Board 8 > Can someone who plays Melee (competive) explain why people think Falco>Sheik?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I can't figure this out.

Lasers are pretty good
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pjbasis posted...

Lasers are pretty good

Is this literally the only reason?

Fox is pretty good and Falco isnt that much different

Also I think hes actually favored against Fox but someone can correct me
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That ain't falco
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I don't play competitive Melee but I watch a lot of it. So here's from my perspective why this might be the case:

Lasers are super good, Falco's combos are pretty brutal, his dair is one of the best moves in the game as is his shine, and he's just got a ton of different ways to kill. Sheik is pretty damn good too but not as good as Falco.
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LiquidOshawott posted...

Fox is pretty good and Falco isnt that much different

Falco is very different, just their moves look the same

At even a semi-competitive level, you cannot play them even nearly the same
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sheik can't keep up with Falco on stage pressure. she's easily comboed so like one shine can lead to a ton of percent. lasers obviously help.

off stage falco gets destroyed but it doesn't matter since he gets destroyed offstage by everyone.

kateee posted...

sheik can't keep up with Falco on stage pressure. she's easily comboed so like one shine can lead to a ton of percent. lasers obviously help.

off stage falco gets destroyed but it doesn't matter since he gets destroyed offstage by everyone.

I don't mean on a one on one basis. I mean by tier list. I've just very rarely watched a game and it thought Sheik seemed superior.

Because like you said, Falco is absolute utter trash off stage. Crippling weakness bad. And he's good enough at everything else that I feel he obviously still belongs top tier, but to me he's so bad off stage that anyone else really good at all should be above him. (So Sheik and potentially Marth) since Sheik isn't just fucked off stage like Faldo is.

So, look at Smash 4.

Cloud is also pretty exploitable off-stage, but he's pretty ridiculous on-stage. And currently, I think he's #2 in the tier list.

Players at a high level find a lot of ways to mitigate that offstage weakness. They mix up their recovery and make it harder to hit them. So basically, it doesn't quite matter if he's just kinda weak off-stage because he's so ridiculously good on stage. And, honestly, we're talking about Falco's recovery as if it's complete and utter garbage. It's not. It's his weakness, but it's still not that bad.

Besides, Sheik's recovery ain't fantastic either. Pretty easy to edge-hog it, or if she is forced to land on stage, that's when you do a ledgedash or some other option and punish it, then get her back off-stage and repeat. It may even be worse than Falco's because Falco's side b can be ledge-cancelled or it can be shortened.
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tier-list wise you'll always get disagreements and there are certainly people who think sheik > falco in terms of tiers. and i think Sheik > Falco has some merit to people especially at the current stage of the meta where there aren't any Falcos that are consistently high placing.

but Falco lasers and combo game are really THAT good. lasers double as an approach as well as a way to stop approaches. As for the offstage thing, i think at higher levels where everyone's good enough at edgeguarding, the recovery thing kind of evens out. you can pretty much assume that when you get offstage with Falco/Fox/Falcon that it's a stock gone since they all have easily edgeguardable recoveries. obviously Fox has a better recovery than Falco and there are situations where he'll get back when Falco can't but it's kind of whatever. even Sheik's isn't thaaat good since if she lands onstage, it has a bunch of recovery and most of the time you're back offstage or at least more damage.

Currently, I'm pretty sure Sheik is 4th in the tier list. So there's not just one spot between Falco and Sheik, there's two. Marth is 3rd. Some pro players even argue that Jiggs should be in the 4th spot with Sheik in 5th, but I think that's pretty heavily debatable and definitely not agreed upon.

Basically what I'm saying is Sheik isn't quite as good as you think she is. Again, she's still a fantastic pick for competitive play, but it is well-established and strongly agreed upon by the pro community (and has been for some time now) that Falco is the 2nd best only to Fox. And he's definitely not worse than Sheik.

Here's what the wiki says are her most prevalent weaknesses:

"Sheik, however, suffers from a relatively short and predictable recovery, vulnerability to comboing, as well as a rather short but quick wavedash. She also is relatively weak to crouch canceling."
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cuz sheik gets bibbity bopped by fox and puff, meanwhile falco goes essentially even with fox (at the tippity top level he might lose but it's at absolute worst 55/45 and probably closer to like 52/48) and beats puff.
they both beat peach and falcon pretty handily. falco has a worse matchup vs marth, but sheik is garbage against ICs so it still tilts in falco's favor.

imo:
1) Fox
2) Marth
3) Puff
4) Falco
5) Sheik

i definitely disagree with the current list putting falco at 2nd and both sheik and falco above puff, but at the end of the day they're all amazing characters capable of winning any tournament
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MysticBrohan posted...

cuz sheik gets bibbity bopped by fox and puff, meanwhile falco goes essentially even with fox (at the tippity top level he might lose but it's at absolute worst 55/45 and probably closer to like 52/48) and beats puff.
they both beat peach and falcon pretty handily. falco has a worse matchup vs marth, but sheik is garbage against ICs so it still tilts in falco's favor.

imo:
1) Fox
2) Marth
3) Puff
4) Falco
5) Sheik

i definitely disagree with the current list putting falco at 2nd and both sheik and falco above puff, but at the end of the day they're all amazing characters capable of winning any tournament

1: Fox (obviously)
2: Marth. Only real weakness would I'm assuming be horizontal recovery.
3: Sheik: Vertical recovery and as someone already said easy to add damage onto when she returns
4: Falco. (Mediocre recovery of all forms)
5: Jiggs. (To me, personally, I don't think Puff has a weakness except she is so light that any damage at all is top stage critical, she just doesn't have the strengths of the others)

Again, I've played semi competitively at best, so all this is from watching videos and my thoughts on them, I don't claim to be a Bible of knowledge

Seems like you're only looking from the perspective of weaknesses and not strengths. Also, you're not looking at it from the perspective of matchups either, which is probably the most important.

Brohan had a good analysis although I don't agree with his list.
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the thing with puff is her aerial drift and ability to get out of the corner make her insanely strong. her bair is the best spacing tool in the game, and if you dont have a reliable way to kill her off the top she can always recover. on top of that, she destroys every other floatie in the game, can crouch under tall characters' grabs (marth, sheik, falcon, peach, etc), and has reliable set-ups into a one-hit kill. hbox is out here winning majors with solo puff, beating the other best players in the world in puff's clear worst matchup. and hbox doesn't even do everything the character is capable of (shield drop rest set-ups, tech chasing with rest, hell he doesn't even jump cancel his grabs). and ON TOP OF ALL THAT, she is technically the easiest top tier to play by a country mile, leading to more consistent performances. she's not perfect, but having her 5th just doesn't make sense to me.

sorry that was kind of a tangent, puff just kinda triggers me lmao. i think you're a little too focused on recovery. it's important for sure, but i think falco's strengths offset his weak recovery enough to keep him above sheik. but like i said, theyre both amazing and it's at least close.
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also sheik losing hard to the most prominent character in the meta is a big deal. its not like sheik/fox is unwinnable or anything (watch plup vs just about anyone) but it's like a 6/4 matchup.
and i think youre underrating just how strong falco's strengths are. his neutral in unparalleled thanks to lasers, and his combo game is devastating to pretty much the whole cast.
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