I have no idea how to ask this or what kind of advice I'm asking for, so I'm just gonna write about it and see how it pans out at the end of the post (besides, PP is a doctor, he's got this helping stuff DOWN lol).
So here's the backstory: I've been watching a bunch of Falco vs *insert character here* videos, specifically zhu/pp and writing down the stuff I saw + what I already knew to make matchups sheets for myself so I can remember all the necessary matchup information.
They've been working well for me so far, I played Fly/zhu/connor in a lot of friendlies over the past couple weeks, and I felt like I'm a lot more agressive and less wasteful of my movements, because I'm playing by the book, so to speak.
Anyway, saturday rolls around, and with it, a tournament. Playing friendlies, everything is going alright, but then I decide to MM S2J cuz I'm feeling confident and even if I didn't win, I could look at my notes and edit them accordingly or see what I was doing wrong.
So as the mm goes on, I'm totally stunned for a few reasons
1. Johnny played so, and overwhelmed me no matter how I tried to slow the pace down
2. My shield pressure was so totally worthless vs him. This one hit me the hardest, anything I did vs his shield was countered. Whether I landed behind him, or did fade back aerials, or tried aerial -> utilt, or laser -> grab, or running shine, or dash dance to mix up the timing, he'd always get around it. I don't usually feel like my shield pressure is inadequate, but johnny just KNEW man lol. It was bad enough to where I had very little confidence in my shield pressure for the rest of the day.
3. Rolling. I guess this should be part of shield pressure but w/e. He would roll a lot of the time I jumped at his shield, and I saw it pretty early on and tried and reading them, but to no avail. When I think he'd roll, I'd get naired in the face or something along the lines of that.
4. I feel like I shot too many lasers, either that or I made my lasers horribly obvious or something. When I tried to slow the pace of the game down or try locking down his falcon, he'd easily get around my lasers. I didn't really stop shooting, so much as I just tried making sure I wouldn't get ***** for each laser x_x
tl;dr - feel like I was really starting to delve deeper into the mental aspect of the game, and matchups/spacing, but s2j thoroughly beat me, leaving me in awe
Again, not sure what advice I'm asking for with this post, but I feel like just getting it out there will lead to good things
Part of this depends on how you take notes. Do you only observe when we succeed? When we get a combo? When we have momentum? You have to be sure to see things even in shield pressure that are good ideas that didn't work out(like a shine FH that probably was a grab but there can be less obvious ones).
Aside from the obvious, you also have to make sure you internalize why all of the things the good Falco players do are good. Learning from us is fairly worthless if you don't tell yourself why all of these things are good. In fact, it is usually best to only steal in part from good players I feel because directly ripping from them will make your style less your own and you won't be able to adapt or improve as well until you can finally understand or come up with your own stuff(yay run-ons idc).
As for the shield pressure itself......
1. That's cool, but when you get control you gotta know how to either speed back up or play at a slower tricker pace. If you've been more aggressive lately then you're probably not used to handling a slow pace and using things like Falco's Uptilt as a means to threaten Falcon. When you change your strategy you must learn how to totally adjust it, not just the part that helps you approach, because the pace you approach at will invariably affect both you and your opponent for the actual approach and the pressure and the followups, etc.
2/3- This is part of what happens when you don't internalize the stuff you learn. You don't know how to adjust it or how to make it scarier or more effective. What you want to think about after understanding why a DD is good during shield pressure is WHEN it's good, at what SPACING it's good at, and, most importantly HOW YOU'LL MIX IT UP. This last part only comes from knowing the rest of the components, and it's a hard thing to just teach someone. For me, I DD when they counter a lot of my regular approaches or I want to feel out their moves. Sometimes I'm not even looking for a hit. Then I say I'll mix that up by running in and grabbing more, which makes my feigned grab(dash in then back out) much scarier, which makes the grabs THEN aerials better, etc etc etc builds on itself. It's all about foundation of your Falco concepts and how flexible you get with them.
4. Did you shoot very high lasers? Falcon can Nair over regular ones you know. Aside from that be sure to know how you can counter approaches that lasers cut off. Bair and Uptilt and if nothing else CC should be great for taking care of all of that.
The absolute most important thing you can do here is take a step back and understand the situation. S2J is a very talented, rising player with a lot of experience under his belt. Even though you have improved, you must respect his skill and accomplishments an acknowledge that it is not such a big deal that you lost to a Falcon or Johnny or just as badly as you did. Recovering from the loss and learning from it, and I mean really understanding that you must learn from this occurrence or you'll be stuck in this rut again, will help you out loads as a player later on when you deal with him or other difficult opponents once more.
If any of this was unclear or you want to talk about it just lemme know man. =)
So I need to get more opinions on this besides my own. What do you guys think about any character (so it doesn't necessarily have to be Falco) having a playstyle that is SO aggressive that they can effectively shut down all of their opponents options, give them absolutely no breathing room to even put up a defense, and be able to win with only being defensive a little bit?
I do not think that this is possible, but a friend of mine does, and I want to get other opinions, and see exactly to what extent this is theoretically possible, and for what characters, if any? Certainly Pichu can't be as successfully aggressive as Fox, so arbitrary definitions are necessary.
And what better place than the Falco boards to ask about aggression?
Well your terms are kind of difficult to define. Just how much is a "little bit" of defense for example?
If I just ask myself if it is possible to play Melee at a level of offense that could be effective but more aggressive than Mango's, then I would say probably not on first instinct, but maybe on second.
Reasoning for probably not: Melee would have to be a rather offense-oriented game in order for such strategies to work. Offense would need to have more advantages than defense in order to continually pressure the opponent effectively(assuming equal skill at top level). There are tons of defensive options such as WD OOS, fast moves like aerials(FC Nair for example)/shines OOS, shield DI, lightshielding, shield angling(kinda), and CC'ing(A REALLY BIG DEAL IN THIS ARGUMENT as it negates most approaches unless spaced or delayed and that makes them difficult to follow up on even then). Having so many good defensive options at one's disposal, and further playing characters that are great at breaking momentum or can play to break momentum(bairing with puff, floating with peach, laser camping with Falco, platform camping with Fox, etc etc etc) would be quite prone to forcing the opponent to overextend in order to continually approach(hypothetically since they want to approach THAT hard).
Reasoning for maybe: Melee has a ton of movement and offensive options that allow characters to be played in a multitude of ways. The depth of the game is such that a player could learn to harness their available offensive options and neglect most of their defensive ones in favor of emphasizing their combo potential and momentum-based play. Such a style of play would indeed be hard to "break" in that they would be tough to control momentum against and it would be one that would be very difficult to play a typically reactionary defensive style(looking for certain cues to come OOS, for example) against, which is kind of what a lot of people do either in general or when they're on defense.
The thing about Smash is that there are really very few "staple" combos to begin with. You can't simply rely on any one series of moves to deal your damage. It's more important to understand the properties of every move you have at your disposal and knowing when they can be used in combos as a result, as well as be aware of your opponent's percent. As a result, combos aren't something that can just be taught through a combo video. You just need experience with every move that you're comboing with.
Really, the goal of any combo or even single hit should be finishing with a significant positional advantage over netting the KO. The nature of this advantage changes with each match-up, although usually, ending with the opponent directly above you, on the ground, or off the stage are good things to go for. Combos that end in the opponent standing can still be useful in that most players stay in defense mode even when they can do anything they want, but that's not as reliable.
So basically, look for moves that either put your opponent in a bad position, or that link easily in to moves that do. This is where the knowledge of move properties and awareness of percent come in. Just focus on maintaining a positional advantage, and one day, you'll do some absurd zero to death, and you'll realize you've learned how to combo.
Well you can still combo into the kill directly, and sometimes you can combo into a position where you'll almost have it(Falco Dair to Dair to tech chase Fsmash or no tech Dsmash or something similar). A lot of this combo advice is great though.
Lol, I just figured when falco/fox tries to shinegrab you, you can shieldgrab them between the shine and their grab.
I love this game.
Also PP, I'd like your opinion on the Puff matchup: how actually effective is camping puff with falco ? Asking that because during your match vs Hbox at P5, you didn't camp that much.
So how even do you think this matchup is ?
You usually can't shield grab them unless they mess up but you can buffered spotdodge.
vs Puff.....
Camping is pretty good against her, but I haven't decided how good just yet. Falco can't really control her from coming to the middle unless he tries to Bair, but she can kinda bait that. Otherwise she'll be floating above lasers so he doesn't really control her approach in THAT well. On the other hand, if the Puff is playing like Hbox and very safe with Bairs and taking their time, then it's totally possible they could inch control from Falco and force him back. This has happened to me several times vs Hbox when I was trying to play defensively against him, but I was trying to buy time to think so I may not have been focusing on the strategy hard enough. Meh I'll camp mahone next time I play him if I remember and try to bring it up lol.
I haven't played Hbox in a while so I've kind of forgotten how hard the matchup is, but it could swing either way. Can Falco camp Puff well and that forces more scenarios to his favors and allow his combos to make up for Puff's usually big punishes on few openings Falco presents? This is essentially what you're asking I feel and I'd rather just leave the question be for the moment.
What are some uses for up air other than in the dair shine autocombo vs fox?
Shield poking on platforms, comboing at weird times to screw with DI, killing things in the air(usually beats or trades with stuff anyway), can jankily pop someone up if they land onstage as they recover for a combo.
I think those are all the productive ones I know.
leffen's kind of abrasive sometimes
but you're wrong. shield DI forward + proper grab timing beats spaced shine -> fadeback whatever (excluding wavedash back).
even multishine can be shieldgrabbed if they keep doing it mindlessly with shield DI
Shield DI to shield grab beats shine to retreating aerial? I'd love to see a gif of that or something because I've never heard such a claim before and didn't think it was possible.
cant always react and grab with proper mixups, but yea. shield pressure is harder than getting out of shield pressure.
iirc moves dont stale when they hit shields.
I thought they did stale when they hit shields? F lol
so do any of the higher up falco players consider falco to have any disadvantageous mu's? id think maybe jigglypuff and probably samus
I think he loses to Marth(maybe not modern Marth but solid Marth). I'm being quiet on the other ones though.
I wish matchup ratio discussions would just disappear. It's not like johning about a bad matchup will make a loss seem more "okay," and it often just leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy where people lose because they go into the set with the mindset that they are at a disadvantage, or on the other side, they assume they can play lazily because the matchup is considered easy.
I've cared more about learning to win them and found I'm much happier that way(how I used to be about it before people asked me who won any of them lol). I tend to only want to talk about whether Falco wins or loses when I'm in a bad mood and we all know how THAT goes rofl.
Yeah basically matchups are fun to discuss and figure out how to win but less fun to argue who wins(still can be really fun though if that wasn't what everyone did lol).
Hardly. There are so many flaws to the whole system.
1. Matchups don't really matter all that much. Obviously this is subjective, but I think people need to accept the fact that it really doesn't matter what character you pick. Your skill level and matchup experience is going to get you the win nearly every time before the matchup itself even comes into play.
2. Matchups refer to the metagame, and how matchups are played vary significantly from one skill level to another. Fox vs. Peach on Mango and Armada's level isn't even comparable to players outside the top 32 in the world. Melee's skill gap is so prominent, any sort of matchup variations between skill levels becomes borderline unique to each player.
3. The system itself has no solid foundation for determining ratios. It seems like everyone started out with the theory that "With two equally skilled opponents, each number represents the percentage of matches that player will win," but it's devolved into "I feel like it should be this good/bad on a scale from 0-100." As far as I know, no one has bothered to actually collect data to see which characters have higher success rates than others. At least that system would be objective (albeit misleading due to the player pool being too small for that sort of analysis).
4. Matchups change. Falco vs. Fox used to be considered a cakewalk because of Falco's autocombos, but now it's up in the air who wins. Most games seem to flesh out in a couple of years, but Melee, being the deep ridiculousness that it is, shows no sign of slowing down its advances. I would argue that 2011 Melee is just as different from 2009 Melee as 2009 is from 2007. If not, it is at least fairly close. Point being, if matchups still have the capability to change, then WTF good does a matchup ratio do? It informs us of how hard a matchup is before people adapt? Jiggs is a perfect example of what happens when people try to live by matchup ratios. I heard so many ridiculous assumptions not more than a year ago claiming Jiggs was tied with Fox for best character and Fox was her only bad matchup. Once people stopped getting uthrown-rested and learned to avoid getting gimped by her, everyone swayed back to the side of Jiggs being simply "okay."
TLDR: Matchup ratios are based on past events, which really don't do any good in predicting the future because Melee is still evolving, and if you ask me, it's evolving further and further away from needing to use a good character and more towards the point where it doesn't matter who you use because so much of the game is not what you do, but how you do it.
Part of the reason I don't say Fox vs Falco=who wins is I feel like that one changes all of the time with the dynamic nature of the characters.
Basically yeah this stuff.
The problem with match-ups is that smashers aren't willing to accept that match-ups are by and large abstractions. The tendency for smashers to want to collect data is testament to their obsession with concreteness. Match-ups aren't data, and they don't come from data. They are the answer to the question, "given what of one character's options beats the other and vice versa, who has the greatest chance of guessing right often enough." In a sense, the match-up ratio actually tries to remove the human element by removing patterns and pattern recognition altogether.
Since a match-up ratio seeks to remove the human element, you can see why it makes no sense to base it on data, because that data involves humans. You can also tell why match-ups are also a pretty stupid john. If a Falcon player loses to a Sheik player, then one player lost to another. Captain Falcon didn't lose to Sheik in that case, because Falcon only loses to Sheik when the human element is removed. Add the human element, and it's more important who's holding the controller. This is what I mean when I say it's an abstraction; the only situation where a match-up ratio would be germane literally cannot obtain.
So then why are match-up ratios important? Well... they aren't really that important. They are pithy ways to say how much more you'll have to out-think your opponent by, but not much more. It's more important to know why the ratios are what they are, than to know what they are.
Well data is still used in determining matchups to an extent I believe, or it can be anyway. Frame data is technically all the data we have so yeah it's not good to base things on that alone. The only other data I could assume you're referring to is something like who beats who in actual top player metagame, and yeah that certainly tires me as well(I believe that is a supporting argument not a main argument for who wins a matchup anyway).
That last paragraph tho.....<3
but at 0% you can jump right as the dair hits you and you have no stun
James
OP
I don't really see how falco loses to marth, at all. I think thats just a residual thought process from the days when m2k beat all spacies for free.
But then I watch that same m2k marth vs modern falcos like zhu, pp and mango and I just don't see it. Granted pp and mango are almost assuredly better players than m2k but still, I don't see any evidence to support marth > falco.
My evidence comes from theory as well as seeing how Falco used to be beaten badly by Marths(the style of Marth changed to one that is much less effective against Falco I believe). Marth severely outranging and outmaneuvering Falco as well as brutally comboing/CG'ing/edgeguarding/juggling him are far too good for him, and the range thing supplements his solid anti-laser game.
I'm willing to go into more detail for this and more if you want.
and yet Taj was able to beat mango/sick pp. Also m2k really only loses to mango/pp. Yes I know Zhu has beaten m2k twice now, but compare that to the majority of their sets that haven't even been put on youtube and m2k has won most of those. Zhu is an excellent player, same with lambchops, and Shiz but mango and PP are better than m2k. M2k just doesn't know how to deal with modern day falco pressure. On the other hand m2k would probably tell you that he doesn't feel that he is in his prime with marth anymore(aka he still feels that his best days with marth are behind him ala 2007/2008).
I think it's gonna take a little tweaking and reworking of marth's metagame before we see why top players like pp/mango feel so strongly about marth's potential. Marth has the tools, It's just up to someone to learn all the MU's and rework the way marth is played (pushing beyond the m2k era)
With all that being said I feel if m2k actually practiced and focused on marth instead of worrying that sheik/fox are sometimes better options against tough MUs his marth would be even better than it is now.
ugh genesis 2
M2K won't put in the work to figure out how to beat what Mango and I do. It's as simple as that. I think Puff would have been a bigger barrier for him than Falco but he probably would have found a way to deal with that too if he just worked on it more on his own. You reap what you sow, and M2K is riding off of his long years of sowing, but that's not enough to stay the best in this game. I just wish we had more Marths so we didn't have to default to one that doesn't even practice this game anymore and hasn't for years. I feel like that's a pretty bad way to judge the metagame. He's not even a Marth main lmao. guh I salty.
Taj does have good ideas vs Falco though. People should do more things like him vs Falco and less of M2K's(insofar as neutral position is concerned anyway).
Funny how after my post about how match-ups have nothing to do with which pros are beating which, people are trying to talk about Marth vs. Falco in terms of which pros are winning it.
ye
Matchups don't really matter unless you know and have experience vs every situation possible. I'm personally tired of johning about matchups, that's why I say this.. there's always something you can do that work to your advantage, it's more about how to recognize patterns and abuse what the PLAYER is doing.
I agree....but this confuses me when you go and play Falco for the ditto or Sheik or something afterward?
at tippy top level, spacies are easy as balls cause they're broken as ****. it's much harder to be good at tippy top with janky characters with no ****ing options.
Tri-state.
Wtf is a janky character with no options? Sheik? Puff? Captain Falcon? I don't know where that list starts but it'd have to be lower than Falcon AT LEAST because those characters are GREAT. Every character has it hard at top level. Spacies get to dictate a lot of the pace but they don't own it. They get gimped frequently and it's almost as bad as with like Falcon or Ganon, though obviously not quite as much.
You have to be good to get a read. All it takes is one read and one correct tech skill sequence and you've got a spacie in a death combo. Just because they're not mashing their face in their controller and winning every tournament because that's what more Melee players like doesn't mean those characters are THAT much worse than spacies, if at all. Maybe it means they're more developed because they're more popular. Maybe it means players aren't consistent enough with evening out the punishment game vs spacies so it appears worse to observers. We just had a Peach win Genesis 2. Jigglypuff won tournaments for several years. Marth won everything before that. I don't even like the who won stuff argument but even I have to admit it looks pretty bad when I was one of the first Falco mains to win a major(correct me if there was a Falco or even Fox streak before my few wins streak that ended with Genesis 2).
I don't know how you can look at these characters getting hard comboed/gimped just like the rest of the cast, if not moreso, and not thinking that's at least pretty fair punishment for what the spacies can do in response.
I feel like powershielding Falcos attacks is more effective than powershielding his lasers. Thoughts?
I wouldn't be surprised, as that strategy has become more common lately and led to things like Armada and DoH doing that powershield to Dsmash strategy which is wonderful against Falco since he's slow enough to make that work against him and lasers tend to lead into attacks more than grabs, especially if you don't shield after getting lasered and the Falco were to assume that's a free hit or something(playing on their visual cues is part of why I consider this a powerful strategy).
Yea I feel like I can shield grab (on reaction) before a shine even comes out pretty consistently from it but it seems possible the aerial could be too early/high as well.
Yeah Marth gets craaaazy grabs on Falco sometimes lol. I don't really know what all I can and can't be grabbed out of somewhat often against Marth these days.
