peepee i'd like to hear your opinion on playing marth in an aggressive way. I love the character and have been playing him for 2 years, but I feel like my options are so limited against good spacies/shiek. I don't want to be entirely reliant on my grab or letting them come to me because people look for it but I feel like all of marth's attacks are so predictable because you have to jump first, then do a slow arcing aerial. Down-tilt and grab seem to be the best bet for his ground game but they're only two options whereas a character like sheik/fox can attack and approach in so many different ways.
Basically, how do you play marth in a way that isn't just reactive/counter-approaching? What moves do you consider in being aggressive in the neutral game and when is it good to use your aerials or stay grounded?
Great question! Very essential to understanding how Marth can succeed in this metagame imo.
Okay so aggression, first of all, can be done entirely with movement. This is because aggression is something that is FELT, you don't have to actually do a move to make someone know you're being aggressive. This is why people freak out on movement when someone gets stuck in shield actually haha. But anyway, by dashing closer to an opponent, you are being aggressive towards them. That, in itself, is aggressive. And guess what? Marth has a super long, low dash! Very good for him. Further, his WD can also be used to be aggressive and this is a good altered visual/audio cue the opponent must deal with when interpreting your approach.
I could go on and on about that kind of stuff, but it boils down to intent. If you want to be aggressive, move towards someone. They FEEL the range of your sword now, and that is pretty strong. In this position I was almost exclusively run up -> Dtilting, but obviously people caught on(eventually lol) and started jumping/attacking me before my dash became a run, running farther than my Dtilt length, etc. Now at this point, it doesn't really matter that your Dtilt is connecting or making them shield or whatever option you're probably looking for. The Dtilt has done its job by extending your threatening range your opponent must deal with. Your dash is now more threatening. This means people have to start running farther from you or attacking you when they see you dash in, which is of course safe as long as you don't commit to your action in advance.
From that position, you can take space/give pressure with largely dashes lol. Incrementally or in big bursts, it depends on opponent, player preference, and conditioning/momentum. Adding in a rising SH Fair when people are cornered(no one wants to get grabbed or Dtilted so jumping would beat the other two options lol,) and you have a great set of stuff to really trap people.
This works differently in the three matchups you mentioned.
For Fox, it's mostly as I described. I won't go into that one right now but it's a super fun matchup because Fox's movement is awesome too(Marth still has great potential to pin/pressure him well though so don't sweat it.)
For Falco, your dashes actually carry the threat of PS as well, so that's SUPER crucial. When you get close to Falco and he can't laser, obviously pressure is free and you don't even need to dash much lol.
For Sheik, this is a hard strategy to execute. The trick to success is to not jump unless you see her jump first or are 98%+ positive she will jump lol. You have to poke a bit more and use a VERY tight DD/WD game in order to be aggressive. It can totally be done though, just respect walk Ftilt and occasionally dash attack range.
Hope this helps, I felt inspired to write some sweet Marth stuff haha.
Dr. Pee Pee? The guy who I just saw on YT? lol.
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