Fox's nair does need a landlag increase though, but not by much, a frame only (two at the VERY most), since right now it has less landing lag than if he were to land without doing an aerial. Plus it has AC frames at the start/end that go to idle which means no matter when you land during it, it will be faster than landing without doing nair lol. It has the low landlag to make it easier to combo off of, but considering how low of landlag it has it can be thrown out willy-nilly.

I don't think the solution to easy auto-combos is to make them harder to do. Especially not if the chosen method of making them harder also actually makes them even better than they already are. Difficulty is a bad balance metric in the first place, but the real issue at hand is whether or not Fox should have these auto-combos at all. If yes, then fine. They might as well be easy. If not, then the solution is to alter the properties of his moves so as to remove them.

Why should a character be allowed to have a move that says "I am throwing this move out and you are going to have to deal with it because I am a fast character with great hitboxes and little lag and can force my will upon you by running and jumping and pressing A while in the air"? Not even Melee Fox can do this to the extent that SSF2 Fox abuses it. Melee Fox's Nair is not generally safe on shield, but the dreaded six blue lines of death let him get away with a lot. I think SSF2 Fox could stand to rely on his other busted tools a little more instead of the current jack-of-all-trades that is Nair. Approaching is precisely about weaving around your opponent and catching them at an opportune time. If Fox's gameplay shifts more towards this style as a result of merited nerfs to an over-centralizing tool, then all the better.

I would say two frames is the minimum. It currently has three and soft landing is four, so to avoid the situation in which there is almost never a good reason not to throw out Nair on the way down, it should have at least one frame more landing lag than landing normally.

As I said, I'm pretty ambivalent on jumpstart increase, but I was suggesting it as something to put on the changelist if they felt that it should be increased, as others have suggested in the past.

Nair is clearly not a move that has no consequences: much like Shine, it's weak to moves that can outrange it safely or hit Fox in an area that nair doesn't cover, like Falcon's uair if Fox is approaching from above or Marth's Dancing Blade. Even if you shield it, if you can predict which option the Fox will use on shield you can get a grab (which for Fox usually means tons of damage or death). Also, characters with good OoS options can just beat it outright even with Shine.

You may not like that nair is really good, but you can't deny that nerfing it is a major nerf to Fox as whole, because in a large part what balances his unmatched fragility is his fabulous neutral. In many matchups that are relatively even, Fox's opponent will lose 80% of the neutral, but in the 20% that they do get clean hits they do as much as Fox did in the other 80%. If you change that percentage to 50-50, suddenly Fox is getting destroyed. In essence, nair is supposed to be really really good, because so many characters in SSF2 have insane punish games on Fox. Look at some of Fox's worst MU's: Zelda, Lloyd, Pikachu: while Fox's opponent has good punishes in these MU's, that isn't what makes them bad. What makes them bad is that they all have tools to go even or better in the neutral game, and Fox simply cannot possibly do as much to a floaty off of a clean hit as they can do back to him.

Nair being both a combo opener and safe on shield and some whiffs is what allows Fox to deal with characters like Sheik and MK that would absolutely destroy him without it. If you nerf it, you have to give something back in a major way.

Certainly, Melee Fox didn't have the nair that SSF2 Fox has. But Melee Fox had waveshine punishes on floaties to kill early, a monster usmash, uthrow uair that worked on nearly every top tier and killed at ridiculous percents, wavedashing for use in approaches (Shine was even better because it had a movement option out of it), and a better recovery. It's not fair to say that because Melee Fox didn't have something that SSF2 Fox will be fine without it.

I know that's not your entire argument, but in case you didn't know, shine already decreases jumpsquat from 3 frames to 2. Unless you meant also decreasing jump out of shine to 1 frame, then disregard this comment.

Anyone else annoyed at how fox falls so DAMN QUICK?! I barely had anytime to recover. The longer the stage the better.

It's better than floaty Fox, that's for sure. *cough* brawl *cough*

Alright alright.. For starters, his Dair is a great combo move, but I have a really, really hard time connecting all hits. Its like trying to hit with all hits of Samus' Usmash. Fair would still be hard to hit with, plus I never said buff the kill power of the move? Dsmash is stupid slow, and its weak too (Can't kill DK at 190% with good DI at the middle of ToS I think) Plus it has tons of endlag. Umm.. Jump SideB wouldn't even be OP, since if you hit him out of his jumps, its over. Plus keep in mind fox is really easy to combo. Lasers legit do like 1% every hit, if you punished a missed rest with Jigglypuff, you wouldn't really get 15% (starting at 0%) plus the lazers aren't even that good against slow characters. Jump over 'em, block 'em or even reflect them. Don't forget that SideB has tons of endlag, so SideB Uair wouldn't be the easiest setup to kill with. His recovery is kinda bad, and with SideB after a jump, it doesn't really change anything. Its just like how Chibi can SideB after his jump. The fact that his Usmash is so fast, AND it knocks you straight up, AND its strong is kinda cheap. You'il die at like 70% with Naruto, plus keep in mind his Usmash is stupid easy to connect with. Nair -> Usmash, Dair -> Usmash, Bair - Usmash.... And if we change the angle just a bit, I think it would be a fair move. I never said it has to kill side ways, I just think it should knock you more to the left/right. His Utilt needs a small nerf imo, its too easy to combo with. Its pretty much DK's Utilt. Dtilt is dumb as an edgeguarding move, it hits from below to stage and kills at like 120% with okay DI. Nair connects into EVERYTHING, I'm pretty sure it even connects into Dsmash and Fsmash.

I just want Fox to become less braindead, because most people just spam his cheapest tools cough Usmash, Bair, Nair, Uthrow Uair, Dtilt cough

The hits of dair will connect if you don't do running FH or SH dairs, which isn't the niche it fills (because nair is better). Standing FH dair or even the rare Shine -> dair works, and it has some unused utility with Sliding Shines. Plus, the fact that the hits don't connect all the time helps balance it as an edgeguarding move. Fair has pretty good power on the last hit and does insane damage if all the hits connect, so it would be a really good aerial finisher. The point of lasers isn't to actually deal enough damage to kill someone, but rather (at least in this game) to force approaches against characters that wouldn't have to otherwise, like Puff. JC Fox Illusion (even with endlag) wouldn't necessarily be OP offstage (because most of the time you get hit out of Illusion anyway), but onstage it would just destroy the whole cast. Imagine laser camping with the ability to cover most of the stage really quickly without major landing lag or helpless: no other move in Smash besides PM Mewtwo's Teleport (and they needed to make you waste your double jump to use it because people thought it was OP) has that capability. Chibi's side-B is really slow and has major endlag, so it doesn't make for a fair comparison.

I have no problem with toning down usmash: I think I suggested that. What I don't like is changing the angle, because it makes floaty characters less susceptible (Samus, Peach, etc., all die much later), which just happen to be some of Fox's hardest matchups, ones that are barely kept in check by Fox's kill power. Additionally, changing the angle makes a lot of combos on fast-fallers not a thing any more. Utilt is a great combo move, and that's sort of the point, but it doesn't have the range or priority of DK's and you can't spam it in the same way, because it has a very poor frontward-facing hitbox and doesn't have great horizontal range. If just using dtilt by the ledge is enough to edgeguard, they were probably dead anyway, and whether you use dsmash, dtilt, Shine, or bair for that purpose is usually inconsequential.

If you want to move Foxes away from his bread-and-butter tools, then diversify his punish game and kill options: perhaps make dtilt a launcher, put in weak bair, perhaps give first-hit uair a bit more hitstun, and nerf nair and utilt just a bit, while perhaps giving his fsmash and dsmash more power in their current KB angles and toning down usmash and uair. Give him solid neutral tools besides nair (which is pretty hard in a game without wavedashing, but I'm sure you could think of something) and give bair landing lag to prevent people from abusing it to fish for kills, while maybe buffing its shield pushback a little to make it a more viable neutral option. But don't give him this Brawl-Minus-esque jump cancel, buff a playstyle no one really enjoys playing, give him a semi-spike, and give him huge aerial combo buffs, and then turn around and give him nerfs in his kill moves and current combo tools. It seems like this sort of Fox would be even more dependent on a central core of tools: lasers in neutral combined with JC Illusion escapes, drill -> shine -> grab becoming totally central to his game, an amazing fair for really devastating two-hit auto-combos, and a drastically buffed recovery.

Reflector
- No longer provides invincibility.
- No longer jab resets.
- Shine->grab is no longer a thing.
- Glitch properties, such as breaking BM's teleport is removed.

Does Shine have invincibility?

Why don't you want Shine to jab reset?

What's wrong with Shine -> grab?

Neither Shine nor Fox's shine has invincibility, at least not like it does in Melee. The only way to prevent it from jab reseting (cuz it does in Melee) would be to increase the KB it does, which also increases the power it holds offstage.

Shine->grab works because of hitlag on shine and the fact that jump canceling is a thing. So there are 3 ways this can be removed: 1) Remove JC on shine (a bad idea). 2) Reduce hitlag on shine (not too bad, it would remove a lot of his shine combos though and might overnerf his offense). 3) Slow down the grab (this is another bad idea too imo. A fast character with a slow grab has to input the grab way further in advance, plus it nerfs DD->grab as an option).

I would honestly prefer the Shine<Grab though...

I think something to consider is to make Shine a bit stronger. I know that I would much rather get shinespiked at 0% because Fox read my recovery path than Nair > Shine > Bair autocomboed at 120% because he approached with his amazing Nair again. This would also solve the problem of it jab resetting and the assinine punishes that he can get from that. Dthrow > Shine > charged Usmash, anyone?

Oh, also. I forgot to respond to this. @CodeSamurai: I don't want Fox's Nair to be bad, not at all. Every character should have good tools. However, I don't think that anything justifies the fact that it has less lag than landing normally. There should be a tradeoff. That's all I was arguing for.

Unless the devs were to do something to shine that makes it so that it still pushes its target away even while they are knocked down, like in Melee. Shine has so much hitlag, that is the real reason it autocombos into aerials.

Yeah, it could do with a hitlag reduction as well. Agreed.