Why does C. Falcon beat Samus?

[bob3981]

I play Samus and I have been playing Samus for about 3 months and I go to a weekly with around 15-25 people every week and we have a few falcons. I also play netplay where there are a fair amount of falcons. I have little issue against most falcons. I understand he can combo her pretty hard but when I play missiles tend to keep them out. Im just wondering if there's anything about the MU im missing, is it possibly just my level of play?

 

[Simmons]

From what I understand, Falcon has many many ways of approaching Samus, and one of his more popular choices, shffl nair, directly counters missiles when timed right. That, coupled with his insane combo game makes for a difficult matchup.

 

[Litt]

I play Samus and I have been playing Samus for about 3 months and I go to a weekly with around 15-25 people every week and we have a few falcons. I also play netplay where there are a fair amount of falcons. I have little issue against most falcons. I understand he can combo her pretty hard but when I play missiles tend to keep them out. Im just wondering if there's anything about the MU im missing, is it possibly just my level of play?

yes, you should rarely be using missiles in this MU unless you have masters fast fall missiles from plats and short hops

 

[ChivalRuse]

Mostly because most of his KO setups are relatively safe. Stuff like nair/uair/stomp -> knee or raw knee are hard to avoid and whiff punish. Also, his bair is pretty good at nulllifying Samus when she is cornered, and it threatens to KO her.

 

[TheGood]

besides his insane combo game out of safe neutral options (shfl nair/dash dance grab), hes outright faster than samus and has more effective reach with his horizontal movement. His dash dance makes it easy to autspace allmost every attack from samus and Falcons platform movement is better. He hits you faster and stronger.
Your only option is to react to him in neutral and dont engage yourself. Use missel spam to keep him grounded or commited to an aerial when approaching you. You can CC Nair and punish it with your own moves or shild and punish OoS. If you can get a grab go for the Up throw followup with dair/nair/bair/turnaroundBair/weakbair/dair. If you restrict his movement and pressure him into a corner he will get offstage and thats where you want him to be as his recovery is ****.

 

[-ACE-]

Because uair.

 

[Litt]

besides his insane combo game out of safe neutral options (shfl nair/dash dance grab), hes outright faster than samus and has more effective reach with his horizontal movement. His dash dance makes it easy to autspace allmost every attack from samus and Falcons platform movement is better. He hits you faster and stronger.
Your only option is to react to him in neutral and dont engage yourself. Use missel spam to keep him grounded or commited to an aerial when approaching you. You can CC Nair and punish it with your own moves or shild and punish OoS. If you can get a grab go for the Up throw followup with dair/nair/bair/turnaroundBair/weakbair/dair. If you restrict his movement and pressure him into a corner he will get offstage and thats where you want him to be as his recovery is ****.

Actually samus's platform game is stronger than falcons, same for her ground game. The issue as you stated was speed and up air which allows falcon to bait samus and out prioritize. Only time knee should connect is raw read or after 2nd hit of nair / weak hit of bair

 

[ChivalRuse]

Stomp -> knee connects more often than nair -> knee. And falling uair combos into knee pretty easily depending on the DI.

 

[bob3981]

so it's his combo game on samus and safer approaches that make the MU bad?
what does samus do to approach then?

 

[Thor]

Because uair.

Falcon would probably go even or win very the MU very slightly [unlikely he'd lose...?] without knee because he'd have no effective way to finish her off... but without uair he'd have a much less potent combo game on her [yay combo SDIing nairs].

Apparently HugS thought at some point in time that Samus won. Almost certainly not the case, but the Falcon MU isn't hot garbage at least.

Missiles lose to hitboxes and dair beats CC. Falcons that know to nair through missiles and good places to stomp will make things a lot more difficult.

so it's his combo game on samus and safer approaches that make the MU bad?
what does samus do to approach then?

Samus doesn't actually have to approach... her projectiles may lose to Falcon aerials when times well but she has projectiles and he doesn't.

That said, beyond hard reads (nair or fair to stuff an approach) she can probably try to poke at his dash dance with ftilt or maaaybe utilt/dash attack [Falcon's CC options that aren't grab are really mediocre] and missiles falling from platforms as mentioned above. If they do a bad nair or you intercept their DD a CC dsmash can set up an edgeguard situation [or dtilt can set up combos], but that's not likely as you play better opponents.

You could look up Duck vs S2J or something and see what he does, watching is probably a better answer than random advice.

 

[Kati]

I agree with everything that's been said, but I want to add that Falcon seems to be able to match Samus' boxing game better than other opponents, but then can get one explosive combo all of a sudden from anywhere on the stage whereas Samus typically just gets quick savage edge guards to secure a good lead.

 

[itsbme]

Samus is fairly tall, even when crouching or dashing, which makes her a big target. On top of that, she's very floaty and has slow horizontal movement in the air, which can keep her stuck in the air long enough for Falcon to come in with a knee or up-air due to his high mobility and speed. Other than Screw Attack, she has no real "GET THE HELL OFF ME!" moves. Because shield pressure is not her forte and also her having a laggy grab, Falcon can be more comfortable using his shield to eat moves and then move out of shield and dair->knee.