I do agree it might be in Marth's favor because Marth has the edge guarding, combos, grab follow ups and tipper to kill Fox. He has all the options to take Fox out that he had in Melee and Brawl.

Fox does do well against Marth, but he doesn't have the same options like he does in Melee. Excluding wavedashing, Fox's recovery is weaker than it is in Melee. Due to the angles be limited and the move not traveling as far along with Fox Illusion's start up lag, ending lag and problems sweet spotting the ledge gives Marth an easy time edge guarding. Fox does got kill confirms on Marth along with being able to approach or forcing him to approach to wreck him.

I would say 45-55 in Marth's favor or maybe 50-50 since Fox can deal with Marth's recovery as well.

I'm pretty sure it's 50-50
most foxes struggle cause they're used to running in and nairing without thinking
just bait out anything from a bad marth and it's a free hit

Marth can sit too, though. Lasers aren't great in this game and it's pretty difficult to actually force Marth to approach, and Marth can just poke with safe aerials (fair and nair) and pressure Fox.

fair and nair are NOT safe lol
dtilt and sideB are safe in neutral for marth, aerials MUST be super super low or they're not safe
if you can't punish marth aerials with fox then give up

I don't mean scrubby full hop nairs out of neutral; I mean SH double fair, autocancel SH nair first hit and landing hit if retreating, random mixup approaches with Dancing Blade or dtilt to keep them on their toes, etc.

Can Fox's back air not be a thing. It has little end lag, lingers, has tons of knock back, and does decent damage. Eh.

Fox is one of those characters where the general archetype has been around for so long (nearing 15 years) that you're unlikely to find people complaining about the general character, but I agree that bair should be a sex kick. It is an essential part of Fox's combos and killing, however, so I wouldn't nerf the initial hitbox.

I really like the idea of it being a sex kick, that way misspaced/mistimed combos are blatantly rewarded anyway.

Soft bair -> upsmash

First hit of uair is one of the most promising unstudied moves in the game: I feel like you could really level up Fox combo game if you could use that in combos.

new tech confirm

I would rather get hit by soft Bair > Upsmash than die to a move that's been out for ten frames and is still at full power.



Oh, also. When's DI on Uthrow?

I kinda like uthrow in this game: it's not like with a little practice you would miss uthrow followups anyway, and it provides a really important function as it is: making Fox's combo game differ by weight and falling speed.

Most of Fox's combos (nair/bair/dair -> shine(s) -> nair/bair, dair combos, nair -> usmash) work on the entire cast with a large percentage range because the key factor in whether they work is hitlag not hitstun, if that makes any sense. Nair -> double shine only works because you're so fast that you hit them before they have the chance to move more than a frame or two: if you didn't, you'd miss. Drill combos don't move the opponent that much, so it's more hitstun than following up like Falcon might. Nair -> uair is one example of an exception to this rule, but because weak nair has low KB growth and base KB it still works at a lot of percents on all of the cast.

Uthrow is a striking exception to this rule: it only works on around half the cast, at varying percentage ranges (from 0-200 to 0-20), and its main followup, uair, only kills at some of these percentages (for example, it never kills Marth even though it hits at low percentages). Therefore, uthrow -> uair is a combo that makes a huge difference in Fox's MU's against heavyweights and fast-fallers (because uair has higher KB growth than uthrow, heavyweights will still die to it at high percentages), but particularly against light fast-fallers (Chibi-Robo, I'm looking at you!)

This is a marked difference from Melee where it was a floaty-killer. It shifts Fox's combo game towards punishing fast-fallers, who are balanced to handle the pain. It makes Fox's floaty MU's (Puff in particular, as that's a matchup that has been studied in Melee as well) less campy and provides incentive for Foxes to find more creative and interesting ways of finishing floaties off (dtilt -> uair, dtilt -> usmash, drill-shine-usmash, Sliding Shine, nair -> uair, nair -> usmash, random kill moves). It also means that lasers, especially with their nerfs, don't dominate the MU's of floaty glass cannons like Kirby and Puff, and forces Fox to play the interesting fast-paced pressure-oriented rushdown that he's known for.

This argument can be turned around to counter itself. If Fox is going to get followups anyway, why give him a move that ignores one of the core principles of Smash? Smash promises the player some degree of control over their character regardless of the situation, specifically including the period during which one is getting hit. Fox's Uthrow in its current state violates that trust. Furthermore, Fox always getting followups on a DI-able throw is not as simple as your argument makes it out to be. Stage positioning plays an important factor in the DI mixup game. If Fox Uthrows me on the left edge of the stage, it is in my best interest to DI hard left in order to prevent Fox from getting the running start he needs to hit me again. Not to mention the fact that being able to DI Uthrow lets me put myself in a better position to hit the smash DI.

None of this relates to Uthrow ignoring DI. Puff - Fox isn't less campy because you can't DI Uthrow - those things have no correlation whatsoever. You're basically arguing that it's ok for Fox to have a true auto-combo from a grab into not only a kill move, but a DI mixup between two fast and powerful KO moves with opposite optimal DI requirements because it only works on characters in specific weight classes. I'm perfectly fine with Fox comboing into a kill from a grab; that's Fox. However, I would appreciate the opportunity to DI and have some influence over my fate - even if I'm just making the Fox work a little bit harder. As it stands, Fox's Uthrow leaves me completely at the mercy of my opponent's execution. That isn't Smash, that's Steet Fighter. I would rather play Smash.