Who is the Best Marth right now?(Mew2King excluded)

[Archangel]

Marth doesn't have a sex kick. That's why he sucks

 

[ERayz]

Dude,give Niko45 the 2012's post of the year award already, nobody will be able to compete with that.

 

[Varist]

NIKO IS THE NEXT DR. PP.

FORUM MVP, MAKE IT A POSTBIT.

that **** was just concentrated knowledge, being dropped on all of us.

 

[ShroudedOne]

I dunno that Peach is SOO much better. Turnips aren't that great for controlling space, in my opinion.

But that was an excellent, in depth post. I always thought it weird that he had no lasting hitbox. Poor Marth. Sometimes, I feel like I could hear an argument for him being Ganon/Samus/Doc tier.

 

[pewpewyou]

Oh Marth boards. You so silly

Btw, I'm sad I didn't get to play you at APEX, Niko D=

 

[Archangel]

I dunno that Peach is SOO much better. Turnips aren't that great for controlling space, in my opinion.

But that was an excellent, in depth post. I always thought it weird that he had no lasting hitbox. Poor Marth. Sometimes, I feel like I could hear an argument for him being Ganon/Samus/Doc tier.

I think at worse he could end up as top of that class. I wouldn't see him going any lower than that. Besides...Samus and Doc have lasting hit boxes...I wonder if that is why they are starting to outplace him?

 

[Construct]

N

I might make a pro-Marth argument when I come home to elaborate because I think both sides of the coin should be examined...

Kindly do so. While Niko's post was magnificently thought-out and written, his logic took tipper-sized chunks out of my morale to play Marth, hah.

 

[Mahie]

Kindly do so. While Niko's post was magnificently thought-out and written, his logic took tipper-sized chunks out of my morale to play Marth, hah.

Yeah I think a lot of Marth mains share this mood right now, sadly.

 

[Niko45]

Oh Marth boards. You so silly

Btw, I'm sad I didn't get to play you at APEX, Niko D=

Me too. I heard you're amazing. I feel like I didn't get to play anyone at Apex it was really annoying. That ****ing tournament...*sigh*

Thanks for the feedback guys. We can talk about positive Marth stuff too, like how sheik isn't that hard anymore. Plus you could always just watch PP's Marth for some good ol' inspiration.

 

[Construct]

Is there any recent footage of PP's marth aside from Apex? I've already seen all those, and searching on youtube I could only find Brawl Marth from like 2009.

 

[PolishSmash]

Streaming some Resident Evil 4 (Knife Only Professional Difficulty) for anyone that is as bored as I am. http://www.justin.tv/polishsmash

 

[Merkuri]

With M2k leaning more and more towards Shiek. I kinda think Ice and Taj are the hope for Marth. I'm not sure either of them are really ready to make any huge waves yet though.

 

[Archangel]

Ice is leaning more to Fox/Sheik though.

Taj...hopefully he leans more to Marth and not Mew2..

 

[Van.]

Several other Marths are already ahead of Ice. I wan to see Taj go to more big tournaments. He may be the best beside m2k now, and he's certainly the best against falco.

hbk, pewpewu, IB are the type of players who will hopefully push this character forward

 

[Merkuri]

Several other Marths are already ahead of Ice. I wan to see Taj go to more big tournaments. He may be the best beside m2k now, and he's certainly the best against falco.

hbk, pewpewu, IB are the type of players who will hopefully push this character forward

I personally don't believe that any(except Taj) of the other Marths are ahead of Ice. He was overrated coming into Apex but I also believe he underperformed. Also even if those players are ahead of Ice, I believe most of them have hit their wall(HBK and IB in particular who you mentioned), Ice blew up pretty quickly and I think he still has a lot further to go.

Yeah, I want to see more of Taj as well. Hopefully he goes to Northwest Manifest.

 

[crush]

I personally don't believe that any(except Taj) of the other Marths are ahead of Ice. He was overrated coming into Apex but I also believe he underperformed. Also even if those players are ahead of Ice, I believe most of them have hit their wall(HBK and IB in particular who you mentioned), Ice blew up pretty quickly and I think he still has a lot further to go.

Yeah, I want to see more of Taj as well. Hopefully he goes to Northwest Manifest.

lol Javi's mom finally makes one good post.

 

[Merkuri]

lol Javi's mom finally makes one good post.

You start having wet dreams yet little boy?

 

[crush]

mercury is a stalking pervert who wont stop talking about how i havent hit puberty

 

[Prince_Abu]

You start having wet dreams yet little boy?

do u feel accomplished that you were born before crush

 

[Heart Break Kid]

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh......we got this

 

[MaxThunder]

Edit: so post i replied to is gone, huh?... well that was very mean... made this post look totally random...

 

[KirbyKaze]

Niko raises some reasonable points.

Sheik can win a national though lolz. Maybe not right now, but eventually. She's got a lot of room to grow.

 

[danieljosebatista]

@Niko, you raise many excellent points concerning Marth's weaknesses. As a new player working my way up with Marth, I have definitely run into a lot of the issues you are describing. I find that the hardest match-ups for me currently are Falco and Sheik.

Concerning Marth's KO and punish game, you're right that it can sometimes be very hard to get those guaranteed kills. On the other hand, I think a lot of this difficulty stems from being stuck in that mentality. For example, as you mentioned, Fox and Falco have fast and relatively safe bairs that can kill at high percents. With Marth, forward smash becomes risky and punishable at high percents, and there really isn't another quick and effective kill option. Although this is technically true, it's only true in comparison to other characters like spacies.

Marth certainly has options he can exploit to kill at high percents, they just don't work the same way. For example once your opponent is over 100%, it might make more sense to go for a dair and follow that up with another aerial or edge-guard for the kill. Downsmash is amazing too, not at low percents, and not all the time, but it's definitely a great option to use every now and then. Comes out in five frames, and if it tips it's un-punishable even at low percents. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's just going to be downright frustrating and upsetting to think of Marth as limited in his kill capacity if you're comparing his options directly to those of other characters who frankly are meant to be played differently, rather than using his options creatively. Marth as you mentioned requires precision and really good reading skills.

I also want to bring up what you mention about his pressure game. Honestly, I feel that Marth's pressure game hasn't fully evolved yet. Marth was one of the first dominant characters in this game, and as a result the metagame that followed with Fox and Falco focused on developing fast shield pressure options and overwhelming Marth's range with speed. If we look at how top fox and falco players are playing today and compare it to the way they looked four or five years ago, we can point out major holes in their gameplay back then, and see many times where they could have applied more pressure, or upsmashed out of shield, etc. The point is, those options simply didn't exist then but now they do and they have become mainstream.

How does this relate to Marth? If you look at vidoes of Marth from a couple years ago, Marth looks just the same as he does now. In fact, he might look even more amazing because M2K was in his prime/not in a funk, and the spacie metagame was not as advanced. Well, my whole point is that Marth mains (not all of them, but many of them) are largely relying on the tactics that worked in the past without adapting to the current metagame. For example, I think that the next top Marth player will be someone who can exploit Marth's range with near perfect spacing. A perfectly spaced fair simply can't be punished. Additionally, Marth CAN apply pressure (though not in the same way as other characters) with fast strings of short hop double fair combos. Short hop double fair can also be used to punish those who abuse sidestep dodge. I think that in the future short hop double fair will become an increasingly efficient pressure tool for marth, but first marth players need to develop better DI to space the fairs properly.

In short, the Marth game developed by M2K and Ken was great, but we need to use it as foundation and build on it, not dwell on how it isn't working now. Please let me know what you guys think of this.

 

[Mahie]

I agree with what you say about Dsmash. It's definitely an underrated move, but in a way, it's even riskier than Fsmash, because it has a shorter range and tipping with it is pretty hard. Experimenting with it should tell.

I don't see how you expect to land a dair and then combo from it, because I assume you want to make them bounce and for that they need to be on the ground, and Dair is too slow to be used as an effective approach move on an idle opponent. Maybe once in a while for the shenanigans, but it's not reliable at all. Or maybe something like Dtilt > Dair on a shield would work, forcing them to shield low, then stabbing from the top. I don't know, once again something that needs testing, but I'm not sure it's a good idea.

Perfectly spaced fair leads to the guess situations Niko was talking about, and frankly , I don't think Marth benefits from that.
Assume your opponent can also avoid your fair perfectly, from a few pixels. He'll want to come in and punish right away, which then gives you a bunch of options : Attack again, Grab, or Spotdodge/Roll (You can run away but you'll get caught anyway if you do that imo). If the opponent decides to DD instead of coming right at you, and waits for you to do something, he'll probably manage to punish you everytime, or at worst, it'll come back to a neutral game. So it's definitely not unpunishable.


And Double fair doesn't sound to good to me either. Given the fact that you can SDI in the shield, and that anything other than tipped fair will put you in disadvantage and possibly get you grabbed, I don't think it's a good idea.
Spacies can pull this off because they can easily follow shield movement, thanks to their lightning fast speed. Marth however, will need godlike reaction to follow the SDI and succesfully pull off consecutive tipped double fairs on a shield.


Anyone else got insight on this? This is pretty much all conjecture, and I feel like I'm being really grim on this all.

 

[Shadow Huan]

lol @ sheik and marth being even. It's slightly in sheik's favor if only because shiek's punishes are WAY easier and more dependable than marth's. Sheik wiffs a move, how does marth punish at low-mid percents? Maybe a grab into a dthrow for a techchase or and uthrow with you HOPING you can take her jump? And if these work you have to make correct reads and punishes and maybe (depending on the stage) you can kill her or get her off the stage and try for an edgeguard. If marth wiffs a move what're sheik's punishment options? LOL grab or tilt into fair or uair... or nair even. Both punish hard but sheik doesn't have to stress about it as much

also dsmash is good for an occasional surprise kill, but even perfectly spaced against a sheild the ending lag is quite punishable. WD OoS is a viable punish against both fsmash and dsmash (tho dsmash has a good chance of a surprise sheild poke)

 

[Beat!]

Doesn't really matter if Marth has a slight disadvantage against Sheik or not. It's close enough to the point where the better player will win.

Get her into the air and juggle/combo for lots of damage and possibly an edgeguard. If you can bait/read her DJ then she's pretty much dead.

Also, learn when to edgeguard passively and when to jump off stage and ****ing hit her. Getting those occasional early kills is golden.
There's always a risk involved of course, but you eventually get a feel for when it's "safe" to go off stage for edgeguards.

 

[Shadow Huan]

i know all that. I was talking punishment options lol

 

[Beat!]

The second and third paragraph were just general vs Sheik stuff and not directed at you specifically.

 

[Max?]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA-ejc6ftRg

 

[KirbyKaze]

Ice evidently didn't read my vs. Marth throw guide :x

 

[danieljosebatista]

I agree with what you say about Dsmash. It's definitely an underrated move, but in a way, it's even riskier than Fsmash, because it has a shorter range and tipping with it is pretty hard. Experimenting with it should tell.

I don't see how you expect to land a dair and then combo from it, because I assume you want to make them bounce and for that they need to be on the ground, and Dair is too slow to be used as an effective approach move on an idle opponent. Maybe once in a while for the shenanigans, but it's not reliable at all. Or maybe something like Dtilt > Dair on a shield would work, forcing them to shield low, then stabbing from the top. I don't know, once again something that needs testing, but I'm not sure it's a good idea.

Perfectly spaced fair leads to the guess situations Niko was talking about, and frankly , I don't think Marth benefits from that.
Assume your opponent can also avoid your fair perfectly, from a few pixels. He'll want to come in and punish right away, which then gives you a bunch of options : Attack again, Grab, or Spotdodge/Roll (You can run away but you'll get caught anyway if you do that imo). If the opponent decides to DD instead of coming right at you, and waits for you to do something, he'll probably manage to punish you everytime, or at worst, it'll come back to a neutral game. So it's definitely not unpunishable.


And Double fair doesn't sound to good to me either. Given the fact that you can SDI in the shield, and that anything other than tipped fair will put you in disadvantage and possibly get you grabbed, I don't think it's a good idea.
Spacies can pull this off because they can easily follow shield movement, thanks to their lightning fast speed. Marth however, will need godlike reaction to follow the SDI and succesfully pull off consecutive tipped double fairs on a shield.


Anyone else got insight on this? This is pretty much all conjecture, and I feel like I'm being really grim on this all.

It's true that dair is slow, but that just goes with the point I was trying to make about Marth's kill game. You can't simply rely on bair or nair like spacies can, instead you need to have good reads and use out of shield options wisely. More importantly, you probably won't kill with one move, but with a successful string of reads from the initial hit. It doesn't matter if you catch them with a dair, fair, forward tilt, or other option that sends them off stage. Marth requires you to follow up, which can suck, but imo that's the price you pay for his range.

I'm a bit confused as to what you mean by "perfectly spaced fair leads to guess situations Niko was talking about." What do you mean? If you space well, you won't be punished, you can't be shield grabbed, and you can follow up with fair again. This is in my opinion a great situation to apply pressure with double short hop fair, but again I feel that this isn't common place yet since it requires very precise mid-combo DI. It's true that if you get in too close then you can be punished, but the whole point of this is to have good spacing isn't it? That's like saying "If your tech skill or spacing with falco is off, you can get punished with a shield grab." You COULD be punished, but the point is to play to your character's strengths and avoid that.

As far as the smash DI on the shield goes, it's true that the opponent has that option. But them gaining a little bit of distance does not really punish Marth in any way. Double fair is a great option, imo it is extremely underutilized. If I double fair your shield with good spacing, even if you smash shield DI you are still stuck holding your shield. I can continue to apply pressure using double fair, another aerial such as nair or u-air, or even rush forward with a grab once I hit the ground. Again, this type of "pressure" isn't the same kind of pressure as peach can apply with downsmash, or spacies can apply using their pillars. It's more of a pressure from controlling space and options, and forcing your opponent to stay in shield or retreat instead of looking for openings.

 

[Mahie]

My point was that if you get closer to the Marth using Shield SDI, you can just shieldgrab the second fair.

And I described what I meant by guess situation, it will ultimately lead to Marth having to throw a coin and hope it works.

 

[danieljosebatista]

Oh I see. In that case, I really don't think that they can SDI close enough to grab you assuming you're well spaced. Even another Marth shouldn't be able to grab you from that distance

 

[Juno McGrath]

I still think Kevin ThatdudePP Nanney has the best non M2K marth atm.

 

[Archangel]

he may have one of the better secondary Marths....but Tournaments are the proving grounds. Mango has gone Marth in tournament I want to see Kevin do that first. Not that I don't think he can be good but...well riding hype trains is usually a bad Idea...the always crash. *cough Ice cough cough!*

 

[KILLA.FOR.CASH.]

i cant seem to find any pp marth videos, besides the ones from apex pools =/

 

[Archangel]

i cant seem to find any pp marth videos, besides the ones from apex pools =/

go back a few pages you'll see them show up.

 

[Beat!]

i cant seem to find any pp marth videos, besides the ones from apex pools =/

G6 2 Grand Finals

Also search on youtube for the following
Dr peepee vs chillindude829
Dr peepee vs thumbswayup
Dr peepee vs chaddd

 

[Battlecow]

watch his friendlies vs armada on EclipsingBinary's channel. He does suuuuuper well.

 

[Dr Peepee]

I couldn't think of something to write about Falco so here I am

Alright first off, I doubt everyone will agree with all of this, and I'm not trying to say these problems are necessarily unique to Marth, but all in all I think they add up to create a pretty serious up hill battle for him in trying to solo win a major tournament.
Anyways, this isn't really anything new. After every major that Marth doesn't do particularly well at there's always an outcry about Marth being bad or overrated or whatever, but while I think Marth has particular flaws that really hurt him, the bigger issue in Melee imo is that there has been a pretty significant paradigm shift over the last couple of years in what characters and strategies are truly viable for winning major tournaments.

First of all, **** the tier list. Listing characters linearly is very misleading because it indicates that all of the characters are playing the same game by the same rules and that just isn't necessarily the case. The fact that Jiggs and Sheik can be ranked side by side and that anyone can actually assess one being a smidge better than the other should indicate that it's completely bogus because one character is highly variable, one of the most if not THE most abstract, difficult characters to measure in the game (Jiggs, obviously). The other, sheik, is pretty much the most conventional straight forward character. You don't have to dig very deep to understand why sheik is good, her entire design is clearly built for efficient damage racking and killing - winning, if you will.

However, sheik still plays within the boundaries of the game. She doesn't really have the proper tools to camp MOST characters to time out, nor does she have overwhelmingly good offensive tools for getting the hits she needs to perform her great punishes. She is the best character of these types of characters, who have to find some sort of middle ground between offense and defense in order to compete, not gifted enough at one extreme or the other.

These characters are every character that isn't Jiggs, Peach, Fox or Falco. In addition, all of these other characters (for the most part...IC's are another outlier character that I don't quite know what to make of yet) are the characters Sheik particularly tends to thrive on beating, and it artificially bulks her up on the tier list because she is quite out matched against the top 4 characters. I don't think Sheik can win a national either.

What does this have to do with Marth? Well Marth is very similar to Sheik I think, though sort of directly inferior in a lot of ways, and better in a couple of ways. Marth's mobility and having guaranteed grab combos on Fox, for example, makes him better equipped for beating Fox, but in the vast majority of matchups, sheik is the one with the guaranteed grab combos and her lack of mobility is not as apparent against non-Fox characters. Sheik is also oddly not that good at corner pressuring imo, as if you are standing near the ledge under a side platform and sheik stands in the middle of the stage, she isn't actually that threatening because her extended range consists of running at you with either a dash attack or grab, or just standing needles. With no platform to do tricky stuff on or use needles practically she is kind of naked and it seems like a bit of an odd flaw but for whatever reason if you don't play scared with your back to the ledge you might find sheik to be not that scary. Marth's stage control isn't much more practical, though...

Stage Control

A lot of people say Marth has great stage command and controls space amazingly but really, he's quite mediocre at it in comparison to what he's up against. The formula for great stage control is to completely own the space you occupy and then to extend pressure into the space in front of you in some way. So for Falco, dair/nair/shine/utilt all very very strong close range moves that require literally minimum frame advantage to land and to top it off, all of these easily lead into big damage and potentially a stock. Very threatening. With that established, he then uses lasers to pressure forward and simultaneously harrass whatever advantageous spacing you might be trying to set up against him. Jiggs and Peach have similarly amazing tools for this. Jiggs particularly is basically camping you very severely initially to stuff any type of offensive approach you might try and once he gets you to start camping her back then he starts inching forward with those bairs and taking stage away from you until he has cornered you, which ends very poorly for the opponent.

But at least Falco will be very vulnerable if he actually gets hit, where as Peach and Puff live forever and are generally not very afraid of being off stage, therefore making their camping absolutely legitimate as a strategy. This also affords them to take more risk (if they want), because the risk-reward in spacing wars is constantly skewed in their favor. Peach would love to trade with Marth all day long. The pressure is on Marth to space perfectly, not her, as if he doesn't he will get the poor end of the trade and also it will be more costly for him as he is severely vulnerable whenever he is forced out of position or off stage. He also sucks at close range, and I mean absolutely sucks. His sword is completely CCable at that range and his jab is horribly slow for practical jab use. He basically has grab, which any character has to begin with. For example, rolling into Marth can actually legitimately **** him if you let it, so this is something you have to guard against actively in order to not get *****, where as the good characters punish rolls pretty freely on reaction with fast moves that just dominate at close range. Another damning aspect of his stage control is that he just...doesn't have much control. He doesn't have any tools that force approaches like a competent projectile, but he doesn't have great offensive tools for pushing the pace either. He's constantly forced to space around what his opponent is doing, which sucks because spacing is his only solid universal advantage but when he's forced to space defensively constantly he's vulnerable to every character's tricks for forcing misspacing (and every character has them and competent players will execute them). Marth is also lacking in CC options defensively. CC grabs are amazing if you can get them but while his grab range is great for a grab, it's still not as ranged as, say, Fox's dtilt, or some similarly quick move that pretty much all other competitive characters have to defend themselves adequately in that situation. Even with Marth at 0%, Fox's back air can still outspace a Marth cc grab if done properly.

Glass Cannon, but where's the Cannon?

I want to focus on the "Glass" part first. I mean, spacies will always argue that the balance to their character is how harshly they are punished, and they are punished quite harshly, but Marth is right there in line behind them man. I think it is really common for people to overlook just how completely boned this character is off stage. Absolutely among the easiest to edgeguard and easiest to gimp in the game. It isn't just the direct combos that are so punishing - they're pretty bad but not the worst - but the sheer fact that he sucks at combo breaking, sucks at close range, sucks when lofted above people trying to get back on the ground. He becomes a complete punching bag in these spots. If you give spacies any daylight in a combo they will shine you and completely flip the momentum. Peach will dsmash you. Instant momentum shifts are amazing. Marth is just hoping you will let him escape so that he can try to start all. over. again. Nothing comes cheap for him. He just wants you to give him an opportunity...to have another opportunity. This is really a massive disadvantage. He's also really screwed coming off the ledge. No actionable invincibility really hurts a character that is so vulnerable offstage. I mean yea, Peach doesn't have that either but Peach lives double what Marth does on the regular (and also has semi viable on-stage recovering options, where as Marth recovering to the stage is basically conceding getting hit again and only does it when forced to). Tons of characters exploit the crap out of Marth getting off the ledge, and against someone like Armada just forget it, he's not letting you back up.

And yea, where's the cannon? His punish game is extremely fragmented in comparison to any character going down the list to even mid tiers. Spacies, I got it, he's competent there, but everywhere else his punish game is consisting of hard read after hard read. I don't think some people really properly value guaranteed-ness in melee, as when things are not guaranteed in melee you instantly jump from 0 to somewhere between 4 and 8 options in most scenarios. In the long run this leads to massive inconsistency in his punish game. You will be fishing for kills, at times, in absolutely all matchups while your opponents kill you methodically and routinely stock after stock. In some matchups like Peach/Puff/Samus you KNOW going in you will be fishing for kills basically every stock. I understand that all characters at times have to fish for kills, but the better characters can generally fish with something pretty safe (though nothing is completely safe), like spacies' bair. Marth finishers like utilt and fsmash are extremely laggy and punishable in comparison, making him very vulnerable when trying to get kills. I know every Marth has been in that situation where they start off a match losing the first stock despite doing a lot of damage to the opponent, then coming back and fishing for that kill only to get opened up on the next stock before that kill actually comes. Worst feeling in the ****ing world.

And don't get me started on playing from behind with Marth. If you're down 2 stocks to peach or jiggs you can go ahead and unplug your controller. He's not built for comebacks. He's extremely vulnerable to conservative attrition-based play, which lots of characters can launch right into very effectively once they get leads on Marth. Spacies, on the contrary, are the offensively gifted characters in the game and while they can be played extremely gay and campy if they themselves have leads, if they happen to fall behind they can dig in their bag of tech skill and find ways to bring it back. This ultimately is what makes spacies the best characters imo, as they are capable of running away and even timing out a ton of characters if they really wanted to, while simultaneously being capable of actually approaching and **** stocking for come backs if they are necessary. Most spacie players play spacies because they want to be able to play offensively, though, so time out spacies have not yet become much of an issue (though if there were more money in the game and more majors, sponsorship, etc I think it would definitely become pretty common).

Outgunned by Spacies

I think right now as of this moment Marth has very decent matchups with Fox and Falco (though Falco is much much more difficult if they know what they're doing). Going forward, though, I don't see much upside or innovation really for Marth where as the rate at which Fox tech skill is starting to take off, I think it's very likely that he will eventually fall behind against them. I don't think either of them can truly camp Marth to death but I think offensively they will just overwhelm him, exploit him once out of position, and destroy him off stage. As they get better control over their shield pressuring tools Marth will lose more and more of those pressure exchanges, as well as spacies that take advantage of ALL recovery options available will live longer, be gimped less, and Marth will just not be able to keep up. Abusing ledge invincibility severely hurts Marth's ability to pin the spacies down as they get off the ledge. There is nothing you can do about this but concede space and continue to play defensively. Sorta sums up Marth in the metagame, constantly giving up ground. Marth innovation: Space....harder?


Lack of Pressure

The top characters are all quite good at shield pressure in their own ways and manage to be pretty safe and destructive in doing so. Sheik also has pretty good pressure, though still not nearly as safe or effective as the better characters'. Good shield pressure allows you to forgo things like whiffing grabs to well timed sidestepping, which Marth has to deal with constantly (Vudujin told me at Apex: "Marth loses to sidestepping") and this is one of the major reasons that bad characters can still give him tons of problems. If you have a fox nair that lasts long time and has a shine following it up you're not even going to bother with sidestepping (making getting grabs even easier!) but the lack of actual safe shield pressure for marth throws off the balance of things here. Most of Marth's "pressure" ends up coming from standing and waiting, hoping you will get scared and sidestep early. This works sometimes, especially on people who suck against Marth, and don't realize that while he stands there doing nothing you could go right into your own offensive pressure (just ****ing hit him). Marth has to wait for sidesteps cause he has no other really strong ways to punish it. The real point is, while it's cool that Marth can just stand there and scare some people into doing things like sidestepping or rolling for no apparent reason you have to actually hit their shield to ensure that what you're doing is safe and then also be able to punish the options you have now limited them to by forcing them in shield. Better players all understand this and will often go on the offensive if you get caught staring at their shield for too long. The best type of Marth shield pressure I've been able to come up with was cross up nairing past someone's shield. This will cover a sidestep and also land you relatively safely behind them which you can then continue pressure with a side B or turn around grab or dash away hoping to bait something out from them. It works okay but it takes more conditioning than traditional shield pressuring tools do, and, like standing and waiting, you can get called out for it and attacked early before you get it off.

Ratio of Hitbox Duration:Total Lag of Move

Extending upon this point of why sidestepping is so problematic for Marth (and by consequence, the vulnerability of waiting for sidesteps), none of his hitboxes stay out for more than about 1/3 of a second. I've already talked about nair on shield, though it is vulnerable between hits and the duration of the individual hits is still very short, but generally speaking your timing needs to be pristine. Everything lags, everything is punishable. Your "control" from neutral position is extremely fragile (and as covered, your stock is pretty fragile after that fails). It's extremely underrated to have a lasting hitbox, even if only for having a MIXUP (and in the case of the spacies' nair/dair, hit confirming into huge damage is pretty cool). Jiggs has this with nair (amazing move), Peach with dair. Sheik has her nair (amazing move). In fact, lots of bad characters even manage to have one of these. Why nothing for Marth?

Marth as a Whole

-Basically the bottom line is your advantage here is the potential to outspace other characters with range and disjointedness. Problem is that even though Marth is disjointed EVERYWHERE most good characters have one or two very good, ranged, disjointed moves that can be exploited to compete with Marth (at least force trades, which are almost universally good against Marth). He's also extremely vulnerable to projectiles disrupting his spacing.

-Grab game is great for control on non-FFers, horrifying for actually punishing or killing things. Grabs have elevated risk because you are vulnerable to the constant sidestep/wait for sidestep scenario, but imo you won't poke your way to victory against Peach and Samus so you need to get good at landing them regardless of the consequences. There is no way to be very safe here, just have to have godlike intuition.

-Big stages vs small stages: Extra mobility advantage on big stages is great, but comes at a price as getting kills will be even harder than it already is. Marth is very laggy and vulnerable to characters with better offense (fox/falco) and better stage control tools (Jiggs/Peach) on smaller stages. Kills will come easier, though. Tough call, personally I prefer big (or at least battlefield size).

-Tight battles with low/mid/high tiers. Again, all you can do is outspace. Marth's punish sucks on most of these characters and most of their punishes are fantastic on him. When sweating these out, you'll be wishing you played sheik.

-Amazing air to air game. Probably the best in the game. Exploit this advantage whenever opponents are misplaying and going in the air unsafely voluntarily. Should also exploit up throw on floaties as much as possible since you can sometimes get a **** stock off stealing a DJ and maintaining complete air control til they are launched off stage.

-Must swing sword to protect himself, but is simultaneously completely vulnerable upon whiffing. The stakes are high and the low payoff of landing a retreat fair on a floaty doesn't seem justified.

-Crappy CC game against good spacing (grab just not long/quick enough)

-Admittedly he is one of the more competent characters among the "mere mortal" tier that I would describe as anything outside of Fox/Falco/Jiggs/Peach/Sheik (Sheik is sorta stuck in the middle. Dominates the characters below but can't keep up with the characters above her imo). The problem is that there's a gap that I'm not sure can be closed between characters that play like Marth and those that play like Jiggs or Falco. Whether he is outgunned offensively or defensively he just doesn't hang and doesn't even really have solid answers imo. Then on top of that, he's still gotta worry about Sheik and Falcon who give him all the trouble he can handle, and the matchups below them are too close to just be Marth and win, you need pretty extensive experience against those characters to play them competently....much better to just be sheik and do sheik stuff and not worry about that.

As negative as this all sounds, I just want to discuss it and get people's ideas on what can be done better. I sorta only focused on negative stuff for the most part and I acknowledge that, I'm sure someone pro-Marth will fill in the positives I overlooked or understated.

Stage Control:

You are correct in saying that, in order to control stage, one must control stage in front of them. However, that is not necessarily a full view of stage control in my opinion. I would say that, in order to effectively control whatever portion of stage one may possess, one must manipulate the space around them effectively by threatening with their available tools(movement and attacks, specifically) in the majority of possible attack areas at the majority of feasible attack timings. Marth, with his long range in both attacks and grabs, fast dash, excellent DD due to a long initial dash, long WD, and relatively quick startup(if not cooldown but that's debatable I suppose) of his moves, it's easy to see that he can control his surroundings and any potential movement into his space well. Dtilt covers ANY grounded approach, with the added benefit of IASA frames for Marth to retreat/approach/attack/defend from. Fair counters MOST aerial approaches(especially retreating Fair), and is relatively safe when used sensibly. Ftilt can cover high and low ranges at a reasonable distance and does not have bad cooldown. Jab is a long range move that starts quickly, interrupts many movement tricks or approaches(important for throwing off timing/momentum), and isn't hurt on cooldown, especially with the possibly of a second jab if needed. Being able to transition from any of these moves into a WD to completely change where all of these big moves can threaten, or being able to DD to intimidate/punish an opponent from that position is quite menacing. As one's punishment game increases, people learn to fear this range/movement game of Marth's as being the precursor to such strong punishment, thereby making them afraid or causing them to question their initial decisions. This is of course human factor side to Marth, but honestly one's goal in games, in addition to winning the matchup, is also to get into the opponent's head.

Marth is not rewarded for mashing tech skill or WoP'ing things. No, Marth's strength lies in how he can CHOOSE whenever he wants to abuse his range against people. If one chooses to execute the same way in a situation over and over, that is much more effective for characters with STAPLE responses or powerful followups(like Falco lasering at something that lags or Peach FC aerial Dsmash'ing something that whiffed an approach or shielded after getting up from the edge). This character is at his best when people know he can outrange any of their decisions AND chase down any escapes but they do not know WHEN he will do it. I would write more here but I want to move on. Maybe another time.


Glass Canon Argument:


Hard combos happen to everyone. Dang it man I've figured out how to hard combo Jigglypuff with Falco now! Marth is FAR less vulnerable to being death comboed than spacies are(I play birdman). I'll give you that he is not exactly a Peach floaty either though. I do believe that he usually isn't going to die in one read or maybe two though(unless they're on solid hits or in solidly bad positions like by the edge). Marth is somewhat floaty you must remember, and even if he isn't in the best of positions after getting out of stun, at least he can get out of stun and have more chances to free himself unlike characters that just die when they get hit. I think more side B tricks, more shield breakers, and more airdodge tricks are things Marths need to be using to recover better. Also, Dair is still a pretty big move even if it doesn't stay out forever. Marth also has an out if he goes high enough, which is falling at an angle(usually offstage) so that anyone trying to attack him from anywhere in front of him(including below) will get swatted by Fair, potentially reversing the situation. I'd rather focus on ways to reduce this problem Marth has than leave it as it is though.....


As for the "Canon"....


If it's not a FF'er, then yeah maybe there's not a ton of guaranteed fast setups for quick easy execution for kills. I don't particularly mind this though. This doesn't necessarily make Marth bad, and it doesn't mean he can't death combo anything at ALL.

Consider this: When someone is above Marth(especially on FD), how do their options fare compared to his, as any character(including Jigglypuff)? Can they realistically use a move to beat out his uptilt, his upair, his spaced rising Fair/Bair? Well, maybe Ganon can, but you can just bait the mess out of that guy LOL. DD ****. But yeah, no one can really touch Marth when he's below them. In a way, if Marth continually sets up situations such as these, then they are basically "free" hits that are simply not ones done in hitstun but are still part of a combo. This is where Marth's punishment game is very strong and allows him to make those comebacks against floaties and allows him to get those strong leads that people can't break by pushing into Marth because they can't beat his RANGE and MOVEMENT game.

With this entrapment game, combined with a phenomenal edgeguarding game, how can Marth not rack damage or even swiftly kill(or gimp) whenever he wants to?

Tech chasing with throws racks damage, keeping floaties/anything at high percent low to the ground(dair and dtilt and them DI'ing Fthrow down and away) is possible and can set up for kills/edgeguards.

His grab is HUGE and sets up ALL OF THIS(upthrow can't be DI'd that hard at that).

How is his punishment game lacking?



Spacies:


Fox having tech skill is cool and all, but does that really change the fact that Marth still outranges Fox? It doesn't change Marth's harsh punishment game. It doesn't make Fox's lasers do any more damage. It just means Fox may punish a little harder or he may pressure a little better/get off the edge a couple more ways now. This just means we have to be smarter....that's literally it. Tech skill enables actions, and Marth has the range to make all of these actions obsolete. Tech skill is useless boxed into a corner in shield.

It's okay if spacies pressure better, better just means they will miss less L-cancels or mix their games up more. Marth's need to shield DI more, WD OOS more, and maybe lightshield more(not something I think you need but whatever). Point is that, once again, this tech skill is just making Marth have to THINK more. Ever tried jumping out of Fox pressure right before he shines? You fly away and if you get the jump out you're not even in stun. Sick spacing reset that forces Fox to quit shining or pressuring eventually.....sounds great to me.

If spacies start recovering using all of their options then Marths need to begin being more proactive in edgeguarding instead of waiting. Manipulating spacies when they're offstage is something that everyone does anyway, and Marth needs to quit sitting at the edge of the stage every time if he wants to keep up. Going out there, pretending to go out there, adjusting spacing with WDs/DDs, or grabbing the edge can all be great ways to mix up spacies on their recoveries. Eventually you don't want to just mix up spacies though, you want to CONTROL them into recovering how you want them to. Going out and Fair'ing a Falco you threw off early will likely cause them to airdodge/instant side B if you throw them off and act as if you are going out after them again, so you could run off DJ back onstage Fair/grab/whatever the heck you want that Falco is afraid of you and doesn't know how to recover best now.


The edge invincibility is a great point. Fox benefits wayyyyy harder from this than Falco does, but Falco gets his LHDL back if it's respected so whatever. The edge is becoming more complex now. Instead of numerous ledgehop side Bs we will see numerous edgedashes. Rather than freaking out about this, Marths need to understand that they still have stage control, and they can still trick the opponent into making a bad edgedash decision(edgedash shield to get grabbed, edgedash whiffed upsmash into anything, edgedash nair to cc punish/retreating Fair punish/DD grab/etc). Rather than despairing that the metagame is changing, I would suggest focusing on how to punish this option, as old school Marths struggled with how to handle the various side B heights they had to deal with. It's not bad, just in keeping with the times.



Pressure:

The point of pressure is to cause the opponent to become reactive to you or become intimidated and lose their gameplan/act out of fear. If Marth puts someone in their shield and stands outside of the range of any retaliation options(that cannot be reacted to, so essentially aerials OOS and grabs), then what option does one have except to get away or know when Marth will attack and punish? Well, if someone knows when you will attack often, then you're playing Marth incorrectly. You have basically total control over that situation. The threat of your moves is now CONSTANT. I could put someone in shield, walk up to them, jab them OOS, watch them go back into shield more afraid than before. I didn't do anything besides catch someone going OOS in response to my approach(aka the distance between us getting too close and possibly with that the FEAR of being grabbed), but I have effectively pressured them with ONE move used ONE time. Marth is not about tech skill in pressure situations(or ever really lol), he is about conditioning and threatening(maybe one could also say this is intelligence or smart play....whatever lol basically it's not what one would call mindless tech skill stuff).

To mix up pressure, Marth should alternate between obvious options(grabs or spaced moves done quickly) to establish a threat, and moving(can be WALKING) while attacking at different times(it may help to disregard spacing for some of this since you'll be getting free hits/pressure by doing so) or spacings(stuff I already said+shield stabbing could be better at different ranges and could allow for different followups depending on which part of the sword you hit with).

In a way, this is extended stage control theory, so you could even say the pressure begins or can be going on before a shield is ever put up. Marth with the stage can begin hard conditioning his opponents with his various walling and threatening techniques.

The best way to start handling Marth's pressure effectively is to stop thinking about it in modern terms(hitting someone's shield) and to begin thinking of it in old terms(threatening options and manipulating the player into doing what you want them to do).


Hitbox Duration:


I'm not sure what else you want for this besides Nair, but I've seen Marth's Fair and Dtilt, among other moves, hit people out of spotdodges and rolls and such even when the prediction timing was off. I suppose I don't consider this that big of a deal because I'm not sure what it's actually supposed to catch. I suppose catching people in the air if you miss would be nice, or throwing out a move to catch people while they're on the defensive, or covering yourself as you fall, but Marth has lots of range and long-enough lasting moves (imo I suppose) that tend to give him leeway as long as he's setting himself up in the ballpark timing area to cover options.

Oh yeah, shield breaker sits out for a while too iirc. I understand the importance of lasting hitboxes, but I guess it just doesn't bother me too much that Marth doesn't have a sick move designed to stay out there. Certainly a disadvantage though, so maybe that has something to do with it. XD



Marth as a Whole:


-I wish you had listed examples of such trading moves, but if you mean like Peach Fair then yeah that sucks to trade with, but the bright side is that most of those moves are pretty obvious to see coming because those are the only moves those characters can use to even somewhat compete with Marth's spacing. Marth gets his whole moveset to **** characters with lol. Powershielding and platforms(shield dropping exists and Marth's wavelands are sick so don't tell me he sucks that badly on platforms lol) handle projectiles just fine.

-Well, if you land a poke on a floaty then it can lead to a grab anyway, so that's cool. Besides, if you poke/throw a floaty offstage then it's your advantage again, and how is that bad? You don't need intuition to land grabs, you just need to make sure someone isn't conditioned to go OOS when you're going close....and using non-grabs help do that. Not a difficult process imo.

-Stages: Big stages are cool because you get relieved of pressure more, while still being able to apply your own really well. You should also be able to live longer because you are floaty-ish.

Small stages are great because your range is huge and grabs send everything offstage lol. It's hard for spacies to get things going here if they can't land a move inside you.

-Bad characters: I have yet to see a bad character that can really handle Dtilt and Fair and getting thrown into the air. Ganon kinda can, but again, he is easily baited and punished. They also can't recover well usually either, so edgeguarding is even easier for Marth.

-I like hitting airborne things while grounded as well, but yes THISSSS.....make those jumpers pay.

-Well he can shield or DD/WD to protect himself, he doesn't HAVE to swing....the fact that he can outspace most approaches is pretty sweet though lol. Hitting a floaty means they will likely fall back and you get to approach now. You gained insight, conditioning, and probably momentum from a retreating Fair on a floaty. Not a guaranteed followup, but it certainly is valuable.

-Crappy CC Game: Yeah I actually suck at remembering to CC with Marth LOL, but the few times I do, I can get hits or grab the limbs of anyone that hit me. Sometimes I can dash in and grab someone that had to space very hard to hit me depending on the circumstance. CCs are more about setup than overuse.

-I think Marth is a top 3 character. I'm not done evaluating my own tier list though so I'll get back to you on that.


Marth has the most maneuverable range in this game, the biggest grab of the good characters, the best edgeguarding(possibly second best but either way it's ****), juggles better than any other character(which leaves more room for error in combos should there be an accidental pop up, though this is a somewhat unnecessary point lol), and even has lots of efficient staples and practices found out already by M2K and friends.

Marth, the character, is amazing. Marth, the players, have work to do. Marth is not "outgunned" and I don't believe he loses badly in an offensive fashion either. The beauty of having all of this range means that there are many acceptable ways to win with him(all of which are still pretty legit though in terms of effort because you have to be close-ish to your opponent).



Thanks for posting that big thing Niko. I needed something to write about for a couple hours to feel better. =)