BBR Weekly Character Discussion #3: Falco

[Pierce7d]

Marth does NOT lose to Falco.

 

[ShadowLink84]

Marth does NOT lose to Falco.

This.

Marth does have the advantage in that matchup.

 

[Shaya]

Marth's tools do naturally beat out falco,

it's just the fact that falco is such an amazing character that it's still very much winnable, and at high levels of play it would be a slight advantage for marth (things like "only needing one lucky 0% cg to take a stock and be at a significant advantage" will always tinker a match up slightly in their favour unless it's just outright impossible to obtain at high levels [in this case it's fully doable]).

It's pretty much the same thing that goes for Snake.
Who actually beats Snake?
Hardly no one, because even if you absolutely destroy him, you're still gonna die after he hits you 5-6 times a stock, and he'll be the one tanking to 170%+. Most characters who do well against snake also happen to have crappy rolls which Snake absolutely MURDERS them if he gets a down throw on.

The only characters who "beat" the broken are the ones that are nearly immune to that character's ****.
Pikachu can just crouch lasers all day. He doesn't need to get damage up on falco. As long as he avoids the kill move from Falco, he only needs to keep safe trying to get a grab and he suddenly wins the match. Crouches lasers, can feasibly win a match 2 stock down.

Dedede against Snake? well any grab putting snake in his WORST position (off stage) pretty much guaranteed (and resulting in him out damaging snake because of this), plus negating stupid weight by his own and snake's range by being able to shield grab just about every move of his as well.

 

[MetalMusicMan]

Marth's tools do naturally beat out falco,

it's just the fact that falco is such an amazing character that it's still very much winnable, and at high levels of play it would be a slight advantage for marth (things like "only needing one lucky 0% cg to take a stock and be at a significant advantage" will always tinker a match up slightly in their favour unless it's just outright impossible to obtain at high levels [in this case it's fully doable]).

It's pretty much the same thing that goes for Snake.
Who actually beats Snake?
Hardly no one, because even if you absolutely destroy him, you're still gonna die after he hits you 5-6 times a stock, and he'll be the one tanking to 170%+. Most characters who do well against snake also happen to have crappy rolls which Snake absolutely MURDERS them if he gets a down throw on.

This-- especially the part about Snake.

 

[Praxis]

It's pretty much the same thing that goes for Snake.
Who actually beats Snake?

Plus that one overweight penguin.

 

[AllyKnight]

Let's not talk about Snake too much until it's time but imo: Marth/D3/ICS (when played right, not the usual American crappy ICS vs Snake), Diddy Kong on Speed can beat Snake. oh and MK beats Snake.

 

[[FBC] ESAM]

Marth beats Snake?

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Marth beats Snake?

Marth beats Snake.

 

[AllyKnight]

Let's not talk about Snake too much until it's time but imo: Marth/D3/ICS (when played right, not the usual American crappy ICS vs Snake), Diddy Kong on Speed can beat Snake. oh and MK beats Snake.

Marth beats Snake?

Read a lil better.

 

[gallax]

marth beats snake

 

[AllyKnight]

Pikachu beats Yoshi

 

[Marcbri]

Marth beats snake

ontopic: LOL at falco beating marth, I'd say it's even or sightly in Marth's favour, but not in falco's favour for sure. About Falco vs Snake it seems a pretty even match for me the more I think about it.

 

[MetalMusicMan]

Marth definitely has a slight advantage on Falco.

 

[AllyKnight]

Falco vs Snake is 55 45 if Falco gets the CG on Snake early and spike off stage. If not then its 55-45 Snake or even at BEST

 

[swordgard]

Falco vs Snake is 55 45 if Falco gets the CG on Snake early and spike off stage. If not then its 55-45 Snake or even at BEST

Didn't I teach you how to SDI that?

 

[DEHF]

Falco vs Snake is 55 45 if Falco gets the CG on Snake early and spike off stage. If not then its 55-45 Snake or even at BEST

LOL that's like Saying Falco beats Pikachu if Pikachu doesn't get a chain grab on him.

Falco Marth is probably even, but there's no way the match up would ever be in Falco's favor.

 

[AllyKnight]

LOL that's like Saying Falco beats Pikachu if Pikachu doesn't get a chain grab on him.

Falco Marth is probably even, but there's no way the match up would ever be in Falco's favor.

Yep you got it right feathers, if you don't get CG, how is the MU bad? but if you do, then the MU becomes death.Try that CG to jab to footstool to laser lock I showed you last night !

 

[M@v]

Oh hey. Didn't realize people were re-doing character dicussions. Glad I wasn't the only one thinking about that when I submitted an SBR application.

For those who don't know me, I'm another Atl north Falco from PA.

ANYWAY.

Just finished reading through the thread, and a lot of good points were brought up.

I feel Falco is good at 4th on the tier list, he *Might* be third, but I still feel snake and diddy have been doing better, and still have more options.

I do agree that Falco is an amazing camper, probably one of the best. And like Pierced said, Falco's reflector is VERY useful. It has an extremely long range, which makes up for its end lag. Its also a good edgeguarding tool vs many characters. The chance of a random trip is an extra bonus as well. Its one of Falco's 2 primary counters vs tornado, lasers being the other one.

Bdacus. This is still an emerging concept in Falco's metagame, and we(the Falco community) have been experimenting with the best ways to implement it. Its a powerful ability due to the fact it can be done out of the end lag of ANY move. This includes get-up attacks, and even shield drops! The tricky part is how hard it is to consisitently pull off, especially since the timing is different for every move. Bdacus out of a dthrow, laser, and rolls seem to be the most useful ones at the moment. Ex. Opponent comes at you with a dash attack. Roll back and bdacus so you connect in his end lag. I'm hoping we see much more of this move in the coming months.


Falco's best move in my honest opinion is his jab. Not his lasers, not his tilts, his jab. It's lightning fast, has great range, leads into almost anything. One thing I've been implementing more into my game play is double jab. In a lot of cases its even safer and harder to punish. Less people expect it over a single jab as well.

Jab-ftilt and jab-jab ftilt are such safe pokes. Great ways to deal damage relatively safe. Jab also allows many mindgames to occur.

Jab , walk a couple steps away, and react to the spotdodge or shield that is very likely to occur.





Matchups.


Imo, Falco vs snake is even, and Falco marth is 45:55 Marth advantage.

Falco holds the cg threat vs snake at low percents, and a camping advantage. Snake however has the obvious advantage in kill power, ability to stay alive, and priority(tilts pretty much shred through Falco's everything).


Falco vs Marth. Both has grab shenanigans on eachother at low percents. Marth has more options than Falco does up close. Falco has a superior grab game than marth overall, especially at higher percents. That is Falco's best option vs marth at those ranges. In the idea situation though he's not going to be that close to marth; hes going to be keeping him away shooting lasers, and timing dash attacks/ftilts/reflectors when he gets too close.


Falco vs icys. I personally suck *** at this matchup, and I currently use mk for it. Maybe I just dont have enough experience in it. Atm, I still feel falco vs icys is his worst, probably a 65:35, followed by pikachu, being a 6:4. Thats an imo though. It just seems to me that besides the killer CG of pika's, Falco has in beat in almost every other way.

-He has a smaller cg on pika
-His moves have more range and priority
-Falco can outcamp pika
-Its easier (and safer if falco's at high percent) for falco to land a kill move on pika than it is for pika to land one on falco.

Its just that pikachu's trump card in the matchup, the cg, wrecks him so hard it still throws the matchup in pika's favor.

 

[Denzi]

-Its easier (and safer if falco's at high percent) for falco to land a kill move on pika than it is for pika to land one on falco.

it actually isn't hard at all for Pika to land a kill on Falco IMO. Running fullhop Nair is safe and a killer, Fsmash kills and has enough range that it isn't punished too easily, and Utilt and Usmash kill or at least set up for another kill move: Thunder. Pika also has a lot of moves besides that will get us offstage at high %s, allowing him to land what are basically free thunder hits as long as he reads our recovery right (not tough to do).

As for Falco's killers, we have Fsmash, but this is even harder to land in this matchup because of how agile Pika is. Usmash is only really guaranteed OoS, and then only when he hits us with the wrong move/bad spacing. Our aerial killers, Bair and Uair, are also tough to land due to the fact that we have to come in from the side, lest we get beaten out by the disjoint on Pika's Dair. Even if we come in at the right angle, it's possible for pika to just QA to safety if he's close enough to the ground.

So I'm saying that not only does Pika rack damage wayyyy faster (CG), but he also has better shot at landing a kill.

By the way I left BDACUS out of Falco's kill options because while Pika is the right weight for us to kill out of down throw, 1. There are few, if any Falco players who can BDACUS consistently, and 2. even then it takes insane reaction time to see how your opponent DIs Dthrow and react. If it were possible Dthrow would be a guaranteed kill setup (DI up, we Bair, otherwise BDACUS), but I think we're still a long ways away from that happening. It's the same thing as the argument on the first few pages about characters being played perfectly.

Falco holds the cg threat vs snake at low percents, and a camping advantage.

I'm also going to say that I don't think Falco particularly "outcamps" Snake. First of all, you have to acknowledge the simple fact of damage output. We have to land five or six lasers to make up for just one of Snake's grenades. Our reflector, which is one of the main reasons we can win camp wars, is practically useless, because Snake can just time the grenades so they explode on contact (and half the time the hitbox on the reflector sets it off anyway). Snake can also crouch under our lasers, and his Dtilt goes through Phantasm. He can also beat out Phantasm with his other tilts and shield dropped nades. Finally, the fact that Snake's camping can kill and ours can't is huge, especially considering his tank-like nature.

 

[M@v]

Yeah, snakes camping kills at really high percents unless you have terrible DI.

And who said anything about phantasming through snake. I'm talking about using extended phantasm to go over him and not get punished. On a stage like FD this is harder to do, but not really hard on stages with several platforms. Don't forget you cant get knocked out of the first 1/3rd of your phantasm once its started.

 

[Pierce7d]

There are few, if any Falco players who can BDACUS consistently, and 2. even then it takes insane reaction time to see how your opponent DIs Dthrow and react.

Almost all the Falco's I play can BDacus consistently. In fact, I am the only one I know that cannot, because I have never practiced it.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Almost all the Falco's I play can BDacus consistently. In fact, I am the only one I know that cannot, because I have never practiced it.

Kismet can do it consistently. Also, from what I can tell, it's a guessing game rather than a need for reaction time.

"Will they DI away? BDACUS!"

"Will they DI toward me? Up-Smash/B-Air/generic followup!"

A true 50/50 KO mix-up if I ever saw one, unless there are other options that I'm not aware of.

 

[Overswarm]

Almost all the Falco's I play can BDacus consistently. In fact, I am the only one I know that cannot, because I have never practiced it.

Same. Switch L to attack and BAM! Instant BDacus.

 

[DEHF]

Same. Switch L to attack and BAM! Instant BDacus.

There's an easier way to do it than switching your controls. When you buffer dash and up on the c stick you'll dash attack, if you buffer dash and up on the c stick twice you'll bdacus.

Also, I think sour spot uair to u smash is a true combo at kill %. The u air will slightly lift them up in the air and there's so much hit stun on the move that they can't move.

 

[Teran]

Wow I could've sworn I posted in this thread.

Must've been too busy with World Cup. :x

 

[GunmasterLombardi]

This discussion was put together very well. Apparently there's a lot to talk about w/ . Consider a discussion about next week.

imo Usmash OoS is Falco's best punisher. Makes thing a lot easier in a lot of scenarios.

...DEHF how long have you kept this information from us? ^_^b

 

[clowsui]

Gunmaster, have you been to any tournaments? j/w you seem to post a lot but have no results

Uhh reactions to this later...all I gotta say is nice job BBR

 

[Denzi]

Same. Switch L to attack and BAM! Instant BDacus.

I didn't think that was the same as the BDACUS, just a frame perfect DACUS.

And Larry don't you still need to switch your controls so you can charge it for the kill? it comes out too early otherwise (in most cases) so it's either that or claw.

@GL: We've already started discussing Marth, I just haven't gotten around to updating the Matchup thread yet.

 

[M@v]

I can bdacus almost consistently. I used it in tourney for the first time this weekend vs shugo, but he shot it with a laser.


Q_Q

I already have R changed, so Im not changing L as well. I just dont feel bdacus is that critical of a technique to set aside yet another button to charge it. It is still useful in situations though; mainly the ones I said.


and for those who don't know how to perform it, its what larry said.


In the last 10 frames of any move.....

1. Flick the control stick left or right(determines the direction of the bdacus)

2. Cstick up twice.

The control stick and 1st c stick up buffer the dash attack, and the second cstick up buffers the up smash.

This all has to be done in the last 10 frames of the move remember.

 

[GunmasterLombardi]

Gunmaster, have you been to any tournaments? j/w you seem to post a lot but have no results

Uhh reactions to this later...all I gotta say is nice job BBR

Not 'til I earn my license.

I play a lot of Wifi, quit wifi tournies recently because though I'd win some, I was forced to play under bad connections. I spend a lot of time on the AiB ladder...and sports...I wish I could go to a tournament that wasn't an hour away.

@Denzi, naw I meant a BBR discussion like this one. This week is Falco and Pit I think.

 

[M@v]

I want people to elaborate why pika is worse than Icys for Falco, because I am still in strong belief that Pikachu is not as bad as icys, and that it is a much more doable matchup.

 

[Shugo-Chan]

I can do shdl bdacus somewhat consistantly..i find it a lot easier than dthrow bdacus for w.e reason..

 

[Denzi]

I want people to elaborate why pika is worse than Icys for Falco, because I am still in strong belief that Pikachu is not as bad as icys, and that it is a much more doable matchup.

I think it's just that vs Pika we can employ what is basically our normal playstyle, while vs ICs you have to handle them a lot differently.

I can do shdl bdacus somewhat consistantly..i find it a lot easier than dthrow bdacus for w.e reason..

Huh, I also think it's easier.

 

[[FBC] ESAM]

The reason Pika is worse than IC is this.

Nana died.

You don't have nearly as big of a threat. True, falco gets screwed by popo alone, but now he can be outcamped and out spaced without fear of much besides like 40% instead of death.

Pikachu, on the other hand, can ALWAYS get the CG assuming correct %s, and good Pikas won't let the % get too high. We would rather play a cat-and-mouse game than to give you too much % and then have to play a legit match.

 

[Denzi]

That too. And Larry is right about ICs being much easier to gimp.

 

[swordsaint]

lasering/reflecting their squal hammer

nana rubberbands on falco's dthrow which is hilarious and results in 1hko on popo

desyncs are unsafe

crossups are fairly safe

nana dies too easy when they get seperated

ice climbers are generally unsafe below a platform camping falco. lol oos options.

 

[M@v]

Icys are the only ones I always switch to mk for atm...who knows if I can get better at the MU maybe I can go Falco vs everyone from now on.

 

[[FBC] ESAM]

Um...you should still go MK against Pikachu. That is a hilariously silly match-up. Just warning ya. You heard what I did to keitaro and Choice (Besides the 1st match against Choice...idk what happened)

 

[DEHF]

(Besides the 1st match against Choice...idk what happened)

An angel got their wings

 

[[FBC] ESAM]

Stupid F-smash at 90% >_>