PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[Bones0]

Are there not 3 different ways fox can land a drill? Either that or there are two ways but the odds are 66-33. iirc you have a 2/3 chance of grabbing his drill without getting shined. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I just checked, and you're right. I thought the hitboxes alternated off and on every frame, but each drill kick lasts 2 frames, not 1. Thanks for correcting me.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

What bones had to say about the risk/ reward of shield grab in that scenario is spot on. When I remember to do it and react properly, I like to angle my shield up to try and mess up the drill timing. Obviously it's not going to work very often against good players, but it's one of those small things to make the execution test just a little bit harder for your opponent.

 

[DogLifeGood]

Dr Peepee I've been studying a lot of DruggedFalco / Ginger / you to see what Falco should look for when comboing Peach.

Most of what I see is short shine-dair combo's that end with lasering their decent and then rinse and repeat till you can bair them off or dair-dair them in the corner. That being said my question is: why do Falco's look to shine peach and try and play her in the air rather that try to nair/fair/ soft bair peach across the stage into dair? Does this only work at a specific % or can Peach always DI out?

Also why does this set consist of 6 games. I really want to know https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDyygl00VTY

 

[Dr Peepee]

Peach can DI out on the forward moves a lot so Nair is a mixup on Dair DI. I've used Nair some vs Peach in combo in tournament I'm fairly sure, but the Dair stuff is more guaranteed. There are also certain mid percents where Nair could push Peach over the edge to help set up Dair. Otherwise it doesn't really matter if she holds in you can't necessarily get a better punish.

That set had old Europe rules where they played bo7 lol I'm glad they changed that

 

[Bones0]

Dr Peepee I've been studying a lot of DruggedFalco / Ginger / you to see what Falco should look for when comboing Peach.

Most of what I see is short shine-dair combo's that end with lasering their decent and then rinse and repeat till you can bair them off or dair-dair them in the corner. That being said my question is: why do Falco's look to shine peach and try and play her in the air rather that try to nair/fair/ soft bair peach across the stage into dair? Does this only work at a specific % or can Peach always DI out?

Also why does this set consist of 6 games. I really want to know https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDyygl00VTY

Shine is a more flexible combo move, and one that isn't at risk of being CCed at low %s, but once you've got Peach in the air, I recommend looking for opportunities to utilt instead. It doesn't send her as high so you are more likely to land an extra bair/uair before she flies too far. Even at low %s, as long as she's not grounded, I'm more than happy to get a triple utilt into SH bair chain. I find it does more damage than pillar combos, and it also let's me stay low while forcing her to DI off stage at a lower height.

With all this in mind, I still think the most important part of punishing Peach is actually recognizing when you CAN'T follow up and positioning to shark her airdodge or nair out. This keeps you safe, allows you to retain stage control, and forces Peach to land more carefully.

 

[Yort]

Peach can DI out on the forward moves a lot so Nair is a mixup on Dair DI. I've used Nair some vs Peach in combo in tournament I'm fairly sure, but the Dair stuff is more guaranteed. There are also certain mid percents where Nair could push Peach over the edge to help set up Dair. Otherwise it doesn't really matter if she holds in you can't necessarily get a better punish.

That set had old Europe rules where they played bo7 lol I'm glad they changed that

Can you explain why is playing grounded vs peach more difficult than playing in the air? I feel like you play pretty grounded vs peach. To be specific, I feel like I notice you dash dancing on the ground and waiting (sharking) for her when she is floating / in the air often.

Do you recommend using the air / platforms to laser her down to the ground? I use this a lot vs puff, full hop lasers to push her down more effectively if she's staying too airborne. And then, as you said, falco beats peach hard when they are both grounded.

Why does it also seem like you / santiago prioritize empty movement so much vs peach? Is it because of her limited ground options / speed? I notice a lot of empty hops, empty dd, wd back etc.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Can you explain why is playing grounded vs peach more difficult than playing in the air? I feel like you play pretty grounded vs peach. To be specific, I feel like I notice you dash dancing on the ground and waiting (sharking) for her when she is floating / in the air often.

Do you recommend using the air / platforms to laser her down to the ground? I use this a lot vs puff, full hop lasers to push her down more effectively if she's staying too airborne. And then, as you said, falco beats peach hard when they are both grounded.

Why does it also seem like you / santiago prioritize empty movement so much vs peach? Is it because of her limited ground options / speed? I notice a lot of empty hops, empty dd, wd back etc.

When I'm playing the matchup well I mostly can just stay on the ground but I wouldn't recommend it. Knowing how to threaten with your DD is already hard enough but you barely outspeed Peach's float on the ground so every action has to count. It's just easier to shoot her out of the air. If you've already hit her off the ground and are juggling, then yeah being on the ground is fine no matter what. That sharking is good.

If you've knocked Peach into the air, the only time I would recommend lasers is if you can't extend your followup at all or need them to continue. It's just more damage and easier to work your Bair. If she's offstage though, lasering her down can be really good. Again, this is all assuming you've knocked Peach into the air and I think aerial lasering her float in neutral is pretty good a lot of the time.

Empty moves vs Peach are good because she's slow and we need her to whiff something like a FH Nair OOS to punish. It's not required but it helps when dealing with her ability to beat out your approaches.

 

[Yort]

When I'm playing the matchup well I mostly can just stay on the ground but I wouldn't recommend it. Knowing how to threaten with your DD is already hard enough but you barely outspeed Peach's float on the ground so every action has to count. It's just easier to shoot her out of the air. If you've already hit her off the ground and are juggling, then yeah being on the ground is fine no matter what. That sharking is good.

If you've knocked Peach into the air, the only time I would recommend lasers is if you can't extend your followup at all or need them to continue. It's just more damage and easier to work your Bair. If she's offstage though, lasering her down can be really good. Again, this is all assuming you've knocked Peach into the air and I think aerial lasering her float in neutral is pretty good a lot of the time.

Empty moves vs Peach are good because she's slow and we need her to whiff something like a FH Nair OOS to punish. It's not required but it helps when dealing with her ability to beat out your approaches.

Raw shield pressure is pretty ineffective vs peach right?

It seems like you should be mainly prioritizing looking for whiff punishes with empty movement or shine grab / shine retreating aerial. Also does peach up b out of shield beat shine retreating aerial? I do not think it does but I want some confirmation, I am pretty sure I was being slow the other day vs peach.

Also, what about hitting peach into the air and then sharking makes it so much better than when it's on your terms? Is it because it's on your terms and not hers, and usually she can't set up a proper float height or plan her intentions well?

Lastly, why do you think your playstyle is not recommended when she's floating? Are you implying that your understanding of DD mix ups are much greater than most falcos, and that's why it works for you? Basically, you think it's a difficult play-style that requires in depth understanding and practice and you recommend the easier solution?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Raw shield pressure is pretty ineffective vs peach right?

It seems like you should be mainly prioritizing looking for whiff punishes with empty movement or shine grab / shine retreating aerial. Also does peach up b out of shield beat shine retreating aerial? I do not think it does but I want some confirmation, I am pretty sure I was being slow the other day vs peach.

Also, what about hitting peach into the air and then sharking makes it so much better than when it's on your terms? Is it because it's on your terms and not hers, and usually she can't set up a proper float height or plan her intentions well?

Lastly, why do you think your playstyle is not recommended when she's floating? Are you implying that your understanding of DD mix ups are much greater than most falcos, and that's why it works for you? Basically, you think it's a difficult play-style that requires in depth understanding and practice and you recommend the easier solution?

Double shine is good vs Peach and so is shine grab. Doing shield pressure mixups can struggle with her WD back oos which gives her good options and of course the obvious nair oos. They aren't especially fast so you can pressure her, especially if you space, but the risk reward doesn't really seem to be there for staying deep on her shield. At least not as a staple tactic.

If you want to win neutral you either Utilt/Bair her aerials in at you, laser grab or shine grab or late nair shine or lateish dair shine if you want to risk the shield grab. Those are your main ways of winning neutral but they don't necessarily come on whiff punishes. For example, if I laser Peach out of her float and then fall with laser I can get in close and try to get her oos or just grab before she does anything.

Peach floating at the specific height Armada uses gives her plenty of options and you aren't directly below her to challenge them well. If you've gotten her higher up then you can be close to beat everything she does with FH Bair and that's really strong. So basically yeah what you said.

And yes to your last paragraph. I'm not saying don't learn how to fight on the ground, it is definitely important, but I don't think it should be the primary way to fight for most people.

 

[Bones0]

Raw shield pressure is pretty ineffective vs peach right?

It seems like you should be mainly prioritizing looking for whiff punishes with empty movement or shine grab / shine retreating aerial. Also does peach up b out of shield beat shine retreating aerial? I do not think it does but I want some confirmation, I am pretty sure I was being slow the other day vs peach.

Also, what about hitting peach into the air and then sharking makes it so much better than when it's on your terms? Is it because it's on your terms and not hers, and usually she can't set up a proper float height or plan her intentions well?

Lastly, why do you think your playstyle is not recommended when she's floating? Are you implying that your understanding of DD mix ups are much greater than most falcos, and that's why it works for you? Basically, you think it's a difficult play-style that requires in depth understanding and practice and you recommend the easier solution?

A perfect shine immediate nair beats Peach's up-B OoS by 1 frame, but it's not at all reliable. First of all, shine is frequently stale so that right there can cost you a frame. Even if we assume your shine is fresh or the opponent will not compensate for the reduced shield stun, Peach ducks down during her up-B startup. This means you have to nair forward/in place in order to hit her with the nair. If you fade away, she dodges it and immediately counter attacks you.

Shine grab seems like the way to go vs. Peach. Even if she buffers a perfect spotdodge, she's only +1 so you have enough time to shine again. Even if shine is stale and she gets a jab outl you can ground cancel and shine anyways.

 

[AnonymousID]

What exactly should I be reacting to when I try to shine out of shield? Specifically Falco dittos.
If Falco hit's my shield with a dair/nair, am I able to tell if it's safe or not off of reaction or are their other factors that I need to consider? I feel as if by the time I react to them hitting my shield even while high, they can fast fall and shine before I can shine oos.
Also how much of a difference does angling your shield make?

 

[Bones0]

What exactly should I be reacting to when I try to shine out of shield? Specifically Falco dittos.
If Falco hit's my shield with a dair/nair, am I able to tell if it's safe or not off of reaction or are their other factors that I need to consider? I feel as if by the time I react to them hitting my shield even while high, they can fast fall and shine before I can shine oos.
Also how much of a difference does angling your shield make?

Whether an aerial is safe on shield or not is solely dependent on the TIME it takes them to get down to the ground and shine. For SHs on level ground, the height of the opponent is the simplest way to judge how safe their aerial is. If they are still rising when their aerial hits your shield, it's definitely unsafe. If the aerial connects around the peak of spacies' SH, their aerial shine pressure starts to beat shine OoS with good FF timing. If the aerial connects after the peak of their SH, it's probably safe, but it's possible to shine OoS if they did not FF and also didn't hit an extremely low aerial.

Trying to describe it really doesn't do it justice, unfortunately. Your best bet to learning when shine Oos is safe is to practice your own shield pressure on 20xx CPUs that are set to shine OoS. You can try all sorts of different timings with your aerials and fast falls. Keep in mind different aerials have different amounts of shield stun and landing lag, and some aerials get weaker over time (Falco's nair, bair, and dair). This can be relevant if, for example, you do a SHFFLed nair from far away and the opponent shields the later part of the attack. Even if you do an early nair and hit with the weak part, it can still be safe on shield if you don't reach the opponent's shield until a few frames before you land. This is why it's always important to focus on how much TIME it takes the opponent to land. Focusing on heights can be deceiving because of the other variables.

Angling your shield doesn't make any difference unless it will cause their aerial to come into contact with your shield sooner or later than normal. The most common example is when someone is approaching from above and already has an active hitbox out.

 

[Dr Peepee]

What exactly should I be reacting to when I try to shine out of shield? Specifically Falco dittos.
If Falco hit's my shield with a dair/nair, am I able to tell if it's safe or not off of reaction or are their other factors that I need to consider? I feel as if by the time I react to them hitting my shield even while high, they can fast fall and shine before I can shine oos.
Also how much of a difference does angling your shield make?

Dair is really unsafe unless it's super low so if you see Dair you should shine oos. Nair is much safer so mid height Nair it will be tough to shine oos. Practicing the timings with a friend can help you learn the distinctions.

 

[Bones0]

Dair is really unsafe unless it's super low so if you see Dair you should shine oos. Nair is much safer so mid height Nair it will be tough to shine oos. Practicing the timings with a friend can help you learn the distinctions.

Nair is only 1 frame safer than dair. Dair has 9 frames of landing lag and nair has 7. Even though they both have the same shield stun, dair causes your ECB to be extended further downwards, which means you land a frame sooner than when you nair.

 

[DogLifeGood]

Dair is really unsafe unless it's super low so if you see Dair you should shine oos. Nair is much safer so mid height Nair it will be tough to shine oos. Practicing the timings with a friend can help you learn the distinctions.

Does using Shine OOS always require prior knowledge? I.E do I need to realize what moves, from all of the cast, are punishable by shine OOS. Or can I just react to a move hitting high on my shield and Shine OOS without worries.

 

[Dr Peepee]

You'll need to practice the timings and also learn in advance what's safe and what's not and what's close. That's the only way you'll be able to decide in the moment.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

Can someone give some guidelines on the following:

1. When can falco combo shine into fire bird? Like what characters and percents does this actually work?

2. What stages/ percents/ characters does firebird kill?

3. What stages/ percents/ characters can i expect to kill with shine off the top?

4. Same as 3 but with uair

I'm starting to go for double shine kills , firebird kills, and kills off the top more in general. But i realized the other day that i don't know what im doing with these setups and just sort of go for them randomly. Like I'll do them on floaties and on yoshis more but that's about the extent of my decision making

 

[Ukulele]

Hi, everyone. Today on Twitter there was a very interesting discussion sparked by Druggedfox about off-stage recovery options and how they differ between Fox & Falco. I'm going to go ahead and talk about some of these differences to make it easier for you all to add ideas and facts of your own that you think are missing from what myself and others have already provided while also asking some of my own questions.

First off, Falco has the greater vertical displacement with his DJ in conjunction with the different properties (hitbox active earlier, larger total composition of hitboxes, better positioning relative to hurtbox for disjointed factor, spike, etc.) of his down air. One question I have in regards to this is: People claim that Fox has the faster jump due to the shorter jumpsquat animation, but has anyone taken the time to look at the physics behind the jumps -- the acceleration components to the jump (a jump is completely grounded first during jumpsquat animation and therefore has 0 vertical displacement and therefore 0 velocity vertically, which implies acceleration when the velocity later has non-zero values...) and the velocity components to the jump. Has Fox been proven to be faster in these regards, too?

Next, we have the Side-b matter. My first question has to do with this post: https://twitter.com/TSM_Leffen/status/873187844378025986

I understand the concept of vertical perfect sweetspot, but what is a perfect horizontal sweet-spot? Is it perfect horizontal positioning -> Side-b? I legitimately don't understand what this terminology means, I'm just trying to infer what it means from my understanding of vertical sweet-spotting.

I've heard Mang0, M2K, and PPMD say that Falco has the faster Side-b. Is this simply a reference to the fact that Phantasm moves before Illusion? It seems implied from discussions I've viewed that the Up-B and Side-B velocities/accelerations seem to be identical. Can anyone clarify this? We have the KB angle difference, (meteor vs launcher) but as someone brought up today, what about the interaction between Falco's Phantasm hitbox and other hitboxes vs Fox's illusion hitbox and other hitboxes? This was their explanation: https://twitter.com/Gabe_Karon/status/873228188167569408

This seems like a good explanation given my experience with the two characters, just wondering if anyone can truly confirm it/add anything to it. Another question I have is, My final question regarding side-b is: Does Fox have 3 different shortens in addition to his full Illusion? I know for a fact that he has at least two, but the frame data/hitbox thread only specifies 3 lengths for Falco.

There isn't much for me to say about Up-b. I feel as though I and many others understand every difference, (this goes with a few other obvious, unspoken differences in recovery) but as I said earlier, I really encourage anyone with potential niche insight to speak up. The more you try to compare all of these differences, the harder it gets to be able to prove the claim "X spacie has the 'better recovery'" in an outright way. I suppose if you actually break down EVERYTHING (To further elaborate, every possible off-stage position in conjunction with variation in possible options due to sequence of events that led to this scenario in relation to every opposing character's "edge-gaurding" toolset and their positioning, too.) side by side, it's possible to get an answer out of this question. This seems like a tedious, daunting task and I'm a Physicist for crying out loud. I haven't even come close to touching upon every difference people know about or the idea of "high" recovery positions and how Gravity, FF, fall speed, air acceleration (air speed is moot, but I can't find values for AA or air friction for that matter?) affect them; no one has ever commented on this in my experience discussing this topic/analyzing it with others. LAZUR recovery as Falco is also criminally underexplored and rarely taken into account as a possible recovery option that largely differs from Fox.

After looking at wall-tech, air-dodge, wall-jump properties -- I figured out that Falco has a noticeably greater vertical displacement on his wall jump compared to Fox. I think this is where I'm going to leave off. Hopefully you all will have tons of interesting insight on their differences!

 

[Dr Peepee]

I'm afraid I'm not much help in most of those questions, but when I said faster I did in fact mean Falco's side B took off faster than Fox's.

I think horizontal sweetspot is just being able to sweetspot/snap to edge when you are a given horizontal position. So based on that tweet I would assume Falco can snap to edge horizontally from very slightly farther away than Fox can.

My opinion has always been that Falco has a better close recovery(less chances though) and Fox has a better far recovery with it depending on how you look at it for mid recovery. I tend to give Fox a bigger benefit of the doubt in terms of longevitiy just because he gets longer moves and up-B flames so I tend to give Fox the nod overall.

 

[Ukulele]

I'm afraid I'm not much help in most of those questions, but when I said faster I did in fact mean Falco's side B took off faster than Fox's.

I haven't been able to find some of these answers ANYWHERE. I will test some of these things myself if push comes to shove. I'm honestly surprised no one has ever tested jump velocities/acceleration vertically.

I think horizontal sweetspot is just being able to sweetspot/snap to edge when you are a given horizontal position. So based on that tweet I would assume Falco can snap to edge horizontally from very slightly farther away than Fox can.

Oh, ok. Thank you. I'm sad no one else has offered anything. In retrospect, my post wasn't the most well structured post .

My opinion has always been that Falco has a better close recovery(less chances though) and Fox has a better far recovery with it depending on how you look at it for mid recovery. I tend to give Fox a bigger benefit of the doubt in terms of longevitiy just because he gets longer moves and up-B flames so I tend to give Fox the nod overall.

Would you agree that Falco has some great differences in his favor for "far away" vertical recoveries, though? I can elaborate if necessary.

It #TRIGGERED me when all of those people mindlessly shot down the possibility of Falco having a comparably useful recovery. This "FOX IS OBJECTIVELY DA BESS BECAUSE WE VOTED FOR HIM AS THE BESS" mentality is a huge cancer for the community, in my opinion.

Meanwhile, Peach, Jiggs, Samus, Link/Young Link (tfw he can't throw bombs at himself), Pikachu/Pichu, and Mewtwo are probably somewhere laughing our discussion... ;_;

 

[Dr Peepee]

Depends on how far is far. If Falco is pretty much forced to side B or have an easily reactable up-B option, then Fox having side B or a few up-B angles would be better. Far is closer for Falco in other words which is why I say he's worse at it than Fox. Doesn't mean if he has a few options he's necessarily worse though I do agree with that.

Yeah people do struggle to talk about Fox more honestly sometimes but at least most people don't conflate Fox being the best in their mind to broken so I'll take what I can get lol.

 

[Ukulele]

To further add to you saying that the close recoveries for Falco can be better, Bones0 and Druggedfox made really good points that I had never considered: https://twitter.com/bones0todeath/status/873155858053648385

https://twitter.com/druggedfox/status/873188650036670466

It's also important to note downard Up-b's to the stage, Fox will be forced to have ground recoil in positions where Falco would not impact the ground and get the ground based recoil.

Depends on how far is far.

Ok, so what I mean by far away vertical positions for recovering is this: Recovery scenarios generated by moves with KB deviating in angle +/- minimal amounts from 90 degrees or are innately 90 degrees (e.g. Up airs, Up smashes, Up tilts, etc. These recovery positions are generated more frequent I think depending upon the properties/usefulness of the move in neutral, killing, combo starters/finishers, juggle tools, etc. In other words, against Fox, you will get put in these positions enough where it could be very useful to utilize what I'm proposing.) put Falco in considerably high vertical positions regardless of trajectional influence/hitlag influence to convert vertical positions to horizontal positions (that are still rly high) in order to not die. I'll get a little bit more specific to give you an even better idea of "how far" like you asked. We could say blastzone (vertical maximum) to 10-20 character lengths (Falco/Fox?? I don't know what would be a good unit without actually diagraming it.) downward until you reach a vertical minimum for some of these options to be practical/play a big role when discussing differences between Falco/Fox. The horizontal min/max simply being the entire off stage section that these options can work for Falco in; the higher the better. I personally consider above on stage as "landing/juggling" scenario as I think you do, too, maybe?

When we have this section of positions, I think that, in response to this: "If Falco is pretty much forced to side B or have an easily reactable up-B option, then Fox having side B or a few up-B angles would be better." Your options are not forced to shine-stall, b-moves, air dodge, etc. From what I can tell, these options are forced at much lower positions -- closer to the ledge, platforms, stage in general, vertically.

Instead, you have superior fast fall and normal fall speed maximum velocities, (Fox has better gravity) dair, lasers, (I have experimented with this a lot and will touch upon some things pertaining to it here in a second.) and DJ. The stupid thing about DJ is I don't know how much friction, acceleration, air speed play a role with the greater amount of air time given by DJ in comparison to Fox because not all of the data is actually out there for the community. What do you think?

My thoughts and practice with laser recoveries has yielded some valuable information. When they choose jumping based edgegaurds you can reset their character state via laser, drop their position, "stuff" their jump by interrupting the jump animation in its early displacement, and combo. You can get more lasers off the higher you are and if you have a DJ, obviously.

To go further on that, Mang0 has used DJ lasers from close to the ledge + under the ledge/slight above/etc. I don't think that I've seen you use it from my analysis, but I still have a ton of things to watch from you so maybe you did and I haven't seen it yet. =]

Anyway, to touch upon your comment that I quoted about the forced, long recoveries and the value of having more length/Up-B angle mixups, I definetely agree.

Yeah people do struggle to talk about Fox more honestly sometimes but at least most people don't conflate Fox being the best in their mind to broken so I'll take what I can get lol.

You think so? I've seen a lot of people say that he is broken. -_-

I think that he's an awesome character but I definetely couldn't say what I think he ranks next to the character. I don't know enough about the game to make a solid tier lists like that-- 1by1 ranking system. I think it's a lot easier to rank by groups, at least for me. It's easy to see why low tiers are low tiers, for example. However, the more I learn about Luigi, Pikachu, Yoshi, Samus, Jigglypuff, Icies, Captain Falcon, and a few others -- the more I think they are unfairly judged a lot of the time. I can see why Sheik, Marth, Spacies are in a tier of their own but some of the aformentioned high/mid tiers seem rly good. I guess that I don't have high level insight, but I see a lot of great high level/top level insight that counter preconceived notions about the tier lists.

You had a really cool comment @ Reunion about self fulfilling prophecy and its effect on character usage, for example. Not gonna go find it tho lol

 

[Ukulele]

edit function saves lives =3=

 

[olleytrolley]

Hey everyone! Today I played against my first decent Marth that could powershield extremely consistently and found that he was completely stuffing most of my approaches in doing so. I'd try to alternate the timings of my lasers (high, low) but it made pretty little difference as he'd almost always powershield (probably about 70% of the time I'd say). In turn, that powershield would lead into a grab and usually a 60-70% juggle punish. Sometimes I'd try to do an empty hop or empty laser but those too were often punished since he would grab me anyways when I did so. I also found him calling out my lasers a lot simply by wavedashing up and outright f-smashing me which caught me off-guard multiple times and I was at a loss for what to do.

I feel like if falco doesn't have lasers to interrupt marth's DD game, it's super hard to win neutral against him and execute punishes. What type of counterplay do I have against a Marth that powershields super consistently? Are there any other mixups that I should be thinking about when I try to go in on this marth? Or should I hold back and DD until the marth decides to approach me?

 

[Dr Peepee]

To further add to you saying that the close recoveries for Falco can be better, Bones0 and Druggedfox made really good points that I had never considered: https://twitter.com/bones0todeath/status/873155858053648385

https://twitter.com/druggedfox/status/873188650036670466

It's also important to note downard Up-b's to the stage, Fox will be forced to have ground recoil in positions where Falco would not impact the ground and get the ground based recoil.


Ok, so what I mean by far away vertical positions for recovering is this: Recovery scenarios generated by moves with KB deviating in angle +/- minimal amounts from 90 degrees or are innately 90 degrees (e.g. Up airs, Up smashes, Up tilts, etc. These recovery positions are generated more frequent I think depending upon the properties/usefulness of the move in neutral, killing, combo starters/finishers, juggle tools, etc. In other words, against Fox, you will get put in these positions enough where it could be very useful to utilize what I'm proposing.) put Falco in considerably high vertical positions regardless of trajectional influence/hitlag influence to convert vertical positions to horizontal positions (that are still rly high) in order to not die. I'll get a little bit more specific to give you an even better idea of "how far" like you asked. We could say blastzone (vertical maximum) to 10-20 character lengths (Falco/Fox?? I don't know what would be a good unit without actually diagraming it.) downward until you reach a vertical minimum for some of these options to be practical/play a big role when discussing differences between Falco/Fox. The horizontal min/max simply being the entire off stage section that these options can work for Falco in; the higher the better. I personally consider above on stage as "landing/juggling" scenario as I think you do, too, maybe?

When we have this section of positions, I think that, in response to this: "If Falco is pretty much forced to side B or have an easily reactable up-B option, then Fox having side B or a few up-B angles would be better." Your options are not forced to shine-stall, b-moves, air dodge, etc. From what I can tell, these options are forced at much lower positions -- closer to the ledge, platforms, stage in general, vertically.

Instead, you have superior fast fall and normal fall speed maximum velocities, (Fox has better gravity) dair, lasers, (I have experimented with this a lot and will touch upon some things pertaining to it here in a second.) and DJ. The stupid thing about DJ is I don't know how much friction, acceleration, air speed play a role with the greater amount of air time given by DJ in comparison to Fox because not all of the data is actually out there for the community. What do you think?

My thoughts and practice with laser recoveries has yielded some valuable information. When they choose jumping based edgegaurds you can reset their character state via laser, drop their position, "stuff" their jump by interrupting the jump animation in its early displacement, and combo. You can get more lasers off the higher you are and if you have a DJ, obviously.

To go further on that, Mang0 has used DJ lasers from close to the ledge + under the ledge/slight above/etc. I don't think that I've seen you use it from my analysis, but I still have a ton of things to watch from you so maybe you did and I haven't seen it yet. =]

Anyway, to touch upon your comment that I quoted about the forced, long recoveries and the value of having more length/Up-B angle mixups, I definetely agree.


You think so? I've seen a lot of people say that he is broken. -_-

I think that he's an awesome character but I definetely couldn't say what I think he ranks next to the character. I don't know enough about the game to make a solid tier lists like that-- 1by1 ranking system. I think it's a lot easier to rank by groups, at least for me. It's easy to see why low tiers are low tiers, for example. However, the more I learn about Luigi, Pikachu, Yoshi, Samus, Jigglypuff, Icies, Captain Falcon, and a few others -- the more I think they are unfairly judged a lot of the time. I can see why Sheik, Marth, Spacies are in a tier of their own but some of the aformentioned high/mid tiers seem rly good. I guess that I don't have high level insight, but I see a lot of great high level/top level insight that counter preconceived notions about the tier lists.

You had a really cool comment @ Reunion about self fulfilling prophecy and its effect on character usage, for example. Not gonna go find it tho lol

Okay so I actually meant horizontally LOL but yeah vertically Falco has to be quite a bit lower and/or not have a wall to walljump on is what makes him worse.

Yeah most people do complain about Fox being broken but I also see some people do it for Puff and Falco and Marth so it's not as bad as it used to be at least. And yeah the self fulfilling prophecy is pretty lame and in my opinion has definitely buffed Fox. To be fair Fox always thrives when Melee is doing well so we probably just increased something that was going to happen anyway.

Hey everyone! Today I played against my first decent Marth that could powershield extremely consistently and found that he was completely stuffing most of my approaches in doing so. I'd try to alternate the timings of my lasers (high, low) but it made pretty little difference as he'd almost always powershield (probably about 70% of the time I'd say). In turn, that powershield would lead into a grab and usually a 60-70% juggle punish. Sometimes I'd try to do an empty hop or empty laser but those too were often punished since he would grab me anyways when I did so. I also found him calling out my lasers a lot simply by wavedashing up and outright f-smashing me which caught me off-guard multiple times and I was at a loss for what to do.

I feel like if falco doesn't have lasers to interrupt marth's DD game, it's super hard to win neutral against him and execute punishes. What type of counterplay do I have against a Marth that powershields super consistently? Are there any other mixups that I should be thinking about when I try to go in on this marth? Or should I hold back and DD until the marth decides to approach me?

You might not be shooting low enough, but anyway if you shoot low and Marth PS' it then you can SH over the laser and laser or aerial yourself and that will keep the Marth wary from coming in. You can also go to a platform and then fall with another laser so your lasers don't really get interrupted. You'd likely also benefit from switching up when and where you laser so Marth struggles more to react to your laser.

 

[Ukulele]

Okay so I actually meant horizontally LOL but yeah vertically Falco has to be quite a bit lower and/or not have a wall to walljump on is what makes him worse.

Well, at least you see what I meant. I really feel as though a lot of times people do not have a structured sense of recovery options in this vertical section. Instead of converting it to a landing scenario when possible or choosing some of the options I talked about, I see people willingly opt to recover at much lower positions and take away their height advantage when recovering, for example.

Foxes don't struggle nearly as much at choosing their good options in far away, horizontal positions.

Yeah most people do complain about Fox being broken but I also see some people do it for Puff and Falco and Marth so it's not as bad as it used to be at least. And yeah the self fulfilling prophecy is pretty lame and in my opinion has definitely buffed Fox. To be fair Fox always thrives when Melee is doing well so we probably just increased something that was going to happen anyway.

That's true. I'm a rather new Melee player, so I don't know much about your last comment. What do you mean by "thrives" and "when Melee is doing well"? Also, if I had private questions about training/practice methods, are you available?

Hey everyone! Today I played against my first decent Marth that could powershield extremely consistently and found that he was completely stuffing most of my approaches in doing so. I'd try to alternate the timings of my lasers (high, low) but it made pretty little difference as he'd almost always powershield (probably about 70% of the time I'd say). In turn, that powershield would lead into a grab and usually a 60-70% juggle punish. Sometimes I'd try to do an empty hop or empty laser but those too were often punished since he would grab me anyways when I did so. I also found him calling out my lasers a lot simply by wavedashing up and outright f-smashing me which caught me off-guard multiple times and I was at a loss for what to do.

I feel like if falco doesn't have lasers to interrupt marth's DD game, it's super hard to win neutral against him and execute punishes. What type of counterplay do I have against a Marth that powershields super consistently? Are there any other mixups that I should be thinking about when I try to go in on this marth? Or should I hold back and DD until the marth decides to approach me?

I have a question, do you record your matches? I find it very hard to believe he was powershielding your lasers 70 percent of the time they were fired with both of you on the ground plane. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that it could prove useful to determine just how consistent your opponent factually is for further decision making.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Melee died after Brawl came out before esports revived us and Fox died with Melee's death. Before and after the death Fox was doing great though.

I generally don't do private questions.

 

[Ukulele]

Melee died after Brawl came out before esports revived us and Fox died with Melee's death. Before and after the death Fox was doing great though.

The various tier lists (which have always been based off of the community voting IIRC) have not always made the same claims about Fox, though. And IIRC, no fox had ever won a "National" until Mang0 at Evo 2013? I know this can be a huge factor for some people when determining who is at the top and such -- winning huge tournaments. So, I think things have changed to favor him slightly, at least.

I generally don't do private questions.

Understandable. I'm surprised you even do this! =)
I just know that you are a note taker, too. I had some categorical questions and didn't want to spill my beans. You have to keep stuff secret here and there. =3=

 

[Dr Peepee]

There weren't any updated tier lists during Melee's death iirc. Maybe there was one? Either way I doubt it was as rigorous as the ones that came before it. Foxes did not win as many majors before besides like PC Chris at Oc3 but they still populated the top spots more than any other character which is still pretty significant. Focusing on who wins events reduces accuracy when assessing these sorts of things to me. The game is arguably at its most competitive point in history so it would make sense that Fox now wins more than before.

 

[smileblade]

Hey everyone
I understand one thing that falcos often overlook are lasers. Recently, I realize my laser game was insanely poor because I laser with no purpose. I mix up my lasers but i feel like i can't find proper openings. The one method that Mang0 mentioned was trying to read the opponent's movement off of lasers, however, I still can't get a grasp on how it works. I was trying it for the past week in friendlies but I could not read if they were going to be defensive or aggressive on my next laser.
Other then that, what else can lasers be used for in neutral? and when are the right times to laser up close to someone?

 

[Ukulele]

>There weren't any updated tier lists during Melee's death iirc. Maybe there was one?

Here is the list of NTSC tier lists through the years done by "Smash Back Room" (lol what even is that.) https://www.ssbwiki.com/List_of_SSBM_tier_lists_(NTSC)
Brawl was released in the USA around early 2008/late 2007, IIRC. There are some tier lists in this time era, as you can see.

>Either way I doubt it was as rigorous as the ones that came before it.

Each tier list is cited with links to the threads in which they were made. I'm too lazy to read through them, but I do have a question: Why are you doubting that? Is it because of people leaving the scene and therefore the analysis/debate had in these threads became weaker/taken less seriously?

>Foxes did not win as many majors before besides like PC Chris at Oc3 but they still populated the top spots more than any other character which is still pretty significant.

lolnational. I always forget how the tournament size terms are defined and misuse them. >_>
Anyway, yeah, I agree. At least from their perspective it must be significant. Although it's quite clear that people arbitrarily make distinctions in results when in high tier/"mid tier" cases. As far as I can tell it must be purely arbitrary, as I've never seen a reasonable argument for why there is such a huge gap. People value results but will claim CF results are not that great because he has never won a "major," for example.

>Focusing on who wins events reduces accuracy when assessing these sorts of things to me.

If I'm undersanding you correctly, then I completely agree. Results are simply not interchangeable with a characters tools or even a characters tools with respect to human/tournament limitations. Results in the "Hey, I've done an anaylsis on these sets and MUs at these "stacked" tournaments" is a lot better supporting reasoning in line with the tools/human limitations, but they're still not the same. When people say results, they never mean it in that way, anyway, though. They just say, "hurr durr this charater got 2nd" for their supporting reasoning.I catch myself rooting for all of those Luigi mains and Amsa so hard recently. I believe in their toolsets and just want to see more good "showings" for them. If my anecdotal ability to note trends is accurate, people will simply revert back to the opinion that the characters are bad regardless of their potential good showings/recent good showings, unfortunately.

>The game is arguably at its most competitive point in history so it would make sense that Fox now wins more than before.

Of course. In my opinion it is because people reason their choice of Fox as a main because "he's clearly the best." I'm scared of what this will do the game, results/perceived tier list balancing wise. The more Fox floods big tournament matches, the more people will complain about the character being the "only viable one." I'm really not sure where this will lead to, but I can see that it drives a lot of people from the game. I started off in other fighting game communities and the friends I gained from those communities (and communities overall generally) automatically discount Melee because of things like this. I don't want my favorite game of all time to grow stagnant right as I get into it. =3=

The last thing I will say is that I hate when people like Mang0 and people in SoCal generally claim that people only want to see Spacies. Sure, it's a lot of fun; and I can see that certain characters they hate have potential "playstyles" that are turn-offs. The question here would be, are these characters forced into playing with these playstyles (Does Puff HAVE to do nigh-invincible aerial based ledge stalls in order to beat Fox? Or is this simply a tactic employed by Hungrybox and he can't actually prove this claim?) However, regardless of how those characters are "forced" to play, characters like Yoshi, Falcon, Pikachu, Samus, and Luigi can do a ton of entertaining, cool stuff, too.

Hey everyone
I understand one thing that falcos often overlook are lasers. Recently, I realize my laser game was insanely poor because I laser with no purpose. I mix up my lasers but i feel like i can't find proper openings. The one method that Mang0 mentioned was trying to read the opponent's movement off of lasers, however, I still can't get a grasp on how it works.

I recall a stream where Mang0 was explaining the concept of "mid-long" distances, ground level, for lasers. Watching the opponent choose options in response to your lasers and reacting therefore. You should probably take this account as your baseline thought process and then recognize the patterns of responsive options to create "reads." In other words, you were watching closely and now they are dash -> shielding alot of laser with similar dash lengths/similar timings for holding shield respectively. You can expect this and preemptively punish next time. Other players may DJ/FH/SH out, take platforms, and so on. Additionally, there are specific "good options" characters have that players may frequently use that you can theorycraft counters for. Structure is really important for reads and I can elaborate further on that if you want. Close range is much more complicated; lasers are complicated. I just want to add something to your comment.

I was trying it for the past week in friendlies but I could not read if they were going to be defensive or aggressive on my next laser.
Other then that, what else can lasers be used for in neutral? and when are the right times to laser up close to someone?

This is PP territory + I'm too lazy to answer. If you find my insight helpful, then I would be more than willing to help out more though.

 

[TheChocolateLava]

I'm looking for some feedback on a small piece of neutral analysis I did on a recent set of mine. I'm working on making PP-style neutral game analysis notes a bigger part of my improvement and was hoping to get some thoughts from the man himself. In this example, I take note of a neutral interaction and spin-off into theory about it. I'm interested to know if the content of the analysis is useful, but also if I'm being too specific or too general in what/how I'm trying to analyze.

Here's the video I was analyzing, if anyone's interested in watching a close/hype mid-level set lmao. (includes relevant timestamp).

• I avoided a run-off fair from the side plat with my dashdance. I didn't whiff punish and I'm not sure if I could have...
• Run-off fair from a platform strikes me as a common option, so lets break it down!
• Marth's fair doesn't have too many active frames, so an early or mid height fair should be whiff-punishable if I'm in the right spot! note: practice DD- punishing this with 20XX replay.
• Can I also punish this with crouch cancel shine/grab? DD and CC should punish early and mid fair, but might lose to late fair.
• Late fair might lose to a hitbox! I could bair/utilt/aerial before marth's aerial comes out if they're doing it late.
• (at this point, I drew a diagram of four options interacting like a rock-paper-scissors diagram: early fair beats hitbox, hitbox beats late fair, late fair beats DD/CC, DD/CC beats early fair. I also start wondering about the pros/cons of DD vs CC in this situation)
• Utilt sounds like the juciest punish, but how can I move into position to get an uptilt? If I'm dash dancing, shield stop bair would be the go-to hitbox option, but at low percents that's not going to combo super well. If they're not mixing up their timing on when to run-off bair, then I can read it and wavedash forward uptilt.
• (I look back at the video and decide that I could have wavedashed forwards after my second laser and uptilted to cover runoff fair)
• A good play in the neutral?
• I wonder if jumping with shine is worth the risk.
• If a marth can shield drop, then their falling fairs out of dash are not limited by the position of the platform, and making reads with uptilt doesn't seem like a good plan. In that case, I should stick to the above mixup (DD/CC vs bair/hitbox).
• (I watch the next neutral interaction and notice): laser can also beat late run-off fair!
• I wonder, how does spotdodge do here? What about shield?
• I conclude: practice my dd/cc punish on falling fair at home. in tournament, try the wd fwd utilt read and pay attention to the timing of any run-off fairs.

I feel pretty good about this analysis but I'm worried I'm falling into pitfalls of being focused on the wrong things. After writing all of this out for feedback, I realize that I never even considered shield and punishes OoS as a defensive option or the marth using aerials other than fair. Is my analysis of this situation too specific? Am I being too general by not thinking enough about what actions my character is doing before this interaction and what positions I need to be in?

I would love some feedback on this. Thanks in advance to anyone willing to chime in!

edit/PS: Is there a general rule for falco about punishing things with in place options (shield/CC) vs with movement? Like "as falco, use movement to whiff punish whenever possible because shielding leaves you too vulnerable to grab" or "falco doesn't have the movement to whiff punish consistently so use punishes in place"?

I guess this is wishful thinking and probably depends on the interaction. Can't wait to learn all 151 neutral interactions and become the pokemaster Kappa. Goddam melee is hard!

 

[FE_Hector]

Alright, after playing and thinking for a long while, I've finally been able to pinpoint some of my broader issues that aren't related to execution (put together a training regimen to work specifically on that recently). So, here we go.

1.) In the middle of a game, I'm never really sure of what I should be doing after I land a laser. I get that there's always the option of lasering more, but even then, it doesn't feel like I understand how I'm supposed to be creating an opening off of them. The way I see it, I really need to get a solid laser -> aerial so that I can actually start setting up a combo so I can do something with the fact that I'm Falco, but I'm always worried about their shielding (which they like to do). I know that laser -> grab is often a good thing against shielding opponents, and it's something that I go for pretty often. The problem is that there are opponents who don't fear the laser -> grab ever and will gladly just get grabbed a billion times rather than just let go of R at a timing that actually makes my aerials decent. Do I just need to try and figure out when they'll be dropping their shield more and punish around that time or what? That's the big solution I've come up with, but it sounds like a very discipline-oriented read that probably won't work that well against players that are capable of mixing themselves up.

2.) Especially against Fox and Falcon, I'm not sure when I need to stop moving or lasering sometimes. Like I want to keep them in one place with good use of lasers, but plenty of people are at least moderately good at dealing with lasers. And I know that I should be dash dancing to try and learn their reactions in most of these situations, which I feel like I do alright, but then they do something that I feel I need utilt for and I'm just kinda lost. I see Fox full hop nair or Falcon nair towards me, but I'm in the middle of a dash and don't have time to stop and utilt. They also space it well enough that I can't really just try to dash out of the way of it, either, so I just go for an AC bair to try and force a trade, which doesn't always feel worth it because of how uncomfortable I am with laser followups like I mentioned in #1.

It's also weird for me because I'm not afraid of making hard reads once i'm confident in them, it's just a matter of getting to that point. Nothing feels really comfortable to me with this character right now. I've halfway resorted to using aerials and dash attacks as whiff punishes, but in that case I feel like I should just commit to the switch to Fox so I can actually dash dance and get more reliable openings off of grab to actually condition them to stop shielding so much so that aerials become a good option, but I'd really prefer to just stick with the bird.

Please help Dr Peepee

 

[Ukulele]

lel all of these walls of texts

PP is going to come back like "one at a time please"

 

[clowsui]

Alright, after playing and thinking for a long while, I've finally been able to pinpoint some of my broader issues that aren't related to execution (put together a training regimen to work specifically on that recently). So, here we go.

1.) In the middle of a game, I'm never really sure of what I should be doing after I land a laser. I get that there's always the option of lasering more, but even then, it doesn't feel like I understand how I'm supposed to be creating an opening off of them. The way I see it, I really need to get a solid laser -> aerial so that I can actually start setting up a combo so I can do something with the fact that I'm Falco, but I'm always worried about their shielding (which they like to do). I know that laser -> grab is often a good thing against shielding opponents, and it's something that I go for pretty often. The problem is that there are opponents who don't fear the laser -> grab ever and will gladly just get grabbed a billion times rather than just let go of R at a timing that actually makes my aerials decent. Do I just need to try and figure out when they'll be dropping their shield more and punish around that time or what? That's the big solution I've come up with, but it sounds like a very discipline-oriented read that probably won't work that well against players that are capable of mixing themselves up.

2.) Especially against Fox and Falcon, I'm not sure when I need to stop moving or lasering sometimes. Like I want to keep them in one place with good use of lasers, but plenty of people are at least moderately good at dealing with lasers. And I know that I should be dash dancing to try and learn their reactions in most of these situations, which I feel like I do alright, but then they do something that I feel I need utilt for and I'm just kinda lost. I see Fox full hop nair or Falcon nair towards me, but I'm in the middle of a dash and don't have time to stop and utilt. They also space it well enough that I can't really just try to dash out of the way of it, either, so I just go for an AC bair to try and force a trade, which doesn't always feel worth it because of how uncomfortable I am with laser followups like I mentioned in #1.

It's also weird for me because I'm not afraid of making hard reads once i'm confident in them, it's just a matter of getting to that point. Nothing feels really comfortable to me with this character right now. I've halfway resorted to using aerials and dash attacks as whiff punishes, but in that case I feel like I should just commit to the switch to Fox so I can actually dash dance and get more reliable openings off of grab to actually condition them to stop shielding so much so that aerials become a good option, but I'd really prefer to just stick with the bird.

Please help Dr Peepee

find me at next TDML/ECG and we'll play and i can try 2 help you with some of this =)

- chi

 

[Dr Peepee]

Hey everyone
I understand one thing that falcos often overlook are lasers. Recently, I realize my laser game was insanely poor because I laser with no purpose. I mix up my lasers but i feel like i can't find proper openings. The one method that Mang0 mentioned was trying to read the opponent's movement off of lasers, however, I still can't get a grasp on how it works. I was trying it for the past week in friendlies but I could not read if they were going to be defensive or aggressive on my next laser.
Other then that, what else can lasers be used for in neutral? and when are the right times to laser up close to someone?

Think of various factors that could impact your opponent. What do they get rewarded for after laser? How close are you? What happened just before you lasered? What happened last time you lasered in that position? What can you do after your laser to threaten or counter them?

These types of questions get you thinking deeper about the positions and how to control your opponent with lasers.

>There weren't any updated tier lists during Melee's death iirc. Maybe there was one?

Here is the list of NTSC tier lists through the years done by "Smash Back Room" (lol what even is that.) https://www.ssbwiki.com/List_of_SSBM_tier_lists_(NTSC)
Brawl was released in the USA around early 2008/late 2007, IIRC. There are some tier lists in this time era, as you can see.

>Either way I doubt it was as rigorous as the ones that came before it.

Each tier list is cited with links to the threads in which they were made. I'm too lazy to read through them, but I do have a question: Why are you doubting that? Is it because of people leaving the scene and therefore the analysis/debate had in these threads became weaker/taken less seriously?

>Foxes did not win as many majors before besides like PC Chris at Oc3 but they still populated the top spots more than any other character which is still pretty significant.

lolnational. I always forget how the tournament size terms are defined and misuse them. >_>
Anyway, yeah, I agree. At least from their perspective it must be significant. Although it's quite clear that people arbitrarily make distinctions in results when in high tier/"mid tier" cases. As far as I can tell it must be purely arbitrary, as I've never seen a reasonable argument for why there is such a huge gap. People value results but will claim CF results are not that great because he has never won a "major," for example.

>Focusing on who wins events reduces accuracy when assessing these sorts of things to me.

If I'm undersanding you correctly, then I completely agree. Results are simply not interchangeable with a characters tools or even a characters tools with respect to human/tournament limitations. Results in the "Hey, I've done an anaylsis on these sets and MUs at these "stacked" tournaments" is a lot better supporting reasoning in line with the tools/human limitations, but they're still not the same. When people say results, they never mean it in that way, anyway, though. They just say, "hurr durr this charater got 2nd" for their supporting reasoning.I catch myself rooting for all of those Luigi mains and Amsa so hard recently. I believe in their toolsets and just want to see more good "showings" for them. If my anecdotal ability to note trends is accurate, people will simply revert back to the opinion that the characters are bad regardless of their potential good showings/recent good showings, unfortunately.

>The game is arguably at its most competitive point in history so it would make sense that Fox now wins more than before.

Of course. In my opinion it is because people reason their choice of Fox as a main because "he's clearly the best." I'm scared of what this will do the game, results/perceived tier list balancing wise. The more Fox floods big tournament matches, the more people will complain about the character being the "only viable one." I'm really not sure where this will lead to, but I can see that it drives a lot of people from the game. I started off in other fighting game communities and the friends I gained from those communities (and communities overall generally) automatically discount Melee because of things like this. I don't want my favorite game of all time to grow stagnant right as I get into it. =3=

The last thing I will say is that I hate when people like Mang0 and people in SoCal generally claim that people only want to see Spacies. Sure, it's a lot of fun; and I can see that certain characters they hate have potential "playstyles" that are turn-offs. The question here would be, are these characters forced into playing with these playstyles (Does Puff HAVE to do nigh-invincible aerial based ledge stalls in order to beat Fox? Or is this simply a tactic employed by Hungrybox and he can't actually prove this claim?) However, regardless of how those characters are "forced" to play, characters like Yoshi, Falcon, Pikachu, Samus, and Luigi can do a ton of entertaining, cool stuff, too.



I recall a stream where Mang0 was explaining the concept of "mid-long" distances, ground level, for lasers. Watching the opponent choose options in response to your lasers and reacting therefore. You should probably take this account as your baseline thought process and then recognize the patterns of responsive options to create "reads." In other words, you were watching closely and now they are dash -> shielding alot of laser with similar dash lengths/similar timings for holding shield respectively. You can expect this and preemptively punish next time. Other players may DJ/FH/SH out, take platforms, and so on. Additionally, there are specific "good options" characters have that players may frequently use that you can theorycraft counters for. Structure is really important for reads and I can elaborate further on that if you want. Close range is much more complicated; lasers are complicated. I just want to add something to your comment.



This is PP territory + I'm too lazy to answer. If you find my insight helpful, then I would be more than willing to help out more though.

Yeah so basically the back room was really dead after Brawl came out and discussion was extremely lacking. The only relevant thing that happened was Scar and Hax arguing to get Mute City and Brinstar banned lol. Maybe that tier list was alright but discussion was awfully sparse compared to the previous tier list, with many members only showing up to vote and not doing anything else. Also there were less active members anyway so that means less diverse opinions, and people generally cared less about the game since it was pretty dead so it was less informed anyway. My sense for that tier list and especially the 2013 one was that we didn't want to do the work. The 2013 one I don't know who even voted on it I think it was a very very very small project since hardly anyone used Smashboards at that point and it was moreso done to build hype since esports happened. Every tier list since the 07/08 one I've regarded as not rigorous at all and/or influenced by melee's state as a game.

Yeah so the Fox thing I wouldn't worry terribly about. While the Fox bandwagonning is strong at all levels, there are people like me and Mango and Leffen at the top who all fight it as well which I've noticed does influence popular opinion too. Especially once I make my videos and do my streams I want to do I think that can calm people down. Fox is very strongly in contention for best character but that doesn't mean he's broken. Especially with our stage list. For most people they really should just focus on improving rather than hating Fox though since that's the way to overcome him even at the top level imo.

Yeah so character traits definitely predispose puff to take longer to get in for example, but she can still get in and fight well. Mango proved that. We wouldn't say Marth can only fish for grabs and edge camp because M2K does it because we know Marth has more tools. Granted the faster characters are how we bill Melee as an interesting game, and aggression will always be a fan favorite in any sport and imo people are more likely to express themselves if they're incorporating more aggression into their game. That said, I like Melee and try to push it as a game where you can play whatever style you want and be successful(provided your character is good enough like top 10ish good enough lol).

I'm looking for some feedback on a small piece of neutral analysis I did on a recent set of mine. I'm working on making PP-style neutral game analysis notes a bigger part of my improvement and was hoping to get some thoughts from the man himself. In this example, I take note of a neutral interaction and spin-off into theory about it. I'm interested to know if the content of the analysis is useful, but also if I'm being too specific or too general in what/how I'm trying to analyze.

Here's the video I was analyzing, if anyone's interested in watching a close/hype mid-level set lmao. (includes relevant timestamp).

• I avoided a run-off fair from the side plat with my dashdance. I didn't whiff punish and I'm not sure if I could have...
• Run-off fair from a platform strikes me as a common option, so lets break it down!
• Marth's fair doesn't have too many active frames, so an early or mid height fair should be whiff-punishable if I'm in the right spot! note: practice DD- punishing this with 20XX replay.
• Can I also punish this with crouch cancel shine/grab? DD and CC should punish early and mid fair, but might lose to late fair.
• Late fair might lose to a hitbox! I could bair/utilt/aerial before marth's aerial comes out if they're doing it late.
• (at this point, I drew a diagram of four options interacting like a rock-paper-scissors diagram: early fair beats hitbox, hitbox beats late fair, late fair beats DD/CC, DD/CC beats early fair. I also start wondering about the pros/cons of DD vs CC in this situation)
• Utilt sounds like the juciest punish, but how can I move into position to get an uptilt? If I'm dash dancing, shield stop bair would be the go-to hitbox option, but at low percents that's not going to combo super well. If they're not mixing up their timing on when to run-off bair, then I can read it and wavedash forward uptilt.
• (I look back at the video and decide that I could have wavedashed forwards after my second laser and uptilted to cover runoff fair)
• A good play in the neutral?
• I wonder if jumping with shine is worth the risk.
• If a marth can shield drop, then their falling fairs out of dash are not limited by the position of the platform, and making reads with uptilt doesn't seem like a good plan. In that case, I should stick to the above mixup (DD/CC vs bair/hitbox).
• (I watch the next neutral interaction and notice): laser can also beat late run-off fair!
• I wonder, how does spotdodge do here? What about shield?
• I conclude: practice my dd/cc punish on falling fair at home. in tournament, try the wd fwd utilt read and pay attention to the timing of any run-off fairs.

I feel pretty good about this analysis but I'm worried I'm falling into pitfalls of being focused on the wrong things. After writing all of this out for feedback, I realize that I never even considered shield and punishes OoS as a defensive option or the marth using aerials other than fair. Is my analysis of this situation too specific? Am I being too general by not thinking enough about what actions my character is doing before this interaction and what positions I need to be in?

I would love some feedback on this. Thanks in advance to anyone willing to chime in!

edit/PS: Is there a general rule for falco about punishing things with in place options (shield/CC) vs with movement? Like "as falco, use movement to whiff punish whenever possible because shielding leaves you too vulnerable to grab" or "falco doesn't have the movement to whiff punish consistently so use punishes in place"?

I guess this is wishful thinking and probably depends on the interaction. Can't wait to learn all 151 neutral interactions and become the pokemaster Kappa. Goddam melee is hard!

Yeah so what you did here is actually what you should be doing for every situation in a match you see. It's the right way! A good rule of thumb is to do two things when you have ideas like this: 1. test it out with another person, ideally just running the situation over and over. 2. watch videos to see how higher level Falcos beat the option and how higher level Marths adapted. If you do those two things when you get ideas then you'll be set. Also, don't be afraid to make tentative hypotheses and test those out. So things like "being closer to his runoff fair position where i can cc or shield shine it means Marth is less likely to pick that option and will instead move away from me or try to intercept me getting there."

Yeah so to your edit, too many Falcos go for spastic movement(my bad) and not enough dash stop or wd actions. You don't need to do lots and lots of dashes, you need to do actions with PURPOSE. If you're doing like 6 dashes and aren't sure what you're threatening anymore and your opponent hits you, then you know you need to simplify. Stick to 1-2, occasionally 3 dashes at a time and pick your options that way. You'll find more clarity there.

Alright, after playing and thinking for a long while, I've finally been able to pinpoint some of my broader issues that aren't related to execution (put together a training regimen to work specifically on that recently). So, here we go.

1.) In the middle of a game, I'm never really sure of what I should be doing after I land a laser. I get that there's always the option of lasering more, but even then, it doesn't feel like I understand how I'm supposed to be creating an opening off of them. The way I see it, I really need to get a solid laser -> aerial so that I can actually start setting up a combo so I can do something with the fact that I'm Falco, but I'm always worried about their shielding (which they like to do). I know that laser -> grab is often a good thing against shielding opponents, and it's something that I go for pretty often. The problem is that there are opponents who don't fear the laser -> grab ever and will gladly just get grabbed a billion times rather than just let go of R at a timing that actually makes my aerials decent. Do I just need to try and figure out when they'll be dropping their shield more and punish around that time or what? That's the big solution I've come up with, but it sounds like a very discipline-oriented read that probably won't work that well against players that are capable of mixing themselves up.

2.) Especially against Fox and Falcon, I'm not sure when I need to stop moving or lasering sometimes. Like I want to keep them in one place with good use of lasers, but plenty of people are at least moderately good at dealing with lasers. And I know that I should be dash dancing to try and learn their reactions in most of these situations, which I feel like I do alright, but then they do something that I feel I need utilt for and I'm just kinda lost. I see Fox full hop nair or Falcon nair towards me, but I'm in the middle of a dash and don't have time to stop and utilt. They also space it well enough that I can't really just try to dash out of the way of it, either, so I just go for an AC bair to try and force a trade, which doesn't always feel worth it because of how uncomfortable I am with laser followups like I mentioned in #1.

It's also weird for me because I'm not afraid of making hard reads once i'm confident in them, it's just a matter of getting to that point. Nothing feels really comfortable to me with this character right now. I've halfway resorted to using aerials and dash attacks as whiff punishes, but in that case I feel like I should just commit to the switch to Fox so I can actually dash dance and get more reliable openings off of grab to actually condition them to stop shielding so much so that aerials become a good option, but I'd really prefer to just stick with the bird.

Please help Dr Peepee

1. Shine, late Dair, and mid/late Nair if you launch them are your best combo starters, so you want to look to hit those. Laser wd/dash(or run) shine, sh aerial, dash back sh aerial in are some of your staple combo starters. However, grab can be really good at opening these things up if you have good grab followups(not true combos usually). Grab discourages shield, which lets you do the rest of these options. So laser grab or laser shine grab, which are pretty strong in neutral too, open up a lot more mixups and new ways to get damage. As for what to decide to do after laser, my comments to some others above may be useful.

2. Don't over-DD. 1-2 dashes max. Sometimes just laser and observe. That type of stuff should help you get your Utilt out and not spastically DD'ing. I go over this above too.






THE LONG POSTS WTF GUYZ

 

[Ukulele]

Dr Peepee I c I c =3=

FE_Hector

1) In the middle of a game, I'm never really sure of what I should be doing after I land a laser.

It's all about structure, my friend. What character are you facing? What stage are you on? What is your positioning relative to said character and the stage? Do you have any knowledge of the counter options your opponent *CAN* use against lasers (a lot of players dont have tech skill down for certain options)? What is their percent?

I get that there's always the option of lasering more,

You're correct in that it indeed is an option that is availble to you at all times; (for the sake of this disucssion, it is, anyway) however, that doesn't mean that is necessarily going to keep you from being hit or keep your opponent from maneuvering around it.

but even then, it doesn't feel like I understand how I'm supposed to be creating an opening off of them.

Personally, I have an in-depth series of notes for two relevant categories to "opening." You can figure out what combos/pseudo combos from laser at various percents, characters, and positions. You can also figure out how it works in relation to counter options. If you laser 3 Falco lengths away (imagine neutral state animation falco and his horizontal measurement; it's close range) from Fox and Fox shields, how many frames of shield stun does Fox receive? Where am I located relative to Fox? What options OoS does Fox have? Can the player perform these options? What percent is Fox at? What is the player doing in past scenarios similar to this? Given these circumstances, what options do I have to cover those options? Stage can play a role but in this scenario, a grounded and close-range positioning, any stage applies.
Going off of the variables I gave: positioning, shielding Fox, let's go further for an in-depth example: He chooses a WD OoS away from you. Let's say not a min/max esque length, just an average one. Obviously, this can vary position wise, but it's not practical to talk about every one. You will have options to punish well in this range, trust me. Anyways, now we can get to the good stuff: countering their counter. There are several methods to structure your counters. In my case, with so many variables given, you could use the newest version of 20xx to set this up and see if you can catch the WD OoS from this range with mixed drift/ff jumps (beginning of parabola, you input drift as quickly as possible; latter end of parabola (y-velocity is now negative), you input the ff.) This is just an example, you can test many different things, and you don't necessarily have to be this precise from my experience but it seems to help. You could say you want a running shine/fox-trot JC shine in this scenario and see if it works via trial and error, too; adapting your counter as you expect same or very similar scenario again/react to it(in my experience, this can give players trouble; including me sometimes cuz "instinctive habits" just make sure to think about it and work hard at attempting it). Hence why I claim there are multiple methods. WD OoS with these variables is seemingly more complicated than something like full-hopping as a counter, as Fox has more grounded options that may be hard for you to properly structure around and therefore "react" to at this range and given your own choice of option. Let's see if my claim is correct: Spot-dodge, roll, CC to cancel WD momentum/provide CC purpose/open for crouching options such as shine or d tilt, short hop (I'm including this here due to the ability of short hop to interact with options so close to the ground/grounded; cancels -> options included; ex: jc grab), dash (fukken pivots...), need I go on? Let's compare to full hop and say this is FD or any stage position with no available "platform options" to keep this simple and prove my point for easiness in theorycrafting comparatively: option(airdodge/aerial/shine/b moves etc; clearly only some are valuable against any player with experience/reflexes) moves out of the f hop while rising (any point), DJ rising option, f hop/dj normal fall -> ff range at frame where they are activated. You can land/not get juggled with up-b/side b shorten mix up landing options but on FD it's worse than other stages, clearly -- it's also worse than Falco's ability to do the same thing. Laser with Fox is not the same as Falco, and I can't think of any other possible option. It's quite clear to see in the simplcity of this scenario branch compared to the grounded one. Your structure will be more simple -- this will make it easier to practically react to any option they choose here with some of your own pretty easily.
so ye, qed etc. There are many methods for figuring out "neutral" scenarios, but it's going to take some work and creativity.

The way I see it, I really need to get a solid laser -> aerial so that I can actually start setting up a combo so I can do something with the fact that I'm Falco,

Well, not to be rude or anything, but you're very wrong. Laser combos into many things on many characters at many percents for many hitlag influences/quick actions out of it/cc even. I have at least 50-100 something pages of notes on Falco combo tests if you want to get rly rigorous, but I'm too lazy to do anything aside from give you one example for now: Laser -> jab CAN (this is given a preset list of conditions) combo on any character in the game, for example.

but I'm always worried about their shielding (which they like to do).

wtf why? -_- (youll see why im right in asking this...)

I know that laser -> grab is often a good thing against shielding opponents, and it's something that I go for pretty often.

Laser -> grab via aerial drift in to character JUST getting out of shield stun or simply holding shield too long etc can be amazing -- especially the risk reward component against certain characters.
>The problem is that there are opponents who don't fear the laser -> grab ever and will gladly just get grabbed a billion times rather than just let go of R at a timing that actually makes my aerials decent.
woah woah woah hold up there big goy
What characters are your opponents using? PPMD is the guy who revolutionized the throw follow up game for Falco im p sure so he probably knows details here and there that I haven't figured out yet buuuuut against many characters falco has quite a few true throw follow ups and can set up landing/pressure/juggle scenarios regardless of whether or not it will connect due to weight/di/your choice of option. For example, Fox is forced into a crouching animation via dthrow to where as no other character is affected like this (although d throw near ledge and on platforms has applications on any character to my knowledge. Maybe there is an easy edge slip technique? Obviously you can di/roll in ledge d throw). He also can get punished hard off of f throw knock downs, f throw/b throw/u throw in many ways. I think you need to recognize the follow options in order to appreciate getting the laser grab conversion. This will improve your "punish" game a lot. To touch upon the aformentioned juggle pressure, you should srsly ask pp. He has a great understanding of many of the scenarios in this category.

Anyways, the reason I said hold up is because you explain why your opponent holds shield in your very own comment. Why would they not hold shield when your grab follow ups are much weaker than your aerial ones, presumably? This isn't even touching upon the fact that you seem to be implying aerials are not useful on shield for shield dmg/shield poking/forcing oos options/GRABS!

Do I just need to try and figure out when they'll be dropping their shield more and punish around that time or what? That's the big solution I've come up with, but it sounds like a very discipline-oriented read that probably won't work that well against players that are capable of mixing themselves up.
2.) Especially against Fox and Falcon, I'm not sure when I need to stop moving or lasering sometimes. Like I want to keep them in one place with good use of lasers, but plenty of people are at least moderately good at dealing with lasers. And I know that I should be dash dancing to try and learn their reactions in most of these situations, which I feel like I do alright, but then they do something that I feel I need utilt for and I'm just kinda lost. I see Fox full hop nair or Falcon nair towards me, but I'm in the middle of a dash and don't have time to stop and utilt. They also space it well enough that I can't really just try to dash out of the way of it, either, so I just go for an AC bair to try and force a trade, which doesn't always feel worth it because of how uncomfortable I am with laser followups like I mentioned in #1.

It's also weird for me because I'm not afraid of making hard reads once i'm confident in them, it's just a matter of getting to that point. Nothing feels really comfortable to me with this character right now. I've halfway resorted to using aerials and dash attacks as whiff punishes, but in that case I feel like I should just commit to the switch to Fox so I can actually dash dance and get more reliable openings off of grab to actually condition them to stop shielding so much so that aerials become a good option, but I'd really prefer to just stick with the bird.

I feel as though I've told you a lot, not sure what else to comment on. >tfw you dont read it because im not ppmd
Helping people in smash in a legit way is too much... i dont even feel like grammaring anymore (clearly)
Anyway, I've been thinking about it hard and im def going up Yoshi as a secondary to my Marth/Falco dual main... time to go grind... I'll see u bois l8r...

 

[FE_Hector]

Anyways, the reason I said hold up is because you explain why your opponent holds shield in your very own comment. Why would they not hold shield when your grab follow ups are much weaker than your aerial ones, presumably? This isn't even touching upon the fact that you seem to be implying aerials are not useful on shield for shield dmg/shield poking/forcing oos options/GRABS!

I'm not horrible at comboing off of grab by any means, but it's still rare that the combos are true or lead into any meaningful amount of damage. 10-30 when they're at low %s and often even less at mid/high%s is wayyyyy less threatening than being put in a situation where everybody knows that Falco can reliably kill, which is why it is they're willing to continue shielding.

Yes, I needa mess around with what situations I like f/bthrow in instead of just opting for uthrow (dthrow isn't safe against Fox since he can reliably shine out of it), but the fact that the punishes are inherently softer is the biggest portion of the problem here.

I appreciate what you said and will (like for all advice) definitely think on it and figure out what all I can do with it, though.

 

[Ukulele]

I'm not horrible at comboing off of grab by any means, but it's still rare that the combos are true or lead into any meaningful amount of damage. 10-30 when they're at low %s and often even less at mid/high%s is wayyyyy less threatening than being put in a situation where everybody knows that Falco can reliably kill, which is why it is they're willing to continue shielding.

Sorry about that false assumption then. I'm not sure how you would define rare but I think there is a lot of thought to be done in terms of determining a solid likelihood or probability with constraints. I also think your percent claims are not exactly true either. I also think the juggling pressure/ forced landing scenarios are huge and should be taken in to account for a lot of mus heavily due to certain characters' properties.

I definitely agree with your last comment though. I was wrong to assume they shield heavy because your throw follow ups aren't threatening.

Yes, I needa mess around with what situations I like f/bthrow in instead of just opting for uthrow (dthrow isn't safe against Fox since he can reliably shine out of it), but the fact that the punishes are inherently softer is the biggest portion of the problem here.

Well define "unsafe." You know the throw you are doing when you input it, the opponent does not. Can it be proven that the Fox can always react to this scenario? the throw seems so fast that its very inconsistent. I have gotten a lot of mileage out of d throw shine/ walk forward shine/ other fast options against foxes who understand the properties of down throw just like us and will counter me for it sometimes with that exact option: shine. I think your claim of inherently softer punishes can be talked about in a certain way with a counter response that would make you think that they're still pretty good damage wise, positioning wise potentially too.

I appreciate what you said and will (like for all advice) definitely think on it and figure out what all I can do with it, though.

I'm more than willing to discuss theorycrafting stuff whenever. I forgot to mention your comment on training methods, ive been doing A LOT on that lately

EDIT: although you probably shouldn't take ALL advice LOL. some advice is ****. my advice is not very well structured compared to pp's for example. much more concise and simple -- even more helpful specifically for some of your questions, but I would say my post helps figure out how to not have to ask pp for advice -- eg methods for theorycrafting/practicing "neutral" stuff. pp also doesn't have time to answer everything

 

[FE_Hector]

Sorry about that false assumption then. I'm not sure how you would define rare but I think there is a lot of thought to be done in terms of determining a solid likelihood or probability with constraints. I also think your percent claims are not exactly true either. I also think the juggling pressure/ forced landing scenarios are huge and should be taken in to account for a lot of mus heavily due to certain characters' properties.

I definitely agree with your last comment though. I was wrong to assume they shield heavy because your throw follow ups aren't threatening.



Well define "unsafe." You know the throw you are doing when you input it, the opponent does not. Can it be proven that the Fox can always react to this scenario? the throw seems so fast that its very inconsistent. I have gotten a lot of mileage out of d throw shine/ walk forward shine/ other fast options against foxes who understand the properties of down throw just like us and will counter me for it sometimes with that exact option: shine. I think your claim of inherently softer punishes can be talked about in a certain way with a counter response that would make you think that they're still pretty good damage wise, positioning wise potentially too.



I'm more than willing to discuss theorycrafting stuff whenever. I forgot to mention your comment on training methods, ive been doing A LOT on that lately

- False assumption was fine; I get where it came from. I say rare to TRUE followups, not followups in general. Because of lasers and how SDI-able they are from the uthrow, a lot of stuff is a baby read mixed with a reaction instead of just a true reaction to get the followup. For example, I'm pretty sure Fox can shine out of basically any uthrow you try to do before like 10%, but trying to shine him there isn't that bad since it's tight timing and a missing it isn't too uncommon + if they just shine in mid-air cuz I did it on a different timing then it works out in my favor.

- From what I remember when we had a more in-depth discussion about dthrow vs Fox before, if he DIs out a bit, then he can reliably shine you before you're even actionable again. And honestly, if people can consistently tech the dthrow, then you can with a bit of training consistently DI out and shine or go for any number of things. Feels really cheesy and risky to me.

I always appreciate these conversations cuz I enjoy seeing other people's views on the game, esp. as I'm still trying to mold my own.