• Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!

    You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!

Key points in Falco's matchups?

Sam'sAwakening

Smash Cadet
Joined
Jan 20, 2016
Messages
52
So I am wondering about some key points in Falco's matchups (obviously). I'm not asking for an essay about each matchup, I am talking about 5 to 10 short (like a sentence or 2) key points about each mathup the Falco player should know. I am asking for short key points because I like to put notes on my phone to look at before I play a match in a tournament. You can leave a couple paragraphs if you want (I know there is already a thread with that), but I am just asking for something short. Thanks in advanced :)
 

Audos

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Apr 24, 2015
Messages
104
Location
Austintown, Ohio
Fox
--------------
  • Fox has a better dash dance than you and his Full hop into fast fall covers a lot of options if you aren't under a platform. Look for how he full hops, or rather what you do that makes him start full hopping, then you can use your full hop to smack him out early.
  • He shouldn't be lasering you much, if he laser camps you can take laser control from him with yours.
  • Remember your lasers have start up, and they can interrupt it. If the fox is chucking SHFFLE nairs at you it probably means he is trying to start a combo by reading that you will laser him.
  • Fox has a potent grab and great OOS options, be careful how you pressure him in shield and don't be afraid back off his shield early to see if he will wiff an option/has OOS habits.
  • Practice your combos in 20XX a LOT. If you want to have a chance at winning this MU or any other fast faller match up, you want to be as comfortable with all DI's and combos on reaction.
  • Remember you don't always have to shine, and when you do land a shine that the opponent will have a normal trajectory that is slightly away from you, not straight up. Use this to your advantage, if you are mid combo and don't want them to full DI to the right off stage, try to shine them on their right side so they can't do that.
  • Use lasers to limit their options off stage, just watch how PP plays that part of the MU. Think of when they will jump first, that is usually important. Also run off DJ dair is amazing, different variations cover almost everything.
  • Laser fox while he lands.

Falco

----------------
  • Lasers are dope. If you control lasers you can land combos/pressure and net stocks.
  • If the opponent is winning the laser game use the side platforms to stop above laser height. Fall through with your own laser to sneak in between their shots.
  • Treat edgeguarding with falco similar to fox, except you have to hard read side-b a bit more as falco's is harder to react to. Falco's usually sweetspot edge so run-off low DJ dair can cover that, or maybe even downsmash if they aren't perfect.
  • You can pressure falco easier than fox, but you have to watch out anyway. He has worse OOS options that give him better combos if he does land them.
  • Learn to powershield, if you can't atm then just practice being as fast OOS as possible. If you get hit by a laser, dash away immediately is an option that makes the falco have to be more careful about how they capitalize/approach.

Marth
-----------------
  • Keep him in the air. You can combo him kind of well, but you can juggle him for days.
  • Try to find ways to steal his jump. Delay your follow up a tiny bit so that his fair can't come out but his DJ can. This is great after an upthrow.
  • Lasers are cool, but Marths often will try to jump, take laser, then immediately fair you. If they do this too much, hit them with a high laser and dash in>shield/punish the fair. Really this is about conditioning them to be complacent so you can make them throw it out in bad spacing.
  • Edge guards rely pretty heavily on when you can invincibility. Firestalling is pretty useful.
  • When they recover and you can force them to land on stage, the mix up is that you either smack them off with a hard hit like fsmash or you dair them so that if they hold in you can double dip. D-tilt them at high % if you know that they Amsah tech.
  • He will try to abuse his grabs as they are unreactable most of the time. Reading how the opposing marth tries to grab is how you win neutral.
  • Mix up your recovery as best you can.
  • Shield pressure is pretty dank vs marth. You will get a lot of mileage by practicing how you shield poke.
Sheik
-----------------
  • Like marth, prioritize putting her above you. She's a great combo weight as well, but whoever is below the other wins the match-up.
  • Abuse CC at low percents. The reason sheiks try so hard to grab and master the reaction tech chase is because they need knockdown to thrive in the combo game.
  • Lock her down, hard. Then, see what she does to get out of the corner. Sheiks love to dash attack under mid/high lasers. If you in knockdown percent, this is terrible. Try to do dashback lasers and mix up options to make her approach risky.
  • Edge guards are very flowchart. Honestly you just need enough experience to capitalize really hard on her options. Unlike marth who can really do work off of coming back with a DJ, with sheik you can just go for a meaty combo until rinse-repeat percents where you can just keep bairing her off stage.
Jigglypuff
-------------------
  • IDK much in this match up. sry bae.
  • If anything work your lasers on her lower jump height and don't overextend your combos.
  • She can't strafe after a DJ unless she puts out an ariel, so that's why they look like they are spamming randomly. This can be taken advantage of but it is hard to.
  • Watch how PPMD used to fight hbox. Most puffs are defensive like hbox, fish for grabs like hbox, and try to edge guard like hbox. I'm fairly sure falco still wins the match-up and can control space as good as puff, but life is really hard for falco outside of yoshi's. Good luck my friend.
Peach
------------------
  • Peach moves into different zones. Control the ground level where she can dash attack unreactably and turnip pulling range with lasers. Control the above highest laser range by trying to poke her as she falls with a laser or something. That space between getting lasered out of your FC ariel and hitting the ground is super vulnerable.
  • You can CC her dash attack, just be careful about aggressive moments you hold down. Be careful when you shine.
  • If you are getting combo'd, peach is slow. Tech roll away is usually impossible to punish.
  • Don't laser her in her up-b. Make your edgeguards patient. Bair is great usually.
  • Make your combo's more conservative. Grab/shine to multi hit fair is good. A shine bair is fine.
  • Don't find a rythmn. If you do a laser then another then another she will hit your start up. Mix dash dances and make every shot a deliberate read if you are trying to laser her out of her FC ariels.
Falcon
-------------------
  • Shield pressure the crap out of him. If he ariels OOS to counter shine, mix in up tilts.
  • Landing a shine is amazing on falcon, but remember the best thing to do against him is get him off stage. His recovery is terrible so if he gets knocked off by an fsmash at like 60% you can usually kill him.
  • Lasers lock falcon down, but he is amazing at randomly SHFFLE kneeing you and what not. Bairs, and especially up tilts are great anti airs. Up tilt can't be CC'd by the falcon if he is approaching with ariels and it combos the mess out of him.
  • Again, combos are pretty big. Get comfortable wrecking him, and when you are great at true stuff start doing things to steal his jumps. As a small tip, hit the falcon just right after hitstun ends so that he can't put out an ariel, but if he jumps he loses the jump. No risk, high reward if mastered.

Hey I hope it helps. You can definitely condense the stuff that is more universal and just keep some of it in the back of your mind. You of course can't cover everything but most of it is great to remember. Check out the more in depth boards and write yourself some notes on what other players are saying, too!
 

GenNyan

Smash Ace
Joined
May 12, 2015
Messages
574
Location
Florida
I can add a few tips on puff MU

  • Puff's Upthrow is basically too fast to react to once you actually get grabbed, so you have to predict when you'll get grabbed and start DI-ing early.
  • A lot of her moves can combo into rest, so know them (Upair especially on small plats, Utilt below like 40, pound at idk % but DI away and you'll be fine, Jab reset, downair between like 50 and 130 nobody does it though, rest OOS if you're not careful, nair rest but yeah nobody does that either.)
  • If you get thrown up on a platform, tech rolling away will make it a lot harder to tech chase you. If you ever need to tech at all really, she really can't chase down tech rolls because she's very slow.
  • laser her when she's offstage, don't overextend on edgeguards.
 

Audos

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Apr 24, 2015
Messages
104
Location
Austintown, Ohio
I can add a few tips on puff MU

  • Puff's Upthrow is basically too fast to react to once you actually get grabbed, so you have to predict when you'll get grabbed and start DI-ing early.
  • A lot of her moves can combo into rest, so know them (Upair especially on small plats, Utilt below like 40, pound at idk % but DI away and you'll be fine, Jab reset, downair between like 50 and 130 nobody does it though, rest OOS if you're not careful, nair rest but yeah nobody does that either.)
  • If you get thrown up on a platform, tech rolling away will make it a lot harder to tech chase you. If you ever need to tech at all really, she really can't chase down tech rolls because she's very slow.
  • laser her when she's offstage, don't overextend on edgeguards.

For the tech rolls on platforms, I'd recommend looking up the tech chase information videos, like the
tech trap that jiggs like to do. This video is overall useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbD_Q_RDxTE

In general
you want to not tech in place and pick when you tech at all when they go for the platform setup. If you try to tech the first time and they read that, they will close your next tech window and punish missed tech with rest. You basically never want to tech in place in this exact situation, since they will be preparing for the missed tech punish. That being said it is a 50/50 either way.

Nice stuff in this post, btw. This stuff
will help me too <3
 

Frenzy231199

Smash Cadet
Joined
Oct 20, 2014
Messages
63
Location
Bristol, England
An important part of the Puff matchup is knowing when you can whiff punish her, A lot of Falco's try to punish Jiggs' aerials immediately out of shield which is unsafe. When Puff aerials your shield you have to respect how safe her aerial drift is and either wavedash out of shield, jump or laser if you are certain they will back up after their aerial. It is almost never a good idea to grab or aerial out of sheild vs Puff
 

1000g2g3g4g800999

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jul 21, 2012
Messages
368
Location
Earth
For the ditto I'd just like to say this: Don't fastfall onto another laser below you if you can avoid it, and don't jump into high lasers. You can win the laser game by simply paying attention to the heights the opponent is firing at while shooting your own against so many Falcos.

For Peach, the float height just above SH laser max height can be hit with uair and fair, if she's floating and you can't just hit her for it but her position is threatening, you should just get out of there immediately, preferably with a roll or wavedash or other movement that maximizes distance between you and where she's projected to land if she were to start falling. You can also catch her descent from a float with lasers anyway if you have room to move back at all. Feel free to just start uptilting and back airing her if she was airborne, get some quick percent. Dash attack can clank favorably with any tilt, but ftilt reaches the furthest to allow you to deal with the most possible approaches at once, though the knockback isn't great at lower percents. It's big enough to avoid whiffing and losing to down-tilt, however. As soon as it begins knocking down, uptilting over and over is your version of downsmashing a peach who CCs, but you can stop it prematurely or continue it further based on their behavior changing. Spacing bairs or landing another strong aerial into a combo of some sort to make more of your neutral options safe vs CC is a must.

Fox. Don't get shined OoS, avoid getting shined (or grabbed) in general, and don't DI shines up near the ledge. Avoid letting him hit you with fullhop approaches or fullhop counter approaches. Just don't have predictable movement and stop jumping around when he jumps, unless you're fullhopping to whiff punish or intercept his fullhop. Your dash dance may be limited, but it can adequately punish approaches targeted towards your current position. Your throw combo game is truer and better on Fox than any other fast-faller by no small margin. Certain floaties and middle fall-speed characters may have more trouble with say, bthrow or up throw (and fthrow can even CG certain characters, but no Fox under any circumstance). Fox is also the character you're most likely to get a combo off of if you shine-grab but hit with the shine and whiff the grab. Fox directly approaching your aerial hitboxes tends to be difficult, but he can dash dance around them or use running shield. Retreating AC bair is much harder to do this kind of thing to, and with most Foxes trying to run in and grab the endlag they're probably not going to actually reach you before you can escape, and you'll often be able to get a move of your own out. Be vigilant for roll->shine or uptilt. If you aren't attacking, you should be able to bair, dair, or uptilt this if they were going to end up close to you in the first place.

Marth. Everything is less safe on shield, including high retreating aerials because his grab reaches so high. He can't regrab DI behind at 0 in the CG, and he can't tech-chase DI all the way behind tech away off of dthrow without a hard commitment (pre-emptively wavedashing) and that won't even always work. Jabs aren't great, but can catch close dash dances, and can force royzones on moves like fsmash and grab. If you can get him into position, fair and uair lead to crazy damage, and he's one of the best character to do pillar combos to. You can often sneak under aerials he comes down with with a dash attack. Laser->aerial isn't really safe vs anyone, but Marth is one of the easier characters to punish this with an aerial oos with. Laser->ftilt or even laser (possible pivot) fsmash can work in these scenarios to punish such an attempt. Ftilt can be faired OoS, but ftilt can beat dtilt's range too. You can beat most of his ground approaches and combo off of them with dair, but if he uses extreme range like ftilt or fsmash he can get around this. Run up shield can destroy aerial walls, many forms of nair intercepting or approaching, and even dtilt if you get in on the range. SH bair can also beat sh AC nair and a bunch of other approaches he might try. Most of Marth's moves have more start up than those of other top tiers, so trying you move in closer with hitboxes to stop the startup isn't bad, it's just you can get grabbed off of a weak hit even if you do this successfully. Don't get dash-dance grabbed or uptilted.

Sheik. CC and quick action out of shield destroy a number of unsafe things Sheiks love to do, including just about any rising aerial if you can move correctly (also all her tilts, her jab, unspaced aerials dsmash). Space to not be in shield grab range to force nair out of shield or non-retaliatory options. CC fsmash vs ledgehop fair can mean Sheik is dead ridiculously early. Bair is amazing, as is dtilt. Feel free to grab her a lot just for positioning, as Sheik probably wants to get a grab on you somehow, and spacing in place could get run-up shield grabbed. Don't get grabbed or gimped.

Puff. Laser-> ground move is extremely effective if she's low airborne. Don't get wavedash back grabbed. Back throw and fthrow combo into things. If puff doesn't or isn't drifting away and goes for an aerial on shield, bair oos and nair oos can work. Otherwise avoid having to shield in the first place. Reposition a little and laser, or bair. Bair to intercept her coming in. Dtilt is amazing.
 
Top Bottom