Falco Social Thread

Just seems to have too much Brawl influence atm. See: Walk around Fsmash and other oddities in his style. He mains Falco in Brawl right? TBH I think he'd be better off not using Falco unless he decides to drop Brawl completely. It's very disorienting to main the same character in multiple games.

Falco also plays entirely different (optimally) in doubles than he does in Singles, so I don't think this is good material if you want advice for him.

TheReflexWonder said:

I think he could manage it if he had any Melee/PM practice in years; his disc drive doesn't work, so he can't play PM at his house. It's a shame, really, because he used to do the Falco thing pretty well in Melee.

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Does he plan to continue to play Brawl (Falco) competitively, though? It's the switching that's problematic, not just the influence. Switching between Melee Falco and Brawl Falco is hard enough for people like DEHF, but it's even harder when Melee Falco has Brawl Falco's model. Make sense?

TheReflexWonder said:

Also, I didn't realize that Falco played very differently in Teams than in Singles. Ignoring the video, can you elaborate on that?

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It's mostly because of how Falco's moveset collaborates in relation to the dynamics of doubles. His kit is based around 1. free horizontal stage control anywhere forever with his neutral b move and 2. death touching with [insert just about any combination of attacks here and it probably works, preferably starting with move -> shine or just shine] after abusing free horizontal stage control anywhere forever. In doubles, this obviously changes things because there's a much more clearly defined drawback to his stage control in that it can exert itself on his partner. Of course, this affects every character, but due to the nature of his control and how his kit is designed so strongly around it, it has a much more debilitating affect on his overall potency compared to singles. Death-touching is also less prevalent in doubles because they have a partner and there's a lot of switching match-ups, cluster****s, and other sorts of interaction going on.

However, again like other characters, there are aspects of Falco that are less relevant in singles and fantastic in doubles. For example, with the added option coverage having a partner brings, you can often force or threaten a mid-percent Dair KO/edgeguard setup even during a standard 2v2 situation with Falco's mobility and Dair's absurdity. Another example is that even though he's typically not a walling character, in some formations he can wall out a character with a laser or two (or his Bair, which is amazingly good at walling) while his teammate edgeguards/combos, or waits for Falco to come and finish with a Dair, leaving them unable to save their partner. He can also "wall" with just his Dash Dance (which he should be doing far more than in singles btw) coupled with the threat/option of doing the aforementioned things, by influencing the opponent(s) play to be sub-optimal. And even though he traditionally doesn't have a particularly great throw game, his (landing a) grab game is one of the best, and grabs are crucial in doubles. Plenty of examples, I could go on. They generally require creative/critical thinking which is something that your average Melee Falco player tends to lack, but you get the picture.

Anyway, yeah. With most characters you can pretty much play singles with some ~universal changes like holding a grabbed char more often instead of throwing them for team combos, teammate awareness AKA Spidey Sense, sandwiching and other common tactics, etc., all stuff you and Kismet should know from your years of experience in Smash. With Falco, playing singles within doubles is actually a pretty terrible idea (laser spam even when intelligent is generally problematic in Doubles) and is why Falco is known for "sucking" in doubles even though he's quite above average. Although in just about all cases a Falco player can probably just pick Fox and do more for his team than he can with Falco. They both accomplish similar goals in low% kills, damage building, mobility, landing grabs, and applying pressure, it just so happens that in doubles Fox is either on par with or better than Falco in those categories.

If you want some more Falco team theory/strategy, I suggest you & Kismet read this post by Dr Peepee. His teams Falco is probably the best around and he's got a sharp analytic mind to boot, so this is yummy information. This one too.

Feel free to hit me up on Facebook or just respond here for more thoughts. I might be pretty busy until after APEX though, so be patient =P