For reference, I will post everything good with Falco here, because these boards are at best a wallowing pit for bad players with a few good people who mostly skim. Oftentimes, these players will misinform hapless SRK members who want to get good at the game.
Before I start: I am a better Falco than you so stfu, here are my credentials:
[LIST]
[]I am an avid tournament goer and Las Vegas holds weekly 50-man brawl tournaments.
[]I placed 9th in teams with Tudios at Brawl in Oakland, a 120-entry tournament.
[]I am a panelist for the Las Vegas SSBB power rankings.
[]I have played with SK92 (the best Falco) many times in local tournaments, driven SK92 to two major events, though I have never beaten him because he is a god damn monster.
[*]Anything I have posted in this thread I have tournament, wifi, or otherwise ranked match experience in doing and probably having it done to me.
[/LIST] All of these facts are factual and a lot of people posting in this thread are misinforming people.
Falco’s Chaingrab with D-throw:
Works from 0-40% on most characters (some characters, like Olimar and Marth, are too floaty to chaingrab past 15% or so or can up-B out, just d-air and regrab) and can be combo’d into a jab, shine, D-air, Dash Attack/Gatling Combo, N-air, weak tipper f-smash, or even a F-air if you really want. Most people end it with a D-air off the side of the stage for the win. This is techable with sick DI. N-air does slightly more damage and sets up for lasers but for the most part you will get more damage if you spike them in the end. Generally don’t follow people down unless you have an explicit plan because Falco’s aerials last forever and you’ll end up killing yourself or getting stage-spiked.
Other mindgames include waiting for people to airdodge/up-B/counterattack and following up with more grabs/a smash.
When close to the edge or facing away from the edge, you can boost pivot grab to regrab most heavy characters. Some characters, like Metabutt, can sometimes footstool you out of a pivot grab but the timing is strict and its usually worth about 20% to try.
–
Boost (Pivot) Grab/Smash
You can cancel a dash attack into a grab or upsmash any time before the hitbox is inactive and retain the momentum from your dash attack.
Boost Grab:
Dash, C-stick down, and hit Z. You’ll slide slightly further than you normally would.
Reverse (aka Pivot) Boost Grab:
Dash, C-stick down, and hit back and Z. You’ll slide a significant distance, turn around and grab. The hitbox of the grab drags with you as you slide and is huge. This is a great attack and you can find all kinds of uses for it, but remember you’re vulnerable the whole time so don’t get crazy.
Usmash:
With normal controls, the best way to do it is to dash, slap down on the c-stick to initiate a dash attack, and then smash up and then quickly hit Z. A works also but the fingering is easier with the trigger. If you get a grab you hit Z too early, if you get a dash attack then you did it way too slowly or horribly wrong.
–
Gatling Combo
On most characters at low% and heavy characters up through mid%, you can cancel a dash attack into an upsmash by flicking up on the c-stick just as you hit them. This is safer vs. shields and does around 28% total damage on hit and a lot of shield damage too. Generally if you hit a shield jab, or spotdodge afterward for safety.
–
Falco’s sick Jab
Falco’s jab is sick. It has the reach of some character’s f-smash and a good puffy hitbox which extends fairly high and all the way to the ground. You can poke most characters off of the ledge with it too, I think. It doesn’t chain to anything, however AAA combo generally chains to shine.
You can also duck cancel your jab to get just the first hit, just tap down after you jab and release the stick, and you can do any move including more jabs.
–
Edgeguarding
Falco gets about a 3/10 in the edgeguarding department. True, you can spike horrible players all day, but in reality, you don’t want to go very far below the ledge because the vert on your recovery is awful. Your B-air is going to be your main off-stage thing. If you get airdodged every time, just bait it and b-air later for the win. Try to hit with the strong hit.
B-air’s hitbox extends past Falco’s crotch and has a lot of priority to beat a lot of non-disjointed up-bs. All three spacies can be repeatedly knocked back by trading your b-air with their up-B; granted they’ll probably just side-b but good to know. Bowser’s up-b will also often trade with a forward facing b-air. Good to know in a pinch.
F-air can be used in some cases too but if you miss you’re wide open for a hot minute and they recover for free. One neat thing is that if you just run off and f-air at people like DK, it’ll drag them down with you and they can’t recover. This is not useful as far as I can tell. N-air is good too.
Anyway a lot of times vs. characters like Marth or Samus that I don’t really like to mess around with offstage, I’ll just try to keep them low with lasers and high b-airs to make them grab the edge. Falco’s d-smash and f-smash both hit people off the side of the stage, and both can punish get-up attacks and the f-smash can even hit people out of their jump. You can also use B-air, hooray!
–
Laser setups
Falco can SHL in this game but it is much much slower than in Melee and you can get two lasers. You can also jump backwards to get the backflip animation and a slightly lower laser without killing yourself. Your lasers also can no longer hit many crouching characters. Still, they are very very good and spammable. Here’s a few good setups that you’ll want to learn:
SHDL to boost pivot grab in close
SHDL to running upsmash is essentially a true combo vs. airborne opponents.
SHDL to dodge vs. Up-B spammers
SHL to jab
–
Kill Setups
The best way to land an f-smash is to out prioritize something with it, like a predicted jab or many character’s f-airs (not Marth’s obviously). Other setups include vs. wake up attacks (you can charge it out of their range), vs. predictable dodges, and as a spacer if they roll behind (hits slightly behind you with the right timing). Its fairly safe, they’ll need to punish perfectly to counteract it. Also you can use the aerial spacing tricks above to bait a grab and then f-smash.
I like to save my u-smash, using it only once or twice before my opponents get to about 110%. It’s faster than the f-smash and quite powerful undiminished, but vulnerable to DI and not as safe.
D-smash is another great kill move near an edge, and if they DI wrong it sends people at an abysmal angle. Its safe against grabs but not against shield dropping, of course with the right spacing. Powershielding into a d-smash or running u-smash can be a great kill move.
Other neat kill setups include short hopping to bait a dodge, and then b-airing at the end of your jump for the strong hit, and f-throws into edgeguards. Mostly though, you want to be getting a solid 30%+ kill rate on your D-throw to spike against characters with mediocre recoveries to solidify your natural character advantage.
–
D-air as an approach
D-air does about 10% or so and hits grounded opponents and has a lot of priority. A good approach is to dash, SH instant D-air, and then hold back on the stick for the duration. If they try to grab you they’ll miss and give you a free grab or hit. If they dodge you’ll be nicely spaced, just watch out for f-tilts and such. If it hits they’ll bounce up and you can follow up with most aerials, f-smashes/u-smashes etc to try and get them off the stage.
–
N-air
N-air has very little lag on it so if you shorthop it and wait for the peak of your jump to hit A, you’ll get most of the hits in and can follow with a jab or grab or something neat. Its not safe against a shieldgrab but as with the d-air you can space back and mindgame. Its also a surprisingly good platform poker and anti air.
–
Side-B Poke
Side-B is safer in this game than it was in Melee. You can use it to punish or poke from a distance, just short hop it so you’re just above the ground.
–
Airdodge traps
Falco’s best airdodge trap is the FH U-air to B-air, because you can either double jump the b-air or not depending on whether or not they try to fastfall through or not. Basically use the c-stick to execute the aerials, try to do the u-air so that you’ll beat out their attack if it comes but still as late as possible, and then b-air if they airdodge. Your side-to-side air control is at best OK so don’t be too miffed at me if this doesn’t work every time.
–
Teammates
Game and Watch is the best teammate, followed by DeDeDe, Snake, and Metaknight. Blab all you want, this is the god damn truth and the high-damage-knockback-awesomegrabsandedgeguarding nature of these characters make them tough to beat in teams. Marth is also good.
Falco is not very high on the teams tier list. He’s fairly quick, somewhat good at getting people off the stage, and somewhat powerful, but he just doesn’t exude killing power. His strengths are more in his spacing and mindgames and damage building, so power characters like Bowser and DK can be good compliments, while other good teams characters like ROB and Kirby can be good too, but the top 5 are the top 5 for a reason.
–
Random Matchups
Metaknight:
Chaingrab to 40% and spike. Try to keep him disabled with your jab and don’t side B recover into downsmashes. You can interrupt his glide attack safely with a well-timed B-air. Save your u-smash for kills.
vs. Tornado, swivel the control stick and c-stick to try to smash DI out, and spam airdodge and oftentimes you can punish it.
vs. Up-B, you can simply counter with a D-air spike with quick reflexes, or you can punish the glide attack with a spotdodge d-smash with AMAZING timing to beat his D-smash.
Vs. spammed ground game spam your D-air approach and use your dodges wisely
Vs. spammed air game use your lasers and jab
Vs. Spammed B moves shield and punish and try to keep your shield up.
The matchup is still VERY HARD for Falco.
Snake
Snake is pretty easy, they have more stuff to learn about the matchup than you do. The thing is that Snake does very heavy damage with his tilts and can land some good F-smashes for very low% kills against Falco.
A few tricks.
vs. F-tilt: You can shield the first hit, and spotdodge the second for a free grab, or roll behind him to cross up. Watch for him to catch on and just drop your shield and jab to grab for a mixup, or anything else you can think of.
vs. Grenades/mines/etc: Use your reflector and don’t get blown up.
Vs. 3 hit Jab->F-tilt->Ftilt2 same as f-tilt, your shield takes a hurting though.
vs. Mortar slide. You can jab him out of it and also punish it if he ends too close to you with a f-smash on shield. If he spams it just shoot grounded lasers, eventually he’ll go back to grenades.
You can also reflect the projectile from his u-smash so it doesn’t damage you.
U-tilt can also be really good to pop him up as Snake’s air game is weak.
Killing:
Just keep knocking him off the stage. 0-40 chaingrab him and then spike, and from there you can follow him down and try to spike again, or you can grab him out of his cipher and NOT HIT HIM; he doesn’t get his jumps or up-b back and has to use C4 to recover, taking tons of %, and plus, you can laser the crap out of him when he does this and go for B-airs when he comes back, or try to stage spike him if he techs the wall.
ROB:
Another good matchup for Falco, ROB has some trouble killing you, just watch out for a fresh N-air. If he downthrows you expect a u-air and try to airdodge or jump it. DI away to avoid getting gimped and don’t waste your jump by jumping into a laser or Gyro and you should be fine. Your D-air is so golden in this matchup its not funny, you can really just be on ROB all the time with it.
As far as edgeguarding goes, edgehog him! His up-B will cause him to bounce off the stage and you can drop off and jump up and B-air him which is nifty, and the invulnerability is good for dodging rising N-airs.
DeDeDe: Eat laser spam, fat man! Punish his recovery, chaingrab him, and you shouldn’t have major problems. Don’t get b-aired to death
Pikachu: Hard matchup. His downthrow chains you to about 25%, so DI and jump after that, and you can reflect his jolt and thunder which are pains to other characters. Basically the idea is to never ever ever side B into his F-smash or thunder and he’ll find he has trouble killing you. For this purpose I recommend occasionally using your up-B for its long startup. Other stuff includes obvious chaingrabs, and then I like to try to D-smash after he quick attack recovers because sometimes they don’t get the edge perfectly. You can DI out of his d-smash by mashing up, good to know, and if you DI right thunder should never hit you in the air, just airdodge ASAP.
Everyone else I think is pretty standard, I haven’t come up with much for Olimar yet though.
