PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[Dr Peepee]

For Puff, the mentality is to remember that only slightly longer waiting than usual is required. "The hits will come." This is true for neutral and edgeguarding especially. Think of how you can get a laser on her on the ground or Bair/Utilt her in neutral OR how to limit her going over you or to the edge when she's recovering. Count her jumps so you have something to do mentally. The more focused you are the more it will seem like it's not waiting and just playing a different kind of game.

 

[Zotto]

Can anyone explain to me dair onto to shield and shine vs nair onto shine and shine, and just dair vs nair as general approaches. Thanks!

 

[BTmoney]

Can anyone explain to me dair onto to shield and shine vs nair onto shine and shine, and just dair vs nair as general approaches. Thanks!

far from a complete answer but here's some info. I THINK dair is 1 frame worse on shield than nair, can anyone confirm?

No, but I can make one, haha.
Non-stale nair can’t be shield-grabbed before your shine comes out if it was done after frame 7 (Jump 6 ) of your short hop or later and fast-falled as soon as possible.


No, that is not possible. It might be possible if nair is completely stale, but I can’t test staleness as quickly.
In the animation above, you can see that non-stale nair can’t even be shieldgrabbed before the shine if it’s done 5 frames before your short hop apex (Jump 11 ). IIRC, a completely stale nair ( ⇒ The last 9 times you’ve hit someone with an attack, it was nair) has 2 frames less hitlag and 3 frames less shieldstun than a non-stale nair. Thus, I guess even then shield grab would be impossible.

 

[Kadano]

far from a complete answer but here's some info. I THINK dair is 1 frame worse on shield than nair, can anyone confirm?

I compared nair and dair on shield at some time. I think dair has to be input about 4 frames later than nair. I’m not willing to do it again because I know I did this already. I need to keep better track of my own contributions, haha.

Anyone remember where that post was? @ Bones0 maybe?

 

[BTmoney]

I compared nair and dair on shield at some time. I think dair has to be input about 4 frames later than nair. I’m not willing to do it again because I know I did this already. I need to keep better track of my own contributions, haha.

Anyone remember where that post was? @ Bones0 maybe?

Coincidentally. I was looking back and I found this post. It seems to be pretty much true (at least #3). I was approaching with d-air with the CPU set to doing frame perfect shield grabs and sometimes I could get the dair->shine off and sometimes I'd get shield grabbed. I'd notice that I could do the aerial before my SH peak and if I got a crispy FF then I would shine the CPU's shield grab. Basically if I hit all my inputs "fast" (fast falling, and getting the shine out ASAP) I felt like I would be safe. If I felt a little slow, even slightly, I'd get shield grabbed all the time.

IIRC I even got this to work while doing a FF from a full hop d-air spaced poorly onto the top of the CPU's shield which was very surprising.

I'm gonna do a little testing myself when I get a bit of time to come up with a general answer cause I was close to figuring one out. I just kind of forgot/didn't take that test too seriously.

Nair and dair both deal 12% (7 frames of shield stun), but dair has 9 frames of L-cancelled landing lag while nair only has 7.

I use 3 general aerial heights when pressuring:
1. Aerial hits at about the peak of my SH, FF after hit. This isn't safe vs. Fox's shine OoS, Sheik's nair OoS, certain up-Bs OoS, and other quick options. Grabs might actually be possible some of the time, but generally I find people do not go for grabs either way because of the risk, and doing the aerial a little earlier than guaranteed or just within guaranteed safety discourages them from trying to move OoS or forces them to shield initially instead of dashing away.

2. Aerial hits late enough that the opponent is in shield stun the entire time between the aerial hit and shine. It can be done either with or without a FF. You must start the aerial before the peak of your SH if you plan on FFing, or else the hitbox won't come out in time. I generally use this without FFing when I know they are scared (high %s), and I milk the time for as much shield damage as possible before the super late aerial. With the damage from them holding shield while you're SHing + the aerial shield damage + shine shield damage + shield damage from an early aerial after the shine, you can wreck shields and often just get outright pokes. I do super late bair-shine-bairs and get pokes on people all the time at high %s. Also a great pressure option when you think they will hold shield and are fine with just shine grabbing.

3. The most "medium" pressure option (and imo the most difficult to grasp/execute) is done by starting the aerial before the peak of your jump, FFing before the aerial connects (keeping in mind you can't FF until you've reached the peak of your SH), and having the hitbox connect after you've started FFing. This beats grabs and even the faster OoS options, but leaves enough time for them to get caught by your shine if they attempt to do something (unlike #2 where they are locked in shield). FFing has a 3-frame buffer which can help, but you cannot FF during hitlag so getting the FF before the aerial connects is a great way to ensure consistency in your pressure. If you've ever gone from playing mediocre/bad players or good players whose chars don't have great OoS options to playing a good Fox, you may have experienced the "OMG, I'm getting shined OoS constantly" effect. It generally doesn't mean your pressure has gotten worse, but rather you were using #1 pressure vs. #3.

Kadano info on nair-shine pressure with amazing GIF that you should watch frame by frame until the image is burned into your mind.

http://gfycat.com/WarlikeWindingBichonfrise

Sources if you'd like to do calculations of your own:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/kwbkgsdok1dekd7/SSBM_Hitboxes_(NTSC_1.0)_&_Knockback_1.5k.xlsx
http://smashboards.com/threads/frame-advantage-on-block.309694/
http://smashboards.com/threads/falco-hitboxes-and-frame-data.300397/

 

[Oskurito]

I compared nair and dair on shield at some time. I think dair has to be input about 4 frames later than nair. I’m not willing to do it again because I know I did this already. I need to keep better track of my own contributions, haha.

Anyone remember where that post was? @ Bones0 maybe?

May I ask what program do you use to create gifs with such good quality. The ones I've tryed are plain ugly.

 

[Kadano]

May I ask what program do you use to create gifs with such good quality. The ones I've tryed are plain ugly.

Dolphin (with high internal resolution and lots of Anti-Aliasing and stuff) with Melee in develop mode. I capture every frame by taking screenshots with the F9 keyboard shortcut. Then I used to use FastStone Image Viewer to cut them (if necessary) and put them in a .gif file.

I don’t do it like that any longer because .gif is outdated now that we have gfycat. The steps I used FastStone for are now done by Avisynth and MeGUI.

Also fyi, it’s impossible to create .gifs with 1x playing speed; their inter-frame time delays are mesured in centiseconds. So you need to choose between 10 ms, 20 ms etc. and never get to the desired value of 16.67 (50/3) ms. You could technically alterate between 20 ms and 10 ms (frame 1: 20 ms, frame 2: 20 ms, frame 3: 10 ms, frame 4: 20 ms and so on) to achieve 60 frames per second ( (20+20+10)*20 = 1000), but I don’t think there’s a program that does this automatically. And doing it manually is too much of a chore.

Gfycats aren’t perfect; they always re-encode, so the quality is significantly worse than in my source .mp4 files. But they don’t suffer from color limits and use much less bandwidth, so the sacrifice of a little sharpness is not in vain.

 

[AvengerAngel]

Ok so if @ Dr Peepee is still doing video critiques, I'd love to hear his opinions on this set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPcxFFCj06E @TheZhuKeeper vs. Zanguzen. I'd like to hear Zhu's feedback as well, if he comes around here :D
There are two main things that I'm struggling with in the ditto:

1) lasering: I'm not that good at shooting good lazers and abusing my lazer control, but most of all I'm struggling A LOT at dealing with my opponents' lazers. I just get locked down and get punished for that;

2) punishing dumb OOS reactions, most of all rolls and spot dodges on predictable lazor>grab approaches, even when I predict them correctly.

Watching the video I got the feeling that Zanguzen was very smartly switching his responses to Zhu's pressure, varying his rolls timings and mixing them up with stuff like Usmashes OOS, lazors OOS etc.
So it looks to me like Zhu was aiming to stay safe most of the time, and even if that didn't lead to a direct punish of predictable rolls, he still managed to keep control of the stage, and that lead to the win.
So... any timestamp critique or general review of the set might help me getting a little better in punishing those things in the ditto I guess, lol. I don't have problems punishing rolls in other MUs, but Falco's rolls (and Fox's too) are pretty good and he has a broken 1-frame move that leads to painful combos and he has the lazors and omg someone please ban this character D:

 

[Zotto]

Whats the most efficient way to practice reverse lasering. Thanks

 

[Dr Peepee]

I had never heard of Dair actually being worse than Nair on shield I thought they were the same on block unstaled. Pretty neat thanks for the info Kadano =) I may ask for clarification on understanding it fully later unless you're interested in explaining it briefly when you see this.

AA: Watched game 1 and it looked like Zhu got good positions then didn't followup as well as he could and Zang is pretty smart but not very efficient.

 

[xman]

Whats the most efficient way to practice reverse lasering. Thanks

Best way to practice reverse lasering is by going on fd and just doing it from on end to the other until its in your muscle memory

 

[xman]

I had never heard of Dair actually being worse than Nair on shield I thought they were the same on block unstaled. Pretty neat thanks for the info Kadano =) I may ask for clarification on understanding it fully later unless you're interested in explaining it briefly when you see this.

AA: Watched game 1 and it looked like Zhu got good positions then didn't followup as well as he could and Zang is pretty smart but not very efficient.

I thought nair had less landing lag than dair wouldn't It be better if your spacing your aerial to land in front of them with nair instead of dair?

 

[Metal Gear Salad]

@ Kadano what are the trajectories of the DAir hit box? How important is it to reverse the DAir in any sort of ledge hop edgeguard scenario?

God I love your frame data.

 

[Kadano]

I had never heard of Dair actually being worse than Nair on shield I thought they were the same on block unstaled. Pretty neat thanks for the info Kadano =) I may ask for clarification on understanding it fully later unless you're interested in explaining it briefly when you see this.

See #21763. Dair and nair do the same amount of shield stun (unless drastically differently staled), but dair has 2 more frames L-canceled landing lag (not 4 as I thought to remember). I can see dair being more favorable for accidental shieldstabs, though, as you simply continue it into shine, which would whiff with nair.

@ Kadano what are the trajectories of the DAir hit box? How important is it to reverse the DAir in any sort of ledge hop edgeguard scenario?

http://www.mediafire.com/download/kwbkgsdok1dekd7/SSBM_Hitboxes_(NTSC_1.0)_&_Knockback_1.5k.xlsx

It depends on the stage. On YS and stages with similar straight walls, not hitting reverse makes it (much) easier for your target to tech. On stages like Battlefield, it usually hardly matters because you need to SDI anyway.

 

[Zotto]

Hey i'm having problems consistently wavedashing, falco is jumping in the air, I know this means i am pressing R too fast, but is there any way to break this bad habit quickly. Thanks.

 

[Oskurito]

Hey i'm having problems consistently wavedashing, falco is jumping in the air, I know this means i am pressing R too fast, but is there any way to break this bad habit quickly. Thanks.

Speed is not your problem if you can press it fast, timing is.

However, there isn't a quick fix, you have to practice, just take it slow, focus and remember that is the timing of falco's wavedash that you're going to work on.

 

[Bones0]

Hey i'm having problems consistently wavedashing, falco is jumping in the air, I know this means i am pressing R too fast, but is there any way to break this bad habit quickly. Thanks.

Practice WDing with Bowser. Ultimately it is just practice to get used to the timing, but going to the the extreme for a bit of practice might help your brain get used to jump+airdodge commands having various timings.

 

[xman]

Hey i'm having problems consistently wavedashing, falco is jumping in the air, I know this means i am pressing R too fast, but is there any way to break this bad habit quickly. Thanks.

Bones0 and oskurito are right its more about timing. My advice is just taking it to the basics and just airdodge towards the ground and little by little airdoging sooner until you're wavedashing and try to get used to that timing

 

[Zotto]

Hey guys thanks for the previous help, but I have a really hard question to answer, so any attempt is very much thanked, but I struggle so hard during the neutral game. I understand that is completely vague, but I am having trouble understanding what I need to do. I know I need to do laser spacing or shffl nairs, both of which i can do, but can anyone give me a good example of video where a falco player accomplishes this. I dont know how to approach of small stages where a character like fox can just rush me unless I am constantly spamming lasers. So any tips on how to space of smaller stages would be much obliged as-well. Anyway thanks guys!

 

[Binx]

Think about your goals are you better vs this char from above below or the side? Once you answer that think about where that character is good vs you. Now you have 2 important points of reference now what distances are in your favor and what are there's. So in Marth vs Mario for instance Marth wants to outrange him horizontally and get below him this match up is really exaggerated but you get the idea. Your goal in neutral is to get into strong spacing and use moves that limit your opponents options get them off stage for a stock. Just get it the habit of picking your battles

 

[GreenBread]

Is SHFFL fair good?

 

[Binx]

There are some very rare situations where I realize I miss spaced an air and so I fair at the last moment but the attack is so weak if they crouch it or anything it can really mess you up. Short answer is no but it has situational uses sometimes you want a weaker hit for a combo or you need the extra range.

 

[Bones0]

A general guideline is that fair is useful during combos, but mostly worthless vs. grounded opponents.

 

[xman]

It does have a slightly higher hitbox than nair it can be used to hit someone on a platform if you catch them off guard on high percent and could give you a meteor spike opportunity

 

[Zotto]

How do I pillar fox at low percents, and to a degree higher percents. Thanks.

 

[OninO]

You have to short hop Dair, I think you actually catch him with upper part of hitbox?

I don't know exactly the transition points to full hop/immediate double jump.

 

[Binx]

So I've been using a ton of forward tilt vs fox in the neutral game to beat out his attempts at close nairs when he thinks I'll want to laser, has anyone else tried this or is there a better option here? Maybe I could just go for a dash dance grab or shine.

Also is there a for sure way to tell when a shine will send them into a neutral aerial position with the floaty knockback, after all the years i've been playing I should know what thats called but Falco seems to be the only character that does that to people.

And lastly when you know your shine will do that but utilt isn't an option because of position or percents or what have you, whats the best option should I shine bair or should I just try to knock them into a tech chase instead?

 

[pkblaze]

And lastly when you know your shine will do that but utilt isn't an option because of position or percents or what have you, whats the best option should I shine bair or should I just try to knock them into a tech chase instead?

My rule of thumb is for floaties, start uptilting after 30%, marth/sheik types, at around 50, spacies around 70(For pillars anyways. Low percent uptilt combos into shine if they miss the DI, which isn't uncommon at lowish level.)

 

[tauKhan]

Also is there a for sure way to tell when a shine will send them into a neutral aerial position with the floaty knockback, after all the years i've been playing I should know what thats called but Falco seems to be the only character that does that to people.

I assume you mean the hitstun canceling mechanic that causes knocked down opponents to sometimes be able to act almost immediately after you shined them. As a side note, the victims trajectory remains normal when this happens, it doesn't become floatier or anything. Having aerial control during it may make it look weird. Also kb speed is separate from other momentum, so if the victim double jumps, he will jump higher and faster than normally, and it's even possible that he kills himself by dj'ing of the top.

The hitstun cancel happens if your shine does less than 7% dmg on an knocked down opponent. Usually this happens if the opponent touches ground after 2nd dair during pillar combo (assuming you started the combo with shine), and you then shine him the third time. Another common case would be if you waveshine combo a fastfaller on fd (or occasionally on other stages) twice or more and then go for a pillar combo and let the opponent touch the ground after dair. To be precise, shine does less than 7% if shine occupies at least stale slot 2 or higher and slot 5 or higher, i.e. you hit an opponent with a shine 2 and 5 moves ago. This is obviously pretty hard to keep track of during a match.

Additional information:

Spoiler

The hitstun canceling mechanic works like this: If you are hit with a move that does less than 7,00% dmg while in DownBound (Knocked down animation) he will go into DownDamage animation. If he is grounded on the 13th frame, he is forced to do a get up action (a reset). If he is still in the air after 13 frames (this is pretty much guaranteed if you shined him), he will go into regular fall and hitstun cancels. This is also why you can sometimes escape jab resets by sdi'ng up.

 

[Binx]

I'm sure its been asked before but what throws should I be using vs Fox when? Right now I almost always favor backthrow unless forward throw would send them off stage. I try upthrow but I feel like I almost never get anything more than a nair off of it.

 

[Metal Gear Salad]

uthrow to shine aerial is neat, just gotta read the di. because of that, it's probably not optimal for comboing but if you're confident on the read it can set up a decent edge guard scenario.

 

[GreenBread]

uthrow to shine aerial is neat, just gotta read the di. because of that, it's probably not optimal for comboing but if you're confident on the read it can set up a decent edge guard scenario.

What percents is it optimal for? Should it also be a kill?

 

[Bones0]

You can react to DI off uthrow, and it's usually better to shine WL, then dair them back down to start a combo at lower percents if the platforms are spaced properly. If you just FH aerial or shine-aerial, you won't be able to followup at all. Go into Training Mode and practice getting the shine quick enough that it true combos, and just pick a flowchart based on common sense. Watch other top Falcos and look at what punishes they do off of throws and why.

 

[Zotto]

Hey guys thanks for the previous help, but I have a really hard question to answer, so any attempt is very much thanked, but I struggle so hard during the neutral game. I understand that is completely vague, but I am having trouble understanding what I need to do. I know I need to do laser spacing or shffl nairs, both of which i can do, but can anyone give me a good example of video where a falco player accomplishes this. I dont know how to approach of small stages where a character like fox can just rush me unless I am constantly spamming lasers. So any tips on how to space of smaller stages would be much obliged as-well. Anyway thanks guys!

 

[Bones0]

Hey guys thanks for the previous help, but I have a really hard question to answer, so any attempt is very much thanked, but I struggle so hard during the neutral game. I understand that is completely vague, but I am having trouble understanding what I need to do. I know I need to do laser spacing or shffl nairs, both of which i can do, but can anyone give me a good example of video where a falco player accomplishes this. I dont know how to approach of small stages where a character like fox can just rush me unless I am constantly spamming lasers. So any tips on how to space of smaller stages would be much obliged as-well. Anyway thanks guys!

Watch A LOT of Dr. Peepee/PPMD videos.

 

[Life]

Watch A LOT of Dr. Peepee/PPMD videos.

Incidentally, I was just about to ask if there was a decent repository of said videos, then I remembered vods.co.

 

[xman]

Hey guys thanks for the previous help, but I have a really hard question to answer, so any attempt is very much thanked, but I struggle so hard during the neutral game. I understand that is completely vague, but I am having trouble understanding what I need to do. I know I need to do laser spacing or shffl nairs, both of which i can do, but can anyone give me a good example of video where a falco player accomplishes this. I dont know how to approach of small stages where a character like fox can just rush me unless I am constantly spamming lasers. So any tips on how to space of smaller stages would be much obliged as-well. Anyway thanks guys!

http://smashboards.com/threads/pro-...g-is-up-ppmd-mango-westballz-and-more.359940/

Watch drpp and mango

 

[GreenBread]

What are some grab follow ups? i found down throw u-tilt useful.

 

[Life]

What are some grab follow ups? i found down throw u-tilt useful.

In what matchup(s)?

 

[pkblaze]

What are some grab follow ups? i found down throw u-tilt useful.

Falco's Dthrow to stuff isn't real. It depends on the opponent not knowing that they can tech it, and Falco's a ****ty tech-chaser so it's only really good on platforms.

That being said, you can get lots of janky stuff off of Dthrow if they miss the tech... Dthrow Dsmash, Dthrow Shine, Dthrow Dtilt, Dthrow jab reset regrab, dthrow uptilt...

The one exception to this is Fox who, in Sakurai's infinite wisdom, it was deemed should stand upon being Dthrown and having frame advantage over Falco finishing his throw. You can still do stuff if they don't know about their frame advantage.