*NEW* Match-up Discussion Week #1: Metaknight!

Okay, it's been too long since we've officially discussed any sort of matchup around here, so we're starting things off again with the big guy, good old MK.




Here are some of the main points in the matchup to help with the discussion:

Falco:

-Lasers + Phantasm = Good camp game
-Projectile that goes through Nado (our Bair goes through it too)
-Faster damage racking CG
-First hit of Nair stops Glide Attack, the rest hit through
-Our great jab and spotdodge make us a match for MK up close
-No need to approach

MK:

-Better recovery
-Better aerials
-Dair camping (ugh...)
-Can easily hit through Phantasm
-Tornado > recovering Falco
-Kills more easily with gimps, Dsmash, and UpB

So basically, we can rack up damage quickly and force an approach, but once we're offstage we have a tough time getting back. Any solution to this? Pure_Awesome might've found one...

Here's a video demonstrating how the matchup should be played: DEHF vs Tyrant at R3
Anyway, Discuss!

Matchup depends on how heavily you are allowed to camp.

If MK can plank with no restrictions whatsoever, Falco will not reasonably win.

If MK can plank, but is limited (edge grab limit), it's around 6:4, 65:35.

If MK cannot plank, it's around 55:45-6:4.

If MK can "air camp" as much as he pleases, 6:4.

If MK cannot "air camp" that much, 55:45.



I hate doing all of these ratios, but considering that not every region feels the same way about planking/edge camping/air camping, sadly they are necessary to reflect how the matchup changes with certain rules in place/not in place.

Our solution is quite the amazing one, but if they're tornadoing to punish, like they should. The idea of SDI doesn't quite work the way we hoped.

HOWEVER, SDI can get us out of the Nado. I've also ****ing SPIKED an MK out of their Tornado with Phantasm before.

Dair camping can be dealt with, whether it be by spacing ourselves to remove ourselves from the obstacle or by outright beating it with a fullhop Bair.

If we're recovering from above I'm pretty sure our Dair can beat their shuttleloop, if we time it right.

On the topic of glide attack, iirc, our Bair can clash and give us frame advantage?

Laser lock is often forgotten, but if we remember our set ups it can be done. (ftilt at certain %'s as well as just simply knocking them off a platform.)

Mispaced aerials, like the fair can be punished with smashes, and since we'll probably be looking to kill with a bair it's an amazing damage racker. Take in to account that we can force this mistake by moving in to an aerial and PSing it.

I still think the MU is about 50/50. However, on stages like Battlefield, Smashville, FD etc. (Anything flat) I'm tempted to say 55-45 Falco. Along the same lines though, stages such as Brinstar, Yoshi's Island and Lylat would put the MU at about 55-45 Metaknight.

Dair camping is not that easy for Falco to handle. Being able to Jump up and Bair MK only works when he has already Daired and is close enough for it to hit. It's easier for MK to just stay in the air and Dair when needed as Falco has nothing that will beat a properly timed Dair head to head.

Air camping in general is not easy for Falco to deal with. Most characters that do so well remove themselves from the more dangerous situations and can avoid most damage reasonably. Landing a killing blow is also much harder when an opponent distances themselves like that.

I put it as 55:45, 6:4 for MK depending again on what your region allows. The matchup is much worse for Falco if MK can full blown plank, and it's not as bad if MK can sorta kinda plank/camp but can't do it that much.

Just to be clear, DMG, my region typically has ledge grab and stalling rules in place. So my opinion reflects that.

That's fine. Your ratio makes sense with those in place unless your region is really liberal on stages. That would favor MK slightly more, although IDK if it would be 6:4 over 55:45 in that case.

My regions stage list is this:
Standard Stage List:

STARTER (3)
Battlefield
Yoshi's Island (Brawl)
Smashville

Counterpick (10)
Final Destination
Delfino Plaza
Frigate Orpheon
Halberd
Lylat Cruise
Castle Siege
Pictochat
Brinstar
Pokemon Stadium 1

It's a little different to your typical list, and it was a little experimental with YI replacing FD. I think it works though, as against someone like Falco, FD will always be banned, and this way we see a bit more of a variety in the starter stages.

That's not too bad of a list. 55:45 seems pretty fair for that list/those rules.

Sweet. Also, I think this MU is ENTIRELY dependant on who wins the neutral.

55:45 is my opinion. With ledge planking it's 90:10 or summit.

Nice ****!
I'd help, but I literally JUST picked up Falco. (I'ts been about 2 days)
But what you have seems about right, from what I know.

yea, I say it should 55:45, Mk's fav.

I can honestly say I don't think anything else can be added to this discussion that will change our opinions on the ratios. LOL
Also, are people saying 55-45 Falco or Metaknight? Because as previously stated, depending on the rules and stage list I think it can be 55-45 Falco.
Match-up Stage discussion now IMO.

:Neutrals:
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville

:Counterpicks:
Halberd (when stalling rules are in place)
What's people's opinions on Pirate Ship to remove gimping?
Pictochat
Jungle Japes

These would be my picks.

55:45 in favor on JJ imo

Full hop lasers and stuff, use vertical acceleration to get him by surprise.

But yeah with aircamping it's like 60/40 there

You have to play insanely patient and smart in order to excel in this MU. AKA camp and don't approach. You have to learn the style of the MK before you try anything.

Dair camping: Obviously you CAN find an opening, IE mis-spaced Dair or airdodge, Via Bair, but pretty much only when you're close enough and KNOW you have the opening... don't even bother with any other move than Bair. You could always refresh your Bair later on via camping. Don't rush to get the Bair.

You have to carefully analyze the MK's movements. If he starts running at you trying to grab, pivot grab behind you, dash attack, etc... utilize your Jab cancels to stop him in its tracks and work accordingly, reaction timing is important. IE: MK stopped in your grab range? Grab. MK outside your range? Ftilt. You shouldn't rush for the grab, because it's easy to get punished if you miss via. So: I lazer camp like a *****, but when MK is around 1/3 of your distance, you stop lazering and rely on reaction time to space Jab cancels into Grab or Ftilt (lead to lazer lock anyone?) given the situation.

Despite our lazers, you can still have a bit of trouble with Nado when you're in the air in the falling motion (considering our horizontal movement is pretty lacking unlike characters like Wario). Personally when I see Nado I just Illusion to a nearby platform or if on a stage like FD... simply Phantasm cancel (long distance) to get away from it... I don't find airdodging useful. I suppose you can hit the Nado with Nair and maybe Bair if your facing in front of it, doesn't work for me most of the time but I know it does. But when grounded and you spot Nado above you... angle your shield to avoid shield poke, or simply roll to avoid it.

Punishing Nado. The best option is Phantasm at low percents, this could set up for racking more damage, or it just sets MK back up in Dair camping position (which leaves you more time to refresh your moves). At high percents, DACUS is amazing at punishing Nado, it really is.

Stages:

Neutrals: FD and SV. BF is honestly MK's advantage imo. Smaller stage means Falco has less room to work with given MK's speed. Plus more platforms for MK to utilize its Dair camping in. YI, I'm personally not a fan of the stage with either of the characters, but it's manageable.

Counterpicks:

Japes obviously, already been mentioned. If you can force MK to the left side of the stage, then you can camp his *** mad hard there. However it's banned in some regions so not all the time.
You have to be creative when picking a CP (that's not a neutral).
-Pokemon Stadium 1
- Castle Seige
- Halberd
My favs personally.

Lazer camp when far away. Space Jabs, Jab Cancel>Grab, Ftilts (LL), and DTILTS (PERSONAL FAVORITE MOVE), when MK, grounded, is closer in distance (around a third of your distance). Analyze its approaching methods and work from there.

Criticism? If so, good, that means I have work to do too.

EDIT: OH **** ANOTHER THING...

High percent... grab release MK into DACUS. Free kill if the MK air releases. HOWEVER, it doesn't always work, and I always forget why. How does one MK avoid the air release? Simply by doing nothing? Could be useful for my MK against Falco since I want to avoid the ditto (KiD got me with one haha).

In terms of length, I'm pretty sure Battlefield is longer than Smashville.

swordsaint said:

In terms of length, I'm pretty sure Battlefield is longer than Smashville.

Click to expand...

Umm, seriously? But either way, BF is small and the platforms only limit its space.

Also


http://allisbrawl.com/blogpost.aspx?id=48983

if MK jump releases blood

In either case, I'm sticking to my guns. I agree that Falco, might just have the 55-45 over MK now. One player (M2K) taking Metaknight to the extreme is not reason enough to say MK beats Falco.

swordsaint said:

In either case, I'm sticking to my guns. I agree that Falco, might just have the 55-45 over MK now. One player (M2K) taking Metaknight to the extreme is not reason enough to say MK beats Falco.

Click to expand...

From experience, as well as watching others via videos/offline, I can attest that MK ahsa clear advantage over Falco... FOR NOW at least. Can't wait for Larry vids to go up so I can see for myself... a new metagame jump.

They're already up. Which is why I agree with them.

The MU ratios are according to the current metagame. Falco has the advantage for now.

Bloodcross can you PM me this new strategy.

I'm Bleachigo c'mon

Edit: I just realized DMG has been lurking here for quiet a while.

Pound 4 Falco's beware. I think he is up to something

LMAO

It's not a metagame jump. The videos don't even display anything NEW or exhaustively creative. It just shows Larry using Laser more, jumping less, spacing with Ftilt more, and camping more. It doesn't show him abusing some new found punishing tool, some new use for lasering or Side B, it just shows him being smarter as a player.

No offense to him, but he didn't make a "leap" in the metagame in those videos. If you want to see a leap in the metagame, come up with a way for Falco to handle a MK on the edge or air camping well.

I'm just playing how I used to play =O

Which is fine.

But then comes Cali with a "tad" of meatriding and hype and "****!" Shouting fests, telling the world that you have singlehandedly changed the fabrics of Brawl. And it's like "Well yes he played better and did good but cmon guys Larry is not Jesus, he is not a miracle worker". lol.

What DMG said is right it is depending on if mk can plank.

If There is a ledge grab rule, than the match up is 50-50. If not, than 40-60

50/50 then IMO.

"... a new metagame jump?"

Forgot to add the question mark in my post. Didn't mean to flat out say it was a metagame jump. DMG is absolutely right. It all came down to Larry being a much smarter player.

Just watched all of the vids vs Tyrant. Amazing stuff Larry. I'm not going to lie, I play MK the same way you do, only you are like 3x smarter and more patient than I am lol (I'm more of the Aggro side with Falco most of the time because... well I want to be) which makes the difference haha.

As for edge game, I sometimes mix it with using Nair and follow up from there. Nair>UpSmash (in its killing range %), or Nair>Shieldgrab (obviously away from UpSmash killing range). Other than that, Lazers with Ftilt, Grab, and Fsmash added in.

The main goal of this matchup is that when MK is dair camping you want to be underneath him, shielding the hits and then jumping out of shield with bair, and just keep trading hits this way. Dair camping is quite difficult to deal with when spaced correctly so that it's important to just wait for that opening. I've also seen D1 deal with it by using Full Hopped dairs, but I can imagine that's more risky than just trading hits with bair.

DEHF told me something about this matchup and he said that Falco should try to avoid jumping as much as possible, especially as an approach. This is because MK just has far too many options in the air which outright beat falco's. Instead we should be using lots more spaced jabs and ftilts on the ground which are safer and MK can't do as much about.

Lasers must be used more sparingly against MK, it's too easy for him to punish us for spamming them thoughtlessly.

It's practically impossible to DI out of tornado (as far as I know) because of the weird properties it has, unless you can do it at the very start of it. Your best bet after shielding a nado is to IAP out of shield to punish MK's landing lag

If you're shielding a dsmash ftilt and jab are your best bets for punishing it. Don't even bother going for grabs because of the shield knockback the move has. Fsmash is pretty much unpunishable altogether as far as I know.

The best way to punish a shielded shuttle loop is to nair the glide. The first hit of the nair clanks with the glide attack while the rest hits. If you are close to the edge of the stage you can even spike him out of it. Also, while you're above MK (which is a really bad position) make sure you save your double jump and listen for the startup of shuttle loop. As soon as you hear it, dair.

Good MK's will also do random short hopped nairs when they predict IAPs so just beware of that.

When doing Jab combo, I find that only doing the minimum possible of the combo is most effective because it's fairly easy for MK to DI away and just dsmash or dtilt.


That's most of my thoughts on how to deal with MK, I prefer just posting what I feel we should do in this matchup rather than theorising

Poor wording on my behalf

But yeah it makes me cringe when I see some falcos just spamming lasers without actually thinking about it, particularly against faster characters

Some very good advice, Vlade. Thanks!

Regarding this topic...

I agree with DMG that what DEHF is doing doesn't change the matchup into MK's favor. He's playing smarter and thus succeeding, and that shows that he is a fantastic player, but that doesn't mean that Falco as a character has an advantage over MK because of it.

This is somewhere in the realm of 55:45 - 60:40 MK's favor, depending on certain factors such as Stage choice. I don't personally think that it ever shifts to Falco's favor on any stage except maybe Japes... but even there I would put it at 50:50 at best I think... I dunno, tough call on Japes.

It's really important to win the first match of a set against MK

Actually, same goes for all characters

But yeah while we pretty much only do well on neutrals MK can screw us up on a fair amount of stages.

Don't know about anyone's regional stagelist but I'd imagine at least Delfino, Brinstar, Frigate, Rainbow Cruise and Lylat are all legal.

I played Ksizzle a lot last weekend and this match-up is very deep.

Too many things can go on. It's like rock-paper-scissors, but with 15 options.

Anyone have a solution to MK using the Tornado to punish your recovery? As far as I can tell tornado > falco's recovery. When the move is used with the proper timing, it will punish anything Falco can try. He can just hover with it before the ledge to prevent you going to the ledge. You try to phantasm over it, you'll so much ending lag he can simply move the tornado towards you.

The only method I have been able to try to escape this is landing on platform high above MK. Like on SV (it's moving away from MK) or BF (top platform). Also, DI so that you get sent above the stage instead of offstage.