you don't need to reset.
-
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Q&A Falco Q&A
- Thread starter Mogwai
- Start date
KAOSTAR
the Ascended One
I cannot actually waveshine. say across the screen but I can for shield pressure for positioning.
yea tech skill when it doesnt matter lol
yea tech skill when it doesnt matter lol
edit: i missed the new page. reset means go back to neutral stick position, it doesn't make sense in the context of just shifting between down and diagonally down.
KAOSTAR
the Ascended One
agreed. REset is a predetermined position that should be easily accessible from any point. ie neutral.
Alright, so you're saying to go from down to diagonal and not down to neutral to diagonal. This definitely makes more sense than down to neutral to diagonal or just leaving the control stick in a diagonal that still registers as a shine.
not really, I'm just saying you can. I think I return to neutral, but what you should really be taking away from this is that it doesn't matter what your fingers do so long as your character does what you want him to do. Nothing replaces practice, so just practice, try different things, find a way that you like, stick with it and get it down to the point where you don't screw up anymore.
I was having a lot of trouble returning to neutral because I would always end up shooting a standing laser or something. It wasn't very consistent. For the last 10 minutes I was trying the other way, and I'm much more consistent aside from the occasional side b, so I'll definitely be sticking with this way.
JPOBS
Smash Hero
heres what you should do:
shine, and slide the control stick out to wavedash (do not reset to do this),, then once the wavedash in done, THEN reset to neutral and shine again, and wavedash, etc rinse repeat.
the key is to shine and wavedash in the same motion, and reset everytime you compete one waveshine. tis wat i do. I find otherwise you illusion of the stage.
shine, and slide the control stick out to wavedash (do not reset to do this),, then once the wavedash in done, THEN reset to neutral and shine again, and wavedash, etc rinse repeat.
the key is to shine and wavedash in the same motion, and reset everytime you compete one waveshine. tis wat i do. I find otherwise you illusion of the stage.
½NIÇK½FBM
Smash Apprentice
Just dropped Marth for Falco and was wondering, is it really necessary to use the claw grip when playing as Falco? Or is it possible to be very technical without the claw grip?
For anyone who doesn't know or calls it something different, claw grip is putting your index finger on Y and middle finger on Z and R. Most really good Fox players use it.
For anyone who doesn't know or calls it something different, claw grip is putting your index finger on Y and middle finger on Z and R. Most really good Fox players use it.
no, the key is to do whatever works for you. That works for you, great, w/e, don't say it's the key like it's the only way people can do it. How you physically do things is purely based on preference.
Shiz doesn't claw, so take that for what it's worth.
AGAIN, how you hold the controller and do things doesn't really matter so long as your character is doing what you want them to. Practice, get comfortable and you'll be fine.
This. Everyone this.
THis
This.
Scidadle
Smash Champion
JPOBS
Smash Hero
when i said "the key is"...i obviously meant in respect to the method i was explaining, being that, you know, that was what i was talking about after all......
i dont mean overall because people have already given different opinions on how to do it..
KAOSTAR
the Ascended One
taking breaks works too. After heavy practice lol.
I take smash like working out. play alot and ull play worse from fatigue. gotta let ur body heal.
practice makes perfect but dont be afraid to say, ive played enough-time to take a break. Im usually better after taking a break if I practiced efficiently
Mogwai are u gonna be in portland sometime after Genesis?
`DNS`
Smash Lord
Why would you WD across the stage?
KAOSTAR
the Ascended One
Well I just consider it a technique. Like if I was a fox I couldnt waveshine falcon all the way across FD. But this is falco but im still sayin that I cant do it.
but I can do a couple or back and forth a couple times. Which is usually all u need. but I see notthing wrong with having the ability to do so. So it would be something that, granted, some extra time id practice.
but I can do a couple or back and forth a couple times. Which is usually all u need. but I see notthing wrong with having the ability to do so. So it would be something that, granted, some extra time id practice.
DUB
Smash Lord
Are there any Falco's who are known to do well on Rainbow Cruise? I'm looking for a little help/strategy on that stage.
Ryan-K
Smash Master
my cp stage is rainbow cruise
it's not like corneria or poke floats where you just camp. you can but the stage is set up in such a way that it's very easy to fight. the idea is that the stage is so vertically oriented that falcos jumps allow him to get anywhere quickly with little to no trouble. he can also get random stupid spikes and shine kills when the stage goes high. basically falco just owns the stage with his mobility and his stupid dair
it's not like corneria or poke floats where you just camp. you can but the stage is set up in such a way that it's very easy to fight. the idea is that the stage is so vertically oriented that falcos jumps allow him to get anywhere quickly with little to no trouble. he can also get random stupid spikes and shine kills when the stage goes high. basically falco just owns the stage with his mobility and his stupid dair
DUB
Smash Lord
One more question. When I practice by myself I usually just mess around with lasers, getting used to stages and wave shining. I usually do all this on Japes because its my CP, good for tech skill I'd say, and a ballin Falco stage.
What are some routines you other Falco players go through when you train.
What are some routines you other Falco players go through when you train.
<3333 RyanK
This dude knows whats up
RC = amazing CP stage
I love you so much, this is what I always say about RC. We need to do flaco dittoes again sometime.
Yes, I will be in Portland from today until Friday. I don't really plan on playing smash while here, but if there's a fest going on or something, I might stop by.
Also, recovery lesson will be up tomorrow night. I finished most of it on the flight from SFO to Portland and I'll polish it up tomorrow between compiles when I'm working.
yesss. i hate when im ****** and i get knocked off the stage at low percents. sooo gay. what do i do vs ledge camping? im too bad to find away around it -_-
xyt
Smash Lord
TresChikon
Smash Lord
Drop through the ledge and use your double jump shoot a rising laser to hit them. I believe it's covered in Mogwai's Extensive Laser Guide, do a search for it
pockyD
Smash Legend
the last thing that a falco should do when someone else is on the edge is "drop through the ledge", whatever that means
Ryan-K
Smash Master
yeah mogwai falco dittos on rc imo..lol
part of why i learned rc is because most people expect poke floats or corneria. ive always hated poke floats and nyc invented corneria so that wasnt an option either X_X
part of why i learned rc is because most people expect poke floats or corneria. ive always hated poke floats and nyc invented corneria so that wasnt an option either X_X
TresChikon
Smash Lord
he said ledge, as in ledge camping, not edge stalling
pockyD
Smash Legend
can you tell me what you think ledge camping is
OK, theoretical question kindof.
So I can do all things nessacary to the game, just getting that out of the way
I play falco dittos all the time, and my pillar combos are limited to +- 40%. I play with a couple other falcos, and get to play viperboy every month or so, and of course he hits me with 0- 80% or 0-death combos regularly. Pisses me off because I can waveshine and all that but I just seem to just get the dair shine dair shine dair then it ends. If I try to techchase an Fsmash i tend to miss because by the time I get to the ground even if they missed the tech they are already rolling away.
Help with combo extension?
So I can do all things nessacary to the game, just getting that out of the way
I play falco dittos all the time, and my pillar combos are limited to +- 40%. I play with a couple other falcos, and get to play viperboy every month or so, and of course he hits me with 0- 80% or 0-death combos regularly. Pisses me off because I can waveshine and all that but I just seem to just get the dair shine dair shine dair then it ends. If I try to techchase an Fsmash i tend to miss because by the time I get to the ground even if they missed the tech they are already rolling away.
Help with combo extension?
TresChikon
Smash Lord
Well, I apologize, clearly my interpretation of "ledge camping" is incorrect. Perhaps you can tell me the right way to deal with it so I don't make the same mistake again.
pockyD
Smash Legend
I really just want to know
to me, ledge camping is hanging out on OR by the edge ('by' being close enough to retreat to it relatively safely) in attempt to bait you to come over and possibly land free hits // gimp you
can you tell me what you think ledge camping is
stabbedbyanipple
Smash Master
What stages can you Doraki wall jump on with Falco?
TresChikon
Smash Lord
Well I just had the platforms in mind, but I was foolishly mistaken. Sorry for the confusion.
Quoting myself because I want an answer.
So I'm not sure how much ppl know about this, but someone mentioning walljumping reminded me of this. Tomacawk and iamthemicrowave were doing this recovery trick. Whenever they ledgeteched, they would point up getting the auto walljump of course, and also hitting the cstick towards the stage, making an instant walljump attack and bairing the attacker. It really isn't too difficult if you can remember to do it...Maybe everyone knows this.
Lesson 5: Recovering with Falco
Section 1: Introduction
For as long as I have lurked the Falco boards, people have been complaining about Falco's recovery. “Falco’s recovery sucks balls!” they would post angrily as they finished regaling us all with another tale of a heartbreaking comeback loss to a Marth. Marth was at 250% with 1 stock left to their 0% with 2 stocks left. Bthrow -> jab -> forward B and chaingrab -> fsmash -> fair -> dair later, another Falco player is left crumbled up on the floor in the fetal position, weeping over how unfair this stupid game is.
And to be perfectly honest, there is some truth behind the overwhelming wave of johns that come with every bad beat we have to hear about Falco’s recovery. It’s not very good and one wrong decision while off stage is practically guaranteed to be the difference between keeping a stock and losing one. But the real problem is that many Falco players don’t analyze when they have made a wrong mistake and instead choose to pin every gimp and brutal edgeguard on their character’s terrible recovery.
Thankfully for all you reading this, Uncle Mogwai’s here to take you to Tough Guy Camp to teach you to stop *****ing and start figuring out how to live on your own.
Section 2: The Issues with Falco’s Recovery
Ok so let’s start off by addressing the serious issues with Falco’s recovery game.
Part 1: It's Too Short (THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID, MIRITE?)
First off, we have the marginal distance covered by his up B and forward B moves. They could be worse, but when you stack the distance covered by these moves up next to Fox’s equivalent moves, it’s easy to see that Falco doesn’t cover a whole lot of distance on his way back to the stage.
Implications:
What this means (aside from the obvious fact that if Falco is hit super far out, he can’t make it back), is that at the same distance from the ledge as a Fox, you have fewer options. In situations where Fox could either go to the edge, onto the stage or all the way up to a platform, Falco is frequently limited to either just the edge, or just the edge or the stage.
How to get around it:
This is an entirely legitimate issue in many situations, but any time you feel limited in your recovery options to the point where it cost you a stock, ask yourself if you could’ve DIed the hit different such that you were close enough to have enough freedom to live. Also evaluate how you DIed the prior hits if it was the final blow in a combo. Frequently we Falco players freak out when we’re getting comboed and foolishly DI up and in to try to stay alive, only to eat extra hits in a combo. DON’T DO THAT. Learn to DI correctly, you can set your DI away to avoid being comboed and then react to most finishing hits as they are typically telegraphed. DI away from Falcon when you’re popped up and if he sets himself up at your level, the knee is coming and then you switch to survival DI, but you wouldn’t be able to set DI to up and in and have time to react to a SH uair. Think about these sorts of things when you are playing friendlies and when you’re watching videos of yourself play.
Part 2: Up B Sucks Pretty Hard
Next we have the considerable startup time associated with Falco’s up B and its vulnerability. Since Falco doesn’t have the fire like Fox, the first hitbox from his up B comes out on frame 43 when he starts moving.
Implications:
That’s a little more than 2/3 of a second, which is brutal and gives anyone who expected you to up B free reign to come out and kill you however they please.
How to get around it:
Only Firebird when you have to or have successfully tricked your opponent into committing to an on-stage edgeguard. This issue is mostly solved by learning to recognize the situations I’ll talk about in Section 4.
Part 3: He Falls Pretty Fast
The last serious issue that people have with Falco’s recovery is that Falco is one of the fastest fallers in the game. He has the fastest top falling speed and fastest average falling speed according to M2K’s old research (http://m2k.galaxy64.com/ssbm.html).
Implications:
Aside from the on stage implications, Falco’s falling speed means that when he gets hit with a weak attack off stage, he has much less time to react before he drops beneath the ledge height. Couple this with the aforementioned vulnerable up B, and we have the formula for every Falco’s worst nightmare.
How to get around it:
React quickly and properly. Learn to react to getting shot with a laser/needle by forward Bing since the intent of the edgeguarder is to knock you below stage level to force you into your up B. Learn to not get hit by Marth’s jab and wiggle -> air dodge immediately after getting hit.
Also save your second jump until the point where your opponent can no longer hit you out of it. I’ll talk more about this in Section 4, but the gist of it is that Falco’s recovery is fine so long as you can accurately perceive and react to the situations.
OK, great, that’s it. Those three things are all there is to ***** about Falco’s recovery, that wasn’t so painful, was it? Sure, he’s got limitations and isn’t nearly as good at recovering as many characters, but it could be worse. For a reference on how it could be worse, play Ness or Zelda or Kirby or Doc or Captain Falcon or Roy for a little while, it’ll give you some perspective.
Section 3: Things about Falco’s Recovery to be Thankful For
So we’ve talked enough about the John-worthy aspects of Falco’s recovery, let’s get into talking about the good facets of it.
Part 1: Non-Linear Recovery
The most important thing here is that Falco has A LOT of recovery options. As we talked about in the previous section, they might not be the best options, but the fact remains that in most recovery situations, Falco has numerous ways to get his feet back on the ground:
Up B with full 360 degrees of freedom and auto sweetspots for downward angles.
Forward B with 4 alternative shortened lengths.
Air Dodging
He also has a few nice tools and characteristics that assist his recovery in:
A high double jump
A shine to stop his horizontal momentum, turn him around and mix up timings
A high wall jump
Compare this to most characters with more limited motion with their up Bs and only marginally useful forward Bs and you’ll notice that Falco’s recovery is relatively far from linear.
Part 2: Low Landing Lag
The next thing I want to note is that almost all of Falco’s recovery moves are unrealistically low on landing lag. Forward B and up B each only generate 3 frames of landing lag if they complete before you hit the ground, and up B only generates 6 frames if you hit the ground with it. Forward B generates 20 frames of landing lag if you hit the ground with it, but this is practically never the case, as the move is mostly going to the edge or slightly above the ground. Due to Falco’s fast falling speed, all this together means that it’s very difficult to try to punish Falco after he has completed his recovery move.
Part 3: Short Duration
Hand in hand with this aspect comes the fact that Falco’s recovery is extremely quick. If your opponent has to move a lot to get in position, they will frequently be out of position due to the fact that Falco’s total time between going off stage and attempting to recover rarely exceeds 2-3 seconds.
Section 4: Situation Recognition
Now that we’ve sorta laid out the bare-bones facts about Falco’s recovery, it’s time to talk about what actually determines if you live or die off stage.
Part 1: What is Situation Recognition
Off stage game is all about what I call situation recognition, the ability to recognize your opponent’s options and realize when one of your recovery options is relatively safe. If you double jump quickly because you thought your opponent wasn't going to jab you out of it, but then he does and you die because of it, it was a failure of Situation Recognition. Learning how to recognize a situation correctly, takes quite a bit of time, but it's important to tell people that this is something they should be doing instead of just trying to get back to the stage without paying attention to the opponent.
There are simply too many characters and play styles for me to go through every different way your opponent can be edgeguarding you and tell you what their options are and what you should be looking for while recovering, but I’m going to try to go through an example and hopefully you’ll get an idea of how you should be thinking when you’re piloting Falco back to the stage.
Part 2: An Example of How to Break Things Down
The example:
I’m going to go through the situation that is most frequently asked about. Marth grabs you near the ledge and dthrows you off stage. To start off, you must DI this away. If you DI in, you allow the Marth to turn around and dtilt you for free, which makes the situation that much worse. Ok, so let’s talk about his options and how you need to be reading his motions to best select your option.
Marth’s Options:
The most common thing for Marth’s to do in this situation is to stand on stage facing outward. The idea here is to attempt to jab/dtilt/fsmash you out of your double jump or your forward B if you DI away and double jump outward to forward B through them.
If instead you go below stage and try to up B, the Marth will either move closer to the edge and counter, move back and fsmash/neutral b or jump out and fair you, depending on their style and reaction time.
The reason Marth players love this style of edgeguarding is that it doesn’t force them to commit to an option and lets them react to everything that you’re doing with a quick move.
The next option a Marth has is to immediately dash off stage and fair, the idea being to catch Falco in his double jump.
The last thing that they can really do is WD backwards and take the edge and try to drop down and aerial you if you attempt to recover low or ledge hop aerial you if you try to recover high.
OK, so now the most important thing for you to do when you’re off stage in this situation is to try to recognize what your opponent’s plan in as quickly and calmly as possible. Double jumping immediately is rarely, if ever, your best option, so for the love of god, don’t just panic and hit jump only to have your jump jacked by a jab. Saving your double jump is absolutely paramount, as once you lose your double jump, your plethora of options that we talked about in Section 3 gets reduced to just up Bing, which means that you’re dead. EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER’S OPTIMAL EDGEGUARD ON FALCO INVOLVES KNOCKING HIM OUT OF HIS DOUBLE JUMP BECAUSE ONCE HE’S BELOW THE STAGE, HE’S DEAD.
Once you notice your opponent’s choice of how to edgeguard you, think of what it’s trying to exploit and come up with a plan to avoid getting hit out of your double jump. The reactions and counters to your opponent’s game plan are not set in stone, but to give you a sort of outline and starting point, these are roughly how I try to react to each of his options above.
How Mogwai Typically Tries to React:
He dthrows me, I see him standing on the stage facing outward. His plan is clearly to dtilt/jab me out of my double jump. I let myself fall to around the point where I could double jump and sweetspot the edge. Marf’s hitboxes are ******** and hit below the stage though, so just double jump sweetspotting doesn’t work with Falco’s sweetspot vs. a properly timed jab/dtilt. I’ve noticed over time that Marths jab/dtilt when then hear your double jump sound so my reaction is to double jump and before I’m at the point of that he can hit me, I airdodge up through his attack and back onto the stage. If I can, I’ll airdodge high and try to DI back towards the edge to avoid the re-grab, but here it’s pretty much a guessing game. If you have a wall to ride up on, also consider wall jumping into the airdodge to give yourself the extra invulnerability frames immediately after the walljump
He dthrows me, I see him dash towards the edge immediately after the throw. His plan is to run off and aerial me. If I have a wall to jump off of, I will let myself drop low and then wall jump into an aerial, forward B to the ledge or airdodge onto the stage. If there’s no wall, I’ll fall to the point of a double jump sweet spot, and either just immediately double jump sweetspot or shine for a spit second to mix the timing up and then double jump sweetspot, depending on the situation. If you have godly reactions or didn’t follow my advice above to not just double jump immediately, you can also just immediately double jump to get above the Marth and throw a quick Dair out there and hope for the best. This is not a smart option though, as every fast reactions aren’t close to fast enough to do this on reaction so if you guess wrong about what the Marth is doing and he decides to just stand there and jab or WD back into an fsmash, you’re probably dead.
He dthrows me, I see him WD backwards. His plan is to take the ledge and attempt to aerial me on recovery. By putting himself on the ledge, he has taken away his ability to hit me if I go high so that’s usually what I do. Also, most of the time a player takes the edge to edgeguard, they don’t plan on actually holding onto it so it’s frequently a good idea to jump up and up B at the level where your up B charging will grab the ledge so that when he ledgehops, you just grab the ledge and get invulnerability frames.
Section 5: Random Other Stuff
Learn to shorten your illusion and understand its sweetspots. If you crash into the stage with it, that’s not a sweet spot. If it ends a little ways away from the ledge, that’s a sweet spot.
Learn where your up B can grab the ledge while charging. Practice some firestalling and while doing so, pay attention to how far away you can be in order to grab it.
Learn to angle your up B against walls for sweetspots from below. Especially against lazy Marth players who just go for counters when you have to up B, this is hugely useful as a sweet spotted up B triggers their counter without actually getting hit.
Wall jumps give you invulnerability frames, so does grabbing the ledge. Pay attention and get a feel for how long each of these invulnerability windows lasts.
LEARN TO TECH. Training mode, proxy mines on walls, just practice practice practice until you get the timing. You have a decent window to start holding R in order to tech, just learn it and you’ll live a hell of a lot longer.
So that’s sorta it. Most of learning how to react to different situations will come with experience, but the gist that I’m trying to get you to get here is that it’s important to think and appropriately identify what your opponent’s strategy is. In friendlies, when someone hits you with something new, think about it later that night and what you could’ve done to avoid dying from it. Recovering is 50% Situation Recognition and 50% beating strong strategies for how to react into your head.
Section 1: Introduction
For as long as I have lurked the Falco boards, people have been complaining about Falco's recovery. “Falco’s recovery sucks balls!” they would post angrily as they finished regaling us all with another tale of a heartbreaking comeback loss to a Marth. Marth was at 250% with 1 stock left to their 0% with 2 stocks left. Bthrow -> jab -> forward B and chaingrab -> fsmash -> fair -> dair later, another Falco player is left crumbled up on the floor in the fetal position, weeping over how unfair this stupid game is.
And to be perfectly honest, there is some truth behind the overwhelming wave of johns that come with every bad beat we have to hear about Falco’s recovery. It’s not very good and one wrong decision while off stage is practically guaranteed to be the difference between keeping a stock and losing one. But the real problem is that many Falco players don’t analyze when they have made a wrong mistake and instead choose to pin every gimp and brutal edgeguard on their character’s terrible recovery.
Thankfully for all you reading this, Uncle Mogwai’s here to take you to Tough Guy Camp to teach you to stop *****ing and start figuring out how to live on your own.
Section 2: The Issues with Falco’s Recovery
Ok so let’s start off by addressing the serious issues with Falco’s recovery game.
Part 1: It's Too Short (THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID, MIRITE?)
First off, we have the marginal distance covered by his up B and forward B moves. They could be worse, but when you stack the distance covered by these moves up next to Fox’s equivalent moves, it’s easy to see that Falco doesn’t cover a whole lot of distance on his way back to the stage.
Implications:
What this means (aside from the obvious fact that if Falco is hit super far out, he can’t make it back), is that at the same distance from the ledge as a Fox, you have fewer options. In situations where Fox could either go to the edge, onto the stage or all the way up to a platform, Falco is frequently limited to either just the edge, or just the edge or the stage.
How to get around it:
This is an entirely legitimate issue in many situations, but any time you feel limited in your recovery options to the point where it cost you a stock, ask yourself if you could’ve DIed the hit different such that you were close enough to have enough freedom to live. Also evaluate how you DIed the prior hits if it was the final blow in a combo. Frequently we Falco players freak out when we’re getting comboed and foolishly DI up and in to try to stay alive, only to eat extra hits in a combo. DON’T DO THAT. Learn to DI correctly, you can set your DI away to avoid being comboed and then react to most finishing hits as they are typically telegraphed. DI away from Falcon when you’re popped up and if he sets himself up at your level, the knee is coming and then you switch to survival DI, but you wouldn’t be able to set DI to up and in and have time to react to a SH uair. Think about these sorts of things when you are playing friendlies and when you’re watching videos of yourself play.
Part 2: Up B Sucks Pretty Hard
Next we have the considerable startup time associated with Falco’s up B and its vulnerability. Since Falco doesn’t have the fire like Fox, the first hitbox from his up B comes out on frame 43 when he starts moving.
Implications:
That’s a little more than 2/3 of a second, which is brutal and gives anyone who expected you to up B free reign to come out and kill you however they please.
How to get around it:
Only Firebird when you have to or have successfully tricked your opponent into committing to an on-stage edgeguard. This issue is mostly solved by learning to recognize the situations I’ll talk about in Section 4.
Part 3: He Falls Pretty Fast
The last serious issue that people have with Falco’s recovery is that Falco is one of the fastest fallers in the game. He has the fastest top falling speed and fastest average falling speed according to M2K’s old research (http://m2k.galaxy64.com/ssbm.html).
Implications:
Aside from the on stage implications, Falco’s falling speed means that when he gets hit with a weak attack off stage, he has much less time to react before he drops beneath the ledge height. Couple this with the aforementioned vulnerable up B, and we have the formula for every Falco’s worst nightmare.
How to get around it:
React quickly and properly. Learn to react to getting shot with a laser/needle by forward Bing since the intent of the edgeguarder is to knock you below stage level to force you into your up B. Learn to not get hit by Marth’s jab and wiggle -> air dodge immediately after getting hit.
Also save your second jump until the point where your opponent can no longer hit you out of it. I’ll talk more about this in Section 4, but the gist of it is that Falco’s recovery is fine so long as you can accurately perceive and react to the situations.
OK, great, that’s it. Those three things are all there is to ***** about Falco’s recovery, that wasn’t so painful, was it? Sure, he’s got limitations and isn’t nearly as good at recovering as many characters, but it could be worse. For a reference on how it could be worse, play Ness or Zelda or Kirby or Doc or Captain Falcon or Roy for a little while, it’ll give you some perspective.
Section 3: Things about Falco’s Recovery to be Thankful For
So we’ve talked enough about the John-worthy aspects of Falco’s recovery, let’s get into talking about the good facets of it.
Part 1: Non-Linear Recovery
The most important thing here is that Falco has A LOT of recovery options. As we talked about in the previous section, they might not be the best options, but the fact remains that in most recovery situations, Falco has numerous ways to get his feet back on the ground:
Up B with full 360 degrees of freedom and auto sweetspots for downward angles.
Forward B with 4 alternative shortened lengths.
Air Dodging
He also has a few nice tools and characteristics that assist his recovery in:
A high double jump
A shine to stop his horizontal momentum, turn him around and mix up timings
A high wall jump
Compare this to most characters with more limited motion with their up Bs and only marginally useful forward Bs and you’ll notice that Falco’s recovery is relatively far from linear.
Part 2: Low Landing Lag
The next thing I want to note is that almost all of Falco’s recovery moves are unrealistically low on landing lag. Forward B and up B each only generate 3 frames of landing lag if they complete before you hit the ground, and up B only generates 6 frames if you hit the ground with it. Forward B generates 20 frames of landing lag if you hit the ground with it, but this is practically never the case, as the move is mostly going to the edge or slightly above the ground. Due to Falco’s fast falling speed, all this together means that it’s very difficult to try to punish Falco after he has completed his recovery move.
Part 3: Short Duration
Hand in hand with this aspect comes the fact that Falco’s recovery is extremely quick. If your opponent has to move a lot to get in position, they will frequently be out of position due to the fact that Falco’s total time between going off stage and attempting to recover rarely exceeds 2-3 seconds.
Section 4: Situation Recognition
Now that we’ve sorta laid out the bare-bones facts about Falco’s recovery, it’s time to talk about what actually determines if you live or die off stage.
Part 1: What is Situation Recognition
Off stage game is all about what I call situation recognition, the ability to recognize your opponent’s options and realize when one of your recovery options is relatively safe. If you double jump quickly because you thought your opponent wasn't going to jab you out of it, but then he does and you die because of it, it was a failure of Situation Recognition. Learning how to recognize a situation correctly, takes quite a bit of time, but it's important to tell people that this is something they should be doing instead of just trying to get back to the stage without paying attention to the opponent.
There are simply too many characters and play styles for me to go through every different way your opponent can be edgeguarding you and tell you what their options are and what you should be looking for while recovering, but I’m going to try to go through an example and hopefully you’ll get an idea of how you should be thinking when you’re piloting Falco back to the stage.
Part 2: An Example of How to Break Things Down
The example:
I’m going to go through the situation that is most frequently asked about. Marth grabs you near the ledge and dthrows you off stage. To start off, you must DI this away. If you DI in, you allow the Marth to turn around and dtilt you for free, which makes the situation that much worse. Ok, so let’s talk about his options and how you need to be reading his motions to best select your option.
Marth’s Options:
The most common thing for Marth’s to do in this situation is to stand on stage facing outward. The idea here is to attempt to jab/dtilt/fsmash you out of your double jump or your forward B if you DI away and double jump outward to forward B through them.
If instead you go below stage and try to up B, the Marth will either move closer to the edge and counter, move back and fsmash/neutral b or jump out and fair you, depending on their style and reaction time.
The reason Marth players love this style of edgeguarding is that it doesn’t force them to commit to an option and lets them react to everything that you’re doing with a quick move.
The next option a Marth has is to immediately dash off stage and fair, the idea being to catch Falco in his double jump.
The last thing that they can really do is WD backwards and take the edge and try to drop down and aerial you if you attempt to recover low or ledge hop aerial you if you try to recover high.
OK, so now the most important thing for you to do when you’re off stage in this situation is to try to recognize what your opponent’s plan in as quickly and calmly as possible. Double jumping immediately is rarely, if ever, your best option, so for the love of god, don’t just panic and hit jump only to have your jump jacked by a jab. Saving your double jump is absolutely paramount, as once you lose your double jump, your plethora of options that we talked about in Section 3 gets reduced to just up Bing, which means that you’re dead. EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER’S OPTIMAL EDGEGUARD ON FALCO INVOLVES KNOCKING HIM OUT OF HIS DOUBLE JUMP BECAUSE ONCE HE’S BELOW THE STAGE, HE’S DEAD.
Once you notice your opponent’s choice of how to edgeguard you, think of what it’s trying to exploit and come up with a plan to avoid getting hit out of your double jump. The reactions and counters to your opponent’s game plan are not set in stone, but to give you a sort of outline and starting point, these are roughly how I try to react to each of his options above.
How Mogwai Typically Tries to React:
He dthrows me, I see him standing on the stage facing outward. His plan is clearly to dtilt/jab me out of my double jump. I let myself fall to around the point where I could double jump and sweetspot the edge. Marf’s hitboxes are ******** and hit below the stage though, so just double jump sweetspotting doesn’t work with Falco’s sweetspot vs. a properly timed jab/dtilt. I’ve noticed over time that Marths jab/dtilt when then hear your double jump sound so my reaction is to double jump and before I’m at the point of that he can hit me, I airdodge up through his attack and back onto the stage. If I can, I’ll airdodge high and try to DI back towards the edge to avoid the re-grab, but here it’s pretty much a guessing game. If you have a wall to ride up on, also consider wall jumping into the airdodge to give yourself the extra invulnerability frames immediately after the walljump
He dthrows me, I see him dash towards the edge immediately after the throw. His plan is to run off and aerial me. If I have a wall to jump off of, I will let myself drop low and then wall jump into an aerial, forward B to the ledge or airdodge onto the stage. If there’s no wall, I’ll fall to the point of a double jump sweet spot, and either just immediately double jump sweetspot or shine for a spit second to mix the timing up and then double jump sweetspot, depending on the situation. If you have godly reactions or didn’t follow my advice above to not just double jump immediately, you can also just immediately double jump to get above the Marth and throw a quick Dair out there and hope for the best. This is not a smart option though, as every fast reactions aren’t close to fast enough to do this on reaction so if you guess wrong about what the Marth is doing and he decides to just stand there and jab or WD back into an fsmash, you’re probably dead.
He dthrows me, I see him WD backwards. His plan is to take the ledge and attempt to aerial me on recovery. By putting himself on the ledge, he has taken away his ability to hit me if I go high so that’s usually what I do. Also, most of the time a player takes the edge to edgeguard, they don’t plan on actually holding onto it so it’s frequently a good idea to jump up and up B at the level where your up B charging will grab the ledge so that when he ledgehops, you just grab the ledge and get invulnerability frames.
Section 5: Random Other Stuff
Learn to shorten your illusion and understand its sweetspots. If you crash into the stage with it, that’s not a sweet spot. If it ends a little ways away from the ledge, that’s a sweet spot.
Learn where your up B can grab the ledge while charging. Practice some firestalling and while doing so, pay attention to how far away you can be in order to grab it.
Learn to angle your up B against walls for sweetspots from below. Especially against lazy Marth players who just go for counters when you have to up B, this is hugely useful as a sweet spotted up B triggers their counter without actually getting hit.
Wall jumps give you invulnerability frames, so does grabbing the ledge. Pay attention and get a feel for how long each of these invulnerability windows lasts.
LEARN TO TECH. Training mode, proxy mines on walls, just practice practice practice until you get the timing. You have a decent window to start holding R in order to tech, just learn it and you’ll live a hell of a lot longer.
So that’s sorta it. Most of learning how to react to different situations will come with experience, but the gist that I’m trying to get you to get here is that it’s important to think and appropriately identify what your opponent’s strategy is. In friendlies, when someone hits you with something new, think about it later that night and what you could’ve done to avoid dying from it. Recovering is 50% Situation Recognition and 50% beating strong strategies for how to react into your head.