Q&A -Fox Advice/Questions Topic-

[Spaghetti Sammy]

How to Fox:
1. Get the opponent off the stage
2. Press down B on them
3. Watch out for the opponent's thrown controller because shine has LIKE 3 MILLION YEARS OF HITSUN AND SENDS YOU 8 THOUSAND MILES UNDER BATTLEFIELD'S JANKY ASS LEDGES AND ITS NOT LIKE DOC'S RECOVERY IS BAD ON ITS OWN
4. Consider the opponent Doctor Mario a filthy 4-Chan memelord whenever he capes your recovery or edgehogs you. Because those are just easy ways to get a KO, pressing one button to send the enemy to the bottom blastline is gimmicky Smash 4 levels of play. Fox is a far more sophisticated and skill based character then that.
5. Congrats you're now my friend Ryan
6. Prepare to be strangled with a GameCube controller in your sleep for suggesting one of Fox's moves is kinda easy to land and is kinda cheep

But being real here. In the Doc v Fox or Fox v Mario matchup, mix up your recovery so it isn't easy for your opponent to read your recovery and Shroom you away fro the ledge

 

[Snorlaxes]

Is it easier to SDI out of Fox's uair with certain characters? I rarely get the SDI when I'm actually playing Fox, but I almost always do when I play Young Link and do often when playing Marth or Sheik.

I'd guess it's a placebo sort of thing, or those characters get killed by up-throw > up-air more often than Fox does so you're more aware of it when playing those characters.

Does weight affect SDI/ASDI? Kadano's video doesn't mention it at all so I'm assuming not. If anything, I could see aerial drift speed helping with post-SDI input movement, but that's independent of weight.

How to Fox:
*snip*

Uhh... thanks for that.

 

[Deep2]

All of those characters are heavier than Fox and Marth and Sheik are bigger and YL is the same size...

I was thinking about Puff at the moment, sorry. It is harder to SDI with Shiek and Marth than with Fox though.

 

[MadeYouLook]

Ive been practicing shine turnaround wavedash to grab ledge

is Run in shine opponent off ledge turnaround wave land to grab ledge then edgeguard a thing ?

Usually I just shine them then jump offstage to try to get another shine but maybe the turnaround grab ledge version would be safer ?

 

[BO/\K]

Ive been practicing shine turnaround wavedash to grab ledge

is Run in shine opponent off ledge turnaround wave land to grab ledge then edgeguard a thing ?

Usually I just shine them then jump offstage to try to get another shine but maybe the turnaround grab ledge version would be safer ?

it's not really a thing, for a few reasons:
1) You can't really hit confirm the running shine on reaction. So odds are you're going to commit yourself by automatically doing running shine -> turnaround WD ledgehog. If you miss you've put yourself in a bad position. That said I haven't tried this so I can't say from experience if you can hit confirm it.
2) The spacing would have to be pretty specific. Shine them way too far from the ledge and it's not an option because they're onstage. Shine them slightly too far and they get ledge. So it'd have to be when they're in the corner. And if they're cornered, you probably don't want to running shine anyways. Running shine to me is something to do in neutral. If I have someone in the corner I want to DD aggressively or go for pressure since cornered opponents are very likely to shield and have no place to WD back to to avoid my approach.

 

[MadeYouLook]

downsides to drill grab in the ditto? seems so good ? I dont remember what the weakness is. Is it just SDI able?

 

[CeLL]

downsides to drill grab in the ditto? seems so good ? I dont remember what the weakness is. Is it just SDI able?

They can shine you sometimes.

 

[Catchy]

How do you guys practice shining fox up b?

 

[advanced]

Hey guys. First off to everyone in this thread: thank you for the wealth of knoweldge that yall drop on a daily basis, been following this thread for a while.

My tag is ZEN | ADVANCED, hailing from the Tristate region (NY/PA/NJ).
The start of my competitive career in my opinion was when I first learned to wavedash and L cancel in June 2014 and attended my first tournament very shortly after (Yes I am a documentary kid, and have been playing fox since the day I learned to wavedash lol).
For like 10-11 months I got beat up over and over again because I couldn't use fox at all. The character is hard as **** lol but like in the past 3 weeks I finally got most of the tech down and have been placing very well at all tristate locals (top 8 usually, behind DJ nintendo, moon, G$, Smuckers etc). My only notable win is Beerman AKA Lambchops.
I went to this great ~60 man local called Max's Celler last Sunday and also yesterday, got 9th last time and 7th yesterday.
Here is a pools match against a player called THX (he got 27th at Zenith 2014, so he's pretty good). I was 3rd seed in the pool of 7, he was 2nd seed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srJ_pBGk6u0

Looking for critiques and comments! Yes besides the eternal "improve your tech skill" advice. I AM WORKING ON IT LOL. Also I know about unsafe aerials from far away. They are easily grabbed.

 

[Snorlaxes]

How do you guys practice shining fox up b?

Granted, I'm not good at it in practice, but here's what I can offer:

Get familiar with the frames where firefox's hitbox is gone. These begin after the second "pulse" until the firefox "launches"

Armada says that most of his execution comes down to fastfalling at the right timing.

Other than that, I'd just study Armada videos and get a CPU Fox offstage and work on only edgeguarding by shining his firefox.

 

[Mikkelmann]

What's a good way to approach Jigglypuff? I try to mix up falling up airs and late nairs but i'm sure if these are good can somebody tell me if these are good/give advice on what to do?

 

[Sempai]

Can u guys go back to just side B-ing to the ledge everytime?
It would rlly help me out, thx a lot

 

[CeLL]

What made it possible for that shine grab to land?

 

[Pr0fessor Flash]

What made it possible for that shine grab to land?

It worked because Marth is a character that doesn't fall down once you hit him with Shine, and you're using you're momentum to get the grab after the shine. It works on Waveshineable Characters and characters that don't fall from Shine.

 

[Legendre]

Do Pro's ever usmash using the c-stick? I remember hearing something about the usmash being stronger if you just use A + Up on the control stick, but I was wondering which one I should practice using.

 

[CeLL]

Do Pro's ever usmash using the c-stick? I remember hearing something about the usmash being stronger if you just use A + Up on the control stick, but I was wondering which one I should practice using.

Yes they do and it's exactly the same either way. You can do whichever way you feel more comfortable doing.

 

[Legendre]

Thanks! On a different note, will practicing tech skill on my computer with 20xx and a GC adapter mess it up, or will I be able to adjust it to a CRT setup later on?

 

[Snorlaxes]

Thanks! On a different note, will practicing tech skill on my computer with 20xx and a GC adapter mess it up, or will I be able to adjust it to a CRT setup later on?

It's better than not practicing at all, but you'll notice a pretty big difference on a CRT. Just get a legit set-up, the hours you invest in practicing will go lots, lots further.

 

[CeLL]

It's better than not practicing at all, but you'll notice a pretty big difference on a CRT. Just get a legit set-up, the hours you invest in practicing will go lots, lots further.

Actually depending on your monitor and adapter it can be horribly laggy or as little as 0 lag (Wii U adapter and CRT monitor). Though even some LCD monitors have as low as like 3ms of input lag, which is essentially trivial due to the polling rate of the controllers, since most of the time an input done 3ms before it should have (as would result from being perfect to the millisecond on a setup with 3ms of lag) is still going to be registered the same by the game. And this is only talking about frame perfect visual cues. The worst effect 3ms of lag could have is making a reaction to something you see or hear come one frame later, and even that is not as likely as doing it on the same frame as 0 lag. Additionally, due to the nature of human reaction time, it's unlikely that adding 3ms to your reaction time (which is what having 3ms of lag does, in effect) would have a noticeable difference. If your reaction time is 200ms (which is really fast), that doesn't mean you're going to react to something exactly 200ms after you see it. Sometimes you'll be faster, sometimes slower. So Instead of averaging between like 180ms and 220ms (wow fast), it'd be 183ms and 223ms. This affects things that you're tracking with your eyes (like your character moving towards the ledge or Falco's laser moving towards you) more than it does actual reactions. Like tech chasing a Fox as Sheik with dthrow, it's very unlikely that you're going to react on the exact frame every time (and don't need to) so reacting a frame later 20% of the time is not going to affect you. And even with things that it truly does affect, the difference you're talking about is a frame at most (generally 0 frames though with just 3ms). Most people have better ways to improve than getting an extra frame of invincibility off a ledgedash. Overall it's just so trivial. Additionally, anything that's based around muscle memory like wavedashing, waveshining, or ledgedashing (the actual input, starting the input by releasing the ledge is visual and therefore "affected" by the lag) are 100% the same regardless of lag, even 10 minutes of lag compared to 0ms. It's also really easy to adjust from a LOT of lag to no lag if you get used to it, but that's another story that doesn't really belong here.

So the real answer then is that if you have a Wii U adapter with a CRT monitor, there's no difference (Dolphin's emulation is perfect, isn't it even how Kadano does research?). If you have the laggy 2-port Mayflash adapter and a laggy monitor, you'll mess up visual timings, but do muscle memory-based techs like waveshining fine. If you have a Wii U adapter and a decent monitor, it will be slightly different on visual timings, though only ever like one frame off. You can never go wrong with an actual setup though, which is probably the best option.

 

[Snorlaxes]

*snip*

Outside of the lag, I've also found that it's tough to get the controller calibration to match (or be very similar to) how the Gamecube reads it. For example, on a real set-up, it feels like I need to be more "forceful" on the controller when dash dancing. However, there might be calibration settings on Dolphin that would remedy this that I'm unaware of.

 

[CeLL]

Outside of the lag, I've also found that it's tough to get the controller calibration to match (or be very similar to) how the Gamecube reads it. For example, on a real set-up, it feels like I need to be more "forceful" on the controller when dash dancing. However, there might be calibration settings on Dolphin that would remedy this that I'm unaware of.

That's the classic mistake of leaving the radius at 70 on the sticks, 100 is correct. But with a Wii U adapter you don't have to set it up, it does it automatically and is identical to console. And the Mayflash Wii U adapter is only like $15, pretty cheap.

 

[Astram]

I haven't posted in a while but I recently got Dolphin working on my PC so I've been working with 20XX on general Fox things so I have a few q's.

1.) Fundamentals vs. tech skill. What are some Fox fundamentals and tech skill Foxes should know / work on and which should new Fox players work on first?

2.) In neutral, is it recommended to SHL or SHDL? I can usually pull of three if I'm fast enough but I'm not too perfect at them; though I understand most experienced Fox players tend to frown upon new Foxes that SOLELY want to learn this technique.

3.) I just watched a video on multishines and how to do it so I went into training mode to try it out, so I can do 2-7 multishines albeit at 1/4 speed. Should I stick to 1/4 speed and gradually go up or just practice at 1x speed?

4.) What are some options Fox has OoS, out of Shines, and out of waveshines? OoS I tend to jump but I know there's wavedash, USmash, and grab and waveshines I've seen shines, USmash, and DSmash.

5.) More so a technology question since I'm running Melee on Dolphin now as opposed to the traditional CRT and GCN. My processor's an AMD Athlon X4 760K QuadCore Processor @ 3.80GHz with 8GB of RAM and AMD R7 Radeon 200 series video card on an ASUS VS228 monitor, is that good enough to replace a traditional setup? Is Netplay a good entry point for beginners?

 

[EpixAura]

Question about running shine. Do I have to wait for the 2 frames of crouch before shining or can I just press DownB while running? I've been messing around with it but couldn't quite figure it out.

Also, what's the most effective way to SHDL? I have a few friends who use tap jump whenever they want to SHDL, but I can't shorthop with the analog stick to save my life and was wondering if there's a better way. I've been trying sliding my thumb from Y->B, but as someone who uses X to jump, I'm not sure if that's easier than using the stick.

 

[DefyPls]

Question about running shine. Do I have to wait for the 2 frames of crouch before shining or can I just press DownB while running? I've been messing around with it but couldn't quite figure it out.

Also, what's the most effective way to SHDL? I have a few friends who use tap jump whenever they want to SHDL, but I can't shorthop with the analog stick to save my life and was wondering if there's a better way. I've been trying sliding my thumb from Y->B, but as someone who uses X to jump, I'm not sure if that's easier than using the stick.

for running shine you're going to want to wait the 2 frames to enter the crouch animation, it takes a little bit of getting used to, but it is totally worth it, as for SHDL, i don't recommend using the analog stick because you can't drift and mainly can only SHDL in place. i do, however, recommend the "Y" to "B" method, it's a bit tricky at first, but once you get it grinded into muscle memory it's a piece of cake, plus you can drift, and it's easier to dash dance around than using the control stick for SHDL.

 

[tauKhan]

downsides to drill grab in the ditto? seems so good ? I dont remember what the weakness is. Is it just SDI able?

It's just harder to do. Drill grab is a 2 frame window vs frame perfect shine and 3 frame window vs frame perfect spot dodge (which can be buffered for 4 frames with control stick. Using c-stick + down + shield is slower). It's tricky to land directly after one of the drill hits when multihitting, which makes it harder to be perfect at. Turning also takes 1 frame, so drill turn grab is very tight window. Grab is also vulnerable to sdi through you when drilling.

I'm not sure whether or not drill grab is the way to go in tournament setting. For example, Leffen has got punished quite a bit from drill grab attempts at recent sets. On the other hand, the drill grab is a much stronger guaranteed punish when you do land it. However you still end up in a strong position if you shine and can often get a tech chase / jab reset. You also pretty much never get punished for drill shine.

Question about running shine. Do I have to wait for the 2 frames of crouch before shining or can I just press DownB while running? I've been messing around with it but couldn't quite figure it out.

You can indeed shine directly out of run. However it's bit tricky to do, since you can't shine during RunBrake which happens when you let go of forward input, so when inputting direction for shine for example. So you can end up missing the shine entirely. Run -> RunBrake -> crouch -> shine is easier because you can do the shine on any frame of the crouch. But if you aim to do quick running shines, you still could accidentally hit the b during RunBrake.

 

[Chainz]

Been struggling against my rival's Luigi for a while now. Can anyone tell me something about that matchup?

I usually try to play a bit more safe/approach with nairs. Getting good results with that tactic. But still having trouble.

 

[20XXlivingroom]

He can perform two aerials on most jumps. This being said his aerial mobility is awful though. He's Just a green square throwing out attacks in a limited range. He has to wavedash/waveland if he wants to get anything done.
If he spams too much nair, just punish it with upsmash but be sure not to do it too closely.
You can't follow up when you shine him since he slides so far. In this situation I just shine > reposition myself while hes sliding, dash dance and wait for the aerial spam or spotdodge then punish it, or laser if I'm not in a good position to hit him without trading.
When you throw him, most of the time he can nair his way out of a punish. Just wait or dash dance + laser then go in.
His down b travels pretty far, be weary as it moves faster then you would expect Luigi to.
When he grabs you at low percent tech so that you don't go behind him. That's juggle city/ chain grab time on a flat stage.
He doesn't struggle to edgeguard fox, so I would recommend going over him when recovering if possible. That limits his killing moves to Fair only. If you fall short be prepared for a Dair
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJDW-ebnjGk

Luigis Upsmash and Uptilt both come from behind his head. Uptilt practically comes out of the ground (right above his back foot). Note for upsmash: Luigis head is invincible during frames 9,10, and 11 when the hitbox is active. So if he can hit you with it, you cant aim for his head.

Redd does the right setups to shinespike a few times here, but Abate has powerful RNG lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDkc5BgeJmY

 

[Kyu Puff]

Is shine -> wd -> wd -> shine a true combo on Marth/Peach?

 

[20XXlivingroom]

The second wavedash seems like it would take too many frames.

 

[Kyu Puff]

The second wavedash seems like it would take too many frames.

According to this spreadsheet I'm using, shine gives you 31 frames of hitstun which seems like it would be enough (something like 2 frames before you can jump cancel + 26 for the two wavedashes + 1 for shine = 29)... And timing two wavedashes perfectly seems like it might be easier than doing a dash jump-cancelled shine in terms of feasability for the infinite.

 

[CeLL]

According to this spreadsheet I'm using, shine gives you 31 frames of hitstun which seems like it would be enough (something like 2 frames before you can jump cancel + 26 for the two wavedashes + 1 for shine = 29)... And timing two wavedashes perfectly seems like it might be easier than doing a dash jump-cancelled shine in terms of feasability for the infinite.

A perfect waveshine is 16 frames, so doing two is 32 frames. That's more than the amount of hitstun you mentioned, though I don't know that's accurate.

 

[Kyu Puff]

A perfect waveshine is 16 frames, so doing two is 32 frames. That's more than the amount of hitstun you mentioned, though I don't know that's accurate.

You wouldn't need to shine in between the two wavedashes though...

 

[CeLL]

You wouldn't need to shine in between the two wavedashes though...

Oh I'm surprised, I just tried it and it is actually a combo on Marth. At least with a fresh shine, though I don't think the 1% or 2% would make a difference on the hitstun, at least not more than a frame.

 

[Kyu Puff]

Oh I'm surprised, I just tried it and it is actually a combo on Marth. At least with a fresh shine, though I don't think the 1% or 2% would make a difference on the hitstun, at least not more than a frame.

As far as I know, shine hitstun doesn't decrease with staling because it's a fixed knockback move (the only way hitstun decreases is if it's crouch canceled).

Also, I've seen people say that shine -> side+B isn't a true combo, but it seems like based on this frame data it should be.

I think in general, people tend to go for the stuff that's easy to execute, but shine gives you a huge frame advantage so it would be interesting to explore just how heavily it can be abused.

 

[20XXlivingroom]

I was able to Shine > wavedash > shine and get 2 Consecutive hits. I got close with two WD but never consecutive hits. I should probably just 20XX this.

 

[Chainz]

Would you guys even recommend pulling wave shines on Marths, lol. I mean, If your in a position to where you can pull it off. Go for it by all means y'know, but wouldn't that be a bit risky?

 

[Soupeschleg]

As far as I know, shine hitstun doesn't decrease with staling because it's a fixed knockback move (the only way hitstun decreases is if it's crouch canceled).

Also, I've seen people say that shine -> side+B isn't a true combo, but it seems like based on this frame data it should be.

I think in general, people tend to go for the stuff that's easy to execute, but shine gives you a huge frame advantage so it would be interesting to explore just how heavily it can be abused.

shine-sideb is real. Can kill Luigi at certain percents with shine - jump + immediate sideb - up air

 

[CeLL]

I was able to Shine > wavedash > shine and get 2 Consecutive hits. I got close with two WD but never consecutive hits. I should probably just 20XX this.

I did it with frame advance, and I was looking at the action state of Marth, not the combo counter.
For the record I'm not endorsing doing this in matches, nor am I someone from whom anyone should really take advice like that.

 

[Diana's Safe Landing]

What made it possible for that shine grab to land?

Momentum from the run, good spacing, fast execution.

 

[Rachman]

How many frames are bair/nair strong for? Like how many actives frames before you get the weak hit?