Looking for constructive critique on my falco game

[jacob91]

Hi, thought I'd post this on all the relevant sub-forums.

My cousin and I have been playing melee together consistently ever since the game came out, getting together almost every month for the last ten years to have a game or two or a hundred.

Like everyone else we thought we were great until we went to our first tournament. That was years ago - we learned a lot since, but still we are humbled by the wide distribution of excellent players in the community.

So, after going to our local weeklies a number of times to gauge our improvements, we decided to record a best of 3 set on each legal stage at least once a month and post the footage of our gameplay here.

This month we recorded the footage despite not being primed beforehand. Thus we are both playing at much less than our current potential. These videos still show a fair representation of our current skill, despite them being far from our best matches.

I main falco and he mains luigi. We're looking for critique with our mains and advice on what we do that we shouldn't or what we should do that we don't. We'll try to incorporate the advice given into our game and post follow-up videos for critique at least once a month.

Here's the videos.

Yoshi's Story - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHeDZzIA2FY
Fountain of Dreams - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asvZgk3gKZg
Battlefield - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvalWh9msPc
Final Destination - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP2PfrbrdXc
Dream Land - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDJ7PVa2riQ

I know the forums are inundated with critique threads, so I promise to keep both of ours contained in this thread and to update it with new videos as we record them. I appreciate any feedback and criticism that helps us improve our level of gameplay.

 

[AirFair]

I was about to ask why you didn't use the official video thread.

Your Falco is not too bad. 1 Followup you could use on Luigi on the platform stage is just to shine him in the air, then jump and shine him up into the blast zone, the "floaty killer."

 

[jacob91]

Thought I'd post some other critique I've gotten here so that I can keep up with the advice I've been getting by consolidating it all in one place.

*you should practice fastfalling. i noticed in some combos you could have gotten to the ground and extended them for sure instead of extended them for mixup. also you never fastfall until after you throw out an aerial - get used to fastfalling at the apex of your jump and attacking right after, it's quick but devastating once you can fully utilize it as combos or shield pressure.
*you double jump aggressively far too often. as a falco, once you lose your double jump it could mean your life. gauge if it's worth it, as often trying to do something janky or trading near the edge can mean your life instead of theirs. but i think the reason you do it often is also attributed to...
*you not looking comfortable walking or running. you wavedash and jump everywhere. falco has sick followups with shine->run and walk and run have more techs than you think, from pc edgehog to foxtrotting to pivoting.
*bair a lot more. like a lot a lot more.-
Something I noticed a lot was you sometimes missed jumping out of shines, rarely used the sweetspotted Side-B recovery, and seemed to be missing a lot of places you could have edgehogged. Sweetspotting the Side-B is decently easy to learn and can be useful to mix up your recovery options, jumping out of shines is vital to comboing or pillaring (although higher-level play has learned to SDI out of pillars, so it will only get you so far), and on a majority of his recoveries where he did his Side-B -> Up-B in order to recover, you could have refreshed ledge invincibility and kept the ledge (or if you have a hard time timing the ledge drop in between his side and up B, you could always refresh invincibility before he comes with his Side-B and roll on-stage to keep the ledge from him.)

Also, try to work on your movement around the stage in general; it seemed like you were trying so hard to wavedash everywhere that your movement was impaired (I saw more rolls and WDs than I saw walking or dashing). Also, Dair approaches can be easily shielded and punished. My last criticism is to avoid trying to deal damage with Side-B or Up-B unless they are being used extremely sparingly as a mix-up as they are highly punishable. I do like that you have well-timed SHLs and your Up-B sweetspot is great. You also have pretty good spacing and I would like to applaud you for your enthusiasm for improvement.
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with Falco, you need to work on your pressuring. Running up and dairinf into nothing, or shield, etc., is going to get you slaughtered. Don't go for hard fsmash reads or youre just going to start getting baited. Even basic shield pressure with Falco would be nair -> waveshine away from sheild -> laser or wait for them to try something. If youre going to dair them, try to land behind them to prevent sheild grabs. Work on your combo game; dont do random fullhops. For instance, some of the things youre doing have no follow ups. Dont shine into upb. With luigi, you can shine him off the stage easily in 2 or 3 shines, even at low percent. Dont give up stage control. This is especially important as a spacie because a falco offstage is a dead falco.

Dont go for shield poke dsmashes either. Usually the shield di makes it not even hit the shield. Even against a Falco of my level, you'd probably get 0-deathd or at least some good percent on you almost every time you try that.

As for M86, hes not utilizing Luigi's best mechanic: his wavedash. Things like wavedashdancing at varying lengths, wavedash into spaced ftilt, etc., are decent approaches. He can chaingrab spacies with uthtow or dthrow tech chase. Can also usmash, follow their DI with a wavedash and chain it into fair. Another simple thing is covering the ledge with fireballs, etc.