PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[Bones0]

Even if nair is staled, it still has a 1-frame advantage over dair.

 

[Xyzz]

Also: Who has a more stale nair than dair anyways? :D

 

[Bones0]

Also: Who has a more stale nair than dair anyways? :D

I realize you weren't being super serious, but if you always use nair to pressure, then you will inevitably hit them with a nair as a poke or as they try to move OoS, so that would stale your nair.

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

anyone got any advice on the situation in falco dittos where you are both grounded and keep trading lasers, both wanting for the crucial laser cotrol

also, as broken as powershielding is, is there a need for much movement, say against a falco
pretty sure on fd you dont need to move as rediculously fast since platform movement isnt a factor and you can just block all lasers

 

[Swann]

Full jump laser so that theirs misses and you get to go in.

As usual I have no idea what the rest of your post is talking about so just keep on keeping on I guess.

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

Full jump laser so that theirs misses and you get to go in.

As usual I have no idea what the rest of your post is talking about so just keep on keeping on I guess.

alright ill try to mix full hops in
sorry for not being able to make good posts
its just because its hard to tell someone what your saying over the internet, especially melee when is so much theorycrafting that i have no further reason to ever post on the boards again

its just not for me know what im saiyan, theres people here who arent just good players, but they can explain stuff

obviously ill let that continue but im def done cuz ive been confusing too many people while i also sound ******** as fuq

but we livin tho

 

[Swann]

Not saying you should stop posting, but I will say that from what it seems like... I think you should take some time and just play the **** out of the game, then come back with questions and stuff you've noticed.

Anyway. Good luck out there.

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

Not saying you should stop posting, but I will say that from what it seems like... I think you should take some time and just play the **** out of the game, then come back with questions and stuff you've noticed.

Anyway. Good luck out there.

word, ive only recently started playing with a good amount of people
through this local i go to and this weekly smashfest, i have a good chance to break through the noob stages of melee

and thanks, plus sorry for the majority of my **** being long disorganized sentences ultimately achieving nothing
wont happen again (after this). I will be looking to come back to the boards in time, probably when i get a match on stream for you guys to see

 

[Swann]

Yeah dude! Sounds like the right way to go! Be sure to ask for crits once you can get some matches recorded.

 

[milligraham]

I've been in a habit that I'm not sure if it's good/bad/neutral.

I always use X to jump...except when I'm jumping out of a shine. In this case I move the control stick up immediately after shining to get out of it as soon as possible. This does cause me to do pretty much only full jumps out of shine.

Also on a side-note the only thing I use Y for is for wavedashing (I seem to be more consistent/comfortable with it over X) is that weird?

 

[Bones0]

I've been in a habit that I'm not sure if it's good/bad/neutral.

I always use X to jump...except when I'm jumping out of a shine. In this case I move the control stick up immediately after shining to get out of it as soon as possible. This does cause me to do pretty much only full jumps out of shine.

Also on a side-note the only thing I use Y for is for wavedashing (I seem to be more consistent/comfortable with it over X) is that weird?

Just use Y for everything. It will suck transitioning, but it's so much better than X in pretty much every way, especially for spacies because you are frequently pressing B right before and right after jumping. Also be comfortable using the control stick for certain things though (like DJ bairing for edgeguards because it allows you to jump straight up while C-stick any aerial immediately after jumping).

 

[milligraham]

Yeah I know using Y as a spacie is good but making the transition after using X for nearly 10 years will REALLY suck. I have noticed some things that would probably be resolved though. For example I have done so many short hop lasers where it makes the noise but no laser shoots out.

 

[SAUS]

Yeah I know using Y as a spacie is good but making the transition after using X for nearly 10 years will REALLY suck. I have noticed some things that would probably be resolved though. For example I have done so many short hop lasers where it makes the noise but no laser shoots out.

You're probably fast falling too early and hitting the ground before the laser comes out.

 

[Bones0]

You're probably fast falling too early and hitting the ground before the laser comes out.

As long as you are lasering quickly enough, you can get lasers out before you even reach the peak of your SH. So even if you want to do the highest possible laser, you can FF asap.

 

[Vixen]

http://www.twitch.tv/azprojectmelee/b/482502947 time stamp @ 1:52:42 vs Tai 11/23/13. Any critique would be lovely. Ignore them horribly misspelling Mizuki xD

 

[whitemountain123]

Can anyone link me to any posts (preferably by PP or another top player) about falco vs. peach? As far as I can tell, there's nothing on it in the matchups thread and search on smashboards sucks nowadays.

Edit: I did some digging. For any of those interested in vs. peach posts/pages with posts:

http://www.smashboards.com/threads/falco-discussion-thread.256826/page-390
http://www.smashboards.com/threads/falco-discussion-thread.256826/page-476
http://smashboards.com/threads/falco-discussion-thread.256826/page-510#post-15528951

 

[Vixen]

I've been playing against high level peaches since '05 if you want to pick my brain. :3

 

[AvengerAngel]

There are some questions I'd like to ask you guys.

First of all, how am I supposed to space as Falco against Sheik?
It looks to me like the 1 SHL-distance theory doesn't work well enough in this match-up, for the reason that SHEIK'S DASH ATTACK IS BROKEN OMG
I like to be on the aggressive side to avoid Sheik's nonsense like dash attacks, boost grabs, needle/Bair camping etc., but if I end up attacking too much and being predictable with it I get punished with Nair OOS (even before I can start the shield pressure, actually), Ftilts, WD OOS > grab etc. If I try to camp her for a while, spacing not-too-close-but-not-too-far-away-from-her with DDs, SHLs, WDs etc., I expose myself to the risk of getting dash attacked and then ***** for it (I suck at CC'ing on reaction and I can't even shield it on reaction wtf). Also, lasering her before I approach isn't going to help much, because she can take the laser and stuff my approach with tilts.
So basically: what's the ideal distance to keep from Sheik? How should I try to defend myself and what are the best approaches and MOMENTS to approach? Is Dair better than Nair to overprioritize Ftilts or is it just a question of timing? (God it looks like she has no lag at all on those moves D: )

Second: what do you do to avoid her shield pressure nonsense? I don't know what to do against spaced Fair shield pressure, or Fair > tilts/jabs. If I roll I (obviously) get punished for it. If I try to jump out I might get hit by a tilt and comboed for it; even if I manage to full jump out of the pressure, I find myself above Sheik and perhaps close to the edge as well, which is a position in which I don't feel comfortable at all.
I have no idea of how the frame data works with Sheik's pressure, but I can never ever grab her or shieldshine her. Am I doing something wrong?

Additionally: is Sheik's grab game scary enough, above certain %s? For example, when I'm playing against a Marth, I know that if he grabs me when I'm under a 80-90%, he's going to do horrible things to me. After that % there's no real reason to be afraid of grabs and I start looking out for other possible threats, like dash attacks, uB OOS if I'm pressuring them etc.
Does the same apply to Sheik? Should I be more cautious against grabs at low %s and dash attacks/OOS Nairs at mid-high %s?

And I think that's all for the moment.
I'm super-inexperienced in the Falco-Sheik MU and I don't know how to counter lots of simple Sheik tactics D:
I wish I had recorded some videos at the last tourney, but sadly we didn't have time.

On a side note, when we got to the last match of GFs, I switched to Fox just to see if I could do better with him. Surprisingly, even though I wasn't playing well and my Fox was super-sloppy, I did as well as I was doing with Falco.
PP, do you think the Fox-Sheik MU is way easier than the Falco-Sheik MU? Or perhaps I was just playing Fox in a certain way that was actually more effective against that Sheik's style of play, I dunno.

 

[Xyzz]

Or maybe your opponent is bad vs Fox. Most people consider both Fox - Sheik and Falco - Sheik to be rather even.

Her fair is fairly safe on shield. She doesn't get a frame advantage on her next move from it, but she isn't too far behind either (your OOS move starts one frame earlier than whatever she tries to do, assuming frame perfect execution by both players). Since her first jab has a hitbox on frame 2, you'll rarely if ever get in a offensive response between the two, if the Sheik player is competent (rolls might work, considering it's easy to be frameperfect on those due to c-stick buffering and him maybe hitting a frame or two before landing).
About what to do: It's the same as always. Rolls aren't inherently bad; doing nothing else is bad. You need to mix it up. If she knows you are rolling after the fair, she can obviously always go ahead and try to chase you down. If it's something you do at times, she can't do much but guess (humans as a species suck at being truly random, so you might very well have a pattern, where you think you're just picking options at random, but that's another topic, i guess). The same thing goes for her as well... you can start picking up what she does. If she tries to read your roll away all the time and starts dashing through you after fairing a lot... well, that's obviously not protecting her at all against offensive options out of shield.
It's rather tedious to give a complete rundown on what beats what, so I'll skip that, and just leave the pointer here: Is she grabbing you after aerials? No? Well, then you can hold shield a little and wait for her attempts to catch your immediate responses. Most ground moves are rather atrocious in terms of frame advantage on shield, so moving out of these is a lot easier than trying to squeeze in your response between the aerial and the grounded follow up she chooses (her up tilt being somewhat of an exception. That thing has like no ending lag whatsoever. On the plus side, you can grab her between the hits, so if that's a concern, go ahead and practice till you can do it.)
E.g. her ftilt has hitboxes on frames 5-10 (usually an early one will hit), can be interrupted on frame 27 and (if fresh) does 7% damage. Which means you have 17 to 22 frames before she can do anything at all. That's really not safe at all, if she is spaced closely enough for it, you can grab her... or if not WD oos and do whatever you want to (towards + grab would be really tight, I'm not sure if that's even possible, but just resetting to neutral is fine enough (to me at least) in these situations).
Also: consider why she is even getting to hit your shield in the first place. Falco is really good at not getting caught there in the first place, and in melee it's generally better to avoid stuff through movement (shielding is sooo limiting what you can do to punish :D).

Regarding grabs: She can always downthrow techchase you into more grabs, or her bnb launcher (dash attack) or a downsmash for the immediate kill/edgeguard. Her grabs are always threatening.

Regarding her OOS game: It's one of the, if not *THE* best in the game. Nair OOS isn't really a punish... Cactuar or somebody once used the very nice wording: "Nair oos is an interrupt. Grab is for punishing people for being bad in your face". If she is willing to nair oos your shield pressure, you should opt for airtight sequences like late aerial > shine > something safe (another shine/grab/retreating aerial come to mind).
If she can do it before your first aerial hits, you are approaching to obvious. Laser to immediate jump towards with a late aerial is not safe at all (as evident to you), and easy enough to pick up on. But if she is committing to nairs all the time you can always go ahead and try punishing those (if she does them retreating it's probably not possible to get more than a laser hit and some stage, but that's quite allright ). Try to approach where she doesn't expect it and can just go "oh ****, I need to shield" and not "ahh, here he comes, I have all the time in the world to intercept, even from the shield I put up to deal with lasers".

Regarding distances in neutral: I wouldn't subscribe to some static "1shl length away" mantra, ever. In general it's a good idea to stick to a distance where you can REACT to all things that your opponent might do in a given situation that seem scary enough to be concerned about to you. If Sheik's DA is among those, well then keep as far away as necessary for YOU to react to her dash towards you.
As long as you stay there, you're as safe as you'd be if the two of you were on the opposite ends of Hyrule castle.
If you move further in, you are committing for all intents and purposes, and need to have something you want to do with that (usually that'll be you trying to land a SHFFL, i guess).
Keep in mind that shooting a laser limits her options, same as her being in shield. So in those instances you can move in further while still being safe, while she is suddenly threatened by things like your SHFFLed aerial / ftilt / run up shine / DA / whatever.

 

[AvengerAngel]

Thanks for the detailed reply!
Answers/questions/observations are in the quote:

Or maybe your opponent is bad vs Fox. Most people consider both Fox - Sheik and Falco - Sheik to be rather even.

Lol yeah, maybe. I don't think he's that bad against Fox, though (but he's probably more experienced in the Falco MU). It's just that it felt way easier and more natural to combo/punish/bait her, I dunno D:

Her fair is fairly safe on shield. She doesn't get a frame advantage on her next move from it, but she isn't too far behind either (your OOS move starts one frame earlier than whatever she tries to do, assuming frame perfect execution by both players). Since her first jab has a hitbox on frame 2, you'll rarely if ever get in a offensive response between the two, if the Sheik player is competent (rolls might work, considering it's easy to be frameperfect on those due to c-stick buffering and him maybe hitting a frame or two before landing).
About what to do: It's the same as always. Rolls aren't inherently bad; doing nothing else is bad. You need to mix it up. If she knows you are rolling after the fair, she can obviously always go ahead and try to chase you down. If it's something you do at times, she can't do much but guess (humans as a species suck at being truly random, so you might very well have a pattern, where you think you're just picking options at random, but that's another topic, i guess). The same thing goes for her as well... you can start picking up what she does. If she tries to read your roll away all the time and starts dashing through you after fairing a lot... well, that's obviously not protecting her at all against offensive options out of shield.
It's rather tedious to give a complete rundown on what beats what, so I'll skip that, and just leave the pointer here: Is she grabbing you after aerials? No? Well, then you can hold shield a little and wait for her attempts to catch your immediate responses. Most ground moves are rather atrocious in terms of frame advantage on shield, so moving out of these is a lot easier than trying to squeeze in your response between the aerial and the grounded follow up she chooses (her up tilt being somewhat of an exception. That thing has like no ending lag whatsoever. On the plus side, you can grab her between the hits, so if that's a concern, go ahead and practice till you can do it.)
E.g. her ftilt has hitboxes on frames 5-10 (usually an early one will hit), can be interrupted on frame 27 and (if fresh) does 7% damage. Which means you have 17 to 22 frames before she can do anything at all. That's really not safe at all, if she is spaced closely enough for it, you can grab her... or if not WD oos and do whatever you want to (towards + grab would be really tight, I'm not sure if that's even possible, but just resetting to neutral is fine enough (to me at least) in these situations).
Also: consider why she is even getting to hit your shield in the first place. Falco is really good at not getting caught there in the first place, and in melee it's generally better to avoid stuff through movement (shielding is sooo limiting what you can do to punish :D).

Ok, so... if she Fairs and then jabs/Ftilts close to shield, is it safe to try to shield grab her? (I'm not talking about Dair'ing her OOS because those are more complex inputs, but pressing A at the right time looks quite an easy task, if the frame advantage isn't that tight)
You're right about not staying too much in shield in general, and more in particular in some MUs. I think I'm doing a bad use of the shield in general and I'm trying to work on it, but it's hard lol
Also there are situations in which I feel the need to shield to avoid the incoming Fair (as I said, I suck at CC'ing on reaction), and if I could shield grab her instead of getting pressured that would be enough, I guess. And yeah, when I was speaking about tilts pressure I was also including her nonsensical Utilt pressure. Damn it xd

Regarding grabs: She can always downthrow techchase you into more grabs, or her bnb launcher (dash attack) or a downsmash for the immediate kill/edgeguard. Her grabs are always threatening.

Argh.

Regarding her OOS game: It's one of the, if not *THE* best in the game. Nair OOS isn't really a punish... Cactuar or somebody once used the very nice wording: "Nair oos is an interrupt. Grab is for punishing people for being bad in your face". If she is willing to nair oos your shield pressure, you should opt for airtight sequences like late aerial > shine > something safe (another shine/grab/retreating aerial come to mind).
If she can do it before your first aerial hits, you are approaching to obvious. Laser to immediate jump towards with a late aerial is not safe at all (as evident to you), and easy enough to pick up on. But if she is committing to nairs all the time you can always go ahead and try punishing those (if she does them retreating it's probably not possible to get more than a laser hit and some stage, but that's quite allright ). Try to approach where she doesn't expect it and can just go "oh ****, I need to shield" and not "ahh, here he comes, I have all the time in the world to intercept, even from the shield I put up to deal with lasers".

Yeah, I'm not having troubles with the shield pressure per se. I don't know why, but I think in the last year or so my shield pressure finally reached a decent level and now that I'm mixing-up multishines, fade-out aerials and shinegrabs the work I made is paying off
The real problem is getting Naired OOS when I'm approaching, and that of course might depend on the fact that I'm committing to very obvious approaches.
Knowing if and how Dair/Nair can outprioritize her Nair/Ftilt would be great to mix them up and punish her accordingly. I have no problem anticipating whether she's going to stay in her shield or do something else to counter-attack, but I don't have enough experience to determine if I can just challenge her Ftilt with my SHFFL Dair/Nair lol (but my guess is that I can't because she's going to outprioritize me easily).

Regarding distances in neutral: I wouldn't subscribe to some static "1shl length away" mantra, ever. In general it's a good idea to stick to a distance where you can REACT to all things that your opponent might do in a given situation that seem scary enough to be concerned about to you. If Sheik's DA is among those, well then keep as far away as necessary for YOU to react to her dash towards you.
As long as you stay there, you're as safe as you'd be if the two of you were on the opposite ends of Hyrule castle.
If you move further in, you are committing for all intents and purposes, and need to have something you want to do with that (usually that'll be you trying to land a SHFFL, i guess).
Keep in mind that shooting a laser limits her options, same as her being in shield. So in those instances you can move in further while still being safe, while she is suddenly threatened by things like your SHFFLed aerial / ftilt / run up shine / DA / whatever.

Yes, of course the 1 SHL thing was just to render the idea. More or less I have to agree with you, but we also have to take into account other possible interactions such as run-up > powershield > something, which is a great answer against lasers and works well also if the Falco is trying to keep the distance, as Sheik is pretty damn fast.
Additionally, I might run into the same problem when I'm trying to close space and commit to an approach. So... yeah, keeping the distance might be good for a while and to keep her guessing, but I don't know if it's going to help much, if I can't understand what else I need to do to solve these problems D:
Again, thanks! <3

I see you're from Germany... Do you usually train with Ice/Luma/Yomi? :D

 

[Vixen]

Any advice for me bird? :'c

 

[AvengerAngel]

I have another question: I saw Mango throwing out various AC'd Bairs (successfully) to protect himself from Dash Attacks or just run-up > grabs. If the Bair whiffed, he covered himself with additional shines, aerials or just shielding/jumping away.
Is that a viable strategy against Sheik? Or was just Mango not getting punished because of his excellent spacing and the "Mango factor" (i.e. throwing out apparently random hitboxes and hit the opponents anyway lol)?
It just feels very unsafe to me D:

@Mizuki: I would give you advice if I was good enough xP
Also either those vids have quite a low quality or my pc is having issues, so it's also pretty hard to understand what is going on in those matches lol

 

[Vixen]

think your pc is having issues, the video runs fine for me. o.o;

 

[Bones0]

There are some questions I'd like to ask you guys.

First of all, how am I supposed to space as Falco against Sheik?
It looks to me like the 1 SHL-distance theory doesn't work well enough in this match-up, for the reason that SHEIK'S DASH ATTACK IS BROKEN OMG
I like to be on the aggressive side to avoid Sheik's nonsense like dash attacks, boost grabs, needle/Bair camping etc., but if I end up attacking too much and being predictable with it I get punished with Nair OOS (even before I can start the shield pressure, actually), Ftilts, WD OOS > grab etc. If I try to camp her for a while, spacing not-too-close-but-not-too-far-away-from-her with DDs, SHLs, WDs etc., I expose myself to the risk of getting dash attacked and then ***** for it (I suck at CC'ing on reaction and I can't even shield it on reaction wtf). Also, lasering her before I approach isn't going to help much, because she can take the laser and stuff my approach with tilts.
So basically: what's the ideal distance to keep from Sheik? How should I try to defend myself and what are the best approaches and MOMENTS to approach? Is Dair better than Nair to overprioritize Ftilts or is it just a question of timing? (God it looks like she has no lag at all on those moves D: )

Second: what do you do to avoid her shield pressure nonsense? I don't know what to do against spaced Fair shield pressure, or Fair > tilts/jabs. If I roll I (obviously) get punished for it. If I try to jump out I might get hit by a tilt and comboed for it; even if I manage to full jump out of the pressure, I find myself above Sheik and perhaps close to the edge as well, which is a position in which I don't feel comfortable at all.
I have no idea of how the frame data works with Sheik's pressure, but I can never ever grab her or shieldshine her. Am I doing something wrong?

Additionally: is Sheik's grab game scary enough, above certain %s? For example, when I'm playing against a Marth, I know that if he grabs me when I'm under a 80-90%, he's going to do horrible things to me. After that % there's no real reason to be afraid of grabs and I start looking out for other possible threats, like dash attacks, uB OOS if I'm pressuring them etc.
Does the same apply to Sheik? Should I be more cautious against grabs at low %s and dash attacks/OOS Nairs at mid-high %s?

And I think that's all for the moment.
I'm super-inexperienced in the Falco-Sheik MU and I don't know how to counter lots of simple Sheik tactics D:
I wish I had recorded some videos at the last tourney, but sadly we didn't have time.

On a side note, when we got to the last match of GFs, I switched to Fox just to see if I could do better with him. Surprisingly, even though I wasn't playing well and my Fox was super-sloppy, I did as well as I was doing with Falco.
PP, do you think the Fox-Sheik MU is way easier than the Falco-Sheik MU? Or perhaps I was just playing Fox in a certain way that was actually more effective against that Sheik's style of play, I dunno.

1. Try to DD just outside of her DA range. There's really no reason to still play with dash SHL distance in mind when you can shield stop to achieve most distances. Players don't really let Falco just SHL onto their shields these days, and even when you do, you're liable to get PS grabbed or just regular shield grabbed if you aren't super deep so that you can shine after the laser.

If you are getting hit after lasering her, it's probably because you always SHFFL after lasering. This is a super common problem so even pretty bad players these days are competent at WDing OoS and beating/DD grabbing the SHFFL. Watch PP and you'll see how he does a lot of DDing after lasers on shields because it makes it riskier for the opponent to do preemptive OoS options. Remember that it isn't enough to just bait something like nair OoS by DDing after lasers. If they do something, you have to punish it, otherwise they will just continue to nair OoS at the first chance they get because why not?

Don't rely on out-prioritizing anything. Even if you could always out-prioritize her ftilt, that is giving her too much time to WD back and/or DD grab you. When you're aerialing vs. her, you should already have her in shield from your presence alone, or you should be catching her as her tech options end. If she's in the air, she's almost always waiting to fair you, and nothing you have is going to ever beat that, and you're rarely going to want to trade when you can (if she's jumping around at 150% and you're at 0%, ofc just bair her and take the damage, but most Sheik players are heavily ground-based).

2. It's all RPS. Don't **** around with any risky stuff if she's fairing your shield. Much like Peach, you really can't do anything unless they severely mess up. Try to get in the habit of light shielding and/or shield SDIing away to hopefully get out of jab range, but as far as her late fair ftilt/grab mixup, you just have to anticipate the correct option and minimize your risk based on the scenario at hand. More importantly, you should be focusing on how you get into this situation and prevent it from happening in the first place. One thing I love about playing Sheik is she probably has the worst range out of any of the top tiers except Fox and Falco, but Fox has a great SHFFL air speed/running shine, and Falco has lasers.

So the benefit you will see in this matchup that you don't see in others is that you can really abuse that laser DD game. Sheik doesn't have super good answers like, say, Marth does, where he can shield and fair you OoS if you're even moderately close to him. She will never come flying at you out of nowhere since she has an awful SHFFL for approaching, and when she's limited to the ground, her only really quick options are DA and grab, occasionally WD into ftilt. You can CC or shield DA and ftilt, and grab is essentially her mixup to those defensive options, but if you just space with DD and/or bop her in the face, you'll get a lot off of it. You can also sort of space a dair which will beat a DA and grab, but might leave you exposed if she WDs towards you and is ready to punish your lag.

3. You should be very afraid of grabs at any %, maybe even MORE SO at higher percents. She can toss you off stage with bthrow/fthrow, uthrow will combo weird DIs (idk the specifics, but I felt like I was able to DI away on reaction when I played M2K, so go with that; most Sheiks never use it), and dthrow, as I'm sure you know, is ridiculous. If you land on a plat, you're basically done unless they screw up (even sliding off won't help because they just slap you as if you were going to tech in place. If you don't land on a plat, you are still forced to tech (assuming you didn't go off stage which is where they will start trying to needle you, dsmash your DJ, etc). If they are solid at tech chasing, they will cover everything on reaction and you're dead. If they're only mediocre, you might get away and the usual best case scenario is you are now trapped at the ledge after having techrolled away from a Sheik to avoid dying. So yeah, don't get grabbed.

Like I explained in #2, there's really no reason to let this happen because you have slightly better mobility than Sheik when you keep in mind you have lasers to mess up their mobility. If you're getting grabbed, you're almost sure to be shielding too much. I hate to suggest spotdodging, but sometimes it seems like the best option because it prevents them from grabbing every would-be shielding scenario without hesitation. I think this is why you will occasionally see M2K do run up dsmash vs. PP and Mango. He is worried about them spotdodge shining to completely wreck his ****, but he also doesn't want to ALWAYS wait for a preemptive spotdodge/shine/utilt/roll towards because if he's wrong, a roll away or FH will usually give Falco a free getaway. This is just my analysis of that behavior, so maybe a Sheik main would give you a different explanation.

 

[Vixen]

Bones, out of curiosity what do you do, personally, to practice tech. I finally have a set up on my own, but I just find myself doing randy ass **** with no real purpose or goal. :V

 

[Bones0]

Bones, out of curiosity what do you do, personally, to practice tech. I finally have a set up on my own, but I just find myself doing randy *** **** with no real purpose or goal. :V

Most of the time I play, it's just trying to recreate situations I feel I struggle at vs. humans against level 4 computers. Somewhat of a recent thing I've specifically been working on was punishing on platforms. I noticed from my history of videos that I would often get hit by peoples' GUAs when they were on plats, or I would punish too slowly and they would get their shield up. So I studied my vids to brainstorm solutions, watched Mango/PP vids to see how they got into those situations and how they dealt with it, and then I played comps as if they were doing what I wanted them to be doing. Sometimes I turn items on very high with only capsules, and I try to break them in different ways attacking with different attacks or from different angles (they explode occasionally which can be helpful for practicing DI buffering). More recently, I've been trying to emulate pressure by forcing myself to perfect 3-stock level 4 computers (no getting hit). It really makes me focus on my approaches so I will DD and be more patient, forces me to get the most off of each hit, and forces me to move fluidly even if I'm nervous about getting hit after getting 2 stocks. It's actually quite hard to not get hit once (at least with Falco), so if you really want to complete the challenge, you will get your blood pumping.

Tbh though, most of that stuff is just for general improvement. I kind of stopped practicing tech skill specifically because, not to sound arrogant, but I pretty much have all the tools I need to compete properly. There's a few things here and there, but most of my actual tech skill practice is just between the time I get on and the time I feel warmed up (30 minutes). I don't really remember the last time I've lost a match because of tech skill issues that weren't directly caused by my mentality. When I'm warmed up and confident, I feel pretty invincible in terms of tech skill. lol If you aren't trying to improve in general and just want to perfect tech, then you really have to commit to playing often and more importantly, practicing a single thing for a long period of time. I think most people want to practice something like ledgedashing for 5 minutes, and since that ends up being a hundred ledgedashes with tons of SDs, they feel that they are done. My mentality has always been, "if I'm SDing, then obviously I'm not done." If you can't sit down without pressure and ledgedash (or w/e) 30 times in a row, you're almost guaranteed to SD at least once in a tournament match, probably more because of pressure and trying to focus on the opponent a little more than you would while practicing.

Sit down and grind out a single technique for 30 minutes. No tiny breaks to do anything else. No taking sips of your drink. No talking to friends, checking FB, texting, etc. Just sit down and perform the technique you are working on for 30 minutes straight with all of your focus your fingers doing it properly. Depending on the difficulty of the tactic, you may want to go for longer. I remember when I first learned about shield dropping (keep in mind this was way before any good players had demonstrated any potential for it so it was largely unmarked territory), I was practicing 90% shield drops in 8 hour sessions. Sounds ridiculous, but I got super good at it super quickly, and now I put as much thought into shield dropping or ledgedashing as I do WDing OoS.

Some specific advice I will give is focus very heavily at the beginning on what your hands are doing. Human nature tends to make us focus on results, but good tech skill is much more process oriented (much like any improvements we make). If you want to learn the piano, you can't simply focus on playing the right notes at the right time because you are starting out with easy songs and may end up adopting a ghetto technique to hit the keys. Then once you move on to more challenging songs, your process proves to be impossible and you have to relearn everything. If you are going to learn a technique, understand the mechanics and learn how to do it as efficiently as possible. Tons of people have horrible habits that they don't even realize because they never stopped to think about how efficient they were. The first thing I do when I pick up any game these days is figure out the best controller configuration. I look at the possible inputs and how they will be used, and then I configure my controller and hands to best suit those inputs. It's not unlike how a basketball player focuses on HOW to shoot a basketball before ACTUALLY shooting a basketball. This mistake is why there are tons of people who L-cancel with full trigger presses, people who don't trigger trick one of their triggers, etc. One of my favorite optimizations is when I am grabbing the ledge at almost the same time as my opponent, I input the ledge roll with a light press and option select an up-B. Most people just airdodge like idiots because they couldn't tell if they grabbed the ledge. I never die from that because I took the time to instill an efficient tech skill habit.

/more than you ever wanted or needed to know about how my tech skill philosophy

 

[Vixen]

To be quite honest I actually enjoyed reading all of that! I'm glad you took the time to oblige my question. c:

I used to be in the situation where I COULD get away with not practicing my tech skill because I played often enough with other players and frequented tournaments, but social and life issues are making that difficult. Last tournament I went to, my performance was very obviously affected by my severe lack of good, consistent practice. Just a few hours to sit down and sort of retrain myself did really fix a lot of my technical mistakes.

Do you have any recommendations on how to practice out of shield options? I must confess I still really, really suck at shine OOS, or dairing OOS. The only thing I can really consistently do is WD OOS and usmash OOS.. For some reason shine and dair I still spot dodge and roll. Me Vman and Tai were discussing our tournament sets after the tournament and they noticed a lot of spots where i spot dodged and rolled like a noob and asked if I was just failing to attack oos. It would be really nice NOT to have that happen as often. e.e;

Also I should definitely get better at not using a full trigger press. It's not quite muscle memory for me yet. I have an extremely bad habit of locking my tech and getting demolished. It's almost embarrassing how few ground and platform techs I get because I was a noob and locked my tech.

 

[Bones0]

To be quite honest I actually enjoyed reading all of that! I'm glad you took the time to oblige my question. c:

I used to be in the situation where I COULD get away with not practicing my tech skill because I played often enough with other players and frequented tournaments, but social and life issues are making that difficult. Last tournament I went to, my performance was very obviously affected by my severe lack of good, consistent practice. Just a few hours to sit down and sort of retrain myself did really fix a lot of my technical mistakes.

Do you have any recommendations on how to practice out of shield options? I must confess I still really, really suck at shine OOS, or dairing OOS. The only thing I can really consistently do is WD OOS and usmash OOS.. For some reason shine and dair I still spot dodge and roll. Me Vman and Tai were discussing our tournament sets after the tournament and they noticed a lot of spots where i spot dodged and rolled like a noob and asked if I was just failing to attack oos. It would be really nice NOT to have that happen as often. e.e;

Also I should definitely get better at not using a full trigger press. It's not quite muscle memory for me yet. I have an extremely bad habit of locking my tech and getting demolished. It's almost embarrassing how few ground and platform techs I get because I was a noob and locked my tech.

OoS options is actually one of my worst areas as well, so I definitely think it's one of the harder things to practice. I recently thought about throwing Bob-Ombs into the air and shielding them to practice that way, but I haven't gotten a chance to try it out. I'm gonna try and give you a critique btw. Just feeling lazy at the moment.

 

[Xyzz]

CPUs ledge attack when you stand close to the ledge while they are hanging on it (at least the lvl 1 to 4s do, I don't really ever see higher ones :D). So make them do it, put up you shield in time, and then do whatever OOS thing you wanted to practice.

 

[Vixen]

i can shine oos the get up attack without fail. its more stuff like Falcons knee, or really good shine pressure that makes me go WHOAMG ASDF

I like the bomb idea. I need to practice vs variable shield stun.

 

[AvengerAngel]

Mizuki, are you sure you can actually punish Falcon's knee on shield? I thought he had the time to knee and then gentleman and gtfo, but I'm not sure about it because I totally lack Falcon practice and I suck at OOS options as well lolol

@ Bones: Thanks for the huge write-up :D
Yeah, I've come to the conclusion that I was probably being too predictable. I already mix-up DDs and WDs with SHLs, but I probably wasn't doing it at the right time/spacing.
My problem with the DD against Sheik though is that I feel I have to be more aggressive in that MU, or I'll give up the pressure and she'll be free to get away somehow. Or, even worse, she'll come to me with Dash attacks, dash -> powershield -> **** etc. :x

Maybe it's because I'm not used to the MU, but I have an easier time against Marth than Sheik. Even if Marth is PS'ing most of my lasers, if he's constantly DD'ing and WD'ing between them, I can control him way more than I can control Sheik D:
When Sheik has enough space and time to move through the platforms, it gets very annoying for me lol. Of course, if I just try to harrass her to avoid that, I might end up being too predictable xP

Oh and lol, I forgot to mention that I play PAL, of course. Is the Dthrow on Falco scarier in the NTSC? Can Falco get away more easily in the PAL version? (I really have no idea about that)


I think part of these issues might depend on the fact that lately I've been switching to a more aggressive playstyle. Of course I'm not the "omg just spam tech skills and harrass your opponent with Dairs as fast as possible" kind of Falco, but I've just reduced the amount of lasers in my game and it's working out pretty well I think. I got better at a lot of MUs and I'm seeing the game under a new perspective; I shoot better lasers and I give up less opportunities to punish my opponents' mistakes, now that I'm not shooting just for the sake of it. Still, I have a long way to go before I can say my laser game is actually good lol
Anyway the point I was trying to make is that this shift of perspective is helping me a lot in other MUs, but I still need to adapt it somehow to the Sheik MU. I don't think that "more camping" or "more DDs" can automatically solve the problems I'm having with Sheik, right now. But those this are definitely going to help me anyway x)

I've been watching lots of videos of Mango vs. Sheiks and wtf sometimes I can't understand why the things he's doing are working. I guess that studying those videos over and over again is going to help though xP

Thanks! <3

 

[Xyzz]

@PAL Sheik: I dabble a little in Sheik (and play PAL obviously), and I think her downthrow is a bit less scary in our version.
If you DI away on her downthrow, I personally can't react to techroll away. It might be possible for somebody with better reaction times (I'm usually between .22 and .25 which quite simply isn't that amazing), and some more experience in doing the techchase... maybe throwing in fox trots towards the landing location of the throw would help, but well... I don't play her enough to really care. (Hell, I've just yesterday bothered enough to start practicing boost grabs)

But I think that's what most people actually do. React to everything except tech away (and be content with putting him in a ****ty situation (Falco still has to take a rather risky guess regarding what he wants to do after the techroll, because Sheik can easily be uncomfortably close after his roll and he doesn't have time to set up his usual defenses)), or well, just read the techroll away and sacrifice some coverage in the other direction.

It's still really, really threatening.

 

[Twilight Emblem]

Sup Dr.PP I have a question for you specifically and I was wondering if you could answer this question with maybe a more drawn out explanation like some of the posts on laser spacing that you've made and linked to in the front page of this thread here

Can we talk about avoiding getting grabbed with falco? lol. I remember a big talking point you had with falco before was as you noticed what players were doing to damage higher level falcos and falcos in general you were noticing that falco got grabbed alot and that you tried to develop ways around what people were doing to grab falco to keep that from happening as much as possible and perhaps turn that missed grab into an opportunity etc

Can we get like matchup specific tips and ideas and thoughts all centering around about avoiding being grabbed with him and how to capitalize on those situations?Like not asking for you to be extremely precise and drawn out but just asking for some thoughts to be shared. Like if I could improve my chances of not getting grabbed by marth or shiek and improve my punish game off those missed grabs that would help with the matchup a lot

Thanks again and this thread is helping my falco tremendously mad props for making this

Edit- Oh yeah and for when the time comes a big shout out to everybody here I hope you all have a good thanksgiving

Edit-"This part was originally a huge walltext but I realized I was dwelving into some seriously thick material there that I couldn't tie the loose ends on so i'm just backing it up to here." Angel, I think a lot of your shiek troubles are stemming from the fact that you don't play against shieks enough. I mean your post conveys to me that you're like 10/10 unfamiliar and uncomfortable playing her. If you don't have any way of playing against shieks very often there is an alternative. You can play Super Smash Brothers melee online. Check it out. Get the program and the thing "dunno what its called* that lets you plug a gamecube controller up to your computer. Get some help on the connection so its lagless and boom you've got shieks all day.

If you're not already, I would also like to reccomend improving your personal health. Being hydrated on a diet that gives you good energy with an exercise routine and good sleep each night will help you play better. Hand stretches help from what i've heard but I don't know how hype they are.

If you want to start doing better vs shiek just start getting really serious about getting better. Play with the sole intention of getting better and overcoming a problem you have with your falco. Get the edge gaurds better. Get a clumsy tech skill reliable and consistent. Get sick yo. Play like, a few hours each day just for the sake of getting better.

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

http://www.twitch.tv/vgbootcamp/b/483171212
14:24

guess i should just go ahead and put this here, even though I dont know what im doing/ understand why i get hit.
all in all, i dont know how to play but i think its good whoever watches for a few minutes can tell me straight up what i need to do to improve

could someone also tell me what reacting to opponents movements is cuz im confused and essentially have no idea what i should be thinking / doing lol.
and sry for stuff like missing double dairs cuz thats me not knowing options yet

 

[Twilight Emblem]

Sup Rocket. How many hours per day are you playing, and what do you do to practice? When you practice, what exactly is everything you try to work on? If we know what you're doing we can start adding suggestions to your practice that you can use to make your training sessions better. How often do you play other people, also?

I think we can all get good so don't worry about getting wrecked by the samus. You get a good training regimin going and samus won't bother you anymore.

I'd like to make some points about problems I see in the video but I think it'll be good to have a much better player than me tell you whats wrong so far. I'm seeing some pretty big mistakes there but the good thing about having big holes in your game is that they're obvious and can be dealt with.

 

[Rocketpowerchill]

Twice a week I play actual people, the problem is not being able to take anything out of the friendlies and off stream stuff cuz most of the time it's not someone who likes talking about the game/ knows a good deal of falco.

I will definitely say the things I don't do which are 100% of melee is hitting people, being faster than people cuz im falco, and knowing what your doing
If anyone has anything I'll take it, I'm not trying to be a lost cause cuz I didn't put in the right work towards getting better

Is there actual key stuff you can practice by yourself? I just practice movement so my control is never rusty

 

[SAUS]

Twice a week I play actual people, the problem is not being able to take anything out of the friendlies and off stream stuff cuz most of the time it's not someone who likes talking about the game/ knows a good deal of falco.

I will definitely say the things I don't do which are 100% of melee is hitting people, being faster than people cuz im falco, and knowing what your doing
If anyone has anything I'll take it, I'm not trying to be a lost cause cuz I didn't put in the right work towards getting better

Is there actual key stuff you can practice by yourself? I just practice movement so my control is never rusty

That's probably the best thing to practice by yourself. Anything like short-hop lasers, shuffles, wavelanding on platforms, wave dash, dashing out of L-cancelled moves as quickly as you can, etc.

I've kind of run out of things to practice by myself. I can practice the tech stuff, but link being my main, it is absolutely pointless (his stuff is too easy for it to matter if I practice). Getting a good warm-up with my secondaries is good, but they're just my secondaries. I've stopped practising/playing by myself a long time ago and pretty much only play when there is a human opponent (even if they are really bad).

 

[Bones0]

http://www.twitch.tv/azprojectmelee/b/482502947 time stamp @ 1:52:42 vs Tai 11/23/13. Any critique would be lovely. Ignore them horribly misspelling Mizuki xD

lol @ that commentator bias. It was almost making it hard to focus with all the d-riding going on... Anyway, I will do the other games later, but here's game 1.

GAME 1: Yoshi's Story

1:53:50 - You should have double jumped earlier and gone for the top plat. Worst thing Marth can do is FH up there and nair/uair you. If he uairs you just work your way down, and if he nairs to knock you off you can Phantasm to the ledge before he can get there.

1:54:05 - That nair wouldn't have done anything for you even if it did hit. I'm guessing it wasn't even intentional though since it looked so weird and random.

1:54:10 - You have to spacing-confirm WL/runoff plat stuff like that. If you realize they aren't going to get hit, just laser and DD back.

1:54:55 - Good CC, but you should have grabbed or dtilted. Shine doesn't have enough range in the front for forward-facing CCs to be very effective.

1:55:20 - Could've gone out there and baired him. React to those DJs and side-Bs.

1:55:45 - You can't flub these edgeguards. If you grab the ledge at the last possible moment (right before Marth is within range to fair you on it basically), you are able to react to those airdodges. Then right after you get him trapped on the ledge, but for some reason you SHL laser towards him. Even if he LHed at that moment, he probably would have been invincible since everyone tends to make sure they are using invincibility off the ledge these days. With only 46%, you should be looking to CC or shield his LH attack and punish. You probably would have gotten the edgeguard if you had baired like I think you meant to, but optimizing your pre-hit edgeguard will make getting the hit that much easier. It would have turned a scrambling LH aerial into an easy, expected reactionary LH aerial because you'd be covering all of his other options so well.

1:56:00 - @ the WL mistake. You really need to DI at least one of those uairs away so he can't keep chaining them. Pay attention to when you can DI away without getting tippered (it is dependent on a lot of spacing factors such as how high in his jump he is, how much momentum he has in either direction, etc).

1:56:05 - That dair-shine pressure was perfect, including the decision to simply waveshine out, but instead of running away and giving Marth space to work his WD OoS options, you should have held your ground from a WD distance away with your back to him. That situation is one of the best positional advantages in the matchup for Falco, so you have to learn the RPS balances that come with it. A huge part of my Falco vs. Marth game is just getting Marths in that exact situation because I feel like I can pretty much systematically beat any Marth player in that position. He can't shield grab because you're just out of range. The fact that he's shielding means he has to jump to do anything (including WD). You can't stop him from WDing onto the ledge, but that only gives him more time to think and more time to for you to screw up, it doesn't gain anything of substance. If he WDs in place to use a tilt or fsmash, you can either shield and punish or simply trade/beat the move before it comes out with bair. If he tries to WD OoS towards you, utilt. If he tries to aerial OoS, you can shield and bair, utilt, maybe trading, and still get the utilt, or CC and bair before he gets another aerial out. As soon as you dashed towards the middle, you gave up all your pressure and he was able to use that space for his WD fsmash. Even if you only hold your ground in shield, it's still better because you can react to WD OoS into grab by bairing OoS yourself. There's literally nothing he can do OoS to beat you shielding in that position.

 

[BTmoney]

Twice a week I play actual people, the problem is not being able to take anything out of the friendlies and off stream stuff cuz most of the time it's not someone who likes talking about the game/ knows a good deal of falco.

I will definitely say the things I don't do which are 100% of melee is hitting people, being faster than people cuz im falco, and knowing what your doing
If anyone has anything I'll take it, I'm not trying to be a lost cause cuz I didn't put in the right work towards getting better

Is there actual key stuff you can practice by yourself? I just practice movement so my control is never rusty

Whenever I take the time to practice Falco (I might go back to him) I practice

1. perfect double lasers from the ledge
2. shortening my illusion on command/to a sweet spot
3. falling through platform lasers
4. falling through plat turnaround laser
5. turnaround lasers /w momentum
6. invincible ledge dashes
7. I don't really practice it but sometimes if I don't warm up my double shines will be sloppy so I practice that sometimes
8. dash shield dropping (general)
9. shield dropping (general)

If I'm really tripping I might practice getting up B angles for a few seconds but that's so painfully boring I give that like 30 seconds. I guess it's good to know you're side B edge cancels to. PP makes good use of them

and duh auto canceled SH bairs...PP uses them so well (and often)

 

[Dr Peepee]

Sup Dr.PP I have a question for you specifically and I was wondering if you could answer this question with maybe a more drawn out explanation like some of the posts on laser spacing that you've made and linked to in the front page of this thread here

Can we talk about avoiding getting grabbed with falco? lol. I remember a big talking point you had with falco before was as you noticed what players were doing to damage higher level falcos and falcos in general you were noticing that falco got grabbed alot and that you tried to develop ways around what people were doing to grab falco to keep that from happening as much as possible and perhaps turn that missed grab into an opportunity etc

Can we get like matchup specific tips and ideas and thoughts all centering around about avoiding being grabbed with him and how to capitalize on those situations?Like not asking for you to be extremely precise and drawn out but just asking for some thoughts to be shared. Like if I could improve my chances of not getting grabbed by marth or shiek and improve my punish game off those missed grabs that would help with the matchup a lot

Thanks again and this thread is helping my falco tremendously mad props for making this

Edit- Oh yeah and for when the time comes a big shout out to everybody here I hope you all have a good thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to you too!

Man I haven't thought about that specific topic in a long long time haha. I should remind myself to think more defensively.

So some big ways to see when Falco gets grabbed is to look at situations you or other Falcos seem to be getting grabbed in. I frequently saw myself getting grabbed by the edge, or out of a hit that kept me in place like a Fox jab, or maybe by the edge/if I teched or stood up. Rarely does anyone just run up and grab Falco thanks to lasers haha. So I would have to get hit first or put in a position where I felt uncomfortable and froze up/shielded. This means that I could micromanage avoiding grabs by looking at common metagame situations for grabs such as classic Marth setups like the dash toward you to bait spotdodge then away then in to grab at the end of the lag frames. As long as I didn't spam spotdodge or shine I would get away, but if Marth just ran up and grabbed then I would be grabbed. So it should theoretically be a RPS situation but if Marths are ALWAYS doing that then I can build a response that beats the metagame "best" decision. Something that still covers a lot of options like WD back or FH or even Ftilt/dash attack could be useful. Note these options could each cover different things: WD can cover any spaced commitment or anything guarding against attacks. FH is probably the fastest option listed and moves Falco to a secure position easily so it may be preferred more often. The attacks would cover any sloppy timings or any waiting to beat spotdodge/shine and also cause the opponent to reconsider/doubt their effectiveness at punishing my wakeups. Once I have these tools in place and their ideas, I look to see if other ideas exist or just test them myself and then go over the results in my head. Usually stuff can stick for a while if I work it out for long enough.

This general process worked for me for every grab-related situation and I should do it again for the new stuff. Obviously, this can work well for anyone, but it doesn't have to be done this way. Just basic trial and error when playing works plenty well enough too =)

Hope that helps!