Man, there was a long period of time where I felt like Marth was one of our easiest matchups, and Lucina was even easier. Now it's completely opposite, with Marth being a difficult MU, and Lucina being even harder.
Okay, I guess it isn't completely opposite, they still are not
that bad, but I fear and respect them now, as contrast to when I considered them easy before.
As for advantages in this MU, we certainly do have a few. We outrange Marth with our giant hammer, which is a
huge deal in this MU since Marth is so reliant on spacing and getting that tipper. Since we outrange the tipper by just enough, we can space even better than marth. Even if Marth gets up close in our weak zone, he doesn't get too much reward. Another great advantage is our survivability. Well, it is actually a double-edged sword here since if we do get tippered, we can lose one of our best tools in this MU, and be at a significant disadvantage, but as long as we don't allow Marth to space that tipper, we can live to very high percents since Marth's sour spots don't kill for a long time, and we can ignore his edgeguards with our armored recovery by just recovering low. Also Marth has no way to force our approach so we can actually play defensively here, which just helps our spacing game even more.
Now for disadvantages. As stated before, Marth can kill us
early, as in like 50-70% (guesstimating F-smash kill percent at ledge), which is less than half of our expected survival percentage, which means we lose rage, time, and damage, and are going to be fighting a very uphill battle if we are going to still win. Also, Marth can rack damage on us very well, with first hit of N-air or jab cancel into dancing blade or a smash, and his good punish game, Marth can deal damage to us pretty well. Also, Marth can juggle us with U-airs, U-tilts, or other aerials pretty well, and we don't want to be above Marth. We can somewhat do the same to him, but not nearly as well. Also, Marth doesn't have too much trouble reflecting gordos. It isn't brainless, but a simple jab, F-tilt, F-air, U-air, or U-tilt will do very well. Marth's recovery makes him difficult to edgeguard, but not impossible. I would still prefer to try and punish his get up though rather than his recovery off stage.
I actually fear Lucina a good amount more than Marth. When playing against Marth, the gameplan is to just not let him get tipper and to survive to high percents while outspacing him. However, Lucina can take advantage of our weak zone right outside our grab range and rack very good damage on us, and kill us with F-smash earlier than DDD should be dying. She can't kill us at 50-70, but she can consistently kill us around 120-150, and she can get us there without too much trouble.
Ratings:
55 - 45
60 - 40