Optimizing punishes vs Fox

[oksas]

I'm currently going through some of my videos and trying to study them, I thought I might ask for input on a few things though. specifically, I'm finding it really hard for me to properly punish Fox when I get a low-percent shine on him. I noticed at high percents I kept going for uairs after landing a shine (likely in hopes they will DI into a side b) but with good DI that won't combo, so for high percent shines I think I'm going to try weak fairs more. but anyway at low percents, you can shine fox a million times in a row but I hardly ever get a good, reliable punish off it. does anyone have any ideas/setups you use to deal with this? here's a video (with timestamp in the url) to show you exactly what I mean and showcase my lack of punish off it:

http://youtu.be/V3oAr_tGSvE?t=1m20s

(other feedback on the match is of course always welcome, I feel like my punishes and edgeguards are lacking most right now though; in theory eliminating all the stupid habits from my play like impulse fsmashes should be easy haha)

it feels much more difficult for me to combo fox properly compared to other characters because he just falls so incredibly fast that he reaches the ground before I have an opportunity to follow up. I've spent a little bit of time playing against a dummy tonight, trying to find optimal follow ups for shine on fox. one thing I discovered is that wolf's dair does not cause a knockdown on fox until 23%, so it looks like you can [shine -> wd -> shine -> wd -> shine -> jump and dair -> grab] and it will combo. if they are above 0% then you can eliminate either 1 or 2 shines accordingly to be sure that they're below 23% when you get the dair. so this seems to be one option.

another option would be using a fair, either week or strong, after a shine. it looks like [shine -> strong fair -> grab] links ok, less reliably than using dair, and weak fair doesn't look to give enough time for you to grab, so if you hit a weak fair after the grab I assume your only option really would be to shine again.

ok so let's say, starting from 0%, you get [shine -> wd -> shine -> wd -> shine -> jump and dair -> grab]. uthrow seems the obvious choice, because any other throw doesn't give you any room for a guaranteed follow-up. I'm doing all this testing by myself so it's hard to know exactly to what extent DI would affect this stuff, so keep that in mind. so let's say, best case scenario, they DI such that you can get either a guaranteed shine or utilt in before they land. in either case you're basically back where you started, but now they've got 30% damage instead of 0. it seems like maybe at this point, DI permitting of course, you can do some shine fair & repeat once or twice until you can get a side b, ending the combo with them at around ~80%. so this is acceptable, I guess, and could possibly lead to a good edgeguard setup depending on stage size etc.

so it's looking to me like using fair after a shine is the best option here. using bair seems like a pretty surefire way to end the combo, uair seems like a wildcard, and I feel like they should NOT be getting combo'd with nair if they're actually trying to smash DI out of it, same goes for blaster too. the other problem with nair, uair and blaster also seems to be that none of them will combo reliably at low percents.

any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated. combos on midweight characters seem sooo much easier as wolf.

another thing... is edgeguarding fox. unless I can edgehog for the kill, fox gets back on stage for free against me just about every time. the hitbox on firefox charging up seems big enough to stuff my bairs and uairs most of the time, so I just stopped trying to go out there. I've tried using fsmash or dsmash to get his firefox as it comes above the stage, but a lot of the time that also seems to get me hit by firefox, and then I get combo'd off it and die because of it. a backwards usmash can be really effective, but when fox is closer to the stage and has more options for how to angle himself, it seems too easy to get hit by the firefox if I don't properly read his angle and release the usmash accordingly. bair could work too I guess, but my issues with that are 1) bair stays out only for 4 frames, so it's not as effective in this situation as fox/falco's are and 2) it seems that sometimes even if I hit it, they have enough time to just side b to the ledge before I land from doing the bair and get a chance to react accordingly. perhaps I just need to get better at using the uair, as right now I end up sending them back onstage half the time. something I'm also going to start trying is using ftilt (problem with this though is that it requires precise timing, and also doesn't hit that hard) or blaster (the hitbox on the gun itself) and see how that works out.

 

[TimeMuffinPhD]

I'll comment more on this tomorrow, normally I go for waveshines across stage into d-smash into an edgeguard or grab depending on DI.

 

[BearFist]

So, shoutouts to Rat for this, but one option you can do at low percents against the spacies is to bounce them with shine two times, and then let them fall to the ground. The idea here is that if they tried to tech the first shine when they hit the ground, the window for teching won't be reset yet and they will guaranteed miss their tech. At that point you can do a jab reset in to an upsmash, which if they're at around 20% or so can get you another upsmash, and maybe even a third but you have to react to DI and where you hit with it and all. But after an upsmash you should definitely be able to get a followup at that point. At below like 20% the upsmash won't give you enough time and they will guaranteed be able to tech before you can do anything. The problems with this are pretty obvious, in that they can pick up on you doing this and either not try to tech the first shine or buffer a roll to get out of the jab reset. The nice thing is that you can mix up how many times you're gonna bounce them, (if they expect two and you do three they miss their tech) so they really can't get better than a 50% shot and mindgames come in. Also, if you feel confident that they won't get the tech you can just not jab reset and go straight for the upsmash, which will work.

Better than that, there's not a ton of options I think. Grabs are good, but honestly you're probably gonna have to tech chase some. Fsmash is really good for covering multiple tech options.

At around 60% to 80% a really really nice thing you can do if you're near the ledge and don't have much time to combo, is to shine, wavedash, downsmash. If you time it right it should hit and set up a really really good ledgeguarding situation since they hit so low, especially if they aren't expecting it and don't DI up. But in general at high percents it becomes a lot easier to combo Fox, obviously, and you can do silly things like shine -> wavedash -> uptilt -> dash attack -> flash kill. At around 70% if they DI away from some given launcher and you can hit with a dash attack, I highly advise going for that since it leads in to whatever you want.

Ledgeguarding comes down to two things in my experience. If you have time to meet him out there with a bair before firefox launches, obviously do it. If he's high, try to cover multiple options with upsmash. If he's low, downsmash or fsmash. Downsmash is better for killing but fsmash the ledge is easier to hit with since it has both hitboxes and spaces itself for you so you don't have to take your own position in to account. Ftilt isn't great and since it gives them so much time to react to it's very easy to DI up and generally doesn't knock very far or at a favorable angle for you either.

And you were right about throwing fox. Almost always upthrow unless you're at the ledge in which case sometimes you wanna just shove him offstage.

And again, sometimes you're definitely gonna have to techchase him.

Oh, and one last thing. Starting at around 25% you can get an almost guaranteed grab off of shine, which can be good if you're not confident you can get anything else out fast enough and you don't want to bounce again with shine. I think that's all I've got, but I'll think about it more and see if I can come up with anything else.

 

[Soft Serve]

@NeonApophis

 

[Gunslinger]

I'm pretty sure you could've gotten an energems combo with the shine at 1:45. Bair would've also worked. What I like to do, to mixup my options instead of the jab reset after two shines, is to just fmsmash them and get them off stage. Generally they're not expecting it. And many Fox's like to panic double jump illusion, which laser just eats up. Then they're forced to firefox and you can ledgehop bair/dair. Fair is definitely a good option after shines, but you really have to know the hitboxes to get the sweet/sourspot if you wanna get the kill/combo respectively.