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How does Falco counter this?

Lapze

Smash Rookie
Joined
Oct 6, 2017
Messages
6
Man, the more I play melee the more I love melee and absolutely hate melee players lol. I feel like I'm hitting a roadblock in games, losing where I shouldn't necessarily. I know falco has it tough because if you don't 0 to death you get gimped by any number of ridiculous attacks that kill for free but still sometimes the struggle seems insanely real.

Peach: I feel like I'm getting the hang of peach players. Every peach player is just drooling to down smash, i honestly dont think they have any other thoughts in their head except for "I need to down smash asap, as many times as possible" A lot of peachs kit is just grimey dumb **** so I've been having BETTER luck in just keeping her away. She gets shut down decently with bair, so I just try to fight cancer with cancer and only aerial and bair lol. Trying to combo seems so easily, randomly countered. One combo which is guaranteed to have a down smash in there will completely destroy your stock, so I just try to avoid comboing all together (unless she has like 50-60%) and just play like a puff and widdle them down over time with bairs, I really try to be as obnoxious as possible, you know like how peach players are. Any other advise welcome.

Marth: This is my hardest match up by far. I'm starting to think Marth is actually the best player in the game. He is easy to play, low risk, high reward, brainless fsmashes, etc. The marths that give me the hardest trouble are the ones that love to live inside their shields. It is incredibly easy for marth to act out of shield and punish. I honestly don't even what to say about this match up. I try so hard and it feels like marth can just push buttons and win. How i do know this? Lol because alot of times ill switch to marth and my trash ass marth can keep up with them all of a sudden. He's just so fast, with the range and OP grabs. Yeah i'm convinced marth is the best character in the game.

Falcon: This match up is actually pretty fair it seems. I don't think i really need any advise on this one, just comes down to execution.

Fox: This is just a higher skill requirement marth. So many busted ass moves that combo easily. I think I'm ever so slowly learning to just out play some foxs, thats all you really can do. But i am getting messed up by nair. His nair is so good, it's so hard to deal with. Not to mention shine gimps, this is just another cancer match up. I don't know how to deal with nair. I'm noticing a lot of foxs like to jump to a plat form and then nair off the side and I'm having issues in dealing with that too. I could just be terrible, but I don't understand why that works so well against me.

Sheik: This match up is always so annoying. I don't really know what to do except for to not get too close and to keep moving.

Also in general if anyone has any grimey, cancerous tips that piss people off please share. I've noticed pretty much every single player just wants to play as cancerous as possible and to make other people rage, as if other peoples rage is how they determine how much fun they are having. It's honestly something else man lol, I can't think of any other video game where people take the game so seriously. Like their character is the personification of their ego and if they lose it's like a personal attack of character or something. I don't necessarily want to make people rage for fun, I just want to grime on grimey players.

TL;DR
So most importantly, how do I deal with foxs nair and nair from platform and how can I make marth shield less, falco isnt the best grabby character. You can't spam lazer too much or marth will just open up on you. You have to combo marth but it's so easy for marth to get away or shield grab you. Is this just like one of those situations where you have to perform razor sharp, godlike pressure like mango or else you can't do it?

MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION: With players that shield a lot in general I know you have to grab them but it is really hard to get anything off a grab with falco. You have to read the up throw, and i'd say I can usually get a bair most of the timely but the problem is if they are low % it just turns into them comboing me which makes it totally pointless. What are the optimized falco punishes when grabbing characters? Am I missing something? If they have good di is my up throw just a wash? I sometimes have decent success with back throw because I think the animation is just a little difficult for people to process mentally but then it puts me in a neutral situation where I have a slight advantage but I usually have to look for a read.

(Also side question on new slippi: does anyone ever feel like they are getting dropped/miss-timed inputs? Sometimes I just want to look at my hands and be like ... is this your doing? WTF)
 

Daladex

Smash Rookie
Joined
Nov 9, 2019
Messages
24
Location
20XX
Slippi.gg
Fox#1
If Fox is going to the platform to jump off and nair you, you could preemptively position yourself when you know they want to do it, space yourself so you're just outside of the move's range, and whiff punish. You can also crouch cancel the nair at low-mid percent, and shine right after they hit you. Marth's shield actually sucks, because he's so tall, he can easily be shield poked when the shield deteriorates even just a little bit, so most Marths actually don't like shielding that often, but if you keep getting shield grabbed by Marth, you're timing your aerials so they can be shield grabbed easily. I know Falco loves to just dair, but nair is a lot safer on shield due to the smaller amount of lag, so if you do a late nair on shield, you can immediately follow up with shine grab, so if the Marth tries to grab after the nair, he'll get hit by the shine, and if he stays in shield, he'll get grabbed. Another thing you can do is to bait the shield grab by jumping at him but cancelling your drift, and then whiff punish the grab with dair, fsmash, whatever. You can also try crossing up the shield by doing nair, shine, wavedash forward through the shield, and then he won't be able to shield grab since you're behind him.
 

CAUP

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Apr 21, 2014
Messages
467
How long have you been playing? Were you playing before the pandemic? Have you been to locals?

I wouldn't read too much into other people's behavior on rollback; I know that's harder than it sounds sometimes. You just don't know what's going through the other person's head though- I would avoid projecting rage or bitterness or spite. I don't think most players actually feel those things commonly. Most do this to relax. Also I would caution against looking down on people who play styles you dislike or characters you don't like fighting against; that mentality is a weakness which will hurt you the better you get, since in order to be really good against a character, you have to understand the subtly behind what your opponent is doing. If you have strong emotions about a character or those who play the character, your judgement will be impaired and you won't be able to understand why you're losing.

I'm not a falco player so I will only be able to give limited advance about the matchup questions you asked.

Peach: laser and bair are definitely really good against her. In addition to that defensive kit, add up tilt, specifically when she's trying to hit you from her float. It's a really good anti-air. I would also urge you to get more comfortable comboing her. Falco has some very solid strings on peach. The big starter is usually down air shine. But shine pressure is also another starter, or up throw, to juggle/push her to the corner.

Marth: If marths are hiding in shield against you that's a sign of two things: your shield pressure isn't good and you're not willing to grab the opponent. Marth's out of shield options are pretty crummy: he has grab, and then he has up b OoS. Grab losses to standard falco shield pressure and up b is barely faster and much higher commitment. Having marth in his shield is where you want him as falco in this matchup. Learn how to shine grab if you don't know already. Shine grab is probably the single most underutilized tech by lower level falcos. They're not willing to grab because against low level opponents, they'll constantly challenge falco shield pressure and get shined. Against better players, they'll hold shield and look for a good time to roll out or spot dodge. Learn shine grab. Generally you'll want to up throw but f throw also works at around 50, and back throw can be a DI mixup. Marth has limited options getting down. Often against lesser players you can bait out a side b and then punish. Defense is important against marth as spacies- work on wave dash out of shield, shortens, shine stalling when recovering, and sweet spotting ledge. Getting back a little bit more of the time will help you a lot against marth.

You definitely don't have to perform incredible pressure to beat marth shield grab.

Fox: learn shine out of shield. That will help you deal with fox nairs. If fox is actually just nairing from platform, crouch cancel shine them. Or dash dance around the nair and then dair the landing. Avoiding shine gimps is hard but it mostly just comes down to mixing up your recovery as much as you can.

Up throw as falco is somewhat of an art. Once you up throw, unless you have a clear follow up, think of it less as a combo and more of a neutral situation where you're trying to keep them in the air or force them to the corner. If up throw isn't working, you can also down throw. If you read a roll, you can aerial side b to cover it against most characters.

Overall, I'd urge you to not feel like you know too much about the game yet and how it plays. It sounds like you're developing some pretty strong opinions, which is all fine, but just watch out. Being biased this early can really hurt your performance in the game later. Playing melee is hard as all characters- no one character gets an easy pass. The easiest character to be really good at is fox (assuming wobbling is banned), and he's still super super hard to be really good at. At a low level marths may be able to seem like they can just swing their sword and win, because you kind of can do that at a low level, but it just doesn't work as players get better.
 

I_Am_GREYmatter__

Smash Rookie
Joined
May 22, 2019
Messages
9
Location
Phoenix, AZ
Use the gun more and incorperate forward smash. Also develop a grab game. I don't care what people are saying about "Projecting" I know rollback is toxic. Actions speak. I (as a Pichu main) have had many people try to **** on me for the character I play or they just quit out at the beginning. I have the footage and the comments (screenshot). I've been told I'm not worth the time because I play Pichu. I also have a falco and trust me I know the spam is real. I'd say this they want to flex. Make it hard for them and flex back.
 

flyboy__

Smash Cadet
Joined
Feb 21, 2019
Messages
46
Falco's grabs are extremely good in the sense that he can get many grabs while establishing and improving positional control, but are bad in the traditional sense due to no follow-up flow chart.

In (((simpler))) cases, grab can be utilized to mix-up the pressure game. F-throw is an excellent get-off-me and can set up edgeguards. Up-throw can potentially lead to upairs, downairs, backairs, or even weird mixups like up-smash, which I like to mix in against fox since it can hard knockdown and is unexpected. B-throw can potentially combo into another grab. D-throw is probably the weakest situational, throw but if you can potentially get a hard read on a tech option. The problem with all of these followups is that they're DI/tech dependent. Fortunately Falco can mix up his opponent with his speed and variety in shield-pressure.

In the current meta, Falco's grab is best at making your opponent uneasy and setting up for positional control. Falco is all about getting stage control and limiting the opponents options, and although his grab doesn't combo well, it is very good at putting the opponent where they don't want to be. F-throw and up-throw are the best for this because one puts your opponent in the corner and the other puts your opponent above you. F-throw can knockdown and limits dashback. Up-throw sets up for sharking and gives you ground control/center stage. Falco's neutral game is all about limiting options with each neutral win, so grab is a strong tool in furthering his aims.

Also grab makes your opponent's shield worse since laser->shine->grab is such an easy-to-execute and effective pressure.
 
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