PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

[stabbedbyanipple]

That helps a lot PP, thank you! I do think I over-value a successful laser to the point I miss direct punish opportunities in favor of trying to immediately position myself to catch them with a laser despite worse reward. It seems I also misjudged the risk-reward of full dash laser vs opponents who generally like Dashback. I’m assuming you would favor taking space more gradually then, or at least being a bit more subtle/patient when doing so? Would you also discourage full dash laser vs characters who are more traditionally grounded like marth?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Well if you want to laser then yes I think less extreme forward ones are more balanced in terms of risk/reward. However, lasering a bit less, at least sometimes, opens up your aerials and sometimes shine OOS/Utilt counterhits, which is where your damage is. Lasers are a way to get in and get damage, not necessarily your main goal in neutral if that makes sense.

That said, the full dash in ones are better vs say Marth who is swinging less, but I am not sure I'd make it a staple play even then.

 

[stabbedbyanipple]

This all helped a lot, thank you very much PP!

 

[Meck]

Hi PP,

I'm unsure how to stop viewing the game so linearly. I had a friend tell me that I view the game as if I were playing a single-player game where my opponent is unable to adapt to my actions. I feel like there should be an all-encompassing option but logically I know that isn't true. I'm having trouble mixing things up and I get overwhelmed when my opponent adapts because I'm not sure what they are doing differently to get the upper hand.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Let's try something simple to work on it. Relax more when you play, and in between stocks and games take time to think about what the last thing in neutral was before you died. Then plan your change. Eventually you can go back through the whole stock with practice. Remembering is how you adapt.

 

[R3_]

Hi again. I have this huge problem of not thinking too much about whats happening while im playing (autopiloting). I do mixup my approaches, recoveries etc but I rarely ever do it because my of opponents approaches, only because its better than doing the exact same options over and over. I've tried to break this habit a little more recently and I think im getting there but I just wanted to know how others deal with this process and see a bunch of other ideas/methods to deal with autopiloting.

 

[Dr Peepee]

My above post should be an okay starting point to begin thinking about this. Beyond that, analysis of yourself and others for ideas and practicing those mixups can be helpful.

 

[NetplayFalco]

Hey PP!

Small rant and some questions about Puff. Feel free to skip to the questions tho maybe rant will give context.

I'm trying to learn the Puff matchup by studying it. It's not a matchup I get to play often, even on netplay, but there are some good PR players who play Puff where I am. I kind of get by against Puff by trying to space around her, poke occasionally, laser her down, pressure when she's in shield and get dair tech-chases.

However, I don't really have a solid gameplan. I'm kind of just guessing and mixing up, but I would really like to develop a solid idea for where I can get my openings in neutral.

Puff seems weird as hell to me because the character dashdances in the air, rarely has any landing lag, and isn't afraid to doublejump.

My gameplan against other characters is to get frame advantage (by lasering or watching them whiff something), and observing their habits, then punishing next time I get advantage. I assume they'll stay grounded, but if they go to the air, I either read fullhop, doublejump, or waveland to platform. It feels like I can cover these with relative success and low risk. There's a bit of ambiguity with drift and empty land vs aerial sometimes, but overall I'm comfortable with the risks. The longest they can stall out for is doing a doublejump, and if I read something else and, say, a fox whiffpunishes me with a doublejump, at least he's risking a lot. Next time I can hit him after his doublejump and that's super scary for fox. So I'm comfortable making these callouts.

Puff is different though. I can't get a solid visual cue on when to make a read, and I don't know what the right callouts are. Puff can decide to poke seemingly whenever, and drift far out seemingly whenever, and escape to platform and shield seemingly whenever. When there are so many more potential times when Puff can retreat, how am I supposed to guess the right one? And even if I do, what do I gain from calling out an airborne Puff? It's not like hitting a fox whose doublejump I read and send him offstage without a jump. I give up all my stage to try and hit Puff, either to gain a few percent or fail and lose that stage for good.

I ended up ranting for longer than I expected so to summarise, I can't find visual cues on Puff and the risk/reward vs airborne Puff rarely seems worth it.

Questions:
- How often should I be looking to approach Puff in the air?
- Are there any important visual cues or moments I should look out for to engage in mixups?
- Is it even worth approaching Puff in the air at low%?
- Should I be reading when Puff wants to touch the ground again, or reacting to the landing?
- What are the important options I should try to incorporate when Puff wants to land?
- I take space from Puff but I don't feel like I can convert this space into a positive situation. Am I wrong to think of the matchup in this way?

Sorry for the long post, and the unclear thoughts presented in it. It's sort of scatterbrained because I don't have a grasp on how to analyse Puff yet. Like I said, I do OK vs puffs, but I'm not really thinking when I play them. Not in the same way I do about other matchups.

Any advice would help, even if you tell me I'm looking at the MU in totally the wrong way ^^ thx for reading in advance

EDIT: My overall question might be: When I have stage control, how do I force situations vs Puff? What am I waiting for and how should I react?

 

[stabbedbyanipple]

Hello PP,

After your posts from last time combined with other factors, I've tried to shift the way I do match analysis from reactive to more predictive. In other words, instead of looking at a situation after the fact and judging my decision making, I take into consideration what they have shown they are looking for in certain positions and then trying to predict what will happen next using the previous information. I have watch both sets of mine and sets of others to try and practice this, and I tried to kind of reverse engineer a list of situations where the options the opponent picked seemed to have a lot of commonality.

I wanted to run through the set of questions I came up with and see what you would add/remove/change.

1) How do they tech chase? (I didn't feel very comfortable about this one actually because it seemed to change based on what they knocked down with and how far they were from Falco)
2) What do they do out of shield pressure? (Changed based whether it was direct or spaced but people seemed to show less variation OoS than I expected going in)
3) What do they do from plat? (Could have just been the videos I watched but this one seemed the most consistent, especially when you're in range of their attacks from platform)
4) What does he do during each of our respawn invincibility? (I saw a lot of commonality on this one, especially when it works once)
5) What do they do when you're in your dash aerial threat range?
6) What do they do when you're NOT in your dash aerial threat range? (Before doing this I was expecting to sub-divide 5 and 6 further into "what do they do out of laser" but I found that if you landed a laser in threat range but weren't close enough to immediately punish, their reaction was in line with their reaction had you gotten that close without a laser in the first place)
7) What do they do when Falco's on the ledge?
8) How do they come off the ledge? (This one seemed pretty linear based on where Falco is with respect to the ledge)
9) What do they do when they get knocked off the stage (Depended on height/distance, but there were definitely "zones" off stage where their decision making would show consistency)

It also seemed like, even if you have an answer to one of these questions, if you weren't threatening the original reason they were picking that option, they probably wouldn't choose it. Example: A certain Marth I played exhibited that he loved to DD back aerial when I was in my own dash aerial threat range, clearly expecting me to come into him w/ an attack. However if I was in that same range, but with my back turned, I wasn't threatening the same option and he just came into me with an attack. Similarly, if they were cornered, they also would be forced into picking a different option in the same situation but I was it's own question or just an offshoot of 5-6.

The answers to these questions didn't stay the same over multiple games for the most part, but there were significant stretches where these didn't change, and if they did change it was one by one and not all at the same time.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Hey PP!

Small rant and some questions about Puff. Feel free to skip to the questions tho maybe rant will give context.

I'm trying to learn the Puff matchup by studying it. It's not a matchup I get to play often, even on netplay, but there are some good PR players who play Puff where I am. I kind of get by against Puff by trying to space around her, poke occasionally, laser her down, pressure when she's in shield and get dair tech-chases.

However, I don't really have a solid gameplan. I'm kind of just guessing and mixing up, but I would really like to develop a solid idea for where I can get my openings in neutral.

Puff seems weird as hell to me because the character dashdances in the air, rarely has any landing lag, and isn't afraid to doublejump.

My gameplan against other characters is to get frame advantage (by lasering or watching them whiff something), and observing their habits, then punishing next time I get advantage. I assume they'll stay grounded, but if they go to the air, I either read fullhop, doublejump, or waveland to platform. It feels like I can cover these with relative success and low risk. There's a bit of ambiguity with drift and empty land vs aerial sometimes, but overall I'm comfortable with the risks. The longest they can stall out for is doing a doublejump, and if I read something else and, say, a fox whiffpunishes me with a doublejump, at least he's risking a lot. Next time I can hit him after his doublejump and that's super scary for fox. So I'm comfortable making these callouts.

Puff is different though. I can't get a solid visual cue on when to make a read, and I don't know what the right callouts are. Puff can decide to poke seemingly whenever, and drift far out seemingly whenever, and escape to platform and shield seemingly whenever. When there are so many more potential times when Puff can retreat, how am I supposed to guess the right one? And even if I do, what do I gain from calling out an airborne Puff? It's not like hitting a fox whose doublejump I read and send him offstage without a jump. I give up all my stage to try and hit Puff, either to gain a few percent or fail and lose that stage for good.

I ended up ranting for longer than I expected so to summarise, I can't find visual cues on Puff and the risk/reward vs airborne Puff rarely seems worth it.

Questions:
- How often should I be looking to approach Puff in the air?
- Are there any important visual cues or moments I should look out for to engage in mixups?
- Is it even worth approaching Puff in the air at low%?
- Should I be reading when Puff wants to touch the ground again, or reacting to the landing?
- What are the important options I should try to incorporate when Puff wants to land?
- I take space from Puff but I don't feel like I can convert this space into a positive situation. Am I wrong to think of the matchup in this way?

Sorry for the long post, and the unclear thoughts presented in it. It's sort of scatterbrained because I don't have a grasp on how to analyse Puff yet. Like I said, I do OK vs puffs, but I'm not really thinking when I play them. Not in the same way I do about other matchups.

Any advice would help, even if you tell me I'm looking at the MU in totally the wrong way ^^ thx for reading in advance

EDIT: My overall question might be: When I have stage control, how do I force situations vs Puff? What am I waiting for and how should I react?

-Bair'ing Puff out of the air is good damage and gains position to get more damage so she can mix up less. It also tends to eat her jumps. In other words it snowballs.
-Count her jumps, she has 5 and each is weaker than the jump before it. She usually won't use just 1 or all 5, so look for habits. Bair is great vs her jumping, and try not to laser her when she's in the air. This forces you to get closer and either dash/run FH Dair/Nair her jumps away(or dash in pivot Bair), force her back, or force her to come into your Bair/Utilt.
-If you can Dair knock her down it's good, but otherwise try to get Bair damage if possible. No need to be antsy, it's not like she can hit you easily either.
-Use jumps to infer what she might like to do, and also consider how close you are and whether you have been punishing her landing in certain situations or not. Think like a Puff.
-Laser her landing, aerial her landing, or get close and beat what comes next. Sometimes it takes a bit.
-See above. May need to bring in specfic vods with timestamps.

Hello PP,

After your posts from last time combined with other factors, I've tried to shift the way I do match analysis from reactive to more predictive. In other words, instead of looking at a situation after the fact and judging my decision making, I take into consideration what they have shown they are looking for in certain positions and then trying to predict what will happen next using the previous information. I have watch both sets of mine and sets of others to try and practice this, and I tried to kind of reverse engineer a list of situations where the options the opponent picked seemed to have a lot of commonality.

I wanted to run through the set of questions I came up with and see what you would add/remove/change.

1) How do they tech chase? (I didn't feel very comfortable about this one actually because it seemed to change based on what they knocked down with and how far they were from Falco)
2) What do they do out of shield pressure? (Changed based whether it was direct or spaced but people seemed to show less variation OoS than I expected going in)
3) What do they do from plat? (Could have just been the videos I watched but this one seemed the most consistent, especially when you're in range of their attacks from platform)
4) What does he do during each of our respawn invincibility? (I saw a lot of commonality on this one, especially when it works once)
5) What do they do when you're in your dash aerial threat range?
6) What do they do when you're NOT in your dash aerial threat range? (Before doing this I was expecting to sub-divide 5 and 6 further into "what do they do out of laser" but I found that if you landed a laser in threat range but weren't close enough to immediately punish, their reaction was in line with their reaction had you gotten that close without a laser in the first place)
7) What do they do when Falco's on the ledge?
8) How do they come off the ledge? (This one seemed pretty linear based on where Falco is with respect to the ledge)
9) What do they do when they get knocked off the stage (Depended on height/distance, but there were definitely "zones" off stage where their decision making would show consistency)

It also seemed like, even if you have an answer to one of these questions, if you weren't threatening the original reason they were picking that option, they probably wouldn't choose it. Example: A certain Marth I played exhibited that he loved to DD back aerial when I was in my own dash aerial threat range, clearly expecting me to come into him w/ an attack. However if I was in that same range, but with my back turned, I wasn't threatening the same option and he just came into me with an attack. Similarly, if they were cornered, they also would be forced into picking a different option in the same situation but I was it's own question or just an offshoot of 5-6.

The answers to these questions didn't stay the same over multiple games for the most part, but there were significant stretches where these didn't change, and if they did change it was one by one and not all at the same time.

Yeah this all seems fine. You can of course include DI and combos and recovery etc in here, but I imagine it's more productive for you. How are you feeling this is in terms of your understanding and gameplay relative to before?

 

[stabbedbyanipple]

Yeah this all seems fine. You can of course include DI and combos and recovery etc in here, but I imagine it's more productive for you. How are you feeling this is in terms of your understanding and gameplay relative to before?

For understanding, I think it has really helped clarify a lot of decisions the opponent makes when I watch matches. In terms of my own gameplay: either due to not practicing it enough yet or maybe I haven't been practicing in the right way, it hasn't really translated well yet. I was focusing on analysis the past few days, and today was the first time I tried playing with the goal of actively keeping track of these things. I don't know if I can describe the feeling well, but I thought I was too consciously trying to keep track of the opponents habits instead of letting myself recognize them a bit more naturally in the flow of the game (like a Self 1 vs Self 2 type of dilemma, to reference the Inner Game). I suppose it could just be a matter of me not yet being comfortable enough doing this at actual game speed while playing the match, and that it will become less of a conscious effort with more practice.

Edit: Also I would say I don't totally have a handle on exactly WHEN the opponent will change their habits up. I know the harder you punish someone off a certain thing, the less likely they will be to choose that option again but I'm not really sure where the threshold is exactly.

 

[NetplayFalco]

-Bair'ing Puff out of the air is good damage and gains position to get more damage so she can mix up less. It also tends to eat her jumps. In other words it snowballs.
-Count her jumps, she has 5 and each is weaker than the jump before it. She usually won't use just 1 or all 5, so look for habits. Bair is great vs her jumping, and try not to laser her when she's in the air. This forces you to get closer and either dash/run FH Dair/Nair her jumps away(or dash in pivot Bair), force her back, or force her to come into your Bair/Utilt.
-If you can Dair knock her down it's good, but otherwise try to get Bair damage if possible. No need to be antsy, it's not like she can hit you easily either.
-Use jumps to infer what she might like to do, and also consider how close you are and whether you have been punishing her landing in certain situations or not. Think like a Puff.
-Laser her landing, aerial her landing, or get close and beat what comes next. Sometimes it takes a bit.
-See above. May need to bring in specfic vods with timestamps.

Thanks for the advice. I will try to build a gameplan around identifying habits with how many jumps puffs do.

When you say bair is great vs puff jumping, is this when falco has made his way below Puff and is able to threaten uptilt? Or should I wavedash into jump bair sometimes to approach with it?

 

[Dr Peepee]

For understanding, I think it has really helped clarify a lot of decisions the opponent makes when I watch matches. In terms of my own gameplay: either due to not practicing it enough yet or maybe I haven't been practicing in the right way, it hasn't really translated well yet. I was focusing on analysis the past few days, and today was the first time I tried playing with the goal of actively keeping track of these things. I don't know if I can describe the feeling well, but I thought I was too consciously trying to keep track of the opponents habits instead of letting myself recognize them a bit more naturally in the flow of the game (like a Self 1 vs Self 2 type of dilemma, to reference the Inner Game). I suppose it could just be a matter of me not yet being comfortable enough doing this at actual game speed while playing the match, and that it will become less of a conscious effort with more practice.

Edit: Also I would say I don't totally have a handle on exactly WHEN the opponent will change their habits up. I know the harder you punish someone off a certain thing, the less likely they will be to choose that option again but I'm not really sure where the threshold is exactly.

You'll likely need to keep with the conscious work and as you get a handle on it the subconscious can take over. Keep experimenting and trust yourself to find the right answer in time.

Thanks for the advice. I will try to build a gameplan around identifying habits with how many jumps puffs do.

When you say bair is great vs puff jumping, is this when falco has made his way below Puff and is able to threaten uptilt? Or should I wavedash into jump bair sometimes to approach with it?

You can WD into jump Bair sometimes. Both work so be sure to explore.

 

[R3_]

hi PP I wanted to know what the best way to present clips to you via slippi. since theres no way to time stamp in slippi, I thought maybe it'd be best to record with obs or something, however melee lags for me when I record through obs, is there a better alternative?

 

[Dr Peepee]

You could just post it then tell me what time to go to I suppose.

 

[NIFOFD]

Hi PP, I played a lot of Peach Falco today and realized that I understand less about the interaction between Peach and Falco's tools than I thought I did. Sorry if this winds up being a wall of text.

Sometimes I was dash dancing to space out Peach coming down with FC fair, and I was trying to punish the follow up option after the fair, which tended to be dash attack in the most recent games I played. I was under the impression that dair would beat dash attack if I were retreating with it, but it either won, traded, or cleanly lost at different points. I setup the situation in 20xx and couldn't quite tell with certainty what dictated each outcome.

Looking at a gif of the dash attack hurtboxes, it seems like it is initially much bigger and then decreases in size. It seems like I can trade with the big part as long as I use the strong hit of dair, but weak dair just clean loses. The late part of dash attack seems to lose pretty consistently (even if the dair is coming in the wrong way). Am I understanding this correctly or is there some weird geometry I'm neglecting?

I generally try not to wait to play the interaction after the FC fair unless I have enough space. Now dair doesn't seem so great and I don't feel like shielding the dash attack is good counterplay. I know I could hit the dash attack startup with a dair, but if she can actually shield and grab the early dair, I don't think the risk reward is good at all. I was watching you play Armada and I noticed you would often space outside the fair with your dash dance and bair Peach when she came down. I guess this means you can fade to avoid the potential shield grab if she does end up shielding. Do you know if that same bair would consistently beat out a dash attack attempt? Sometimes it traded with jabs so I'm worried it might trade with a dash attack. I'm talking about a situation like here:

https://youtu.be/WMpUymqNkag?t=66

I notice more generally that Armada never dash attacks in the situation I'm describing. It seems like the spacing you usually dash dance at would remove the threat of the strong part of dash attack. When I try to do the same thing, a new problem arises... If you're going to maintain you're spacing with a dash dance even as she floats forward, why doesn't Armada just push you into the corner by slowly floating forward? When I maintain the spacing I see you use, Peach players like to just keep floating in and I wind up in the corner. I know if the float height is above the side platform, he would be limited in how far underneath the platform a fair would go and any lower makes peach low enough to be baired/naired/lasered. A situation like this comes up at the start of game 2 in that vid at 2:40ish. It looks like your plan would be to just go over him in such a situation? A similar sort of thing also happens at 5:49 where you full hop out to top platform. Now I notice on stadium you started challenging the descent with SHL when you were in the corner. Did you start doing that on Stadium because of how much more space is protected from FC fair by the side platforms? I'm talking about around 10:12 in the video.

I hope this isn't too much. I really want to be able to get the most out of this situation since it comes up so often in the matchup. Its kind of confusing how FC fair/dash attack/dashdancing/lasers/side platforms all interact together.

 

[Dr Peepee]

I would say that's probably true about dash attack.

Bair will beat the DA so long as you get it out early enough and are close enough. She can DA under Bair if you are late or too far or both. You could also space Dair on her landing too to avoid shield grab and beat DA I imagine, but I never tested it. Bair is just easier to connect with in my experience.

Yeah that was my strategy vs float back then you are correct. However, I would argue it's not the only one and you can do more proactive things if Peach chooses to float farther inward. You can SH DJ Bair her if she comes in too much, or run in FH Nair her or even SH in DJ over her FC then Dair etc her landing depending on when and how she swings. You can also just get on a side platform and laser her float down, which may encourage her to come down early. This still opens up runoff laser which can keep her grounded and lead to pressure depending on factors. This more dynamic positioning battle on the ground and in the air combined makes her life quite difficult since she cannot change float direction well(test for yourself) and Fair's startup means she should have to guess vs grounded plays a lot. She could Bair to get around this, but that's a smaller move.

Does this help?

 

[NIFOFD]

Yeah that was very helpful, thanks! Its nice that I can practice these interactions with 20xx.

I was going to check out games of you two playing on FoD and FD to see how low/no side platforms changes the interaction. I was assuming that you'd be more proactive in handling the descent or in escaping the corner, but neither set of grand finals has a game on either of those two stages.

Do you know what Armada's rationale for counter-picking Yoshi's was? It seems like FoD would have offered similar advantages with better side platforms and lower risk of dying off the top. ssbwiki says it was an old ruleset so maybe you banned it? It also says KJ64 and rainbow cruise were legal so I'm surprised neither of those were ever chosen.

 

[R3_]

ok so the qualitys bad bc I can only record with my phone but its still analysable

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=11
in this bnb combo, I miss my second shine, what should I do in that situation? shield? dash away to centre stage? It doesn't seem possible to react to that misinput so maybe I should I always waveshine to centre stage rather than into the corner like in this clip?

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=14
what should I do oos against this type of pressure. looking back at it, I probably should've watched what he was doing and reacted with a dair oos when he did that sloppy wavedash down?

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=30
here I go for nair after the shine bc I wasn't sure if I could setup a late dair after my grab, is there anything else I can get off of that that would work better than nair? also I used wavedash back turnaround utilt to play it safe reading the tech in rather than trying to react, what do you do when you want to read a tech in?

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=34
here he running shines me and my brain decided to dash attack (but came out as pivot ftilt), should I be dash attacking here at this percent for a tech chase or would something like sh dair work better?

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=48
what should I have done after hitting the laser on shield, should I have immediate dair instead of dash dance dair and catch him full hopping oos, what other approaches could have worked in that scenario?

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=52
here I struggled with what I wanted to do after the ledgedash, it seems like shine would've been best but what should I do if he spaced properly and outranged my shine with bair or smth, turnaround utilt? dtilt?

I would put more timestamped questions into this reply but I feel like im already giving you too much to analyse, how many timestamped questions should I be sending to you in one reply? thanks!

 

[Dr Peepee]

Yeah that was very helpful, thanks! Its nice that I can practice these interactions with 20xx.

I was going to check out games of you two playing on FoD and FD to see how low/no side platforms changes the interaction. I was assuming that you'd be more proactive in handling the descent or in escaping the corner, but neither set of grand finals has a game on either of those two stages.

Do you know what Armada's rationale for counter-picking Yoshi's was? It seems like FoD would have offered similar advantages with better side platforms and lower risk of dying off the top. ssbwiki says it was an old ruleset so maybe you banned it? It also says KJ64 and rainbow cruise were legal so I'm surprised neither of those were ever chosen.

Armada and I agreed to gentlemen ban those jank levels lol. I can't remember stuff about that set so I won't speculate on YS.

ok so the qualitys bad bc I can only record with my phone but its still analysable

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=11
in this bnb combo, I miss my second shine, what should I do in that situation? shield? dash away to centre stage? It doesn't seem possible to react to that misinput so maybe I should I always waveshine to centre stage rather than into the corner like in this clip?

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=14
what should I do oos against this type of pressure. looking back at it, I probably should've watched what he was doing and reacted with a dair oos when he did that sloppy wavedash down?

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=30
here I go for nair after the shine bc I wasn't sure if I could setup a late dair after my grab, is there anything else I can get off of that that would work better than nair? also I used wavedash back turnaround utilt to play it safe reading the tech in rather than trying to react, what do you do when you want to read a tech in?

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=34
here he running shines me and my brain decided to dash attack (but came out as pivot ftilt), should I be dash attacking here at this percent for a tech chase or would something like sh dair work better?

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=48
what should I have done after hitting the laser on shield, should I have immediate dair instead of dash dance dair and catch him full hopping oos, what other approaches could have worked in that scenario?

https://youtu.be/-T9IlR8uzVw?t=52
here I struggled with what I wanted to do after the ledgedash, it seems like shine would've been best but what should I do if he spaced properly and outranged my shine with bair or smth, turnaround utilt? dtilt?

I would put more timestamped questions into this reply but I feel like im already giving you too much to analyse, how many timestamped questions should I be sending to you in one reply? thanks!

It's a lot, but I get to it when I can and am able to.

If you miss, then either dash away or SH to spaced Bair or turnaround grab I guess. Or delayed shine. Lots of potential nonsense.

Shine oos or shield grab on that shine wd would've been good, but hold shield through second shine bair and either grabbed or went to edge or FH'd out of it or something works too.

Dair may have worked, Uair too. Fsmash as well for damage and maybe DI mixup. Nair is fine though. Maybe turnaround Utilt or JC Usmash? If you want to read tech in you can Fsmash in that direction, or WD/RC Utilt or RC shine.

Dair is generally safer overall, and that DA would've been a bit early.

Immediate Dair would have missed too since you were so far away. Could have dashed in and lasered in place, dashed back dashed in full approach laser, etc.

Turnaround Utilt, or dash away for space could work. FH can sometimes get you around it too if you have enough invincibility.

 

[R3_]

I've been realising, recently that I struggle to kill and I feel like one of the reasons for that is because I don't do shine bair almost ever. The reason I don't is bc I just assume my opponent will always di away (which is obviously not the case) so I find myself just going for waveshine and reacting. What situations should I be using shine bair over waveshine > react?

Edit: Should I always shine bair against Sheik at low %, I can never get waveshine combos off of her (besides plats) as I just get put in a bad position after any aerial

 

[Dr Peepee]

Shine Bair is okay for damage, but you can just regular Bair to keep her airborne and push her toward the edge and set up for more Bairs/Utilts etc. It can be situational, so test it out.

 

[R3_]

thank you so much. by regular bair, do you mean waveshine bair?

 

[Dr Peepee]

No I mean like FH or DJ Bair. And you're welcome =)

 

[R3_]

I found out a neat lil trick yesterday about learning how to practice falco shine grab perfectly. falcos shine grab on shield beats marths up b oos (assuming perfect execution from both) however the up b will hit falco if hes even 1 frame off with either jumping out of shine or grabbing after jumpsquat

this made me realise that you can practice perfect shine grabs by setting a marth cpu's oos to up b on 20xx. this is even easier in unclepunch since you can just go to the attack on shield event, choose marth cpu and set his oos in the pause menu

this may be something you lot have already found out but I think it's pretty useful and haven't heard anyone talk about it so I thought I'd share it here

 

[PAWN1]

Hey PP, I had a few questions about this match now that I've gone through and analyzed it:

1. When your opponent respawns you chose to full hop backflip towards center stage at this position:
https://i.imgur.com/ddEyG6h.jpg

And then either fast fall to land on the ledge side of the side platform:
https://i.imgur.com/C6yV3xl.jpg

Or double jump and fast fall to top platform:
https://i.imgur.com/EGJbY8l.jpg

Can you explain what going to top platform beats vs going to side platform from this position?

2. At https://youtu.be/3xBx5QjTvW0?t=13 you dash dance for a moment after hitting Marth with a laser in the air while he's getting off ledge. What options are you trying to beat here?

3. At https://youtu.be/3xBx5QjTvW0?t=46 you turn around and enter jumpsquat for a moment before getting faired. Were you trying to bair in this situation?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Top platform is just generally hard to cover, and he isn't likely to get much off of it. If he stays low or tries to cover a certain high landing spot it makes it easier, plus if he tries to cover the ground at all with you not DJ'ing then you get away for free.

2. Mainly setting up a better Nair, but also potentially beating jab I suppose.

3. Looks like it

 

[PAWN1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObuJqL1_vW4

0:21 - You full hop dair here. What makes this good? I notice you used this to push Ken shielding on the edge of the side platform later in the match into a bair, is that what you were trying to do here?

0:33 - Why short hop fall through the platform here rather than just drop through?

1:09 - Is this run off laser to catch dash away or does it cover anything else?

1:48 - can you explain why you like laser f tilt here? I know it has a lot of disjoint and just f tilting wouldn’t beat the rising nair but is there anything else to it?

1:59 - Was this shield poke on purpose? This spacing looks very intentional.

2:04 - Short hop tomahawk shield under the side platform - saw this in your match vs Andu as well, why is this good? It looks like you do this when you see Marth full hop.

2:20 - What does this short hop tomahawk f smash beat?

2:39 - Saw this shine -> full hop shield pressure twice in this game now, why is it good? Here it beats roll, but what else does it beat?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Sort of yeah, but also I wanted to just keep him from knowing when and how I'd hit him.

Would've been better to drop through laser, yeah.

Mainly for dash away yeah, maybe also shield.

Ftilt gives me a fairly reliable edgeguard situation that isn't protracted. In other words, it gets to the point quickly which can help with stamina. Nothing wrong with Dsmash there obviously it may have killed faster but Ftilt most guaranteed to hit.

Nah it was a mistake. That's cool though.

It wasn't a good play here. I should have DJ Bair'd Marth out of my SH in, or dashed away after landing to set up laser.

Them coming up with an aerial in some cases.

Pressures grab and aerials oos somewhat.

 

[PAWN1]

It wasn't a good play here. I should have DJ Bair'd Marth out of my SH in, or dashed away after landing to set up laser.

Interesting, what makes this not a good play compared to this situation where you do it?
https://youtu.be/3xBx5QjTvW0?t=9


Also just analyzed game 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObuJqL1_vW4

3:36 - I like this dash sequence. What other options does this beat? Dash attack? Dash side B? Dash jc grab?

3:41 - You dash away and just stop for a moment. Why? Are you looking for Marth escaping using the platform or the air?

3:53 - You dash away for a moment and then approach with nair. In this situation, I've seen you often dash away and turnaround laser. Both options would work here, but why choose nair? Because the laser would give him less stage position? It also seems like nair would beat Ken attempting to stuff a turnaround laser with his own aerial or grounded attack.

4:06 - Why laser shield here in the corner? I initially thought you were trying to shield stop but I saw you do it again later in the game with no dash before shielding.

5:09 - Why drop through platform laser after jabbing Marth? To cover him moving to side platform?

 

[Dr Peepee]

I don't think that other SH in was great either, but I was at least fishing for a CC shine better there.

Yeah it beats most stuff. But it would depend on whether you stayed locked into it and when and how the Marth attacked etc. For example, if Marth ran forward more before Nair'ing and I did the same movement then I'd lose or rely on OOS punish which is bad.

I expected an aerial OOS and I could also react and punish a grab or spotdodge. If he did escape to platform I could set up to counter that as opposed to losing with a yolo.

He was invincible so I expected an attack when I started out so close to him, so it's better to move in to intercept here or pressure if he decided to wait.

Perhaps expected a bit of PS, or maybe a Nair over it. It was pre emptive and not a good play regardless(I could have shielded later).

I am expecting to push him off with jab, so then I want to laser him afterward. I do it a few seconds before as well but also miss it.

 

[PAWN1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00kWf6lvDhU

0:17 - Why laser d tilt here?

0:26 - Was this supposed to be a dash away turnaround laser?

0:41 - From this and other spots in the match, it looks like you're setting up backflip -> react with either turnaround laser or bair or just nothing (tomahawk). Is this good anywhere else or just for corner pressure?

Also, while I was analyzing this, I was curious about when in particular you react/confirm during the laser. Sometimes it seems like you confirm after the laser is out, and other times it seems like you're very confident the laser will hit and do something immediately to pressure.

 

[Dr Peepee]

I was messing with Dtilt on shield and also on hit at the time.

Yes

It's best as corner pressure, but it can be good other places, though you may want to focus less on doing the Bair then.

Yeah that's Falco for you. You can sometimes choose to wait and sometimes commit based on prior knowledge/positioning.

 

[Meck]

Hi PPMD,

I'm starting to think about the range of percents kill confirms work and how it should affect my neutral. Let's say I am playing against a Sheik on Battlefield and she doesn't DI the shine but she DIs the up-air. If she DIs the up-air perfectly, she dies at around 120%, but if she DIs the up poorly, she can die at 110%. The combo stops working at 150%. I'm not sure what range of percents to keep in my head [110-150] or [120-150].

I'm not sure how me having this knowledge should affect my neutral. Let's say I have Sheik at 110% and shine up-air starts kills at 120%. Should I just be racking up damage with lasers so I can start killing with shine up-air or should I play normally and when I get her to 120%, that's when I should start looking for shine up-air?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Yeah you're on the right track. Laser damage can help but if you're several lasers away no need to focus on it. You can also shine and just Bair or Uair as a mixup I suppose.

 

[PAWN1]

Yeah that's Falco for you. You can sometimes choose to wait and sometimes commit based on prior knowledge/positioning.

For a general rule, it seems like you're more interested in confirming during laser start up when you're closer and can get something like grab off the laser, and less committal and more interested in confirming after the laser is out, during your movement, when you're farther away from the opponent. Am I getting this right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00kWf6lvDhU

1:23 - why the short hop drift back on the platform here?

1:26 - Sometimes you cover top platform with full hop dair instead of bair. What makes dair better in this situation?

1:28 - How you set up the bair is interesting here. Is the full hop towards ledge -> double jump back supposed to dodge an aerial in the case of Marth dropping?

1:38 - Is this a timing read on marth oos/take laser option?

2:06 - Laser -> immediate high nair here into the corner. This seems pretty unsafe, so why do it here? Is it because you had high percent and had the chance of getting a lot of percent if you happened to win?

2:18 - Interesting, laser -> full hop DJ waveland to side platform. From what I've seen, this is an uncommon option for you to pick, so why do it here?

 

[Dr Peepee]

You have more frame advantage when closer, so you can beat more stuff out to act faster. Waiting there can get you hit in my experience.

Looks like I wanted to be just out of range of edgehop Uair.

His percent wouldn't give me a good edgeguard with Bair necessarily so Dair could set up for better damage potentially.

Yes.

Mainly OOS but yes. Also lets shield shrink so I could poke his head.

I thought it was somewhat unlikely he'd shield probably given he had advantage in percent and was moving and trying to attack a lot. But yes also what you said.

Fakes the approach, and also dodges a potential PS laser and lets me set up for another one.

 

[PAWN1]

You have more frame advantage when closer, so you can beat more stuff out to act faster. Waiting there can get you hit in my experience.

This makes sense. Would you also say it's more useful to confirm later when they're farther away, as it'll take more time for the laser to hit? I'm thinking it's ideal to confirm as close to when the laser is going to hit them as you can. So if Marth is far away, I want to laser and confirm during my dash in right before it hits. And if I'm too far to directly punish, I confirm his take-laser action after it hits while I'm moving.

As for takeaways from the match, it seems like there's a base mix up between dash away turnaround laser and short dash away, dash in approaching nair to beat Marth approaching to interrupt the laser. It also looks like there's a mix up between approaching laser and approaching nair. Is this correct?

Also, before watching this I didn't realize how much percent in this match came off of counter hits. Taking a Marth fair, landing, and jabbing got you a pretty big combo, among other times.

It also looks like you called out Marth dashing away in a disadvantageous position a few times with turnaround laser -> confirm -> grab.

Finally, from my first watching in regular speed, it looked like you did little besides laser -> grab, but rewatching it after looking at all the interactions in slow motion, I can see how many high nairs you threw out to seemingly get away with most of them. I realize this is pretty general, but how did you manage to do that? It looks like most of the time that the nair works out, it's for a different reason. Marth spotdodges and then gets hit, he rolls away and can't punish, just doesn't shield grab after shielding it, or dash attacks underneath it, etc.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Yes, you have time to confirm the hit from farther away too.

I don't think you need full approaching laser, but partial approaching laser vs approach Nair is a mixup yeah.

Counter hits like that shouldn't happen so much I think, but if the Marth will swing in such a way where you can counter it's great. He could CC grab the jab of course.

Nair often works at a space where Marth has to guess what's going to happen. If you're doing enough different stuff there, and set it up well in a good position, it can work even more.

 

[PAWN1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZKx_VtnrHc

This match is one of my favorites (:

9:00 - Why this run off double jump double laser? It looks like it covers Marth jumping at you from side platform but that doesn't seem like a good idea from first glance since Falco could just get underneath him.

9:13 - You laser after Marth when he’s off the screen. Any differences in decision making when this happens? It seems hard to confirm what action they're doing before and after the laser hits.

9:16 - Why the waveland on side platform here? There was no laser so you weren’t working to jump over a potential PS laser. Just to set up a platform laser after faking an approach? Also Marth jumped center stage here which was interesting. Just what does Marth get from doing this?

9:36 - Interesting - short hop double jump waveland to side platform, then drop through waveland back. What does this beat? It looks like if Marth up tilted there this wouldn't have worked out.

9:51 - Short hop backflip towards center stage but while facing the edge - is this similar to the backflip corner pressure from before but threatening fadeaway dair instead of bair? Or just an input error? Speaking of which, sometimes I see you backflip away from someone while you’re facing them when they’re in shield, is this similar to that situation or good for the same reasons?

10:48 - again a short hop double jump waveland to side platform, then with a drop down empty land shine. Was this a read on Marth wavedashing OOS towards the platform?