Not touching his end lag also butchered his Blaster. There's one thing to remove auto-canceling, but not touching end lag or landing lag kills characters. Marth can't auto-cancel his Fair, but his landing lag might be the same since Melee which probably was bad, but nobody noticed because it auto-canceled. Falco's end lag on Blaster is similar - more or less by a few frames - from Melee and Brawl, but none of that mattered when it auto-canceled. Now it doesn't and it has one of the worse end lag if not the worst in the game for a projectile.
You can't fix a character by removing or changing one thing and expecting everything to work out. That's like if my car's headlights stop working, so I use full beam instead. A lot of Falco's issues are from Melee which you could even say it's because of Fox that he's messed up. In Brawl, people could chaingrab and he was notorious for it. Well, Smash 4 doesn't have chaingrabs, but not only that, he gained increased startup on his standing grab and it wasn't like a 1 frame increase that basically returns his Melee grab, but 2 frames which makes his grab slower than Ganondorf's while his dash and pivot grabs are basically Fox's. In Melee, his Blaster had a slow rate of fire, but auto-canceling meant it could be fired quickly. You don't make it so he can fire even faster in Brawl while allowing it to auto-cancel. Auto-canceling already made his Blaster (too) good, but in Brawl? It was broken since he could fire 2 lasers like Fox from a short hop, stun, and it covered Final Destination's length. In Smash 4, his Blaster got a lot of complaints and what happened? Slightly increased rate of fire. That wasn't the problem; the problem was the end lag or safety. Falco's main issue along with a lot of other characters like Zelda, Lucina, and even Fox is safety, but Fox can get away with it with speed - overall speed like low end lag, low landing lag, fast attacks, and fast ground speed. Falco has none of that except for fast attacks and even though his Smashes and Dtilt do push shields, he's too slow to actually get out. Now, take a look at Peach who can retreat Fair or pressure people with Dair and her Nair is incredible. Even without Float, she can do all of that.
Even in Brawl, Falco's main issue was killing. It wasn't kill power, but getting the kill because he was so slow in the air and on the ground. A mix of poor air speed, fast fall speed, and poor ground speed is probably the worst combinations on a character this light and who doesn't really have range. On Ike, Ganondorf, or Bowser, the heavyweights, it would work since they have the range and durability. Falco mobility is like a heavyweight's, but his build is a lightweight's. That just doesn't fly and then you look at Wolf who's a heavyweight, but has incredible air speed and who matches pace with Falco on the ground. Oh, and he outranges Falco with his melee attacks. High jumps means nothing when you can't use them well like Greninja, ZSS, or Yoshi who all have good air speed.
His strengths as a strong, fast attacker who can combo with kill moves and kill with practically anything is countered by his design. Personally, I don't get why Falco has a really high jump. Birds don't really jump high and Falco being a bird would suggest he has really good air speed instead of a really good jump. Melee and Brawl's mechanics were exploited by Falco, but if you didn't exploit them and didn't auto-cancel his Blaster, wavedash, waveshine, etc., he'd be pretty much the same as in Smash 4. His design, unfortunately, might be set in stone. Can it work? Yes, but there would need to be a lot of changes and some of them are fairly "simple" like lower end lag on Blaster, shield push on more moves, stronger shield push on other moves, and some of them might need more like I think it would be a great idea if his Dair sort of functioned like Sheik's. No, not a multi-hit move, but one where the first initial hitbox is just a regular hit, then there's a spike hitbox - he'd stomp his other leg while spinning -, and the late hitbox. It wouldn't combo or fully connect like Sheik's or Kirby's Dair, but it would make his Dair much safer without be broken. Although, it would make it really telegraphed, but it's already telegraphed as of now.
Anyway, we already have a thread on Falco's problems, weaknesses, etc. If you don't mind, @
(Buddha)
, I'll merge the threads.
