My dream

[Sycko]

I am going to Genesis as my first tournament, and I had a dream that Mango told me to main falco. I am entertaining this possibilty. My main goal is to make it on to youtube in a match. Hopefully that will happen but whatever. Just had a couple questions about falco.

1. What is the point of shine pressure as opposed to a shine grab?
2. Is b-reversing a thing in melee? I come from pm but it died.
3. Is his dair a true spike, or can it be cancelled?
4. Why does it seem like falcos wavedash is harder to preform than marth?

Thanks, I appreciate it.

 

[GenNyan]

1. IIRC a well-timed shine OOS can beat shine grab. Also falco isn't guaranteed anything off of his throws, while dair, nair, and shine easily start combos.

2. No.

3. It is a true spike. (Can't be cancelled)

4. Marth has 1 less frame of jump squat, and maybe you're just more used to the timing. Going from marth to falco or vice versa doesn't really mess up my timing so idk. Maybe it just feels harder because marth has a longer wavedash?

 

[Sycko]

I thonk the frame data difference is what throws me off thanks. Are westballz and Zhu good falcos to watch? Westballz is pretty crazy. Also, i hate to be that guy, but what are the things I absolutely need to work on? Thanks a lot man.

 

[Astherath]

To begin, if you're talking about pressing the opponent direction and then pressing B to turn around when you do the move, it is a thing in Melee, we just call it turnaround, or reverse. Turnaround laser is still in the game.
And as for the wavedash problems, Marth's jumpsquat (the moment right before the character jumps) is 5 frames, which is one frame faster than Falco's wavedash. If you're used to playing characters who do them incredibly fast (like Fox or Pikachu) then it's the timing you're messing up.

The biggest things I think you need to work on is finding your style as a player, and then basing your practice around that.

You should be able to tell whether you're a very aggressive or very defensive player. (or somewhere in the middle.) Do you prefer to play in an optimized way, or in a flashy stylish way?

If you're a more optimized and "frame perfect" kind of player then watch Zhu's matches, and his "SmashPractice" videos with Cactuar because they're incredibly helpful and insightful. Also watch PPMD's falco. Both of these players are very good at things like option coverage, how to continue combos and how to apply pressure without throwing out moves.

If you're a stylish flashy "gfycat" kind of player, then watching Westballz is the way to go. He's incredibly combo oriented, and is almost always on the attack. You can learn how to be a sick Falco from him, but don't expect to watch some slowed down play. Anther amazing Falco to watch for this is MaNg0's falco. (the sickest of them all.)

The other must watch Falco's are DaShizWiz, the FL legend, and Porkchops, the senpai of Falcos.

As for what you should learn, try to not waste time with things like quadruple shine out of shield, and try to learn how to play the game really well (fundamentals). Things like spacing, pressure, DI, punishes, stuff like that. If you're confident in your fundamentals then practice shield pressure with and without shines, the range of ALL of your moves (and their hitboxes), and watch videos of all of the matchups against the top 8 characters so that in pools you won't lose to matchup inexperience.

And above all, have fun!

 

[GenNyan]

To begin, if you're talking about pressing the opponent direction and then pressing B to turn around when you do the move, it is a thing in Melee, we just call it turnaround, or reverse. Turnaround laser is still in the game.

Actually, Turnaround B and B reversals are very different things. It is explained fairly well here.

The biggest things I think you need to work on is finding your style as a player, and then basing your practice around that.

You should be able to tell whether you're a very aggressive or very defensive player. (or somewhere in the middle.) Do you prefer to play in an optimized way, or in a flashy stylish way?

If you're a more optimized and "frame perfect" kind of player then watch Zhu's matches, and his "SmashPractice" videos with Cactuar because they're incredibly helpful and insightful. Also watch PPMD's falco. Both of these players are very good at things like option coverage, how to continue combos and how to apply pressure without throwing out moves.

If you're a stylish flashy "gfycat" kind of player, then watching Westballz is the way to go. He's incredibly combo oriented, and is almost always on the attack. You can learn how to be a sick Falco from him, but don't expect to watch some slowed down play. Anther amazing Falco to watch for this is MaNg0's falco. (the sickest of them all.)

The other must watch Falco's are DaShizWiz, the FL legend, and Porkchops, the senpai of Falcos.

I kinda disagree with this. I think that you should learn how to play the game both aggressively and defensively. Only learning one and ignoring the other can only be detrimental to your game. While personal styles are important, all the top falco players do things differently, and learning different perspectives enhances your options. When a player only watches players who are similar to him, he won't learn anything new and might find himself stagnating. Its better to take all the best tricks from all over the place to make your own style, rather than directly following only one or two people.

I thonk the frame data difference is what throws me off thanks. Are westballz and Zhu good falcos to watch? Westballz is pretty crazy. Also, i hate to be that guy, but what are the things I absolutely need to work on? Thanks a lot man.

I don't know how much you know, but I'm personally trying to work on precision. Often people will throw out aerials in their opponents' general direction instead of being able hit an specific target. I'm practicing this by using the tick marks on PS. I use the marks to say (You have to actually say it aloud) where I will short hop dair to, for example, and then I try to land exactly on that spot. When I first started it was very surprising how little control that I actually had over where my aerials went. I also try to jump offstage and shine-dair my opponents in friendlies/with CPUS. That helps be be more precise in aerial drift as well. Don't do it in tournament though because it is usually never worth it.

I guess as a more general thing (that last one was actually pretty specific), work on laser tricks, laser spacing, and being able to shine OOS as well as wave shine. And practice shield pressure with 20xx if you have it, if not use handicap 9 bowser w/ .5 damage ratio and your handicap at 1. Also the stuff Astherath said about fundamentals is good.

 

[AscendantAquila]

Playing Falco defensively is super strong, his AC bair and Utilt are really strong and can give many players issues, but make sure you are not surrendering space or being too passive because as you probably already know, Falco has some of the scariest pressure. Lasers are strong in order to control space, but against people who can fight lasers well, are much less effective than lower level players believe. Even though Westballz is a flashy, he actually will play really defensive at times as he is really strong at using Utilt and his bair. Basically all the Falcos are good to watch for combos because a lot of them use different options and watching all of them will give you a good idea of what moves combo where.

When playing, one of the things that helped me was trying to read movement more, most lower level players and even mid-level players are usually pretty predictable with movement and are easy to exploit.

Also, Falco wavedash has much less leniency if you don't do it well is what I noticed due to his jump, so being 1 frame late with him creates a much worse WD than being 1 frame with Fox (At least that's what I noticed).

 

[Sycko]

Thanks for all your replies, I really appreciate it, and have decided to pick up falco for genesis. Im gonna work my tail off. Im delving a bit into frame data for shield pressure, but mostly ive just been working on spacing and stuff. Im gonna start practicing with my freind, so ill probably uploda a video on YouTube of a match. Thanks for your help, its helped me improve a lot.

 

[Sycko]

Sorry about the double post, but can you just brak a shield with multishine, or is there pushback.

 

[LozNerd]

There is a bit of pushback to my knowledge. So just do a few shines and then a SHFFL'd aerial towards them to get back in range.

 

[Archelon]

Your questions have been answered, but I think one think that hasn't been said is that you CAN reverse your specials, you just don't change your momentum or whatever.

 

[ShadowKing]

First of all PM never died.I belive there is b reversing because I would always be able to B reverse roys neutral b and falcos dair isn't a true spike because it can be cancelled as shown by m2k and other top players before.

 

[Meez]

Sorry about the double post, but can you just brak a shield with multishine, or is there pushback.

You'll push them back and shield poke or force them to roll before you'll break their shield.

 

[C-SAF]

First of all PM never died.I belive there is b reversing because I would always be able to B reverse roys neutral b and falcos dair isn't a true spike because it can be cancelled as shown by m2k and other top players before.

Falco's dair is a true spike. If hitstun wears off u can jump, but unlike a meteor it cant be cancelled immediately.

 

[Sage_]

If you're a more optimized and "frame perfect" kind of player then watch Zhu's matches, and his "SmashPractice" videos with Cactuar because they're incredibly helpful and insightful. Also watch PPMD's falco. Both of these players are very good at things like option coverage, how to continue combos and how to apply pressure without throwing out moves.

If you're a stylish flashy "gfycat" kind of player, then watching Westballz is the way to go. He's incredibly combo oriented, and is almost always on the attack. You can learn how to be a sick Falco from him, but don't expect to watch some slowed down play. Anther amazing Falco to watch for this is MaNg0's falco. (the sickest of them all.)

I feel like you made this list well, but I'd like to add that to learn about falco's tech skill and as a begining falco to learn from, is bomb soldier. Bomb soldier may have been an older player, therefore having less tech skill due to the way the game evolves. However his playstyle is the very core of falco, so watching him as well will be very beneficial. New technical players like mango, and westballz are all very good to watch, but its very hard to repliacte what they do in a game. Watching a simpler falco however will teach the most basic, fundamental, and essential tech skill, so please do try it out!