What are Fox's options on shield at high percent?

[Justinian]

So last night I went to my first tournament, and got bodied, as I expected; it was the first time I'd ever played players considerably better than me. Something I noticed in bracket and in the friendlies I played beforehand was that if my opponent just sat in shield, none of the kill confirms that I know would work, and getting ~12% off a grab wouldn't really help me since it would just give them more rage.

So, what are my options if my opponent just holds shield at kill percent? Should I be trying to play more defensively and punish mistakes with Usmash OoS or a kill confirm, or is there something else I'm missing?

 

[-Cheeto]

I find that if you just sit back and shoot some lasers to put up some shield pressure that helps a lot. Alternatively you could try to space back airs as that makes it hard for the opponent to punish you.

 

[Hattie]

Um, welcome to competitive Fox?

Seriously though, punishing shield is easily Fox's greatest weakness, which means you have to get very creative. Cheeto is right about baiting out your opponent, to an extent. There are many characters against which it is very unsafe to laser (Captain Falcon and Sonic to name two).

The general trick is to bait your opponent into committing to an option, then punish it. Thankfully, Fox has an easy time doing this. His movement options are excellent, and has probably the most useful jump in the game besides Sheik. Dashing around and jumping is a great way to make your opponent commit to an option, by making them think you're going for the kill.

Fox has a few relatively safe things he can throw out on shield, most notably back air, which autocancels, so you can immediately follow up with an up tilt to punish a grab. His boost pivot grab also goes extremely far and is very hard to punish. If you get the grab, either throw them off stage or into the air as quickly as possible to give them less time to react. Being above Fox is very bad, so up throw is surprisingly good.

 

[Ralph Cecil]

You can bair their shield as long as they'll let you and it forces them to react with something that isn't shielding. You can walking yourself into a threatening range and just let them shield as long as they want, because they're just eating their own shield by doing so. Lastly you can just take the free grab to get them offstage and at that point they HAVE to do something to get back on stage that is vulnerable if you read it(and in some cases react to it) and that means they HAVE to give you an opportunity for a kill move. Downside at the end of the day tho is that most of these options won't guarantee you much without a read anyways and you will end up having games where you just keep tacking on damage without a kill and that means you're going to have to deal with rage as a fast falling light character, but that's part of playing Fox.

 

[BradLeeTee]

Well even though I've never applied to a match yet I know Firefox eats about 80% of a shield, the first hits doing about 40% and the final hit doing around 40% as well. U could mix up your opponent by short/full hopping then double jumping and finishing with a fire fox while their shield has slowly broken down to around 80%~ if they like to wait for u to land and punish. This could also become a almost safe on shield option as well if u were to master the auto cancelling fire fox from the ground, and ofc best part is broken shield against Fox = a whole free stock no matter the %.

 

[Justinian]

Thanks, guys. I think the reason my kills are usually getting shielded is because, looking back on a few of my matches, I wasn't mixing up my options, generally fishing pretty hard or a dair or weak nair. I know in the back of my head from watching Snow that spaced bair on shield forces my opponent to either drop shield, spotdodge or roll away, all of which are punishable, but I've never really used it in my game, which is something I need to work on, along with my mental game, which would help me with getting kills off up throw and ledge getups. I've been trying to integrate some of these tips into my play in a few sets I had today, and it's made it easier to get kills. My problem is that I usually play way too aggressively when my opponent is at kill percent, so once again, thank you all for helping me realize that and presenting alternatives I can use.

Also @ BradLeeTee I had no idea that Firefox could break shields, I'll have to try that out sometime!

 

[TDC]

I feel like the best thing to do, as people have said, is pivot Bair. If they try to shield grab, or roll away, you can generally get a punish. If nothing else you reset the neutral. I generally like to laser camp for a couple reasons though. It is typically a safe option depending on the matchup, and also it sends a message. It says "If you're going to play lame, I can too." I noticed I had the same problem as you, and I would just throw out the dumbest falling Nairs and Dairs. High percentage kills are definitely tricky to get, but if you can play the neutral well and work on mixups, you can sneak in a weak hit nair and for the most part get the follow-up. Worse comes to worst B-air isnt a bad kill move when edgeguarding or if they're high percent.

 

[pkjuicebox]

Another option you can try against shield-happy campers is utilizing U-air to get them above you, and either go for Uairs or empty SHs to bait the air-dodge near the ground and try to get a Usmash or Dsmash off of the landing lag associated with air-dodge. This helps condition the opponent as well to not always sit in shield, along with laser run n' gun as mentioned previously. I definitely have issues with being too aggressive as well when my opponent is at kill-percent; imo, playing fox aggressively helps really well at early percents when most of your combos have the highest chances of working correctly, but when you need to finish an opponent, you need to pull a complete 180 and try to hang back and capitalize off your opponent's mistakes and bait them into doing things that are unsafe. Otherwise, most of Fox's kill moves leave him vulnerable enough to be punished.

 

[luke_atyeo]

^ upthrow to get them up above you for uairs can work, but from my experience most good players know that against fox you dont try land on the stage, you go out and around, over the edge and back to the ledge, fox cant chase offstage both due to having no horizontal air speed to catch up, and no great offstage options, so most good players will just do that after an uthrow.

I've found I've had to really focus on getting good and punishing people trying to get up off the ledge, since fox can put people there very very easily. Hard thing to get good at though, still trying to iron it out.

 

[RPK]

Auto cancel bair on shield is absolutely amazing with Fox. With the new shield stun auto cancel bair on shield gives the opponent 10 frames of shieldstun while you can then walk away lagless. Maybe even turn around grab since grab is 7 frames.

 

[Bloodcross]

jab jab upb

 

[Coffee™]

Firefox in general. Favorite kill move right there.

 

[Justinian]

Sorry I've been neglecting this thread for the past few weeks. I've been pretty bogged down with school, but I've attended three more tournaments since I made the thread and tried some of these suggestions and also played around in the lab a bit. Once again, thank you all. Thanks to advice from this thread, I've found that a lot of Fox's kills should be coming from pressuring or just waiting for the opponent to make a mistake, and then punishing it, rather than trying to force it, like I was before.

^ upthrow to get them up above you for uairs can work, but from my experience most good players know that against fox you dont try land on the stage, you go out and around, over the edge and back to the ledge, fox cant chase offstage both due to having no horizontal air speed to catch up, and no great offstage options, so most good players will just do that after an uthrow.

I've found I've had to really focus on getting good and punishing people trying to get up off the ledge, since fox can put people there very very easily. Hard thing to get good at though, still trying to iron it out.

Yeah, I've found that up throw is pretty good against players that aren't as good as me. All I have to do is up throw, read (or react to, in some cases, like some heavyweights) how they land, and that's a stock. Like you said, though, good players tend to go to the ledge after they get uthrown, so that doesn't work too well against them.

As for punishing get ups, I've practiced that quite a good deal over the last two weeks. Two things I like to do are to up-B into the stage as they get up, which covers every option but jump, and to shield on the ledge, punish normal get ups and get up attacks with grabs or Usmash OoS, and then just run up Usmash on reaction to a roll.

Auto cancel bair on shield is absolutely amazing with Fox. With the new shield stun auto cancel bair on shield gives the opponent 10 frames of shieldstun while you can then walk away lagless. Maybe even turn around grab since grab is 7 frames.

Just like you and some other posters suggested, I've been trying to work spaced bairs into my game. It really is a great pressure option on shield, especially since the 1.1.1 patch. I never thought about doing it into grab though, thanks for the tip. :]

jab jab upb

...Is this really a thing?

Firefox in general. Favorite kill move right there.

I've found Firefox decent to cover ledge getups, but how could I use it as an outright kill move without the read of the century?

 

[luke_atyeo]

...up-B into the stage as they get up, which covers every option but jump...

you sure about that?
I dont think it beats getup attack, it doesn't beat the option of them dropping off the ledge and double jumping with an aerial (which can get you killed because you are super light) it doesnt beat the option of them just waiting on the ledge until your firefox flies away, and it doesnt beat roll if they time roll properly. I've watched some good foxes using it as an edgeguard, but it seems more of a once or twice off trick than an actual reliable go to option. I have a really strong ledge game, other top players in my country comment on it, I get a lot of kills of the ledge, and I dont find upB that helpful so... I dunno, keep using it but dont rely on it, keep exploring and experimenting with other options too.