Yep
He felt really good when I started playing him at first, exactly like Brawl, until I landed that first dair.His jab is "buffed" in that it has a finisher, but overall nerfed because you can no longer use the first hit of jab and then do something else (usmash, grab). No mixups. This is a common thing across the board, and part of what I feel looks like a trend of attempting to simplify the game compared to Brawl. Most characters have their Brawl bread and butters removed (Peach's turnip nerfs and fair autocancel removal, Pit's arrow turning nerfs, Fox's dair/laser nerfs, Falco/s dair/laser/throw nerfs, Wario's SH dair autocancels removal, etc).
His usmash is nerfed. Combined with VI it's not a particularly great kill move.
We already knew about the lasers, but now they're basically only useful for extreme distances.
Dair has too much landing lag, and parts if it send people up, so it can never ever combo in to anything.
Side-B's buffed, it goes right through Sheik's needles, maybe invincibility? And it doesn't go in to freefall, so you can up-B after side-B. However, there's a little bit of an animation before you can up-B, so it's not as amazing as it sounds. But it does mean that if you're barely too far away you can make it.
That's basically everything that made Fox great in Brawl :/ He had a dair that led in to a mixup on shield and in to a kill move or mixup on hit and the vertical speed to space it as a threat. He had a laser game that could force you to approach if you were, say, Metaknight. And he had very fast options that let him get kills early if you messed up or lost a guessing game after jab. And he had the shinestall to prevent him from being too obvious when he was going to come down with a speedy fastfalled aerial.
Most of these are gone, except the last one. I seriously considered playing Fox for a while in Brawl, so this is disappointing.
He's still got speed and nice hitboxes, but he has to always approach now, which gets predictable since the game has no dashdancing, and has no real threats as far as early kills and setups for them.
Fox will probably need to abuse his fast walk, like he frequently did in Brawl, which sucks for a character that feels so well designed to be able to rushdown. I think just walking is an underrated tactic people aren't doing enough in this new game.
I don't think he's a bad character, but if he was identical to Brawl except no chaingrabs he'd be top tier for sure IMO. I'm thinking mid tier with the nerfs. They're such subtle nerfs I didn't even catch them until I actually got to play Fox. Sad
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