Falco (SSBB)/Down throw

Hitbox visualization showing Falco's down throw.

Overview

Falco throws his opponent to the ground, shooting them with his Blaster four times with each shot dealing 2% each. Falco then throws his opponent which deals 1% for a total of 9%. Unlike his back throw and up throw, the laser shots are guaranteed to hit unless Falco is interrupted during the throw animation as unlike those throws, Falco shoots his lasers before he throws his opponent.

The throw does very weak horizontal knockback, sending opponents at a 50° angle and not sending them into tumble until around 30%-50% (depending on the opponent's weight and how stale the throw is). The throw also has very low ending lag, only having 11 frames of cooldown. These factors make the throw an excellent combo tool. At low percents, the move can be used to chaingrab opponents. The effectiveness of the chain grab depends on the falling speed/gravity of Falco's opponent (as well as if his opponent has any strong options to escape the chain grab) although even if the opponent cannot be chaingrabbed, Falco can still followup into a dash attack, an up smash, a neutral aerial or a down aerial, with his most damaging followup being his gatling combo (dash attack into up smash). Against floatier characters, Falco can usually build up around 30%-40% although on fast fallers and hevayyweights, he can build up to 65% damage with a 0% chaingrab into a gatling combo.

If the opponent is near the edge at lower percents, Falco has two options. He can either perform a boost pivot grab to turn around and continue the chaingrab or, he can perform a down aerial and meteor smash the opponent offstage (though the opponent can SDI back onto the stage). While the down throw down aerial isn't too reliable due to meteor cancelling (assuming the opponent receives enough knockback to meteor cancel the down air), along with the opponent's ability to SDI back onto the stage, it is very effective on Wolf in particular, due to his 60 frame meteor cancel delay along with his poor vertical recovery, allowing an easy edgehog if he fails to SDI back onto the stage. A very situational technique is the DFS (Drill Footstool Spike) - in which Falco performs a down aerial followup to the throw offstage and it is meteor cancelled, he can use a footstool jump off of the opponent. However, the opponent can usually edge sweetspot while jumping, unless they meteor cancel too late or delay their jump. Down aerial can also be used onstage to lead into a followup at lower percents or to start a tech-chase at higher percents.

Even when the throw puts opponents into tumble, the throw is still highly useful due to its low ending lag along with Falco's tool kit. Depending on the opponent's DI, Falco can land the first hit of his neutral attack which is unavoidable. Below 60%, the jab will cancel the opponent's tumble state, which can then lead into Falco's jab cancel setups. Above 60%, the jab will no longer cancel the opponent's tumble state and if they DI down, there is a chance to knock the opponent onto the ground, opening a laser lock opportunity. However, this is too situational and difficult to perform to be effective. Falco can also go for another grab as a mixup when the opponent is in tumble, resetting the situation if he lands the grab. At higher percents, Falco can finish off his opponent with a DACUS which when performed perfectly, requires a fast air dodge in order to avoid, making it a solid setup. These setups can be avoided however by DIing up although if Falco reads this DI, he can predict his opponents landing and potentially punish it with either another grab, one of his aerials or even a smash attack.

The only downside Falco's down throw has compared to a few other down throws is that it is not capable of reliably 0-deathing any characters as it sends opponents into tumble once they reach around 25%-50% (depending on the opponent’s weight and the staleness of down throw), while still being completely ineffective as a KO move (although as mentioned before, a down throw into BDACUS is an effective followup at high percents depending on the opponent's DI).

Overall, Falco's down throw is easily his best throw as well as one of the best throws in the game due to its high damage racking potential, low knockback, low ending lag (leading to its excellent chain grabbing potential) and high versatility, as well as working very well with Falco's moveset.

Throw data

Laser

ID	Part	Rehit rate	Damage	SD	Angle		BK	KS	FKV	Radius	Bone	Offset			SDIx	H×	T%	Clang	Rebound	Type	Effect	G	A	Sound	Direct	Blockable	Reflectable	Absorbable	Flinchless	Heedless	Piercing	Strechy	?2	?5	?6	?11	Hit Bits
0	0	0	2%	0		Forwards	60	80	0	9.6	0	0.0	0.0	4.0	1.0x	0.25x	0%							Punch													11111111111111

Throw

ID	Damage	Angle		BK	KS	FKV	Bone	SDIx	FFx	T%	Type	Effect	Sound
0	1%		Forwards	45	130	0	0	1.0x	None	0%			None
1	3%		Forwards	60	100	0	0	1.0x	None	0%			None

Timing

Invincible	1-8
Blaster shot 1	23
Blaster shot 2	25
Blaster shot 3	28
Blaster shot 4	31
Throw Release	33
Animation length	43

Throw

Hurtboxes

Legend (1 square = 1 frame)

Lag time

Vulnerable

Invincible

Prop event

Throw point

Gallery

• 

  Falco following up his chaingrab with a Gatling Combo.

• 

  Down throw followed by a down aerial meteor smash.

Chain grab list

This is a list of how many chaingrabs Falco can get on the whole cast, made by DEHF. This list goes by least chained character to greatest. There are certain escape techniques such as Marth's Dolphin Slash which can be used to avoid the chaingrab. However, if one can correctly buffer all of Falco's grabs, this issue is, for the most part, negligible.

Throws	Character	Damage
2	JigglypuffW	0-17
3	SamusW, PeachW, LucarioW	0-25
4	Kirby	0-31
5	Mr. Game & WatchW, Squirtle	0-37
6	Diddy Kong, Meta Knight, Pit, Ice Climbers, R.O.B.W, Fox, Falco, Pikachu, Marth, ZeldaW, Sheik, Zero Suit SamusD, Ness, Lucas, Toon Link, Sonic	0-43
7	Ike, Ganondorf, Charizard, Ivysaur, Olimar, Wolf, Wario, Link, Yoshi, Mario, Luigi, King Dedede, Captain Falcon	0-48
8	Donkey Kong, Snake, Bowser	0-53

W = must walk in order to get max chain grabs possible

D = must dash grab in order to get max chain grabs possible

Related moves

• Fox's down throw

Falco's moveset

Neutral attack (1 · 2 · inf) · Forward tilt · Up tilt · Down tilt · Dash attack · Forward smash · Up smash · Down smash
Neutral aerial · Forward aerial · Back aerial · Up aerial · Down aerial
Grab · Pummel · Forward throw · Back throw · Up throw · Down throw
Forward roll · Back roll · Spot dodge · Air dodge · Techs
Floor attack (front) · Floor getups (front) · Floor attack (back) · Floor getups (back) · Floor attack (trip) · Floor getups (trip)
Edge attack (fast) · Edge getups (fast) · Edge attack (slow) · Edge getups (slow)
Neutral special · Side special · Up special · Down special · Final Smash