PPMD's Falco Discussion Thread

H I V + said:

alright so i shffl nair -> shine -> fadeaway nair on marths shield then he wds in and grabs me. what could i have done after the fadeaway nair?

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Based on this situation, then jab or Dtilt would be pretty good and potentially set up combos.

H I V + said:

after i shine he will wd out of shield -> f smash or shield grab or just wait. he doesnt try to punish my shield pressure with aerials. idk how/if i can take advantage of that?

is nair -> shine -> fadeaway nair safe?

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It's prety safe but you have to be wary of WD OOS towards you. Jab and Dtilt tend to stuff those, but those options might lose to aerials OOS if Marth can get them out fast enough(not sure if he can).

If he's just waiting in shield, then grab him so he feels like he has to do something. Laser grab or shine grab(or laser/approach shine grab) are too good lol.

If he's WD'ing away OOS then you should play to stuff that(aerial early to catch it or laser in shield pressure to catch it, but there are movement tricks you could potentially do as well to cover that). Mix up your shield pressure timings so he doesn't have a good idea of when he can WD OOS and will have to guess. You have to make his life hard when you shield pressure and understand the psychology behind how to make it scary. Just keep him guessing, basically. =)

H I V + said:

thanks a bunch! i appreciate it.

last question. if i were to try to shine grab marth would he b able to shield grab me before i grabbed him?

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It's a fairly tight timing but unless your shine is pretty staled(hit with it a lot in one of your stocks) then usually you shouldn't be getting grabbed.

Bones0 said:

Double shines > WD OoS

You can also just WD out of your shine and either shine/aerial (if you guessed which way he would WD and WD'd the same way) or dash back (usually with a laser) to keep yourself protect from a rogue fsmash... they go SO FAR and when your laser hits him a frame too late... well... you know how it is...

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I would never waveshine towards the opponent in pressure unless it was late in a match/set and I had conditioned them very well. It just doesn't seem as safe to me but the reward which could be a kill move or kill setup is pretty great so I guess that's a neat thing to do in that regard.

I'd prefer to waveshine back though since they'd have a smaller shield plus I could approach again. That threat+the pressure I already applied is very powerful I find.

Also double shine complicates everything which is great.

Falco Post!

I've done a lot of writing in my big posts about Marth or about Melee in general or just me, but I haven't written about Falco in eons. While I'll be writing from more of a player perspective(my own), I think that I will still be saying helpful Falco-specific things. Maybe I'll end with something more applicable to everyone, I haven't thought about it lol.


So I decided that my Marth stint needed to take a break(though I still play that guy in training more than my Fox or Falcon). ROM4 and Apex will be here before I know it, and the last thing I want to do before then is stress about any improvements I COULD HAVE made. My personal goal is to have all of the new age(and some old, lol) technical things mastered or at least ready to use on call by the time ROM4 is a few weeks away, so I can focus on fine tuning my actual strategies involving the techniques and expand my game overall rather than divide my time/focus between tech practice and strategy evolution.

The techniques I am working on are:

edgedashes, platform cancels, double shines, shield drops, side B cancels....among others, but these are the bigger ones. I think I'll speak a little about each and how I think about them related to Falco.




Edge dashes(do I call these things edge dashes or wavelands btw? always been iffy on this bs lmao)- It's not good enough to get these right anymore. I want to start reversing momentum and taking stage back with this technique. So I try to get the edge dashes which are pretty close to perfect, and my measure of that is Falco not making his airdodge noise. It has a way to go, but it's improving.

Eventually, I'd like to firstly take a note from Azen's book and edge dash Fsmash. Tons of priority out in front of him and probably protected on the vulnerable startup? That man is too smart lol. If someone is closer though, then maybe shines to whatever or jabs or killing dtilts could be favorable? Seems like there's room to experiment there.




Double shines- right now, this technique is comprising the majority of my effort lol. I do not naturally understand how to make my fingers do this at all, but it's been about a week of training every day for an hour or two and I think I'll have it fairly soon. My biggest problem with this technique is that it requires a ton of focus for me, so I may have to use it sparingly at first until it becomes second nature. This is only in training too, so I have a ways to go on actual application. I recognize the increasing importance this technique has though, as everyone is getting more and more adept at recognizing and exploiting the holes in Falco's shield pressure. I have to stay ahead of the game or at least on par with it in this case haha.

Double shines stuff everything that everyone tries to punish after regular shines(grabs, aerials, WDs, empty hops I guess lol). This seems like a crucial mixup because it forces your opponent to second guess all of their usually instinctual punishes OOS upon seeing a shine(most people still delay aerials such as myself so acting after the shine is more common, but that may be changing these days, I'm not really sure). The threat of this technique alone allows standard shield pressure to once again become useable, not to mention all of the regular shield pressure you can do out of double shines anyway haha.




Shield drops- Not much playing around with this yet, but I'm really bad at it lmao. I'd only use it during pressure though(not out of dashes) because I'd rather not complicate my inputs any more than I think is necessary. Sometimes I can get 6ish of these in a row on my own, and sometimes my lightshield breaks while I'm wiggling it around for 5 seconds lol. This is definitely worth learning though, so once double shines are perfected I'll at least focus on this a little more.

First of all, I'd like to say that Mango didn't mean to do that shield drop in my WGF set vs him lmao. Been wanting to say that for a while now, so I hope it becomes common knowledge after this point. <.<
Anyway, shield dropping out of pressure, while I don't totally understand the frame data behind it, seems incredible and may be just the technique needed to swing the metagame towards smarter play once again(since shield pressure value, at least on platforms, would be greatly diminished). I also think that it could emphasize platform-focused play, since you can only shield drop on platforms. For Falco, this means shield pressure on platforms is less useful than before. More importantly, it means he can avoid being trapped as easily on platforms when he gets forced into shield there(either by being thrown/hit up there or by the threat of an attack when Falco is moving around). Falco could also perform very well in a platform-centric metagame due to his laser potential and control(double lasers could cover a high and low area or the important heights of a higher or level platform area that is great for control or helping Falco approach).

*This is all kinda off the top of my head, so feel free to be skeptical. I'd love to hear other ideas on what I'm saying. =)




Side B cancels- I learned I had to wait a second to get the shorten, but I can't get it close to consistently without spamming B at that time, but even then it's not successful a large percentage of the time. I don't want to mash because I think tensing up will give my intentions away to my opponent, but maybe I tense up too when I side B anyway? I heard you could mash A after you side B to trick your opponent, but I'm not sure if I could remember to commit to that during matches. Maybe it's worth it though?

Canceling side B going to the edge allows you to avoid weird stuff that normally kills side Bs. Spacies' Dsmashes can be avoided by a lower side B, and you can actually grab the edge a little lower than regular side Bs with the cancel. PC also did that high one to grab the edge, and that's a real guessing game it seems, especially when most people are caught offguard by strange side B tricks as it is. That's a fast move LOL.


This is pretty good for starters I believe. I feel kinda lame not talking about Falco much in my Falco thread so hopefully this helps make it more legit haha. =p

Yeah I got by without it before, but I want every edge now haha.

And that trick seems to be what most people suggest but I keep missing it when I try that. I probably just need to practice it more and make sure I'm actually doing it like that haha.

Thanks for the tip though I had legitimately forgotten it again somehow until you suggested it haha. =)

Tirno said:

I've been playing around with properly adding edgedashing to my game. It's difficult to get perfect, but the payoff would be pretty awesome. I've tested it frame-by-frame, and IIRC, Falco can get up to 14 frames of invulnerability after the completion of the waveland. This means invulnerable shine, as well as invulnerable startup on pretty much all dodges, tilts, smashes, and even running aerials.

I've messed around with double shine, but have been leaning towards just using shinegrab to beat quick OOS options. This is because I discovered that a frame-perfect double shine often whiffs against OOS options since Falco's shine is small and the opponent's hurtbox usually doesn't move forward until the latter part of a grab, WD, up-smash, etc. I'm probably putting too much weight on frame-perfect or near frame-perfect theorycrafting, but it's something to consider, at least.

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How much leeway is there on the startup of aerials? Like could I be off by, say, 3 frames and still get a Nair out safely?

Won't the double shine catch them before they can move OOS though? I'm asking because I understood that that was why double shine beat a lot of those options and not them being able to move but me catching their not frame-perfect hurtboxes or however one would phrase the scenario you described.

Hm interesting on both counts. I never wanted to make double shine a staple of shield pressure though as it's unwieldly for me technically and there are shield DI problems in addition to the one you mentioned. Double shine is more of a mixup and people trying to punish could possibly hold in after the first shine to punish so maybe there's some accidental shield DI help there? Either way I have my own testing of this tactic to do because I haven't seen it used much but if nothing else this can be a pretty nice mixup once in a while I feel. Obviously I'd have to remember to be very close to the opponent though, but that isn't an impossible feat or anything.