Fast Falling the Knee

[ZDEG]

So I've started to use Falcon

(I can SHFFL, Wavedash, Waveland..sometimes, etc.)

And I'm aware that Falcon's bread and butter is the knee. However, when I SHFFL for the knee, I Fair obviously, but when I fast fall I cut the move short and my knee never lands the hit, thus getting punished to beat hell...

Any clues or tips about the timing for his knee? I'm trying to get the timing down if I were to for example, dash and and fair, or do a throw to a fair. But it just gets cancelled everytime I try and fast fall. If I don't fast fall, it lands more often...

What's going on?

 

[Sleepy]

first and foremost, it might be a little misunderstood of the nature of a shuffl.

During any jump of any fashion moves permit for fastfalling for almost all A attacks in melee, during the descent (falling state of the character)
Assuming this, performing a knee has only so many active frames. So in your case, I assume you're saying you're hitting the ground before the active frames come out. In which case you're performing the knee late.

To remedy this, you should know that in Melee (not in 64) you can fastfall mid move, provided you're falling (and using a move that permits fastfalling during move initiation (windup/during/recovery). So you can try doing the knee earlier, so it has a chance to come out, and fastfalling after starting the move.

so, try initiating a shorthop, then doing the action (knee: cstick forward/forward A) then pressing down on the stick during his descent (falling). You should note that this also will very if you're trying to tech chase with a knee, or hit smaller hitboxes etc.

So the TL:DR is: Press Jump (x or y), smack the C-stick left or right asap, then press down when you're falling, L-cancel slightly before landing.

small edit:
Also you should try to learn SHFFLs in different ways, for example:
Nair- might require a bit more time before the fastfall is initiated so the second hit's hitbox is the most exposed (higher from the ground)
Uair- it may be necessary to learn different timings, for deeper uairs (so sometimes I wouldn't fastfall this on occassion. You also might want to maximize the forward hitbox, and thus place it closer to the ground.
Dair- For nipple spikes, on stages with short platforms for example, Yoshi's Story, you want to learn to press the C-Stick down immediately, and maybe fastfall after the move connects if someone is stuck on a platform.

Although the jump height is the same, and you could in theory practice the muscle memory of just short/fullhops/dj aerials L-Cancel and Fastfall, it becomes necessary to just learn how to do things automatically and at variable timings.