PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[Wenbobular]

Stickhopping doubleshines as Falco is actually very reasonable ... sometimes with Y you wind up actually trying to jump too quickly ...

 

[Bones0]

Yeah, I don't even jump with up and I can do it. I'm not sure it's as easy to jankshines with up though since your DJ is instantaneous and you'd have to airdodge down. I'd guess he uses X.

 

[WestBallz]

The real reality is that west is an obnoxious cocky douche, but if that's the kind of person you guys like, that's on you.

rofl then u obviously don't kno me and your talking out of ur ***.

also i use X for everything

 

[Bones0]

I knew it.

 

[WestBallz]

I have beaten infinitely more top players than you kage and i doubt u will even come close to beating me. so even if ur talking about results i have wayyy better results than you.

 

[KirbyKaze]

I can vouch for West being a cool dude

He's a lil' cocky but I mean if you could routinely wake up with perfect hair and had a penchant for jumping through closed windows to make epic getaways then you'd probably have a bit of cockiness in your swagger too

 

[Wake]

I thought he was pretty cool...

 

[WestBallz]

dude wake your tech skill the other day was blowing my mind

 

[KirbyKaze]

Wake is rather fast actually

 

[Wake]

haha thanks!

 

[Little England]

Wake has the fastest nairs. Easy.

 

[unknown522]

Yeah, weston is a good guy

 

[Divinokage]

I have beaten infinitely more top players than you kage and i doubt u will even come close to beating me. so even if ur talking about results i have wayyy better results than you.

Sure you did.. that BH placing says everything. Who have you beat that's good huh?

 

[Strong Badam]

I can vouch for West being a cool dude

He's a lil' cocky but I mean if you could routinely wake up with perfect hair and had a penchant for jumping through closed windows to make epic getaways then you'd probably have a bit of cockiness in your swagger too

LOL oh man
that story was great

 

[Bones0]

He outplaced you at Apex, Kage.

Just supersaiyan.

 

[knightpraetor]

lol, so much drama.. controller johns are lame..just don't enter if your controller breaks or don't complain when you get wrecked.

Also, anyone who thinks they have more knowledge than PP but just don't play as well...(*shakes head)...you obviously don't spend enough time in PMs with PP.

also, PP is not that good at teaching from what I've seen. The last 5 times I've seen him give people tips he talked about all this high level stuff in the matchup and didn't give them any tips that actually related to the real reasons they were losing their matches. I mean I'm sure he'd be a great teacher if you are already a top 20 player...but otherwise...i'm pretty skeptical

 

[Divinokage]

He outplaced you at Apex, Kage.

Just supersaiyan.

I got top 5 at FC, just sayin'. Apex 2013 is right around the corner too and there's also RoM 5 now.. and.. From that point, I've gotten a lot better overall with all my characters, you'll see! I promise some amazing things. I'm not sure what it will look like for others but all the things that come out my mind definitely works, no matter what it might be. I just want to shed some light on multiple characters and show new things I can do with them.

Edit: It's like every time I try to post something cool or truthful, people don't believe me or I get shut down with other past crap. How many ****ing times do I need to come down to the US and kick all of your *****? I'm not always the underdog when I battle.. but if everyone believes it so then **** you guys.

 

[SUNG666]

Wake has the fastest nairs. Easy.

It's fast but if you've ever seen Peligro's nairs...

$50 on wes if it ever happens

I am a fraudulent falco main

 

[clowsui]

also, PP is not that good at teaching from what I've seen. The last 5 times I've seen him give people tips he talked about all this high level stuff in the matchup and didn't give them any tips that actually related to the real reasons they were losing their matches. I mean I'm sure he'd be a great teacher if you are already a top 20 player...but otherwise...i'm pretty skeptical

he's given me great advice time after time. brawl might be way less complex than melee but outside of me being his psychology guinea pig his advice has all been accurate and helpful

also kage it's the warrior spirit that gets you in trouble LOL, if you know who mekos is you're not quite as annoying as him but your warrior spirit is very close to some will of fire garbage


if PP is currently the most effective model, then why haven't we seen a transition to more falcos that play like PP? is it because he's not strictly dominant? is it because he plays slower? is it because people think a greater emphasis on stage control + more passive pressure isn't good? >_>

 

[Divinokage]

Clowsui, that's pretty insulting.. that spirit is part of who I am.. it drives me to become better than I can be right now. I live for competition and challenge so if there's any, you bet I'm going to bring it to me because I want to and this is how I will live.

If you actually try to understand what I'm trying to say in some of these things, then a whole new world of beauty will be unlocked for you.. but anyhow no one has the right mind to do something like that because it is outside the mind.

 

[Deleted member]

If you actually try to understand what I'm trying to say in some of these things, then a whole new world of beauty will be unlocked for you.. but anyhow no one has the right mind to do something like that because it is outside the mind.

sometimes you have good ideas and sometimes reading your text is like an out-of-body experience.

 

[Divinokage]

sometimes you have good ideas and sometimes reading your text is like an out-of-body experience.

Have you ever truly had one?

 

[clowsui]

Clowsui, that's pretty insulting.. that spirit is part of who I am.. it drives me to become better than I can be right now. I live for competition and challenge so if there's any, you bet I'm going to bring it to me because I want to and this is how I will live.

If you actually try to understand what I'm trying to say in some of these things, then a whole new world of beauty will be unlocked for you.. but anyhow no one has the right mind to do something like that because it is outside the mind.

I don't think a competitive ethic or desire to improve is bad. In fact I admire and respect the fact that it's allowed you to reach where you're at right now + you've improved over time w refining your warrior spirit to a sort of focused zeal. However, you can't tell me going all "If you can't believe in yourself, believe in me who believes in you" in a post doesn't raise detract from the point(s) that your posts make, however occasionally. Call what you're doing to be a form of intensity, call what you have to say outside the box, but don't call what I'm saying an insult.

As a side note, I don't think calling yourself a unique participant/citizen of a "greater world of beauty" and simultaneously denouncing me/others who don't prefer your posting style as people who don't have "the right mind" does any favors for you. I don't particularly care as I'm confident in my abilities to understand + comprehend several games at a higher level, but this is also something that could hinder others from "getting" what you have to say.

EDIT: Yo out-of-body experiences are too real.

Mow why do people only autopilot with Falco

 

[knightpraetor]

playing falco like PP requires you to actually know all your opponent's options and have fine spacing control so you don't get steamrolled while you are moving slower...falcos would rather autopilot

 

[RFrizzle]

Holy **** Kage you have such a hard **** for yourself because you placed top 5 in a tournament where a lot of top players who would have scraped you were absent. A rusty *** Darkrain 3-0'd and came close to placing the same as you. You had some HUGE wins don't get me wrong, but calm the **** down catdaddy.

 

[Divinokage]

Holy **** Kage you have such a hard **** for yourself because you placed top 5 in a tournament where a lot of top players who would have scraped you were absent. A rusty *** Darkrain 3-0'd and came close to placing the same as you. You had some HUGE wins don't get me wrong, but calm the **** down catdaddy.

There's only 7 players MAX who I know can scrape me, the rest is up in the air. Also, thank you for proving my point and straw manning my failures just like everyone else does.. idiot.

 

[clowsui]

I can't wait for all those who are up in the air to learn Sheik

 

[Divinokage]

They could always try..

 

[Vixen]

I don't autopilot as Falco. I actually put a lot of conscious thought in to my decision making mid-match. It's really fatiguing. e.e

Since I'm going to apex now, I guess I'm unretired from competitive smash. >_>

Oksas will be posting vids of my rusty *** bird. I'll super appreciate any help once I can link the vids.

 

[ShroudedOne]

Wake is the most technical Peach right now. Since Vanz is being a rusty scrub.

 

[Deleted member]

There's only 7 players MAX who I know can scrape me, the rest is up in the air. Also, thank you for proving my point and straw manning my failures just like everyone else does.. idiot.

MM round 3!

20-100 bux

 

[S l o X]

wes is cool

kage seems cool

just do 100$ money match falco vs ganon please

a lot more entertaining that way

not having controller sucks i didnt have mine for big house i just never complain about my loses (bragging about wins >)

 

[Dr Peepee]

lol, so much drama.. controller johns are lame..just don't enter if your controller breaks or don't complain when you get wrecked.

Also, anyone who thinks they have more knowledge than PP but just don't play as well...(*shakes head)...you obviously don't spend enough time in PMs with PP.

also, PP is not that good at teaching from what I've seen. The last 5 times I've seen him give people tips he talked about all this high level stuff in the matchup and didn't give them any tips that actually related to the real reasons they were losing their matches. I mean I'm sure he'd be a great teacher if you are already a top 20 player...but otherwise...i'm pretty skeptical

Can you give me an example? I know I have been accused of this before and want to be more relateable when teaching.

Sometimes you can only guess as to why people lose matches if you can't see the matches for yourself/put the information in ways that a person can understand(people think and learn very differently from one another overall). Teaching is quite hard for this reason, and even harder when I'm asked something between being strung around at tournaments and have little time. I often say what's on the top of my head at that time because it's the best I can do then.

Basically, if you can provide me with a fast but effective way to give information about matchups to people in an informal setting then I'd gladly apply it.

MM round 3!

20-100 bux

heck yeah!

 

[Wenbobular]

It's probably because most newer players learned tech skill before learning how to get hits

Teaching neutral game is pretty hard
But pressing more buttons is easy

 

[knightpraetor]

PP, you just tend to focus too much on telling people stuff that is above their level. I have a tendency to do this too and try to explain move counters, overall strategy in a matchup, and other stuff that the player listening often can't implement. Honestly mahone's simple advice of "space better and just play a lot" is often as good as any advice I've given. However, I think specific examples of where they can play reactively and then explain how to react to the opponent's options or talking about walling strategies like you sometimes do is also ok. It just needs to be tempered by more basic advice. i also think it's good when you just tell them a good response for something the opponent is using to wreck them. But often you tell them the optimal strategy for the matchup, which they cannot even hope to implement due to their lack of movement control.

Most of the players in north carolina need to throw out less moves at the opponent, attempt to overshoot attacks (the mid level guys seem to do this pretty well), play reactively (practically no one there does anything except attempting attacks nonstop), and stop throwing out attacks constantly.

i honestly think the last one is the most important because they don't place enough focus on reaching advantageous positions and just attack whenever. also, i remember one tmie you offered like 5 great options in a situation, but with insufficient detail so they didn't understand at what spacings or timing the move should be used.

a lot of your tips should focus on whether the attack was started at an optimal spacing and if it misses, how they could adapt to catch how the opponent dodged the last time.

But more than that you have to teach people not to spam or act on fear constantly.

honestly telling people to space better isn't concrete enough, but you should tell them if they sh their nair too early, or if they swing every time the opponent comes in range rather than dodging, or if they spam Bair every time the opponent is on a platform. Honestly I understand that it can be a pain to explain simple stuff to new people, but sometimes they just won't understand the complicated stuff. I used to always talk to people about focusing on reaching safe spacings from which you can reactively punish the opponent's options, but then I realized that this has so little relevance since most players i watch get totally demolished by space animals getting on top of them and are unable to move or wall them out with marth. So in my case, it was important to explain techniques for dealing with pressure and for dealing with nair spam.

also so many people in NC auto-die to lasers. But yeah, focus more on what is holding back the individual player rather than on what they ideally need to achieve to be good. Learning has to be a step at a time, and some steps have to be learned first.

in my opinion, you have the best dashdance in the world, but good luck teaching those techniques to a new player...start small, teach them movement a bit at a time. It's easier with character who can wall well (so they can get time to think about movement) or if they are playing against someone who isn't super technical and attacks so fast that they can't even think about dashdancing/walking/shing around properly

also, higher level tips never hurt either; i know most of my improvement in the last two years came from two higher level tips that i didn't understand till months after you said them. but some people are getting wrecked so badly they can't use those tips

also it seems my grammar was wrong. Anyone is singular so i should have used
"doesn't play well"
in my prior post

 

[Dr Peepee]

What I believe I can summarize this with is

-water down advice with more simplistic things

-focus on general trends among all NC players and work with those

-do not rant on high level topics


as much as I do love my ranting, I'll tone it down. thanks for the advice! =)

 

[Wenbobular]

You should rant about high level topics anyway
Just include an abridged version for the people not interested / unable to comprehend

 

[Cactuar]

Nah its fine. He and I can just do all the high level ranting in private.

 

[Deleted member]

Mow why do people only autopilot with Falco

because falco can solve all of his problems by pressing more buttons. usually when your moves are losing trades or they feel weaker than usual, it's a good sign that you're being outplayed and you don't know why. this is fine, everyone hits this point and you grow out of it by improving, even in a small way. usually improvement in this game means progress on a margin. so let's say you play your friend and you're even, and then you learn to edge guard a little bit better, or you don't fall for something very specific, and your win ratio goes over 50%.

with falco, a lot of his problems come from these fringe things, because someone can "get you" on something and for falco that's a big deal. so falco becomes this super momentum based character, because when you're running bad, you end up running really bad, and when you're doing well, you're playing falco and you obliterate them. this is all background info.

what really matters here is laser and shine. laser means that you're automatically covered in the neutral game better than any other character simply by doing what you would already be doing. lasers means infinite stage control everywhere forever, and powershielding is rarely an effective tactic to beat it, and it only gets worse from there. add in conditioning from playing the game for some length of time to remove running into moves, and you have a busted character.

this is unlike fox. falco is broken because he chooses when to let you attack, or he pins you down. fox is broken because he can choose when to attack. if you're not choosing when to attack as fox, you're not playing a top tier. however, here's where it gets tricky: fox's speed encourages you to attack, but fast as fox is, it's still possible to get a positional advantage on him. you must play counter-intuitively in that you have this really fast character, and yet to play him correctly, you end up using it for defense to be an unfair character. fox is good enough where you can attack blindly, but why would you? falco on the other hand, his lasers from neutral do all of the work for you. you simply pin the opponent with a safety that no other character can mimic, into a punishment game that no other character can mimic. falco is both the best character in the game from neutral, and the best character in the game with a positional advantage, which is where you'll spend most of the game based on the nature of the game.

not only do you get the best neutral game far and away, it transitions your free positional monopoly into a frame 1 invincible launcher that sets up a combo that again ends in positional advantage every time. whether it's a complex combo from 0 to 60 into an edge guard, or a 2 hit combo at 140, falco will always finish the combo at a positional advantage if he chooses his combo permutation correctly, which again transfers directly into game state momentum. but wait, even if the opponent blocks your 1 frame invincible launcher, you can grab them out of their block and it's 100% safe. not only that, but if you expect a block, and your 1 frame invincible launcher hits and then your buffer grab misses, the opponent is still stunned long enough for a combo. this essentially means that falco's initial hit game going from neutral into advantage is unblockable if you're doing it right.

all of this is a detailed evaluation. the basic summary is that falco rewards the player for doing what they should be doing anyway, so it becomes about doing it better rather than differently, and subsequently requires no adaptation unless you're actually just playing the character wrong. if you're playing him correctly, your marginal loss always comes because of your tech skill- your laser control wasn't good enough, you didn't transition into your first hit game well enough, your punishment game isn't that good, or the alternative is that you made a bad judgment call and got screwed for it. the latter half is guessing, and can rarely be improved in any meaningful way. the first set of problems can all be solved by better tech skill. more importantly, they're not solved with anything other than tech skill. there's really no incentive to focus on intelligent play over technical ability because the character can solve those problems for you without your help.

the way you beat falco in the current metagame is you either directly outplay him, or you trick him into making bad guesses and punish them accordingly. having to outplay your opponent is what constitutes a bad match-up to begin with, and it's not a reliable strategy to hope that your opponent will be bad so we can usually disregard the second option as a primary tactic.

personally, i think it's incredible that some people still don't think that falco is the best character in the game.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Nah its fine. He and I can just do all the high level ranting in private.

today/tomorrow

prepare to throw down theories plz

because falco can solve all of his problems by pressing more buttons. usually when your moves are losing trades or they feel weaker than usual, it's a good sign that you're being outplayed and you don't know why. this is fine, everyone hits this point and you grow out of it by improving, even in a small way. usually improvement in this game means progress on a margin. so let's say you play your friend and you're even, and then you learn to edge guard a little bit better, or you don't fall for something very specific, and your win ratio goes over 50%.

with falco, a lot of his problems come from these fringe things, because someone can "get you" on something and for falco that's a big deal. so falco becomes this super momentum based character, because when you're running bad, you end up running really bad, and when you're doing well, you're playing falco and you obliterate them. this is all background info.

what really matters here is laser and shine. laser means that you're automatically covered in the neutral game better than any other character simply by doing what you would already be doing. lasers means infinite stage control everywhere forever, and powershielding is rarely an effective tactic to beat it, and it only gets worse from there. add in conditioning from playing the game for some length of time to remove running into moves, and you have a busted character.

this is unlike fox. falco is broken because he chooses when to let you attack, or he pins you down. fox is broken because he can choose when to attack. if you're not choosing when to attack as fox, you're not playing a top tier. however, here's where it gets tricky: fox's speed encourages you to attack, but fast as fox is, it's still possible to get a positional advantage on him. you must play counter-intuitively in that you have this really fast character, and yet to play him correctly, you end up using it for defense to be an unfair character. fox is good enough where you can attack blindly, but why would you? falco on the other hand, his lasers from neutral do all of the work for you. you simply pin the opponent with a safety that no other character can mimic, into a punishment game that no other character can mimic. falco is both the best character in the game from neutral, and the best character in the game with a positional advantage, which is where you'll spend most of the game based on the nature of the game.

not only do you get the best neutral game far and away, it transitions your free positional monopoly into a frame 1 invincible launcher that sets up a combo that again ends in positional advantage every time. whether it's a complex combo from 0 to 60 into an edge guard, or a 2 hit combo at 140, falco will always finish the combo at a positional advantage if he chooses his combo permutation correctly, which again transfers directly into game state momentum. but wait, even if the opponent blacks your 1 frame invincible launcher, you can grab them out of their block and it's 100% safe. not only that, but if you expect a block, and your 1 frame invincible launcher hits and then your buffer grab misses, the opponent is still stunned long enough for a combo. this essentially means that falco's initial hit game going from neutral into advantage is unblockable if you're doing it right.

all of this is a detailed evaluation. the basic summary is that falco rewards the player for doing what they should be doing anyway, so it becomes about doing it better rather than differently, and subsequently requires no adaptation unless you're actually just playing the character wrong. if you're playing him correctly, your marginal loss always comes because of your tech skill- your laser control wasn't good enough, you didn't transition into your first hit game well enough, your punishment game isn't that good, or the alternative is that you made a bad judgment call and got screwed for it. the latter half is guessing, and can rarely be improved in any meaningful way. the first set of problems can all be solved by better tech skill. more importantly, they're not solved with anything other than tech skill. there's really no incentive to focus on intelligent play over technical ability because the character can solve those problems for you without your help.

the way you beat falco in the current metagame is you either directly outplay him, or you trick him into making bad guesses and punish them accordingly. having to outplay your opponent is what constitutes a bad match-up to begin with, and it's not a reliable strategy to hope that your opponent will be bad so we can usually disregard the second option as a primary tactic. personally, i think it's incredible that some people still don't think that falco is the best character in the game.

A laser is a large commitment based on the frames it takes for the laser to come out. DD'ing with Fox/Marth/anyone can be canceled on any frame. That right there is a pretty good point against lasers being overpowered. It does not cover Falco well on any part of the stage because lasers cover the horizontal and platforms, or vertical-based play(FHs, floats, multi-jumps, etc) will reduce the impact of a laser. Additionally, powershielding is far from impossible to become fairly proficient at, ESPECIALLY with characters like Sheik or Marth which are already grounded often and get tricks to make the powershields easier(like crouching). Powershielding is unlike other tactic counters in that it can directly turn Falco's positional advantage against him and he can't handle the momentum change as well as they can as you already stated. Even with powershield counters, Falco still loses a large measure of control when dealing with it.


Falco does not stop people from attacking he merely requires a different means to beat him. That's like saying Puff keeps people from attacking because she floats high and drifts away and Bairs and no one can beat the priority if used correctly. YES you can still attack Puff but you might have to wait a second aka do something else first. Similarly, you might have to wait until Marth swings before attacking or get into a good range. Falco is no different. You have to make him laser or give himself to an unsafe spacing and then punish him.


Then you talk about Fox and some other stuff I'm not really sure how to reply to.....

And then you say Falco always finishes combos....but that's impossible LOL. Melee is deeper than that due to ASDI/SDI/teching/etc. Fox can finish combos if he gets the 2-3 shine spikes he needs on floaties but that's just hard....same with Marth juggling people. Mistakes happen, but putting someone in a bad position still allows for stage control and good damage to come from these situations, and that same concept applies to Falco.

Shine grab is NOT perfectly safe. Staling reduces the effectiveness of the technique and even fresh it can still be avoided by some characters or even all with appropriate prediction.


-Falco isn't fully understood and prepared for(definitely prepared for less than other characters based on his evolution and what the current metagame looks like....in the current metagame sure he's broken or whatever but that's the players' fault)

-Falco's results dictate people's perceptions of him

-Falco could very well be the best character....but not all counters have been truly shown and tested vs him so that claim is premature to me