BirdLordMasterBeak
Smash Apprentice
This is going to be kind of like a falco journal (but I am pretty much just writing here it because its a cool place to store my own thoughts and it can probably help people a lot too). This is my theory about falco stuff. I plan on separating it into several sections.
DISCLAIMER: I am a scrub falco so not everything here is accurate.
Neutral game(lasers):
Falco has one of the best neutral games in melee. His projectile alone can completely shut down the enemy. When I first started playing melee, I noticed right away how hard it was to fight a good falco. I felt like I wasn’t even playing the game because lasers just stopped everything I tried to do. To control your opponent, you need to stop your opponent from playing the game and make them play a game of laser tag. The most common ways that I see people dealing with lasers in neutral: Powershielding, Shielding, running away, or jumping. (Getting hit by a laser can be beneficial in certain situations but thats higher level stuff).
Pressure:
Falco is (in my opinion) one of the three characters in the game that can perform safe, guaranteed pressure. These characters are Fox(shine), Falco(shine), and Peach(float cancel). My Falco exerts three different kinds of pressure during gameplay. These pressures are:
DISCLAIMER: I am a scrub falco so not everything here is accurate.
Neutral game(lasers):
Falco has one of the best neutral games in melee. His projectile alone can completely shut down the enemy. When I first started playing melee, I noticed right away how hard it was to fight a good falco. I felt like I wasn’t even playing the game because lasers just stopped everything I tried to do. To control your opponent, you need to stop your opponent from playing the game and make them play a game of laser tag. The most common ways that I see people dealing with lasers in neutral: Powershielding, Shielding, running away, or jumping. (Getting hit by a laser can be beneficial in certain situations but thats higher level stuff).
- Powershielding
- I believe this option is good because it sends a projectile that interrupts the opponent right back at them. There are quite a few people capable of powershielding with a high % of accuracy. I believe the best way to counter this is to perform an empty SH so that they try to powershield the laser but cannot because it never actually comes out. This commits them to being in shield which is generally a bad position to be in against falco because of his safe shield pressure.
- Shielding
- Shielding lasers is a very popular option for dealing with falco. It prevents the lasers from doing damage and you can wavedash out of shield and try to punish them. Laser into grab, jab, ftilt, and even fsmash(risky) if you predict your opponent trying to punish your laser are all really good options.
- Running away
- When an opponent is dashing away from a lasering falco, they are giving up stage control to falco. (more on this later)
- Jumping
- Jumping can be a very good option or a very bad option in dealing with falco lasers. Jumping over them puts you in a position to punish falcos lasers. Once a falco commits to a laser, they aren’t able to do much besides fast fall. This severely limits what they can react to. If an opponent jumps over a laser, they have a chance to punish falco before he hits the ground. I have eaten many Captain Falcon nairs from my roommate because of this one.
Pressure:
Falco is (in my opinion) one of the three characters in the game that can perform safe, guaranteed pressure. These characters are Fox(shine), Falco(shine), and Peach(float cancel). My Falco exerts three different kinds of pressure during gameplay. These pressures are:
- Laser Pressure
- Laser pressure is very important. Falco holds the second best projectile in the game, the first being marth’s grab. It has very unique properties that makes it so good. His lasers interrupt actions (unlike fox’s), have transcendent hitboxes so they cannot be smacked away by most attacks, and all lag from doing it can be cancelled upon landing (if you shoot the laser in the air). Laser pressure can be used to interrupt opponents and catch them off guard, leading into offensive openings. It can also be used defensively to force the opponent to approach (or you get free damage). I could go on for hours about lasers but this is just a generic description for now.
- Shield Pressure
- Shield pressure is GREAT for falco. Once your opponent is in shield, with proper shield pressure, all they can do is roll. There are many different kinds of shield pressure that you need to be aware of. The first two are the generic shield pressure options that you will see most falcos doing at low to high level play. This is the dair-shine-dair-shine pressure and the nair-shine-nair-shine pressure. Many people I know actually don’t know the difference between the two.
- -Dair pressure is wonderful because dair has a really nice hitbox for shield poking. It also gives frame advantage so when done correctly, the best option the opponent usually has to escape is to buffer a roll out of the pressure.
- -Nair pressure is wonderful because of how much shield stun there is on the shield. It gives a little more leeway with timing than dair shining (I actually consider dair shining to be high risk high reward pressure). Nair has a bigger hitbox so it has a smaller chance of poking shields. This can be good because instead of getting a little percent with the chance of a follow up from a shield poke, a shield break can lead to any attack.. Due to its safe nature, it is a really good move to use to make opponents afraid to shield so that you can get more offensive openings that lead into juicy 80%+ combos.
- There are other kinds of shield pressure too. An opponent may like shielding a lot. Perhaps your pressure isn’t very good or you want a nice pressure mixup. Shine grabbing is super underrated because of falco’s “meh” throws. However unlike nair/dair shield pressure, shine grabbing is guaranteed damage with a possible followup. When doing shield pressure sometimes you can mess up or not read the opponent's roll out of shield and they get away without any damage. This is a nice mixup if you know they are going to stay in shield.
- Combo Pressure (The fear of being combo'ed)
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I am glad I helped! I am going to add more stuff on movement and combo game later too!
