Questions from a new Falco player

[midshot16]

Hello, I recently started trying to take Melee seriously and decided to main Falco. Anyway, I have some questions hopefully you guys can help out with.

Approaching: So whenever I approach, I usually Short hop laser into a SHFFL Dair or Nair. However, the person I play against, mainly my brother who mains Dr.Mario, always shields the laser and grabs me out of my Dair/nair. My question is should I only be going in for the SHFFL if I get the hitstun from the laser hit or should I basically just go in even the laser is shielded. I have tried to change up my approaches to combat this. For example, I short hop laser wave dash back to bait the grab then go into the SHFFL. Is there sort of a more foolproof way of approaching that doesn't require me to do this sort of baiting etc or should I basically just work on varying the approaches?

Fighting Floaty Characters: Again I mainly fight Dr. Mario and I have SUCH a hard time comboing floaty characters. When I play Captain Falcon or Fox I just feel that my combos are much more fluid and the hit stun actually allows me to get the follow ups correctly. However, whenever I try to pillar a floaty my bro always throws out a nair and just ruins the combo. Am I just not being fast enough? Are there some tips you guys can give me for comboing the floaties?

Thanks in advance for advice you guys can give me.

 

[L33thal]

I'm no Falco expert, but here's my two cents:

Approaching: I think laser to SHFFL dair/nair and shine should be frame safe if it's done correctly. Are you spacing your lasers? Are you doing your aerial too early? Are you L-canceling? Are you shining right after your SHFFL? From what I heard, a well-timed laser-to-SHFFL-shine should be un-shieldgrabable all the way to the time when you do your first shine. After that, you can do more follow-ups to shield pressure like multishining, Westballz shield pressure, shine grabbing, waveshining, another SHFFL shine, etc.

I think it's also good to practice different approaches, otherwise you become predictable and they could do stuff like buffer rolls, wavedash OOS, pivot, or space themselves away from you.



Fighting Floaty Characters: I think in general, a combo on a floaty goes something like this:

Dair/nair -> shine/up-tilt -> jump -> dair -> repeat

Also, shine-waveland onto platform is really helpful when you're comboing in general. You just have to jump, shine beneath the platform (but make sure that the shine touches/intersects the platform), jump out of shine, and wavedash onto the platform. Once you land on the platform, you have a lot of options.



Here are some videos that might help:

 

[xman]

What I like to do is when ever I approach with an aerial I like to fast fall behind the opponent l-cancel shine wavedash towards them and double shine to initiate pressure if you feel like your approaches aren't working you can try to space your SHL so that you land in front of them and grab them, its a guaranteed grab. As for the comboing lighter characters dair -> up tilt lower percentages and for higher percentages light nairs, light bairs to jump shine spin strong bair to finish. Up tilt pretty much replaces shine. On some characters you can shine and dair late so you can fast fall quick enough to follow with another shine and pillar that way but this only works on big spaces like FD.

 

[xman]

Also if the other person predict when yiur aerials are hitting they're probably following a pattern you're making try to mix it up with dash dances near them, falling through platforms. Makes their reaction time slower

 

[Oskurito]

Hello, I recently started trying to take Melee seriously and decided to main Falco. Anyway, I have some questions hopefully you guys can help out with.

Approaching: So whenever I approach, I usually Short hop laser into a SHFFL Dair or Nair. However, the person I play against, mainly my brother who mains Dr.Mario, always shields the laser and grabs me out of my Dair/nair. My question is should I only be going in for the SHFFL if I get the hitstun from the laser hit or should I basically just go in even the laser is shielded. I have tried to change up my approaches to combat this. For example, I short hop laser wave dash back to bait the grab then go into the SHFFL. Is there sort of a more foolproof way of approaching that doesn't require me to do this sort of baiting etc or should I basically just work on varying the approaches?

Fighting Floaty Characters: Again I mainly fight Dr. Mario and I have SUCH a hard time comboing floaty characters. When I play Captain Falcon or Fox I just feel that my combos are much more fluid and the hit stun actually allows me to get the follow ups correctly. However, whenever I try to pillar a floaty my bro always throws out a nair and just ruins the combo. Am I just not being fast enough? Are there some tips you guys can give me for comboing the floaties?

Thanks in advance for advice you guys can give me.

Short hop laser (SHL) into a SHFFL Dair or Nair is the bread and butter approach, is fine, the key is to mix it up and stay unpredictable.

Here are some other good aproaches:
SHL + forward tilt - spaced is safe against most characters, peach can't hit you with dsmash, haven't tryed against doc but as a rule when you do this you should either angle it straight forward or low, retreat and roll with the c-stick if he decides to crouch cancel dsmash you. I'm not sure if his dmash has a longer reach, by looking at the frame data I'm guessing it does.
SHL + read forward smash
SHL + grab
-:forward throw + tech chase or reset (reset means you will re engage approach from an neutral stance by reatreating via laser or any mobility technique of your choice, the goal of reatreating is that you can space well and approach again safely).
-:up throw + bair or fair (fair can multihit if poor di, make sure to L-cancel + up tilt, dair is also possible)
-:down throw + tech chase more laser and reset
-:back throw + laser and reset
You can also do a shine grab (jump cancel the shine into a grab)

SHL + shine on his face (jump canceling a grab is good if he shields)

Here I gave you some other examples but like I said, the key is to mix it up, and you don't do that just by aproaching, try to force and approach instead! You don't always have to approach, that's the mix up, try to stay defensive for a while and see how it goes. Keep spamming those lasers or just dash dance and wavedash around by keeping a safe distance, see how he reacts, if he approaches try to predict and punish with a combo. Example: you're moving around the stage and he decides to run at you and approach with an aerial, lets say.. fair, you see him coming and you immediately double jump straight up and out of the way, while he hits the ground with his fist you come down with a dair right on his face then up tiltx2 or 3 times (try to raise the percent a bit so the dair stuns him long enough for the uptilt to combo).

Thats a pretty basic bait, the beauty of this game relies on being able to read your opponent and also taking the better choices out of the many options that may be available depending on the situations you're facing throughout the match.

Against doc I would avoid FD, FD is not that good because doc can jump out or DI out of your pillar combos easily and he has chaingrabs. On DL he gets harder to kill, his recovery sucks though so is OK against him. Against doc (and floaties overall) combos are better on platform stages, if they land on the top platform after you get a hit with dair shine you can follow easily with another dair + uptilt or dair shine + uptilt if you see his DI is not that good overall. Yes you might get naired (specially by luigi) but like I said, if you catch them on the top platform after landing a dair + shine, is almost impossible for them to escape, with that aside you might want to try dair + uptilt or nair up + tilt (both of them combo into another aerial). Try uptilts more often since they don't send them too high and you can repeat them a couple of times at low %, or you can try nair juggles like fox, those work pretty good as well.

I recommend you to check my videos, I think you can learn some good stuff watching them. I have 3 tutorials: laser tricks, mobility tricks and combo tricks. The link is on my signature, or just type The Melee.pe TV on youtube.

 

[midshot16]

Wow thanks for the very detailed responses! I'm definitely going to test some of this stuff out.

 

[20YY SS | Saiblade]

I learned a **** ton from this, the Smash communitiy is too good.

 

[Oskurito]

I learned a **** ton from this, the Smash communitiy is too good.

Wow thanks for the very detailed responses! I'm definitely going to test some of this stuff out.

If you guys found my videos helpful, please like and follow the meele.pe tv on youtube and fb. Thank you!