My opinions on this MU:
1. How does Dedede's ground game fare versus Falco?
2. How does Dedede's air game fare versus Falco?
3. Can Dedede gimp or disrupt Falco's recovery? How does Falco fare offstage versus Dedede?
4. Can Falco gimp Dedede? How does Dedede fare offstage versus Falco?
5. Is Falco easy to grab and/or chaingrab? Can we chaingrab him?
6. Can Dedede shield pressure Falco, and with what attacks can he do so with? Can Falco also shield pressure Dedede?
7. Can Dedede punish Falco's attacks easily on shield? And vice versa?
1. Well, we get CG'd fairly hard if we ever get grabbed at the beginning of a stock, and if we're not careful, it could end up with us being spiked right away. We also get camped fairly hard. Falco can bust out some pretty fast normals, like DACUS and DA>usmash (two different things). Falco's SHL's and SHDL's are lagless upon landing, so he can combo any laser into a quick attack or grab at close range. I feel like reflector could actually become annoying in this MU as well. I think it can cause tripping, but I'm not sure. We have the omnipotent grab of Dedede. We enjoy the benefit of having throws that can usually send Falco offstage or to the ledge. Perhaps D3 can also sneak in a quick dash attack kill off of a hard read from dthrow?
I feel like every single other move D3 has on the ground is way too laggy for us to be using it preemptively against Falco. In this case, I would say dtilt is our fastest option, which is nice since it's a semi-ko move. Falco's a fastfaller, so he might be somewhat difficult to kill with utilt, but he's also fairly light, so it shouldn't be too big a deal. One problem with our ground game vs Falco is that he can always phantasm through us, should he feel threatened and we're not ready to deal with it.
2. Well, we still have our bair, as usual, but I personally believe Falco's bair is actually good enough to directly contest with ours. I really think Falco straight out beats us in the air. His bair is stupid. His dair is stupid. His nair is stupid. His uair is decent. Idk how good his fair actually is, but it seems like a bad G&W bair. It's pretty SDIable and so is his nair, but the nair has a pretty nicely spread hitbox. Also, nair>jab is a janky combo that works for some reason. Lasers can screw up aerial approaches, even though this doesn't really apply too much to D3. Oh, and of course, he can always phantasm if he ever feels threatened.
3. Can Dedede gimp Falco? Well, do we all play Smash (please let that be yes)? Falco kind of flounders offstage. It doesn't matter who he's facing. If he can't make it to stage level for phantasm, then he's in big trouble. His Firefalco is garbage. It has no range and it doesn't even snap to the ledge sometimes. Phantasm is a whole other story, though. If he's at or above stage level then our best bet is to stay on stage to try to punish his recovery onto the stage or from the ledge. We can grab him and send him back off again. We can dtilt, ftilt, bair, etc., but we either have to put out the move preemptively to catch the phantasm or we have to punish the lag. Honestly, if it wasn't for Falco's incredible game onstage, I think Falco would be bottom of high tier or even mid tier, largely because of how linear his recovery is. I'm not sure if this is what D3's should be doing, but if Falco lets himself end up below the stage line, I usually try to gimp him or grab the ledge, since phantasm is no longer an option for him.
4. Falco
can gimp D3, but I think D3 definitely fares much better offstage than Falco does. Falco can be quite annoying with lasers that interrupt our jumps combined with the huge vertical reach of those two jumps of his, but the saying that 'Dedede always makes it back' still pretty much holds true. Unless you're spiked at high %'s somehow, being gimped isn't too big of a fear. Falco's somewhat bad recovery and fastfalling status mean he has no offstage pursuing power.
5. I don't think D3 can CG Falco. He always gets knocked down instead of landing on his feet. Falco isn't really easy to grab either, imo, unless he's recovering. Then we can punish his options, but at neutral, it's hard to punish a lot of Falco's stuff.
6. For our shield pressure, we have the regular ftilt pressure, which I think works quite well here, and we have bair and swallow mixups for shield harrassment. I don't think Falco can really punish swallow that hard if it's done right. Iirc, the few characters that can punish swallow easily are chars with swords and Lucario, basically the chars with huge disjointed hitboxes and counter moves. Dtilt pressure also seems somewhat reliable. It can interrupt quite a few things. I've hit people's shields with one dtilt and then they try to do something oos but it gets stuffed by a second dtilt immediately after. However, even with all these things, I think Falco's shield pressure on us is
much more significant. Of course, there are lasers, which should seriously be PS'd. There is dash attack>usmash, which works if they hit our shields. There is jab and there is that aerial version of jab (nair), both of which keep us locked in decent shieldstun, but jab can be shieldgrabbed as long as D3 grabs Falco before he begins the rapid multi-hitting portion of the jab and nair can be grabbed upon landing. Of course, Falco can mixup his shield pressure with grabs, which devastate us. Also, if we are on platforms above Falco, he can safely hit our shields with basically any aerial and utilt. We don't wanna be above Falco. Phantasm doesn't really pressure our shields, but it can't be punished oos unless he lands right behind us, in which case we can bair him.
7. Falco has a lot of moves that create a bit of shieldstun, but for the most part, he can be shield-grabbed out of all of them, with the exception of maybe jab (multi-hitting portion), lasers, and phantasm. Also, I'm not sure about this, but I think Falco's DA can cross us up, which means we can't grab him if he spaces it correctly (inside of us). Of course, we can always bair and nair oos if he does something punishable behind, above, or inside us. If we space our moves correctly, I don't think Falco can shield-grab us out of any of our moves, barring utilt, nair, and DA. Yeah, none of 'em 'cept those three. However, Falco can still attack with aerials and usmash oos, and Falco has great aerials and a good usmash, so spacing and keeping our lag to a minimum is essential.
There was a lot of theory here, so definitely speak out if something I said was blatantly wrong or misleading.