How to properly perform a ledge hop attack?

[Clint Jaguar]

This is currently one of the hardest things I've ever tried to pull off in the game. I know what to do and can often do it with characters with high double jumps like Sheik and Fox but with Falcon, typically it ends two ways. Either the hop is too short and my attack ends up getting cancelled by the landing animation or I fall right off the ledge. I even have difficulty pulling this off with my Marth but at least with him I only really struggle when trying to do neutral airs.

Now I see people in competitive matches pull this move off perfectly all the time and whenever they do it, it seems like the jump is far higher than any jump I can pull off. I can ledge hop fine and can even ledge hop into a waveland but trying to do an attack is almost impossible. Even if I firmly press down the jump button or try to do it as fast as possible, it still doesn't work. Please help!

 

[meme2king]

It's all timing. Try it in .25 speed in training mode to see what inputs you should be doing.

One thing to note is that pressing down too far on the analog stick will make you fast fall. Either don't press all the way down, or tilt it away from te ledge and you will get a regular falling speed. Try to practice different timings , and learn to abuse the way falcon contorts his body during different aerials to help get different heights. It's most noticeable with down air when he goes fetus mode

 

[Devilsbabe]

Do you use A or c-stick? In debug mode I can see that the knee hitbox doesn't come out when I use the c-stick. But since I'm already holding forward to move towards the stage, the knee comes out automatically by pressing A and it's much faster. The other attack options from the ledge work fine with c-stick (apart from nair obviously), though stomp is sometimes close to whiffing.

 

[meme2king]

I have a bad habit of using the a button for aerials. It works in some situations, but you should really get in the habit of using the c stick for everything except for nair. You want to have full use of the analog stick so you can control your aerial mobility. This makes it a lot easier to punish marth/shiek recovery, since you can place the knee wherever you want with little difficulty using the C stick.

Stop doing bad things it's why falcon sucks.

 

[Clint Jaguar]

I mostly use a mix of A and C-stick aerials, depending on the situation. Sometimes it's just easier to use the A-button, especially when short hopping. For ledge hops, I am using the A-button, since the gap between the jump button is greater if I try to use the c-stick. Still, neutral airs are the ones I have the most trouble with and this doesn't just go for Falcon (as I mentioned before, my Marth also struggles).