PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[clowsui]

we can talk about it any time! i don't think i understand this very well though, at least not in a practical sense. otherwise i'd be doing a whole lot better in tournies . i should note, in case it wasn't clear, that you can practice any movement or move you want. FJ, SH, DJ, wavedash, waveland, "wavesurf" (dash + instant WD), utilt, fsmash, ftilt, nair, dair etc...i just limited my list to the ones that came to mind lol

once my sister-in-law gets here and we figure out a good time to go on a weekend trip i'll be around. it'll happen in the next month or so.

 

[DownDog]

Thanks chi, I appreciate it. I might ask you some questions about this stuff on facebook later considering you know a lot about these types of things. Also, aren't you coming to GA soon and staying at Samis? When is that? I would like to train with you when you are here if that is true.



I actually wanted to add one process related thing that helped me a bunch in learning inputs like this.
One good way to do it is to consider how a double shine works, so in a double shine you do one grounded shine, jump out of it, and then shine again during your jump squat before you enter the air. So then you can ask, how long is falcos jump squat?
It is 5 frames, so if you are struggling to do the grounded double shine input then you are not going from Y to B within 5 frames. When you figure out this then you can deduce that the true difficult part of double shining is the Y to B input, and then you can figure out a way to get from Y to B within 5 frames. This also allows you to kind of ignore the first part of the input, the b to y part, as it can be as slow as you want while you're learning it for now. Later on, you can speed up this B to Y input in order to have better double shines, but for now you would want to focus on the Y to B input within 5 frames.
Also, this gives you perspective on your speed, if it's really so difficult going for Y to B within 5 frames then it's unlikely you're even near frame perfect on the B to Y input, you're probably even slower than Y to B.

This stuff might be wrong i'm not a huge frame nerd but uh the important part is the process, I think it's very useful to break down inputs and then focus on the most important aspects of them, slow down at first and then gradually speed up once you understand what parts of the inputs are important and how you can fix them. This is also why I think it's important to start with grounded shine out of shield because that lets you focus only on shielding and doing the Y to B input out of shield, plus it's more applicable.

Thank You! I'll keep that in mind when practicing.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Dr Peepee


a
"Prime yourself for possible outcomes, and also just wait to observe responses at first as you get used to seeing things. I still think you're over complicating things and should practice basic actions alone, outside of any cpu/human interaction to get used to the tools for real first."

I have been practicing basic actions alone but I do think I have been moving too fast and tried to work on set ups / combinations too early. I have mainly focused on dash back, dash forward, wd back, wd forward, laser in place, and approaching laser. I try and just use the basic action while thinking about what it threatens and why and how that might make the opponent respond at different spacings. I then try to think of combinations and what they might do to the opponent. I will definitely take a few steps back and work on this more, as I don't think I spent enough time doing this.

Do you think this should be done with aerials as well such as bair, where I just use it over and over and think of it's purpose, or mainly with movement tools that also threaten something attached to it like short hop threatens nair or dash forward threatens jc grab?
Should I get familiar with every single decision tool like wait, stand, and roll and spot-dodge before even attempting to move on?
Personal question but considering that you think I have been over complicating things, which I agree with, in what ways do you think I have been doing this? How do I even know when I should move on?


b
https://youtu.be/3ZKx_VtnrHc?t=100
Here, did you laser fsmash assuming he would immediately jump oos with nair / wd or did you think the laser would anti air and combo? He did nair oos but didn't get hit, still wondering the intentions though
https://youtu.be/3ZKx_VtnrHc?t=68
Did you do approaching laser jab assuming you would hit his landing lag and not shield?
Was the approaching laser designed to both pressure shield effectively upon landing while also lasering if he dashed back immediately, or did you know for certain he would have to shield. I am wondering when I should approaching laser pressure peoples landings versus approaching aerial.

At 1.10, did you do laser dash attack when you saw that you lasered his landing in order to hit his movement out of of shield with wavedash / jump like in the earlier fsmash situation?

Why do you do laser jab when doing pressure strings sometimes even if you should be able to observe that he is shielding when you land with the laser and know that jab can be grabbed on shield?

I have been messing around with spaced approaching laser to hit shield > turn around uptilt / bair to beat shieks immediate drift in nair oos.
Do you think this is a good idea?

Assuming the shiek is most likely to full hop / sh drift in nair or wavedash back, what can I do to pressure both of these? If I do laser > uptilt or bair I miss the pressure on wavedash back so that makes it more of a hard read while maybe I can do something like laser > dash back observe > approaching laser vs wd back or laser in place vs their nair oos.

Why do you like shine retreating aerial so much vs shiek? Is it because it beats nair oos while also letting you observe the oos options and then getting an even better position afterwards possibly if you predict correctly?

In what edge guard situations do you roll to edge guard shiek versus the usual timed normal get up?


c
What do you think the core fundamentals of melee are and how many of them are there?

Right now I consider it to be
Neutral game (which has multiple aspects, also wondering what you think the core distinctions of neutral game are)
Punish game (tech chasing, air combos, di traps, tech traps)
edge guarding
juggling
defense
recovery
ledge play (ledgedash, getting off the ledge, etc)





y to b is fine just focus on the speed of Y to B instead of B to Y for now and try to flick / slide it, also I think you should just work on the singular input of grounded shine oos for now then translate that into double shines. It is the same input to some degree and that input is universal in grounded double shines, dash grounded jc shine, and grounded shine oos. Also the shine oos input is more practical earlier on anyways. Also if you do work on multi shines I highly recommend not bothering going past two, more then two isn't very useful anyways.

a. SHFFLs count too, but you must make sure to get them down to their individual parts as well. A SH is different than a SHFF and is different with an aerial, etc.

You don't need to worry terribly about roll/spotdodge I imagine, but it couldn't hurt to spend some time with them.

You have been too eager to get to application in a fight. Too eager to get to complexity and depth. There is a great amount of depth in basic actions. Some people in the Marth thread will say "I practiced basic actions like you said, and even though I don't fully understand I do play better and understand more when I play." You basically want to practice until you have an improved feeling, or a connection to a tool. This is a frustrating answer in a way, but you'll know it when you feel it. It's about time and focus. One thing I can add is that when you learn enough your knowledge condenses into simplicity and goes into your subconscious. When you have that feeling, you'll know it.

B. I expected shield grab or him taking the laser.

I did the deep laser to beat landing and also dash/WD back.

1:10- Yes, and also his shield was smaller so I could have shield poked.

I do jab to hit them coming OOS and if they want to wait then I can encourage them to act with jab since it's not technically safe but also hard to confirm. Jab to grab was a common thing back in the day so jab still forces people to act OOS.

Yeah that idea seems like it can be useful.

Well, it's not terribly easy to cover both. You can do different things to try it like what you said, or to laser in close and then SH in place and either Fair her jump or laser if she moves back so you've gained stage and maybe some percent at least. Turning around to Utilt and then reacting to them WD'ing away you could Bair, or you could SH and then Bair their SH or reverse laser their WD are some other possibilities. You can switch coverage based on what Sheik prefers, or you can predict based on how you covered something before to make another option more likely. Many times there aren't ways to true cover, but you can control decisions with conditioning knowledge and your setup.

Sheiks pop the Nair OOS so much and it beats nearly everything, plus your drift is safe from shield grab and you get to observe yeah.

I haven't played vs a lot of the new Sheik up-B stuff but I tend to prefer roll as a normal habit and then mix in roll very occasionally. The occasional mixed roll makes Sheik want to consider going high, which can make for easier kills sometimes(you could reverse the logic and roll more to make her go to edge more and you hog it and she dies, but imo stand tends to cover more options on average).

c. looks like chi covered this lol

 

[Yort]

Dr Peepee

Thank you for the advice I will get to work on this as soon as I can and try not to get off topic. I do have some other questions that i'm curious of your answers to though, I believe they are more related to conditioning so a bit of a divergence.

How do the different states of neutral game / position affect how opponents respond to your actions? Like raw neutral from a longer range compared to a close ranged scuffle.
I feel as though the direct influence of lets say my dash back at a super close range is less noticeable then from further away when we're both relaxed and observing, but I also think that they are forced to react in some way at a closer position as it is more dire for them to make a decision, and I think this reaction is more so based on factors like the actual space in between us and habits rather than response to my actions as it might be at a longer range. I think this question is very complex though and has been bugging me for a while.

How do lasers causing icies to desync change the way you use lasers against them? How do you abuse this fact?

Why do you use laser dtilt so much vs icies?

Do lasers lock icies down more so then other characters? And why?

How should the ground game be played against icies on a basic level? Do you think the icies match up is one, like peach, that it's easier to play more vertically than grounded or do you think it's more of a grounded match up?

I guess, on a general level, what should my gameplan be vs icies in your opinion. I have an opportunity to train in it this weekend so I plan on testing many things, but i'm not very certain how I want to approach lasering them, attacking from platforms, and playing vs them on the ground.

What does spaced bair on shield tend to influence in response from the opponent? I notice they often hold shield for longer than they would after jab and i'm not sure why.

Do you do the jab shine on shield because the jab might force them to move out of shield and then the shine might hit them for that movement?
What sorts of movements would jab bait out of shield? I assume mainly buffer roll / spotdodge.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Opponents may be more jerky in response to actions near you, but they may also just ignore it. It can depend on how close, the type of scuffle, and what happened before. This can be contradictory until you look more at extra factors and not just the space itself.

You should either get a hit in the time it takes for them to resync/popo tries to fight you off as he waits for Nana to resync, or get pressure/stage from them as a result. You can either find lasers in their desyncs to make this happen, confirm it interrupting their WD to make it happen, or move forward with laser and then confirm after landing.

I used to really like laser Dtilt vs ICs as it would be safe on shield and launch shield grab spam which I could convert into kills, but then I got shield grabbed doing it at various ranges in pools at Apex 2015 so I never got to show that I'd do other things. I probably need to end up testing the Dtilt more anyway.

ICs only move on the ground or through SH so lasers mess them up really badly. Adding in the fact that they primarily only WD and lasers desync them, and they can't reliably PS lasers, and lasers are really effective against the character.

I think there's no need to deviate from a ground game against ICs and you should just aim to hit their frontal diagonal space with Dair/Nair/Bair, but you can also achieve this with platform games if you want. The added bonus of using more vertical play is you'll make ICs jump and you could punish this. I don't care for the strategy, but I have heard of ICs disliking this style more.

Spaced Bair can't usually be punished(if it's lower to the ground especially), so they can either hold shield or move back OOS as their primary options. They could of course jump or wait then WD in but those aren't common and can be more punishable. Bair keeping you out of range of many attacks and being more frame safe encourages the opponent to move back. A common tactic is to Bair and then dash in Nair to catch a smaller shield or them moving backward.

And yes that's one of the reasons I jab.

 

[NeoZ]

One good way to do it is to consider how a double shine works, so in a double shine you do one grounded shine, jump out of it, and then shine again during your jump squat before you enter the air. So then you can ask, how long is falcos jump squat?
It is 5 frames, so if you are struggling to do the grounded double shine input then you are not going from Y to B within 5 frames. When you figure out this then you can deduce that the true difficult part of double shining is the Y to B input, and then you can figure out a way to get from Y to B within 5 frames. This also allows you to kind of ignore the first part of the input, the b to y part, as it can be as slow as you want while you're learning it for now. Later on, you can speed up this B to Y input in order to have better double shines, but for now you would want to focus on the Y to B input within 5 frames.
Also, this gives you perspective on your speed, if it's really so difficult going for Y to B within 5 frames then it's unlikely you're even near frame perfect on the B to Y input, you're probably even slower than Y to B.

This stuff might be wrong i'm not a huge frame nerd but uh the important part is the process, I think it's very useful to break down inputs and then focus on the most important aspects of them, slow down at first and then gradually speed up once you understand what parts of the inputs are important and how you can fix them. This is also why I think it's important to start with grounded shine out of shield because that lets you focus only on shielding and doing the Y to B input out of shield, plus it's more applicable.

Just wanted to jump in to clarify that this is not how double shines work, you cannot cancel jump squat with shine.
You don't want to hit B within 5 frames, you want to hit B after 5 frames, you shine once you become airborne, not before.
If you do it within 5 frames you just jump, "grounded" jc shine is doing the shine frame perfect once you leave the ground, and no matter how perfect, it will always be in the air, you land after a few frames (if you do it late you land after a lot of frames).

And going from B to Y frame perfectly is slower than Y to B because there's hitlag involved (you can jump on the 8th frame after shine connects), plus you jump out of shine in a lot more situations that just double shines, so it wouldn't be surprising for someone that can't double shine perfectly to be able to jump out of shine perfectly (B to Y).

With that said, I agree with the sentiment that breaking things down and understanding how they work is useful for improvement.

 

[Scroll]

NeoZ is absolutely right.
This is reason why doing Double Shine or more is faster with Fox than with Falco.
You can start Jump Squat from Shine with both characters on the same frame (4th) but Fox's Jump Squat frames are 3 vs Falco's 5.

 

[Yort]

Just wanted to jump in to clarify that this is not how double shines work, you cannot cancel jump squat with shine.
You don't want to hit B within 5 frames, you want to hit B after 5 frames, you shine once you become airborne, not before.
If you do it within 5 frames you just jump, "grounded" jc shine is doing the shine frame perfect once you leave the ground, and no matter how perfect, it will always be in the air, you land after a few frames (if you do it late you land after a lot of frames).

And going from B to Y frame perfectly is slower than Y to B because there's hitlag involved (you can jump on the 8th frame after shine connects), plus you jump out of shine in a lot more situations that just double shines, so it wouldn't be surprising for someone that can't double shine perfectly to be able to jump out of shine perfectly (B to Y).

With that said, I agree with the sentiment that breaking things down and understanding how they work is useful for improvement.

Haha yeah I figured I was wrong about how double shine worked I was mainly trying to stress the importance of breaking down and understanding the timings involved. Thank you for the info that is good to know.

Also, I thought that the 8 frame delay was only for turn around shines and that the frame delay you can jump out of shine after shield stun is 3 frames (or something near that, not sure why that number comes to mind). I think I am not counting jump squat here though. I do know that there is a shield/hitstun component that changes how you have to apply the B to Y input, so are you saying there's 5 frames of jump squat + 3 of shieldstun? Do you have to wait 3 frames before inputting jump after shine connects on shield / body, or is it 8? And if it is 8, how many do you have to wait before inputting jump after connecting a shine turn around on shield / body? I mainly know these inputs by attempting to tighten up these two inputs without being too fast, and I don't know the numbers which I think would be helpful.

Also, I don't know many falcos who are very good at jumping out of shine quickly, which is why I stressed that. I notice many falcos waste frames with shine wavelands / shine wavedashes including myself which is why I spent a while refining the input, since it is so integral to punish and pressure. I also do know that in order to beat a well timed fox shine oos you have to go from b to y pretty dang fast, and I don't know many falcos who actually use this mix up effectively to beat fox shine oos after you shine. When I tested it with a 20xx fox 2 frame delayed shine oos I was seriously struggling to beat him with double shine; it is tough stuff. I definitely don't deny that being quick with b to y is more intuitive than double shines though, that is for sure, but I do disagree with falcos being tight enough on their shine waveland / wd inputs, if that is what you were implying.

 

[ChivalRuse]

Just wanted to jump in to clarify that this is not how double shines work, you cannot cancel jump squat with shine.
You don't want to hit B within 5 frames, you want to hit B after 5 frames, you shine once you become airborne, not before.
If you do it within 5 frames you just jump, "grounded" jc shine is doing the shine frame perfect once you leave the ground, and no matter how perfect, it will always be in the air, you land after a few frames (if you do it late you land after a lot of frames).

This is something I've been meaning to clarify for a while. Can't believe I didn't know that until now. So that means Fox's fastest Shine OOS is frame 4 and Falco's is frame 6.

 

[NeoZ]

Haha yeah I figured I was wrong about how double shine worked I was mainly trying to stress the importance of breaking down and understanding the timings involved. Thank you for the info that is good to know.

Also, I thought that the 8 frame delay was only for turn around shines and that the frame delay you can jump out of shine after shield stun is 3 frames (or something near that, not sure why that number comes to mind). I think I am not counting jump squat here though. I do know that there is a shield/hitstun component that changes how you have to apply the B to Y input, so are you saying there's 5 frames of jump squat + 3 of shieldstun? Do you have to wait 3 frames before inputting jump after shine connects on shield / body, or is it 8? And if it is 8, how many do you have to wait before inputting jump after connecting a shine turn around on shield / body? I mainly know these inputs by attempting to tighten up these two inputs without being too fast, and I don't know the numbers which I think would be helpful.

You're the one attacking and aren't in shield, there's no shield stun to worry about.
And no, I'm not counting jumpsquat, as I said, I'm talking about the time between inputs, you can jump out of shine starting on frame 4 of the animation (you can input the jump on frame 3), and there's hitlag from hitting something, so that's an extra 5 frames.

To beat Fox's shine oos, which hits on frame 4 and is intangible on that frame, you need to hit him before that, which means you need a perfect double shine. You can figure this out just by looking at the frame data, shine is +3, jc shine is hits on frame 6, being a frame late means you clank vs Fox's perfect shine oos, and 2 frames late means you get hit. Of course it's more likely Fox won't start his shine oos frame perfect, so that gives you a bit more leniency.

If you were losing to shine oos with 2 frames of delay I'd recommend you practice executing your double shines (and other options from shine like shine grab). The frame advantage you get from shine isn't huge, but it is enough to beat a lot of things if you execute correctly.

This is something I've been meaning to clarify for a while. Can't believe I didn't know that until now. So that means Fox's fastest Shine OOS is frame 4 and Falco's is frame 6.

Yeah.

ICs only move on the ground or through SH so lasers mess them up really badly. Adding in the fact that they primarily only WD and lasers desync them, and they can't reliably PS lasers, and lasers are really effective against the character.

I think lasers can be pretty dangerous inside their wavedash range (which is almost half of FD), as Popo can tank the laser while Nana keeps advancing with a move. You can intercept them with an aerial, but they always have the option of wd in shield, having you hit both their shields, then punishing. You could also shield their attacks, but having the extra hitstun from Nana's attack can make punishing even smash attacks unreliable (for example, Popo's -17/18 after a double fsmash, which means pretty much no leniency to wd oos shine, not hard to get the shine on Nana though, which is always good). It also opens you up to raw grabs.

That plus lasers desyncing them being something IC players can take advantage of to set up stuff, make the ground game not as bad for them as it seems (or as it seemed at first to me at least) at first glance.

 

[Yort]

Dr Peepee

1
Can you tell me more about journaling and reflecting while training?
Do you journal after friendly sessions and practice mainly to reflect on the quality of the work and what you learned?


Can you tell me more about your intense meditation practice and how that influences the quality of your practice and training sessions?
Having two hour a day meditation practice cuts out of a lot of potential training time which is hard to balance with school and life but I do think improving the quality and understanding of my thoughts is extremely beneficial for everything, however, balancing it is tough, especially on tournament weekends and when socializing constantly for smash.


Can you tell me a bit more about how doing things intensely improves the amount you get out of things?
It seems pretty obvious and I've read about it from Josh Waitzkin and Anders Ericsson's books but I would love to hear your thoughts on this, in particular with regards to playing to learn in melee.
I seem to struggle with just being lazy while playing to learn and kind of submitting to losing, in other words I feel like I'm not properly investing in the loss and staying focused on what I need to work on. I feel like i'm not bringing the intensity and focus I should have while playing to learn.


can you tell me what you think your player archetype is? In terms of aggressive or defensive, impatient or patient, grounded / airborne.
As of now I would say medium aggressive, patient, grounded.

Also do you know any other archetypes I could look into for categorizing? I currently have, aggressive / defensive, impatient, grounded, and stationary / movement heavy, maybe I could look into slow / fast to think about how they like to play speed or momentum I think.

How would you define "pressure", I can tell when you say it that does not mean shield pressure directly but just pressuring, which I kind of get intuitively, but do you have a definition for it?

How would your definition of pressure differ from threatening? Do they tie together as in, if I'm threatening a sh nair and they have to respect it they are pressured in that sense?

2
Can you tell me more about falco whiff punishing?
Druggedfox describes most whiff punishes in melee as a soft read on what the opponent will commit to after. Why do you think falco struggles to actually whiff punish?

It seems difficult to tell when I can or can not react to a whiff and punish, how much of it are "soft reads" on the action that whiffs itself versus a raw reaction and punish?

How do I get better at edgeguarding marths double jump sweet spot where he can delay with side b and then double jump sweet spot or just go for it flat out, etc?


https://www.twitch.tv/videos/232436841?t=06h30m02s
I struggle to deal with things such as this, where marth does FH fair falling drift in fair.
Similarly, I struggle with shiek doing empty sh and then drift in fall with fair.
(By empty I mean the sh is not attached to anything immediate and she does delayed fair)
We talked about this shiek this before I think I struggle to deal with full hop drift mix ups in general, like falcos full hop drift dair from the air for example, I guess i'm looking for advice on pressuring full hop drift mix up.

What can I do to better prepare for and pressure this? For now, I generally just wait and dash back and then get clipped because of spacing or don't prepare properly.
Can you tell me more about how pre emptive fh bair threats can help with this? Or do you think in this marth example by itself I should just wait and pressure the landing. In this clip I didn't properly react and did dash forward after the first fair, I think I assumed drift back but he just drifted in and pressured me.

Similarly, how can I deal with marths sh approaching nair, the one that beats laser and pressures movement forward?
I think marths mainly do this when they have frame advantage, so that kind of clears this up a bit, but it seems to just take so much space and also pressure any sort of movement forward.
If they do it from mid - high range it also becomes very difficult to hit the marth before the nair comes out, so it takes a bunch of space for marth, which is annoying to deal with.


I tried a bunch of the icies stuff we had talked about and stuff I gathered from analysis of you and it went well! I mainly worked on ground game and lasers and also tried working on charging fsmash / fthrow when nana was across stage and running towards me which I saw you do a lot lol. I also used the laser dtilt thing a bunch atleast in friendlies, didn't get grabbed but I'm sure someone like dizz would get me for it if I'm not doing it right.

https://youtu.be/zIybggLI0s8?t=139
about the down tilt here's something neat I noticed. When I daired icies from above at 15% and they didn't shield I did dtilt, usually the icies can put up shield and dair does not combo into uptilt/dtilt at 15%, but here popo did get the shield up but because of the delay nana actually got hit and popo got pushed far enough away to be safe. I thought this was pretty neat and might actually be useful when I get earlier dairs vs icies at lower percents where shine will not connect. Might be grasping at straws here though, but I think I will mess with it a bit.

https://youtu.be/g6CaDytIPdA?t=535
I noticed it happened here with you vs nintendude too!

https://youtu.be/g6CaDytIPdA?t=545
again!
i'm assuming you already know about this at this point.

https://youtu.be/zIybggLI0s8?t=165
Do you have any advice for the commonish desync set up where nana blizzards and popo shields?
What do you recommend against blizzard in general? Is it okay to pressure afterwards? Not too certain of the properties on this move. I think it's not very high reward unless popo is ready to pressure with wd grab/jab or if i shield after getting hit by the blizzard

https://youtu.be/g6CaDytIPdA?t=207
Here, you pretty much lasered until you figured he was off balance or stuck in some way and went in with approaching laser.
What cues let you know this? I'm assuming it was the popo airdodge after the fh ice block.

A bit ago you mentioned that recognizing when people are stuck and pressuring is an important part of pushing advantage.

How can I recognize when someone is stuck?
Is someone being "stuck" the same as being off balance for you or are these different terms?


Both druggedfox and leffen have mentioned to me that falco exceeds at solo fighting popo while pushing nana away, what do you think of this strat? So mainly focusing on popo and only taking on nana when it's necessary / most beneficial.


Can you tell me more about the fsmash on shield stuff both you and mango use a lot vs icies? Why is it so good, do you still think it's good, is it because things push icies so far away?

 

[Scroll]

Yort what do you mean when you say "...marths empty sh approaching nair"? When I say empty I mean no attack is used while being airborn. Are there more to the difiniton that I am missing?

 

[Yort]

Yort what do you mean when you say "...marths empty sh approaching nair"? When I say empty I mean no attack is used while being airborn. Are there more to the difiniton that I am missing?

Sorry I just mean marth sh approaching nair, although I think when I said empty I meant slightly delayed / delayed. I've just been throwing empty in front of short hop too much in my own notes to indicate that the short hop isn't attached to anything immediate, like an immediate sh nair from falco, that would just be sh rising nair for me.

I think this is pretty confusing though I should just be using empty for no actions in the sh and delayed for delayed aerials lmao.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Dr Peepee

1
Can you tell me more about journaling and reflecting while training?
Do you journal after friendly sessions and practice mainly to reflect on the quality of the work and what you learned?


Can you tell me more about your intense meditation practice and how that influences the quality of your practice and training sessions?
Having two hour a day meditation practice cuts out of a lot of potential training time which is hard to balance with school and life but I do think improving the quality and understanding of my thoughts is extremely beneficial for everything, however, balancing it is tough, especially on tournament weekends and when socializing constantly for smash.


Can you tell me a bit more about how doing things intensely improves the amount you get out of things?
It seems pretty obvious and I've read about it from Josh Waitzkin and Anders Ericsson's books but I would love to hear your thoughts on this, in particular with regards to playing to learn in melee.
I seem to struggle with just being lazy while playing to learn and kind of submitting to losing, in other words I feel like I'm not properly investing in the loss and staying focused on what I need to work on. I feel like i'm not bringing the intensity and focus I should have while playing to learn.


can you tell me what you think your player archetype is? In terms of aggressive or defensive, impatient or patient, grounded / airborne.
As of now I would say medium aggressive, patient, grounded.

Also do you know any other archetypes I could look into for categorizing? I currently have, aggressive / defensive, impatient, grounded, and stationary / movement heavy, maybe I could look into slow / fast to think about how they like to play speed or momentum I think.

How would you define "pressure", I can tell when you say it that does not mean shield pressure directly but just pressuring, which I kind of get intuitively, but do you have a definition for it?

How would your definition of pressure differ from threatening? Do they tie together as in, if I'm threatening a sh nair and they have to respect it they are pressured in that sense?

2
Can you tell me more about falco whiff punishing?
Druggedfox describes most whiff punishes in melee as a soft read on what the opponent will commit to after. Why do you think falco struggles to actually whiff punish?

It seems difficult to tell when I can or can not react to a whiff and punish, how much of it are "soft reads" on the action that whiffs itself versus a raw reaction and punish?

How do I get better at edgeguarding marths double jump sweet spot where he can delay with side b and then double jump sweet spot or just go for it flat out, etc?


https://www.twitch.tv/videos/232436841?t=06h30m02s
I struggle to deal with things such as this, where marth does FH fair falling drift in fair.
Similarly, I struggle with shiek doing empty sh and then drift in fall with fair.
(By empty I mean the sh is not attached to anything immediate and she does delayed fair)
We talked about this shiek this before I think I struggle to deal with full hop drift mix ups in general, like falcos full hop drift dair from the air for example, I guess i'm looking for advice on pressuring full hop drift mix up.

What can I do to better prepare for and pressure this? For now, I generally just wait and dash back and then get clipped because of spacing or don't prepare properly.
Can you tell me more about how pre emptive fh bair threats can help with this? Or do you think in this marth example by itself I should just wait and pressure the landing. In this clip I didn't properly react and did dash forward after the first fair, I think I assumed drift back but he just drifted in and pressured me.

Similarly, how can I deal with marths sh approaching nair, the one that beats laser and pressures movement forward?
I think marths mainly do this when they have frame advantage, so that kind of clears this up a bit, but it seems to just take so much space and also pressure any sort of movement forward.
If they do it from mid - high range it also becomes very difficult to hit the marth before the nair comes out, so it takes a bunch of space for marth, which is annoying to deal with.


I tried a bunch of the icies stuff we had talked about and stuff I gathered from analysis of you and it went well! I mainly worked on ground game and lasers and also tried working on charging fsmash / fthrow when nana was across stage and running towards me which I saw you do a lot lol. I also used the laser dtilt thing a bunch atleast in friendlies, didn't get grabbed but I'm sure someone like dizz would get me for it if I'm not doing it right.

https://youtu.be/zIybggLI0s8?t=139
about the down tilt here's something neat I noticed. When I daired icies from above at 15% and they didn't shield I did dtilt, usually the icies can put up shield and dair does not combo into uptilt/dtilt at 15%, but here popo did get the shield up but because of the delay nana actually got hit and popo got pushed far enough away to be safe. I thought this was pretty neat and might actually be useful when I get earlier dairs vs icies at lower percents where shine will not connect. Might be grasping at straws here though, but I think I will mess with it a bit.

https://youtu.be/g6CaDytIPdA?t=535
I noticed it happened here with you vs nintendude too!

https://youtu.be/g6CaDytIPdA?t=545
again!
i'm assuming you already know about this at this point.

https://youtu.be/zIybggLI0s8?t=165
Do you have any advice for the commonish desync set up where nana blizzards and popo shields?
What do you recommend against blizzard in general? Is it okay to pressure afterwards? Not too certain of the properties on this move. I think it's not very high reward unless popo is ready to pressure with wd grab/jab or if i shield after getting hit by the blizzard

https://youtu.be/g6CaDytIPdA?t=207
Here, you pretty much lasered until you figured he was off balance or stuck in some way and went in with approaching laser.
What cues let you know this? I'm assuming it was the popo airdodge after the fh ice block.

A bit ago you mentioned that recognizing when people are stuck and pressuring is an important part of pushing advantage.

How can I recognize when someone is stuck?
Is someone being "stuck" the same as being off balance for you or are these different terms?


Both druggedfox and leffen have mentioned to me that falco exceeds at solo fighting popo while pushing nana away, what do you think of this strat? So mainly focusing on popo and only taking on nana when it's necessary / most beneficial.


Can you tell me more about the fsmash on shield stuff both you and mango use a lot vs icies? Why is it so good, do you still think it's good, is it because things push icies so far away?

1. I'll journal after friendlies or after practice. Sometimes I'll just write down ideas I have at any point. When I write after practice, it's about what I did and how well I did it and also how immersed I was. It's good to compare days to make sure I am progressing. Then friendlies are application of practice, and while I journal much less after practice, I may compare with practice notes to see if I could execute the things I felt good/bad about and feed new ideas into practice. Sometimes I just get matchup/testing ideas though so that will be separate.

Meditation lets you do everything else more effectively, like exercise does. If you trade these sorts of things for just practice, I'd argue that extra time would be wasted. Now maybe you don't want to meditate as long as I do, and there are shorter useful meditations you can do. Here's a talk demonstrating an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waYNEDZxEPY
Anyway, meditation for me is basically just doing some visualizing of goals, focus training by paying attention to breathing, boosting yourself by having more clean breaths, and also it can even induce flow state if you go long enough/deep enough into it which can have many benefits. Generally I just find getting away from the excessive stimuli we have around us and learning to focus is extremely important. Focus lets us get into flow, really remember what happens such as in Melee or in analysis, and generally can be calming. It's too important not to do I believe.

You kind of ask two different questions next, but I'll just talk about playing to learn. You need to set goals and take it very seriously. A session can't just be about bragging rights and tourney practice. You also need time to experiment with what you're practicing and also playing different ways. Maybe you can practice being very aggressive or very defensive, or using way more or less lasers than you used to, or doing combos without Dair, or some other thing. There is much you can do to play to learn, but you have to take the time to realize its value. Maybe you will do it differently than others, or maybe only want to do it vs weaker players. I just know that for me it has been super valuable, and with some I work with they benefit a lot if they really commit to it too. So if you don't think it's valuable, don't waste your time. The goals need to really interest you or you won't get anything out of it. It's a different mode.

I'd agree with your archetype assessment(though I do get much more airborne in Falco dittos now). I also seem to have a "deliberate" archetype such as what Armada kinda and Cactuar definitely have. It's about picking your moves very purposefully.

Speed is a good archetype as well. Grounded is something that tends to apply more to spacies than other characters so I'm not sure I'd keep it unless looking at Falcos. I could argue there's a "tense" vs "loose" archetype, but it isn't fully formed in my mind and tends to overlap with other things like tense defensiveness anyway. Something I'll probably put more time toward later.

I mean pressure and threatening the same, but shield pressure would just be an extra addition to pressure. So I guess pressure is a slightly bigger term to me. Would that still require a definition?


2. Whiff punishing is hitting a thrown out move. This can be for defensive moves like retreating Marth Fair, but those don't get whiff punished often. It's more likely you'll whiff punish a move that's coming into you that your opponent means to connect, like a Sheik dash attack. However most people just mean it as a way to hit something of a poke like Samus Ftilt. Falco isn't great at these sorts of plays since his range isn't massive and his dash is small and his jumpsquat is eternity and his laser takes mad frames to start up. Add this together and you need to be in good position and usually primed or set up to react to a move(such as when you SH backward at an opponent and Bair if you see a move or land/turnaround laser/DJ/waveland if you don't). Whiff punishing will depend on matchup too, as you'll want to be whiff punishing Sheik Ftilt as much as possible but shouldn't be planning on reliably whiff punishing Fox FH Bair in many positions if he's doing them well. Not sure what else to say about it really so I'll let you ask.

You either drop and drift into him and DJ Bair the way Mango does it, or you drop shine Dair if he's directly below you(or drop and drift into him and shine Dair/Bair if he's kinda low but in range for it), or you do something on stage where you runoff shine Dair his DJ or do the same vs side B. Kinda depends on a few things so I can't do more specifics without having more from you first.

Well, you can run under Marth and Uair like you had time to do here, you can dash FH Fair/Nair/Dair into him if he's close enough/you react early enough, or you can just do something safer like run in crouch shine or back up laser(easiest option). Marth really should be afraid of going that high vs Falco, and I'd recommend trying the FH into him options since he's lagging a lot after the initial Fair.

Sheik is similar except she doesn't Fair early on so that's where you want to hit her. I recommend SH Fair into her since your Nair/Dair can be too low sometimes. You can also sometimes Bair her. Backup laser can also work here.

You can DD grab and sometimes shield grab/shine oos approaching Marth Nair, as well as SH over it and Bair(may have to dash back first). You can also laser such that it hits standing Marth and jumping Marth if you make it a little higher. You can also just full momentum dash back SHL or dash back stop laser, or WD back laser. If you're cornered you could sometimes roll past it if you're early or you can dash FH over it.

Oh you didn't get grabbed for laser Dtilt? Were they spamming grab and did you try really close and kind of spaced? Nice that it worked and things went well for you btw.

And yeah that's part of why I love Dtilt against them lol.

As for blizzard, you NEED to train yourself to cover the roll so they can't get this for free. If they get it out, you can try going over them but you have to watch out for SH Uair from Popo. I just laser them for free damage and to further desync them. Not much else you can reliably do imo. Maybe you can mess with shield dropping on a platform to beat popo spamming Uair but I'm not sure I care about giving up the ground enough for that. Worth looking into.

I could've went in earlier, but the airdodge that was meant as a waveland/WD gave me the certainty I could go in.

Being stuck is like a subcategory of being off balance I guess. Stuck is more of an in place thing, whereas off balance could be erratic movement that they weren't doing before or a drastic tempo change or flailing moves....basically a bigger catchall term.

I don't know if you need to think that deeply about popo vs nana. I play to separate both just fine and switch hit a lot. I find going after popo can let him roll through me too often or let him wait and then nana hits me, so I don't prefer to exclusively focus on one or the other. Nana is my preferred target though since I can reliably Bair/Dair/Nair her and either kill or get a better position or combo/kill setup out of it and it's more likely to force popo to act, which simplifies things. If I'm shining and launching them both, then I focus more on continuing to launch popo with more shines/utilts/uthrows/bairs and otherwise just kicking Nana away until percent is high enough/positioning is good enough to start thinking of kills.

With shield DI i'm less sure Fsmash on shield is good which is why I do it less now. I need to experiment with it, as well spaced strong Fsmash is still probably fine but others may not be. It's good shield damage, safe(they never roll into you unless super cornered pretty much) and will body them at any percent and separate them well. Laser setting this up also helps with frame advantage to secure it.

 

[Meck]

Dr Peepee

As a Falco main, I am having trouble what do in the Marth matchup and what to do in neutral in certrain situations. I have a friend who is doing side-b in neutral and I have no idea how to beat it. He does it when he thinks I am going to approach with a laser or an aerial. If he guesses the timing correctly, I get hit. I can usually escape from the first hit but other times I get hit by the second hit or get grabbed. I feel like there is no way to punish Marth's side b because if I try to bait it out, he can instantly dash back or do the second hit of side b.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Dair will often beat or trade with side B which is good for you. Otherwise you can always SH in and DJ punish the side B, or laser in just out of side B range and either laser again or Fsmash/Ftilt/Dair/Bair the side B or what comes afterward. Marth needs to be spaced and kind of hope or easily see your approach to get side B off, so you need to fight a little closer before attacking/bait it out then.

 

[DogLifeGood]

He Dr Peepee I have a question about how to efficiently apply ideas in friendlies.

Most of the time when I try to apply ideas I feel like I'm playing slower, not my game, but most importantly I find it hard to execute the changes I want to make (even if I practiced it a bit). If that starts to get to me I decide to play for fun and I become faster and just happier playing my game. On the flip side i'm not seeing the situations I want to work on as well as I was before. Also I think it's important to note I have to keep reminding myself what I am trying to change which leads to a lot of sub vocalization.

I'm re reading "The Art of Learning" to try and find answers there but I was wondering if you had any advice about finding this sweet spot where I can still play well and incorporate new ideas. Or is playing slower/worse yet learning just part of the process?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Yes you will play slower and not your game when you apply ideas. That's because you're testing and not really applying. If you're applying then you're incorporating all available information together to try and win. However, more importantly than that, you do need to practice your changes if at all possible before playing matches. You admit to doing this some which is good, but you may need to do more or more deliberate practice. So if you wanted to work on tech chasing for example, you may tunnel vision on this and it may impact your overall ability, but you'll get to really see what's happening when you get a tech chase opportunity. If you practice this beforehand then it'll be even easier to generate new ideas and observe more when it happens. Your overall ability will still take a hit but that's fine, that's playing to learn.

 

[Basod]

Dr Peepee I apologize if this has been asked before but how do you do the dair where you reach the ground before the opponent? Is it a delayed fast fall, dair into fast fall, or does it only work at certain percents(percent range[10-85%] or only on specific percents [10%],[25%],etc)?
1st 2:42
2nd 4:00~4:01
3rd 5:02
4th 6:53
5th 6:54
6th 6:58
7th 8:15
8th 8:32
9th 8:36
10th 9:30
11th 10:45---- this one specifically
12th 10:53
I may have confused the dairs together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy8FeSI-gCM
P.s.
I apologize if this is giving out trade secrets, but how do you analyze your sets in general, and then for specific characters?
I.E: General= this is what I shouldve moved to point A then point B i would gain the advantage/bait him out/punish him.
Character Specifc= Marth is weaker here I cant/shouldn't do this.
Falco is weaker here do...
Falco/Marth stronger in this situation do...
P.P.S
What is your goal/strategy during a match? Is it fixed or fluid?
I.E: fixed=I will hold x and y position, i will do this to counter this,etc(specific approach/strategy.
fluid=going with the flow
P.P.P.S( I promise last one)
Why did you keep going for the bair when armada tried to float/bait out your approach/ range? Does it have a really good follow up and kill or was it to put him in a specific situation/ space?
Thanks PP

 

[NeoZ]

Basod , the ones after shine/uptilt are due to knockback stacking, if you dair an opponent while he has upwards knockback it will cancel out part of the dair knockback and they'll fall slowly.
Here's an example: https://gfycat.com/EvilSarcasticAegeancat
Marth's knockback gets almost completely cancelled, he falls at his regular fall speed while still in hitstun so you can do whatever you want to him.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Dr Peepee I apologize if this has been asked before but how do you do the dair where you reach the ground before the opponent? Is it a delayed fast fall, dair into fast fall, or does it only work at certain percents(percent range[10-85%] or only on specific percents [10%],[25%],etc)?
1st 2:42
2nd 4:00~4:01
3rd 5:02
4th 6:53
5th 6:54
6th 6:58
7th 8:15
8th 8:32
9th 8:36
10th 9:30
11th 10:45---- this one specifically
12th 10:53
I may have confused the dairs together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy8FeSI-gCM
P.s.
I apologize if this is giving out trade secrets, but how do you analyze your sets in general, and then for specific characters?
I.E: General= this is what I shouldve moved to point A then point B i would gain the advantage/bait him out/punish him.
Character Specifc= Marth is weaker here I cant/shouldn't do this.
Falco is weaker here do...
Falco/Marth stronger in this situation do...
P.P.S
What is your goal/strategy during a match? Is it fixed or fluid?
I.E: fixed=I will hold x and y position, i will do this to counter this,etc(specific approach/strategy.
fluid=going with the flow
P.P.P.S( I promise last one)
Why did you keep going for the bair when armada tried to float/bait out your approach/ range? Does it have a really good follow up and kill or was it to put him in a specific situation/ space?
Thanks PP

NeoZ covered the knockback stacking stuff already.

You analyze by looking at when a hit happens, and then trying to figure out why. Punish or neutral. Pause for each hit and ask why it happened, what are the consequences of it, what they each could have done instead, and then make your predictions about what will happen. See how things play out and keep informing your understanding of positions and trends in matches. Just look at when a hit happens and eventually you'll see patterns basically.

Bair beats a lot of what Peach can do, and if she's offstage then you can work it a particular way to stall out her float and many of her FC options and also to pressure her Fair landing.

 

[Basod]

N NeoZ Thank you.
Dr Peepee could you explain what you mean by patterns? Patterns based on trends in the match up or patterns based on trends in the set? Could you explain using this: Dreamland a Fox jump bairs, the marth backs off and does a rising fair. Fox realizes that the marth is punishing his bad approach so he approaches differently. ( This is where I get stuck when I try analysis).

Also how do you keep yourself from overthinking during a set? Is that where meditation has the pig bayout?
Thanks

 

[Dr Peepee]

Fox jump Bairs, what could he have done instead? What were Marth's options as Fox landed? Fox's? What do you predict happens next? How does this situation change over time? This is where patterns are.

 

[ChivalRuse]

Dr Peepee

As a Falco main, I am having trouble what do in the Marth matchup and what to do in neutral in certrain situations. I have a friend who is doing side-b in neutral and I have no idea how to beat it. He does it when he thinks I am going to approach with a laser or an aerial. If he guesses the timing correctly, I get hit. I can usually escape from the first hit but other times I get hit by the second hit or get grabbed. I feel like there is no way to punish Marth's side b because if I try to bait it out, he can instantly dash back or do the second hit of side b.

If there are actually Marth players who think that they should be using side-b against Falco, just shoot him with 5 or 10 standing short hop lasers and help them understand how little side-b does for them.

 

[KEYLIME SSB]

If there are actually Marth players who think that they should be using side-b against Falco, just shoot him with 5 or 10 standing short hop lasers and help them understand how little side-b does for them.

Unless powershield

 

[LowQualityJpeg]

Dr Peepee

in your set vs mango @ koc i noticed something very interesting. https://youtu.be/wm2LKbO5evo?t=4m8s at this timestamp mango does a fh dair over you, but you counter this by sh'ing and getting hit by the dair. since hitstun doesnt carry over from the air to the ground, you had frame advantage over him and managed to get a shine on him.

was this intentional or nah?

do you think this is a practical/viable option vs falling dair?

 

[RedGamer]

Dr Peepee

in your set vs mango @ koc i noticed something very interesting. https://youtu.be/wm2LKbO5evo?t=4m8s at this timestamp mango does a fh dair over you, but you counter this by sh'ing and getting hit by the dair. since hitstun doesnt carry over from the air to the ground, you had frame advantage over him and managed to get a shine on him.

was this intentional or nah?

do you think this is a practical/viable option vs falling dair?

^^^^

It is a viable option. Peachs/foxes/falcos/marths/sheiks do it all the time
edit: grab heavy characters do it the most i believe
It's certainly viable against fox for the same reason

Then again, my opinion might not matter. I'm just a guy looking for samus tips.
starting combos the conventional way is super risky. I've tried running shines, wavedash in grab, laser grab, laser d tilt, dair d tilt, dair up tilt, dair grab, laser up tilt, laser shine, wavedash d tilt, etc. but the main problem is edge guarding and/or killing.

The neutral game options can wait cause experimenting in neutral is super fun.

 

[Yort]

Fox jump Bairs, what could he have done instead? What were Marth's options as Fox landed? Fox's? What do you predict happens next? How does this situation change over time? This is where patterns are.

1
Would you say patience is taking longer to make a decision or taking longer to commit to an attack?

How important is patience for falco?

Can you define patience for me?

can you define timing?

Can you define manipulation for me?
How does one get manipulation?
As of now, I look at manipulation as me being able to act first or having access to more available powerful options than the opponent, for example if they're in the corner, and thus I can more easily predict their next option than they can now. This is very hazy for me honestly you use manipulation a lot and it makes sense kind of intuitively but I don't really get just what a manipulation is.

Why exactly does frame advantage give you increased manipulation? Is it just the ability to act first as I mentioned above?

How would you define having control versus not being in control? How does manipulation play into this?

What are some of the different types of scuffles as you mentioned?
I will look for them myself but just curious if you remember your categorization stuff.

Why does doing fast DD have a general purpose compared to slower dashes which have more decision points and time to react?

Do you believe you are a reactive player or proactive? I assume reactive but i'm interested in your thoughts on this.

How to beat a falco who is spamming laser? I do a lot of dash forward aerial to beat the laser dash back if the space allows me or platform mix ups currently.

What are marths weaknesses and strengths as a character?

2
"I mean pressure and threatening the same, but shield pressure would just be an extra addition to pressure. So I guess pressure is a slightly bigger term to me. Would that still require a definition?"

I guess it would not still require a definition as it is a category which has subsets like shield pressure. I'm still curious about what exactly you mean by pressuring by threatening,
example: if i'm doing short hop forwards while my opponent is dashing back at a close range, I am threatening nair, dair, dj, empty land, which in turn pressures them into responding with shield.
Would that be how the threat / pressure influenced them into shielding?

" I could argue there's a "tense" vs "loose" archetype"
I know it is not fleshed out yet but when you say tense vs loose do you mean the way they are mentally while playing the game or the way their character itself is playing?
I know personally some tense and loose players I have already kind of categorized in this manner, and I try to play a certain way to throw off the tense player I know but I generally am referring to his intense mental and physical tension while playing in tournament, which reflects itself in his play from my perspective. I would say that tense players are easier to throw off balance.

I have actually been trying to punish foxes landing from fh bair with dair lmao and I often get hit by his DJ ff bair as a result. I guess I should stop trying to do this!
Versus foxes full hop would you say the mix up usually involves letting him land and then beating him in the post landing mix up as a result of various factors such as spacing, my action before, conditioning, player habits, percents, etc.
Also, currently I look at spacing, my stimulus, conditioning, player habits, percents, and stage position to be the main 6 factors which dictate how the opponent might act in a given situation. Are there any other factors you might refer to as important?

How can I prevent fox jumping in the first place. I feel like I am waiting for fox to jump and play the mix up which can be good but it's like I am giving up space for free sometimes to wait for his landing, I watch you and mango seemingly control fox and not let him jump in the first place. This confuses me.

"Oh you didn't get grabbed for laser Dtilt? Were they spamming grab and did you try really close and kind of spaced? Nice that it worked and things went well for you btw."
I believe they were spamming grab, I did not try kinda spaced much and mainly did really close because I didn't really go in with much preparation of it and I only got to play icies in friendlies for about 40 minutes. I also think that I would need to try it more against somebody like dizz because he's amazing at specific counters to things like this haha. Yeah it worked but I never get to practice this MU and I think against more prominent icies I would need to lab out and further understand how the dtilt interacts with their shield so I can use it in the right spots.

"As for blizzard, you NEED to train yourself to cover the roll so they can't get this for free
(they never roll into you unless super cornered pretty much)"

I don't really get how to cover rolls effectively honestly. I think it might be one of my biggest flaws. I think to understand this I need to understand when people roll, why, and what direction they roll, and then how to cover.
I guess I'm just going to ask some general questions about escape and that will help aid my analysis for sure.

Why do people roll versus wavedash out of shield?
I personally think people wavedash or jump out of shield when they feel a bit safer and that the opponent might retreat with their pressure, while rolls come out when they feel desperate / expect more hard committal pressure.

Why do people roll so much more in the corner than center? Do they just want to get to center really badly?
Do you think icies mainly roll out unless super cornered? Do you think this is true for most characters or is there something about icies that might make this more true?

Are jab and shine the two best things to bait roll, and in the corner the chance is more likely?

What would the process be like to train myself to cover roll? I think you've probably given me an answer adequate for this before. I will look into it myself of course just wondering what you think.

Lastly, why do you do empty pivot sh when doing things like dash forward pivot sh bair rather than shield pivot? Is there a reason or did people just not shield pivot back when you learned it?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Dr Peepee

in your set vs mango @ koc i noticed something very interesting. https://youtu.be/wm2LKbO5evo?t=4m8s at this timestamp mango does a fh dair over you, but you counter this by sh'ing and getting hit by the dair. since hitstun doesnt carry over from the air to the ground, you had frame advantage over him and managed to get a shine on him.

was this intentional or nah?

do you think this is a practical/viable option vs falling dair?

It's one of those things that's always halfway intentional but I've primed myself to react appropriately to it. I don't prefer taking damage to get advantage, but using it sometimes is definitely good.

1
Would you say patience is taking longer to make a decision or taking longer to commit to an attack?

How important is patience for falco?

Can you define patience for me?

can you define timing?

Can you define manipulation for me?
How does one get manipulation?
As of now, I look at manipulation as me being able to act first or having access to more available powerful options than the opponent, for example if they're in the corner, and thus I can more easily predict their next option than they can now. This is very hazy for me honestly you use manipulation a lot and it makes sense kind of intuitively but I don't really get just what a manipulation is.

Why exactly does frame advantage give you increased manipulation? Is it just the ability to act first as I mentioned above?

How would you define having control versus not being in control? How does manipulation play into this?

What are some of the different types of scuffles as you mentioned?
I will look for them myself but just curious if you remember your categorization stuff.

Why does doing fast DD have a general purpose compared to slower dashes which have more decision points and time to react?

Do you believe you are a reactive player or proactive? I assume reactive but i'm interested in your thoughts on this.

How to beat a falco who is spamming laser? I do a lot of dash forward aerial to beat the laser dash back if the space allows me or platform mix ups currently.

What are marths weaknesses and strengths as a character?

2
"I mean pressure and threatening the same, but shield pressure would just be an extra addition to pressure. So I guess pressure is a slightly bigger term to me. Would that still require a definition?"

I guess it would not still require a definition as it is a category which has subsets like shield pressure. I'm still curious about what exactly you mean by pressuring by threatening,
example: if i'm doing short hop forwards while my opponent is dashing back at a close range, I am threatening nair, dair, dj, empty land, which in turn pressures them into responding with shield.
Would that be how the threat / pressure influenced them into shielding?

" I could argue there's a "tense" vs "loose" archetype"
I know it is not fleshed out yet but when you say tense vs loose do you mean the way they are mentally while playing the game or the way their character itself is playing?
I know personally some tense and loose players I have already kind of categorized in this manner, and I try to play a certain way to throw off the tense player I know but I generally am referring to his intense mental and physical tension while playing in tournament, which reflects itself in his play from my perspective. I would say that tense players are easier to throw off balance.

I have actually been trying to punish foxes landing from fh bair with dair lmao and I often get hit by his DJ ff bair as a result. I guess I should stop trying to do this!
Versus foxes full hop would you say the mix up usually involves letting him land and then beating him in the post landing mix up as a result of various factors such as spacing, my action before, conditioning, player habits, percents, etc.
Also, currently I look at spacing, my stimulus, conditioning, player habits, percents, and stage position to be the main 6 factors which dictate how the opponent might act in a given situation. Are there any other factors you might refer to as important?

How can I prevent fox jumping in the first place. I feel like I am waiting for fox to jump and play the mix up which can be good but it's like I am giving up space for free sometimes to wait for his landing, I watch you and mango seemingly control fox and not let him jump in the first place. This confuses me.

"Oh you didn't get grabbed for laser Dtilt? Were they spamming grab and did you try really close and kind of spaced? Nice that it worked and things went well for you btw."
I believe they were spamming grab, I did not try kinda spaced much and mainly did really close because I didn't really go in with much preparation of it and I only got to play icies in friendlies for about 40 minutes. I also think that I would need to try it more against somebody like dizz because he's amazing at specific counters to things like this haha. Yeah it worked but I never get to practice this MU and I think against more prominent icies I would need to lab out and further understand how the dtilt interacts with their shield so I can use it in the right spots.

"As for blizzard, you NEED to train yourself to cover the roll so they can't get this for free
(they never roll into you unless super cornered pretty much)"

I don't really get how to cover rolls effectively honestly. I think it might be one of my biggest flaws. I think to understand this I need to understand when people roll, why, and what direction they roll, and then how to cover.
I guess I'm just going to ask some general questions about escape and that will help aid my analysis for sure.

Why do people roll versus wavedash out of shield?
I personally think people wavedash or jump out of shield when they feel a bit safer and that the opponent might retreat with their pressure, while rolls come out when they feel desperate / expect more hard committal pressure.

Why do people roll so much more in the corner than center? Do they just want to get to center really badly?
Do you think icies mainly roll out unless super cornered? Do you think this is true for most characters or is there something about icies that might make this more true?

Are jab and shine the two best things to bait roll, and in the corner the chance is more likely?

What would the process be like to train myself to cover roll? I think you've probably given me an answer adequate for this before. I will look into it myself of course just wondering what you think.

Lastly, why do you do empty pivot sh when doing things like dash forward pivot sh bair rather than shield pivot? Is there a reason or did people just not shield pivot back when you learned it?

1. Patience is something you sometimes use but not always. It's a general description I think, but it can be specific as well. Patience for specific situations is taking longer to act, or simply just waiting to see what happens. It means not taking direct openings or trying to force them necessarily. It can have some different definitions I suppose.

Falco needs patience more against floaties than spacies or Falcon, but beyond those general things it can be up to the Falco.

Timing....I suppose I'd say good timing is taking action at an appropriate space between important events. So a well-timed Bair might be after an opponent attacks into you but before they can get their shield up at a range where the attack won't hit you as an example.

Manipulation is the art of influencing the opponent through deep game understanding and their own psychological fitness. I could argue the game understanding is more important because without it you can't impose any will. Though when you get strong enough they become interchangeable, so this is hard to put into an easy definition.

Manipulation is not just when you have advantage. It can be (nearly) any time. If I am cornered but know you like pressing into me when you have control, then I will fake being scared and hold shield, but then roll/attack out as I see you confirm my longer shield hold and move in.

Frame advantage gives you more direct control since you have more options than your opponent does and they are forced to respond to you based on space and frames/time.

Having control vs not....this is actually a very hard question. So typically, I could answer this by saying if your opponent has significantly more options then they are obviously in control. But what about some options? What about when it's even? What about when it's uneven but a player who should have less options knows the position better? What about when it's very lopsided but the "losing" player knows the position extremely well and has a read on their opponent? I cannot give a meaningful answer this way I think. I would say you have control when you are relaxed and have a high level of game knowledge and trust in yourself. If I go by game definitions I don't think I could truly encompass the complexity, but you can know when the opponent shields or is cornered or is off balance that you typically have a control situation.

Different types of scuffles? Well that would largely depend on how the scuffle happened, and also distance from the opponent I imagine. Having all of your moves able to hit quickly vs some moves changes things, as does one player recognizing the spacing first. I don't really have a way to break it down beyond that as it's not something I normally consider.

I switch very heavily between proactive and reactive, but I think I am more of a proactive player. I tend to push in some and if I don't get an immediate counterattack then I move in.

Assuming the opposing Falco is playing defensively with the spam, then I could use ZPS, FH over them/platforms, and maybe some take laser attack into them like you mentioned but that would be less common.

Marth's strengths: biggest range, not easily comboed, great dash and WD(movement), extremely strong punish including very good 50/50s and edgeguards, Dtilt covering his weaknesses in many matchups, very strong vs airborne opponents

Weaknesses: not very strong up close or OOS, bad in the corner and off the edge and above opponent, takes a lot of knowledge to do well with him



2. Yes your example is one of pressure.

Their mental state and their character. Loose players are often exploitable for their less rigorous mechanics as a counterpoint to your tense example.

No, you can attack Fox's FH. You NEED to be using Utilt especially, but also Bair and retreating laser and even dash FH Nair/Dair into them sometimes. Letting them land is okay too but you want to be threatening their direct attacks since you can beat them sometimes and scare them off from trying it too often to keep their options narrowed.

I'd add in timing. That list will give you plenty to work with though.

You keep Fox from jumping by attacking his jumps like I was just saying, but also by threatening to hit him if he jumps. Nair is super good against Fox because it intercepts his jump pretty well in addition to being safer on shield. If you threaten Nair well then you can keep him from jumping as often.

Ah okay I'll look back into the Dtilt then. It's such a nice option against them I'd really like to keep it lol.

Chances are, you probably laser and then set up to punish them WD'ing OOS or sitting in shield and don't prime to cover various things. Don't ALWAYS laser dash back. Don't ALWAYS double laser. Any of this type of stuff can keep you from really paying attention. Instead switch to beating the common options. When do opponents roll? Often just after a laser or as they see you move in. So laser slight wait, or laser dash in WD/dash back is great for covering roll, setting up pressure, and transitioning into laser just attack. And of course you can kinda cover both by setting up laser Bair since Bair is spaced so far you can just land and walk if needed to catch the roll sometimes. Mango does a lot of different coverage types and especially hunts down rolls, so maybe he would be worth looking at for pressure specifically.

Most times people roll just because they can't WD back OOS anymore in a lot of matchups. WD OOS backward is just so much safer even against Falco. Roll backward is something pretty much only ICs do to set up blizzard desync. You lose those backup options then you have to roll in, unless you're a Fox who likes WD'ing to the edge lol. Now with that said there can be other reasons to roll like you going deep on their shield a lot so they can get farther away from you by going behind than away, and certain moves or size of shield plus conditioning can also be factors. But the general idea I gave above may be more useful than all of this.

I don't like wasting the frame(s) to shield and sometimes I am okay with getting dash back momentum anyway.

 

[Doof_]

Recently I made the switch from Marth to Falco. One of my friends who has been someone that I've wanted to beat has kept mentioning how I'm going to switch back after a month or so. My plan to shut him up is beating him in the falco ditto by putting time into learning the match-up and studying his patterns and habits. Learning how to really dissect someone's habits would also be helpful for being able to do it on the fly mid set against someone new.

So my question is how do you go about identifying player habits? Is it more about picking out common options/mistakes they do and learning how to punish those situation as hard as possible? Or is it more of learning what they do in specific situations you can control like in the falco ditto, you know they like to full hop to regain control once you hit them with X amount of lasers and punishing that?

It also seems to be something you'd need to work on this for multiple times of playing against them to be able to come up with possible ideas for habits of theirs and testing out how you can manipulate them. You've answered a question similar to this for me before just about analyzing in general. I put what you said as this:
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
•focus on taking a series of situations and bring out the patterns/rules from them (general, Melee as a whole).
•Patterns = given how a character is prone to attacking in this position, then I should assume that this position+action combination forces the opponent to want to come in. This is because ____.

•incorporate matchup/player "facts"
-matchup - the patterns that occur between two characters. Also certain punishes you can use against that character, and what tools of the opposing character, to understand and respect.
-player - the patterns that occur between one specific player to another. Are they impatient? Do they favor a certain option over another? How do they tend to recover depending on your position? And so on.

•with specific attacks ask yourself "why?"
-If it misses, what good does it do?
-If it hits, why does it hit?
•after that you should ask yourself how is this "action" is setting up for the threat in the future for that "action" so you don't have to do the "action" in the first place. (Ex. Using Marth's Fair or grab because after using Dtilt a few times it makes them want to jump)
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I guess the main thing I'm asking how would you classify player habits and could you give some examples if mine doesn't do the concept justice. Thanks again for all that you do for the people. You've been my main inspiration for my melee philosophy and some aspects of my life philosophy lol.

 

[Yort]

Recently I made the switch from Marth to Falco. One of my friends who has been someone that I've wanted to beat has kept mentioning how I'm going to switch back after a month or so. My plan to shut him up is beating him in the falco ditto by putting time into learning the match-up and studying his patterns and habits. Learning how to really dissect someone's habits would also be helpful for being able to do it on the fly mid set against someone new.

So my question is how do you go about identifying player habits? Is it more about picking out common options/mistakes they do and learning how to punish those situation as hard as possible? Or is it more of learning what they do in specific situations you can control like in the falco ditto, you know they like to full hop to regain control once you hit them with X amount of lasers and punishing that?

It also seems to be something you'd need to work on this for multiple times of playing against them to be able to come up with possible ideas for habits of theirs and testing out how you can manipulate them. You've answered a question similar to this for me before just about analyzing in general. I put what you said as this:
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
•focus on taking a series of situations and bring out the patterns/rules from them (general, Melee as a whole).
•Patterns = given how a character is prone to attacking in this position, then I should assume that this position+action combination forces the opponent to want to come in. This is because ____.

•incorporate matchup/player "facts"
-matchup - the patterns that occur between two characters. Also certain punishes you can use against that character, and what tools of the opposing character, to understand and respect.
-player - the patterns that occur between one specific player to another. Are they impatient? Do they favor a certain option over another? How do they tend to recover depending on your position? And so on.

•with specific attacks ask yourself "why?"
-If it misses, what good does it do?
-If it hits, why does it hit?
•after that you should ask yourself how is this "action" is setting up for the threat in the future for that "action" so you don't have to do the "action" in the first place. (Ex. Using Marth's Fair or grab because after using Dtilt a few times it makes them want to jump)
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I guess the main thing I'm asking how would you classify player habits and could you give some examples if mine doesn't do the concept justice. Thanks again for all that you do for the people. You've been my main inspiration for my melee philosophy and some aspects of my life philosophy lol.

Hey I hope you don't mind i'm going to sort of answer for DR PP because I have kind of been asking him these same sorts of questions in different formats for months, so I have a bunch of his responses to my own questions about this sort of thing.

Here are his responses to similar questions.

You analyze by looking at when a hit happens, and then trying to figure out why. Punish or neutral. Pause for each hit and ask why it happened, what are the consequences of it, what they each could have done instead, and then make your predictions about what will happen. See how things play out and keep informing your understanding of positions and trends in matches. Just look at when a hit happens and eventually you'll see patterns basically.

from earlier in the page, if you analyze vods of you and your friend playing in a similar vein to the way ppmd recommends above you will get better at noticing patterns and specific player patterns your friend might have. The more you practice this and feed your understanding the more you can generate ideas and notice when patterns might happen.

3. I would recommend looking into classifying as much as you can. It's so intuitive for me at this point I'm not sure I'd be able to easily give you the information you're looking for, though your questions help me bring those ideas out from my subconsciousness which is good. Even so, slotting opponents into as many useful categories as you can is always beneficial and helps you stay more adaptive in any match and against any adaption a more familiar opponent may try in the meantime.

PPMD thinks you should classify opponent archetypes based on your understanding, and this can then feed your ability to adapt / generate game plans suited for specific player archetypes.

Currently my archetypes I have been using are aggressive/defensive, patient/impatient, proactive/reactive, grounded/airborne, fast/slow, and I might start looking into that loose/tense archetype as I asked ppmd about earlier because I have noticed this difference in players sort of intuitively.

Also, here's a post from December.

2. You might need to give me examples of what you mean by this second type of player you call reactive. I tend to think of reactive as an opposite to proactive, and a reactive player would often be one that is more about letting the opponent act first while a proactive one does the opposite. Often these types will be associated with offense or defense, but a reactive player could catch an opponent on their startup and a proactive player could just push forward to observe a reaction then wait. It can be messier than it seems. Defensive players are ones who prefer to let the opponent come to them in my definition. They may be proactive as I've said or reactive but by nature defense is to make things complicated for the opponent to figure out and get through. It is not for novices only because we see defensive play at the top often, but even if we didn't it would still exist.

I think patient is often reactive but not necessarily true always. For example, a Falco player could be lasering forward often but not committing to any major approaches for longer than most people. However once he's playing at his own tempo he will prefer to be the one to take things a step farther and make the initiations which is far more proactive(he may shoot an extra laser or two than less patient Falcos would in similar positions for instance). This is proactive and patient but it just means they take longer to get going. You could do this with defense too.

A simple definition for aggressive would be wanting to go to your opponent while defensive would be a player would rather make it difficult for the opponent to come to me.

Anyways, speaking from my own experience if you do lots of analysis and build the skill you'll start to see patterns and in regards to your friend in particular you should try and develop ideas and test to see how effective they are versus him and how he might adapt.

If you look back a few months in this thread you will find pages of him talking about this sort of stuff so that might be useful.

i formatted this weird but italicized is me and non is ppmd responses.

 

[Barron]

I had some questions regarding Peach vs Falco specifically at the ledge.

There's this peach player I play with from time to time and one scenario that keeps popping up is Peach being at the ledge (grabbing it herself). The Peach player would ledge drop and double jump back on stage mixing in either air dodge or fair. My counter to this has been ac bair or even forward smash if I'm lazy lol. Sometimes I threaten with empty short hops which I feel gives him more of an incentive to air dodge.

After watching Armada in this situation, two things the other Peach player wasn't implementing was simply refreshing his invincibility (ledge drop double jump to grab the ledge) and ledge drop umbrella. Getting around the umbrella is what I want answers for. I saw a single instance where Armada went for a ledge drop umbrella and it traded with Westballz's bair (killing Armada). After watching this I recommended to the Peach player that he should try using that trick more often so I could get some practice on it.

To this day I think I've managed to get the bair to trade twice if anything? Not only that but it seems quite impractical. It becomes high risk low reward the lower the Peach's percent is. The umbrella has always sent me into a tech situation, even after it trades. Trying to trade bair has been more trouble than it's worth.

I saw Ppmd vs Armada in this same instance, and PP resorted to spacing himself in a way that he is out of range from the umbrella. I don't remember what happened next but I'm pretty sure PP found a way to squeeze in a bair after Armada was forced to pick a sub par recovery option. I like this response a lot. It makes perfect sense with how position, and reacting to a character's position, plays out. I'll definitely be trying something like this next time the Peach player and I meet.

TL;DR
How do you keep Peach on the ledge? What are her counter options? What punishes are you looking for?

 

[Dr Peepee]

You can walk Dsmash the umbrella, but the timing can be a pain and she can tech it. I think you may also be able to reverse SH over the umbrella and grab the edge, but that wasn't always reliable to me. You can also WD grab the edge(or do some platform shenanigans and get there) as she drops before she up-Bs, and this option isn't so bad since it forces her to early or late up-B and you can punish each differently.

I tend to just play it safer in tourney since I haven't messed around with it a ton as Peach really sucks getting back onto the stage anyway, but you can always mix the edge grabbing thing in and see what that opens up for you. Also the Dsmash at percents she can't tech it is fairly useful for setting up earlier kills imo. Now if you're already on the edge before she wants to up-B, you can either drop drift into her shine dair before she up-Bs or drift lower dj bair. She may pop the up-B earlier in these situations and that's just a free roll up then if you're refreshing and threatening appropriately(faking edge drop attack vs regrab is pretty good).

 

[Doof_]

Hey I hope you don't mind i'm going to sort of answer for DR PP because I have kind of been asking him these same sorts of questions in different formats for months, so I have a bunch of his responses to my own questions about this sort of thing.

Here are his responses to similar questions.

You analyze by looking at when a hit happens, and then trying to figure out why. Punish or neutral. Pause for each hit and ask why it happened, what are the consequences of it, what they each could have done instead, and then make your predictions about what will happen. See how things play out and keep informing your understanding of positions and trends in matches. Just look at when a hit happens and eventually you'll see patterns basically.

from earlier in the page, if you analyze vods of you and your friend playing in a similar vein to the way ppmd recommends above you will get better at noticing patterns and specific player patterns your friend might have. The more you practice this and feed your understanding the more you can generate ideas and notice when patterns might happen.

3. I would recommend looking into classifying as much as you can. It's so intuitive for me at this point I'm not sure I'd be able to easily give you the information you're looking for, though your questions help me bring those ideas out from my subconsciousness which is good. Even so, slotting opponents into as many useful categories as you can is always beneficial and helps you stay more adaptive in any match and against any adaption a more familiar opponent may try in the meantime.

PPMD thinks you should classify opponent archetypes based on your understanding, and this can then feed your ability to adapt / generate game plans suited for specific player archetypes.

Currently my archetypes I have been using are aggressive/defensive, patient/impatient, proactive/reactive, grounded/airborne, fast/slow, and I might start looking into that loose/tense archetype as I asked ppmd about earlier because I have noticed this difference in players sort of intuitively.

Also, here's a post from December.

2. You might need to give me examples of what you mean by this second type of player you call reactive. I tend to think of reactive as an opposite to proactive, and a reactive player would often be one that is more about letting the opponent act first while a proactive one does the opposite. Often these types will be associated with offense or defense, but a reactive player could catch an opponent on their startup and a proactive player could just push forward to observe a reaction then wait. It can be messier than it seems. Defensive players are ones who prefer to let the opponent come to them in my definition. They may be proactive as I've said or reactive but by nature defense is to make things complicated for the opponent to figure out and get through. It is not for novices only because we see defensive play at the top often, but even if we didn't it would still exist.

I think patient is often reactive but not necessarily true always. For example, a Falco player could be lasering forward often but not committing to any major approaches for longer than most people. However once he's playing at his own tempo he will prefer to be the one to take things a step farther and make the initiations which is far more proactive(he may shoot an extra laser or two than less patient Falcos would in similar positions for instance). This is proactive and patient but it just means they take longer to get going. You could do this with defense too.

A simple definition for aggressive would be wanting to go to your opponent while defensive would be a player would rather make it difficult for the opponent to come to me.

Anyways, speaking from my own experience if you do lots of analysis and build the skill you'll start to see patterns and in regards to your friend in particular you should try and develop ideas and test to see how effective they are versus him and how he might adapt.

If you look back a few months in this thread you will find pages of him talking about this sort of stuff so that might be useful.

i formatted this weird but italicized is me and non is ppmd responses.

Thank you so much for your response. I figured that this information must've been somewhere within the 613 pages of this thread, but finding it was a different story lol.

I really like the idea of classifying players in a certain archetype when playing someone new because it allows you to have a baseline to work with and you can adjust it throughout your set. Like generalizing styles is definitely a non-exact science, but having the thought of "this player is defensive and waiting for me to mess up with a bad approach" can allow you to make connections to other things they might be looking for.



Recently I had a lesson with Druggedfox and we looked over this set between PP and this random falcon in pools to see just how he dismantled him as a player. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHC-hihbvas).
-Druggedfox brought up that on Falcon's first respawn at 1:16 PPMD does a full hop, lands and does dash -> wavedash underneath Falcon's nair and then goes in with a laser to pressure him.
-After Falcon's second respawn at 1:36 PPMD does the exact same thing except this time he does in with an immediate nair because he knows that this Falcon is going to do the exact same thing and shield in the corner

Once all of that happens it feels like it is just completely over for this Falcon. PP just seems to have a complete read on him and his abilities after this.



Even being able to emulate a fraction of this ability would be extremely helpful for my problem of dealing with new opponents, and I guess I just wanted the best possible foundation to begin really working on it.

Also I'd like to thank you, Yort, for you walls of text. They give me something to read when work is slow

 

[SalaMenace]

What are the best ways to improve at this game? And how can you actually tell if you're improving? I've been playing melee for about 7-8 months now, mostly on netplay. I'm vastly better now then when I started, but the past 3 months I feel like I just can't tell if I'm getting better. I've been ranked silver for what seems like forever, and gold ranked players seem to be on a whole 'nother level from me.

I feel like when it comes down to it, the biggest factor in one's skill at the game is just time spent playing. When I ask people who are better than me how long they have been playing, they'll usually say at least a year or two, sometimes more. But how do I know if I'm on the right path to also get better just through playing? I try my hardest to learn from watching and analyzing gameplay, and I try to understand what I'm doing wrong as I'm playing. And I'll practice tech skill when I feel it's needed. But even with all my efforts, I still just get constantly destroyed by players who are much better than me. All I want is to be good at this game lol.

Does anyone know how long it took the top players to become top players? Like how many years was Armada a scrub for before he became one of the best in the world?

 

[Dr Peepee]

There are only two things every current top player has in common: they played the game a lot, and they analyzed videos. So if you want to go by just what every top player DID, you'd either need to find something useful in that, or get into their mental processes. Something they also shared was a common hunger, or desire to be really good. This made them really flexible in approach and kept them pushing when others got lazy. This cannot be understated.

In terms of strategy, I'd say if you can at least practice every section of the game like combos tech chasing DI recovery etc you'll form a good plan because there's always something new to learn for yourself or from videos. There's always something to practice too, but that is often shunned in this community.

This said, the work still takes time. If you want to go faster, find ways to go faster. Accepting where you are and that improvement won't happen overnight is still healthy though.

 

[Barron]

Falco vs Peach neutral
When neither character has distinct positional advantage, what are the strategies and mix ups?

As far as I'm concerned, Falco will try to lock down Peach with lasers and set up for aerials / shines. To counteract this, Peach can float above the lasers and come down with float cancelled fairs (for the most part). If Peach floats, Falco can take to the platform and SH laser to remove the float. What is Peach's counterplay in this scenario? When can the Falco incorporate aerials off the platform? If Peach decides to float, he can also FH aerial to the top platform to nick at her and gain percent. Can this be punished? Maybe if Peach is at low percent but idk, haven't messed around with this / studied this situation.

I feel like when people talk about Falco vs Peach, the whole "Peach floats above laser" thing is overblown. It may be a part of the matchup but what are her tools (in neutral) outside of float? What moves should the Falco play around?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Peach can intercept Falco on the way to the platform, attack him if he's on it, or just wait for Falco to come down and then move up as he comes down. She could also pull a turnip to throw at him. Peach can intercept Falco's FH if he has to go through her or she starts her attack early or is close enough to him. If Falco makes it obvious he will go high, she can start her DJ(if needed) and intercept him as he gets to the top platform. On YS/FoD she won't need DJ.

Peach's other neutral tools are mainly PS, WD back, DA, and jab after landing from float generally.

 

[Barron]

What's the difference between Peach going for jabs vs going for a grab or downsmash after FC fair?

Hey, Peepee. You can buffer a roll out of the FC fair > grab that Armada was getting you with (he's started doing that recently it seems, and it's pretty ****). You don't have any other OoS option that'll beat it (maybe shine, but I'm not really sure), and buffering a spotdodge against Peach is obviously not
smart.

I'm tempted to mess around with shine OOS against this. Buffering roll with cstick sounds good but then --->

If Armada is perfect, you can't buffer a roll -- you'll get grabbed out of roll startup. The only thing you can do that avoids the grab is spot dodge (or, better yet, just don't get caught shielding his FC fairs). In practice, you can probably buffer roll, since doing a perfect FC fair > grab on shield seems hard (Armada is pretty good though, so maybe not).

[COLLAPSE="Source, plus foreshadowing."]


[/COLLAPSE]

Apparently buffering roll loses to a frame perfect grab, but you can still spot dodge. I read something about spot dodge having invincibility 2 frames faster than roll. Spot dodge is invincible frame 2 while roll is frame 4.

Marth technically cannot get the first regrab if you DI down & away from f-throws. You can buffer anything out of it and avoid the follow (unless he waits). But then the risk is that he can up throw > regrab instead. The reason people DI into Marth (aside from panicking and being silly) at 0 is because if he up throws at 0 he can't regrab if you DI behind him (just too slow, only Falco [so don't ask about Fox]). If he grab attacks I think he can do it, but that's what mashing is for. Spacies in my experience tend to mash very little though, so maybe Marths should just do that instead of f-throw regrab. Hmm. Interesting thought.

Wow, that's a lot of text about a single mixup. Smash be wordy. Smash be vague. I want to rhyme plague somehow but I don't see how to.

Regarding FC aerials: Peach cannot buffer grab after FC aerial (or down smash, which is the other important one) and, in my experience, it's very hard to be frame perfect at that specific timing. So rolling is generally a go. On a related note, since you're frail, I think you're best off rolling. It's really hard for Peach to chase that because she's, well, terribly slow. Sidestep is generally awful vs Peach.

Because Peach cannot buffer grab and stalling is a thing, rolling seems like the more reliable option here. Not only that, but it's harder for Peach to contest it because of her speed, as KirbyKaze said.

I realized my mistake and edited my post.

The gist of it is that:

Fair-grab loses to roll because of height
Fair-downsmash might lose to roll but it depends on how high they are and other crap like that (will probably work though)
Fair-jab probably beats roll but it's jab they probably can't follow it legitimately and you can probably roll after the jab if you're buffering anyway lolz

Low FC Nair is OP




Bones:

Marths could just up throw and then tech chase the regrab I think but shhh don't tell them that

Marth seriously has like 3+ good ways of doing the low percents game vs Falco for that first 20% or whatever it's really unfair but then again you're Falco so it kind of is fair

My general gameplan will be to buffer roll when a Peach tries to FC fair into grab. Unless they show me that they can do it perfectly, I will not implement spot dodge. If I come across a Peach that can FC fair into grab perfectly, then I'll start spot dodging and we'll play around with that.

When would staying in shield be useful? I imagine you could stay in shield when you're expecting jabs. Eating a down smash on your shield doesn't seem favorable, but you can always shield di away I guess. Would FC fair into jabs beat out roll? How about spot dodge? Either way, jabs shouldn't lead to much according to KirbyKaze. I'm thinking it might lead to a tech chase at higher percents. Or if you're closer to the ledge it might put you off stage.

 

[Dr Peepee]

If a Peach sees you always buffering roll, they could just Fair and then chase your roll with DA. This is when you can get more hold shield or even Dair/FH OOS counterplay, among other mixups such as delayed roll or other timing differences. FC Fair into jabs does beat roll iirc but I'm not sure about spotdodge. Jabs give a good positional advantage that is especially worse on smaller stages/when closer to the corner(though better than getting outright grabbed, at least usually). Dsmash you can shield and I think some have said you can WD OOS shine this even after FC Fair(from full shield mainly) but I couldn't do it consistently.