PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[DogLifeGood]

@PPMD Hey PP I have a Q about how to efficiently use stage control against marth.
The situation is I have center stage while marth is in the corner. I don't always want to laser dash back approach b/c half of the time I fall for marth's tricky DD and get grab whiff punished. So when I try to let Marth take stage (to try and throw him off balance) I always end up putting myself in a bad position. I notice what mostly happens is i let Marth come in with a dash grab, dash attack or SH nair. To try and punish them for throwing these options I usually FH, which leads to me trading with a marth panic Utilt or I burn my DJ and get put in a bad position, or I ineffectively retreat to the corner.

I also feel like dashing back to beat marth dash attack isn't viable. And if I shield to beat that I put myself in a 50/50 (shield to beat dash attack or dash back to beat grab). On top of that Nair can shield poke and beats Dair in place (which could beat both dash attack and dash grab) but could lose to dash back.

I feel like this is a bad Q with a very obvious answer but I want to see what you think. I feel like I'm either missing a better situation I can create or I understand the RPS I just need to play it better.

 

[DogLifeGood]

One shield pressure option I feel like I have a poor grasp on is simply waveshining back. This should undoubtedly be used to bait bad attacks OoS, but do you think it is worthwhile instead of just shine grabbing which seems to lead to more solid positioning advantages? Maybe I'm not mentally prepared in the moment, but I can never seem to punish most OoS options. Whether it's Fox shine DJing away or Sheik/Peach nairing OoS and drifting back, it feels like I only ever get to reestablish laser pressure, and never actually get a direct punish.

I want someone else's opinion on this part too as the same thing happens to me a lot. I feel confident that in these situations you either hard guess their defensive OOS hitbox with a Dair or you mentally prepare to play the reestablished laser situation knowing they have less stage.

Although reestablished laser pressure seems like an easy situation to win I find that anticipation and how fast these situations can play make them much harder than they should be

 

[Bones0]

Even if it's far from the current meta, I don't want to wait until it's being adapted to. I want to have the best cycle of options already in rotation by the time something is figured out.

If your aerial is spaced at all, I could see shine grab missing. That's a fair enough point about the forward shine. I don't know the distance difference between shield DI/SDI and forward shine though.

If they buffer roll out they could get out of single shine laser pressure. Adding in the extra shine lag I'd be surprised if you could get anything even semi-reliable against buffer roll in, and that wouldn't be great since you'd lose positioning too if they were cornered.

The laser after shine, if it hits, is to get some more damage and keep the opponent locked up. Yes you do lose some frame advantage because they're out of lag sooner due to laser stun, but if they keep shielding you get a new shield pressure mixup which I think is pretty cool. To me that makes this worth doing.

Oh you can WD through Marth's grab? I'll have to look into that since getting chasedowns on roll away would be really good.

Yeah I already know the throw confirms and want to develop my grab follows further, but I shouldn't always make things so difficult for myself and get more real pressure to complement my neutral game.

This has been good for me since my shield pressure game is pretty weak overall. I wrote some things down to fully test out when it's time. Thanks man

Planning ahead definitely makes sense, but because shield DIing the first shine of a double shine is so specific, there's already a myriad of options that you can comfortably use to beat it. Shine grab, retreating aerial, and even FH should all be effective vs. that setup. If you're worried about shield DI, I'd be much more concerned with opponents powershielding, light shielding, and/or shield DIing the initial aerial instead of the shine itself. It's much easier to get pushed further away from the aerial so that Falco's first shine doesn't hit than it is to get a shield SDI input timed during shine's shield stun. This is particularly noticeable vs. Luigi where hitting an aerial shine pressure string is actually very difficult even when he just shields it regularly. Counterplay vs. this seems a little more nuanced because it requires spacing mixups like drifting back with your aerial or bluffs like empty hopping in and shining.

I'll double check the leniency on waveshining through Marth to avoid his grab and post my findings here.

 

[Dr Peepee]

What do you mean by spaced dair in this situation? i feel like there's tons of ways to space dair and always get confused by this

That's a fair point. I meant dash/run forward and rising Dair forward but then pull back so you don't get too close but you're close enough to hit. If you're worried Peach will pull back then dash attack or something you can always full fadeback Dair.

@PPMD Hey PP I have a Q about how to efficiently use stage control against marth.
The situation is I have center stage while marth is in the corner. I don't always want to laser dash back approach b/c half of the time I fall for marth's tricky DD and get grab whiff punished. So when I try to let Marth take stage (to try and throw him off balance) I always end up putting myself in a bad position. I notice what mostly happens is i let Marth come in with a dash grab, dash attack or SH nair. To try and punish them for throwing these options I usually FH, which leads to me trading with a marth panic Utilt or I burn my DJ and get put in a bad position, or I ineffectively retreat to the corner.

I also feel like dashing back to beat marth dash attack isn't viable. And if I shield to beat that I put myself in a 50/50 (shield to beat dash attack or dash back to beat grab). On top of that Nair can shield poke and beats Dair in place (which could beat both dash attack and dash grab) but could lose to dash back.

I feel like this is a bad Q with a very obvious answer but I want to see what you think. I feel like I'm either missing a better situation I can create or I understand the RPS I just need to play it better.

Why don't you get closer so he can't dash back punish if you come in? Why don't you try lasering forward or lasering slightly forward? Why don't you do everything the same except pullback or waveland back?

You can hold down vs DA if you want, and angle your shield up and in against Nair if you need to.

Planning ahead definitely makes sense, but because shield DIing the first shine of a double shine is so specific, there's already a myriad of options that you can comfortably use to beat it. Shine grab, retreating aerial, and even FH should all be effective vs. that setup. If you're worried about shield DI, I'd be much more concerned with opponents powershielding, light shielding, and/or shield DIing the initial aerial instead of the shine itself. It's much easier to get pushed further away from the aerial so that Falco's first shine doesn't hit than it is to get a shield SDI input timed during shine's shield stun. This is particularly noticeable vs. Luigi where hitting an aerial shine pressure string is actually very difficult even when he just shields it regularly. Counterplay vs. this seems a little more nuanced because it requires spacing mixups like drifting back with your aerial or bluffs like empty hopping in and shining.

I'll double check the leniency on waveshining through Marth to avoid his grab and post my findings here.

Oh yeah I guess I should explain a little more. I've been thinking that in most aerial shine approaches, if the opponent just shield DIs/SDIs the aerial first and then the first shine they should be able to get out of the way of the second shine even if the aerial was deep(maybe not always or if they're caught off guard but I feel it's possible). So yeah I should have explained that part my bad it looks like I miscommunicated.

Sounds good

 

[Lucid41]

Trilliums set with west was nice. I'd like to see what this thread thought I felt like trill played pretty methodically idk though thoughts?

 

[bolt.]

Dr Peepee
I have a question about melee questions.

Are there any questions that don't get asked but would start pretty interesting discussion if they did?

Or maybe a question you would ask/idea you would like to flesh out with mango, westballz, or a future version of yourself?

Im interested in the questions themselves, not the answers.

:3

 

[Dr Peepee]

Really anything specific

Instead of "how do I beat defensive Marth" I'd love more of "how do I handle Marth's dash back vs aerial/jab in place?" Or asking about the importance of any move in particular and how it relates to the rest of the moveset/fundamentals, such as thinking about how AC Bair helps Falco zone and how it ties into laser threats and how it differs from FF Bair, etc. Major bonus points for coming up with your own theories beforehand because that's how learning is really done.

My main Falco questions for my future self are:

1. How much does SDI impact combos? Can you still reliably do the 40% to spacies at 0 or do you need to change it to something like 50/50s? How does comboing Marth/Sheik change from SDI when they used to just get hit?

2. What are the implications of double shine on shield, particularly against spacies/maybe Sheik?

 

[bolt.]

I'll work to come up with some decent questions and ideas of my own. Thank you

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

Dr Peepee
This is Ginger (working on getting a new account set up LOL)

The subject of SDI on Falco combos is an interesting one that KJH and I have recently explored. So to start the scenario, lets say you connect a down air on fox at 0% and combo it into a shine. I don't think that fox SDIing away (even with two SDI inputs) limits your ability to connect another down air unless he's off stage obviously. He is however lower to the ground than he would be if he had either DI'd in or DI'd up on your initial shine. This allows him to reach the ground by SDIing down with only 1 input of SDI + ASDI down. If he achieves this SDI down, he's actionable way before you finish your down air lag. He can up smash, grab, shine, shield, dash away, ect. If he DI's the shine in or up, he is required to get two or more inputs of SDI down to have any frame advantage on you. https://twitter.com/spotdodge_shine/status/874761367877808128 this short twitter video from KJH shows exactly what I'm referring to.

This basically establishes two different branches of combos on fox. If he DI's the shine out, I generally go for another shine, or if he's at a slightly higher % (lets say 30%) I'll waveshine > forward smash which will catch him trying to SDI the down air down and away. If he DI's the shine up or in, I connect a down air unless he SDI's up around 30-35% in which case you have to up air (I go for second hit only so I can either combo or tech chase depending on their DI of the up air).

I have not tested specific scenarios enough to speak on the exact implications of SDI with marth/sheik, but through my experience playing against them it doesn't seem to effect things much.

Hopefully this helps clarify some things! It's possibly you already knew all of this, but I think it's important for everyone here to reconsider the combo tree on FD against fast fallers because of SDI. I'm going to try to be more active in this thread and ask good questions.

 

[Bones0]

Dr Peepee
This is Ginger (working on getting a new account set up LOL)

The subject of SDI on Falco combos is an interesting one that KJH and I have recently explored. So to start the scenario, lets say you connect a down air on fox at 0% and combo it into a shine. I don't think that fox SDIing away (even with two SDI inputs) limits your ability to connect another down air unless he's off stage obviously. He is however lower to the ground than he would be if he had either DI'd in or DI'd up on your initial shine. This allows him to reach the ground by SDIing down with only 1 input of SDI + ASDI down. If he achieves this SDI down, he's actionable way before you finish your down air lag. He can up smash, grab, shine, shield, dash away, ect. If he DI's the shine in or up, he is required to get two or more inputs of SDI down to have any frame advantage on you. https://twitter.com/spotdodge_shine/status/874761367877808128 this short twitter video from KJH shows exactly what I'm referring to.

This basically establishes two different branches of combos on fox. If he DI's the shine out, I generally go for another shine, or if he's at a slightly higher % (lets say 30%) I'll waveshine > forward smash which will catch him trying to SDI the down air down and away. If he DI's the shine up or in, I connect a down air unless he SDI's up around 30-35% in which case you have to up air (I go for second hit only so I can either combo or tech chase depending on their DI of the up air).

I have not tested specific scenarios enough to speak on the exact implications of SDI with marth/sheik, but through my experience playing against them it doesn't seem to effect things much.

Hopefully this helps clarify some things! It's possibly you already knew all of this, but I think it's important for everyone here to reconsider the combo tree on FD against fast fallers because of SDI. I'm going to try to be more active in this thread and ask good questions.

I'm pretty sure you can just dair earlier and Fox won't reach the ground from a single SDI. R2Dliu was trying to demonstrate this escape against me and it never worked. lol I haven't labbed it myself though.

SDI makes Marth very difficult to combo, and Sheik basically impossible, at least from 0%. You can't set up your dair off of the shine properly before they're out of stun, and you constantly have to opt for suboptimal ground links when they SDI dair out of shine range (which is incredibly easy).

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

I'm pretty sure you can just dair earlier and Fox won't reach the ground from a single SDI. R2Dliu was trying to demonstrate this escape against me and it never worked. lol I haven't labbed it myself though.

SDI makes Marth very difficult to combo, and Sheik basically impossible, at least from 0%. You can't set up your dair off of the shine properly before they're out of stun, and you constantly have to opt for suboptimal ground links when they SDI dair out of shine range (which is incredibly easy).

Single SDI plus ASDI down as well (just clarifying). I don't think that you should take R2Dliu being bad at it as evidence of much. Kalindi and I did some pretty intensive testing in debug mode and in practice. We would do the dair as early as possible and the results were the same.

From my understanding Marth and Sheik were already "basically impossible" to true combo from 0%, I'm not sure SDI has much to do with this. As for the SDI on the down air out of shine range, I think this is more of an every character sort of thing so I didn't think we were referring to that SDI specifically.

This is sort of unrelated, but I'm curious if anyone has real insight into this. Without having done testing, it seems like certain characters reel back farther away from Falco when they're in hitstun from the dair than other characters which makes it harder to connection the shine even without SDI (samus for example). I'm curious if this is just my imagination or if this truly has something to do with it.

 

[`Rival]

Dr Peepee
This is Ginger (working on getting a new account set up LOL)

The subject of SDI on Falco combos is an interesting one that KJH and I have recently explored. So to start the scenario, lets say you connect a down air on fox at 0% and combo it into a shine. I don't think that fox SDIing away (even with two SDI inputs) limits your ability to connect another down air unless he's off stage obviously. He is however lower to the ground than he would be if he had either DI'd in or DI'd up on your initial shine. This allows him to reach the ground by SDIing down with only 1 input of SDI + ASDI down. If he achieves this SDI down, he's actionable way before you finish your down air lag. He can up smash, grab, shine, shield, dash away, ect. If he DI's the shine in or up, he is required to get two or more inputs of SDI down to have any frame advantage on you. https://twitter.com/spotdodge_shine/status/874761367877808128 this short twitter video from KJH shows exactly what I'm referring to.

This basically establishes two different branches of combos on fox. If he DI's the shine out, I generally go for another shine, or if he's at a slightly higher % (lets say 30%) I'll waveshine > forward smash which will catch him trying to SDI the down air down and away. If he DI's the shine up or in, I connect a down air unless he SDI's up around 30-35% in which case you have to up air (I go for second hit only so I can either combo or tech chase depending on their DI of the up air).

I have not tested specific scenarios enough to speak on the exact implications of SDI with marth/sheik, but through my experience playing against them it doesn't seem to effect things much.

Hopefully this helps clarify some things! It's possibly you already knew all of this, but I think it's important for everyone here to reconsider the combo tree on FD against fast fallers because of SDI. I'm going to try to be more active in this thread and ask good questions.

what if you nair instead of dair?

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

what if you nair instead of dair?

He DI's the nair down and away so you can't combo or tech chase off of it. It's decent to send them off stage, but I prefer to shine/f smash to send them farther.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Dr Peepee
This is Ginger (working on getting a new account set up LOL)

The subject of SDI on Falco combos is an interesting one that KJH and I have recently explored. So to start the scenario, lets say you connect a down air on fox at 0% and combo it into a shine. I don't think that fox SDIing away (even with two SDI inputs) limits your ability to connect another down air unless he's off stage obviously. He is however lower to the ground than he would be if he had either DI'd in or DI'd up on your initial shine. This allows him to reach the ground by SDIing down with only 1 input of SDI + ASDI down. If he achieves this SDI down, he's actionable way before you finish your down air lag. He can up smash, grab, shine, shield, dash away, ect. If he DI's the shine in or up, he is required to get two or more inputs of SDI down to have any frame advantage on you. https://twitter.com/spotdodge_shine/status/874761367877808128 this short twitter video from KJH shows exactly what I'm referring to.

This basically establishes two different branches of combos on fox. If he DI's the shine out, I generally go for another shine, or if he's at a slightly higher % (lets say 30%) I'll waveshine > forward smash which will catch him trying to SDI the down air down and away. If he DI's the shine up or in, I connect a down air unless he SDI's up around 30-35% in which case you have to up air (I go for second hit only so I can either combo or tech chase depending on their DI of the up air).

I have not tested specific scenarios enough to speak on the exact implications of SDI with marth/sheik, but through my experience playing against them it doesn't seem to effect things much.

Hopefully this helps clarify some things! It's possibly you already knew all of this, but I think it's important for everyone here to reconsider the combo tree on FD against fast fallers because of SDI. I'm going to try to be more active in this thread and ask good questions.

I...never considered (A)SDI down in the air there lol. Wow! Saved this info for later for sure, really interesting. Would you be okay with me putting this information in the OP? This is meta-changing stuff.

Why does his SDI up on the Dair matter at those higher percents? Are you suggesting he can jump(or shine?) before shine can hit? If so, can you hit with Utilt instead of Dair, and if so do you know what that looks like in terms of punish options? I would imagine that your followups on Uair aren't too great, especially if they keep DI'ing up on FD or get to a platform on other stages but maybe I'm wrong about that. Do you find that to combo fine even with the SDI? Actually, if you can connect with SH Uair does this mean you could hit them with dash for a frame or two into FH Bair so you could double hit Bair?

The SDI implications against Marth, from my limited experience using it against other Falcos, does feel significant since I can break more combos/force Falco to guess more instead of get an easier 50/50 or guaranteed hit, but I really do need to test that out too.

Thanks for taking the time to post this!

This is sort of unrelated, but I'm curious if anyone has real insight into this. Without having done testing, it seems like certain characters reel back farther away from Falco when they're in hitstun from the dair than other characters which makes it harder to connection the shine even without SDI (samus for example). I'm curious if this is just my imagination or if this truly has something to do with it.

I feel kinda sure that has to do with a character holding down when they get hit by Dair, but I don't really remember since I tested it a long long time ago. It's possible it's random like whether you go into an easier or harder to hit animation when you're weak hit at higher percents, but I don't really know. If you or anyone else can find out that'd be cool.





Edit: OH does this apply to Falco/Falcon too? Falco I'd imagine so but Falcon I'm less sure about.

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

I...never considered (A)SDI down in the air there lol. Wow! Saved this info for later for sure, really interesting. Would you be okay with me putting this information in the OP? This is meta-changing stuff.

Why does his SDI up on the Dair matter at those higher percents? Are you suggesting he can jump(or shine?) before shine can hit? If so, can you hit with Utilt instead of Dair, and if so do you know what that looks like in terms of punish options? I would imagine that your followups on Uair aren't too great, especially if they keep DI'ing up on FD or get to a platform on other stages but maybe I'm wrong about that. Do you find that to combo fine even with the SDI? Actually, if you can connect with SH Uair does this mean you could hit them with dash for a frame or two into FH Bair so you could double hit Bair?

The SDI implications against Marth, from my limited experience using it against other Falcos, does feel significant since I can break more combos/force Falco to guess more instead of get an easier 50/50 or guaranteed hit, but I really do need to test that out too.

Thanks for taking the time to post this!



I feel kinda sure that has to do with a character holding down when they get hit by Dair, but I don't really remember since I tested it a long long time ago. It's possible it's random like whether you go into an easier or harder to hit animation when you're weak hit at higher percents, but I don't really know. If you or anyone else can find out that'd be cool.

You can definitely put it in the OP! I find it to be very important as well.

My apologies if my response was worded in a confusing manner, but when I was talking about SDI up I was referring to SDIing the shine, not the down air. SDI up on the down air doesn't seem to have any effect on your ability to combo. If they SDI up on the shine around 30-35% you can't connect a down air before they break out of stun and are able to jump/shine out. The only aerial in this situation that will reach them is up air. Captain Falcon's have been abusing this for a while now, but foxes are starting to do it as well. The combos you get off of these up airs seem pretty good though I'm not 100% what hits you can get afterword, I just kinda freestyle at that point lol. I should definitely test stuff! I'll try to get back to you on that.

I actually haven't tested if falco/falcon can do the same, but my assumption is that they can. I'll do some testing today and get back to you

I have very limited Marth experience in my region, and it's possible they're just not good at SDIing falco combos Something I'd also like to bring up is that Falco can delay his hits in an unreactable way. So if someone is trying to SDI using the traditional "Slam the stick when you think you're gonna get hit" method it's very inconsistent for them. Unfortunately, I think people will just start wiggling their stick inbetween 2-3 notches and holding C stick until after they've been hit. This is something us Falcos should also be using in the ditto (and other match ups) though!

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

I feel kinda sure that has to do with a character holding down when they get hit by Dair, but I don't really remember since I tested it a long long time ago. It's possible it's random like whether you go into an easier or harder to hit animation when you're weak hit at higher percents, but I don't really know. If you or anyone else can find out that'd be cool.

I'm really hoping that it's not random, but that would make a lot of sense. I'm curious why them holding down would matter, but it would also make sense since it seems to happen a lot against characters/people who CC a lot lol
Thanks

 

[Dr Peepee]

You can definitely put it in the OP! I find it to be very important as well.

My apologies if my response was worded in a confusing manner, but when I was talking about SDI up I was referring to SDIing the shine, not the down air. SDI up on the down air doesn't seem to have any effect on your ability to combo. If they SDI up on the shine around 30-35% you can't connect a down air before they break out of stun and are able to jump/shine out. The only aerial in this situation that will reach them is up air. Captain Falcon's have been abusing this for a while now, but foxes are starting to do it as well. The combos you get off of these up airs seem pretty good though I'm not 100% what hits you can get afterword, I just kinda freestyle at that point lol. I should definitely test stuff! I'll try to get back to you on that.

I actually haven't tested if falco/falcon can do the same, but my assumption is that they can. I'll do some testing today and get back to you

I have very limited Marth experience in my region, and it's possible they're just not good at SDIing falco combos Something I'd also like to bring up is that Falco can delay his hits in an unreactable way. So if someone is trying to SDI using the traditional "Slam the stick when you think you're gonna get hit" method it's very inconsistent for them. Unfortunately, I think people will just start wiggling their stick inbetween 2-3 notches and holding C stick until after they've been hit. This is something us Falcos should also be using in the ditto (and other match ups) though!

Okay great thanks!

At those higher percents vs SDI up on shine, you can Dair into Utilt/Dair again correct? Which means that whether they hold up on that shine would be a 50/50 type of scenario and that would be really hard for them to react to.

For that last paragraph, do you think that's something works more on Marth/floaties since you mentioned Marth or do you think you can change up aerial/shine timing to mess with them? I worry about them just mashing too, but if you're sitting next to someone that'll be super easy to see so you won't have to waste time trying to find out. I already do the wiggling a lot and it works well for me so I don't see why others won't start doing it. This can open up unconventional punishes though, such as letting people jump when they're in the air and want to DI the shine/Dair up or something and you take their jump.

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

Yeah the up tilt/dair again instead of shine would be a great mix up in that scenario!

I think that in 20xx where everyone is mashing the SDI, changing up aerial/shine timings won't actually matter because they'll hit their SDI with very solid consistency. I don't think it's Marth specific. I've never really considered letting them jump in those situations where they'd wanna SDI shine up! I'll try to play around with that against KJH and see what comes of it.

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

Dr Peepee
I'm curious if you watched Westballz vs The Moon from GOML 2017 and if you had any thoughts.
Set for reference - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ4_5_K3Wo
I noticed that he shot less than 10 lasers that had any utility in 3 games. Just speculating, I would imagine it's because he's afraid of getting powershielded (and not being confident in how to deal with PS) or dash attacked. I personally think those are lame excuses to not abuse one of Falcos strongest neutral tools. I actually don't see much merit in not lasering at all! Do you think what Westballz was doing by not shooting lasers is objectively bad, or is there some good that could come of it? I ask because powershielding can definitely be frustrating to deal with, but I personally don't think that means that falcos should give up an option (lasering) because of it.

 

[Bones0]

Dr Peepee
I'm curious if you watched Westballz vs The Moon from GOML 2017 and if you had any thoughts.
Set for reference - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ4_5_K3Wo
I noticed that he shot less than 10 lasers that had any utility in 3 games. Just speculating, I would imagine it's because he's afraid of getting powershielded (and not being confident in how to deal with PS) or dash attacked. I personally think those are lame excuses to not abuse one of Falcos strongest neutral tools. I actually don't see much merit in not lasering at all! Do you think what Westballz was doing by not shooting lasers is objectively bad, or is there some good that could come of it? I ask because powershielding can definitely be frustrating to deal with, but I personally don't think that means that falcos should give up an option (lasering) because of it.

I also think it's bizarre how Wes plays against Marth without lasers. The last time I studied one of his sets vs. Pewpewu, he spammed immediate DJ, mixing up between drift back onto side plats, drift forward onto top plat, and in between plats to hit Marth. PPU somehow never adapted, and he won.

Also, I can explain the ground stun animation thing in a bit, gotta eat first.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Dr Peepee
I'm curious if you watched Westballz vs The Moon from GOML 2017 and if you had any thoughts.
Set for reference - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ4_5_K3Wo
I noticed that he shot less than 10 lasers that had any utility in 3 games. Just speculating, I would imagine it's because he's afraid of getting powershielded (and not being confident in how to deal with PS) or dash attacked. I personally think those are lame excuses to not abuse one of Falcos strongest neutral tools. I actually don't see much merit in not lasering at all! Do you think what Westballz was doing by not shooting lasers is objectively bad, or is there some good that could come of it? I ask because powershielding can definitely be frustrating to deal with, but I personally don't think that means that falcos should give up an option (lasering) because of it.

Westballz never shoots, most WC Falcos don't shoot and it drives me crazy. I think it might be kind of PS concern but I think he just likes moving and trying to hit them more I guess since he does this in every matchup. Now having said that, not shooting can be a fantastic mixup, but to make it your staple way of playing I think is clearly just crippling yourself. Even skewing toward less lasers like Mango does is alright(though I still don't fully agree), but Wes' amount of shooting is just consistently too low to be effective to me.

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

Westballz never shoots, most WC Falcos don't shoot and it drives me crazy. I think it might be kind of PS concern but I think he just likes moving and trying to hit them more I guess since he does this in every matchup. Now having said that, not shooting can be a fantastic mixup, but to make it your staple way of playing I think is clearly just crippling yourself. Even skewing toward less lasers like Mango does is alright(though I still don't fully agree), but Wes' amount of shooting is just consistently too low to be effective to me.

That's what I thought! Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something lol thanks

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

Edit: OH does this apply to Falco/Falcon too? Falco I'd imagine so but Falcon I'm less sure about.

Just tested and Falco can get out with 1 SDI input down and 1 ASDI input down exactly like fox if he DI's the shine away! I tested with earliest dair possible to catch falco as high as possible. I was able to forward smash the falco for down airing me. So I was at least +13 after he hit me lol

 

[Bones0]

Just tested and Falco can get out with 1 SDI input down and 1 ASDI input down exactly like fox if he DI's the shine away! I tested with earliest dair possible to catch falco as high as possible. I was able to forward smash the falco for down airing me. So I was at least +13 after he hit me lol

Hurts to hear, but glad to know. lol




The reeling back animation you describe is (mostly) unrelated to crouch cancel. Crouch cancelling only correlates with it more often because they are not getting knocked down by dair as early. The animation itself, which from here on I'll refer to as ground stun, has many different varieties, and they all vary based on WHERE you hit the opponent. If you've ever heard Puff mains talk about the "flip" animation from their dair, this is what they're talking about. All of the Puff mains I talked to had no idea how the flip was triggered, but the animation itself does not change the amount of stun a character undergoes. The only reason the flip helps Puff drill-rest is because the flip animation immediately causes characters to extend their hurtboxes on top of Puff.

Characters have 3 different ground stun animations when they are put in stun by a spike without being knocked down (if it's not a spike, they get knocked away). Which animation you get is entirely based on what part of their body you cpnnect with (how exactly they determine which hitbox and hurtbox get priority if two are hit at the same time, idk). Samus is a great character to test this with to see for yourself, and you can use lasers to get a good idea of how high the different body zones are, and use a falling dair with the right timing to get a visual of how far away she moves during the animation.

Hit the top of her head and she will go into DamageHi. The number 1, 2, or 3, as far as I can tell, correlates with the strength of the attack. Laser causes 1, first hit of uair causes 2, and a dair is 3. If Samus CCs Falco's dair and gets hit in the head, the strength of the move is reduced to DamageHi2, and she only bends over backwards a little. When she gets daired in the head without CCing, it triggers DamageHi3, which practically has her bending over backwards. The animation also takes longer for DamageHi3, though it's important to keep in mind that the animation's length does not dictate how much stun she's in. For example, DamageHi1 from a laser lasts for 14 frames, but she only has 12 frames of stun. Since this issue of ground stun is only really relevant vs. spikes, the rest of this post will be directed towards dair causing level 3 ground stun.

DamageN is the stun animation for the middle of the body. Triggering this animation causes Samus to move back then lean forward as if she had taken a punch to the gut. If you've been testing this as you read this, then you may already have seen DamageN when trying to hit Samus's head. This is caused by her shoulders being considered the middle of her body instead of the top (or at least I'm pretty sure that's why). Since her shoulders are obnoxiously big, whether you hit her head or shoulders will depend on Z-axis shenanigans. With some characters this is less problematic, with others that have short bodies, the animation you get can almost feel random. It's entirely dependent on how your hitboxes interact with their hurtboxes.

The last animation is for her legs and feet, and it's DamageLw. She still moves back a bit upon the initial hit, but now she falls head over heels like she forgot how to tie her space suit's nonexistent shoe laces and tripped in zero gravity. The important thing to note as you go frame by frame is how her body extends into you. Her head moving forward mostly just compensates for the initial pushback, though because of how you tend to aerial, this is usually more than enough to get shine to connect. Her legs actually extend quite far forward, but I don't think timing the shine on the 1-2 frames her legs go through you is reliable, especially because it's difficult to judge exactly when the stun is ending. Testing right now with her at 30%, she's out of stun and able to shield just a couple frames after her legs pass through you.

While you can't rely on flip animations to always guarantee a shine, they certainly make it more comfortable if you're worried about the opponent SDIing away. At the very least, it will help make you more acutely aware of when your shine will reach and when it will be dodged by a DamageHi ground stun animation. I wouldn't be surprised if some characters have more dramatic hurtbox extensions that could be reliably abused, but I initially discovered this a couple years ago so I have long since forgotten any details I may have gathered when going through all of the animations. I guess one of the more notable quirks that I remembered researching was trying to get DamageLw vs. Jiggs. It seems basically impossible unless she extends her legs out like from a dtilt. This is very unfortunate because her flip might have been a way to consistently punish her rest with dair shine at 0%. Oh well.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Just tested and Falco can get out with 1 SDI input down and 1 ASDI input down exactly like fox if he DI's the shine away! I tested with earliest dair possible to catch falco as high as possible. I was able to forward smash the falco for down airing me. So I was at least +13 after he hit me lol

Lol dang figured as much. Is it also true for Falcon? That one seems harder for me to guess.

Also nice post bones ty I saved it.

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

Lol dang figured as much. Is it also true for Falcon? That one seems harder for me to guess.

Also nice post bones ty I saved it.

Falcon can't do it without at least two frames of SDI + ASDI and they seem to have to be pretty specific. 1 frame SDI down + away, 1 SDI down, 1 ASDI down. This the case even if you delay your down air so that he's low to the ground already. Basically unreasonable for him!

 

[Dr Peepee]

Okay so you can't get that with quarter circling down during Dair? If so that's pretty cool. Thanks for all the testing man super helpful!

 

[tauKhan]

General mechanics behind the "tech" Ginger wrote about, to help
understand or predict when the victim will get out of stun. It's very complicated, and 1 SDI + ASDI down for fox to get out doesn't always hold. I've been holding this info for a long while, since there's so many variables and I wasn't satisfied (still aren't) with how I need to do the analysis case by case and I can't cover exact % ranges / DI variations because of that. I'll probably be updating this post in the future.


Hitstun landing

When you touch ground during non-tumble hitstun, there is two different possible landings. The more common one is that the victim transitions to normal landing animation (normal landing), and the remaining hitstun cancels out. The landing is usually 4 frames long (frame or 2 more for a few chars), and lets the victim retaliate quickly. Normal landing happens almost always when you crouch cancel (ASDI down to land) a move, and against Falco when the Falco hits you with a raw dair when you're in the air.

The other possible result is transition to grounded hitstun, where the remainder of hitstun plays out while the victim is grounded. This hitstun landing occurs when the victim has less than 0.5 total kb velocity upon touching the ground. Less than 0.5 total kb velocity equals x^2 + y^2 < 0.5^2 . Thus both kb components have equal significance, unlike when landing without hitstun, in which case only vertical speed matters.

Spoiler: Kb stacking (not necessary info, but might be useful)

Knockback stacking

When a hitbox connects less than 10 frames after another hit, the remaining knockback (kb) velocity from the previous move is totally overwritten.

If the next hitbox connects 10+ frames after instead, the victims knockback velocity will be calculated as follows:

1. Horizontal and vertical velocity components are both treated separately in the same manner
2. If the components share a direction (same sign), the one with greater absolute value is chosen. If the components are opposite directions (different signs), they're added together.

In attempt to make the stacking rule more concrete and easier to grasp, here's some calculation examples of the (10+ frame difference) stacking:

Knockback velocities are denoted as vectors (x, y), where x is horizontal component and y is vertical component (Positive x means rightward, positive y is upwards). S denotes the stacking operation.

(-2, 2) S (2, 2) = (0, 2)
(2, 2) S (3, 3) = (3, 3)
(2, 2) S (3, -2) = (3, 0)

Effect on Falco's shine -> dair combos

Due to how kb stacking works, the victims kb velocity usually hovers close to the 0.5 threshold when he is about to land after shine -> dair. This is because when the dair hits, there's still a great amount of vertical kb velocity left from the shine, which counteracts the downwards kb from the dair. With floatier characters the speed will almost always be less than 0.5 upon contact, or the victim won't even be in hitstun when landing. However with fast fallers, especially Fox, the strong gravity means that the kb velocity is higher when touching the ground, as kb velocity slows down on every frame spent in the air.

(A)SDI downwards means that the victim will touch the ground sooner and will have more speed left as a result. In some cases this can make the difference between getting hitstun landing or the normal landing. Getting normal landing usually requires DI away on the shine so that the dair hits at a lower height.

Example of fox performing SDI + ASDI down on dair and forcing a normal land. The values at the bottom display physics information: the first pair (white) is base position (x-pos, y-pos), the second pair (green) shows ECB bottom offset (x, y) and the 3rd pair (purple) shows kb velocity components (x velocity, y-velocity)

Same situation as above, except Fox does only partial SDI + ASDI, so that it takes 2 more frames for him to touch ground, and as a result his kb velocity is less than <0.5 when it happens.

vs Fox

While 9 units of downwards shift (1 SDI + ASDI) is often enough for Fox to force normal landing, Falco can occasionally time his dair so that more is required. The optimal timing for dair to make the normal landing as hard as possible usually seems to be just before the dair will totally cancel the upwards kb remaining from shine (You can use ikneedata calculator to estimate when this happens at various %). Since dair has stronger kb growth than shine, the dair needs to hit earlier the more % the Fox has. For example, when Fox is at 8%, you want to hit around frame 35 of his hitstun, while at 20% it's around frame 31.

Special low % mix-up with DamageAir2 (this will ONLY work when fox has less than 10% before dair):

When Fox has <10% before the dair (0-1% before shine with everything unstale), he'll get a different hitstun animation (DamageAir2) than at 10+%. DamageAir2 has higher ECB bottom offset than the DamageAir3 that occurs at higher %. This essentially means that Fox will need to fall lower to touch the ground, and he'll lose more speed in the meantime. Because of the difference, it's possible for Falco to wait until Foxes position is at ground level or a little bit below before dairing, so that the Fox will still get hitstun landing using only ASDI down. This makes SDIng to force normal landing very hard for Fox, since if he performs an SDI input that would make his ECB touch the ground, he'll get lifted back up so that his base position is at the ground level and the ECB bottom that governs landing will then be considerably above the ground.

It's still possible for Fox to force normal landing by using a lower angled SDI down that doesn't cause a collision though, but using such SDI angle would almost certainly mean that he'll fail to normal land if Falco hits slightly earlier. The window for Falco to hit Fox so that he can't apply full SDI down seems to be 2 frames, with the later frame being harder for Fox to deal with.


Shine -> Dair onto platform (applies to floaties as well)

If you follow up a shine with a dair onto a platform that's at higher than the level the shine hit at, the opponent will usually normal land if you hit the dair into the same direction (horizontally) the shine sent at. However, if you cross up after the shine, so that the dair kb will have horizontal kb against to that of shine, the total kb will be dramatically lower so that it's impossible to normal land even with (A)SDI. In other words, if you hit someone with shine below a platform and he gets sents rightward and you want to dair him onto the plat after, you want to get to the right side of him so that the dair sends him leftward.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Okay....my brain is still kinda slow so that was hard to read but it was REALLY interesting. Thanks for writing that out. I have some questions though:

1. You're suggesting Falco can still get normal stun on Fox doing 1 SDI + ASDI down on Dair if he does it later at low percent and early at higher percents? Do you have to hit a specific frame per percent(or percent range) and is that feasible if so? Also, is it feasible to expect Fox to SDI down multiple times to counteract this(by mashing down instead of timing it or something)?

2. For that exception below 10%, you're suggesting Falco hit at the last possible frame or two when Fox is already on the ground after he's SDI'd away from shine? Is it possible for Fox to act before hitting the ground(jump/shine)?

3. Are you suggesting that if you shine Dair someone onto a platform, if they SDI + ASDI down they can do normal land on it as well unless you hit the Dair on the opposite side?

4. How similar does this work to Falco/Falcon? I would imagine percents are a bit different, but I'm curious about whether that special below 10% could also apply in the ditto.

I'll save your post for myself and update Ginger's edit in the OP with your post. Thanks again man really interesting stuff. I don't suppose you've labbed out anything like SDI total realistic inputs/when to make a decision on Uthrow/Bthrow while I have you here?

 

[tauKhan]

Okay....my brain is still kinda slow so that was hard to read but it was REALLY interesting.

I'm sure it's more about me not being able to write this stuff out well enough, it's terribly complicated haha.

1: The frame ranges where you need to hit are specific and drift with %, so I'm not sure if it's feasible trying to learn them. I haven't fully mapped them out yet, but seems the optimal "early" timing starts at f35-f36 (the same frames used in the gifs), and drifts to f31 by 20% before dair. Double sdi from the fox is actually pretty easy if the fox guesses when you're going to dair as well. Might be better to try to mix up timings to make it harder for fox to hit SDI in the first place.

2: You need to hit fox about 4-5 frames before he'd hit the ground (because the foxes ECB is ~4.5 offset from ground at that point, his base position will be around ground level 5f before he'd hit it.), I'll make a gify of that later. It's not possible for fox to jump out before he'd hit the ground.

3: Yes, and usually they don't even need to SDI, just ASDI suffices if you dair them in the wrong direction. In some cases they don't even need to DI at all. On the other hand when you do hit the "reverse" dair, it's not possible for them to force normal landing after.

4: I've not looked into falco/falcon much, as I've done the research from fox mains perspective. As they both fall slower than fox, it should be more difficult for them to reach ground quickly enough to get normal landing. I think especially against falcon you could be able to force even 3 SDI needed. I'll look into the ECB patterns later, it could even go other way round for them. The ECBs are designed to approximate the character animation in the state, and they can be very different.


For realistic SDI, 2 is pretty easy on GCC, 3 should be doable with medium / high hitlag. I'm personally very bad at the "****" DI, and I really don't know how quickly you could potentially do it. Falco's throw game I know very little about, and currently I'm not very interested to lab that, sorry.

 

[Dr Peepee]

So it seems like getting the Dair stun on the ground isn't reliable then and I should just stick to shining for practical purposes if I'm reading you correctly. Wow at the platform thing that's pretty crazy.

4. Does this mean they'd need more SDI, or if I hit the Dair high enough it won't matter? Ginger said his own personal testing revealed Falco could do this as well, but of course I don't know if he tested various heights or more than 1 SDI input. Thanks so much for looking into this man.

Are you getting 2 SDI with a double tap or with a quarter circle or something? Just curious since you don't mash it.

That's fine about the throw labbing. Do you have any suggestions for how I could do it myself? If not no worries.

 

[tauKhan]

4. After a quick testing, it seems like falco would need more than 1 SDI most of the time unless you execute slowly. The ECB patterns play out similarly to fox with him as well.

I do a conventional quartercircle because it's very efficient: aim first input directly at one of the 4 main cardinals (Crucial that the first input is cardinal). Then the slightest rolling of stick will produce second input.

For throw labbing, I've not really done that sort of stuff, so I don't know the most efficient way to go about it. I suppose 20xx hack pack features should be useful.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Okay so I'm assuming you mean 2 on average then, with the occasional 3 based on how the Dair is timed, is that right?

Okay thanks for the quarter circle explanation. I never did know exactly how that worked.

Alright I'll figure out the throw stuff somehow lol thanks for all the help once again!

 

[tauKhan]

I don't think you'll ever need 3 with falco (if you get the horizontal trajectory DI on shine), it's just basically 2 required. Timing might change how good double SDI you need though.

 

[Dr Peepee]

I don't actually know the difference between good and bad SDI. I know I've asked a lot of questions, but if you wouldn't mind explaining it I'd really appreciate it and I'm sure it would help others as well.

 

[tauKhan]

Hmm, I should've have said how strong SDI downwards. Basically, the SDI inputs nets you distance based on the control stick analogue readings. In this case you want the sum of the downward input components to be as high as possible.

Achilles post on how SDI is calculated: https://smashboards.com/threads/mel...-here-in-the-op.247119/page-129#post-20938687

 

[Ultrasatanicus]

General mechanics behind the "tech" Ginger wrote about, to help
understand or predict when the victim will get out of stun. It's very complicated, and 1 SDI + ASDI down for fox to get out doesn't always hold. I've been holding this info for a long while, since there's so many variables and I wasn't satisfied (still aren't) with how I need to do the analysis case by case and I can't cover exact % ranges / DI variations because of that. I'll probably be updating this post in the future.


Hitstun landing

When you touch ground during non-tumble hitstun, there is two different possible landings. The more common one is that the victim transitions to normal landing animation (normal landing), and the remaining hitstun cancels out. The landing is usually 4 frames long (frame or 2 more for a few chars), and lets the victim retaliate quickly. Normal landing happens almost always when you crouch cancel (ASDI down to land) a move, and against Falco when the Falco hits you with a raw dair when you're in the air.

The other possible result is transition to grounded hitstun, where the remainder of hitstun plays out while the victim is grounded. This hitstun landing occurs when the victim has less than 0.5 total kb velocity upon touching the ground. Less than 0.5 total kb velocity equals x^2 + y^2 < 0.5^2 . Thus both kb components have equal significance, unlike when landing without hitstun, in which case only vertical speed matters.

Spoiler: Kb stacking (not necessary info, but might be useful)

Knockback stacking

When a hitbox connects less than 10 frames after another hit, the remaining knockback (kb) velocity from the previous move is totally overwritten.

If the next hitbox connects 10+ frames after instead, the victims knockback velocity will be calculated as follows:

1. Horizontal and vertical velocity components are both treated separately in the same manner
2. If the components share a direction (same sign), the one with greater absolute value is chosen. If the components are opposite directions (different signs), they're added together.

In attempt to make the stacking rule more concrete and easier to grasp, here's some calculation examples of the (10+ frame difference) stacking:

Knockback velocities are denoted as vectors (x, y), where x is horizontal component and y is vertical component (Positive x means rightward, positive y is upwards). S denotes the stacking operation.

(-2, 2) S (2, 2) = (0, 2)
(2, 2) S (3, 3) = (3, 3)
(2, 2) S (3, -2) = (3, 0)

Effect on Falco's shine -> dair combos

Due to how kb stacking works, the victims kb velocity usually hovers close to the 0.5 threshold when he is about to land after shine -> dair. This is because when the dair hits, there's still a great amount of vertical kb velocity left from the shine, which counteracts the downwards kb from the dair. With floatier characters the speed will almost always be less than 0.5 upon contact, or the victim won't even be in hitstun when landing. However with fast fallers, especially Fox, the strong gravity means that the kb velocity is higher when touching the ground, as kb velocity slows down on every frame spent in the air.

(A)SDI downwards means that the victim will touch the ground sooner and will have more speed left as a result. In some cases this can make the difference between getting hitstun landing or the normal landing. Getting normal landing usually requires DI away on the shine so that the dair hits at a lower height.

Example of fox performing SDI + ASDI down on dair and forcing a normal land. The values at the bottom display physics information: the first pair (white) is base position (x-pos, y-pos), the second pair (green) shows ECB bottom offset (x, y) and the 3rd pair (purple) shows kb velocity components (x velocity, y-velocity)

Same situation as above, except Fox does only partial SDI + ASDI, so that it takes 2 more frames for him to touch ground, and as a result his kb velocity is less than <0.5 when it happens.

vs Fox

While 9 units of downwards shift (1 SDI + ASDI) is often enough for Fox to force normal landing, Falco can occasionally time his dair so that more is required. The optimal timing for dair to make the normal landing as hard as possible usually seems to be just before the dair will totally cancel the upwards kb remaining from shine (You can use ikneedata calculator to estimate when this happens at various %). Since dair has stronger kb growth than shine, the dair needs to hit earlier the more % the Fox has. For example, when Fox is at 8%, you want to hit around frame 35 of his hitstun, while at 20% it's around frame 31.

Special low % mix-up with DamageAir2 (this will ONLY work when fox has less than 10% before dair):

When Fox has <10% before the dair (0-1% before shine with everything unstale), he'll get a different hitstun animation (DamageAir2) than at 10+%. DamageAir2 has higher ECB bottom offset than the DamageAir3 that occurs at higher %. This essentially means that Fox will need to fall lower to touch the ground, and he'll lose more speed in the meantime. Because of the difference, it's possible for Falco to wait until Foxes position is at ground level or a little bit below before dairing, so that the Fox will still get hitstun landing using only ASDI down. This makes SDIng to force normal landing very hard for Fox, since if he performs an SDI input that would make his ECB touch the ground, he'll get lifted back up so that his base position is at the ground level and the ECB bottom that governs landing will then be considerably above the ground.

It's still possible for Fox to force normal landing by using a lower angled SDI down that doesn't cause a collision though, but using such SDI angle would almost certainly mean that he'll fail to normal land if Falco hits slightly earlier. The window for Falco to hit Fox so that he can't apply full SDI down seems to be 2 frames, with the later frame being harder for Fox to deal with.


Shine -> Dair onto platform (applies to floaties as well)

If you follow up a shine with a dair onto a platform that's at higher than the level the shine hit at, the opponent will usually normal land if you hit the dair into the same direction (horizontally) the shine sent at. However, if you cross up after the shine, so that the dair kb will have horizontal kb against to that of shine, the total kb will be dramatically lower so that it's impossible to normal land even with (A)SDI. In other words, if you hit someone with shine below a platform and he gets sents rightward and you want to dair him onto the plat after, you want to get to the right side of him so that the dair sends him leftward.

Thanks so much for all of this info/testing! Apologies if I said anything incorrect in my post. I did some quick testing in debug-mode with limited knowledge. These posts have been very informative though

 

[tauKhan]

Thanks so much for all of this info/testing! Apologies if I said anything incorrect in my post. I did some quick testing in debug-mode with limited knowledge. These posts have been very informative though

No worries, I've been tripped up more than once over time on this thinking I had everything down. It's just a stupidly complicated interaction.

 

[Bones0]

Dr Peepee

With regards to studying throws, you have to be VERY careful about labbing them, especially with something as precise as SDI. Falco's throws are already finicky, but when you take into account the differences between having a lower numbered port and a higher numbered port, it gets downright insane. I had a massive Excel sheet filled with data for dthrow on Fox, and when I revisited it a few months later, I was getting different results because I hadn't kept track of which ports I was using.

Really, this video says it all: https://twitter.com/ssbm_zero/status/880050077464633345



On an unrelated note, I was wondering if you could talk about Falco's dash dance a bit? It's obviously something you're known for, and when asked about how you see it functioning in your game and Melee at large, you talk a lot about threatening space. Moving forward forces the opponent to respect the possibility of an approach, and moving backward forces the opponent to respect the possibility of being whiff punished if they throw out an attack to counter an approach. Hopefully so far that all sounds about right.

I've noticed my games tend to fall in one of two kinds of categories in terms of DDing. When my opponents respect my DD, they give me room to set up my laser game, corner them, and play pretty much how I want. I feel very much like they're playing my game, and aside from a tendency to do bad approaches instead of continuing to laser, I don't lose these games.

The other category of games are ones in which the opponent doesn't respect my DD. They are usually eager to run up and attack me at the center point of my DD, and it's usually with unreactable approaches like Fox's running shine, Marth's dash attack, Sheik boost grab, etc. My main tool for stuffing these approaches is fadeaway dair (or maybe AC bair for aerial approaches), and that works if I can call out the timing on them, but is it necessary to rely on that kind of read to make use of the defensive aspect of Falco's DD?

With Marth and the other top tiers it's so much simpler because they can rely so heavily on reactionary DD grabbing. Falco is so much slower that he's limited in a lot of different ways. He threatens less space in front of him with aerials (though laser is obviously huge in compensating for this), he cannot avoid attacks as quickly as other characters, and he cannot move back in and whiff punish even when he does get out of the way of approaches.

The simplest explanation that I've come up with is I'm too close and I need to maintain a better spacing relative to my opponent. Falco's DD may be slower, but obviously if I have more room between us, I have more time to react and get out of the way. The reason I'm not sure that's the correct adjustment is moving further away so I can react consistently gives up space and also puts me in that no man's land of "too close to laser, too far to approach". I've noticed that this no man's land is where you seem to apply your DD in a way most players cannot, especially Falco mains, so if you could help dissect the science behind it that would be really helpful. I tried to be as specific as possible, so hopefully this doesn't come off as "how do I dash dance, PPMD?!" lol

 

[Dr Peepee]

Dr Peepee

With regards to studying throws, you have to be VERY careful about labbing them, especially with something as precise as SDI. Falco's throws are already finicky, but when you take into account the differences between having a lower numbered port and a higher numbered port, it gets downright insane. I had a massive Excel sheet filled with data for dthrow on Fox, and when I revisited it a few months later, I was getting different results because I hadn't kept track of which ports I was using.

Really, this video says it all: https://twitter.com/ssbm_zero/status/880050077464633345



On an unrelated note, I was wondering if you could talk about Falco's dash dance a bit? It's obviously something you're known for, and when asked about how you see it functioning in your game and Melee at large, you talk a lot about threatening space. Moving forward forces the opponent to respect the possibility of an approach, and moving backward forces the opponent to respect the possibility of being whiff punished if they throw out an attack to counter an approach. Hopefully so far that all sounds about right.

I've noticed my games tend to fall in one of two kinds of categories in terms of DDing. When my opponents respect my DD, they give me room to set up my laser game, corner them, and play pretty much how I want. I feel very much like they're playing my game, and aside from a tendency to do bad approaches instead of continuing to laser, I don't lose these games.

The other category of games are ones in which the opponent doesn't respect my DD. They are usually eager to run up and attack me at the center point of my DD, and it's usually with unreactable approaches like Fox's running shine, Marth's dash attack, Sheik boost grab, etc. My main tool for stuffing these approaches is fadeaway dair (or maybe AC bair for aerial approaches), and that works if I can call out the timing on them, but is it necessary to rely on that kind of read to make use of the defensive aspect of Falco's DD?

With Marth and the other top tiers it's so much simpler because they can rely so heavily on reactionary DD grabbing. Falco is so much slower that he's limited in a lot of different ways. He threatens less space in front of him with aerials (though laser is obviously huge in compensating for this), he cannot avoid attacks as quickly as other characters, and he cannot move back in and whiff punish even when he does get out of the way of approaches.

The simplest explanation that I've come up with is I'm too close and I need to maintain a better spacing relative to my opponent. Falco's DD may be slower, but obviously if I have more room between us, I have more time to react and get out of the way. The reason I'm not sure that's the correct adjustment is moving further away so I can react consistently gives up space and also puts me in that no man's land of "too close to laser, too far to approach". I've noticed that this no man's land is where you seem to apply your DD in a way most players cannot, especially Falco mains, so if you could help dissect the science behind it that would be really helpful. I tried to be as specific as possible, so hopefully this doesn't come off as "how do I dash dance, PPMD?!" lol

Can you tell me what you think makes them finicky already? Is it just slight DI combined with numerous SDI, and do number of SDI change based on slight DI inputs? Yeah that port stuff is awful lmao do we know how that clip works and is it true for every character on every level? I feel like it's not but I don't really understand it.

Yeah you're right in that you're probably too close. However in order to decently threaten approaches you need to push decently close to your opponent(at minimum just inside immediate dash SH Nair range but usually a bit closer). So first I would suggest fighting these moving in players at ranges where you can reliably react, or threatening range(the main neutral position in other words). Then you work on approaching from there.

Another problem is possibly you over-DD, which I've done in nearly every set I've had recorded unfortunately, leaving a bad example. You want to stick to 1-2 dashes then make a decision and keep it that way. That decision can be letting a dash stall, WD, laser, SH in, or something else. But the point is to try to begin training yourself to get something out of movement. It's not easy to do but if you get a couple basic action strings down(some you probably already use can help) then you'll be alright.