Help me with Neutral game

[Lapze]

Alright I feel like I've hit a bit of a road block. I've spent a ton of time practicing against cpu and I feel like I've created this terrible habit of being aggressive. When I play against a really good player, I feel locked up. It really comes down to me having an abysmal neutral game. I'm extremely predictable and have a hard time breaking this cycle. I even have a friend that gives me a really difficult time even though he doesn't have the best tech skill nor nearly as much time practicing. When I play against him he can often times sit in one place and just waits for me to approach and beats my approach most times. This has made me develop a super cringey habit of trying to attack from above because attacking horizontal more times than not, doesn't work. Now what confuses me is I've played against some pretty sick falco's that just run a train on me. They just blow right through me chain comboing me to death, and so I try to do the same thing to people when I play. I don't like being defensive, I love how mango plays. I like the idea of dictating the pace of the game by being really fast and yet I get punished for it so easily. I just don't know what to do in order to start making progress. I've read over and over again falco's best neutral game approachs and strategies but for some reason I must not be doing it right. If i'm being honest it feels like my spacing is garbage and everything i do is easy to read. Is there any specific advice people can give so that I can at least start making progress? When I watch the best falco's play it literally feels like "Okay, I'm going to run over to you and combo you to death and theres nothing you can do about it" but when I play It's like I'm just walking into death repeatedly. How the hell can Mango and Westballs make it seem so easy?

 

[Illuminus]

In melee defensive options are really good. To pull off the stuff Mang0 or Westballz do you need amazing tech-skill, the speed to pull off that tech-skill, and the experience to recognize, read, and capitalize. They are also playing the meta certain stuff works because there is an assumption happening.

Next, focus on yourself its amazing how confident you can be in your tech-skill but it not be that good. An example can be just watch westballz hand-warmer or practice between stocks. He'll often shffl -> shine repeatedly or multishine. Watch how much quicker he is then you . Seriously find a vod and just watch his hand warmers. Another good way is to put speed in perspective is to load up 20XX and try to beat fox shine OOS start with nair which is the easiest, then dair harder, finally try it with double shine (it's a 2 frame window). Its hard. Even harder to get with 90% success. Its truly a skill that you have to work on.

People never consider that Tech-skill comes in 3 dynamics: inputs, speed, and understanding. PPMD talks a lot about this as well as drugged fox if you want to research more I'd suggest some falco lessons videos from drugged fox youtube or following the ppmd q&a thread in this forum. Specifically Yort has a really good series of question that spans MANY pages.

Next, I would recommend building your game plan at a very basic level then branching off it. You need to have set-plays.

For example you get on their shield. Base gameplan: Dair -> Shine pressure. Thats gonna work for a bit but eventually you'll play a player who is going beat that with Shield grab. So you branch your mixup game out now, you start mixing up high and low dairs to mix up the shield grab timing, maybe mix in some double shines. Now your opponent the genius he is starts just holding shield longer he is waiting for a mistake or to buffer roll; you start to shine grab to punish his paitence. This can continue on but the point is to illustrate 3 basic mix-ups and having a game plan or set-play when you get on top of his shield.

I also wanted to address your comment about approaching from above. Approaching that way is not inheritly bad, unless you are doing it in a predictable way. When you come down on them what are you doing? High Dair on shield most likely, maybe getting caught in lag on platform? Have you tried: Platform mix-ups? Empty land shine? Under/over-shoot waveland -> shine? Landing with a laser? The fact with all these options available and you consider approaching from above "bad" just means you aren't really thinking about your options.

Finally, I just want to leave you with some stuff people never told me:

1. You can change your shffl timings a lot
Try getting full momentum and pulling back, shffl in place, back-flip shffl etc. Your goal can be achieved without constantly holding forward. Sometime you need to lose the fastfall

2. At mid - long range lasers beat everything even powershield. Lasering close is the risk. On that note you can laser every height really fast in every direction from any position. You dont need to spam laser but you can always put a well placed one.

3. Falco has good dash dance. Sure its bad compared to marth but it has really really good mix-ups with aerials and lasers.

4. Tap jump is really good for out of shine.

5. You can do it!!!

I hope this helps!

 

[Lapze]

In melee defensive options are really good. To pull off the stuff Mang0 or Westballz do you need amazing tech-skill, the speed to pull off that tech-skill, and the experience to recognize, read, and capitalize. They are also playing the meta certain stuff works because there is an assumption happening.

Next, focus on yourself its amazing how confident you can be in your tech-skill but it not be that good. An example can be just watch westballz hand-warmer or practice between stocks. He'll often shffl -> shine repeatedly or multishine. Watch how much quicker he is then you . Seriously find a vod and just watch his hand warmers. Another good way is to put speed in perspective is to load up 20XX and try to beat fox shine OOS start with nair which is the easiest, then dair harder, finally try it with double shine (it's a 2 frame window). Its hard. Even harder to get with 90% success. Its truly a skill that you have to work on.

People never consider that Tech-skill comes in 3 dynamics: inputs, speed, and understanding. PPMD talks a lot about this as well as drugged fox if you want to research more I'd suggest some falco lessons videos from drugged fox youtube or following the ppmd q&a thread in this forum. Specifically Yort has a really good series of question that spans MANY pages.

Next, I would recommend building your game plan at a very basic level then branching off it. You need to have set-plays.

For example you get on their shield. Base gameplan: Dair -> Shine pressure. Thats gonna work for a bit but eventually you'll play a player who is going beat that with Shield grab. So you branch your mixup game out now, you start mixing up high and low dairs to mix up the shield grab timing, maybe mix in some double shines. Now your opponent the genius he is starts just holding shield longer he is waiting for a mistake or to buffer roll; you start to shine grab to punish his paitence. This can continue on but the point is to illustrate 3 basic mix-ups and having a game plan or set-play when you get on top of his shield.

I also wanted to address your comment about approaching from above. Approaching that way is not inheritly bad, unless you are doing it in a predictable way. When you come down on them what are you doing? High Dair on shield most likely, maybe getting caught in lag on platform? Have you tried: Platform mix-ups? Empty land shine? Under/over-shoot waveland -> shine? Landing with a laser? The fact with all these options available and you consider approaching from above "bad" just means you aren't really thinking about your options.

Finally, I just want to leave you with some stuff people never told me:

1. You can change your shffl timings a lot
Try getting full momentum and pulling back, shffl in place, back-flip shffl etc. Your goal can be achieved without constantly holding forward. Sometime you need to lose the fastfall

2. At mid - long range lasers beat everything even powershield. Lasering close is the risk. On that note you can laser every height really fast in every direction from any position. You dont need to spam laser but you can always put a well placed one.

3. Falco has good dash dance. Sure its bad compared to marth but it has really really good mix-ups with aerials and lasers.

4. Tap jump is really good for out of shine.

5. You can do it!!!

I hope this helps!

Thanks, I really appreciate this advice. Easy to understand. I'll be sure to look for that stuff from PPMD, drugged fox and yort. One of the hardest parts about melee that I find is translating an undertanding into actual muscle memory. I can practice stuff over and over and over but when It comes to actually playing people It's all lost lol. I've noticed that when I play really good people I actually start playing even worse than what I'm capable of to the point where I just feel like I'm stuck in slow motion. I was talking to someone else today and I realized something pretty important (I think)... people develop all this muscle memory and when they play people they just go through the motions, nothing but intuitive flow charts. Where as with me, I think I notice myself trying to think and figure stuff out on the fly but the game is just way too fast to try to tell myself "hey do this" and then actually do it. I have never played a game like that, like training yourself on a flow chart that you execute intuitively/automatically. I just hope in another couple years, I'm a lot better than I am now.