Shield drop

When shielding on a platform, you can drop through and become actionable in the air in one frame; even faster than Shine out-of-shield.

No character in this game can feel safe when a Fox is above them, ready to pounce with an aerial. When mastered, shield dropping lets you threaten the stage under the platform, make it a nightmare to attack your shield without getting shined or back-aired, and move through platforms generally faster.

Shield dropping also has a general speed benefit. It saves the same four frames that the Isai drop does and a further two from not needing to crouch.

Thanks to Universal Controller Fix (UCF), any GameCube controller can do notched shield drop methods. It has no effect on the buffered straight down or raw straight down methods. However, you do not need to modify the notches on your controller to get consistent notched drops or buffered notched drops.