What am I doing wrong as Falco?

[L33thal]

So my gameplan is this:
-laser if I'm far away or to get closer
-dash dance outside of the range of their OoS options
-stop aerial approaches by walling with bairs
-if I manage to get a hit in, then I punish

But lately I've been playing good players and getting wrecked. Some things I struggle against are:
-people moving with shield a lot to corner me
-platform camping
-lots of spaced, high priority aerial spam

When good players use aerials against me, they usually pick situations when my Falco isn't in a good position to counter. So they can hit or poke me, but I can't hit them. I just end up shielding.

And when people close in on me by shielding and moving or throwing out aerials, I feel compelled to throw out my own SHFFLs to counter them, either by preventing them from doing aerials or to keep them from moving forward and getting even more ground on me. The problem is, whenever I throw out my counter aerial, people just WD back or something similar and punish me. I've tried mixing up my counter aerial by dash dancing but I always get punished.

Can anyone give me any advice? I'd really, really appreciate it because I haven't been able to find an answer for this for months. My counter aerials work against lower level players but the higher level players just see them coming and laugh.

 

[OninO]

Aggressively spacing with shields is a trick which I discounted at some point in my development but I'm really starting to notice how well players better than me use it. Dealing with it is really about acknowledging it's a possibility. If you like to throw out aerials or moves to wall, the aggressive shielding counters this by creating a scenario where your moves are now poorly spaced and consequently punishable.

Whether any given answer to a tactic is correct depends on spacing. Say you're in a relatively tight spacing with your opponent, mentally picture just outside your f-tilt range. Say both you and your opponent make a decision at moment Z, if your opponent chooses to dash in and shield and you throw an f-tilt, they're going to get hit as their shield isn't going to come up in time. If you wait then throw you're going to get punished, if you throw and they wait you're going to get punished. So what can you do?

You can dash away at that spacing then dash back in with a nair->pressure string. If they are quick they'll be WD'ing out of shield as you come back in. If they WD'd forward you win, if they WD'd back you probably lose unless you went a beat longer aiming for a cross up or WD back.

All of this variability goes to highlight something that Mango said "anything is good if it works". If good players are getting mileage off a certain tactic they will keep doing it. So you must start punishing it. If you read aggressive shield spacing, grab it. It's the simplest, easiest punish option. The fact that you don't necessarily get a whole lot off it doesn't matter. It's a simple and direct answer which says "I know how you operate and how to deal with it".

Platform camping you can deal with a couple of ways once again depending on spacing. If they're actively looking to run off and attack you with an aerial (shieks and foxes) you can space roughly in the center and bair them as they come down or you can space further away and laser without fast fall. Usually if I do that they will abort the attempt so you can go straight from a high laser to a full length short hop up air which covers you as you reposition under their platform. Once you get under you're now into a bit of a mix up game again. If you think they'll drop on you then shield and shine OoS or CC shine if you're low enough and they don't have Fox's dair, they might shield anticipating an attack from you. You can wait a beat then poke their feet with short hop up air or up smash. You can actively try and shine them or you can waveland grab if you think they're really scared.

The other way to deal with it is learn the 'full-hop double-laser fast-fall in the middle' timing which gets you up to a middle platform while putting a laser at both top and mid plat heights in one motion. Then you can laser them off the platform.