Thanatos*~
Smash Apprentice
I like this guide. The gifs were really well thought out and all that good stuff. I wonder how much of this could be applied to brawl falco?
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Q&A Falco Q&A
- Thread starter Mogwai
- Start date
puckgood
Smash Journeyman
*slowly takes out flamethrower from pocket, and prepares to flame thanatos8~*
Da Shuffla
Smash Lord
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2008
- Messages
- 1,810
Not now, Puck, not now. He doesn't know.
Team Falco? Good idea.
Team Falco? Good idea.
I.B
Smash Lord
when's lesson 4 mogwai?
puckgood
Smash Journeyman
Team Falco would be excellent.... *he said as he regretfully put his flamethrower back in his pocket, without any regard of what physics says would happen to vital parts of his body when exposed to extreme heat.*
Thanatos*~
Smash Apprentice
Binx
Smash Master
Its alright Than, pretty much none of this applies to brawl because it doesn't have the same types of movement options and the lasers don't stun as well. If you wanna learn to play brawl just watch the boring ass matches and copy whatever you want since none of it is hard to do. Except maybe m2k's metaknight haha.
The same basic principles apply to that game except every normal hit becomes a tech chase since there is no hitstun. Also you have no movement options. And it has a character with 4 "b" recoveries and 5 jumps and a glide, haha.
The same basic principles apply to that game except every normal hit becomes a tech chase since there is no hitstun. Also you have no movement options. And it has a character with 4 "b" recoveries and 5 jumps and a glide, haha.
Blistering Speed
Smash Champion
Here's some topics I'd recommend that I think everyone'd be interested in:
- Shield pressuring and when to grab (could involve options from shine).
- Falco in teams.
- Recovering intelligently.
- Edgeguarding (Maybe a little too matchup dependant, so you could just cover the highest tiers).
Great work so far by the way, all very thorough and informative.
- Shield pressuring and when to grab (could involve options from shine).
- Falco in teams.
- Recovering intelligently.
- Edgeguarding (Maybe a little too matchup dependant, so you could just cover the highest tiers).
Great work so far by the way, all very thorough and informative.
Miggz
Pancake Sandwiches
This thread is cool. Cute title and all.
Thanatos*~
Smash Apprentice
falco in teams is awesome......I think its rly hard, but awesome if executed properly. Theres just somethings that he has the potential to do that fox will never have.
Da Shuffla
Smash Lord
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2008
- Messages
- 1,810
Binx made me lol.
Scar
#HarveyDent
Mogwai is the best player in the world. I can only hope to aspire to be as good as he some day.
You forgot about Lite
Shil0
Smash Cadet
Awesome thread 
ac_burito
Smash Journeyman
hey i had a question. i have noticed that lately i've been getting shield grabbed way too much and i've been told that its been from hitting their shield too high. does anyone have any more info on this and maybe ways to prevent getting shield grabbed?
Without seeing what's happening with you, I can't really pinpoint what's making you get shield grabbed. There are a number of problems that can arise from hitting the shield too high:
1. You have more space between yourself and the ground, so it inherently takes longer to land and l-cancel.
2. You miss the fast fall due to the hitlag.
3. You miss the l-cancel due to the hitlag.
4. Frequently, if you're hitting too high on the shield, it also means that you are starting your aerial too early. If you start a dair or nair as soon as you jump on the approach, by the time that aerial runs into your opponent you'll only hit their shield with the weak hitbox which won't generate sufficient shieldstun to not get grabbed.
To not get shield grabbed on the approach, I'd suggest waiting on your aerial until you're just about to fast fall so that the hitbox doesn't come out until you've already started fast falling. Also, read Lesson 3 in the first post, I explain some alternatives to standard aerial -> shine approaches.
its also possible to get grabbed even in a perfect pillar :/
Is it? I've been trying to find frame data on shield stun and hang time, but I can't find any anywhere, so I can't double check it. All I know is that no matter how warmed up I am, PC can hit me with pretty much whatever he **** well pleases OOS vs my standard pillar. So I've had to throw double shines in to screw up his timing when applying shield pressure.
pockyD
Smash Legend
i'm fairly certain a standard dair shine dair shine pillar is grabbable in some window which varies depending on when you time your second dair
that's why you gotta mix it up with stuff like spacing the second one away, grabbing, double shining, etc
that's why you gotta mix it up with stuff like spacing the second one away, grabbing, double shining, etc
yea, I mean, I just sorta intuitively mix it up, but it seems like there is nothing I can do with the 2nd dair timing vs. Fox's sheild to not get hit by shine or usmash and I'd just like to make sure it's not a technical flaw that I'm having.
pockyD
Smash Legend
14 frames at least... that means even zelda can grab you
Awesome, thanks for quoting that, I'm gonna quote it in the first post here too so that I can always find it when I need that data.
More important than the 14 frames thing to me is that even a frame perfect dair ASAP leaves 5 frames meaning that Fox can shine OOS and get you regardless. Mix in doubleshine and you beat that though, so, yea, people, multishines are grood.
EDIT: Actually, looking again, why couldn't one start the dair on frame 17 or 18 and leave a 9 frame window and a 10 frame window? TAKE THAT LINK, Y.LINK, & ZELDA!
More important than the 14 frames thing to me is that even a frame perfect dair ASAP leaves 5 frames meaning that Fox can shine OOS and get you regardless
. Mix in doubleshine and you beat that though, so, yea, people, multishines are grood.EDIT: Actually, looking again, why couldn't one start the dair on frame 17 or 18 and leave a 9 frame window and a 10 frame window? TAKE THAT LINK, Y.LINK, & ZELDA!
Binx
Smash Master
hey guys whats the timing on teching Marths counter? I wanna say i've tried everything but... obviously not.
the timing is when he hits you -_-'
you have to smash DI into the stage and be close to the stage to begin with.
you have to smash DI into the stage and be close to the stage to begin with.
Doggalina
Smash Lord
Well, I'm gonna experiment with some Falco again after switching to Fox. My Fox is by far my best character, but I think the tech skill and smarts I picked up with him will help my Falco. I tend to switch between characters a lot, and after the break they all get better.
Now for my question: I was watching some Revival vids and I saw Shiz using fthrow tech chasing on spacies. Is this useful at all against nonfastfallers? I did some research and found out that Marth can tech it starting at like 40%.
Now for my question: I was watching some Revival vids and I saw Shiz using fthrow tech chasing on spacies. Is this useful at all against nonfastfallers? I did some research and found out that Marth can tech it starting at like 40%.
I've left yall hanging for too long, here's the unedited/formatted lesson on Falco in Teams. I will make it pretty and put in in the first post sometime over the weekend:
Lesson 4: Falco in Teams
Section 1: The History of Mogwai in Teams (skip if you don't care)
For the vast majority of time I spent maining Falco in Melee, I have been hopelessly unable to use him in teams. Going into my first teams tournament with PockyD, we both decided that our mains (Falco and ICs) were not very well suited for teams play and settled on him playing Ganon and myself playing Jigglypuff. For the first few years of my competitive smash career, Pocky and I would always team and I would rarely play anyone other than Jiggs in teams because the little ***** is unbelievably good in teams. Every once in awhile, I'd pick Falco in team friendlies and inevitably die 5 times in 2 minutes, get pissed and switch back to Jiggs.
Once Pocky moved out West, I started to play smash less and less and ended up more or less freelancing in teams. Winning in teams had become unattainable due to the increase in skill around Pittsburgh and my failure to find another steady teammate, mostly due to my inactivity. This subsequently led to me desiring fun more than victory in teams which pushed me towards more aggressive characters like Fox and Captain Falcon. I continued using those two in teams during the next year or so of sparse Melee activity and while they were always fun, I never had terribly much success with them.
As I started taking the game seriously again, I quickly found that any skill I may have had with characters had evaporated and that only Falco and Mewtwo (lol) had any residual skill left. As such, when team friendlies came up, I would just stay Falco and all the bad memories of him in teams came back to me. It just seemed so hopeless. In all the chaos that is a Melee teams match, it seemed almost unavoidable that you'd end up off stage, and once you're there, there are now two jerk offs just looking to tap you once for a free stock. I got frustrated and starting playing Jiggs again in teams, but quickly got frustrated by how much worse I was with her compared to back in the day. After a mostly poor showing at SPOC with Pakman, I decided to quit Jiggs in tournament for good. Finally, I had decided it was time for me to buckle down and figure Falco out in teams.
The only Falco I had seen be successful in teams up until this point was Reik, so I decided to think back on what made NY Conexion (Eggm + Reik) so good. The first thing that came to mind was their incredible combo chemistry. It seemed whenever they had a 2 on 1 opportunity, you were lucky to get out of it only taking 80%. They also had well thought out team strategies, such as an FD camping strat where Reik would do Full Hop High-Medium Lasers (Fast Fall at the peak of Full Hop) behind Eggm doing SHDL with Fox. If you tried to jump over the SHDL, you'd get hit by Reik's lasers, which would then drop you into more Fox Lasers, it was really annoying. Then it suddenly hit me what was wrong with my whole approach to Falco in teams. 75% of the time, Reik was the one with more stocks. Whenever their team was on one side of the map, and the other team was on the other side of the map, the Fox was in front. All this time, I had been just acting like it was singles and playing a pressure based Falco, when in reality, Falco's best uses in teams are in a supporting role. With this newfound insight, I started playing Falco in teams again and have found myself playing teams at a much higher level than I ever was with any other character.
Section 2: Why Falco Sucks in Teams (Not Really)
First I want to talk about all the reasons that I stayed away from Falco in teams for so long.
1. Extended combos are much less likely to happen in teams. One of the biggest up sides to Falco in singles is that you can hit someone once, then spend the next 20 seconds comboing them for 759812743932874%. In teams, it's rare that your opponent's teammate will let them get comboed for more than a couple seconds. Sure, it does come up when your team mate has them tied down, but the fact that not every shine will lead to a nice extended combo really hinders most Falcos' games.
2. He gets gimped really easily. Every time you're off stage, there's a high chance that you're going to lose a stock. Since your combos get interrupted frequently, you also find yourself off stage quite a bit more in teams. You also can get hit out of a double jump you used to try to combo, which is even more bad news. There are also two people out for your stock, again, bad bad news. This is a big hurdle to overcome. You're going to have trouble getting a decent teammate if you have to steal one of their stocks every game.
3. He doesn't have many reliable gimps. Compared to the top tier characters in teams (Fox, Peach, Jiggs, Marth, Sheik), Falco is absolutely abysmal at getting low % kills. Gimps are such a hugely powerful weapon in teams. With combos and grab games limited by the mere definition of teams, being able to just go off stage and make sure your opponent doesn't follow you back is an irreplaceably valuable tool to have.
4. He has slow horizontal speed. Have you seen Falco run? The speed at which you can make it from one side of the map to the other is very important for creating and disrupting 2 on 1 situations. The fact that Falco can't just knock 1 opponent away and then quickly come up to assist his partner is a big downside compared to Falcon, Fox, Marth and Sheik.
5. Compared to the top tiers, he doesn't have nearly the same abilities to punish a grab in a 2 on 1. Fox has usmash, Peach has the properly spaced dsmash for 5798572389473%, Jiggs has rest, Marth has tipper, Falcon has knee. Falco's best option is either fsmash, dtilt, dair -> shine, or charged usmash, but none of these really carry the OOMF of the moves I said in the last sentence. His fsmash is good, but in order to strong hit your opponent, you will frequently also hit your partner with at least the weak follow through.
6. He gets comboed very very easily in 2 on 1 situations. Being a fast faller is bad enough when 1 guy is juggling you... once there are 2 dudes doing it, it gets seriously stupid.
Section 3: Why Falco is Actually Very Good in Teams
And here's why Falco is actually amazing in teams:
1. Lasers. Holy **** are lasers amazing in teams. They cover item 4 up there and then some. The fact that Falco can't run fast ends up being completely moot when he has the best disruptive projectile in the game. Ok, so Sheik's chaingrabbing your teammate on the other side of the map? 1 laser fixes this, regardless of who it hits. Peach got a grab on your teammate at 150%? Shoot a high laser to stop the knockback from the fthrow. On top of that, lasers are amazing at controlling space, assisting your partner's recovery, keeping an opponent tied up and extending your partner's combos. In fact, there's so much to say about Lasers that the whole next section is going to be able laser in teams.
2. Despite the lack of extended combo, Falco's quick combos are still obscenely good and easy to link into your teammate's combos. While you can't spend all of a teams match going off and making combo vid material out of one of your opponents, simple combination of dair, bair, shine, and utilt can build up a lot of damage very very quickly and leave your opponent in hitstun in a convenient location for your teammate to pick up where you left off.
3. While not great at gimping, dair kills are fantastic at mid % kills when your opponent is left hanging in the air off the stage. It leaves little room for DI and guarantees a lot of kills, so throw that bad boy out there whenever you get the opportunity.
4. Falco is a good 1 v 2er thanks to all his low lag moves and shine leaving very little in the way of punishable frames. While you never hope to be in this situation, it still helps having a character who can pull out a 1 v 2 on 2 opponents with high %.
Section 4: Lasers in Teams
In all honesty, using lasers intelligently in teams is the fastest way to boost your teams Falco game to the next level. In this section, I'm going to go through the general uses of lasers in teams. Above, I described some generic laser uses that don't really require a lot of coordination with your teammate. Helping them out of a jam that they have no control over is just the tip of the iceburg though, and many of the uses require that you talk to your teammate beforehand and make sure that they have an understanding of your thought process behind your lasers.
1. The "Help Bro!" situation: This situation is the one I described above. Your teammate is getting combo-*****, edgeguarded, techchased, or grabbed. They have little control of their fate and are just looking for anything to allow them to reset to a neutral position. In cases like this, any laser will likely disrupt what was going on enough to buy your teammate a second lease on life, though I will note that when a powerful throw or attack is coming quickly towards my teammate, I usually shoot high to try to hit my teammate (since hitting the opponent after said powerful attack has already connected does no good). In edgeguarding situations, you want to wait until right before your opponent would start a movement to hit your partner before shooting them with a laser. In a case like a Marth trying to fsmash or a Sheik going for ftilt to fair, this is just right before they would do their attack, but if it's a situation where a sheik will jump off fair, Peach would float nair/bair, C.Falcon jump off and weak knee, etc, you must shoot much earlier to just throw them off what they're doing. I've found that most opponents get really confused and thrown off by a laser before they try to do something complex like that and just fail at any simple grounded edgeguard attempt afterward, but if you can, you want to keep shooting that way until your teammate is safe.
2. The "Hopeless Recovery" situation: This is the most basic situation that you need to mentally prepare your partner for. The situation is pretty straight forward... you partner is off stage and cannot make it back on stage due to either being edgehogged or simply not having a long enough recovery. What you need to tell your partner about before hand is that they MUST recover as high as possible in situations like this to give you a chance to give them another up B via a laser. This isn't a terribly complicated thing and it may seem like common sense to you, but you really wanna make sure that your partner gets this, because it sucks when they give up and you're in a perfect situation to just laser them back to the stage.
3. The "Unauthorized Airspace" situation: This one is really important to explain to your partner and make sure that they are comfortable with, but if used effectively is very very potent. This is a generic 2 v 2 situation where you and your partner are on one side of the stage and your opponents are on the other side. In other words, each team has a front man and a back man. As Falco, you are the back man for your team, and what you do is fire high SHLs while your partner stays low to keep your opponents from using any aerial approaches. Once you get a hit, you stop firing the SHLs to let your partner take advantage of the opening and progress to High/ Medium IDJDL to limit the opposing teammate's assist options. This typically works best with a dash dancing Fox/Marth/CF as your teammate and the idea is to give your partner a grab so that they can send the first opponent back your way for a tech chase and move on to the other opponent. The important thing to talk to your partner about here is keeping low and staying in the dash dance (can also work with a crouching Jiggs or Shiek or simply dashing Sheik) without attempting to aerial while you're lasering. As long as they keep lower than your leading opponent and you have good laser control, you can easily manufacture openings. The nice thing is that even if you don't hit with your laser, you can force a shield and generate enough shield stun to get a free grab for your partner.
4. The "Keep The Beat Goin'!" situation: This situation is simply when your partner finishes a combo and you can't get there for a hit. By simply lasering your opponent you can frequently buy enough time for your partner to follow up with another move. Nothing you really have to discuss with the partner here, but it's worth considering throw combos where your partner would appreciate a laser (such as Falcon uthrowing Marth under 30%ish when Marth can still fair out, but a laser would guarantee your partner an unmolested aerial.)
5. The "Backstab" situation: The teams have roughly split off into 2 1 v 1s. The 1 v1s are both at roughly neutral positions. If you have a clear shot on the opponent that your partner is pair up with, it can be huge for obvious reasons. The low lag on lasers makes the really hard to punish and really gives your team a big edge in the 2 1 v 1s style of team play since you can effectively create a 1.5 v 1 for your partner without really losing anything in your 1 v 1.
As you may have noticed for 1 and 3, high SHLs are crucial in teams, make sure you have them down pat.
Section 5: Things You Should Keep in Mind
1. Don't use your double jump to combo unless you are 100% certain you won't get hit out of it. I can't say this enough. Getting hit when you have no double jump is the worst thing that a Falco can do in teams. If you have a choice between full hop bair or full hope shine-> bair, for the love of god, don't waste your double jump for the shine if there's a snowball's chance in hell that your other opponent could hit you.
2. Pay A LOT of attention to your teammate. Even with good communication, you can't expect your teammate to keep you clued in on everything, so it's your job to make sure that when you can laser to his benefit or help extend any of his combos that you make the most out of it. It's difficult to split your attention like this, but it's certainly worth it, so practice practice practice keeping one eye on your teammate.
3. Don't do risky edge guards. If you have a mostly guaranteed kill by doing a simple edgeguard, go for it, but otherwise, you'd rather not take the chance of a reversal. Instead, use these opportunities when you knock one opponent way off to double team his teammate.
4. Laser grab is really good in teams. The limiting factor in comboing your lasers into grabs in singles is that Falco's throws suck, but as long as your teammate has good options vs. a stationary opponent, this technique proves very powerful.
5. Learn to split tech chase options with your teammate. This isn't Falco advice, this is general teams advice. You and your partner need to have a good feel for each other's reactions to tech chasing scenarios and keep all options covered. It's honestly not terribly difficult but I see tech chase situations blown way too much in teams to not mention it.
6. If your partner has a good aerial finisher, teach them that you will end combos with utlit/usmash/shine and that they should try to finish. If you're teaming with a CF, teach them that they should run up and knee the piss out of someone after you shine them while you keep the other opponent off. Pulling these types of cross ups are fairly difficult, but hugely powerful in teams. It requires that you, too, know when your partner is in a situation to finish for you and to lay off in these cases, but as I said in 2, you should be paying attention anyway.
7. Find a teammate you have good chemistry and stick with them. I miss having a regular teammate because building from your teams experience with someone is such a huge bonus. If you find a good teammate, don't ditch them for better singles players, as you ultimately will want to keep a consistent teammate rather than freelancing.
Lesson 4: Falco in Teams
Section 1: The History of Mogwai in Teams (skip if you don't care)
For the vast majority of time I spent maining Falco in Melee, I have been hopelessly unable to use him in teams. Going into my first teams tournament with PockyD, we both decided that our mains (Falco and ICs) were not very well suited for teams play and settled on him playing Ganon and myself playing Jigglypuff. For the first few years of my competitive smash career, Pocky and I would always team and I would rarely play anyone other than Jiggs in teams because the little ***** is unbelievably good in teams. Every once in awhile, I'd pick Falco in team friendlies and inevitably die 5 times in 2 minutes, get pissed and switch back to Jiggs.
Once Pocky moved out West, I started to play smash less and less and ended up more or less freelancing in teams. Winning in teams had become unattainable due to the increase in skill around Pittsburgh and my failure to find another steady teammate, mostly due to my inactivity. This subsequently led to me desiring fun more than victory in teams which pushed me towards more aggressive characters like Fox and Captain Falcon. I continued using those two in teams during the next year or so of sparse Melee activity and while they were always fun, I never had terribly much success with them.
As I started taking the game seriously again, I quickly found that any skill I may have had with characters had evaporated and that only Falco and Mewtwo (lol) had any residual skill left. As such, when team friendlies came up, I would just stay Falco and all the bad memories of him in teams came back to me. It just seemed so hopeless. In all the chaos that is a Melee teams match, it seemed almost unavoidable that you'd end up off stage, and once you're there, there are now two jerk offs just looking to tap you once for a free stock. I got frustrated and starting playing Jiggs again in teams, but quickly got frustrated by how much worse I was with her compared to back in the day. After a mostly poor showing at SPOC with Pakman, I decided to quit Jiggs in tournament for good. Finally, I had decided it was time for me to buckle down and figure Falco out in teams.
The only Falco I had seen be successful in teams up until this point was Reik, so I decided to think back on what made NY Conexion (Eggm + Reik) so good. The first thing that came to mind was their incredible combo chemistry. It seemed whenever they had a 2 on 1 opportunity, you were lucky to get out of it only taking 80%. They also had well thought out team strategies, such as an FD camping strat where Reik would do Full Hop High-Medium Lasers (Fast Fall at the peak of Full Hop) behind Eggm doing SHDL with Fox. If you tried to jump over the SHDL, you'd get hit by Reik's lasers, which would then drop you into more Fox Lasers, it was really annoying. Then it suddenly hit me what was wrong with my whole approach to Falco in teams. 75% of the time, Reik was the one with more stocks. Whenever their team was on one side of the map, and the other team was on the other side of the map, the Fox was in front. All this time, I had been just acting like it was singles and playing a pressure based Falco, when in reality, Falco's best uses in teams are in a supporting role. With this newfound insight, I started playing Falco in teams again and have found myself playing teams at a much higher level than I ever was with any other character.
Section 2: Why Falco Sucks in Teams (Not Really)
First I want to talk about all the reasons that I stayed away from Falco in teams for so long.
1. Extended combos are much less likely to happen in teams. One of the biggest up sides to Falco in singles is that you can hit someone once, then spend the next 20 seconds comboing them for 759812743932874%. In teams, it's rare that your opponent's teammate will let them get comboed for more than a couple seconds. Sure, it does come up when your team mate has them tied down, but the fact that not every shine will lead to a nice extended combo really hinders most Falcos' games.
2. He gets gimped really easily. Every time you're off stage, there's a high chance that you're going to lose a stock. Since your combos get interrupted frequently, you also find yourself off stage quite a bit more in teams. You also can get hit out of a double jump you used to try to combo, which is even more bad news. There are also two people out for your stock, again, bad bad news. This is a big hurdle to overcome. You're going to have trouble getting a decent teammate if you have to steal one of their stocks every game.
3. He doesn't have many reliable gimps. Compared to the top tier characters in teams (Fox, Peach, Jiggs, Marth, Sheik), Falco is absolutely abysmal at getting low % kills. Gimps are such a hugely powerful weapon in teams. With combos and grab games limited by the mere definition of teams, being able to just go off stage and make sure your opponent doesn't follow you back is an irreplaceably valuable tool to have.
4. He has slow horizontal speed. Have you seen Falco run? The speed at which you can make it from one side of the map to the other is very important for creating and disrupting 2 on 1 situations. The fact that Falco can't just knock 1 opponent away and then quickly come up to assist his partner is a big downside compared to Falcon, Fox, Marth and Sheik.
5. Compared to the top tiers, he doesn't have nearly the same abilities to punish a grab in a 2 on 1. Fox has usmash, Peach has the properly spaced dsmash for 5798572389473%, Jiggs has rest, Marth has tipper, Falcon has knee. Falco's best option is either fsmash, dtilt, dair -> shine, or charged usmash, but none of these really carry the OOMF of the moves I said in the last sentence. His fsmash is good, but in order to strong hit your opponent, you will frequently also hit your partner with at least the weak follow through.
6. He gets comboed very very easily in 2 on 1 situations. Being a fast faller is bad enough when 1 guy is juggling you... once there are 2 dudes doing it, it gets seriously stupid.
Section 3: Why Falco is Actually Very Good in Teams
And here's why Falco is actually amazing in teams:
1. Lasers. Holy **** are lasers amazing in teams. They cover item 4 up there and then some. The fact that Falco can't run fast ends up being completely moot when he has the best disruptive projectile in the game. Ok, so Sheik's chaingrabbing your teammate on the other side of the map? 1 laser fixes this, regardless of who it hits. Peach got a grab on your teammate at 150%? Shoot a high laser to stop the knockback from the fthrow. On top of that, lasers are amazing at controlling space, assisting your partner's recovery, keeping an opponent tied up and extending your partner's combos. In fact, there's so much to say about Lasers that the whole next section is going to be able laser in teams.
2. Despite the lack of extended combo, Falco's quick combos are still obscenely good and easy to link into your teammate's combos. While you can't spend all of a teams match going off and making combo vid material out of one of your opponents, simple combination of dair, bair, shine, and utilt can build up a lot of damage very very quickly and leave your opponent in hitstun in a convenient location for your teammate to pick up where you left off.
3. While not great at gimping, dair kills are fantastic at mid % kills when your opponent is left hanging in the air off the stage. It leaves little room for DI and guarantees a lot of kills, so throw that bad boy out there whenever you get the opportunity.
4. Falco is a good 1 v 2er thanks to all his low lag moves and shine leaving very little in the way of punishable frames. While you never hope to be in this situation, it still helps having a character who can pull out a 1 v 2 on 2 opponents with high %.
Section 4: Lasers in Teams
In all honesty, using lasers intelligently in teams is the fastest way to boost your teams Falco game to the next level. In this section, I'm going to go through the general uses of lasers in teams. Above, I described some generic laser uses that don't really require a lot of coordination with your teammate. Helping them out of a jam that they have no control over is just the tip of the iceburg though, and many of the uses require that you talk to your teammate beforehand and make sure that they have an understanding of your thought process behind your lasers.
1. The "Help Bro!" situation: This situation is the one I described above. Your teammate is getting combo-*****, edgeguarded, techchased, or grabbed. They have little control of their fate and are just looking for anything to allow them to reset to a neutral position. In cases like this, any laser will likely disrupt what was going on enough to buy your teammate a second lease on life, though I will note that when a powerful throw or attack is coming quickly towards my teammate, I usually shoot high to try to hit my teammate (since hitting the opponent after said powerful attack has already connected does no good). In edgeguarding situations, you want to wait until right before your opponent would start a movement to hit your partner before shooting them with a laser. In a case like a Marth trying to fsmash or a Sheik going for ftilt to fair, this is just right before they would do their attack, but if it's a situation where a sheik will jump off fair, Peach would float nair/bair, C.Falcon jump off and weak knee, etc, you must shoot much earlier to just throw them off what they're doing. I've found that most opponents get really confused and thrown off by a laser before they try to do something complex like that and just fail at any simple grounded edgeguard attempt afterward, but if you can, you want to keep shooting that way until your teammate is safe.
2. The "Hopeless Recovery" situation: This is the most basic situation that you need to mentally prepare your partner for. The situation is pretty straight forward... you partner is off stage and cannot make it back on stage due to either being edgehogged or simply not having a long enough recovery. What you need to tell your partner about before hand is that they MUST recover as high as possible in situations like this to give you a chance to give them another up B via a laser. This isn't a terribly complicated thing and it may seem like common sense to you, but you really wanna make sure that your partner gets this, because it sucks when they give up and you're in a perfect situation to just laser them back to the stage.
3. The "Unauthorized Airspace" situation: This one is really important to explain to your partner and make sure that they are comfortable with, but if used effectively is very very potent. This is a generic 2 v 2 situation where you and your partner are on one side of the stage and your opponents are on the other side. In other words, each team has a front man and a back man. As Falco, you are the back man for your team, and what you do is fire high SHLs while your partner stays low to keep your opponents from using any aerial approaches. Once you get a hit, you stop firing the SHLs to let your partner take advantage of the opening and progress to High/ Medium IDJDL to limit the opposing teammate's assist options. This typically works best with a dash dancing Fox/Marth/CF as your teammate and the idea is to give your partner a grab so that they can send the first opponent back your way for a tech chase and move on to the other opponent. The important thing to talk to your partner about here is keeping low and staying in the dash dance (can also work with a crouching Jiggs or Shiek or simply dashing Sheik) without attempting to aerial while you're lasering. As long as they keep lower than your leading opponent and you have good laser control, you can easily manufacture openings. The nice thing is that even if you don't hit with your laser, you can force a shield and generate enough shield stun to get a free grab for your partner.
4. The "Keep The Beat Goin'!" situation: This situation is simply when your partner finishes a combo and you can't get there for a hit. By simply lasering your opponent you can frequently buy enough time for your partner to follow up with another move. Nothing you really have to discuss with the partner here, but it's worth considering throw combos where your partner would appreciate a laser (such as Falcon uthrowing Marth under 30%ish when Marth can still fair out, but a laser would guarantee your partner an unmolested aerial.)
5. The "Backstab" situation: The teams have roughly split off into 2 1 v 1s. The 1 v1s are both at roughly neutral positions. If you have a clear shot on the opponent that your partner is pair up with, it can be huge for obvious reasons. The low lag on lasers makes the really hard to punish and really gives your team a big edge in the 2 1 v 1s style of team play since you can effectively create a 1.5 v 1 for your partner without really losing anything in your 1 v 1.
As you may have noticed for 1 and 3, high SHLs are crucial in teams, make sure you have them down pat.
Section 5: Things You Should Keep in Mind
1. Don't use your double jump to combo unless you are 100% certain you won't get hit out of it. I can't say this enough. Getting hit when you have no double jump is the worst thing that a Falco can do in teams. If you have a choice between full hop bair or full hope shine-> bair, for the love of god, don't waste your double jump for the shine if there's a snowball's chance in hell that your other opponent could hit you.
2. Pay A LOT of attention to your teammate. Even with good communication, you can't expect your teammate to keep you clued in on everything, so it's your job to make sure that when you can laser to his benefit or help extend any of his combos that you make the most out of it. It's difficult to split your attention like this, but it's certainly worth it, so practice practice practice keeping one eye on your teammate.
3. Don't do risky edge guards. If you have a mostly guaranteed kill by doing a simple edgeguard, go for it, but otherwise, you'd rather not take the chance of a reversal. Instead, use these opportunities when you knock one opponent way off to double team his teammate.
4. Laser grab is really good in teams. The limiting factor in comboing your lasers into grabs in singles is that Falco's throws suck, but as long as your teammate has good options vs. a stationary opponent, this technique proves very powerful.
5. Learn to split tech chase options with your teammate. This isn't Falco advice, this is general teams advice. You and your partner need to have a good feel for each other's reactions to tech chasing scenarios and keep all options covered. It's honestly not terribly difficult but I see tech chase situations blown way too much in teams to not mention it.
6. If your partner has a good aerial finisher, teach them that you will end combos with utlit/usmash/shine and that they should try to finish. If you're teaming with a CF, teach them that they should run up and knee the piss out of someone after you shine them while you keep the other opponent off. Pulling these types of cross ups are fairly difficult, but hugely powerful in teams. It requires that you, too, know when your partner is in a situation to finish for you and to lay off in these cases, but as I said in 2, you should be paying attention anyway.
7. Find a teammate you have good chemistry and stick with them. I miss having a regular teammate because building from your teams experience with someone is such a huge bonus. If you find a good teammate, don't ditch them for better singles players, as you ultimately will want to keep a consistent teammate rather than freelancing.
SwiftBass
Smash Hero
forward and taj = successful team
are we not counting falcos that u havent seen in teams in person? Im pretty sure forward's falco qualifies for successful in teams
are we not counting falcos that u havent seen in teams in person? Im pretty sure forward's falco qualifies for successful in teams
Jeez does that second sentence not make sense. Basically I never watched teams matches online so I only ever paid attention to them at tournies. My point is not to give kudos to successful Falcos in teams, it's to describe how I came to my realization about how I was playing Falco wrong in teams
SwiftBass
Smash Hero
just found it surprising that when you took the moment to recognize a successful falco, that you chose reik and not forward....I guess its not that important, but like he WAS a falco and part of the FIRST team to beat ken and isai. Just a bit shocked but w/e I guess......
dude, it's a story about my personal experience, there is no right or wrong here...
soap
Smash Hero
he saw reik first-hand, i figure you could learn alot more that way.
taj and forward were pretty beast together though
taj and forward were pretty beast together though
Most of section 5 is really good teams advice for any character.
Good read, Professor Mogwai.
Good read, Professor Mogwai.
pockyD
Smash Legend
not falco specific, but when your partner holds an opponent for you to fsmash, he should be holding down shield
works with varying success on all moves, but definitely works really well with progressive hitboxes like the fsmash
works with varying success on all moves, but definitely works really well with progressive hitboxes like the fsmash
seems like that should be obvious, but I've never even thought about it, lol. good tip.
when my teammate is holding someone
and im falco and there say
fox
I up smash so that it sets up a u air for them
or if its at lower percents i up tilt then they can up smash
then i cna do something =D
i think up smash/down tilt is better at like 30-70 percent cause
it sets things up
anything after that should be a forward smash =D
and im falco and there say
fox
I up smash so that it sets up a u air for them
or if its at lower percents i up tilt then they can up smash
then i cna do something =D
i think up smash/down tilt is better at like 30-70 percent cause
it sets things up
anything after that should be a forward smash =D
soap
Smash Hero
its hard to position yourself in time for the utilt sometimes.
and i dont think utilt knocks them out of the grab. it would have to be right after the release.
and i dont think utilt knocks them out of the grab. it would have to be right after the release.
yea, come to think of it, I mostly just usmash these days. move's too goot =P
positioning utilt isn't terribly difficult, just takes some practice doing walk -> turn around utilt which seems to be harder for most people than it should be.
positioning utilt isn't terribly difficult, just takes some practice doing walk -> turn around utilt which seems to be harder for most people than it should be.