Some questions I have regarding fox

[Dvg]

I've been playing fox for a few months now and theres a few things I can't really figure out so would be cool if someone could help me out.


- How do you fair->footstool someone reliably? I've been trying it lots and while it works often it also just as often does not work, while i have heard it's supposed to be guaranteed(maybe it's not?). When it goes wrong people either seem to fall out of my fair prematurely and I don't really know why, or everything looks like it's working as expected, but then I end up getting footstooled myself even tho I am spamming jump. Also are there any good set ups for it? I usually just try to catch people's recovery with it.

- How do I kill as fox? This is literally the biggest problem I have with fox. In the last tournament I went to I was able to keep the game even against the people who beat me, until they got to kill%, at which point I really don't know what I'm supposed to do and just end up getting 3stocked. I know a few kill confirms but they almost never work because as soon as people get around kill% they just shield 24/7. I can grab them for that which I do but I honestly don't even know I should be doing that because foxes grabs are pretty much useless around kill% and all the extra added damage does is make my kill confirms harder to land.

- How do I punish airdodges? This is mainly a problem against my friend who plays Lucas, he will basicly spam airdodge all the time when he's being combo'd, but i really don't know how to punish it. I will jump in the air, he will airdodge, but because of fox's low air mobility he will be way out of my range either way, and i just end up getting punished myself because of it.

- This is probably a silly question but is the timing to short hop smaller while dashing? I've gotten somewhat okay at lagless short hop upairs and can basicly spam it in training without messing up. But as soon as I start dashing and trying to do the short hop i end up fullhopping about 95% of the time. I'm inputting the dash with my other hand, so I don't see how there would be any difference and it's pretty frustrating missing them all the time.

 

[seoh]

1. fair footstool is true. the basic gist is you need to have them low enough, and fast fall before the 4th hit (generally, meaning sometimes you need to fast fall earlier on hit 2 or 3). if you'd like to practice it, I just did a drill write up:

FF air spike is really easy. pick a cpu (omega stage) and then run at them, forward throw and do the spike. instantly reset after and resume. you should practice it against the entire cast, as its actually kind of variable in my experience. some characters have fast up specials, so if you don't get close enough, I've seen them get out. also some times you can get away with 2 hits, sometimes you need 4. also, a lot of characters live, like pit, 3d, olimar, villager etc.

for ease, try starting with DK.

2. use your kill set ups, theres a ton of them. http://smashboards.com/threads/kill-setups.436699/ has a lot of them and is a recent thread. they have a lot of variability in percent, weight, rage etc etc.

most of us have the shield problem. every top fox will say use grabs to get stage advantage (forward and back throw). get them off stage and abuse fox's top tier ledge guard game using utilt, dtilt, down smash, rising nair, ledge trump and others to pressure your opponent. utilt can 2 frame the entire cast at the ledge and covers several ledge options. nair covers jump and some other ledge options. his pummel is very strong as well, use that to get extra percent out of your stage pressure. this just takes practice, you'll get there.

alternatively you can also use upthrow to get them in the air, and try for juggles or mind games to get an uair. at worst you get stage back.

thirdly, run up and up b them, it breaks their shield if they hold and they can die at 150%. its not the best option but its not something anyone expects.

fourthly, be a god like Larry and run around and have sick reads for when they drop shield and kill confirm them with dair/nair.

3. takes some practice but once their air dodge they are useless. if they are high in the air, ff and uair them again. once you get better, use the first jump, delay, then DJ uair them after they airdodge or use an aerial. this will make them think about their air dodge.

if they are low, do the vortex. sh ac uair them, they air dodge then you utilt and then sh ac uair. it goes on forever. if they dont air dodge, you land that uair plus a guaranteed follow up full hop uair (sometimes into another uair that can kill depending on stage/platforms). this is the best frame trap in the game. it does high damage, is a repeated 50/50 that leads into itself.

better movement and understanding of ac and timing will improve this. I had all of your problems before and now suffer from them way less.

4. not sure. just do some movement practice. literally just dash pivot sh back and forth over and over. simple movement practice, imo, is a great practice for all levels. helps you get loose, be smooth and fast.

 

[Dvg]

Thank you for your comment, most of it is very helpful but I don't quite understand some things:

what do you mean by ''utilt can 2frame the entire cast''?
why would i have to pivot sh for dashing sh upairs?

Also maybe I didn't explain my problem with airdodging very well. I don't mean when they airdodge close to the ground, i know how to punish landing airdodges pretty well but the problem is when they airdodge without touching the ground. Because I need to jump in order to bait an airdodge in the first place, I don't know how to follow up at all. Landing and going for another upair is almost always too slow.(I guess I should be timing it better) And I don't really know what you mean by double jump upairing them after an airdodge, because by the time airdodge is over almost the entire cast will be too far away to follow up with any move let stand upair simply because their air speed is much higher.

 

[seoh]

a 2 frame is when you catch the 2 frames of vulnerability as someone snaps the ledge. they get invulnerability, but after 2 frames. you can utilt as they get very close to the ledge and pop them up before they get invulnerability. its very hard to do consistently. it also is good vs some characters that often pop above the ledge like rosa and falcon.

you simply put your back at the ledge and utilt as they get really close. you can roll into the ledge to speed this up

as for the pivot, i just recommended it because its a good idea to never dash and turn around so you go into a laggy skid. by practicing jumping you get used to dash pivot bair, which is an incredibly good tool for lots of occasions (d throw follow up, covering some ledge options when you're farther away, or simply empty hop mix ups to approaches etc). you don't need to do that to practice dashing sh, it just might be helpful to work on more than one thing.

as for the air dodge bit, the situation is very important. so I'll create one. lets say you are going for the dash attack into up air 50/50 at kill percents. its a 50/50 because either they air dodge or don't. in the scenario where you think they are air dodge happy, you do a single full hop, they air dodge, you then DJ while still in the air and up air them, killing them. now they should be conditioned to not air dodge immediately. the next time you can go for a normal uair, if you read they won't air dodge in time, or you can do some crazy stuff like fire fox.

other notes:

1. you dont have to jump to get options. sure if you guys have good reads, you'll have to do a lot more to get certain reactions, but often players will know that fox will go for x, so they respond to it regardless if you are fully committed it or not.

2. when I said landing, i was mostly thinking of stages with platforms. bf, dream land, t&c will often be useful in this air dodge bait because you can afford to fast fall and land, allowing you to chase farther, without much drop time. with these things you can even empty dj into them, then ff and shop uair at times because you land on a platform and not the stage. sometimes these platforms will even let you vortex them with utilt. additionally if you land a SH ac uair while they are on a platform at mid percent, you can follow up with FH uair that ac on the platform they were on, which 50/50s into another uair, which can easily be AC on the top platform into a uair air dodge punish if you are at good spacing (usually only works on bf/dland/t&c).

3. there are also uair confirms where you don't have to worry about air dodge. illusion > uair is a confirm at certain percents and spacing (important). not that you should do this in neutral, its just that you sometimes get it when you side b to recover stage control from the ledge. tipper jab2 at high percent is true to uair. tipper dtilt works at normal kill percents. two hit boxes of utilt combo into uair (notably the hitbox where you are facing them). I'm sure im forgetting something.

4. dont be afraid to just go up and make them air dodge. lets say you pop them up with utilt at a high percent or some other move. even if you'd never get high enough to kill them, or they will have ample time to air dodge, its still okay to go and throw out the uair. it makes them think and usually will make them go to the edge, which is where fox can put on mad pressure at all percents because of how good he is there. who knows, if they come down too close to center, you might be able to land from a platform and get an aerial punish on their originally "safe" air dodge


5. in the situation i made, if they use a counter often, just dj into them, they counter then ff uair and they die

 

[Dvg]

Alright thank you for the information, very useful especially the 2frame ledge uptilt thing as I suck at covering ledge options. I can already do pivot sh's very consistently, it's literally only when I try to do a dashing lagless upair that I can't sh if my life depended on me. Very frustrating, but I'll just keep practicing it.

 

[seoh]

could be how you input jump, do you have tap jump on or off?

 

[Dvg]

I have tap jump off. The added difficulty in short hopping upairs is because rather than tapping Y to sh, i slide my thumb over the edge of it, making it easier to time hitting A

 

[seoh]

ah thats why. I recommend clawing up airs so you can double stick. tilt stick is the best for fox for a number of reasons, mainly being because it allows you to retain aerial control when using both sticks. combined with this, you can either claw your sh uair or set a shoulder button, or tap jump as some people do. its called "double sticking"

 

[Dvg]

How would putting C to tilts help aerial control at all? I basicly exclusively use C-stick for smash attacks. I don't have a clue how you would be able to hit c stick fast enough to get a lagless sh upair honestly, and I could just leave it on smash for that?

I already have L set to jump but only for jumpcancelling. Learning how to short hop with that button seems extremely unpractical in the first place.

 

[seoh]

To answer your question, we kind of have to dive into control schemes and opinions. A lot of people will tell you to use what you prefer etc, but I'm not in that group. I strongly feel, for Fox, that the most optimal scheme is tilt stick, tap jump off, and if you aren't doing these things, it is detrimental. Here is my argument.

In Smash 4 you can charge smash attacks with smash stick. You hold your control stick in the same direction you move the c stick at the same time, and it will charge. so for instance, if you hold up while moving the c stick up, you will charge an up smash. that is cool and all, but there is a HUGE problem with it. This makes the game think any time you are using both sticks, you are trying to charge a smash attack. So when you are in the air, you are not able to move around in the air while inputting an aerial with the c stick. This means you can not perfectly place all of your aerials unless you input them for exactly 1 frame, otherwise you will be stuck flying with the momentum and direction you had while inputting the aerial with c stick. For any character this is problematic, for fox it is huge. Your aerials are so important for combos and killing.

I recommend watching this video before reading on, it covers the pros and cons of control set ups, but I've linked you to the relevant part. He probably explains the aerial momentum thing better, hand has examples.

Everything MSC says is relevant to every character, but for Fox these things are huge, except for c bouncing. But lets simplify things and look at move sets. If we look at Fox's smash attacks, we see both ends of the spectrum. His up smash is incredible: a good hit box (not compared to melee though LOL), comes out frame 8 and has good knockback. His forward smash is one of the worst KB wise in the game, but has a little less end lag. His down smash is decent, but hard to use outside of some specific cases. When we look at his tilts, we see a whole different story. His forward tilt comes out fast, is okay on shield, has decent damage. It has a butt hitbox that combos insanely well and makes for good mixups. His dtilt, is average speed, can 2 frame most of the cast and tipper combos into uair until very high percent. Utilt is for sure one of Fox's best moves, and is probably one of the top 3 tilts in the game. It comes out frame 3, has a variety of hit boxes for approaching, comboing, landing, ledge guarding, frame trapping, juggling, and all while being safe on shield. It leads to follow ups at all percents. It kills at 176. But by far the best part of this move is that it sends the opponent up, where fox can use his great aerials to threaten/kill or pressure an opponent to the corner.

So I've made it fairly obvious, but Fox's tilt kit is one of the best in the game (perhaps the best), while his smashes are good, but not as good. So would you like easier tilts, or easier smashes might be a good question, a better one is what does Fox ask for? He asks for tilt stick when I look at it. For his utilt alone. A move that good by itself while also being that versatile is screaming to be spammed.

All of this gets more magnified when you learn to perfect pivot, because pp utilt is insane. It extends combos, adds a crazy safe approach option from a long distance to extend your space where you can be safe and whiff/punish.

A concern you may have now, or in the future is how to jc usmash for your kill confirms. I recommend using z inputs, as they cannot be charged. a manual input (as you would be forced to do with tilt stick) using a may lead to imperfect inputs resulting in a few frames of charging usmash. I input dashing jcus with y+z while flicking up.

Sorry for the long response, my professors always told me to try and be more concise, but I suck at it.

edit: I forgot to explain claw. here is a picture. Relative info is that I use my right pointer for z, right middle for r. I have a normal grip but switch to claw often, for sh uair, rar bair amongst others. This will allow you to easily buffer your uair during jump squat, while using your left hand to land it precisely, for great results in sh uair.

edit2: earlier we talked about double sticking, but here is a video about it that explains better

 

[Dvg]

I've been trying out tilt stick while using claw and it's very obviously better I agree with you. It's still pretty awkward and I havnt figured out what finger I want to use to press A, but I think I can figure it out pretty quickly. It was extremely noticable playing against my friend that mainly upair combos were hitting much more often and much more easily. Learning doing smashes with A is the biggest downside at this moment, especially because it means my biggest problem(killing) seems to be even worse for now, but that should only be temporarily.

I had noticed that doing aerials with C-stick set to smash would sometimes result in wonky movement, nice to see this being resolved with tilt stick aswell.

What exactly do you mean with using Z for jumpcancels? Do you set Z to jump?

Thanks again for the advice, hoping I'm able to get comfortable enough with tilt stick to use it in tourney in 2weeks

 

[seoh]

I switch between claw and a normal grip. generally in neutral I'm in a normal grip and only claw to sh ff ac bair and when I need to uair.

Z has weird properties in all smashes. if you crouch and press z, you'll get dtilt. you can get ftilt if you dash pivot and press z (though you should get grab most of the time). I believe you can use z to jab sometimes too? Anyways, you can upsmash with z, by flicking up and pressing z. its not the easiest thing, but it is a good technique. you can use this to do jcus frame perfect (no charge) out of shield or out of dash.

The entire reason this is important is because, as you said, killing with fox isn't as easy. With no grab confirms and, we have to rely our on narrow follow up windows for nair/dair/jab2/butt tilt. Following up with a jcus is the easiest way to help with this, since you slide slightly farther (even with no charge) than a regular up smash. using Z instead of A to do the jcus means you don't charge the up smash, making it technically the most optimal.

also, if you suspect the opponent will tech in place, or away at the edge, you can do jcus with A input and charge, when they get up release and get the kill. just another thing to think about

you're welcome! hope tilt stick goes well for you. don't forget, as great as this all is, solid fundamentals are always good. raw up smash can be used to punish, dont force yourself to kill with combos if you can kill them with punishes or edge/ledge guarding.