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PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Dr Peepee
- Start date
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH8FYFUDJhY This serie of videos is nice, don't be afraid/discouraged if there's stuff that look impossible, just do the easier things you can replicate, leave the harder tricks for later.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoU3TQBakHOp0LFIjbrfUA8ibLMx6dfWV Here's the playlist for all falco-related videos on the ssbm tutorials channel : it has become a reference in terms of melee pedagogic ressources.
the basics.
short hop, done by pressing and releasing jump quickly.
then short hop > laser, then SH > laser > fast fall (tap down with the control sick)
SH > aerial, practice all of them, then be sure to l-cancel your aerials.
then practice fast falling after your aerial and before your l-cancel : SH > aerial > FF > l-cancel, also known as "SHFFL"
you can cancel your shine by jumping. shine a cpu on the ground, then jump quickly and catch him with a down-air for practice. you can even do it several times in a row : dair (l-cancel) > shine > dair > shine ... That's a pillar combo.
wave-dash. It's a movement trick, very useful to position yourself quickly. Jump and airdodge down diagonnaly almost instantly. It will become easier until it's a second nature. Just practice WD all the time between stocks for example.
now it gets trickier.
nair > shine and dair > shine. These are your best tools to approach, mix them up with lasers, and be sure to FF and L-cancel. I know this is pretty advanced stuff already if you're just beginning.
WD out of shield (OoS). You can WD to quickly get out of shield, without rolling.
WD out of shine, a wave-shine. Since you can jump out of your shine, then you can airdodge and WD.
Other things to learn.
It's not all tech-skill. Be familiar with your moves : their timing and hitboxes, if they're better combo moves (dair, up-tilt, shine...) or kill moves (bair, f-smash, d-smash...). Be comfortable recovering with up-b and side-b. Not being predictable by moving around a lot and shooting lasers. Having good DI : as a general rule, hold down and away to get out of combos, and hold in and up to survive strong hits at high %. Be ready to tech when you get hit / thrown to get away.
If you love the game and the character, you should watch sets from the best falcos right now, like PPMD, Mango and Westballz. It's very inspiring and there's so much to learn from watching the game in the hands of top players.
I hope this helps getting you on tracks. Be sure to come back if you need advice/explanations, we're all glad to lend a hand.
AnonymousID
Smash Cadet
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2015
- Messages
- 57
If I shffl someones shield than shine and then wavedash can they shield grab me out of my wavedash?
FE_Hector
Smash Lord
You'll generally be safe doing that unless you WD to the front of their shield. If you cross up their shield with the WD, spacies will gladly shine OoS. If you get the safe aerial and subsequent shine, though, just shinegrab. It's an amazing option even if it doesn't look flashy.
Why would you shield though? There's really no reason to, it'll just leave you vulnerable to the opponent's OOS options. Just go straight into shine.
FE_Hector
Smash Lord
I think he was saying that he got a safe SHFFL shine on THEIR shield and was wondering if HE could then WD. Shielding right next to somebody else's shield is dumb though. Unless you've got hella good mindgames. Then it's cool
Ah, my b.
Bones0
Smash Legend
Even doing a shine waveland on an opponent who is shielding on a platform isn't safe. Doing a waveshine on a grounded opponent is even less safe because it's 4 frames slower (5 frames of jumpsquat vs. 1 frame of DJ).
You can get away with using waveshines on shield, in fact I'd recommend it, but you have to condition your opponent to respect your other options. If they are concerned you might doubleshine or early aerial after shining their shield, they won't be able to react and shield grab a waveshine.
You can get away with using waveshines on shield, in fact I'd recommend it, but you have to condition your opponent to respect your other options. If they are concerned you might doubleshine or early aerial after shining their shield, they won't be able to react and shield grab a waveshine.
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AnonymousID
Smash Cadet
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2015
- Messages
- 57
What should I do when the other person (say a fox or shiek) is on the top platform? I feel lost whenever that happens since I usually get hit if I'm in the middle and If I'm on the edge I don't have stage control.
FE_Hector
Smash Lord
It's very rare that somebody coming down against you WON'T get their option stuffed or at least traded with if you space a utilt well. If they seem super comfortable on top plat, WL onto one of the side plats and just bully them a little bit with clever aerials or lasers to make them think twice about going down. Alternatively, you could do a rising n/bair to try and force them off of the plat, but that is a much better strategy if they're a side plat. A lot of the time, though, you've just gotta be patient if they like their plat.
Bones0
Smash Legend
Assuming you mean they are dropping through and hitting you, these are the most common ways of dealing with opponents attacking you from above:
- anti air with utilt/uair (uair takes longer so it may require a read vs. the less floaty characters)
- outspace their drop through angle horizontally with an AC bair (if they are directly above you, just dash in either direction to stay out of their range while keeping them within your bair range)
- DD around them and grab/SHFFL (these are good if you can't tell exactly where they will land and need a bit of insurance; grab will work if you're a bit slow and they shield while SHFFLed aerials will lead to shield pressure or hit if they tried to move after landing)
- shield (not the best option, but blocking their aerial is better than getting hit, and by dashing under them before shielding, you can often force them to hit your shield early and get a free shine OoS punish)
- immediate DJ uair (if they're being really stubborn about not coming down, uair can be used to poke their shield and will usually let you get back down before them even if they shield drop or run away)
brokenshoelace
Smash Rookie
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2016
- Messages
- 1
Hey, have people tried implementing double laser to top platform on Battlefield like this: https://gfycat.com/AbsoluteMisguidedGemsbuck ?
Not sure if this is already something people do, just haven't seen it a whole lot in games I've watched. It seems fairly useful, idk.
Not sure if this is already something people do, just haven't seen it a whole lot in games I've watched. It seems fairly useful, idk.
That's nothing revolutionary, it's just application of some of falco's laser tricks. Useful yes, but doing the same action above the lower plats has essentially the same results, except you can control the height of the second laser if you choose to do so. And you're closer to the offstage opponent, putting on more pressure and giving him less time to react to your lasers.
Shadaxis
Smash Rookie
I'm still fairly new to smash and I've been only playing for a total of 6 months. I was wondering if anyone had any tips on hitbox interactions with falco. and what moves to use in what situation because I feel like my biggest problem at the moment is just not knowing the interactions with other characters hitboxes since I don't have a ton of time played in smash.
FE_Hector
Smash Lord
The biggest way to handle this is practice practice practice. Just play against other people a LOT until you have a general idea of which of your options will beat which of your opponents options. On top of that, watch pro Falco sets. Most of them know EXACTLY what they should be doing in a lot of situations, so just try to take some mental notes. You get a feel for it after a while.
JFM2796
Smash Journeyman
I recently switch to the tap jump method for double laser from the edge. I seem to get reverse lasers more than half the time, despite my controller being generally good about not accidentally reversing lasers since breaking it in. Anyone have any advice for this?
FE_Hector
Smash Lord
I can't say anything definitively, but it's possible that you're accidentally hitting away just enough when you tap jump to make the game read reverse lasers.
Push left/right slightly (towards the stage) to not reverse it. I think the timing is right before you shoot the lasers, its all muscle memory now, so I don't really remember. Also when you plug your controller in, make sure your control stick is completely centered and you're not accidentally touching it.
Bones0
Smash Legend
Useful for what? It's not safe vs. opponents on the top plat, and if they're high above the side plat, you're better off getting underneath them and hitting them with just about any other attack.
They simply turn around any time they touch a wall while rising in the up-B. How you let go of the ledge prior to up-Bing has no impact.
Hitbox interactions in Melee should be pretty intuitive once you know the size of everyone's hitbox and hurtbox (their body). Use 20xx to get a good idea of how far you can space attacks and still hit, and I definitely recommend going through the frame data threads of the popular characters to see how quickly they come out, disappear, and how disjointed they are. If you're confused by hitbox interactions, you probably aren't paying enough attention to disjointedness, which is simply the space between the edge of a character's hitbox and the edge of his hurtbox. Marth has a huge disjoint between the tip of his sword and his arm. Falco's bair has a significant amount of disjoint on the back foot, but his front foot has almost none because his arm is outstretched further than his leg.
Again, can't stress enough how important it is that you use 20xx to look at all of these hitboxes because Melee is a 3D game. A move may have good range looking from the side, but it could have poor range on the Z-axis. Falco's dtilt is a good example of this. Looking from the side the first frame of dtilt's hitbox seems to have decent priority, but when you look from above you can see that it's angled 45 degrees to Falco's side so it may completely miss a thin hurtbox character. G&W is the obvious example, but even Sheik will be harder to hit than say Bowser or DK whose frames are thicker and less prone to dodging attacks on the Z-axis.
Well first of all, I'd just recommend using Y. You'll have much easier consistency jumping with a button than stick, especially when you're pressing B quickly after which may trigger an up-B if you are a bit off (which could easily mean death for Falco). If you insist on using tap jump, you have to make sure not to let go of the ledge with back because they may be counting as a reverse input. Reverse inputs last quite a while (I wanna say 20 frames but I forget since the last time I tested it), so even if you let go of back immediately after dropping and laser as late as possible, it will still reverse your lasers. If you're dropping with back, you have to be sure you are dropping straight down or down and towards the stage because even angling back will count as a reverse input.
AnonymousID
Smash Cadet
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2015
- Messages
- 57
What can I do when a character full hops (lets say fox or sheik)? Do I have to read how/when they land? and if so what would be the best way for me to punish?
FE_Hector
Smash Lord
The vast majority of the time, you can just patiently put yourself under them and anti-air utilt. Alternatively, rising bair outspaces the majority of options in the game and is super fast.
![Эикельманн [РУС]](/data/avatars/l/153/153661.jpg?1415225120){kind=avatar}
Эикельманн [РУС]
Banned via Administration
idk if this thread is where i'm most likely to get a detailed response from good players but i'm gonna give it a shot
getting serious about falco. i need you guys to rip me to shreds and tell me what i need to be doing differently because this matchup feels 9001x easier as ganondorf and i need to change that. pretty lost right now. help me out guys. i'll give tips vs ganondorf in return lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJZ2cjzYAnA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBsc-nNnsC0 (ignore the first match, not relevant)
getting serious about falco. i need you guys to rip me to shreds and tell me what i need to be doing differently because this matchup feels 9001x easier as ganondorf and i need to change that. pretty lost right now. help me out guys. i'll give tips vs ganondorf in return lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJZ2cjzYAnA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBsc-nNnsC0 (ignore the first match, not relevant)
Bones0
Smash Legend
- Establish and maintain laser control. You can't really start attacking a Fox or any fast character unless you have a read on their movement, and lasers serve to narrow their options. I think that's why Yoshi's generally seemed more comfortable to you, though I don't think it's a strong stage in the current meta. You should certainly feel free to pick it though, just keep in mind Falco's weaknesses of getting rushed down by Fox and constantly getting pinballed by shine knockdowns.
- Be more careful with your DJ. People are very willing to trade with a Falco dair if it means getting him off stage without a DJ. These run off DJ back on attacks are especially troublesome, though the Fox wasn't punishing them very often. Better players, and especially tankier characters like Peach and Sheik, will throw themselves at a Falco by the ledge for early gimp opportunities.
- There's a couple times you just threw out "random" fsmashes. Idk if you had a particular read, but you have to keep in mind that you were throwing them out at percents where it wasn't even a guaranteed KO. Fsmash is really unsafe so you generally don't want to use it in neutral. If you need a move to wean you off of it, I recommend ftilt. It's mostly safe on shield if spaced and will at least let you keep opponents' OoS options in check because it can potentially knock them down/off stage.
- This Fox is really bad at DIing shine, so make sure you are waveshining during combos because better players will fly away from you. You're doing a lot of shine into immediate jumping aerials that will prevent you from reaching if they DI. Waveshining will also give you better setups for your followups so you can do more DI mixups. If you are always dairing at knockdown percents instead of pushing FFers off stage, you will lose a lot of opportunities from them techrolling out.
- Learn to laser Fox's recovery, it's really huge. The last stock of the last DL match, he was up-Bing from really far out and you could have knocked him down with lasers. Every little bit of distance can make a huge difference because they lose exponentially more upward angles possible angles the further they fall, and you can entirely prevent downward angles to the ledge with lasers. The general edgeguard flowchart should alternate between lasering their up-B charge and reacting to side-B. As soon as you realize they side-B, just hit them back off with a dsmash, bair, etc. If they up-B again, just repeat from the beginning with another laser. If they don't side-B, they will eventually be up-Bing from below the stage at which point you can utilize shine turnaround dair from the ledge or LH bair.
- Generally stay more grounded and laser DD more. Focus on anti-airing Fox with utilt and AC bair and less on approaching, which is a crapshoot until you really establish their movement tendencies. Knowing you play Ganon, I feel like you are taking for granted that Ganon has a sort of inherent zone of respect. His attacks are so devastating that people will respect your space a lot even in situations where you don't have hitboxes out. For Falco, you have to focus a lot more on earning that respect. If you never AC bair, utilt, fadeaway dair, dash back laser, etc., then the opponent (Foxes especially) will have no qualms about trying to steamroll you because you're more fragile, and the risk reward is more in their favor.
- Practice those late SHFFL aerials and ledgedashes (I'm sure you're working on these already, but they were really costing you).
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So I was in the ICs discussion thread a weekish ago when I came across this post. So naturally I started thinking of how it could be applied to Falco, and have been experimenting with jab nair quite a bit recently. It seems to be working fairly well, but I can't do extensive testing (don't have 20XX or a practice partner), so does anybody know how useful/reliable this is, and if there are better options?
Bones0
Smash Legend
It seems way too unreliable to actively attempt to clank with something unless there is a very specific situation you have in mind. Jabbing is constantly at risk of being CCed, and it's so weak I am assuming it won't clank with any strong attacks anyway. It will clank with tilts, but since they are so weak there won't be enough frame advantage to punish. I could see utilt/ftilt clanking with some useful moves, but like I said, if they don't throw out those attacks when you try to clank, you are gonna eat a huge punish. If a Fox or Peach is going to use a smash attack, I'd rather just shield it and WD OoS shine to punish.
The one instance I can think of where this might be useful is from incidental clanks. If you are trying to utilt a grounded approach like Fox running usmash or Peach DA, you might clank without trying and have some decent frame advantage. Unfortunately, I don't think there's much better options outside of just utilting again, which seems to be the general instinct among players. I know that for me, whenever a utilt clanks, I sort of just throw out another and hope I did so faster than my opponent. I may try throwing out a utilt next time I think a Peach is going to DA me instead of playing the DA/run up grab mixup game. Maybe I can just beat the grab and clank-shine if she DAs. I'd still be susceptible to run up shield and a few other things but it's worth a try.
Bones0
Smash Legend
Clanking is actually affected quite a lot by stale moves. A fully stale utilt does 4% instead of 9%. Falco's utilt clanking with Fox's utilt is +3 when they're both fresh, but when Falco's utilt is fully staled, it can go as high as +8. Of course, the obvious drawback from stale moves is that they are more likely to be beat outright. Fox's usmash will go straight through Falco's fully stale utilt. As a general rule, frame advantage seems to be approximately the same as the difference between the two attacks. i.e. If your attack does 5% less, you'll probably have ~5 frames of advantage.
Falco's frame advantage from utilt clanking:
PEACH
-7 vs. jab 2
-5 vs. jab 1
0/+3 vs. DA (weak/strong)
+4 vs. dsmash (first and last hit are the same)
+3 vs. dtilt
+3/+7 vs. golf club fsmash (weak/strong)
FOX
-12 vs. shine (shine has hitlag, but doesn't actually clank because Fox is intangible)
-4/-2 vs. DA (weak/strong)
+1 vs. dtilt
+3 vs. utilt
+5 vs. dsmash
+6 vs. usmash
+17 vs. fsmash (fsmash has this weird trait where the animation finishes instead of going into rebound...)
ICE CLIMBERS
+3 vs. dsmash (first hit, on the back; if you are close, you'll hit Nana, but if you're spaced, her dsmash will hit you because your utilt hitbox disappears as soon as you enter rebound)
I might do more later, but testing manually is time consuming (once I got curious about Peach's fsmash I realized I was wasting my time lol). I'd rather just find the formula and calculate it that way, but I think it's dependent on hitlag and other stuff, idk. I will say that these initial values are very promising, so I will definitely keep clanking in mind when I'm throwing out utilts.
Falco's frame advantage from utilt clanking:
PEACH
-7 vs. jab 2
-5 vs. jab 1
0/+3 vs. DA (weak/strong)
+4 vs. dsmash (first and last hit are the same)
+3 vs. dtilt
+3/+7 vs. golf club fsmash (weak/strong)
FOX
-12 vs. shine (shine has hitlag, but doesn't actually clank because Fox is intangible)
-4/-2 vs. DA (weak/strong)
+1 vs. dtilt
+3 vs. utilt
+5 vs. dsmash
+6 vs. usmash
+17 vs. fsmash (fsmash has this weird trait where the animation finishes instead of going into rebound...)
ICE CLIMBERS
+3 vs. dsmash (first hit, on the back; if you are close, you'll hit Nana, but if you're spaced, her dsmash will hit you because your utilt hitbox disappears as soon as you enter rebound)
I might do more later, but testing manually is time consuming (once I got curious about Peach's fsmash I realized I was wasting my time lol). I'd rather just find the formula and calculate it that way, but I think it's dependent on hitlag and other stuff, idk. I will say that these initial values are very promising, so I will definitely keep clanking in mind when I'm throwing out utilts.
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Wow, this data is amazing ! I think clanking with utilt is great, I get away with a lot of stuff in neutral thanks to it. Quick question : does clanking with a move register in the stale move counter thing ?
If you keep going, please do clanking utilt vs marth stuff, I feel like it's particulary good. Against shiek I don't think it's that safe at all, her tilts and jabs +dsmash have broken frame data.
Also how dare you not to explore all of peach fsmashes properties in depth ? It's like, her main tool to space and exert pressure in neutral
FE_Hector
Smash Lord
When I shine somebody on the ground, I generally WD in the direction they'd be hit on no DI (to my right if they're to my right and vice versa). For wavelanding and shine wavelanding onto different plats, you've just gotta figure it out on your own. It's not horribly difficult, though.
One thing I always tell newer players is that everything in melee is subconscious. Just play a lot, and suddenly, you'll begin to learn when it's best to waveshine forward or waveshine backwards. Cliche as cliche can be, but mostly everything in melee comes with practice.
Bones0
Smash Legend
This is a lazy mindset and a terrible approach to improvement. Obviously there are a few aspects that you can calibrate yourself to subconsciously, but in order to make the best possible decisions you need to know the concrete facts. If you don't know that shine sends at an 84 degree angle based on which side they are hit on, there will inevitably be scenarios where your intuition about which way to waveshine is wrong. This is especially true when you don't have the chance to practice with top level players all the time. If you practice vs. your friend who can't DI that well, you might be led to believe that waveshining straight down lets you cover all the DI options. Only by experimenting and understanding will you know all of the possibilities. Simply playing for a ton of hours and hoping something sticks may have worked in '08, but the meta is too developed for that to work anymore.
This is something that I will test myself anyway, but if they di to the opposite side that they were shined on will they go straight up?
I actually don't know the concrete facts so im wondering if there is a post on this or if u could elaborate? like how do u follow someone when they are shined?
FE_Hector
Smash Lord
We had this discussion in the Falco Discord yesterday. Basically here's what you wanna look at:
ASSUMING straight to the right is 0 degrees and straight to the left is 180 degrees (not reorienting based on side), here's what we're looking at given that DI affects launch angle 18 degrees.
Opponent to the Right
- No DI launches them to the right at 84 degrees (6 degrees right of straight up)
- Full DI right launches them to the right at 66 degrees (24 degrees right of straight up)
- Full DI left launches them to the left at 102 degrees (12 degrees left of straight up)
- No DI launches them to the left at 96 degrees (6 degrees left of straight up)
- Full DI right launches them to the right at 78 degrees (12 degrees right of straight up)
- Full DI left launches them to the left at 114 degrees (24 degrees left of straight up)
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Thanks for sharing this, it helps a lot.
FE_Hector
Smash Lord
We had a discussion about it in Discord literally yesterday, so I scrolled up until I found my protractor screenshots to show launch angles and pulled the numbers.
Thanx, could I ask where these numbers came from? Was it just tested by someone in the discord or was it previously known?
FE_Hector
Smash Lord
One of our resident lab monsters pulled up some magical Excel sheet with all launch angles in the game and then found somewhere the amount of difference in launch angle that DI can make. Basically, he took stuff that was already known and researched and I did a little bit of math to make it easy to comprehend for us mortals.
Bones0
Smash Legend
For those wanting to check hitboxes and other useful values on your own, here is the download to an Excel sheet with a lot of info:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/kwbkgsdok1dekd7/SSBM+Hitboxes+(NTSC+1.0)+&+Knockback+1.5k.xlsx
For a friendlier way to view this data, I KneeData is a great resource as well:
http://ikneedata.com/calculator.html
http://www.mediafire.com/download/kwbkgsdok1dekd7/SSBM+Hitboxes+(NTSC+1.0)+&+Knockback+1.5k.xlsx
For a friendlier way to view this data, I KneeData is a great resource as well:
http://ikneedata.com/calculator.html
Minor correction: Your first bullet point should say "6 degrees right of straight up", not left.
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FE_Hector
Smash Lord
Like it never happened...