videos, since opponents DI hard away. This forces the falco to WD out of the shine to chase their DI, which is then followed by a dair, which is then followed by another waveshine or an uptilt.

Pillaring has basically evolved as to not be as vertical as it used to be.

 

[Archelon]

Watch Falco against fast fallers on FD. Lots of pillaring going on, except they're not as vertical as some people are used to seeing them in sample videos, since opponents DI hard away. This forces the falco to WD out of the shine to chase their DI, which is then followed by a dair, which is then followed by another waveshine or an uptilt.

Pillaring has basically evolved as to not be as vertical as it used to be.

For instance, watch Westballz play a match against spacies on FD: he'll to repeated shines to about 20% then dair-shine, then dair-shine, then whatever else he can get off of it.

 

[Shreke]

If the opponent has good DI then it becomes pretty obsolete.

 

[Hedgehog_]

only really useful on fox falco falcon on low percents. other characters can get out easily

 

[Juice_]

Shine -> DAir on fox/falco is only a true combo until about 40%. After that, to continue the combo after DAir, you'll usually have to read the tech roll. Ideally, you'd want to bait out the double jump and keep them in the air -> death.

 

[WondrousMoose]

You can waveshine > dair fast fallers to surprising percents if they DI poorly. Definitely keep it in mind as an option.

 

[NotAnAdmin]

No, not useless.
It's still a BNB combo, just not THE BNB combo that it used to be.

Most players are aware of what pillaring is and things you can do to get out of it, it's the nature of progressive meta. Learning how to pillar is still very useful.

 

[doby]

At low levels pillaring is good to use as a go-to before you develop your combo game very extensively. As mentioned though, no matter the level, you can get a guaranteed 0 -> 40% combo from dair -> shines and go from there into a guaranteed utilt or really the move of your choosing to try to extend the combo, so it is quite useful

 

[doby]

Look up Zorc - the current #1 player in Norway. His falco makes excellent use of quintessential falco combos and techniques.

You can probably learn a lot more from him as oppose to someone like westballz b/c westballz opts for far more technical sequences which are dope af but not accessible to people without elite level tech skill

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Back when I was a falco noob, pillaring referred to shield pressure (dair -> shine on shield). I know that isn't the popular definition now, but this old man will respond to that definition anyways.


Falco's shield pressure is not as good as people think. Its mostly because of his jumpsquat, which is 5 frames compared to fox's 3 frames. Doing frame perfect double shines is basically the only choice he has, with everything else being mixup (shine grab is pretty strong, but he lacks a single throw to combo with). If fox shines out of shield, he will beat your fastest aerials. Sheik can nair out of shield before your dair comes out. Thats why you see literally only westballz being successful as an aggressive Falco (and he plays fox as much as falco now).

 

[CP Adagio]

Back when I was a falco noob, pillaring referred to shield pressure (dair -> shine on shield). I know that isn't the popular definition now, but this old man will respond to that definition anyways.


Falco's shield pressure is not as good as people think. Its mostly because of his jumpsquat, which is 5 frames compared to fox's 3 frames. Doing frame perfect double shines is basically the only choice he has, with everything else being mixup (shine grab is pretty strong, but he lacks a single throw to combo with). If fox shines out of shield, he will beat your fastest aerials. Sheik can nair out of shield before your dair comes out. Thats why you see literally only westballz being successful as an aggressive Falco (and he plays fox as much as falco now).

If you're not bad Up throw combos into stuff

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

There are no guaranteed followups from uthrow. It requires them to mess up their DI.

 

[CP Adagio]

There are no guaranteed followups from uthrow. It requires them to mess up their DI.

You cannot DI out of any possible follow up after up throw. You can only rely on Falco sucking at reading/reacting. Either way, being above Falco in the first place is extremely dangerous if Falco doesn't get a follow up.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

If they fail their DI you can get a guaranteed hit. If they DI properly you only have positional advantage, like the rest of his throws.

 

[Audos]

Pillaring is okay, in the same way it has always been okay. On a lot of characters that are on the floatier spectrum you are going to have a hard time true comboing in some situations. The good thing is that you can optimize other ways to combo or simply practice reading habits that they have to get out of barely untrue combos.

Smash 4 has a pretty silly punish game, but if it can teach you anything it is that even untrue combos can be capitalized on.

 

[Audos]

You cannot DI out of any possible follow up after up throw. You can only rely on Falco sucking at reading/reacting. Either way, being above Falco in the first place is extremely dangerous if Falco doesn't get a follow up.

Up throw is not perfectly true because a lot of times you have to read SDI, starting your jump before you react to actually punish on time. Again you can just capitalize on the psuedo-combo, though. You start your rising ariel at a time that doesn't allow most characters to finish ariel start up but will steal their jump if they try to jump out. Falco double jump speed OP.