He's probably in my top 15 impressions for the game. But Marth is going to be good as long as his rewards are rewarding and he has safety in his kit used optimally. Look at Marth in Project M? He's the same as in Melee but horrendous, every character's rewards are better, every character's **** is safe on shield as well, and marth only gets rewards for tippering that are mildly comparable to what the mid tier characters or better get for free. I can't stand him in that game because I'm working significantly harder than my opponent to only have it all undone by getting grabbed once into everyone's free/easy cookie cutter ****.
Honestly, I'm glad I don't know much about Project M. I playtested an early beta of it, saw it going the wrong direction, and gave up on it before it became popular. Melee has enough dumb crap, and the decision to balance the game around the original broken top tier cast was most likely the wrong decision. Just so people can fight Fox and Falco, they have to make a lot of characters really stupid from what I last heard.
His forward, up and back air act much like his grounded tilts (or jab). Neutral air is somewhat like down tilt. ?
Your design/understanding scope of Marth is completely different to mine, someone who doesn't play Marth nor has the claim of beating him consistently (which hint: most top players in all three smash game he's appeared in thus far usually have strong tournament records against Marth / outright claim he's terrible on a consistent basis). Marth is a character of fundamentals, spacing and reacting; when you play as Marth or against Marth, the player who wins is going to be the guy who's "better" at Marth, his match ups are not skewed with anyone or anything that isn't inherently bad already.
Okay, so you believe I don't acknowledge Marth requires skill to be effective with. I pick MARIO against Marth players in Melee precisely because I don't mind making a fool out of his mistakes and because at a high level he can't offensively dominate like space animals. This doesn't mean I can't point towards dishonesty in his design.
Also, if we go back to Melee and you want to argue Marth is about fundamentals, you have to acknowledge this. Marth was not intentionally designed to be intelligently played. He was originally designed to CRAP ON YOU COMPLETELY in neutral unless you threw items at him. It's somewhat unfortunate for him that competitive players discovered wavedashing and crouch canceling though...sorta making his sword less important. So if Marth is "fair" in Melee, it's mostly by accident.
All of Marth's attacks are arcs, with specific horizontal strikes in a very small few moves. He has tippers to accentuate what arcing hitboxes achieve (differences in horizontal or vertical positioning 'guaranteeing' tippers).
I'm not sure why you're stating a simple fact. My argument is that especially in a 2D environment like Smash, arcing hitboxes are not just something you should give to anyone, ESPECIALLY fast characters that are disjointed.
Okay, fair comes out, no matter what, the next time he can do anything is 25-30+ frames later. I proclaim Marth's full hop fair is enough of a bread and butter option to base his neutral off of it. I have to hit with fair to be effective, on shield or on themselves proper, if my opponent is good enough to avoid forward air at all, I'm likely losing the match. If Marth's forward air was 2 frames start up with a cool down of 13 frames, I'd say that **** is counterplayless. But it's ONLY SAFE ON HITTING SOMETHING. In this game I can only rising forward air or landing/fast fall forward air to be safe/effective, that's about a 35 frame window in Marth's floaty jump where he doesn't have optimal usage of this "no counter play" move. Knowing those are the two scenarios which are most optimal, what can an opponent do? A hell of a lot, and I just don't think you understand that/smash enough to get it.
Okay, the frame data makes sense. I'll concede that.
This doesn't exist in Smash 4. Where is the dishonesty at a +1 frame advantage? Seriously. Ughhhhh.
Positional advantage. You are close to Marth's tipper range in grab release, and for the majority of characters, this forces a buffered defensive response. Objectively it's minor in the grand scheme of things. It's still a dishonest advantage that should be steered away from.
I didn't say he should or shouldn't be artificially safer. It does make him a bit of a stinker to Lucina, but considering there are ways to space with his attacks that are at really good ranges but are still untippered, I respect it (Up tilt/fair in this game mostly, Brawl this was more pronounced).
Marth's entire kit is mostly honest, there is rarely if ever anything that you see from him that's unexpected. You do not understand Marth at the same level as any tournament going Marth, and it's obvious by your complaints about him; his OPTIMAL USAGES ARE GOOD, his non-optimal usages are pretty mediocre in this game and the ability to use things optimally in Marth is in relation to how capable your opponent is at Smash.
Do you know how many hours I've spent only losing and getting 2-3 stocked playing as Marth against someone like Tyrant's anything (Captain Falcon in Brawl, over and over)? He's a significantly better Marth player than I am in Brawl, likely one of the best in the world yet he doesn't pull it out in tournament. He power shields reliably, rolls appropriately, and abuses his blind spots disgustingly. Him and Mew2King are known as Marth slayers, they haven't dropped sets to them in tournament for like, HALF A DECADE+. Do you think any of the other countless top level players I've played that cannot beat me without their main in comparison? Those top players I still lose to end up just bulldozing me, hard punishing me for habitually relying on going for 'only optimal usages' and do so primarily off of power shielding my forward air. Seems like a pretty consistent ticket to ****ing up Marth "oh he's in the air? He's either forward airing on the rise, so spot dodge, or fairing on the landing, so shield it!" Voila.
Okay, fair enough. I know my complaints are largely from a design perspective, and I was strictly avoiding getting detailed about his competitive effectiveness. You want me to admit that? There's that. You have to realize it's not my intention to overrate Marth, and that in my limited competitive experience, I traditionally have found him an easier matchup for all the terrible characters I end up maining in Smash. I was not trying to argue from any of those impressions.
Brawl Metaknight (and co) is bull****. I somewhat don't understand the point of your stories about how you couldn't beat top Metaknight players with Marth. Like...if you were trying to convince me that Marth is beatable and has weaknesses, I already knew that. But that ultimately was never what I was arguing about.
