PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[Vixen]

i would actually be ok if you just said what you thought about me.

 

[JPOBS]

lolololololololol oh man i love smashboards

 

[Machiavelli]

ya this thread is the bomb

 

[choknater]

feel free to ask me questions mizuki i got u

 

[Xyzz]

does anyone else use lasershine shield pressure like how mango used it at koc? i don't really see it being used nor do i really understand its effectiveness...kind of want to start trying it

What exactly do you mean?
Shooting a laser at someone and then moving in with a shine? I like that one a lot, it's like doing a shffl at someone, that covers WD back > stuff. And unlike laser > late aerial is actually safe on shield.
Or moving away from somebodies shield while shooting a laser? Using that for similar purposes as retreating aerials. It's obviously a lot worse for defending against aggressive OOS options, but I feel it's pretty nice if the opponent will most likely choose to WD or roll away

 

[Wake]

Nah he didn't really move lol.

 

[Xyzz]

He might do that to throw off his opponents timings... nah, just kidding, lasers shot that way are mostly one thing and that would be: ridiculously unsafe.
Could do it if you are really sure your opponent will hold shield and you want to kinda taunt him

 

[oukd]

yea what he did was basically lasershine on shield like 3-5 times in a row vs pp. really goofy

its like the highest apm possible for shield pressure next to multishining but the laser doesn't seem like a threat at all

or idk the possibility of something else coming out or w/e

 

[Vixen]

any advice for falco in teams? im teaming with a falcon player.

i feel pretty good at my ability to not laser my team mate/laser him when he needs to be saved.

i just dont know about like.. team set ups/overarching strategy. i usually just kinda camp the platforms until my team mate is getting *****.

 

[choknater]

i forgot who said this but

"falco needs to be the best character on the screen" when he plays in teams

gotta control space with lasers, defend well with your priority, choose when to go in and when to slow down, and punish/convert very hard.

falcon/falco doesn't sound like the greatest combination tbh but good luck!

 

[Vixen]

we were doing fox/falcon but my fox is fraudlant now. i dont practice it anymore because i really really want to be a falco purist.

 

[Deleted member]

any advice for falco in teams? im teaming with a falcon player.

teams is weird at first because it's still about maintaining positioning and stage control, but it takes on a different meaning in teams because it's not reasonable to control your own character and 3 others. rather than covering a projected set of area like falco usually does with lasers, you should forfeit lasers from your neutral game completely. instead, play falco like you would play peach or ganon in that your best strategy is to take control of your immediate area around you. from there, your neutral game becomes your ability to interact with your opponents normally. that means you'll often resort to spaced aerials on shield, less extensive combos, and a greater emphasis on not putting yourself in a poor position. effectively, this means that you'll spend most of your time doing simple things like dair > shine > bair, small bits of dashdancing, and simple but quick edge guards if you can help it.

laser changes roles to that of a distanced safe interrupt. that means if your opponent is in a 2 vs 1, you can go back to regular falco and do a laser lead-in to save your teammate. lasers best use is the ability to save your teammate. if your teammate needs saved and you can save them, ALWAYS save your teammate. even if there's a risk for you to both get killed, eventually you'll learn-by-doing to not fall into these situations and the gain long-term is better.

if you really don't know what to do, you can usually spam dairs into good things in lieu of a more defined strategy, and that can be a good temporary crutch. otherwise, play it safe, don't over commit, and by all means do your best to avoid playing "normal falco".

finally, give me your email address, i have a write-up in my smash guide project for teams, and that should be good enough to cover you in the short term.

you'll notice that i didn't address your teammate's character choice in any way, and that's mostly because it doesn't matter. your play doesn't change, other than you shouldn't have to dedicate much to kills when falcon can randomly knee people at 70. most of the kills you do get will probably be early dairs or forced "good stuff" edge guards (ex. edge hog, ledge jump dair > dair kills). stick to really simple and effective things. if you're covering your opponents properly, this won't be an issue anyway so it's not worth going into.

kevin i watched some of your teams matches with ken. i'm pretty sure you could have teamed with a CPU and still gotten 3rd place lmao

 

[Bones0]

kevin i watched some of your teams matches with ken. i'm pretty sure you could have teamed with a CPU and still gotten 3rd place lmao

I don't agree with this at all.

If PP had teamed with a level 9 Luigi, I'm pretty confident they would have been able to take down PewFat for 2nd.

 

[Van.]

you shouldn't have to dedicate much to kills when falcon can randomly knee people at 40

fixed that one for ya chief

 

[Divinokage]

I want to team with you PP, I'm sure we'll win!

 

[unknown522]

Mizuki:

On the real, about that falco/falcon team. Your role should be to combo as hard as you can until 60% or so and then set up a knee with falcon. Since people dont want to shield (roll, or spotdodge either), you can always threaten with your stage control. A single laser can reverse a lot of situations, especially for your teammate, and will open up chances for new combos. Make sure to always be threatening with your stage presence. Any decent hit will probably be huge damage, an edgeguard situation, or just put your opponent in a bad position (above you). The fact that the opponents will also have a hard time CCing, 1. Cuz it's falco and 2. The chaotic nature of doubles, it is pretty hard to take defensive measures and prevent bad situations for just happening. Keep falcon alive as much as possible. Save him with lasers. Combo break with lasers. If you're fighting a fox/floaty team, you should be trying to do as much damage as you can in one-two combos on the floaty, but make sure the falcon isn't getting ***** by the fox. Keep the fox knocked down.

If it's a team with two floaties, then damage the one that is the biggest threat as much as possible (probably will be peach for your team). Make sure she is ALWAYS in the air through shines and whatever.

Double fox would probably be a pain for your team though.

 

[Divinokage]

Hm it's hard for me to be able to give a good opinion because especially Falco, I do think negatively about him in teams. His poor movement makes him pretty vulnerable to get interrupted or killed quickly. His main role to do damage seems rather weak, imo. But I'm also biased since I've beaten every team pretty much, =/

 

[Wretched]

yea what he did was basically lasershine on shield like 3-5 times in a row vs pp. really goofy

its like the highest apm possible for shield pressure next to multishining but the laser doesn't seem like a threat at all

or idk the possibility of something else coming out or w/e

Its a really good mixup. The laser is a threat because if you shoot it near the top of their shield, it prevents a lot of OOS options and definitely disrupts the normal flow of shield pressure. I like combining it with jab more than shine, though. You can bait so many shield grabs by sitting at a falco fist length and just jab-lasering their shield.

 

[Deleted member]

fixed that one for ya chief

i'm not from the midwest.

 

[Van.]

^ excellent retort

 

[Vixen]

I like to do down and away plus tech by habit so sometimes I survive knees at 100+

sometimes I die at 20.

 

[unknown522]

Hm it's hard for me to be able to give a good opinion because especially Falco, I do think negatively about him in teams. His poor movement makes him pretty vulnerable to get interrupted or killed quickly. His main role to do damage seems rather weak, imo. But I'm also biased since I've beaten every team pretty much, =/

I dunno man. The only times I have ever taken games off of Vwins+Bam is when I use falco instead of fox in doubles.

Also vs M2K+DoH, we took 2 games in GFs when I switched to falco with David.

There are more examples, but those are the biggest examples from personal experience.

Also, falco doesn't die fast all the time. When people DI badly then sure. Lots of characters can get gimped easy in lots of matchups

 

[Wretched]

Falco has to be the most gimpable character in the game due to the fact that EVERYONE understands all of your options when you're off the ledge. His recovery is terrible and predictable. He can't use lasers in teams like he does in singles and he becomes much less valuable as a character. Lasers may compensate for his mediocre mobility, but that all goes to doodoo in teams. Your individual success was probably not due to the character itself, but rather your knowledge of the character and how it affected your decisions.

When Falco is in doubles, all he can really do is let his teammate be the aggressor and capitalize on the opportunities and openings that his partner creates. You probably did this and stopped playing ye olde aggressive Fox, thus winning you the match.

 

[Van.]

but he still has these gorgeous hitboxes

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

lol is this thread why David is banned?

oh you guyyyyssss

 

[Deleted member]

Also vs M2K+DoH, we took 2 games in GFs when I switched to falco with David.

idk man, m2k is pretty good vs fox and pretty bad vs falco. not to refute you or anything, but it's worth considering.

 

[Bones0]

Pretty sure KK had himself banned because people who will not be named were pissing him off.

I agree with Wretched. I really just don't like Falco in teams. But then I get a random dair -> dair combo or a laser interrupt across the stage to prevent my teammate from getting edgeguarded and wonder if that kinda stuff makes up for everything else in the long run. I also think Falco is really teammate dependent. Having slow teammates seems to suck a lot, but if I have a Fox or Falcon or even Sheik that can quickly capitalize on my dairs and shines then it seems much, much easier to play the role of "imma run around and launch people into the air and edgeguard". Otherwise, you hit someone upwards and can't really double jump up to go get them without falling onto their teammate's attack and getting gimped b/c you don't have a DJ.

 

[Divinokage]

I dunno man. The only times I have ever taken games off of Vwins+Bam is when I use falco instead of fox in doubles.

Also vs M2K+DoH, we took 2 games in GFs when I switched to falco with David.

There are more examples, but those are the biggest examples from personal experience.

Also, falco doesn't die fast all the time. When people DI badly then sure. Lots of characters can get gimped easy in lots of matchups

Well if 2 personal experiences contradict each other, what do we do? lol.

 

[Xyzz]

You're both Canadian, so I suppose you invite each other over for tea and calmly try to settle the dispute in a laid back discussion while remaining super polite all the time?

 

[Wenbobular]

If you're getting gimped too much with Falco you're probably doing something wrong
Just saying

Sometimes they have your number
But it's not like you're just straight up dead until you're up-bing underneath the stage ... there are plenty of phantasm tricks / up-b / doublejump / walljump things you can do to make it hard for them

SEE YOU ALL AT ROM!!!!

 

[Vixen]

tbh i feel practically unedgguardable as falco in dubs. even against people much, much better than me. plus im a ***** and camp platforms and play with a falcon team mate who is just as much of a ***** to kill as i am sometimes. sometimes we just win because of attrition plus sometimes falco and falcon can just randomly kill things at low %

even tony, the king of gimping falco complains about how hard it is to edgeguard me.

doubles makes my recovery that much better.

except my ledge game.

my ledge game ****ing sucks.

how to beat mizuki: let her grab the ledge, then wait for her to do something stupid.

 

[Divinokage]

Well those tactics are definitely abusable if you do it right. If any one of you want to camp then it'll just be easier to create a 2v1 situation.. the dude camping doesnt really help. =P

 

[choknater]

for a good ledge game you want to master a couple things

- safe stalling, like up-B stalling that keeps you invincible, or falling and sweetspotting the double jump repeatedly. this will give you time to think about your get up options

- mastering ledge attacks: ledge hop double laser, the different laser heights you can do, ledge hop dair, fair, getup attack (low and high percent)

- long waveland onto stage, and different lengths at which to do so (like long waveland or waveland in place by the edge)

- double jump onto platforms, and waveland onto platforms

- doing the stupid falco thing where you phantasm onto the stage and abuse your invincibility frames to go through moves -_-

and most importantly: knowing when to choose which option

don't just blindly fall into a habit, like many people do with ledge hop double laser. you need to pay attention to the way your opponent is spacing, because he is anticipating you to do certain things. while on the ledge, treat your opponent just as you would treat him on stage... space and read and anticipate. don't get hasty just because being on the ledge is an unfavorable position

edit: oh yeah and stage specific stuff like wall jumps on yoshi's, the cloud, how to treat the battlefield ledge, as well as all the other stages. they're all different. and also platform heights. for example it's very easy to do ledge cancelled phantasms onto platforms on stadium and battlefield.

 

[Vixen]

i lose at the ledge RPS. Sometimes i space things wrong. sometimes i just chose the wrong option. sometimes im like HERPADERP IMMA LDL RIGHT IN HIS FACE OH WAIT I DIED.

the actual mastery of each option i've gotten down. it's just im stupid and don't pay enough attention to the opponent LOL.

 

[Mahone]

it might help to stall a little so you don't immediately do a stupid option...

like, laser on is SOOOO good against mid level players that it becomes reflexive to do it right away when i grab the edge...

i think a lot of other people have this problem too but im not sure...

if u stall maybe once or twice you can see how ur opponent is positioned and make an informed decision on how to get back on...

ofc this isn't a long term solution because stalling is pretty bad itself and can get u killed just as fast, but hopefully itll help slow down the game a little while ur learning how to recognize different situations and then later u can just immediately chose the right option more often

edit: I didn't read choknator's post and he already said this, but i think its worth emphasizing

 

[unknown522]

Alright

 

[choknater]

haha mizuki then just pay attention

 

[Bones0]

it might help to stall a little so you don't immediately do a stupid option...

like, laser on is SOOOO good against mid level players that it becomes reflexive to do it right away when i grab the edge...

i think a lot of other people have this problem too but im not sure...

if u stall maybe once or twice you can see how ur opponent is positioned and make an informed decision on how to get back on...

ofc this isn't a long term solution because stalling is pretty bad itself and can get u killed just as fast, but hopefully itll help slow down the game a little while ur learning how to recognize different situations and then later u can just immediately chose the right option more often

edit: I didn't read choknator's post and he already said this, but i think its worth emphasizing

Yeah, I have this problem, which is especially dumb because I can ledgedash consistently and just choose to LHDL anyway. -.-

 

[Dr Peepee]

jesus guys
can we move on from this topic >_>

i think the point has been made



does anyone else use lasershine shield pressure like how mango used it at koc? i don't really see it being used nor do i really understand its effectiveness...kind of want to start trying it

it's also incredibly hard for me to do

It's good because it allows Falco to cover the roll option and act quickly while still applying pressure. As long as no one is attacking quickly after they see Falco shine(via conditioning usually) then the laser is even more effective because you can reverse the laser and cover an immediate roll if the opponent freaks out during pressure.

teams is weird at first because it's still about maintaining positioning and stage control, but it takes on a different meaning in teams because it's not reasonable to control your own character and 3 others. rather than covering a projected set of area like falco usually does with lasers, you should forfeit lasers from your neutral game completely. instead, play falco like you would play peach or ganon in that your best strategy is to take control of your immediate area around you. from there, your neutral game becomes your ability to interact with your opponents normally. that means you'll often resort to spaced aerials on shield, less extensive combos, and a greater emphasis on not putting yourself in a poor position. effectively, this means that you'll spend most of your time doing simple things like dair > shine > bair, small bits of dashdancing, and simple but quick edge guards if you can help it.

laser changes roles to that of a distanced safe interrupt. that means if your opponent is in a 2 vs 1, you can go back to regular falco and do a laser lead-in to save your teammate. lasers best use is the ability to save your teammate. if your teammate needs saved and you can save them, ALWAYS save your teammate. even if there's a risk for you to both get killed, eventually you'll learn-by-doing to not fall into these situations and the gain long-term is better.

if you really don't know what to do, you can usually spam dairs into good things in lieu of a more defined strategy, and that can be a good temporary crutch. otherwise, play it safe, don't over commit, and by all means do your best to avoid playing "normal falco".

finally, give me your email address, i have a write-up in my smash guide project for teams, and that should be good enough to cover you in the short term.

you'll notice that i didn't address your teammate's character choice in any way, and that's mostly because it doesn't matter. your play doesn't change, other than you shouldn't have to dedicate much to kills when falcon can randomly knee people at 70. most of the kills you do get will probably be early dairs or forced "good stuff" edge guards (ex. edge hog, ledge jump dair > dair kills). stick to really simple and effective things. if you're covering your opponents properly, this won't be an issue anyway so it's not worth going into.

kevin i watched some of your teams matches with ken. i'm pretty sure you could have teamed with a CPU and still gotten 3rd place lmao

I like lasering in teams. If I have the middle then I can laser at whoever I'm walling out, as well as laser anyone my teammate is attacking/being attacked by. I can't do more than a couple at a time usually but in teams that's a big commitment anyway.

player does seem to matter more than character for teams outside of what I do when I get a grab, I'll give you that.

I played so well in most of the teams games OH MY GOSH I was happy haha.

I want to team with you PP, I'm sure we'll win!

we should def team some day =)

it might help to stall a little so you don't immediately do a stupid option...

like, laser on is SOOOO good against mid level players that it becomes reflexive to do it right away when i grab the edge...

i think a lot of other people have this problem too but im not sure...

if u stall maybe once or twice you can see how ur opponent is positioned and make an informed decision on how to get back on...

ofc this isn't a long term solution because stalling is pretty bad itself and can get u killed just as fast, but hopefully itll help slow down the game a little while ur learning how to recognize different situations and then later u can just immediately chose the right option more often

edit: I didn't read choknator's post and he already said this, but i think its worth emphasizing

mixing in a couple stalls with quick side bs or edge dashes or platform dashes as well as double lasers makes falco hard to edgeguard

also, what your post said haha

 

[Bones0]

I don't wanna hear your advice about getting off the ledge ever since that once set where you Phantasmed to the center like 50 times in a row. lol