S-Critical
Smash Cadet
Provided by the Fox discord lab team
Fox back pivot ftilt hitbox (will be referred as “Forward Tilt Hipcheck, FTHC”)
The FTHC is a move that Fox has that we have known about for a long time, but for those who do not know, the FTHC is a hitbox on Fox’s ftilt that isn’t located on his leg, but on the back of Fox. This move can be performed by running up to your opponent and performing a pivot (by tilting the analog stick to the other side, making Fox turn around) and press the attack button. What should happen is that you hit the opponent with the back hitbox while Fox is still sliding. This move is usually used as a combo starter, creating good combos that are pretty easy to do such as:
FTHC>utilt:
This move is really good because Fox’s utilt comes out pretty fast behind him, making this combo true. You can also string a series of true utilts and possibly end it with a bair or uair to deal about 30% from a mid percent range.
However, we think that the FTHC hasn’t been fully experimented with, so we took the past few days to see what exactly we can do with it, and we managed to find some interesting stuff.
To begin with, at low percent, we found a good mixup that can be used to get some good percent on the opponent without risking too much.
FTHC 0% mixup:
What makes this good is that we can avoid those annoying punishes just for attacking them without their shield up. For example, if that Sheik were to try and jab me straight after I did that FTHC, nothing would happen to me because I am behind Sheik. We basically trapped Sheik and we are able to grab her and potentially get a good 36% on them (plus, an extra 6% is better than nothing). Let’s think of more situations, shielding. If the Sheik managed to shield by FTHC and they immediately tried to grab me, they will wiff the grab because I had slid behind them, making them miss the shieldgrab and giving us a free punish. Another situation is if they roll behind us. With good reaction, we can cover their option with some of our moves (jab, utilt, dtilt, ftilt, dsmash, usmash etc). The same thing can be applied if Sheik spot dodges. We can easily dash attack them, as our ftilt will finish before their spot dodge finishes. One disadvantage of this mixup is that if they roll away from us, there may not be enough time for us to punish. Dash attack may be the only move that we might be able to cover, but it seems possible, knowing the fact that Fox has great ground speed. more testing can be done later on about that situation. Of course, the Sheik might be able to punish us if they have a good enough reaction to it and pulls out a fast move that can beat our jab.
note: This mixup because impossible to do after about 15% as the opponent slides with you and you are not able to slide behind them.
FTHC>jab:
This is a very simple combo that can be used to get opponents offstage, which can lead to edgeguard opportunities. To do this, simply perform the FTHC and do a turnaround jab. This gets about 15% in a true combo fashion, and is one of the simplest combos to do. You can also be creative with this combo and do 2 jabs and grab them afterwards to extend combos. This combo is good because it is quite flexible, but does not dish out as much damage compared to the other combos that are listed on here.
One every good thing about this move is that it sets up the jab infinite reborn technique as your opponent will slide slightly further than you, giving you the sweetspot of jab that you need to get this jab infinite started. This can lead to a pretty deadly combo and kill confirm, like what we have stated before in #lab_projects . Only bad thing is that it is really difficult to pull off, let alone doing it consistently.
ftilt space comparisons:
We also did a bit of research on what moves could push away Sheik the furthest from the centre stage of Battlefield. The camera was fixed, and all moves were performed at 40%.
Normal Ftilt:
The normal ftilt does not take them very far, and we wouldn’t recommend using it to gain stage control UNLESS you plan to follow up with other moves. Only disadvantage is that those followups will not be true and are reads. That can fall down on your side and you might end up losing stage control.
FTHC>ftilt:
This combo is a lot better to use if you want to get your opponent against the ledge, and the closer you are to the stage, the better chance you have to get your opponent offstage. This can lead into more edgeguarding or ledge getup reads. It also puts the opponent a further away than a normal ftilt at that percent due to the added 6% you get from the combo. This can be a good tool for spacing yourself away and playing more defensive.
FTHC>dsmash:
This combo seems to be the best one to use when getting your opponent offstage. With 20% of damage and a good amount of knockback, you can potentially get them offstage in 2 simple moves. You will have to buffer the dsmash in order to make it true. Only bad thing about this is that the opponent can roll in if they tech it, making your effort to get them offstage almost worthless. However, you should be in better shape because you got a decent amount of damage on them.
Now we explore what FTHC can do at higher percents.
FTHC>utilt>uair:
This combo can be done at higher-ish percents and can deal a lot of damage if done correctly. In order to make it true, it requires the player to successfully read the opponent’s DI and buffer a FH uair. At higher percents, this may have potential to kill, however this will need to be tested more for me to confirm it. For now, it is a great way to get your opponent above you with kill percent, and to to get a good amount of damage in a true combo fashion.
Such potential was found due to the use of pp utilt.
If you read the DI correctly, this can kill! This combo is more difficult to execute because of the quick inputs of pp utilt, so I suggest that if you are not able to get this combo down, try practicing both parts of the combo individually (pp utilt, then utilt> uair. Combine both together and keep practicing).
FTHC> dash attack (late hitbox)> uair:
FTHC can link the dash attack> uair kill confirm pretty well, but you must be aware that you have to get the late hitbox of the attack in order for it to be true. What makes this combo true is that the late hitbox is near the end of Fox’s dash attack animation, giving you more time to buffer a FH uair and get the true combo.
FTHC> nair
FTHC> dair:
This combo is very simple to use and should be used to get some percent on the opponent if you are struggling on getting hits. What makes this combo very solid is that it is not escapable, no matter what DI your opponent uses, and it seems to have a pretty big percent range (managed to get it to work from about 87-130% on Mario). This can be used to get them offstage, as well.
note: If you are going to do FTHC>dair, you may have to drift back when in the middle of dair so your opponent does not fall out of this. This happened a few times when I did it in training mode on Mario.
What I am now going to show are some of the harder moves using butt ftilt:
FTHC strings:
Although not completely true in this example, we have managed to successfully link together 3 butt ftilts, which dragged the opponent from one side of the stage to another (similar to Sheik’s fairs). These strings are pretty hard to do, because the timing of getting the pivot instead of the dash dance on the spot is quite close to each other. If the opponent misses the tech of the first ftilt, you can then string more FTHC to drag them across the stage. Their window to tech is pretty small, and missing it guarantees your 2nd FTHC. You can also get kill confirms from doing this.
We also found out that the FTHC strings are easier to true combo if you use your angled ftilts to your advantage. An example will be linked to below
FTHC> FTHC> usmash:
This is a good kill confirm to do that is less risky to use than nair>usmash and dair> usmash, because you do not get put in as much lag as the other moves. You can get away with a few things with FTHC (as stated in the 0% FTHC mixup), and if you hit the opponent, you can confirm into this. What makes this even better is that you don’t even need to string another FTHC in order for this to be true (I was just making sure that Mario was at kill % for the usmash, but it is good that we know ^.^)
You can also use your angled ftilts to make this combo a bit more guaranteed, because DI could screw this up.
EXAMPLE
FTHC> RAR bair:
This is one of the hardest ones to pull off, because not only do you need to be near frame perfect, but the opponents DI can either make this combo impossible to execute, or much easier to do. If they DI in, it sends them at a higher angle for you to get the bair. On the other hand, if they DI away, they will be too far away to get it. Also, the reason why you have to be near frame perfect is because of the angle in which they get launched. Once they get launched, they start drifting diagonally downwards, which makes it harder to get the RAR bair. However, if executed right, it will kill. It usually works at about 120% to 135% (I’ll need to do more testing, and you guys can help with that)
FTHC>SH fair> usmash:
This is another hard kill confirm to pull off, because you have to time when to jump and do the SH fair. There is also the fact that the opponent can tech the FF fair, so it isn’t a guaranteed kill. However, it makes it easier for people to get the usmash without much tech skill needed. Timing is still very important, though. One problem I have with this combo is that I could only get Mario with the tip of Fox’s fair, which means that if Mario DI’d away, it would possibly mean that Mario could escape the combo. On the other hand, DI’ing in would only make this combo a lot easier to do.
FTHC> footstool> sourspot nair> usmash:
This is a combo that is confirmed if you get the footstool, but that is where the problem lies. Getting the footstool at that low of an angle is pretty hard for some Foxes to execute, and it got harder trying to get it at higher percents than that due to the fact that the opponent flew further away, and it probably was not true that those percents. However, this combo is a bonus if you guys want to be flashy
.
Well, that’s everything we could find with FTHC. We would be more than happy to know what you guys can come up with as well. Maybe you can find something that we didn’t even know was possible! Alternatively, you can fill in some holes that we are still trying to fill ourselves, which is the percent ranges in which some of these combos are true, and how DI will affect the combo. I know this one was a long one, but thanks for reading. Please reply here if you got any questions or that you have found out about anything else
The Fox discord chat does a lot of labbing, and we have discovered a lot more stuff than this one. We decided to post this one here, because it is a LOT bigger than the other ones that we have done before. If you want to come and join the Fox discord, please follow this link and it will give you instructions on how to join us ^.^
EDIT: Changed name of tech to FTHC because butt ftilt was too ****ing cringe and I hate 2016 me
- 2017 S-Critical
Fox back pivot ftilt hitbox (will be referred as “Forward Tilt Hipcheck, FTHC”)
The FTHC is a move that Fox has that we have known about for a long time, but for those who do not know, the FTHC is a hitbox on Fox’s ftilt that isn’t located on his leg, but on the back of Fox. This move can be performed by running up to your opponent and performing a pivot (by tilting the analog stick to the other side, making Fox turn around) and press the attack button. What should happen is that you hit the opponent with the back hitbox while Fox is still sliding. This move is usually used as a combo starter, creating good combos that are pretty easy to do such as:
FTHC>utilt:
This move is really good because Fox’s utilt comes out pretty fast behind him, making this combo true. You can also string a series of true utilts and possibly end it with a bair or uair to deal about 30% from a mid percent range.
However, we think that the FTHC hasn’t been fully experimented with, so we took the past few days to see what exactly we can do with it, and we managed to find some interesting stuff.
To begin with, at low percent, we found a good mixup that can be used to get some good percent on the opponent without risking too much.
FTHC 0% mixup:
What makes this good is that we can avoid those annoying punishes just for attacking them without their shield up. For example, if that Sheik were to try and jab me straight after I did that FTHC, nothing would happen to me because I am behind Sheik. We basically trapped Sheik and we are able to grab her and potentially get a good 36% on them (plus, an extra 6% is better than nothing). Let’s think of more situations, shielding. If the Sheik managed to shield by FTHC and they immediately tried to grab me, they will wiff the grab because I had slid behind them, making them miss the shieldgrab and giving us a free punish. Another situation is if they roll behind us. With good reaction, we can cover their option with some of our moves (jab, utilt, dtilt, ftilt, dsmash, usmash etc). The same thing can be applied if Sheik spot dodges. We can easily dash attack them, as our ftilt will finish before their spot dodge finishes. One disadvantage of this mixup is that if they roll away from us, there may not be enough time for us to punish. Dash attack may be the only move that we might be able to cover, but it seems possible, knowing the fact that Fox has great ground speed. more testing can be done later on about that situation. Of course, the Sheik might be able to punish us if they have a good enough reaction to it and pulls out a fast move that can beat our jab.
note: This mixup because impossible to do after about 15% as the opponent slides with you and you are not able to slide behind them.
FTHC>jab:
This is a very simple combo that can be used to get opponents offstage, which can lead to edgeguard opportunities. To do this, simply perform the FTHC and do a turnaround jab. This gets about 15% in a true combo fashion, and is one of the simplest combos to do. You can also be creative with this combo and do 2 jabs and grab them afterwards to extend combos. This combo is good because it is quite flexible, but does not dish out as much damage compared to the other combos that are listed on here.
One every good thing about this move is that it sets up the jab infinite reborn technique as your opponent will slide slightly further than you, giving you the sweetspot of jab that you need to get this jab infinite started. This can lead to a pretty deadly combo and kill confirm, like what we have stated before in #lab_projects . Only bad thing is that it is really difficult to pull off, let alone doing it consistently.
ftilt space comparisons:
We also did a bit of research on what moves could push away Sheik the furthest from the centre stage of Battlefield. The camera was fixed, and all moves were performed at 40%.
Normal Ftilt:
The normal ftilt does not take them very far, and we wouldn’t recommend using it to gain stage control UNLESS you plan to follow up with other moves. Only disadvantage is that those followups will not be true and are reads. That can fall down on your side and you might end up losing stage control.
FTHC>ftilt:
This combo is a lot better to use if you want to get your opponent against the ledge, and the closer you are to the stage, the better chance you have to get your opponent offstage. This can lead into more edgeguarding or ledge getup reads. It also puts the opponent a further away than a normal ftilt at that percent due to the added 6% you get from the combo. This can be a good tool for spacing yourself away and playing more defensive.
FTHC>dsmash:
This combo seems to be the best one to use when getting your opponent offstage. With 20% of damage and a good amount of knockback, you can potentially get them offstage in 2 simple moves. You will have to buffer the dsmash in order to make it true. Only bad thing about this is that the opponent can roll in if they tech it, making your effort to get them offstage almost worthless. However, you should be in better shape because you got a decent amount of damage on them.
Now we explore what FTHC can do at higher percents.
FTHC>utilt>uair:
This combo can be done at higher-ish percents and can deal a lot of damage if done correctly. In order to make it true, it requires the player to successfully read the opponent’s DI and buffer a FH uair. At higher percents, this may have potential to kill, however this will need to be tested more for me to confirm it. For now, it is a great way to get your opponent above you with kill percent, and to to get a good amount of damage in a true combo fashion.
Such potential was found due to the use of pp utilt.
If you read the DI correctly, this can kill! This combo is more difficult to execute because of the quick inputs of pp utilt, so I suggest that if you are not able to get this combo down, try practicing both parts of the combo individually (pp utilt, then utilt> uair. Combine both together and keep practicing).
FTHC> dash attack (late hitbox)> uair:
FTHC can link the dash attack> uair kill confirm pretty well, but you must be aware that you have to get the late hitbox of the attack in order for it to be true. What makes this combo true is that the late hitbox is near the end of Fox’s dash attack animation, giving you more time to buffer a FH uair and get the true combo.
FTHC> nair
FTHC> dair:
This combo is very simple to use and should be used to get some percent on the opponent if you are struggling on getting hits. What makes this combo very solid is that it is not escapable, no matter what DI your opponent uses, and it seems to have a pretty big percent range (managed to get it to work from about 87-130% on Mario). This can be used to get them offstage, as well.
note: If you are going to do FTHC>dair, you may have to drift back when in the middle of dair so your opponent does not fall out of this. This happened a few times when I did it in training mode on Mario.
What I am now going to show are some of the harder moves using butt ftilt:
FTHC strings:
Although not completely true in this example, we have managed to successfully link together 3 butt ftilts, which dragged the opponent from one side of the stage to another (similar to Sheik’s fairs). These strings are pretty hard to do, because the timing of getting the pivot instead of the dash dance on the spot is quite close to each other. If the opponent misses the tech of the first ftilt, you can then string more FTHC to drag them across the stage. Their window to tech is pretty small, and missing it guarantees your 2nd FTHC. You can also get kill confirms from doing this.
We also found out that the FTHC strings are easier to true combo if you use your angled ftilts to your advantage. An example will be linked to below
FTHC> FTHC> usmash:
This is a good kill confirm to do that is less risky to use than nair>usmash and dair> usmash, because you do not get put in as much lag as the other moves. You can get away with a few things with FTHC (as stated in the 0% FTHC mixup), and if you hit the opponent, you can confirm into this. What makes this even better is that you don’t even need to string another FTHC in order for this to be true (I was just making sure that Mario was at kill % for the usmash, but it is good that we know ^.^)
You can also use your angled ftilts to make this combo a bit more guaranteed, because DI could screw this up.
EXAMPLE
FTHC> RAR bair:
This is one of the hardest ones to pull off, because not only do you need to be near frame perfect, but the opponents DI can either make this combo impossible to execute, or much easier to do. If they DI in, it sends them at a higher angle for you to get the bair. On the other hand, if they DI away, they will be too far away to get it. Also, the reason why you have to be near frame perfect is because of the angle in which they get launched. Once they get launched, they start drifting diagonally downwards, which makes it harder to get the RAR bair. However, if executed right, it will kill. It usually works at about 120% to 135% (I’ll need to do more testing, and you guys can help with that)
FTHC>SH fair> usmash:
This is another hard kill confirm to pull off, because you have to time when to jump and do the SH fair. There is also the fact that the opponent can tech the FF fair, so it isn’t a guaranteed kill. However, it makes it easier for people to get the usmash without much tech skill needed. Timing is still very important, though. One problem I have with this combo is that I could only get Mario with the tip of Fox’s fair, which means that if Mario DI’d away, it would possibly mean that Mario could escape the combo. On the other hand, DI’ing in would only make this combo a lot easier to do.
FTHC> footstool> sourspot nair> usmash:
This is a combo that is confirmed if you get the footstool, but that is where the problem lies. Getting the footstool at that low of an angle is pretty hard for some Foxes to execute, and it got harder trying to get it at higher percents than that due to the fact that the opponent flew further away, and it probably was not true that those percents. However, this combo is a bonus if you guys want to be flashy
.Well, that’s everything we could find with FTHC. We would be more than happy to know what you guys can come up with as well. Maybe you can find something that we didn’t even know was possible! Alternatively, you can fill in some holes that we are still trying to fill ourselves, which is the percent ranges in which some of these combos are true, and how DI will affect the combo. I know this one was a long one, but thanks for reading
. Please reply here if you got any questions or that you have found out about anything elseThe Fox discord chat does a lot of labbing, and we have discovered a lot more stuff than this one. We decided to post this one here, because it is a LOT bigger than the other ones that we have done before. If you want to come and join the Fox discord, please follow this link and it will give you instructions on how to join us ^.^
EDIT: Changed name of tech to FTHC because butt ftilt was too ****ing cringe and I hate 2016 me
- 2017 S-Critical
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