Brinstar Discussion

MARLX · Oct 10, 2011

Brinstar

Pros: Falco is amazing on the platforms.
Falco can use a lot of jabs.
The plasma helps Falco recover.
Falco can kill with up smash at low percents.

Cons: Falco has no space to camp.
When Falco phantasms back to the ledge, he falls through and dies.
More difficult to get the lag less phantasm.
Difficult to (B)dacus because of the slime.
When Falco dairs on to the slime, it slows the dair by a signifigant amount.
If the slime is broken, it becomes more difficult to chain grab (cg).
Because of Falco's poor recovery, we fall everytime and get 14% damage.

I really try to avoid this stage because of the flaws of the stage, and Falco's flaws on this stage.
In my opinion this stage is not one of Falco's best stages. Rating:

Elyssa Xey Hexen · Oct 10, 2011

This is not Falco's best counterpick against a majority of the cast where stages like SV/BF/FD play to Falco's typical strengths best. If anything, you have to worry about being counterpicked here, but there is some margin of strategy as a stage people are not accustomed to playing on.

The biggest things worth considering are the destroyable objects, slants in the stage, and the acid.

The slants will add extra sliding distance upon landing. Fast fall an aerial on one of the slants and your landing lag will slide along the ground. This can be used defensively. Suppose your opponent is standing at the peak of one of the slants, land an aerial and even if it misses or hits a shield, the landing will cause you to slide away a bit.

Any of the destroyable objects will decay your moves if hit, and cause you to enter hitlag which will extend your attacks. This obviously requires adjustment for timing attacks. All attacks will more or less have the same hitlag. Fsmash, Fair, Lasers, and Shine have modified hitlag times. Fsmash has reduced hitlag by 50%. Lasers and Shine are relatively unaffected by hitlag having 0.1x and 0.25 multipliers, and Fair has 0.7x for the multihits and 2.0x for the final hit. A general rule of thumb, the more hits a move has, the more lag it will have when hitting.

The slime capsules in the center of the stage can be either crossed or act like a ledge depending how many have been destroyed. If none are destroyed, it can be crossed without penalty from moves like rolls, dash attacks, and dashes. This can be used to your advantage by trapping people into tech chases by taking note of how destroyed it is.

As far as I recall, the acid moves in random patterns. But it comes at the same heights. There is a height that will replace the bottom blast zone, but not interfere with a drop down 2nd jump sweet spot the ledge as falco. There is another height further up that will interfere with such a maneuver. The next height will come up to the stage ledges, but a little island in the center is safe to land on. The highest height the acid will come up to is enough to cover the two bottom platforms. However, if the pillars on the side are broken, they will rise above the max height of the acid.

MARLX · Oct 10, 2011

Xeylode said:
This is not Falco's best counterpick against a majority of the cast where stages like SV/BF/FD play to Falco's typical strengths best. If anything, you have to worry about being counterpicked here, but there is some margin of strategy as a stage people are not accustomed to playing on.

The biggest things worth considering are the destroyable objects, slants in the stage, and the acid.

The slants will add extra sliding distance upon landing. Fast fall an aerial on one of the slants and your landing lag will slide along the ground. This can be used defensively. Suppose your opponent is standing at the peak of one of the slants, land an aerial and even if it misses or hits a shield, the landing will cause you to slide away a bit.

Any of the destroyable objects will decay your moves if hit, and cause you to enter hitlag which will extend your attacks. This obviously requires adjustment for timing attacks. All attacks will more or less have the same hitlag. Fsmash, Fair, Lasers, and Shine have modified hitlag times. Fsmash has reduced hitlag by 50%. Lasers and Shine are relatively unaffected by hitlag having 0.1x and 0.25 multipliers, and Fair has 0.7x for the multihits and 2.0x for the final hit. A general rule of thumb, the more hits a move has, the more lag it will have when hitting.

The slime capsules in the center of the stage can be either crossed or act like a ledge depending how many have been destroyed. If none are destroyed, it can be crossed without penalty from moves like rolls, dash attacks, and dashes. This can be used to your advantage by trapping people into tech chases by taking note of how destroyed it is.

As far as I recall, the acid moves in random patterns. But it comes at the same heights. There is a height that will replace the bottom blast zone, but not interfere with a drop down 2nd jump sweet spot the ledge as falco. There is another height further up that will interfere with such a maneuver. The next height will come up to the stage ledges, but a little island in the center is safe to land on. The highest height the acid will come up to is enough to cover the two bottom platforms. However, if the pillars on the side are broken, they will rise above the max height of the acid.

On the Marth boards, they have the brinstar information in perfect detail.
I will put the link under my post.

#HBC | Ryker · Oct 11, 2011

The only character I would consider counterpicking here is Ice Climbers and then only if Rainbow Cruise was banned. The only set I can recall playing in the past four tournaments or so where I didn't ban this stage against a non-ICs player was against a Diddy Kong who I knew was extremely comfortable with RCruise. I probably would've still banned it if I didn't have a pocket MK.

Falco's worst stage.

#HBC | ZoZo · Oct 11, 2011

Olimar to Brinstar = good stuff

Host Change · Oct 12, 2011

I hate dealing with this stage, but in the situation that I get stuck here, I tend to work from the left side of the stage with Falco. Now that I've been playing enough to get the hang of other characters, I would certainly pull out one of my secondaries on Brinstar rather than try to deal with it. However, I'm likely going to ban it in a tournament scene so there's not too much to be concerned about.

-DR3W- · Oct 16, 2011

Falco on Brinstar really is not that bad.

You just have to be willing to play different and carefully, so that you don't get punished by the characters that bring you there (probably Wario or Game & Watch). And you have to have knowledge of the stage and how to move around fluently.

I wouldn't recommend it but you guys are over-exaggerating the severity of the disadvantage.

MARLX · Oct 16, 2011

-DR3W- said:
Falco on Brinstar really is not that bad.

You just have to be willing to play different and carefully, so that you don't get punished by the characters that bring you there (probably Wario or Game & Watch). And you have to have knowledge of the stage and how to move around fluently.

I wouldn't recommend it but you guys are over-exaggerating the severity of the disadvantage.

Also zero suit samus mains would take you there. (zss best stage).

Elyssa Xey Hexen · Oct 16, 2011

The stage is still fairly poor for Falco though drew.

On any neutral stage Falco has good zoning with the usage of his lasers and almost always has some safe option of retreat to reset camping. On Brinstar a lot of his escape options are limited by the stage and it makes camping difficult.

Phantasm abuse is something that is not available to Falco on this stage due to the size and uneven terrain. He incurs extra landing lag for no IAP or extra lag due to an improper IAP. His roll away is fairly good and gets restricted due to the breakable capsules on the stage. Further more, the uneven terrain makes it easier to get around his lasers because characters can either wait it out on the platforms, ducking underneath, or simply waiting for the lava to force Falco out of camping.

Also, recovery for Falco is very hampered as well and has difficult retaking control of the stage after being hit away from it. If there is acid covering a good portion of the stage, his recovery gets extremely predictable or laggy. Plus, taking extra damage due to lava is never good for a light weight.

The stage is playable, but I have simply not seen enough positive points to this stage that one might consider it as a counter pick in most match-ups. The risk you take on the stage is honestly not really worth it when you can play to Falco's natural strengths on any neutral.

However, I can see bringing characters like Pikachu or ICs here to break up the CG because of the awkward terrain and the acid.

1PokeMastr · Oct 18, 2011

One - NEVER Abuse Phantasm. Going to get you killed.
Two - Who said Falco has to camp on all stages ?

Camping with Falco on this stage is obviously a bad Idea, the opponent can hide behind the Slime and never be hit.

The slime near the Ledges is good for Scoring Kills with Usmash/ Fsmash/ Dsmash, Dair or Bair, due to the Hit Lag duration that Extends the Hit Box.

A Full Hop Dair/ Uair/ Bair will set you on the top platform with them Auto Canceled, meaning you can Punish People who try to retreat to it.

If someone's on the second level platforms, It limits their roll distance, making it easier for a Bair Punish, not to mention that the close Blast Zones allow for us to kill easier.

Now, if you don't know how to play Falco without his Lasers.
I wouldn't advise you to play this stage, though, we should all know how to play Falco without laser camping.

And for the Pillars of Slime, I usually fire lasers at them to refresh my moves, or even Just do 9 single hit Jabs.

For sweet spotting the ledge with with Phantasm, it isn't that difficult if you're used to it on Delfino or Halberd.

And, it's better to know our worst stages than only to play our good stages, it'll make us un prepared for when someone takes us to one of them.

Mu's I advise to avoid for this stage are..

Actually, I've only lost on this stage twice and it was on Wifi, every other time, I've won.

Though, don't pick it if you don't know how to use it.
I didn't state the cons, I only stated the Pros, the cons come obvious.

Elyssa Xey Hexen · Oct 18, 2011

Abusing phantasm can be done in a smart way. If you rarely use it, your opponents start to adapt to covering other options. If you over use it, your opponent will start to cover that option. By abusing, then droughts of no abuse can throw people off. So saying to never abuse anything is just restricting your scope of tactics to use against someone. If someone isn't punishing you hard doing something, why not keep doing it if it works?

Falco doesn't have to camp every stage nor against every character, but losing that ability to do it effectively takes away from Falco overall . Same with phantasm as its far less effective on this stage. There are a few gains, but are pretty situational.

Much of this is obvious, but because it is so obvious is tends to be forgotten the quickest.

Anyway, here are a couple of videos since it can be easier to see stuff in this rather than simply talking about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9HizUtmAdc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YxiI7ZEtk8

Couldn't find too many that were fairly recent. Most are pretty old back from 09-10, the two above were just best I could find.

#HBC | Ryker · Oct 18, 2011

-DR3W- said:
Falco on Brinstar really is not that bad.

You just have to be willing to play different and carefully, so that you don't get punished by the characters that bring you there (probably Wario or Game & Watch). And you have to have knowledge of the stage and how to move around fluently.

I wouldn't recommend it but you guys are over-exaggerating the severity of the disadvantage.

The issue with Brinstar, like every single other stage for Falco, is not that Falco can't play on it, but that you will ONLY be playing against characters who want to play your Falco on it. Under current unity ruleset it is Falco's worst stage overall.

Brinstar Discussion

MARLX

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Elyssa Xey Hexen

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MARLX

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#HBC | Ryker

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-DR3W-

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MARLX

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Elyssa Xey Hexen

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1PokeMastr

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Elyssa Xey Hexen

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#HBC | Ryker

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