Thank you for taking the time to thoroughly explain [ rant :) ] Makes it a lot easier to remember & implement when talked through -- compared to a 30 second technical snippit.
One thing you could talk about is auto-cancel back air being a bait. At ranges a bit farther out where dash grab won't be fast enough a lot of people will still try to punish an auto-cancel bair whiff but then Falco can make them whiff the dash grab and punish them.
I remember some commentary (I forget who) talking about how bairing on shield is a lost art (and that Westballz is one of the last advocates of it), it's not quite the same situation but I spose AC bairing on shield falls prey to similar pitfalls. You've spoken about something similar too in some of the Fox matchup analysis, specifically that facing towards Fox is actually much better because it leaves you with more mixups and better movement, that was very useful for me but I still catch myself standing stationary, back turned to Fox, hoping for an uptilt or AC bair...
You should make a quick guide for the benefits of, and how to practice resetting your stick to neutral after doing an action. Saw Zain doing it on his stream; it's something subtle that most newcomers wouldn't think about.
Auto-cancel bair are imo just a neutral tool against floaties: When you have center stage, you can throw auto-cancel bair as a bait: they will try to react and you can then punish them because you have almost no ending lag. You can also use it to cover tech in place. It's similar to shine-grab: if the shine hits, and you miss the grab, you can still combo most of the time because shine has so much hitstun and grab so little endlag. Similarly, you can use autocancel bair to try and cover ledge option or techs, being still able to punish if it misses. Maybe the frame data proves me wrong tho ;)
Brilliant Great to see dialogue like this. I love it when falco’s use ac bair to attack or space in a predictable situation. You can grab them and start a huge punish, I play Falcon. So just like you said, it is a myth that it is OP or even..safe! Sometimes as falcon I mess up the timing to grab them and I get up tilted or shined THAT can feel OP. But really it was me who messed up, I should be able to come out on top with the right execution, there is a clear counter that works. As the bird character The option select from HOLDING OFF from commiting to an ac bair and using shorthop instead is far superior and freeing! Like you said you can late backair, dair, double jump away, waveland when you hit the ground, laser, All this you could never do auto cancel bairing. Sure it feels fun to prance around laglessly with the ac bair and be able to act immediately, BUT use too frivolously AND you will get badly punished from the loss of options and over commitment in a serious match! Cheers!
As a big nerd I wanted to add one tiny bit of nuance to the discussion--Falco actually has a really good initial dash speed (the same as Fox, at 1.9 units). I'm sure every Falco main has noticed that their jumps go a lot further when they do it immediately after dashing than if they wait a couple frames. This is the effect of his fast initial dash. It takes Falco 5 frames to slow down to his max run speed, but for all of those frames he's actually moving further than Marth does frame-by-frame, albeit in reverse order (leaving displacement by dash animation aside). Per frame: Falco: 1.9, 1.82, 1.74, 1.66, 1.58, 1.5 Marth: 1.5, 1.56, 1.62, 1.68, 1.74, 1.8
Yeah I actually didn't articulate this point well and just said that "Falco dash which isn't the fastest in the game". I do know about his fast initial dash speed! One thing I tried to say (but again didn't articulate well) was that he doesn't manipulate his hurtbox nearly as well as a lot of other characters do (marth is a great example) by dashing back. So he ends up getting hit regardless a lot of the time. Also, to clarify your statement, you said "but for all of those frames he's actually moving further than Marth does frame-by-frame". With the numbers you gave, isn't that not true? He only moves farther for 3 of the frames right?
@@SsbmGinger I totally agree that many other characters (Sheik and Marth in particular) have more favorable dash animations that help them here. The way Sheik and Marth have their legs far back is offset by how most limbs are ungrabbable. Falco would benefit too except he tragically has a tail that's at a very grabbable height. Specifically regarding the dashing frames--what I mean is in overall movement, Falco has gone further and maintains that movement advantage for up to 6 frames (which can be phrased as "faster" but I realize that's somewhat misleading). I tried to call attention to that by mention how they'd have to be lined up in reverse order for one character--you can see that Falco's fastest frame is faster than Marth's fastest, and so on when comparing their second through sixth fastest frames. It doesn't look like that due to Marth's crazy lean. Again, agree with the overall point--Falco doesn't get to dash away like some other characters. Because he doesn't have any crazy hurtbox displacement and his fastest option is pretty small, you end up trapped if your movement gets pinned or predictable.
Well i think it still has its uses, such as just kinda being able to poke around in the air and being able to drift where you want to be next to to set your next up move. I use it poke out foxes that full hop alot! I think the fade mix ups with it is useful too! But yeah def not a move you wanna spam because it seems good lol
As a sheik player, late aerials by falco are generally so much harder to deal with than early aerials. An early rising sh aerial I can grab or nair oos most times.
I agree as I’ve gotten better I use this option less. I feel like I only throw it out when they are high percent and I’m reading a approach . It really is a bad option close range generally
I thought the right way to autocancel bair was to space yourself so that the strong hit barely whiffs and then you drift into their shield with it on the way down giving you frame advantage.
That would be preferable if you are going to hit an autocancel back air on shield, but like I mention in the video, if you opponent is shielding and you're going to do a hard commitment like that I think that you have much more punishing and reliable things to do. Also, the spacing isn't always up to you (someone could do something like dash -> shield). Lastly, I'm honestly not sure if you get "advantage" from a descending auto cancel back air, but it might not be devastatingly bad.
@@SsbmGinger That all makes sense to me. What I meant by advantage was that you can shine before they can do anything to you when you perform it correctly, maybe fox could shine you first though? For an example of exactly what I was talking about at 6:42 in "Pushing the Falco Meta Past 2018" on mang0's channel. he does the exact drift in autocancel bair I was talking about.
You thresholds for reacting to bair are off. Let's say you react to sh bair frame 1 of bair. Well that means that in reality you aren't reacting till frame 16 of the sh. 1f (bair startup) +12 (reaction time) + 3 (in game input lag) =16 AC bair takes for 27f (23 + 4) before you can act Meaning you only have 11 or so frames to punish. Most of the common openers you'd use vs ac bair are 7-9f of startup. A perfect jc grab is 8 for instance. This means you only have 2-4f of dash to actually "whiff punish" it. Basically unless the opponent is spamming it at a set spacing They drift into me with it Hit my asdi down/cc You actually can't true whiff punish it that easily. However, as you stated that his shine is small? You have to play a mixup game from them trying to call them out correctly. He doesn't have easy "punish you for running in" move like marth dash back. But instead has a series of options that require different responses. For instance AC bair into control stick spotdodge is a really strong alternative to shine. (Not c stick cause 1f slower) And helps force the opponent to hesitate in trying to punish the ac bair. Because they will shamelessly get spotdodge shined over and over Once they show that stutter step to punish spotdodge you can go back to stealing your turn with secondary mixups like dashback, dash sh forward aerial, dash attack, fsmash, etc.. Then them trying to beat you stealing your turn back. Loses to the first level reads of spotdodge, shine, utilt, jab again
@@LeeumCC my instinct is that this would combo and stuff but gives the other guy more time to react and they can wiff punish or hit you with a sword to stuff you out
I think that ac bair is good for conditioning. Allows for mixups like empty hop grab, empty hop shine, waveland shine (super swaggy), reverse dair, or anything else that beats cc. By the way... any frame nerds know if ac bair, shine, turn around jc grab is a good adaptation to a fox running in?
*retreating* AC bair is the safer option ofc you're gonna get grabbed if you do the earliest bair known to man and land right in front of them you should've drifted away vs S2J, instead of drifting in 3 times in a row lol
Knowing which drift direction is safer is completely reliant on the situation. I understand how your intuition probably says "Well since you're drifting away, you're farther away from the opponent and it'll take them more time to get to me to punish" or "As I retreat, my disjoint becomes better" but these things are not even close to the only factors. Very specifically, to address the end of your comment, full drift IN bair is actually required to contest most timings of falcon nair in order to actually beat it and retreating just gets you punished regardless because of falcon's dash speed/nair hitbox. You can definitely find situations where drifting away is the correct option, but speaking so absolutely isn't helpful here. I could find hundreds of clips where someone (even me vs falcons) drifts away an AC bair where it would have only worked if they had drifted in.
