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Falcon's Worst and Best Matchups?

Currienoodles

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I'm doing an in depth video on Falcon's Kit, MUs, and Tech. However Im not a seasoned Falcon vet and Id love to know what the best falcons think about his MUs. From my understanding here are the worst.
Pika
Shiek
Rosa
ZSS
DHD
Is this true? Also what are his favorable? I know LM and Jiggs are good but idk, please let me know. Ill cite you for information on my video!
 

Romans

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Basically anyone that can combo him hard and doesn't have a predictable/spike-able recovery.
So yes: Pika, ZSS, Sheik, Diddy, Luigi, Pit.
Duck hunt is just annoying to play against regardless of the character.
Rosalina I think is not a bad matchup for falcon at all. He has speed and zone-breaking potential. And her large hurtbox and hitbox-less recovery makes her food for combos and spikes.
Granted if you let her space you right and pressure you offstage then you are in for a bad day and plenty of deaths via spike.
 
D

Deleted member

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Yeah :rosalina:'s Dair pretty much kills you everytime offstage. Its a long lasting, disjointed meteor that can take out Falcon's already unreliable recovery extremely well. Also, if Luma is next to her then you can be punished for getting a grab. I've grabbed Rosalina multiple times, immediately went for a Dthrow without a pummel, but I got hit by Luma's Nair/Jab or whatever. I don't know if its a guaranteed punish or if Rosalina buffered it/did it as I grabbed Luma, but against one of the few good Rosalina's I've faced I had to give up going for grabs because of that happening multiple times.

:4luigi: has a combo field day on fast fallers, and Falcon is no exception. Plus, Tornado spiking is nothing that Falcon likes to eat while recovering low.

As for good match ups, heavies like :4bowser: and :4ganondorf: are combo food for our good gentleman, especially with Knee setups like Uair, Dthrow, or simply an air dodge read. On top of that Falcon's Dair is a relatively easy spike.
 

aDavid4

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I think Ness is a pretty rough MU. His Up-B makes him impossible to spike, and he seems just too light to combo. Also, I struggle with his projectiles. It's hard to get in on him.
 

Dashum

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Agreed on Ness. His aerials are also pretty disjointed and have high priority so its scary following up after dthrows and dash attacks. He's also on the short side so tough to land shorthop aerials.

Oddly DK I think gives falcon some trouble. Yeah once you're in the big hit box makes it easy but offstage is scary whether you're coming back or trying to edgeguard. You can't challenge his Up B and really have to keep your aggression in check.
 

moofpi

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I'm doing an in depth video on Falcon's Kit, MUs, and Tech. However Im not a seasoned Falcon vet and Id love to know what the best falcons think about his MUs. From my understanding here are the worst.
Pika
Shiek
Rosa
ZSS
DHD
Is this true? Also what are his favorable? I know LM and Jiggs are good but idk, please let me know. Ill cite you for information on my video!
Ayyye ICTS, I just clicked on this random Falcon thread and it's yours. Nice.

Also Wii Fit is the bane of Captain's existence.
 

Currienoodles

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Yeah Ness for sure! Didnt think of that and I secondary DK and falcon isnt an easy MU but i def think its closer to even or in Dk's favor. Also yes moofpi lol the lurker of smashboards.
 

Trifroze

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Diddy, Rosalina and Ness actually don't pose that much threat to Falcon on a higher level. Falcon can break into Rosalina's zone quite easily and get rid of Luma instantly with rapid jab, and while offstage is extremely dangerous for Falcon in this matchup, it's pretty much the same for Rosalina. Falcon also juggles Rosalina as easily as she juggles him.

Diddy we are currently discussing in the matchup thread I made so I won't go into him.

Falcon beats Ness in neutral pretty definitively. Ness is slow and PK fire isn't safe to use against Falcon in mid range. Falcon just gets comboed by Ness harder than Ness does by him because Falcon doesn't really have much defensive options in the air whereas Ness has a 3 frame nair and his disjointed fair to get away from more situations. You just have to space your follow-ups properly and occasionally bait his aerials out and punish him for them. PK Thunder can be annoying but it disappears if you hit it with bair or uair which is easy to do, meanwhile Falcon outright destroys Ness offstage if Ness has to recover low (try to force him into that by punishing his offstage fairs from below or waiting them out and then bairing him).

I'm surprised to see people thinking ZSS is difficult for Falcon, as I find it to be a very even matchup. She can't safely try to grab Falcon and her approach options are very limited. As long as you don't get paralyzed you can eventually punish her footsies, combo her and KO her much earlier than she KOs you especially if you DI her up b every time (hold up and towards ZSS when you anticipate she'll do it).

Sheik and Pikachu are Falcon's worst matchups by far. Sheik outperforms Falcon in neutral, combos him harder than Falcon does her, and can recover very safely whereas you are in constant threat of being gimped. Your best bet is to force her to recover low and abuse the ledgesnap vulnerability on her recovery with bair (it's surprisingly easy as long as you avoid her up b startup hitbox), and in general try to KO her early because that's one field where she struggles especially in comparison to Falcon.

Pikachu is hard much for the same reasons except not as prominently, but he also has a tiny hurtbox that can avoid your jab and grab in a lot of his landing animations. These still aren't terrible MUs in my opinion, but currently I view them as Falcon's worst ones.

Sonic might be on the bad side, but I've yet to play enough versus him to say, and now that his bthrow got nerfed I'm not so sure. Just mentioning this to be as thorough as I can.

DK vs Falcon I think is pretty even (or slightly in Falcon's favor) since both characters strive from the fact that their opponent can't harass them with projectiles. It's a very aggressive matchup, and I like it a lot because of that. Falcon can use his speed to punish DK for a lot of things and combo DK so hard it feels kinda bad sometimes. DK's pressure is pretty good though. He can also easily gimp offstage Falcon by hanging on the ledge when Falcon is recovering and using his up b or bair at the right time to send him farther and farther back, but Falcon's dair is a serious threat to DK as well.
 
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Gawain

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Personally I don't think Sheik is bad. It's more even imo. Neither do I think ZSS is very bad. Pika is DEFINITELY his worst imo. You can't grab Pikachu half of the time due to height, it's hard to do any of Falcon's more interesting combo shenanigans due to size, and pikachu has some deadly combos vs Falcon. Rosalina is also an awful, awful matchup on some stages. Other than those two I really don't think Falcon has any actual "bad" matchups. Any others that are unfavorable are only just, like 4.5 to Falcon. Custom Villager can give Falcon a lot of trouble too though.

I would disagree that Jiggs is a good matchup for Falcon though. Floaty, small characters are bad for Falcon. They're hard to grab and they can escape most of his kill combo setups. They do have the big weakness of being vulnerable to weak nair into footstool combos though, which is extremely useful. But their small size makes it hard to get that FS and lock move sometimes, and some like Jiggly with high airspeed are even harder.

Falcon's best matchups are against normal sized floaty to semi-floaty characters. AKA Mewtwo, Marth, etc. The true strength in Falcon is really that he has mostly even matchups with the commonly used guys though imo.
 

KenMeister

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My ranking:
- Pikachu (safe shield pressure BS, really small, and beats everything we have with a simple fair)
- Ness (Disjoints, small, scary grab combos, juggles and offstage game)
- Diddy (Difficult to get in on without getting grabbed or walled out by fairs)
- Rosalina (Same as Diddy, but with stupid good juggles and edgeguards)
- Lucario (Difficult to edgeguard and difficult to get in on when at high percents)
- Marth (Shield pressure, edgeguards, and stuffs most of our approaches)
- Sheik (really good grab game on us in comparison to everyone else, and solid edgeguards)
 
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Metalbro

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If Ness decides to use PKT2 a fair ways below the ledge of a stage. It's a free knee. Even if you are late and he launches into you, you just have to tech into the stage. A little tricky but it's worked for me countless of times.
 

Trifroze

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Any thoughts how to beat Luigi? :)
He'll try to approach after throwing fireballs, and you can pretty much always shield them and instantly jab to interrupt his grab attempts since that's what he's mostly going to be doing. Once he does get the grab, he'll try to land a couple hits and jab or grab you again when you land. Since Falcon is a fastfaller, you'll land a good while before he does at low %s and can just spam jab to interrupt his resets. In the air Falcon outranges Luigi pretty hard and offstage you can gimp him fairly easily; always try to jump backwards after him if he's forced to use side b and bair or dair him out of it since Falcon can go pretty deep as long as you're facing towards the stage (since Falcon's up b goes a longer way like that). When comboing Luigi you have to be safe and space properly because of his nair. Also try to avoid using rapid jab; I've had Luigi land 3 nairs on me for like 30% in 1 second like that.
 

Sakelig

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He'll try to approach after throwing fireballs, and you can pretty much always shield them and instantly jab to interrupt his grab attempts since that's what he's mostly going to be doing. Once he does get the grab, he'll try to land a couple hits and jab or grab you again when you land. Since Falcon is a fastfaller, you'll land a good while before he does at low %s and can just spam jab to interrupt his resets. In the air Falcon outranges Luigi pretty hard and offstage you can gimp him fairly easily; always try to jump backwards after him if he's forced to use side b and bair or dair him out of it since Falcon can go pretty deep as long as you're facing towards the stage (since Falcon's up b goes a longer way like that). When comboing Luigi you have to be safe and space properly because of his nair. Also try to avoid using rapid jab; I've had Luigi land 3 nairs on me for like 30% in 1 second like that.
thanks alot Mr. Triforze :D
 

Scooty Puff

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My worst match ups are always short or floaty characters. Kirby, Jiggs specifically and a little of Pikachu and Peach to a lesser extent. I feel like my grabs go right over them despite being ontop of them, and tilts and smash attacks that normally hit most characters go right over them. Their spamming of aerials make it nearly impossible to start any kind of string/combos. Anyone have any tips for playing better against them?
 

FALCON (///_V)

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Hey I main c. Falcon and I find it very difficult to approach sheik. Is they're anyway to get in on her or do you have to play defensively to actually not get comboed by her. Also this is just another thing. Also I find that if you read a ness get up attack or roll then a forward smash can kill him quite early due to his slow ledge get up
 

Raethien

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Rosalina is really bad due to Falcons horribly predictable recovery. All she has to do is follow him and down air, then he will get screwed over. Easy way to beat Rosa though, its pretty simple, Since Luma keeps getting nerfed (For some bad reason) She is easy to kill. Take out Luma first, then you have free reign in juggling Rosa.
 

Abaasy

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I am a Falcon secondary, and my main is Shulk. I find I really hard time against other Shulk's who know how to space their nairs and fairs and bairs. I'm not sure if it is just me but I think Shulk is pretty dominant over Falcon in the matchup. Shulk can actually gimp Falcon quite early as well, because of the range of his aerials. Falcon also has to play more safe against Shulk, especially with customs because Shulk's Power Vision and regular counter have insanely high knockback, especially since many of Falcon's moves have high knockback. I may be biased on this because I am a Shulk main, so I want to see your guys' thoughts on this matchup as well.
 

PokemonyeWest

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With Falcon, the hardest matches for me are against the usual suspectds. Kirby, Pikachu, Luigi. I swear Luigi is the 100% counterpick to Falcon.
 

shrooby

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Interesting.
Dededes seem to usuallysee the match up as in Falcon's favor. Ending lag on our normally safer options get punished since Falcon's so fast.
We basically have to just focus on reading approaches.

Granted, I've personally never had that much trouble with Falcons. In my experience it seems about even. Though I did have to change a lot of how I usually play. A lot more defensive than I usually do.

On paper it seems like Falcon would be pretty good against Dedede since he can combo the big phatty, punish his laggy moves through sheer speed and a great dash grab and cover Dedede's few landing options thus basically forcing Dedede to reset to the ledge whenever he's above the stage (unless Dedede reads a shield and lands with inhale. Nair isn't safe on shield. And at most only a perfectly spaced bair is safe on shield against Falcon.)
 
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D

Deleted member 269706

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Unfortunate to see that Falcon has a hard time against so many of the "top tier" characters. Almost a little discouraging to see, but he will always be my main. That being said, we don't have any super strong Falcon players yet, so for all we know, everything we think about certain matchups could be wrong. To throw my two cents in, I feel like Ness is one of the fighters who are easier to go against as a Falcon player. I'm not saying it's in Falcon's favor, but it's definitely nothing impossible to beat. His PK fire and PK thunder are both very punishable with high amounts of cool down. It's really about staying out of reach at the 0%-20% and 100%+. Get in, hit, get out. Repeat. ZSS is a similar story. Just avoid the paralyzer, and the match is about even. The only characters who I truely find to outmatch Falcon are Pikachu (due to size), Shiek (due to speed), and Sonic (due to his never ending bull****).

If Falcon could keep his running momentum when he jumped (like in Melee), he would be so much more dangerous against so many more of these players. I don't see the change happening in a patch, but it'd be rad if it did.
 
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