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Social General Ice Climber Chat

OddishGuy

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I like the lil nana fsmash->wd edgehog one.
I think it could be used to cover illusion onstage + to edge. Rolling is slow though =[

I just realized you're a PM Samus main. We must do battle in the distant future to establish the Alpha Melee IC / PM Samus player @_@



For me its kinda easy to do, just fastfall and buffer a ftilt backwards on the landing, done right nana will jab in the other direction and the desynch is up. Howerver its the pivotdesynch i use which doesnt require the odd 1 missed 1 hit lcanceltiming which of course is ideal, learning that on approaching fair can make some interesting pressuregame work, if someone is able to do that consistently.
Ohhhh! SH_AC_Bair to Guard desync is one of my go-to's! I love doing that :D I misinterpreted what you said.

Approaching SH Fair L-cancel desync is actually really easy to do consistently if you don't FF it. It's a 2 frame window that way. Right now I think the aerial/grounded ice-block option is arguably the best use for it, but retreating Fair desync to iceblock -> nanapult is pretty good. I almost always just blizzard out of desyncs, but with Popo acting first I feel so lost XD
 

Smog

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Can anyone give me some tips for falco laser camping? I read in the matchup guide synced iceblocks can out camp him, and wobbles said you can usually engage because only 1 ice climber will get hit, but is there anything else I can do? Everytime I engaged falco would dair me if I shielded and hit my shield but go over me, and if I tried WD or DD I would just end up in hitstun from the lasers.
 

DerfMidWest

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I think it could be used to cover illusion onstage + to edge. Rolling is slow though =[
Yeah I started playing with it and I started doing usmash instead to buffer jump with popo and just wding out of that.
It's weird to wd with the cstick though, but I'm getting used to it.

I just realized you're a PM Samus main. We must do battle in the distant future to establish the Alpha Melee IC / PM Samus player @_@
lol I play that game once every like 8 months. I lost interest in it pretty quick.

Ohhhh! SH_AC_Bair to Guard desync is one of my go-to's! I love doing that :D I misinterpreted what you said.
this is one of my favorite ways to desync as well. clutch af.

Can anyone give me some tips for falco laser camping? I read in the matchup guide synced iceblocks can out camp him, and wobbles said you can usually engage because only 1 ice climber will get hit, but is there anything else I can do? Everytime I engaged falco would dair me if I shielded and hit my shield but go over me, and if I tried WD or DD I would just end up in hitstun from the lasers.
this can be hard to do, I look for falco to laser in certain positions and just punish that accordingly.
I would just learn the different ranges of the options you have off of lasers and how they force falco to respond.
 

Smasher89

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Do note that shielding the laser gives you a couple of more frames stun, ccing it and using it to desynch might be another way to deal decently with it, of course its all about how far away the falco is that matters.
 

S2rulL

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****ing ICs/marth man, i'm so angry rn

ok, so the reason i'm mad is mostly because today, i was going stock for stock against a scottish marth named phade and i was so close to beating him and getting out of pools but he ended up winning, and then when i talked to him about marth/ICs he said that the matchup was 50/50, if not in ICs favour.

do marth players actually believe this?!?!?!
 

FlamingForce

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I would definitely give marth the edge, dtilt is just so good.

I mean, I'm no expert on either character but what I do know is that my ics friend usually whoops all of my secondaries and also destroys me in the ditto. But I can beat him consistently with marth even though I really don't play the character at all and all I ever really do is throw out dtilt and read his sh-fair attempts.

So yeah as far as my exp goes marth definitely wins but that's just 2 unknown players doing things I guess.
 
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VegiLohrd

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I'd say the matchup is in marth's favor, but it isn't as lopsided as some other matchups. IC's definitely have tools to deal with marth, and as long as they can covert on mistakes they can win. That being said, d-tilt sucks to deal with and fair is so hard to work around. I'd give it 55-45 marth's favor
 

DerfMidWest

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Bad/2008 lookin marth is like 55-45 maybe.
But that mu is actually brutal.
Marth has a lot of issue dealing with ICs projectile walls if you do them correctly (he has a couple ways to poke through some of the glaring holes though).
If you lose the lead, particularly on bigger stages, there isn't a whole lot ICs can do to get in on marth unless he makes a mistake.

I like to think that marth is one of my personal better mus these days and I've put a lot of work into it, but I'd take peach over marth/fox any day.
 
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Kyu Puff

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I'd take Fox over any other match-up. I don't think Marth is that bad, but I tell myself most match-ups aren't that bad because match-up expectations can create mental blocks or lead to a defeatist attitude that prevents you from ever figuring out why you're actually losing.
 

S2rulL

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another thing that pissed me off when i was talking to phade was that he mentioned how däumling has never lost to a marth, completely forgetting that däumling plays vs reaper (the best marth in germany) on a fairly regular basis iirc.
 

Fly_Amanita

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I've seen Däumling lose to Reaper and I don't think Reaper even plays the MU well. Däumling was too impatient in the sets I saw.
 

S2rulL

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I've seen Däumling lose to Reaper and I don't think Reaper even plays the MU well. Däumling was too impatient in the sets I saw.
yeah, i think phade was going off how at BEAST V, däumling beat mahie and then made the assumption he's never lost in tourney, which i know is a load of rubbish
 

FlamingForce

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Aight so,
There's no character that I've had the displeasure of playing against more than Falco and to this day I honestly don't get what the **** I'm supposed to do to fight him.

Lasers always lock me down, even if I try to do projectile desyncs it usually just doesn't work out and I just get hit way too much because I can never ever get a read on them, everything he ever does seems nigh unpunishable

I shield a laser, he shines.
Whiff aerial, shine/throw out something fast that gets him out.

I only managed to record 1 game here before my harddrive complained it was full and I only won it because of an SD, I really want to just stop getting thrown around by this damn bird and would really like some advice on how to fight the laser/dair happy falco (aka all of them LOL)

 

Samwisely

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Since we seem to be talking about MUs we hate, I've recently been experimenting with Puff to cover the Peach/Samus matchups. This could be dumb and I'll drop it in a few weeks if it's true, but hey, why not try?

On a better note, I four stocked a guy with all wobbles at the last monthly I went to and somehow didn't make him think ICs were stupid. Probably because our other games were better and I talked him afterwords about how to approach, what went wrong, but still, that was as much an accomplishment as four-stocking someone. At least in my mind.
 

Smog

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Aight so,
There's no character that I've had the displeasure of playing against more than Falco and to this day I honestly don't get what the **** I'm supposed to do to fight him.

Lasers always lock me down, even if I try to do projectile desyncs it usually just doesn't work out and I just get hit way too much because I can never ever get a read on them, everything he ever does seems nigh unpunishable

I shield a laser, he shines.
Whiff aerial, shine/throw out something fast that gets him out.

I only managed to record 1 game here before my harddrive complained it was full and I only won it because of an SD, I really want to just stop getting thrown around by this damn bird and would really like some advice on how to fight the laser/dair happy falco (aka all of them LOL)

I'm probably not the best guy to be taking advice from, but it seemed you were trying to do reads to much or something at 00:05, 00:15, 00:36, and alot of other spots you just sit there and let him hit you. It seems you just don't know all your options against falco yet, you probably just want to play a bunch of falcos.
 

FlamingForce

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I have played more falcos then I can count, they all do the same stuff. I would love for someone to just list my options because I honestly can't think of any :| I can never hit him tbh, either you wait and he just laser locks you which means you're going to start getting combo'd on sooner or later OR you try to attack him and he either dairs or shine through literally everything.
 
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Smasher89

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I think the match had you not doing a good attack in about 40seconds at the start, that fulljump fair and upair inte the middle of nowere were the first ones i think.
Dont be afraid, you want to challenge falco, a good example where when you ftilted and got the hit through the laser, what you dont want is to sit in shield like you did for a long time there and throw out just random aerials.

Overall practice a couple of hours against cpus (mb lv 3 falco is what ill recomend) just to get a feel for falcos knockback and ICs strong punishgame/movement to be rmore ready for harder hitting punishes. An example is to do something when nana fthrows falco at the edge :D
 

OddishGuy

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SH double iceblock is pretty swell against long range laser spam, which I didn't see you ever go for. (you did this at 2:22) Closer range lasers can be stuffed by tilts and aerials and just any attack really since one of the climbers isn't going to get lasered. It looks super stupid because you are just getting lasered in the face, but just keep going. After this works a bit, this forces the Falco to try to retreat or jump around when you get too close and Upairs and stuff will come into play more then.

You can also WD in shield to close large gaps and then just approach as normal. Shielding up close against a decent spacie isn't the best of times because of their safe pressure, but using WD in shield to close long gaps is safe enough for you since you can react if they try to approach from a distance. If they dash and SH approach you can do something like Up-B OoS desync into blizzard (if they go for laser they'll likely hit grounded Popo, if they go for a SHFFL it will likely get stuffed by blizzard), if they FJ approach you can go for Upairs or WD back and go for grabs or smashes, etc. As annoying as lasers are, I don't think you should be approaching all that much against Falso unless he's heavily taking to the platforms and forcing it on you.

Speaking of FJ Upairs, I think they're good in this MU, but not too amazing in neutral on this stage. On Stadium I would mostly only use SH AC Upairs in neutral. But if you see him FJ near you, intercepting with FJ Upair is dandy.

Then again, I'm a noob so IDK (This message inserted to prevent any blame *_*)

Since we seem to be talking about MUs we hate, I've recently been experimenting with Puff to cover the Peach/Samus matchups. This could be dumb and I'll drop it in a few weeks if it's true, but hey, why not try?
I tried this for a bit, but I hate Puff so it just didn't work out. Puff can cover most bad MU's, Peach, Falcon, and Marth (IDK if this one is actually good but it's better than ICs), and any other random low tiers. I think the ICs Puff MU is nearly even, so if you hate dittos you get that benefit as well (and if you're weird like Nintendude you can get even more dittos now @_@). The other amazing benefit is that people will team with you :p

I've heard Fly and other top ICs say that Samus isn't very bad, so I would encourage you to stick to ICs for that. I struggle with it too, but I think it might be one of those MU's that gets exponentially nicer with experience.
 

FlamingForce

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S Closer range lasers can be stuffed by tilts and aerials and just any attack really since one of the climbers isn't going to get lasered. It looks super stupid because you are just getting lasered in the face, but just keep going. After this works a bit, this forces the Falco to try to retreat or jump around when you get too close and Upairs and stuff will come into play more then.
Do you mean as a kindof approach? Lasers have splash damage and can hit both climbers, tho it doesn't happen if you happen to be walking/running forward into them.
 

OddishGuy

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Do you mean as a kindof approach? Lasers have splash damage and can hit both climbers, tho it doesn't happen if you happen to be walking/running forward into them.
Walking, running, WDing, just moving. As long as you're not standing/in jumpsquat (even then you can dash-> jump) you don't have to worry about the multi hit and the other climber is free to tilt, dash attack, aerial, etc.


In other news, netplay with ICs is weird. I can't waveland desync or L-cancel desync consistently online and it makes me sad =/
 

DerfMidWest

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In other news, netplay with ICs is weird. I can't waveland desync or L-cancel desync consistently online and it makes me sad =/
To me that just says that youre doing those desyncs off of visual cues (which is how I usually do them too), but its possible/benefitial for you to work on learning them through muscle memory.
This will help you in the long run because, although the effect is often minimal, crts can lag too, so muscle memory is always superior to a visual cue in regards to raw tech.

(That doesnt mean visual cues are bad, I'm a visual learner, but practice makes these things second nature so you wont have to rely on the visuals)
 
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OddishGuy

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To me that just says that you're doing those desyncs off of visual cues (which is how I usually do them too), but its possible/benefitial for you to work on learning them through muscle memory.
This will help you in the long run because, although the effect is often minimal, crts can lag too, so muscle memory is always superior to a visual cue in regards to raw tech.

(That doesnt mean visual cues are bad, I'm a visual learner, but practice makes these things second nature so you wont have to rely on the visuals)
Yeah, it's hard but it's something to work on I guess. I've gotten the platform waveland desync off a few times just in between stocks, but I don't think I have any muscle memory for the L-cancel desync, I've missed it every time ;_;
My DD and pivot desyncs have gotten a lot better from their heavy use now!

I should be going to weeklies IRL soon though. I'll be able to test everything there :D
 

OddishGuy

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Guys I'm having real issues with Falcon. I'm getting wrecked left and right.
TBH I don't know a lot about this matchup, but I know Up-tilts, F-smashes, and SH AC Upairs can be good at stuffing Falcon. I've seen Fly use F-smash to shut down approaches from S2J in the past, and Admiral used uptilts as wobble setups against Slox a lot. I use dash attack for grab setups in this MU because I'm a scrub, but I think it's actually decent if used sparingly.
 

DerfMidWest

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Guys I'm having real issues with Falcon. I'm getting wrecked left and right.
It's hard if he plays it right.
In my experience, the matchup is basically just one player gets a lead and then camps the **** out of the other one, because both characters stuff the other one's approaches pretty well.
Against most falcon's in our region, I've been super successful just blizzard walling. Falcon is fast enough to deal with this, but his aerials are not that fast, so you can often bait an approach and then punish it.
Knee->gentleman is safe on shield.
You can shield grab raptorboost if you shield asdi into falcon. A lot of falcon players will throw it out a lot because it used to be a thing that destroyed ICs.

Ice block is good for catching falcon out of his dash away.
utilt is great for stuffing his approaches if you know he's going to overshoot, especially with dair.

if falcon approaches with knee a lot in between blizzard, I like walk back->ftilt and bair. fsmash works too, but I don't like committing too much.
I really love baiting dd->grab or raptor boost and then doing Pivot bairs against him in neutral. Faking approaches against him in general is pretty cool since he's almost always going to dash away or jump to a platform and try to punish whatever you do, so this let's you take back a ton of stage.
Pretty much you just keep reseting the situation until falcon messes up then you grab him.
You have to be really patient though.

As far as stages go, I really really dislike giving falcon either a top platform or space, because if he has room and he gets solid hit, you're probably dead. Also if he has a top platform you're gonna play an 8 minute match.
So by default I try to avoid BF and Dreamland.
I'm not huuuge on fd or stadium, but they don't have a top platform. I'd go stadium over fd though because I like the side platforms, but if you lose the lead you can't do **** during the transformations if he's positioned well.

I really like yoshi's and FoD. The sides are close, so nana dies pretty fast, but falcon has no room to run. On the low platforms of FoD, you have to watch for low shield drop uairs, but you can shield grab those, so I approach with a dd desync usmash a lot in this position and shield with popo.
Most falcons will insta ban either FoD, but sometimes they ban FD so you get to take them there.
There are still top platforms on the small stages, but they are a lot more manageable.

When falcon it trapped on the ledge, I just sit back a little further and blizzard. He can stall invincibly with hax dashes, but his aerials don't have a whole bunch of range in front of him from the ledge, so you can just keep him there.

I know you don't wobble, so I guess I'd recommend just mixing up dthrow->dair CGs if you get a grab. All three work on falcon, so if you mix them up, they can be kinda hard to react to, reverse dair is usually the hardest for him to escape, but that doesn't work super well if they know the mu.
You can raw dthrow CG him until pretty high percent too, but you have to react pretty fast, which makes it hard. Dthrow->dsmash and dthrow->dtilt also work, obv.
Also because you can dthrow cg, dthrow->fsmash->regrab works as a DI trap.
At 0%, dthrow->usmash->regrab works if he DIs away, I think if he does no DI or DI up he can jump out though.
Dthrow->nair->regrab works like 2-3 times from 0%.
You can also do dthrow->fair cg and dthrow->utilt cg, but they are hard to do consistently (and escapable, except utilt in v.1.0 once it's staled).
Uthrow->dash attack->regrab works on DI away.

I also love bthrow->iceblock reset at low percent.

Reaction tech chasing falcon is kinda hard since his tech rolls cover a lot of distance, but it's definitely doable and it works better than gimmicky cgs.

that's all I can think of off the top of my head right now.
 
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Fly_Amanita

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Projectile walls are ridiculously dangerous against Falcon. I advise against them unless you have reason to believe the Falcon is bad at getting around them, which, to be fair, will usually be the case since most Falcons are bad.
 

Vanitas

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I'm having a hard time in deciding which stages to go to/strike to vs Falcon. I know FD or FoD or in our favour but they usually ban those, and I tend to do pretty poorly against them on any other stage. I have heard people saying Yoshi's Story is good but I don't know some of the rationales for that.

Also have people been able to use IC's aerials' frame advantage effectively? As far as I know, IC's nair, fair, bair all have frame advantage.
 
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DerfMidWest

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Projectile walls are ridiculously dangerous against Falcon. I advise against them unless you have reason to believe the Falcon is bad at getting around them, which, to be fair, will usually be the case since most Falcons are bad.
This is one of those things where it works well enough at mid-level that I feel like I get over-reliant on it, but I'm not really entirely sure what else I should be doing either. I usually either use a lot of bairs and ftilts if I'm not using blizzard.
But as a whole I want to start correcting my playstyle to get rid of all the little "this works if they are bad" things, so any advice here would be much appreciated.

I'm having a hard time in deciding which stages to go to/strike to vs Falcon. I know FD or FoD or in our favour but they usually ban those, and I tend to do pretty poorly against them on any other stage. I have heard people saying Yoshi's Story is good but I don't know some of the rationales for that.

Also have people been able to use IC's aerials' frame advantage effectively? As far as I know, IC's nair, fair, bair all have frame advantage.
I think yoshi's is great in the mu. The stage is really small, which lets you touch falcon, and you can control the platforms very well.
Same concept with FoD.
I absolutely hate trying to catch him on BF and dreamland.
 

OddishGuy

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Guys if I consistently lose on FD what does this mean about my ICs? I feel like I should be camping more(?) ATM it's probably my worst stage against fast characters like Falcon and Fox.

When my opponent is on a platform I feel like I know what to do. I take center, shark with Upairs, move around to bait missed aerials, and so forth. On FD, my opponent always has the option to just run at my face and IDK how to deal with that. How do you deal with straight forward aggression, or close range DDing pressure? Should I be DDing more, or keeping more blizzards out, or just trying to stuff their close DDing with WD tilts/jabs?

I know this is kind of an extremely vague "how do FD?" kind of a question but TBH I just feel lost here =[
 

DerfMidWest

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Guys if I consistently lose on FD what does this mean about my ICs? I feel like I should be camping more(?) ATM it's probably my worst stage against fast characters like Falcon and Fox.

When my opponent is on a platform I feel like I know what to do. I take center, shark with Upairs, move around to bait missed aerials, and so forth. On FD, my opponent always has the option to just run at my face and IDK how to deal with that. How do you deal with straight forward aggression, or close range DDing pressure? Should I be DDing more, or keeping more blizzards out, or just trying to stuff their close DDing with WD tilts/jabs?

I know this is kind of an extremely vague "how do FD?" kind of a question but TBH I just feel lost here =[
I am of the somewhat unpopular opinion of hating fd against other high tiers (I think ICs still destroy most of the cast there pretty bad though).
Most characters who can easily get around ICs projectile walls (most of the top 8) do so even better when there isn't a platform above you.
The stage is also huge, so even though there isn't a top platform for people to work with, there is still a ton of space for them to run around.
In general, against spacies, falcon, peach, and marth, I think the stage stops really working well for ICs once they start to understand the mu.
I still like it against sheik, because she loses a lot from not having platforms against ICs, and in general it's a bad puff stage, but I still would rather have low platforms against puff to protect me.

Uthrow combos on FFers are nice though.

As a whole, I think there is merit to the stage, but I'm definitely not the biggest fan of it, personally.
I think the idea of ICs being broken good on fd, at least against the rest of the top 8, is a somewhat outdated theory.
(remember this is just my opinion based on my own experience, I'm happy to be disproven).
 

941

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The only characters I don't like FD against are Peach and Samus. When there are no platforms to escape to, ICs can juggle most of the cast for a lot of percent, and I like not being platform camped by the likes of Falcon. It's also easier to catch characters out of their jumps after establishing some ground control. Marth seems to have a hard time getting around ICs projectiles, so I always try to pick FD against him if I can.

I've been having a hard time playing against defensive/campy players lately, as I have a bad habit of trying to setup desync walls whenever I have room to do so. What are some other good neutral options I can practice for situations where ICs aren't in immediate danger?
 

SHIP

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The only characters I don't like FD against are Peach and Samus. When there are no platforms to escape to, ICs can juggle most of the cast for a lot of percent, and I like not being platform camped by the likes of Falcon. It's also easier to catch characters out of their jumps after establishing some ground control. Marth seems to have a hard time getting around ICs projectiles, so I always try to pick FD against him if I can.

I've been having a hard time playing against defensive/campy players lately, as I have a bad habit of trying to setup desync walls whenever I have room to do so. What are some other good neutral options I can practice for situations where ICs aren't in immediate danger?
I really like spacing wavedash back air right outside where my opponent is. Its fast and has good hitboxes and autocancels so its pretty safe. A lot of the time I wavedash back air then wavedash away then wavedash back in and back air again. The inputs on it are kinda fast though so sometimes I mess it up.
 

OddishGuy

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I've been having a hard time playing against defensive/campy players lately, as I have a bad habit of trying to setup desync walls whenever I have room to do so. What are some other good neutral options I can practice for situations where ICs aren't in immediate danger?
If they're staying grounded then iceblocks can force an approach, and approaching after nana shoots a desynced iceblock can really limit your opponent's options. Nanapult can really wall some people. Approaching with WD tilts/jabs isn't bad either, and Bair can catch them jumping away. DD Bair is something I don't see a lot but I think it's a pretty noncommittal option.

If you're being platform camped it's a rough life. Sharking with SH AC Upairs is good times, and DD SH Upairs covers tons of space. WDing/DDing/moving around in general is a good option here if you can bait a missed attack you can always punish hard ( think this is significantly worse against campy spacies since they can drop down shine DJ away).
If they're sticking to top platform you have to FH Upair (FH Fair for battlefield) to hit them; stuff like SH Upairs and Utilt can guard you for a bit and intercept them if they come straight down. You can Nanapult onto a platform but that commits quite a bit.
 
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DerfMidWest

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I love FD against samus, her projectiles are much much easier to handle there.
no platforms for repeated missile cancels. Makes things a little simpler.
 
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SHIP

Smash Apprentice
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Hey guys, I don't post here often but I'm having tough times against Marths.
Any general tips?
As much as I hate watching this video, this was my latest 3-0 at winner's semis at our smash weekly.
Besides the dropped wobbles and questionable panic rolls, what else can I improve on? I'm 2002 by the way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lheDVHfYq7M
Blizzard man. Blizzard all day. Marth's hate people having something longer than theirs :p. You can see at roughly 1:55 the Marth doesn't want to deal with your blizzard and just camps. You should learn to dashdance blizzard then press it all the time because if they get caught in it and don't smash di you can grab and wobble. Also nana pults are very good if your opponent is not caught by the initial dashdance blizzard and you think you may be abe to surprise him although it is risky as he may just fsmash your Nana if he reacts well or reads it.

Strategy wise you don't want to be above Marth ever (You try some full hop fair approaches and they don't go well) and should be very happy when he goes above you because he has a hard time getting down. Beyond blizzarding a whole lot I like to be wavedashing backwards and forwards to try and get Marth to throw out a move I can punish. If you can wavedash out of shield correctly you should be able to wobble him any time he fsmashes your shield.I find wavedash to jab into dsmash ftilt or grab to be quite effective approaches against Marths. Often Marth will attempt to wall out with dtilt spaced just outside the range of a blizzard. This can be beaten with shorthop fair or occasionally by wavedashing forward shielding the dtilt then trying to roll behind the Marth. Both are somewhat risky however as the fair leaves you vulnerable to fsmash or utilt and the roll puts you in a lot of lag so you may get punished unless you managed to dodge a move with it and the Marth is also in lag.

Your edgeguarding against Marth did not seem very strong and you often let him return to the stage unassailed. Marth's recovery is very strong vertically but not horizontally and is quite linear so he can be quite easy to edgeguard with some consideration. Marth's main options when recovering are to 1) get to the ledge/on stage using only sideb and double jump 2) to get to the ledge with upB 3) to get on stage with upB.
In 1) the Marth will probably be quite high in the air which allows you to jump out with your back turned and then attempt to predict whether they will jump so that you can back air. Back airing a Marth offstage is almost always lethal (and it feels super cool too).
In 2) the Marth will probably be quite low. If you feel you have time you can shoot an ice block to make things a bit more difficult for him. Then you want to grab the ledge then either roll or if you can time it well stand up. The good thing about this is that Marth's lag from upBing onto the stage (3) is so high that often when you roll up from the ledge you can still wavedash and dsmash before Marth is able to act.
Even if you feel you do not have enough time to take the ledge against Marth you can try to make things difficult for Marth to get back on to stage from the ledge by repeatedly blizzarding and shooting ice blocks or preparing to up air attempts to get around the blizzard.

Hopefully you find this helpful. I used to have a lot of trouble with the Marth matchup but after a lot of thinking about it, watching videos and playing it I feel it is one of my strongest and I rarely lose to a Marth player who isn't significantly better than me at spacing and stuff.
 

DerfMidWest

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Slippi.gg
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I havent watched the set yet, but marth was always one of my personal worst matchups and over the last year ive made some significant strides and I am fairly confident in it these days (i still think its one of ics worst matchups and ill provide a little more detail on why in a second)
Anyway, here are some of the general things I do:
So the way I break the matchup down is in response to the different things marth does.
Are they playing more in the air? Or are they grounded and playing the poke and run away game?
How do they respond to projectiles?

Ill start with the easiest to handle, the aerial marth. I think it's horrendous for marth to go in the air against ICs in neutral.
The reason for this is that his aerials aren't super fast and aren't safe on shields.
A little trick VaNz taught me to handle marths who fair a lot is to wd at them when they jump and hold shield.
Since marths fair starts above him, you can sneak into his sourspot and react to his options with the following responses:
1. Shffl fair: shield grab after the move hits your shield
2. Sh double fair/double aerial: shield grab after the second aerial
3. Sh fair->dj back->aerial: wd OoS and usmash/uair if he fairs or nairs, hold shield if he dairs or does anything else.

Some other options Ive been thinking about, that I don't see a lot of marths do are these:
1. Sh fair->waveland back dtilt.
This one is one I'm not sure how to handle, if you know he'll dtilt out of the waveland you can sh fair over it, or you could wd oos to follow him and shield again and hope he sourspots (if you shield DI that you can shield grab it).
Or if you call it you can just grab out of his fair or his waveland while he's in lag.
I think this is a really strong mixup against ics though.
2.sh fair->reverse dolphin slash onto top platform. This one just seems like a rare mixup that is generally unsafe. It puts marth in a super bad position so I would just abuse that.

Moving on to projectile stuff, the big one is blizzard. Blizzard is hard for marth to get around. If he SDIs to the ground, grab, unless you see a shield, then look for the buffer roll.
If he SDIs up, i like to walk forward and either u/fsmash or shield (marth usually either fairs or djs here)
A rare, but irritating if not expected, response to blizzard is jump in->counter.
If you're behind nana, it's not an issue, but if youre in front of her, you can get hit, so I usually shield if I see marth jump at blizzard. Free wd oos grab.
He can also fsmash you if youre in front of blizzard, but thats also a free wd oos grab if it hits a shield.
Sometimes marth players will position themselves so they can fsmash, get hit by blizzard to interrupt the animation while their frame is extended, then buffer roll/spotdodge to avoid being grabbed, so you have to be aware of that.

Ice blocks are good if marth is dashing away or landing, not if he's dashing fowards.
When chasing marth behind and ice block, watch for pivot dtilt.

Don't do extended desync walls too much, marth can poke through some significant holes, most commonly, dtilt you out of the ice block animation.

I like setting up blizzards with dd blizzard (hold shield with popo), I find marth has the most trouble with this one.

Dtilt is a whole nother post, so ill talk about that some other time. Dtilt is the hardest thing to deal with.

General stragey that works:
Take stage away from marth, force him into a corner, threaten with blizzard, then force him to either go to the ledge, hold shield, or try to go above
 
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