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Transitioning from Marth to Fox

Meez

The Fraudulent Fox
Joined
May 6, 2015
Messages
51
Location
Rexburg, Idaho
Okay, so as the title says, I'm interested in picking up Fox as a main, and maybe transitioning my Marth to secondary. I already have a lot of the tech for Fox down, and I can do it consistently, but I feel like there are small things I'm doing wrong that are keeping me from performing.

I don't have anyway to provide gameplay, and honestly, other than the techs, I am pretty much new to Fox, since the most practice I got was just solo practicing the techs.

What should my mentality be, what way should I approach common match-ups, and what techs should be used in what situations.

Any advice is cool, keep rocking Smashboards.
 

bearsfan092

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jun 1, 2012
Messages
402
Your DD training from Marth is going to serve you well here. Keep that part of your game. The most significant conceptual tools:

1. Your "get off me" aerials as Fox are way better. Smart utilization of bairs and drills to protect yourself is something Marth can't do nearly as well.

2. Your vertical escape is a lot better now. You can go far playing Fox horizontally like Marth, but the platform game will get you out of all sorts of sticky situations.

3. Like Marth, you should generally be moving second since you have the DD to punish most things. However Fox's ability to initiate is better once you establish stage position advantage.

4. The combos are generally not as long as Marth's.

5. Fox normally has to make less commitments than Marth if played in a certain way. Aerials are faster, shine, a superb DD game, etc.
 

Meez

The Fraudulent Fox
Joined
May 6, 2015
Messages
51
Location
Rexburg, Idaho
Excellent advice.

Is my bair okay to just sort of throw out there to keep some space between my opponents and myself, or should I focus on just DD'ing to avoid the damage?

My shine is good for getting out of combos, should I just try and throw it out as soon as I can and hope to knock them back then jump out of my shine, or would I just be better off trying to DI the combo then tech?

Is wave shine>d smash better or wave shine> up smash? I see different players do different things. Is it just a preference?

Anyways thanks again! That will help me emmensly.
 

Motley

Smash Rookie
Joined
Aug 25, 2014
Messages
4
Location
Richmond, VA
Fox is fast enough that throwing out bair to wall out your opponent can be a pretty good option in plenty of options. Practice throwing in SHFFL'd aerials in your DD so you can put them out without committing too hard. DDing and throwing out bair/nair are both fine in general, but depends on your opponent. (Marth's sword is longer than your bair but Falcon can have trouble dealing with it sometimes)

Shine is good for some specific stuff. If your opponent has disjoints, it doesn't do a lot to stop combos. That, and it's out for one frame meaning timing is tight. Shine OOS is great for breaking pressure though. There are definitely situations where you can DI in and shine, but they're not on my mind right now. Falco's down throw I guess. This is a broad question that has a lot of variables. Be careful if you throw it out and JC it in the air, because you'll get killed by about anything.

Both the options are different purposes. It's a DI mixup since most characters want to DI U-smash far away and D-smash hits at such a low angle. That's the other part of it. D-smash by the ledge hits at a really low angle that some characters have a hard time coming back from since you have a shine and they have fewer options. Concisely, it can be a mixup, but it's mostly dependent on the situation. Falcon is a pain to kill off the top, so if waveshine him near ledge, you may want to D smash to kill, but if he's low percent you would want an upsmash to start a combo. Try them out and see what happens!
 

Meez

The Fraudulent Fox
Joined
May 6, 2015
Messages
51
Location
Rexburg, Idaho
Interesting about the shine in the air. I was mainly basing that question off of something I had read about shining a fox mid combo in the ditto.

Good advice about the different smashes out of waveshine. Say I'm playing a Falco or Falcon, would a good follow up to the d-smash be a shinespike or would I be better off going for a safe edge guard like b-air?

I've seen armada, mango and leffen do some very good u-air combos and tech chases. Would it be okay to start incorporating stuff like that immediately since I'm used to juggling with Marth, or focus on fundamentals and safer options first?

Thanks a ton for your insight! I'm learning a lot.
 

Motley

Smash Rookie
Joined
Aug 25, 2014
Messages
4
Location
Richmond, VA
I'll take those down in order.

See how their trajectory is at different percents. At higher percents, you may just need to hold ledge because of low/far they go. This is also extremely situational. Try it a few times on CPU's and see what works if you want. If the Falco is forced to firebird anywhere near stage, you can ledgehop shine or bair for free. The answer to most questions like this is try it and see. It's all down to preference, percent, DI, stage. Lots of variables.

This is a sort of weird question. It depends what your overall goal is. If you want to do those combos because they look cool, do it. There's no wrong answer. You may be able to get more immediate results with guaranteed stuff though. Chaingrabs are good, but upthrow upsmash is still great. Personally, I prefer doing the simple stuff and then once you have those as solid options in your repoitoire, try new stuff so you can have more options. There's a time and place for everything.
 

Catchy

Smash Cadet
Joined
Nov 4, 2014
Messages
31
Is my bair okay to just sort of throw out there to keep some space between my opponents and myself
Look, on anyone that has a good dash dance game, bad bairs will get you dash danced grab. I just saw this happen like a dozen times in ORLY (CF) vs KELS (fox) on Saturday. Bair is FANTASTIC, and walling bairs is great on characters that commit to an approach or try to grab your shield from behind, but be very careful not to get baited into doing so as a dash dance grab can wreck you. Bair is fantastic for edge guarding, getting people the **** off you, and walling people into a corner (especially ganon and cf)

Shine OOS is great for breaking pressure though.
Careful, it's not always safe to do this under great pressure. You're looking for weak points in the opponent's pressure. If fox nairs late, shines, the nairs high, it's not safe to do it until after the high nair. If he late nairs, it's only safe to shine OOS in the space between the shine and second nair. (at least i think this is all right, please correct me if I'm wrong. I am relatively new) Buffering a roll is sometimes the least risky escape.
 

1000g2g3g4g800999

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jul 21, 2012
Messages
368
Location
Earth
Jab is kind of like your new downtilt in neutral, almost. The difference is, it's awful vs CC and usually not as safe for pressure. It's better at dealing with short hops in the neutral, however, and has better ability to lead into combos. The other dtilt replacement is shine, which has much worse range, but can actually deal with CC (if you don't get hit first) sends them away, and you have guaranteed followups out of it. You can't really AC nair jab dtilt wall, the closest thing you have for walling is bair, which means turning your back. Nair to nair to nair to nair to....... or something other than nair is a combo that works on the entire cast, be wary of CC though. Uair chains also work on everyone. You have better OoS from behind in the form of bair, and when closer shine OoS. Usmash is an OoS option with more comparable range to grab, but is less royzonable, hits one frame later (because jumpsquat), doesn't hit people shielding, triggers counters, and can hit lower limbs (unlike grab). Upthrow into juggle and cause pain still works, and has faster payoff, but can't necessarily be spaced as easily when it doesn't truely combo. Other throws -> tech-chase aren't as easy. JC grab is still flipping amazing, you have a projectile now, so work on using it. You no longer get forced to approach.
Nair is better for actually approaching, and not just hitting someone trying to approach. Try to avoid super early nairs in shorthop at part of an approach, you could have done something other than nair that would be better in those situations. Low aerials are key when the opponent's also on the ground... Mostly. Grab ledge->DJ bair at various heights (and preferably always doing so so that you can autocancel when they're recovering from higher, and to cover as many low options as possible + somewhat above the ledge when from lower) is effective in edgeguarding pretty much everyone. Against other fastfallers, fsmash and fulljump bair can deal with almost every recovery option. Dsmash at the ledge, if hit, is devestating. If they might go to the ledge, down angled ftilt and ramen noodle are relatively easy to use. SH bair from onstage when covering grabbing the ledge and slightly above it tends to work pretty well if you want to avoid a hitbox from the third jump. If you have more time, your fast fallspeed allows you to short hop, or even fulljump backwards onto the ledge to deal with recoveries like Roy's and Peach's that are sufficiently close to the ledge horizontally that they have to hit through the stage, and grab ledge before they have any chance, whilst completely avoiding the hitbox.
Still try to stay grounded, getting hit out of your jump isn't fun, and you have poor aerial acceleration and speed. You jump direction is very committal even if airtime is short. Ftilt isn't very appreciated in neutral, but it's better against characters with bad dashdances and ones with low traction. You could also just dashdance camp, but against characters with really good wavedashes, this could be more stressful. Platform camping vs. most of the cast tends to be effective, and not overly difficult. You're still amazing on FD, even if a lot of characters might chaingrab you or combo you vertically. You're still less vulnerable to the type that just pop the thrown character next to the opponent, the more horizontally based ones, and jabs as combo extenders (and similar types of weaker moves). FD is good because it makes everyone else's neutral much more linear than yours, relatively speaking, even if it makes camping harder. A lot of players or characters may try to hit you out of the Mozilla (Fire Fox) startup from farther away. If they attempt this by jumping offstage at you, illusioning at a height that avoids their move usually works. Most people won't cover a tremendous number of options this way, and you can react to attempts of this a lot of the time (or shinestall). If you side-b back or shinestall, you can turn the situation around, and potentially KO them for it. Aerials near the ledge at lower percents can mean fairly easy shinespikes off stage, and dsmash at the ledge can set up for one or easy edgehog and other option coverage. Illusioning higher can cause a lot of edgeguards using move from onstage to clank with the projectile hitbox, but illusion has a lot of lag compared to Fire Fox.
Spotdodge/getup shine can be a get out of jail card (or shine in general) but try not to rely on it too much. The opponent can space around shine with dashdances and shieldstop among other things. Of course, you can hit them out of some of this with jab (only one frame slower but more range infront) or even a smash attack can work.
In general, maintain stage control and try to play calm. Most people will be scared into panic options against Fox. Even if they aren't you can punish a lack of action pretty well too.
While a lot of people, especially in the current meta will try to crouch cancel you, they probably have worse tools for dealing with it than you, and you have pretty painful options out of it too.
Your moves have great hitboxes and have active frames now. It's much easier to challenge positions and attacks, and you're usually less likely to whiff when one or more character(s) is/are moving.
 
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