Q&A -Fox Advice/Questions Topic-

[EWC]

^ wasn't even commenting on practicality. Just pointing out that it is, in fact, pretty hard.

Man I can't wait for summer. My tech skill sucks so much when it's cold.

 

[unknown522]

Indeed

 

[FluxWolf]

^LOL real canadians

it's been warm as hell in MN this winter O_o

 

[Bones0]

2 frame window? When did Fox mains become such babies about tech skill? Sheesh.

 

[unknown522]

The weather hasn't been that bad this winter. A few bad days, but not many in Toronto. It hasn't snowed much

 

[Wenbobular]

@Erayz - watching vs Thatguy

First game
You miss a couple edgeguards, I think your default should be grabbing the ledge ASAP -> ledgehop Bair, dropping low enough to cover sweetspots - both a matter of timing and going low enough (ideally with invincibility, @ around 2:20 you don't refresh on last time so you did it way early although you could've hit it anyways, just have more confidence in your ledgehop Bair timing)

Consider chaingrabbing and getting better at ledgedashing, you get pinned on the ledge and lost a stock for it

2nd game

Don't drop thunder's combos that he gives you, upsmash is probably the easiest followup (dash attack is generally a bad idea at any % though because he can just ground tech shine)

You jump immediately after getting thrown off once, sweetspotting your double jump is a lot safer if he tries some Dairing the ledge cheese and gets around laser eating your 2nd jump forcing instant illusion (which you should be doing I think) or upb (you do it instantly with no sweetspot angles which isn't really ideal IMO)

Take more care with which way your Bair sends him - on the last stock you could've Baired him left (the near side) but you don't take the time to even though he goes straight up

Side note - shine Bair kinda sucks so unless you just wanna goof around I suggest not doing it haha

Nothing new to say about the 3rd match really <_<

Overall - since this Falco never seems to ledgedash I think you want to get closer to the ledge to put more pressure on him when he's trying to get back on stage
I think you played fine but this Falco didn't seem super great so I feel most of this was just kinda nitpicky although there's definitely room to improve in edgeguarding and punishment

Loser's finals vs Kage

First game

First stock I think you're trying to engage Ganon from above (or you just randomly double jumped I can't tell) when you should just be trying your hardest to safely get back down (if that's an accident then whatever but you're double jumping a lot and I'm not sure how safe that is if he just sweeps above him with Uair)

You don't sweetspot your double jump and get kinda ***** for it

You have the ledge vs him, hold it until he's below you - he's forced to either upb or sweetspot. Shining is will almost never hit in that situation, either wait until he up-b's / airdodges or ledgehop Bair before he gets there

First game impressions - feels like you should be more aggro, you're giving him too much time to set up when the only pressure you're doing is double jump Bair, which isn't particularly safe anyways. Against a character like Ganon you really want to be stuffing his moves before they come out because overshot Fairs will get you pretty good, especially on a stage like Yoshi's where you don't have infinite running room

2nd game - no comment <_<

3rd game - you can tell he's caught on to your double jumping when he just steals your jump with Fair first stock and you just die

Mess up an edgeguard - think you should either commit to being on stage or being on the ledge vs up-b
4:21 - awkward

At least you're not running into Kage's attempts at hitting the Firefox sweetspot from above

5:17 - definitely should've hit that edgeguard :\ wait a little longer to Bair or ledgehop shine/drill, or ledgehop upsmash

You freeze up a bit on the last 2 stocks (not that I can blame you, I did that at RoM vs Kage <_<)

Get more comfortable aggroing Ganon, and try not to doublejump so much - Fox's mobility is in his ground game, not his doublejump Bair game

Note vs Falcon and Ganon - I generally am much more comfortable Firefoxing from below, especially on FD where it's super easy to sweetspot from below. This forces them to guess which angle you're doing because the sweetspot will get past basically everything - even if something hits you, ledgetech instant side-b / ledgetech walljump shorten illusion gets you onto the ledge almost uncontested.

If you do Firefoxes above the ledge you're way more susceptible to cheapout attempts (knee @ illusion height -> Uair Firefoxes for example, although it kinda worked vs Kage's Ganon although he could've covered your high angles better than he did when he recovered before you did)

 

[unknown522]

Wenbo, you're gonna poison his mind about recovering low

Oh yeah, erayz: when you knock your opponents off the stage, a lot of times you dash away, or space yourself way too far to cover some of the important options. In general, standing near the edge or taking the ledge will help you a lot

 

[Lovage]

recovering high is da best

 

[Bones0]

Recovering high is for scrubs who can't ledge dash.

And pro Fox mains.

 

[unknown522]

Recovering high all day!

Also don't forget about illusion shortens

Edit: matches coming up in the near future

 

[Wenbobular]

I'm not saying do it all the time and I even mentioned the matchups when I like it and and gave an explanation

It's definitely (definitely) a mixup you should be using against Falcon / Ganon, they don't have the tools to cover all your options if you recover low

Falcon especially will gladly knee at illusion height -> Uair your Firefox all day if you refuse to recover low

I think space animals are best suited for covering low angles because ledgehop bair/drill goes low enough + shine, but most of the cast is actually not very well equipped to handle good sweetspots and are basically forced into hardguessing which option you take

So no, I don't think I'm poisoning his mind. Obviously you need to consider when it's good and when it's bad, but a lot of Foxes have terrible recovery because they don't recover low / are really bad at it, which eliminates a good portion of Fox's recovery options that make him so hard to edgeguard

It's worse IMO to say it's a bad option and just give no explanation, because I'm pretty sure I'm right about this and 2 esteemed Fox mains are basically saying "no don't do that it's terrible"

Side note - Marths should kill you every time when you're below the stage but the vast majority still use counter in my experience, which gives you a free recovery on half the stages ... and that's just one example

 

[unknown522]

That's where reaction comes in.

Also no. That isn't why foxes have bad recovery. A lot of them choose the wrong thing at the wrong time (basically not assessing the situation they are in, when making their choices). Also a lot of spacie players have kinda bad survival DI (not saying all of them do, but there are a lot of them).

 

[Wenbobular]

Could you elaborate

 

[unknown522]

Which part?

 

[Wenbobular]

What are you reacting to when Falcon flies off with a knee at illusion height? Are you saying you can fastfall on reaction when your goal is to recover high?

I'll cede the point on why spacies have bad recovery, but I do think most spacies suck at recovering from below and the below the ledge sweetspot is almost as good as the above the ledge sweetspot on some stages

 

[unknown522]

How can they be bad recovering low with no options to begin with?

Also If you're getting hit by a flying knee out of your illusion, it is because you got predicted. You can definitely react to falcon jumping off the stage as long as you haven't started your recovery move yet. Also other things give it away like your position in relation to his positioning, how far falcon's jump goes and other stuff like that.

If falcon sees you going low, what's gonna stop him from hogging you? Or even reverse kneeing you with ledge invincibility? Or what have you?

 

[Lovage]

It's definitely (definitely) a mixup you should be using against Falcon / Ganon, they don't have the tools to cover all your options if you recover low

Falcon especially will gladly knee at illusion height -> Uair your Firefox all day if you refuse to recover low

dodging falcon's offstage knee at illusion height is way easier than you give credit. a tiny bit of subtlety (aka not spamming jump and DI'ing towards the stage immediately out of hitstun like it's 2005) will go a huge way in dealing with falcon's insane offstage reach.

and falcon's uair is NOT an auto-edgeguard vs. high firefox. the amount of tools fox has in that situation to force falcon to mess up is ridiculous. the simple fact you were able to firefox in close range to the stage with the option to go high (to which he has to jump and aerial you) or sweetspot low (to which, depending on your precise positioning, he may have nothing he can do to you.)

Side note - Marths should kill you every time when you're below the stage but the vast majority still use counter in my experience, which gives you a free recovery on half the stages ... and that's just one example

100% agree with this, there's very little you can do below 30-40% (techning percent) to avoid dying if you recover from below a marth. same thing for falco and a lot of other top tiers. in today's metagame, if you're somehow forced to firefox below the stage below techning percent you are definitely gonna die vs. any good character.

 

[Wenbobular]

How exactly does recovering low give them no options? Making them decide between covering your sweetspot and covering other angles forces most characters into some tough decisions if he's trying to react to the rest of your options from the stage

Falcon flying out with a knee cuts off illusion and high Firefox attempts ... it basically forces you to go low or get tapped by a weak knee -> Uair

On stages that aren't Battlefield you can almost always force a Falcon on the ledge to either

Roll to cover the sweetspot and give up Firefox that goes slightly above the lip
Ledgehop knee to cover the Firefox slightly above the lip, giving up the sweetspot
Ledgehop stomp to try to cover both, which leads to a very easy tech -> illusion assuming that hits

Also if he guesses with a knee to cover illusions and high Firefoxes you get to the stage before he does

 

[unknown522]

A variety of things may happen:

- Fox may hit falcon on the way back if he misses a knee offstage

- falcon may make it back to the stage first, but he'd have to be under shooting that knee pretty hard to recover with only his double jump....but I don't think that you were talking about under-shooting. If he does get back with his jump only, then he can't grab the ledge in time due to his back being turned away from it.

- If he does jump off without under-shooting, then there's no way that he's gonna take the ledge before fox gets there still. Also, when he goes onto the stage, falcon's up-b landing is very laggy, which may cause him to get hit. Anyways, if he misses a knee then his edge guard is gone (Well, I guess he can go for some kind of SD edgeguard, but that's not worth it).

- falcon misses a knee, but fox is at a height where he can still illusion; shine spike.

- falcon hits the knee. GG stock



Sorry, I can't mass quote with the phone, but jumping out with the knee doesn't absolutely force fox to go low enough to Firefox. You can still manuveur enough especially with something that telegraphed. You must be thinking that illusions come out really slow or something......

Also things like the slight angles to barely land on the stage. Especially on a stage like battlefield can still be reverse kneed/b-air'd or whatever. If he goes directly for a sweetspot then you can roll hog anyway. If a fox barely lands on the stage, then that's the falcon's fault for not gauging and reacting to where the fox would end up. There's no magic way for fox to increase his recovery moves' distance.




@ Oscar: regarding the marth and other character edgeguarding, I think that Wenbo was saying that 'in theory you should die, but it doesn't happen often' (anyways that's what I get from reading the 'free recovery after being hit by a counter'). I may be wrong in that though

 

[Lovage]

How exactly does recovering low give them no options? Making them decide between covering your sweetspot and covering other angles forces most characters into some tough decisions if he's trying to react to the rest of your options from the stage

the only time a good fox would ever recover off-stage, medium distance from the ledge, with a firefox is because falcon already missed his chance to soft knee+uair. only a ****** fox would do a close-high firefox when falcon is freely able to **** him. the whole point of this is that a good fox would only go for that firefox if he was completely safe to do so (falcon already messed up his pre-edgeguard positioning or failed to react to your opening recovery choice,) and once he gets to that position, the odds of him living are extremely high.

 

[unknown522]

Indeed

 

[Wenbobular]

Alright, I'll think about knee vs Firefoxes some more I guess

And yes, I was talking about how most Marths seem to enjoy edgeguarding very suboptimally

 

[unknown522]

Word.

Oh yeah, nothing personal btw

Edit: I was gonna add that in my set with hax at P5 and s2j at the big house, I never got hit by a single edgeguard vs either of them. I recovered high almost exclusively. Then again, s2j never attempted to jump out though (after just re-watching the set).

Sadly, my set vs hax wasn't recorded. I think I played way better vs him than vs s2j. Except that I missed more edgeguards vs hax due to players like gmoney and scar screaming in my ear and zhu blocking half the screen during one edgeguard

 

[Lovage]

Alright, I'll think about knee vs Firefoxes some more I guess

And yes, I was talking about how most Marths seem to enjoy edgeguarding very suboptimally

it's not for without reason tbh, there's a reason few marths can do it with insane consistency like m2k can, it's actually pretty hard. this is just a case of choosing the safer option even if it isn't the best one. counter is 100% safe but doesn't have a 100% chance to kill. getting on the ledge and executing your gimp correctly has a 100% chance to kill, but has so many spots where you can mess up, so it isn't truely safe for most marths.

this happens all the time in melee, it's the same reason even top level fox players will edgeguard each other with ledgehop bair 20 times before they attempt an offstage shine vs. an active firefox. even if the shine will result in a kill 100% of the time, the chance of you missing your shine, getting hit by fire, and subsequently getting ***** is way too high to even consider most of the time. (exceptions include: being really far behind, being far ahead and at high%, and being a pimp *** clutch superpro)

 

[unknown522]

Omg, m2k pretty much never misses edgeguards with marth when he's playing well. If he misses vs me, it's because I recovered in a way where he's gonna hit me and probably combo to death.

So gay

Still, he has his bad days though

 

[Wenbobular]

Oh yeah, nothing personal btw

But of course
I was enjoying some discussion because I think it's interesting from both sides

Countering is actually super unsafe if Fox can sweetspot past it, basically leads to a free ledgehop Uair / Bair on FoD DL FD and YS (admittedly limited on DL and way harder to do for some reason on YS, probably because of the slope)

 

[Bones0]

Marth should only be countering during edgeguards if the spacie is directly underneath the ledge and far enough down they that can't angle against the wall to sweet spot. Anything else just makes me cringe.

 

[ERayz]

Thanks for the tips guys!

Actually I don't know why I was double jumping that much, seems like it's a new habit I've taken lately, and I know it's really bad. Ganon's fairs and uairs make it hard (impossible?) to approach him from above, so I don't know why I was jumping so often lol.


As fro the edgeguards and recovery, your knowledge will really help me, since I pretty much suck at it

I got a question though: I practiced ledgedashing yesterday, now I can do it 95% consistently without dying, but I would like to know what I should do right after a ledgedash? Should I shine, or grab, or up-smash? Or any of these depending on situation?

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

ledgedash utilt
ledgedash shield
ledgedash roll (either direction)
ledgedash nair :D

 

[Bones0]

I would just recommend trying to ignore the fact that you ledge dashed at all. Just look at where your opponent is and play like you were standing at the ledge when he got there. If you have enough invincibility to hit him, go for that obviously. Ledge dashing into shield/rolling can be a bad habit if you are just doing it for the sake of doing it. You'll get grabbed over and over.

 

[Silent Wolf]

Wave ledge -> jump at them shine is good if you can do it so you're still invincible when you jump at them. It catches people waiting for a wave ledge and can also knock them towards the ledge if you're lucky.

 

[omgwtfToph]

If you're feeling really consistent with your waveledges, you can fish for kills with waveledge usmash against opponents that are at kill %. Best used sparingly.

 

[robyextreme]

Wave ledge -> jump at them shine is good if you can do it so you're still invincible when you jump at them. It catches people waiting for a wave ledge and can also knock them towards the ledge if you're lucky.

Lol I'm to scared of doing this, nothings worse then air dodging while hanging on.

Also waveland from the edge into u-smash is really good, you are invincible through out the whole thing.

 

[rokimomi]

Is there any special way to practice ledgedashing or do I just have to man up and do it all day till I stop air dodging off?

 

[JPOBS]

Marth should only be countering during edgeguards if the spacie is directly underneath the ledge and far enough down they that can't angle against the wall to sweet spot. Anything else just makes me cringe.

and even then, a ledgehop dair is strictly better anyway.

but don't tell them that

edgedashing: stop being afraid to die and consistency goes up like 50%. I almost never SD anymore. Nowadays, all my f*** ups come because i try to ledgedash too fast, and instead i get the crappy ledge jump. That's just as bad vs good players tho lol

 

[omgwtfToph]

hi roby extreme

 

[PGH Carroll]

in your opinion, whats the easiest way to double shine people off the stage. because i double shine on the ground with downB>Y>downB but cant do it with downB>UP>downB. but then the FEW times ive gotten it in the air it has always been with downB>UP>downB. idk

im messing around with doing fox Fthrow on marths and double shining them oos. think it would be pretty cool.

 

[unknown522]

Thanks for the tips guys!

Actually I don't know why I was double jumping that much, seems like it's a new habit I've taken lately, and I know it's really bad. Ganon's fairs and uairs make it hard (impossible?) to approach him from above, so I don't know why I was jumping so often lol.


As fro the edgeguards and recovery, your knowledge will really help me, since I pretty much suck at it

I got a question though: I practiced ledgedashing yesterday, now I can do it 95% consistently without dying, but I would like to know what I should do right after a ledgedash? Should I shine, or grab, or up-smash? Or any of these depending on situation?

I think you answered your own question.

Sometimes doing nothing is good too. Because of they respect your ledge WD, then they will try to space around your move. It'll also mostly depend on what character you're facing as well.


@ Wenbo: yeah the sweetspot on the counter is doable. It's fortunate that most marth's don't know the most effective way to edgeguard low recoveries; ledge invincible side-b (twice I'd you want) -> x (where 'x' can be almost all of his aerial moveset).

@ Tristan: ledge jump is the same as SDing to me.

@ roki: yeah you're gonna have to man up and do it. I guess you can try practicing it on a 'carefree ledge' like Hyrule temple or something

@ nick: it's all preference

 

[Wenbobular]

Is there any special way to practice ledgedashing or do I just have to man up and do it all day till I stop air dodging off?

The most important part is jumping immediately after letting go
2nd most important part is learning the timing to let go at the fastest possible time (gets you the most invincibility while not doing the crappy ledge jump)

It'll feel just like doing a wavedash if you jump immediately

After that, it'll probably take a lot of practice before you can really use it in friendlies, then some more practice using it in tournament ... nerves will probably kill you a few times so it has to be as natural as wavedashing for you to really use it effectively

 

[voorhese]

Who all is going to SMYM?