Tired response that might include some stupid stuff:
however, as embarrassing as it is...i think i need to ask for some zelda tips....is the best idea to just turn around and space your own bairs on him..and then dash in for a grab if you can get him to miss? I was getting split up rather easily when he played zelda..though the last life I realized i can just grab smash him offstage and then regrab him a million times when he does it again since he can't sweetspot very well since he's not a zelda main (or maybe zelda is just bad at sweetspotting)..heck if i know.
does zelda's up b not have much lag? i tried fsmashing with marth and she shielded it..so it seems grabs are less risky
I don't like approaching Zelda very much and usually just camp with ice blocks and blizzard a lot. If you can get her directly above you, then that is good for you. IIRC, Up-B doesn't have much lag if she angles it downward from above and lands directly on the stage.
other notes and questions:
2. So vs fox i was having a rather interesting problem...basically i did not seem to be able to approach at all moving forward. dashdance desynchs the ICs, so it seems pretty bad..but if you dash forward he can overshoot hit nairs to catch you as you wd back..and when i dashdance nana seems to get hit anyway..
The only way you can really approach Fox when facing forward is by catching him off-guard. Ftilt is my favorite move for serving this purpose, but is not the only thing that will work, and sometimes other things are better depending on what the Fox likes to do. I generally prefer to get close to the Fox, bait a response, see what he likes to do and punish that instead, but against patient players, rushing in at a weird time is sometimes is a good idea.
all of this is solved when i'm facing backwards because i can space bairs to keep him honest about coming in...but i'm wondering if i have other options for competing with nair when they come in. is uptilt capable of beating nair coming in from the side or does it only work by hitting the fox before or in the beginning of the jump.
Our utilt should not beat a well-spaced nair from the side. Angled-up ftilt should beat nair; I've been an advocate of that a long time even though I basically never do it anymore. I should pick that up again. What you should do against nair generally depends a lot on how he spaces it. I often retreat and try to punish him as he lands or just throw out something more disjointed (generally fsmash, but doing that too much never works out well against good players; it's good when done sparingly, though). It's often not bad to just shield the nair and see what the Fox likes to do from there. Some Foxes that aren't confident in their pressure will do full jump aerial pressure, which is easy to beat with uair. Ones that go for longer, more complicated pressure will often screw up and leave themselves open to a shield-grab; tighter Foxes won't mess up as often, in which case you might just want to roll away or WD OoS away. Going for a passive option is admittedly generally better against great players, so don't get in that habit too much. Also, when you're at low percentages, you can just CC -> dsmash/shield-grab a lot of nairs. There are plenty of other things you can try, too. Dash attack can work, but I'd recommend against it since in spite of having nice follow-ups, it's surprisingly easy for Fox to outprioritize it, and you get punished terribly if he baits it; it's still occasionally decent, though.
maybe i just need to relook at the hitboxes but i wasn't able to really get uptilt or upsmash to beat a nair...i have hit uptilts but they were usually chasing fox as he was moving around or coming down from a platform...horizontally ICs seem very weak when facing forward. is the solution to just dashdance even though nana desynchs? i was kind of looking at nana desynching as too dangerous..i think they split us up whenever i dashdance but maybe i'm doing it wrong.
Yeah, usmash and utilt should generally be reserved for hitting a Fox descending at you. ICs' options when facing forward aren't bad at all, but if you'd rather face backwards most of the time, that's fine. You sacrifice a couple good options, but gain a couple other ones. Dash-dancing is okay, too. Even if it doesn't work out quite how you planned, you can easily get back in sync with a wavedash immediately after the DD. More generally, jumping (mainly short hopping) out of a dash-dance can be a good way of not losing track of Nana.
also lasers from falco are the worst cause they turn you around...on big stages you need to approach if he's camping, but you can't properly approach him facing backwards cause the lasers always turn you around.
ICs are great at dealing with lasers when facing forward, so this isn't an issue at all. The simplest thing to try is to use ice blocks to create little holes in Falco's camping that let you get closer, and then you can see how he responds to you being close to him and act accordingly. There are plenty of other weird tricks for dealing with lasers, too.
also, i don't know how i ever had trouble as marth vs ICs..i think my trouble back when i was marth was because i tried to approach the ICs...why does marth need to approach ICs when ICs seem to have such unreliable approaches against marth....outspacing marth is doable..but if they just walk forward and then dtilt at the right range i feel as if i'm at a disadvantage. i think i only won matches cause they die to dsmashes while trying to kill nana
1) Marth does need to approach ICs if the ICs know how to camp Marth, because ICs blatantly beat Marth in camping wars.
2) I have two main ways of dealing with things like Marth's dtilt. The classical counter to dtilt is fair. This is nice in that it will very cleanly hit Marth if your read is good, and you can get a mileage off of it if you connect. It's not nice in that Marth can punish you pretty hard if he reads it. The second option is to just not let Marth be in a position to use dtilt in the first place, which is a natural consequence of good camping. More specifically, desynched ice blocks (mainly those shot by Nana) inhibit Marth's ability to approach on the ground. Unless the Marth is brain-dead, the ice blocks probably won't hit him, but they will prevent him from doing stuff like just walking up and using dtilt. This approach opens up another can of worms, as Marth has ways around this sort of camping and ICs have counters to those counters, and so on, and sometimes in the course of this mess Marth will find opportunities to use dtilt anyways. I'm too tired to detail how all of this works plays out and I've kind of strayed a bit from the main question anyways.
question 3..how to edgeguard marth...edgeguarding from on stage doesn't work...what about with ledge invuln..i know i can stand on and smash..but i want more...can i trade nairs or bairs rising on stage or even falling offstage..i just want new edgeguards
Rising invulnerable nairs are good against Marths that aren't familiar with it, and sometimes works against those who are anyways. It's mainly useful against Marth's that up-B onstage in response to the opponent grabbing the edge. You can also use high invulnerable ledgehop nairs to intercept Marths that are recovering high pretty well. Ice blocks tend to be pretty good against recovering Marths, too. They can cut his double jump short and otherwise interfere with his recovery. Ledgedrop bair is good for intercepting Marth out of his side-B when he's recovering low. If you're onstage, you can run or short hop off and nair Marth out of his side-B, but if he reads this, you can get screwed over.
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If the Fox is shffl'ing aerials, you have a few options for stopping him in his tracks. One is dash dancing into grabs; even though it splits Nana up, you have decent combo options off up-throw, and it's still possible tech-chase with down-throw and back-throw. If he is at a high percent, you can wait for Nana to return before using a finisher combo. The other strong defense against his SHFFL offensive is retreating wavedashes into jabs. They come out quickly, and do very well to interrupt his n-air and d-air. Jabbing won't beat a shine, but it's faster and safer than a smash. It can lead into grabs and smashes, and you should use them frequently."
from the guide..so i guess i will stick to that if you guys don't know anything else...i think that wd into jab seems better than dashdance at low percents at least...i play marth vs fox enough to know that ICs won't beat a competent fox off of dashdance grabbing his aerials if the punish is something weak that solo popo can do.....so i'm guessing that that is really only of much benefit at high percent...i hope wd into jab is pretty good cause otherwise i think ICs have a really bad problem with keep away style campy foxes.
turning around beats everything though..you just can't approach very well though;p
I don't agree with using jab this way in the first place. Wavedash back -> jab against a nair or dair requires a very specific wavedash spacing, and jab doesn't reliably lead to anything, although it's still good and has its place in the match-up. I'd rather skip the middle man and go for something more substantial than a jab from the get-go. Relevant to facing backwards, you can dash back, short hop, and bair; if you pull in so that you don't lose a bunch of space during the short hop, this can be pretty good, and there isn't much to lose if you already have control of center stage, so it's okay then. I talked about other responses to this sort of approach earlier.
