PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[duckypotato]

The vast majority of it revolves around watching. Observe how PPMD, Mang0, Westballz, and sometimes Zhu and other accomplished Falco's create their openings, and what they do with them. Maybe start with games against spacies on FD and see what happens with punishes there and then start looking at more matchups on varied stages. A lot of the allure to Falco combos is how much room there is for split-second innovation and stylish decision-making, so there's very little of it that's flowcharted out.

Also, just play around a bit on your own. Once you're comfortable with execution of a lot of stuff, then start putting random things together. Shine -> WD out fullhop fair vs low% Marth is something I personally enjoy that I think I came up with. It's a combination of normal shine combos and PPMDs uthrow -> fair. Little bits of innovation, ya know?

Generally speaking though, it would be really cool if Dr Peepee would be willing to contribute here again? I know I asked you before in the Marth thread, but what do you think about it now that you're feeling better?

I like to think Falco has some flowchart to him. If the 20YY movement is gonna amount to anything falcos need some solid development into consistent falco punishes.
Don't get me wrong, falco has a really solid punish game and you see lots of amazing falco strings. But I would be interested to see / participate into research about all his moves and their potential for combos.

I think upair especially has a lot of potential in neutral as well as punish, for example, but lots of players dismiss falco upair as a niche move.

TBH its kinda a meme that falco has creative combos, when a lot of his combos are just using more moves and covering more options than other characters have to deal with.
(Im 100% not saying that creativity in combos isnt real, just that it can be an excuse for not exploring how a character works).

 

[MewtwoForce]

Thanks again for the feedback FE_hector. I agree it would be amazing if PPMD could weigh in and help us figure out how to think about building a very good punish game.

I have some advice from armada on punishes. I talked to armada and he said that reads and guesses don't lead to consistent punishes. He told me that learning to recognize and react to escape options like techroll etc until you're familiar with reacting to a lot of them are really crucial. Another bit of crucial advice was that players sometimes believe that "I can't react to this" but if they keep practicing reacting to it over and over they can get much faster and get to a point where they're consistently reacting.

Some other advice he gave was that when reacting to escape options you want to wait and be patient to give yourself some time to react in time and take in where they're going. My interpretation of this is this is harder but if you react immediately that can be troublesome. Like if they DI behind you but you've already committed to moving in front of you.

That's an issue my falco was having practicing against falco on battlefield. But it looks like I can learn to get so fast at reacting that I can learn to take in where the DI is going and chase it anyways.

Armada might be doing a twitch stream where he really breaks down how to react well to options. He talked about doing it but I don't know if it's certain the stream will happen. I'll post the link to the saved broadcast to that option reaction stream if he does it.

 

[FE_Hector]

I like to think Falco has some flowchart to him. If the 20YY movement is gonna amount to anything falcos need some solid development into consistent falco punishes.
Don't get me wrong, falco has a really solid punish game and you see lots of amazing falco strings. But I would be interested to see / participate into research about all his moves and their potential for combos.

I think upair especially has a lot of potential in neutral as well as punish, for example, but lots of players dismiss falco upair as a niche move.

TBH its kinda a meme that falco has creative combos, when a lot of his combos are just using more moves and covering more options than other characters have to deal with.
(Im 100% not saying that creativity in combos isnt real, just that it can be an excuse for not exploring how a character works).

I agree with you here. Some Falco's definitely think "his combos are too organic, why would I make a flowchart." That wasn't what I was saying, though. I was more saying that, as it stands right now, Falco is thriving WITHOUT a flowchart. I recently gained access to 20XX, so if I have a lot of spare time at some point soonish, I can look into some situations.

As far as the current amount of flowchart, we basically have pillaring on fast fallers till ~50% and then just yolo from there. My style of yolo involves techchasing (yes, as Falco). It's really hard to pull off properly, but once you learn the spacing, it ends up working pretty well.

Falco's uair certainly has a lot more room for innovation, but not in the neutral due to its small range. If you don't SDI up, then Zhu's 1st hit uair -> shine or -> grab works beautifully. Second hit only uair is pretty good for poking through platforms or comboing spacies on FD due to its interesting launch angle. Second hit uair is also a pretty decent move for juggling Marth, and generally useful for reaching opponents just out of the range of a shine. But those are just the uses I know of.

Thanks again for the feedback FE_hector. I agree it would be amazing if PPMD could weigh in and help us figure out how to think about building a very good punish game.

I have some advice from armada on punishes. I talked to armada and he said that reads and guesses don't lead to consistent punishes. He told me that learning to recognize and react to escape options like techroll etc until you're familiar with reacting to a lot of them are really crucial. Another bit of crucial advice was that players sometimes believe that "I can't react to this" but if they keep practicing reacting to it over and over they can get much faster and get to a point where they're consistently reacting.

Some other advice he gave was that when reacting to escape options you want to wait and be patient to give yourself some time to react in time and take in where they're going. My interpretation of this is this is harder but if you react immediately that can be troublesome. Like if they DI behind you but you've already committed to moving in front of you.

That's an issue my falco was having practicing against falco on battlefield. But it looks like I can learn to get so fast at reacting that I can learn to take in where the DI is going and chase it anyways.

Armada might be doing a twitch stream where he really breaks down how to react well to options. He talked about doing it but I don't know if it's certain the stream will happen. I'll post the link to the saved broadcast to that option reaction stream if he does it.

The advice Armada gives all around is super solid, so I really appreciate your sharing his insight in here.

That bit about reads/guesses != consistent punishes is exactly what Mang0's "Falco in 2016" video is about. When you're lasering somebody, you're forcing a response out of them, even if that response is nothing. You have to figure out how they prefer to react to lasers and then punish them for that OR if you don't like lasering much, you figure out when they want to approach. That's basically how the neutral is won, but it's hard to apply this kind of stuff until you're really comfortable with like every other aspect of your gameplay.

Definitely wait and react to tech options. If you watch M2K/Plup techchasing, they wait before making a commitment. If somebody DIs behind them, they turn around, but don't do anything more. If somebody DIs in front of them, they walk forwards, but don't do anything more. The idea is to position yourself to where you can react instantly to a tech in place while still having enough physical space to cover their other tech options.

Reacting to DI is actually secretly easy as Falco, at least while pillaring. Optimally when you pillar, you shine -> WD out in the direction they were. If they were on your right when you shined them, you WD right. If they were on your left, you WD left. Once you've internalized these movements and have pillared enough, you'll be able to see during your WD "oh, they DId this way, so following it is relatively easy." It takes out a lot of the guesswork at lower %s.

The harder part about reacting to DI is basically operating under the assumption that they're still holding their stick one way. If I knew somebody was holding left, then weak bair -> turnaround utilt -> strong bair at the very least starting around 50% (ending the pillar) is a free combo. If they decide to hold out, though, then the combo falls flat pretty fast.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Yeah I'll post in here again. I think it's high time for Falco to get some knowledge out there anyway. I will not be answering tech questions and usually not overly simplistic questions(ex: how do I beat Marth). I'm looking forward to bringing stuff to some aspiring birds =)

Edit: I won't be dropping big walls of text on my own just yet but I'll be around here to answer whatever questions you guys have. Just thought I'd clarify!

 

[Flics]

Yeah I'll post in here again. I think it's high time for Falco to get some knowledge out there anyway. I will not be answering tech questions and usually not overly simplistic questions(ex: how do I beat Marth). I'm looking forward to bringing stuff to some aspiring birds =)

PP!! Looking forward to seeing the knowledge you're gonna drop on us! I've been playing for about a year, still go 0-2 at locals but since I saw that you will be posting Ive decided to join smashboards and change that.

 

[FE_Hector]

Yeah I'll post in here again. I think it's high time for Falco to get some knowledge out there anyway. I will not be answering tech questions and usually not overly simplistic questions(ex: how do I beat Marth). I'm looking forward to bringing stuff to some aspiring birds =)

K R E Y G A S M I N T E N S I F I E S

 

[Klemes]

Yeah I'll post in here again. I think it's high time for Falco to get some knowledge out there anyway. I will not be answering tech questions and usually not overly simplistic questions(ex: how do I beat Marth). I'm looking forward to bringing stuff to some aspiring birds =)

Edit: I won't be dropping big walls of text on my own just yet but I'll be around here to answer whatever questions you guys have. Just thought I'd clarify!

how do I beat Marth

 

[Dr Peepee]

No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[FE_Hector]

We love you, PP

 

[Vista_]

PP you're back on the Falco boards!!

 

[Flics]

I apologize if my questions are basic as I am a relatively new player but I would really like to improve. Here is my attempt at getting the ball rolling in this thread. what is the correct way to space/zone with lasers? I know they are crucial to Falco's kit but I am having trouble using them well, specifically in neutral. Again, I apologize if this is an overly simplistic question but your answer would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MewtwoForce]

PPMD I have a question on the mental game.

I can't find it but I remember a post where you mentioned you were getting your marth ready for a tournament. And you said you felt like at the time you felt like the marth wasn't ready. And that you were worried you might choke if you used the marth at that point. So you mentioned working on the marth more until you felt you wouldn't choke with him.

Can you walk us through how you changed your mentality from feeling as though you would choke with this marth to feeling confident in it to play well in tournament without choking? Since many people struggle with choking I think this would be very valuable. If this is too hard to answer in a general way that's fine. Although this question is around your marth I think it applies to getting falco ready as well so I think it's ok to ask here.

There is already a write up from you here on dealing with nerves but i'm not sure if that post applied to getting a specific character ready that you didn't feel confident with before.


I have another question on top of this.
Can you summarize the important guidelines and considerations to have in mind when building a good movement game? Or if that's too much, just list the top 5 summarized considerations you feel are important?
This way you don't have to wall text about movement and can give us brief insights we can use as jumping off points to creatively brainstorm effective ideas for building high level movement. That's the idea anyway lol

If these questions don't really qualify as good ones can you give us an example of the kind of questions you're willing to answer? If we have that as a reference maybe it will help us ask more appropriate questions

 

[Dr Peepee]

I apologize if my questions are basic as I am a relatively new player but I would really like to improve. Here is my attempt at getting the ball rolling in this thread. what is the correct way to space/zone with lasers? I know they are crucial to Falco's kit but I am having trouble using them well, specifically in neutral. Again, I apologize if this is an overly simplistic question but your answer would be greatly appreciated.

Yeah I can tell you put some work into the question. I'll bring up a few useful things to think on:

-lasers are a projectile. very obvious, I know, but what do projectiles do? In my view, Falco's laser can force the opponent to come in or keep them away or only allow them to move in certain spaces or timings. a projectile is extended control then.

-lasers have a lot of startup lag. this is really just a property of laser, like it being transcendent priority or moving horizontally, but it's still important to think about. you can't shoot without a big startup so you have to find a way to make that happen. this is why close range lasers are quite risky, as are approaching SH lasers from mid range. you can be intercepted on a fairly easy reaction. thinking about laser properties helps you figure out how to use them to your advantage in other words.

-different lasers are required for different matchups. peach and puff fly over my lasers, and marth sits on the ground. clearly my laser game will have to be quite different against these characters. for peach, you want to use FH/DJ/platform lasers to lower her from her float and shoot her on the ground to get pressure. even though puff goes over SHLs too it's usually not better to go high and shoot her. risk/reward is really bad on it. you want to shoot her as she comes down, but she can come down and hit you at a diagonal where your laser won't hit her. This is why you must alternate lasers with Bair/Utilt. And then Marth you just SHL at varying heights to death lol.

These are general rules but they should serve you well and get you to think deeper about the game. You can also think about how lasers can function for offense and defense differently as another example of neutral usage.

PPMD I have a question on the mental game.

I can't find it but I remember a post where you mentioned you were getting your marth ready for a tournament. And you said you felt like at the time you felt like the marth wasn't ready. And that you were worried you might choke if you used the marth at that point. So you mentioned working on the marth more until you felt you wouldn't choke with him.

Can you walk us through how you changed your mentality from feeling as though you would choke with this marth to feeling confident in it to play well in tournament without choking? Since many people struggle with choking I think this would be very valuable. If this is too hard to answer in a general way that's fine. Although this question is around your marth I think it applies to getting falco ready as well so I think it's ok to ask here.

There is already a write up from you here on dealing with nerves but i'm not sure if that post applied to getting a specific character ready that you didn't feel confident with before.


I have another question on top of this.
Can you summarize the important guidelines and considerations to have in mind when building a good movement game? Or if that's too much, just list the top 5 summarized considerations you feel are important?
This way you don't have to wall text about movement and can give us brief insights we can use as jumping off points to creatively brainstorm effective ideas for building high level movement. That's the idea anyway lol

If these questions don't really qualify as good ones can you give us an example of the kind of questions you're willing to answer? If we have that as a reference maybe it will help us ask more appropriate questions

Hmmm well I won't lie I don't fully remember the process, but I can tell you what I do remember. These are very fine questions compared to what I'm asked a lot so I don't mind answering them at all =)

My main concern with Marth for a very long time was one that should plague anyone with secondaries. My Marth simply didn't have as good of a matchup spread as my Falco. So if someone counterpicked my Marth I would be much more likely to lose the next game. Even if I made him good at all of the relevant matchups at the time there was always the concern a top player could use another character eventually to beat him, or a high level specialist could beat him. So I went to work learning as many as I could until I felt comfortable in them, playing and learning and feeling like I would know why things went wrong and right even if I couldn't always fix it right away. This is closely related to the second almost as big issue of not having a fully developed character understanding. This also is a struggle for secondary characters since they are many times the main character mapped onto the secondary and the secondary needs to find its own voice still. That just took more time analyzing and playing others and practicing alone(I was just getting really into the nuances of solo practice as I was learning Marth so I kinda learned them together).

This all sounds very vague, but there is an element to this that has to be vague. It's called feeling. When you get the feeling of deeper connection with the character and you have a clear understanding that sustains it, then you don't have any reason, in a game sense, to feel you would choke with the character. Now, you might still doubt yourself or feel you shouldn't succeed or other very normal psychological problems, but what you WONT be able to tell yourself after all of this is you didn't work hard enough or train enough. You have the feeling to prove it to yourself, and I have always found that to be invaluable.

So basically, practice, analyze, build your understanding, test in friendlies, and repeat until you have a deep feeling with the character. I was also meditating and doing some psychological/self-improvement work at the time which I imagined helped too, so that's hard for me to disentangle. I hope this helps with that part though.

The movement game question is much more vague and harder to answer. Here are some things I think about when thinking about movement though:

-properties of the movement. WD frames, dash frames, WD/dash length, jump squat for lasers, distance for lasers, influence of aerial drift from different starting positions, how fast or slow or how much distance any of these options and others give is valuable knowledge. Marth's WD is decently faster and also goes much farther than Falco's WD, so it stands to reason that Marth's will be more likely to WD and this is what happens. I think Falco's WD has its uses though outside of waveshines but that is because he is primarily dashing.

-what's attached to the movement. what are ground moves you would do after WD? what can you do out of dash? what are some better options? what are some worse options that may be effective with the right conditioning? what do you do after you shoot 1 laser? 2? moving or not moving?

-threatening range. This is a big one. Threatening range is basically the speed + attack size spacing both characters must be at in order to be safe from the other. Falco gets some leeway on this because of the laser, but he still needs ample space to set it up safely so he has to play around the same spacing as the other top tiers. Falco's main threat range is dash SH Nair(not necessarily immediate). I say not necessarily because if Falco dashes a little vs jumping right away that can be very hard to react to, so giving extra leeway to that space is good. Marth's threat range is usually WD Dtilt(can be with dash first). Figuring out the threatening ranges and options out of them is extremely important for moving since you need to know when you are breaking TR vs when you are extending it or returning to it. It's fine to break TR as a final note you just want to do so deliberately. Not understanding this causes offensive play to suffer, and Falco can't afford that I believe.

 

[FE_Hector]

PPMD, or anybody else who has a good idea, I'm trying to figure out how to explain something.

So, my brother recently made the partial switch to Fox from Sheik. He doesn't really do any typical Fox stuff, instead opting to read movement and techchase really well. However, once I get in the zone, my mental fortitude and improving intelligence with lasers becomes a serious mental block for him. I've tried explaining "it's 12 frames of stun max, so you can avoid certain followups," but it doesn't entirely get through to him.

Similarly, I've explained to him that having the same response in certain situations every time is really bad and how I beat him. For example, if he shields a laser under a side plat on DL, he jumps up and wavelands forwards, falling off the plat with a bair. My solution is a quick utilt after my laser because I knew his response.

Can you think of any ways to help me better explain how he can improve his play vs me? He doesn't practice much, but his annoyance at how badly he loses has me convinced he'll figure out ways to get around his lack of certain amounts of techskill. I know he can improve, especially mentally, without practice, but have no idea how I should explain all of this to him.

Part of it could be that I'm his sibling, and listening to family is rough, but ideas are super appreciated.

 

[Vista_]

Hey PP, I'm starting to notice that the benefits of solo practice in the game is starting to lose some of its effect on me. I'm analyzing my game and finding what I need to grind, but I'm starting to consider writing in a notebook about the game. How beneficial do you think it is to write down your thoughts on the game and go over certain strategies on paper?

 

[Dr Peepee]

PPMD, or anybody else who has a good idea, I'm trying to figure out how to explain something.

So, my brother recently made the partial switch to Fox from Sheik. He doesn't really do any typical Fox stuff, instead opting to read movement and techchase really well. However, once I get in the zone, my mental fortitude and improving intelligence with lasers becomes a serious mental block for him. I've tried explaining "it's 12 frames of stun max, so you can avoid certain followups," but it doesn't entirely get through to him.

Similarly, I've explained to him that having the same response in certain situations every time is really bad and how I beat him. For example, if he shields a laser under a side plat on DL, he jumps up and wavelands forwards, falling off the plat with a bair. My solution is a quick utilt after my laser because I knew his response.

Can you think of any ways to help me better explain how he can improve his play vs me? He doesn't practice much, but his annoyance at how badly he loses has me convinced he'll figure out ways to get around his lack of certain amounts of techskill. I know he can improve, especially mentally, without practice, but have no idea how I should explain all of this to him.

Part of it could be that I'm his sibling, and listening to family is rough, but ideas are super appreciated.

Most, and by most I mean 99% of players, freak out about getting hit by lasers. A good way to beat this is exposure therapy. I tell people to get shot. Turn on a cpu/20xx falco and let them shoot you up so you don't freak out about the stun or damage, and also practice moving between the lasers at various spacings.

Also you're doing well to tell him what he's doing wrong, but you also want to suggest what to do instead. Additionally, you should run through the situation itself a few times and let him execute the correct play so he gets the feeling in his body to do it.

Hey PP, I'm starting to notice that the benefits of solo practice in the game is starting to lose some of its effect on me. I'm analyzing my game and finding what I need to grind, but I'm starting to consider writing in a notebook about the game. How beneficial do you think it is to write down your thoughts on the game and go over certain strategies on paper?

I write in a notepad file after every practice session. Writing it down physically is even better. I think that's a good way to go.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

PPMD, I've noticed lately that I don't have the best grasp on how to platform tech chase as Falco when I am below my opponent, both on the ground under the low platforms, and on the lower platforms under the high platform.

When I'm on the ground, I usually try to reactively hit a shine into wd or a uair. But my understanding of which is better in what situation is lacking. I'm getting good combos, but they're often more read/luck dependent than I'd like.

When I have something going on the top platform, I can sometimes cover everything if I wl onto the platform in time. But if I'm not fast enough and recognize this, I'll sh out and then dj dair depending on where they tech. I've seen Mango and other falcos do this a lot. Trouble is, I often get clipped by getup attack. Same thing happens when I wl on too slow. Is there a way to cover the missed tech and hit everything in this situation? Am I doing the right things and am just too slow?

If the answers to these questions vary a lot depending on the character, just answer for spacies.

 

[Vista_]

PPMD, I've noticed lately that I don't have the best grasp on how to platform tech chase as Falco when I am below my opponent, both on the ground under the low platforms, and on the lower platforms under the high platform.

When I'm on the ground, I usually try to reactively hit a shine into wd or a uair. But my understanding of which is better in what situation is lacking. I'm getting good combos, but they're often more read/luck dependent than I'd like.

When I have something going on the top platform, I can sometimes cover everything if I wl onto the platform in time. But if I'm not fast enough and recognize this, I'll sh out and then dj dair depending on where they tech. I've seen Mango and other falcos do this a lot. Trouble is, I often get clipped by getup attack. Same thing happens when I wl on too slow. Is there a way to cover the missed tech and hit everything in this situation? Am I doing the right things and am just too slow?

If the answers to these questions vary a lot depending on the character, just answer for spacies.

I'm not PP but I've been working on this recently and I'd like to share some stuff:
Generally a good way to techchase below a platform is to shine waveland to cover missed tech/tech in place, then to try to cover one tech roll if you notice they haven't stayed in place. This covers 3/4 options which is very good, and you can start reading their tech roll directions to close your margin of error.

If you're dairing them onto a platform from above, it's a bit more simple. Up tilt to cover tech behind/in place/no tech. If they tech away you can choose a quick option like grab or instant Dair, in which case they only have a couple frames to react and you have the momentum so don't sweat whiffing a move.
Covering platform tech options doesn't have one end-all option as of now, and some people prefer to make a hard read and cover one option with, say, F smash if they're confident. If you like experimenting, turn on the game and see what works best

 

[Dr Peepee]

PPMD, I've noticed lately that I don't have the best grasp on how to platform tech chase as Falco when I am below my opponent, both on the ground under the low platforms, and on the lower platforms under the high platform.

When I'm on the ground, I usually try to reactively hit a shine into wd or a uair. But my understanding of which is better in what situation is lacking. I'm getting good combos, but they're often more read/luck dependent than I'd like.

When I have something going on the top platform, I can sometimes cover everything if I wl onto the platform in time. But if I'm not fast enough and recognize this, I'll sh out and then dj dair depending on where they tech. I've seen Mango and other falcos do this a lot. Trouble is, I often get clipped by getup attack. Same thing happens when I wl on too slow. Is there a way to cover the missed tech and hit everything in this situation? Am I doing the right things and am just too slow?

If the answers to these questions vary a lot depending on the character, just answer for spacies.

I forget the percent, but basically you don't want to Uair until 35-40ish%. For shine, sometimes you have to be prepared for them to hard DI away and get out of the punish and you could mixup Bair I guess or just follow them(ideally offstage for an edgeguard....pushing people toward the middle doesn't always work in this situation I've noticed).

You can shine stall after the SH to help out with that other situation you mentioned, but I personally try to keep that situation from happening much of the time.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

I forget the percent, but basically you don't want to Uair until 35-40ish%. For shine, sometimes you have to be prepared for them to hard DI away and get out of the punish and you could mixup Bair I guess or just follow them(ideally offstage for an edgeguard....pushing people toward the middle doesn't always work in this situation I've noticed).

You can shine stall after the SH to help out with that other situation you mentioned, but I personally try to keep that situation from happening much of the time.

What do you do to stop that situation from happening? Usually it happens to me when I've gotten a shine or a utilt on a lower platform.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Avoid putting them on the side platform in the first place, or Bair'ing them to push them away and give more damage. You can still play the position if you set it up right, but not always and it can be a big pain on BF/DL since the platforms are so large and high up.

 

[MewtwoForce]

Hey PPMD. I have a lot of time on my hands for the next few months.
You made a post awhile back briefly explaining how M2k developed his punish game. This very tedious way of going over situations at every percent in various positions on the stage until his style got very optimal.

My idea is that I would like to do this same punish game training m2k did because I too do not mind taking a lot of time to tediously go through these situations. But after completing this and getting used to the really good optimal punishes I would like to use that foundation to start branching off into my own creative punishes that would deter from an optimal style and still punish really good anyways.Then at that point I feel like I would be expressing myself in melee in my own way with the best punish game I could think of.

Is is possible to get in contact with m2k about this training or do you know specifically what he did?

Additionally I found this DI and Hitstun calculator http://ikneedata.com/calculator and was wondering if you or m2k could help me figure out how to use this to train in the way m2k did. Right now I feel like i'm not using the calculator in a very effective way.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Well, he told me he just sat down and tried everything he could think of at every percent. Obviously some would be kill setups and not combo setups. I don't know if there is an easy way to say where to start but I imagine starting this, like anything else, is the hardest part. Once you get to trying things you'll start getting ideas about where to go and what to try next, especially with so many Youtube videos.

Also I'm not the right person to ask about using a hitstun calculator LOL sorry. I'm sure someone here or on Reddit knows though.

 

[Vista_]

Broad-ish to everyone but it's similar to some stuff PP talked about for Marth. How do you all use falco's grounded movement to bait reactions against Marths?

 

[Zeppeli]

Hey Dr Peepee ! It's great to hear that you're getting better and to see you back here!

Ironically and coincidentally, my questions stem behind the decisions I need to make to beat Marth with Falco. I'm very troubled by this because peoples' playstyles are just so different and there's so many different ways to win and lose in melee.

1) What is your opinion on walling out marth in the matchup? Do you think lasers are the answers? Bair/Dair?

2) What do you think about people who enjoy maneuvering around the stage with falco's fullhop in neutral and come down when they finally feel comfortable?

For the first question: I think most people are familiar with using lasers to restrict marth's movement so he can't land his quintessential zero to death move: his grab. However, I'm curious about how much bair/dair you suggest that I need to add in this equation. I can't always laser marth because he's eventually going to come up close, where his grab and sword swings will reach me. But if I keep dairing and bairing him out, it's just asking to get DD grabbed precisely because I don't have a laser out during that time. I understand that this decision also stems from a risk vs reward decision: landing a dair at 20% vs marth leads to a massive combo and amazing stage positioning, whereas landing a second laser to stuff his ongoing fair oos right after he shields my first laser doesn't net much. It is a matter of RPS but I'm trying to make conscious decisions while I play the matchup in order to shift the odds to myself as much as possible.

It's a really difficult question and I'm not asking you to cover all the bases - But I'd like to hear your opinion on it as a whole and maybe some advice as to how I should make the decision myself while I'm playing.

The second question really works together with the first because it is a dictation of one way falco moves when the player assumes that the best decision to make is not laser/bair/dair - This is something I've noticed extremely often from Westballz. Druggedfox's falco (when he played him) and Zhu's are most likely the most representative of your own falco play as of recently, abet unpolished IMO whereas West brings in quite a few different elements and series of decisions with his own. Druggedfox seems to do this a few times in his set vs PPU in genesis 3 just so he can avoid getting grabbed and make himself a bit unpredictable (although it opens up to be hit by aerials from above) whereas West seems to like retreating to the platforms, having the opponent shift their goals to aerialing him (which results in him dodging some more, coming down with a shield drop aerial, etc) and then finally coming down when he can take center.

This option makes falco more susceptible to being hit in the air, but it shifts the goal of the opponent to aerialing him since marth can readily grab him. What do you think?

The last little bits are just some general guidelines that I go by & I just want some confirmation on them. Is this alright?
3) Shielding vs marth, up close, the moment I see him in the air (unless the player shows that they're willing to tamahawk grab me)
4) Alternating between shine grab and shine -> short hop laser in one direction when shield pressuring marth (double-shining doesn't seem too good versus marth and I'm not sure if it's worth the risk ... maybe throw it in once a while?)

Whoops, this has gotten a lot longer than what I had initially planned for. I need to study your past videos vs mew2king a lot more since there's a lot of things that most falcos don't even use now (buffering dashes after SHFF laser, WD forward -> WD back right outside of my opponent's effective range when they're cornered since it provokes a reaction and covers preemptive rolls). There's just so much to melee, whether it's just the mechanics to different layers of RPS stemming from different risk & rewards to even manipulating the opponent with dash animations on screen haha and I feel like I've learned so much from you already. I can't wait to see the return of your falco when you're ready ... and the funday with you and Mango ofc. Best of luck PP!

 

[Dr Peepee]

Broad-ish to everyone but it's similar to some stuff PP talked about for Marth. How do you all use falco's grounded movement to bait reactions against Marths?

Fake SH Nair or laser in place and then do the other using dashes is my go-to.

Hey Dr Peepee ! It's great to hear that you're getting better and to see you back here!

Ironically and coincidentally, my questions stem behind the decisions I need to make to beat Marth with Falco. I'm very troubled by this because peoples' playstyles are just so different and there's so many different ways to win and lose in melee.

1) What is your opinion on walling out marth in the matchup? Do you think lasers are the answers? Bair/Dair?

2) What do you think about people who enjoy maneuvering around the stage with falco's fullhop in neutral and come down when they finally feel comfortable?

For the first question: I think most people are familiar with using lasers to restrict marth's movement so he can't land his quintessential zero to death move: his grab. However, I'm curious about how much bair/dair you suggest that I need to add in this equation. I can't always laser marth because he's eventually going to come up close, where his grab and sword swings will reach me. But if I keep dairing and bairing him out, it's just asking to get DD grabbed precisely because I don't have a laser out during that time. I understand that this decision also stems from a risk vs reward decision: landing a dair at 20% vs marth leads to a massive combo and amazing stage positioning, whereas landing a second laser to stuff his ongoing fair oos right after he shields my first laser doesn't net much. It is a matter of RPS but I'm trying to make conscious decisions while I play the matchup in order to shift the odds to myself as much as possible.

It's a really difficult question and I'm not asking you to cover all the bases - But I'd like to hear your opinion on it as a whole and maybe some advice as to how I should make the decision myself while I'm playing.

The second question really works together with the first because it is a dictation of one way falco moves when the player assumes that the best decision to make is not laser/bair/dair - This is something I've noticed extremely often from Westballz. Druggedfox's falco (when he played him) and Zhu's are most likely the most representative of your own falco play as of recently, abet unpolished IMO whereas West brings in quite a few different elements and series of decisions with his own. Druggedfox seems to do this a few times in his set vs PPU in genesis 3 just so he can avoid getting grabbed and make himself a bit unpredictable (although it opens up to be hit by aerials from above) whereas West seems to like retreating to the platforms, having the opponent shift their goals to aerialing him (which results in him dodging some more, coming down with a shield drop aerial, etc) and then finally coming down when he can take center.

This option makes falco more susceptible to being hit in the air, but it shifts the goal of the opponent to aerialing him since marth can readily grab him. What do you think?

The last little bits are just some general guidelines that I go by & I just want some confirmation on them. Is this alright?
3) Shielding vs marth, up close, the moment I see him in the air (unless the player shows that they're willing to tamahawk grab me)
4) Alternating between shine grab and shine -> short hop laser in one direction when shield pressuring marth (double-shining doesn't seem too good versus marth and I'm not sure if it's worth the risk ... maybe throw it in once a while?)

Whoops, this has gotten a lot longer than what I had initially planned for. I need to study your past videos vs mew2king a lot more since there's a lot of things that most falcos don't even use now (buffering dashes after SHFF laser, WD forward -> WD back right outside of my opponent's effective range when they're cornered since it provokes a reaction and covers preemptive rolls). There's just so much to melee, whether it's just the mechanics to different layers of RPS stemming from different risk & rewards to even manipulating the opponent with dash animations on screen haha and I feel like I've learned so much from you already. I can't wait to see the return of your falco when you're ready ... and the funday with you and Mango ofc. Best of luck PP!

1. You can try to wall him out, but if Marth ever corners you even on DL it can get pretty bad for you. So if you want a defensive skew that's fine but camping is riskier imo.

When he does get close, I like to do what Mango does and just SH Dair through them. Either I hit them and maybe their dash back, or they shield and can't really punish, or I hit them early and then they shield and I can dash in grab. You can also just FH out of the situation or WD back, but each of these carry their own risks vs Marth. Sometimes I'll just wait and then do whatever I was going to do in the first place(panicking will get you destroyed here often).

2. It's fine and very effective vs spacies, but in many other matchups it's not needed or hurtful(why be above Falcon/Sheik/Marth's Uair?).

Wes plays all matchups like they're Falco dittos, so I don't really agree with platforms and all that all the time that he does. He's shown there is more merit to it than I originally thought, but it still isn't worth doing as a main strategy. Also he can just be grabbed after his high up aerial so it doesn't avoid the problem too much.

3. Shielding is not usually the answer with Falco. Not in that matchup anyway. It would be better to hold down or just Bair him or back up and laser or intercept with Nair imo.

4. You can usually spam shine grab on Marth. If you need to occasionally do the laser or immediate retreating Nair that's fine too.

Thanks for the kind words and good luck to you =)

Hey PP

So right now my main way to stack up % is with simple Dair Shine Plat tech chase combos.

While that's given me success I get a lot of advice to try out different combo formats such a stringing Nair's and Fair's. This is much easier to do on Peach / Puff / Samus but I have a hard time seeing these combos on Marth / Shiek. How can I begin these combos on these 2 characters? Is it a good idea to mix up nair's after I land a solid dair (in place of shine) or is there a completely different way to go about getting these combos?

Also what are the chances you'll be playing friendlies @ genesis ? : )

Nair is okay sometimes vs those characters, but you'll usually see more success with Dair. If you're going to Fair any of those you listed you'll get more positioning and damage and sometimes a better combo from FH Fair. You can't Nair after Dair hit unless they get popped up from the Dair. What I like doing vs Marth/Sheik is Dair shine DJ FF Dair into Shine/Utilt and go from there. Sometimes they'll DI out of this but you can WD out of shine and then FH Fair or something and have good damage and position that way. That's my rough memory of it anyway.

 

[FE_Hector]

Hey PPMD. I have a lot of time on my hands for the next few months.
You made a post awhile back briefly explaining how M2k developed his punish game. This very tedious way of going over situations at every percent in various positions on the stage until his style got very optimal.

My idea is that I would like to do this same punish game training m2k did because I too do not mind taking a lot of time to tediously go through these situations. But after completing this and getting used to the really good optimal punishes I would like to use that foundation to start branching off into my own creative punishes that would deter from an optimal style and still punish really good anyways.Then at that point I feel like I would be expressing myself in melee in my own way with the best punish game I could think of.

Is is possible to get in contact with m2k about this training or do you know specifically what he did?

Additionally I found this DI and Hitstun calculator http://ikneedata.com/calculator and was wondering if you or m2k could help me figure out how to use this to train in the way m2k did. Right now I feel like i'm not using the calculator in a very effective way.

Something that could also help a lot besides IKD is 20XX. I'm no expert with it, but you can definitely make it in 4.05 so that characters have a different color overlay for when they're in hitlag/ hitstun, so that's definitely one way to help visualize how much time you have after certain moves.

 

[MewtwoForce]

Thanks for responding FE_Hector and yes i've been trying in 20XX so far. I'm actually feeling very reassured because PPMD developed his very good punish game without needing to use this calculator. So it's good to know I won't need to rely on it to build mine.

PPMD, in the same way I asked about the movement earlier I am interested in the top five summarized guidelines or top 5 things to consider when thinking about and building a good punish game. Or even more if you feel comfortable because I would like to learn about the punish game as much as I can. I remember in a certain point in game with PPMD vs Armada they said that you were "On the chase, On top of him" and just kept your punish situations going and going and wouldn't let armada breathe. Now that i've seen this is possible to stay on top of somebody with falco like this, that's what I would like to do. Understand how to keep chasing and chaining punish situations into more punishing situations for as long as I can. Not necessarily combos alone.

I friend of mine talked to the best players in our state and said they believe that the punish game of even our top 3 is very weak compared to players in MIOM top 100. Which is why I want to prioritize getting a good punish game because nobody in my state understands what a good punish game is. And by developing a good one I think that would allow me to beat our best players here and teach them to make a better one.

Thanks a bunch for answering my questions here so far guys. I think after I get an answer to this I won't need to ask anything for awhile.

 

[FE_Hector]

I friend of mine talked to the best players in our state and said they believe that the punish game of even our top 3 is very weak compared to players in MIOM top 100. Which is why I want to prioritize getting a good punish game because nobody in my state understands what a good punish game is. And by developing a good one I think that would allow me to beat our best players here and teach them to make a better one.

For something along these lines, especially improvement and focusing on punish game and stuff like that, I think that this SSBM-T video is pretty cool. Lots of good and simple tips overall, too, so don't think it applies just to you. I'm partially sharing it because I like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEQ7NTHPSeo

 

[Dr Peepee]

PPMD, in the same way I asked about the movement earlier I am interested in the top five summarized guidelines or top 5 things to consider when thinking about and building a good punish game. Or even more if you feel comfortable because I would like to learn about the punish game as much as I can. I remember in a certain point in game with PPMD vs Armada they said that you were "On the chase, On top of him" and just kept your punish situations going and going and wouldn't let armada breathe. Now that i've seen this is possible to stay on top of somebody with falco like this, that's what I would like to do. Understand how to keep chasing and chaining punish situations into more punishing situations for as long as I can. Not necessarily combos alone.

I friend of mine talked to the best players in our state and said they believe that the punish game of even our top 3 is very weak compared to players in MIOM top 100. Which is why I want to prioritize getting a good punish game because nobody in my state understands what a good punish game is. And by developing a good one I think that would allow me to beat our best players here and teach them to make a better one.

Thanks a bunch for answering my questions here so far guys. I think after I get an answer to this I won't need to ask anything for awhile.

Yeah punish game is much easier to work on than neutral and still has massive results, so I tend to tell people to work on punish, even top 20 players to get farther.

hmmm some important things to keep in mind with punish is:

-how you won neutral. if they get knocked off guard vs they're jumping vs they're kind of expecting the hit will all get you very different initial DIs. preparing for this in neutral is important.

-using moves that don't allow for so much SDI. again kind of obvious, but with strong implications. You can't DI Dair as far as Nair so Dair tends to be a better combo move.

-have a plan for direction of the combo. you want to be a couple moves in advance if possible because sending the opponent up vs out is very very different in terms of immediate percent given and ultimate goals of the combo. This can certainly depend on starting position.

-knowing your combo tree. again kind of obvious but you want to know what every move does in a given situation and what it leads into. Dair shine WD is not good enough unless you also know how far they can DI, what you can use after that point like nair on spacies, if you need to shine or just pop them up for something else, etc

-what happened last time. also known as conditioning, you'll have to remember that people may do different things in the same situation as they try to get around it. this isn't always conscious on their part so you have to look for habits of switching and not switching.

 

[FE_Hector]

So, I recently realized something pretty interesting about the way I play vs Puff specifically compared to every other matchup: slowly. I don't like to go in at all vs Puff because I feel like the risk/reward tends to be skewed in Puff's favor unless I'm really familiar with what I'm doing or I've got a solid read on them.

Interestingly enough, this strategy works. I stand roughly in place underneath a platform and laser them until they've decided to come in. When they're sufficiently irritated and do approach me, I simply let them most of the time. I've found the Puff players I faced tend to have one or two go-to approach options, and intelligent bairs or utilts catch all of them.

Any ideas for how to similarly slow down matches against inherently quicker characters who have an easier time baiting out bairs and utilts like that? I tend to try to play really fast paced, but because I'm not super used to it yet, I tend to end up approaching from a lot of bad positions. I know that slowing down or drastically speeding up the pace of a match can do a lot to trip up my opponents, but I'm not really sure how to execute this quite yet.

Any tips (from anybody) would be appreciated.

 

[duckypotato]

So, I recently realized something pretty interesting about the way I play vs Puff specifically compared to every other matchup: slowly. I don't like to go in at all vs Puff because I feel like the risk/reward tends to be skewed in Puff's favor unless I'm really familiar with what I'm doing or I've got a solid read on them.

Interestingly enough, this strategy works. I stand roughly in place underneath a platform and laser them until they've decided to come in. When they're sufficiently irritated and do approach me, I simply let them most of the time. I've found the Puff players I faced tend to have one or two go-to approach options, and intelligent bairs or utilts catch all of them.

Any ideas for how to similarly slow down matches against inherently quicker characters who have an easier time baiting out bairs and utilts like that? I tend to try to play really fast paced, but because I'm not super used to it yet, I tend to end up approaching from a lot of bad positions. I know that slowing down or drastically speeding up the pace of a match can do a lot to trip up my opponents, but I'm not really sure how to execute this quite yet.

Any tips (from anybody) would be appreciated.

Against fast characters I feel like you need to use dash dance/lasers and wait for them to do something. Aggressive falco uses lasers to approach but a passive falco uses them to wait the opponent out and make them do something predictable.

Against Fox/Marth specifically too if you take note of what they do in between lasers, you can use that to formulate a safer approach. For example if they always WD back OOS from lasers you could move your spacing foward and take more stage until they are cornered.

I think you are right about utilt and bair tho, against fast chars those become whiff punishable. Movement and control is the key for playing against Marth Fox Falcon Falco

 

[FE_Hector]

Against fast characters I feel like you need to use dash dance/lasers and wait for them to do something. Aggressive falco uses lasers to approach but a passive falco uses them to wait the opponent out and make them do something predictable.

Against Fox/Marth specifically too if you take note of what they do in between lasers, you can use that to formulate a safer approach. For example if they always WD back OOS from lasers you could move your spacing foward and take more stage until they are cornered.

I think you are right about utilt and bair tho, against fast chars those become whiff punishable. Movement and control is the key for playing against Marth Fox Falcon Falco

Yeah, I definitely understand all of this, thanks! Hardest thing about stuff like this for me right now is maintaining the mental discipline to keep up a specific playstyle that's beating somebody. As an easy example, two local Marth's love to abuse dash back vs Falco, so I figure if I keep running in at them with more lasers, they'll think they need to run back more. In theory, they'll run themselves into the corner if I keep doing these lasers, but I always lose mental discipline 3/4 of the way across the stage and dair, getting grabbed.

This is easily one of my biggest weaknesses as a player right now, but I suuuuuper appreciate your tips for faster characters. Sometimes I need people to tell me the same thing I tell them lol.

 

[roboticphish]

Awesome, I have been trying to find answers for a bunch of things and I needed a Falco sensei to help me out. Dr Peepee if you'd be willing to take the time I have a few questions for you.

1a. Marth matchup stuff -- In general I know it's better to keep Marth in the air, but I can't tell you how many times I've tried to end combos with a finisher like Fsmash, Dsmash, or strong bair, only to eat a fair/dair and end up being punished on the side plat. With how relatively little time Marth spends in hitstun, I feel like I struggle to find the hard finishing moves that set up for clean edgeguards, and instead I either get hit out of my combos at mid-%s or end up resetting to a neutral position while gaining nothing but % on him. Do you have any tips for how to open Marths up for that finishing move?

1b. Kinda continuing that theme, stage control is exceptionally difficult for me against Marth. It's one thing to hold a Peach or a Sheik at the ledge, as their options for getting back to center are relatively limited in comparison. However, Marth players have an uncanny knack for finding stray hits and grabs when they're pushed in the corner, and my stocks end up dropping like flies. In general it's my understanding that when Marth is at the ledge, if he's grounded and stationary I can use my ground movement to bait out a punishable commitment from him, if he tries jumping or going to the platform I can laser/bair him, and if he's trying to take stage by dashing I can do a stationary/fading dair, but honestly beyond knowing the answers to his options I am lost at how to effectively call out what the opponent is doing or get him to do what I want. Any tips here?

2. Puff stuff -- I've studied a lot of your matches against the Puffs out there, and in general my combo game is fairly good. I am able to get 60 - 70% combos fairly regularly on Prince Abu and Mr. F (Chicago's two best Puffs atm), but there are huge holes in my defensive game. When I get hit by like, anything, I get messed up something fierce. Trying to run away from bairs after getting hit leads me to getting pushed into the corner where, surprise surprise, I am susceptible to more bair/fair walling. I am thus very disincentivized from running away from Puff after a hit. I don't know how to make Puff respect my space and make her fear coming too close to me. Her bair is safe on whiff, so I am unable to effectively threaten a punish against it, and the instant I'm out of cc and into knockdown % I get eaten alive by fairs and nairs. My offense against her is good...but I haven't the slightest clue how to approach thinking about the matchup from a defensive angle. Any tips would be appreciated.

3. Pikachu! -- Only recently have I come into contact with good Pikachu players, and frankly the matchup is a little bit of a mystery to me. So far, I've gathered that I want to stay grounded, keep her out with bairs and dairs, laser her to death, and wavedash back -> crouch cancel her nair approaches. Also don't get grabbed. However, I seem to find myself getting hit by up-airs (which apparently breaks crouch cancel?!) a lot, I don't really know how to DI out of her combos, and edgeguarding her seems to me to be actually impossible. Much like Luigi and Samus, I feel like this is a matchup that should be fairly straightforward once I figure out how she wants to play it, but at the moment I have no idea what that gameplan of hers is. Any tips on swinging the Pikachu matchup more into my favor? Sorry, I know this one's pretty vague.

4. Ditto question -- This one's a pretty straightforward question. In the Flaco ditto, I don't know how and when to mix up the DI on his combos. I get that you want to hard SDI the shines away and hard SDI the dairs behind him, but against a remotely competent Falco player, they're ready with DI mixups out the wazoo that make it really difficult to escape. Is this simply something I have to learn to accept in the matchup, or is there something I'm missing about the relationship between SDI and Falco combos?

5. Finally, a general question. As you might have been able to tell from my previous questions, the thing I'm struggling with most right now is defense. My offensive game and punishes are quite good and have been the focus of my practice up until now, but I don't have much of an idea how to go about levelling up my defensive tactics. In the neutral, I know part of my problem is impatience and committing too early, and while I loathe the idea that I will ever let a match go to time I am becoming more comfortable with a slower pace. But even beyond that, I get wrecked by players who know how to approach me, how to get around the yomi level 1 stuff, and how to punish the basics. I am at a loss of how to practice and improve defense, and my video analysis is only telling me what I should have done and not how I should have known to do it. If you are daunted by the rest of my questions, this would be the only one of the five that I really need help with. PPMD, how do I stop getting f'kin destroyed?

Thanks :3

 

[eideeiit]

Have you read Axe's guide to Pika v Falco? Might give you ideas if you haven't?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Awesome, I have been trying to find answers for a bunch of things and I needed a Falco sensei to help me out. Dr Peepee if you'd be willing to take the time I have a few questions for you.

1a. Marth matchup stuff -- In general I know it's better to keep Marth in the air, but I can't tell you how many times I've tried to end combos with a finisher like Fsmash, Dsmash, or strong bair, only to eat a fair/dair and end up being punished on the side plat. With how relatively little time Marth spends in hitstun, I feel like I struggle to find the hard finishing moves that set up for clean edgeguards, and instead I either get hit out of my combos at mid-%s or end up resetting to a neutral position while gaining nothing but % on him. Do you have any tips for how to open Marths up for that finishing move?

1b. Kinda continuing that theme, stage control is exceptionally difficult for me against Marth. It's one thing to hold a Peach or a Sheik at the ledge, as their options for getting back to center are relatively limited in comparison. However, Marth players have an uncanny knack for finding stray hits and grabs when they're pushed in the corner, and my stocks end up dropping like flies. In general it's my understanding that when Marth is at the ledge, if he's grounded and stationary I can use my ground movement to bait out a punishable commitment from him, if he tries jumping or going to the platform I can laser/bair him, and if he's trying to take stage by dashing I can do a stationary/fading dair, but honestly beyond knowing the answers to his options I am lost at how to effectively call out what the opponent is doing or get him to do what I want. Any tips here?

2. Puff stuff -- I've studied a lot of your matches against the Puffs out there, and in general my combo game is fairly good. I am able to get 60 - 70% combos fairly regularly on Prince Abu and Mr. F (Chicago's two best Puffs atm), but there are huge holes in my defensive game. When I get hit by like, anything, I get messed up something fierce. Trying to run away from bairs after getting hit leads me to getting pushed into the corner where, surprise surprise, I am susceptible to more bair/fair walling. I am thus very disincentivized from running away from Puff after a hit. I don't know how to make Puff respect my space and make her fear coming too close to me. Her bair is safe on whiff, so I am unable to effectively threaten a punish against it, and the instant I'm out of cc and into knockdown % I get eaten alive by fairs and nairs. My offense against her is good...but I haven't the slightest clue how to approach thinking about the matchup from a defensive angle. Any tips would be appreciated.

3. Pikachu! -- Only recently have I come into contact with good Pikachu players, and frankly the matchup is a little bit of a mystery to me. So far, I've gathered that I want to stay grounded, keep her out with bairs and dairs, laser her to death, and wavedash back -> crouch cancel her nair approaches. Also don't get grabbed. However, I seem to find myself getting hit by up-airs (which apparently breaks crouch cancel?!) a lot, I don't really know how to DI out of her combos, and edgeguarding her seems to me to be actually impossible. Much like Luigi and Samus, I feel like this is a matchup that should be fairly straightforward once I figure out how she wants to play it, but at the moment I have no idea what that gameplan of hers is. Any tips on swinging the Pikachu matchup more into my favor? Sorry, I know this one's pretty vague.

4. Ditto question -- This one's a pretty straightforward question. In the Flaco ditto, I don't know how and when to mix up the DI on his combos. I get that you want to hard SDI the shines away and hard SDI the dairs behind him, but against a remotely competent Falco player, they're ready with DI mixups out the wazoo that make it really difficult to escape. Is this simply something I have to learn to accept in the matchup, or is there something I'm missing about the relationship between SDI and Falco combos?

5. Finally, a general question. As you might have been able to tell from my previous questions, the thing I'm struggling with most right now is defense. My offensive game and punishes are quite good and have been the focus of my practice up until now, but I don't have much of an idea how to go about levelling up my defensive tactics. In the neutral, I know part of my problem is impatience and committing too early, and while I loathe the idea that I will ever let a match go to time I am becoming more comfortable with a slower pace. But even beyond that, I get wrecked by players who know how to approach me, how to get around the yomi level 1 stuff, and how to punish the basics. I am at a loss of how to practice and improve defense, and my video analysis is only telling me what I should have done and not how I should have known to do it. If you are daunted by the rest of my questions, this would be the only one of the five that I really need help with. PPMD, how do I stop getting f'kin destroyed?

Thanks :3

1a: You want to usually Utilt/Bair Marth in the air, but Utilt has a bad habit of trading so Bair is usually the way. You do this by either jumping quickly into Marth with FH/DJ into Bair, or you wait for Marth to drop lower before rising to hit him with FH Bair. You can also use SHs as bait before DJ'ing to see if Marth will swing. Anyway for your second part, I'm not sure how you're comboing so it's tough to say. Generally, I like hitting Marth to mid percent and then doing the Bair part you're struggling with to kick him offstage for edgeguards. Hitting Dair on Marth isn't super easy but abusing him being stuck in the air after being launched is much more doable, so even if it's not always the biggest immediate reward I find putting Marth up and getting good at edgeguards is the way to go.

1b. Well again I don't know exactly what you're losing to so it's hard to say. But remember, you don't need to rush the position it is a bad one for Marth. The reason Marths are good at it is because they're forced to be, but if you put in similar work then it goes back to being bad for them. There are a few general approaches I take when corner pressuring which include going all in, slowly going in, and kind of alternating between the two or waiting. All put pressure on Marth in different ways, but the important thing to remember is if Marth loses his dash back, he can only go up or into you, and Marth doesn't usually like being above people. So he's forced to deal with you basically. The only thing I can say is when you dash in you threaten sh nair and so if you mix that with laser in place and dash back into whatever as well you'll be able to influence him.

2. Running away after Bair is fine, you just have to be very quick to see how the Puff is responding if you can move back in right away or not. Actually, if you just avoid doing the normal Falco thing and shielding you can figure it out. Getting hit then shielding vs Puff is usually the worst thing you can do. You could just FH over her on many stages and take the top platform, or dash back and then set that up, or dash back then move in with nair/dair, or dash back laser, or dair/nair right out of getting hit. There are a lot of options and generally what I find is people only pick one or two which makes them easier to abuse.

3. Dair/Bair/Utilt beats Pika Nair clean. Honestly Dair kind of beats the whole character LOL. You just space it and Pikachu has to hold that. Can't challenge it with anything either. If you're getting beaten up in this matchup you're either lasering too much or too little or not countering Pikas attacks well enough with your big moves. For Uair, most Pikas FH Uair after a SH Nair which is what Axe does, and yes that beats CC if you're slow I think but otherwise I bet you could CC shine the Nair. Anyway, if you let Pika get behind you with their back to you and they have frame advantage like that you should just shield and let them Uair, or see if they adapt and try to DD grab and get out on reaction. I forgot about how to DI her stuff lol, but I remember edgeguarding. Walk all the way or almost all of the way to the edge and Dsmash after you hear the up-B noise(not when Pikachu is about to take off but just after). This will catch the second up-B and keep Pikachu from sweetspotting. Now Pikachu has to either up-B directly to the edge(which can often be Dsmashed also), or go over/into you which has lots of landing lag. This is something you should practice because if you mess up you get Uair'd and die lol.

4. Yeah you just have to guess what they're going to do and try to SDI in advance. You can make guesses based on past information, stage position, percent, and so on though.

5. This is hard to answer without specifics. I don't know if you know all of the moves to beat things with, or ways to position yourself to beat other characters. I can tell you defense is a mindset change. You're wanting to pull the opponent in instead of push into them. You want to make things complicated for that person. You can practice thinking this way in friendlies. I do it with offense and defense and I find it really helpful to just slip into a mode of one or the other sometimes. In fact, it might be even better to just record yourself practicing letting the opponent come in and trying to beat it out, then resetting the position after a hit. You can just see yourself playing only defense and figure things out faster that way I bet.

 

[roboticphish]

1a: You want to usually Utilt/Bair Marth in the air, but Utilt has a bad habit of trading so Bair is usually the way. You do this by either jumping quickly into Marth with FH/DJ into Bair, or you wait for Marth to drop lower before rising to hit him with FH Bair. You can also use SHs as bait before DJ'ing to see if Marth will swing. Anyway for your second part, I'm not sure how you're comboing so it's tough to say. Generally, I like hitting Marth to mid percent and then doing the Bair part you're struggling with to kick him offstage for edgeguards. Hitting Dair on Marth isn't super easy but abusing him being stuck in the air after being launched is much more doable, so even if it's not always the biggest immediate reward I find putting Marth up and getting good at edgeguards is the way to go.

1b. Well again I don't know exactly what you're losing to so it's hard to say. But remember, you don't need to rush the position it is a bad one for Marth. The reason Marths are good at it is because they're forced to be, but if you put in similar work then it goes back to being bad for them. There are a few general approaches I take when corner pressuring which include going all in, slowly going in, and kind of alternating between the two or waiting. All put pressure on Marth in different ways, but the important thing to remember is if Marth loses his dash back, he can only go up or into you, and Marth doesn't usually like being above people. So he's forced to deal with you basically. The only thing I can say is when you dash in you threaten sh nair and so if you mix that with laser in place and dash back into whatever as well you'll be able to influence him.

2. Running away after Bair is fine, you just have to be very quick to see how the Puff is responding if you can move back in right away or not. Actually, if you just avoid doing the normal Falco thing and shielding you can figure it out. Getting hit then shielding vs Puff is usually the worst thing you can do. You could just FH over her on many stages and take the top platform, or dash back and then set that up, or dash back then move in with nair/dair, or dash back laser, or dair/nair right out of getting hit. There are a lot of options and generally what I find is people only pick one or two which makes them easier to abuse.

3. Dair/Bair/Utilt beats Pika Nair clean. Honestly Dair kind of beats the whole character LOL. You just space it and Pikachu has to hold that. Can't challenge it with anything either. If you're getting beaten up in this matchup you're either lasering too much or too little or not countering Pikas attacks well enough with your big moves. For Uair, most Pikas FH Uair after a SH Nair which is what Axe does, and yes that beats CC if you're slow I think but otherwise I bet you could CC shine the Nair. Anyway, if you let Pika get behind you with their back to you and they have frame advantage like that you should just shield and let them Uair, or see if they adapt and try to DD grab and get out on reaction. I forgot about how to DI her stuff lol, but I remember edgeguarding. Walk all the way or almost all of the way to the edge and Dsmash after you hear the up-B noise(not when Pikachu is about to take off but just after). This will catch the second up-B and keep Pikachu from sweetspotting. Now Pikachu has to either up-B directly to the edge(which can often be Dsmashed also), or go over/into you which has lots of landing lag. This is something you should practice because if you mess up you get Uair'd and die lol.

4. Yeah you just have to guess what they're going to do and try to SDI in advance. You can make guesses based on past information, stage position, percent, and so on though.

5. This is hard to answer without specifics. I don't know if you know all of the moves to beat things with, or ways to position yourself to beat other characters. I can tell you defense is a mindset change. You're wanting to pull the opponent in instead of push into them. You want to make things complicated for that person. You can practice thinking this way in friendlies. I do it with offense and defense and I find it really helpful to just slip into a mode of one or the other sometimes. In fact, it might be even better to just record yourself practicing letting the opponent come in and trying to beat it out, then resetting the position after a hit. You can just see yourself playing only defense and figure things out faster that way I bet.

Thanks, PP. This is all really good, helpful stuff. I just have one follow-up question for you, regarding your answer to my question 5. "I don't know if you know all of the moves to beat things with, or ways to position yourself to beat other characters." In general, I'd say I have a functional knowledge of which positions are good against most characters. Don't be below a Sheik on the platform, don't be above Marth, don't be at the ledge against a Fox, etc. But I'm pretty damn sure that I don't know most of those 'moves to beat things with', and I'm sure that when you're thinking about 'ways to position yourself', you're thinking in more specific terms than the general matchup lines I have drawn in my head. So my followup question is this: How would you recommend structuring my video analysis to gain that knowledge? How much of it is study of my own footage/mistakes versus trying to find the answers in your, Mango's, Westballz', or Zhu's play? How useful is it to dive into pre-2014 footage, before shield dropping and ledgedashing started making big waves? Watching videos to expand my punishes has become second nature to me, but not for defensive concepts like escape options, SDI, or deliberate mid-punish positioning. I don't really know what to look out for in this respect, how would you recommend looking at footage with that in mind?

 

[Dr Peepee]

The way I recommend everyone to watch videos is to look for a hit and then pause the video, rewind, and figure out why it happened. Keep doing that until you at least have some guesses and can make larger generalizations eventually. Pre-2014 footage is fine you just will consider the situations a bit differently. As for who to watch, I think Mango and myself have the most structured Falco games so it would usually be best to watch us. Obviously you need to watch yourself plenty and both forms of watching feed into each other.

 

[drunkfalco]

Just a quick tech question, but what is Wes doing in the clip that starts at 9:56 of this video? Does he just DJ --> waveland on platform or is that a short hop to laserland?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onIeVmnZKaM

 

[Frenzy231199]

Dr Peepee could you answer a few questions I have please? Firstly, I've found myself not having enough stamina/mental fortitude to play the long patient game vs Puff/Peach/Samus, did you train yourself to play patiently or is it just a natural trait of yours? Also I'm having a lot of trouble trying to space around vertical/diagonal approaches such as Puff B-Air or Sheik F-Air at the moment, is there any way I could improve this as my horizontal spacing is fine which is weird? Finally, getting clean hits at low % seems hard for me at the moment, especially with PAL weak hit making D-Air annoying to approach with, It feels like if I hit most characters with anything but a shine at 0 i get counter attacked by an instant N-Air/D-Smash from Peach etc. any advice to avoid this?