So wait, I think Marth's down smash still sent people upwards?
First time I had the opportunity to play, mostly Marth, a little Lucina. A little Falco too.
If you can tip, Marth is better, he definitely can feel short on ability/potency if you aren't getting tips though.
Lots of wifi play, ****ing still the same old ****. Rolls don't have invincibility on start up like they did in Brawl, so I was getting used to punishment not the roll but the initial roll (like hitting Palutena while invisible, lol). But yeah, still couldn't do much about rolls unless I was at tipper spacing. Wifiwifiwifwifwifiwfiwfiwifwifwifiwi
Match ups that were just ******** were little mac, lucario and zero suit. Basically roll away to side b/dash attack >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Marth with ping. Lucario gets to the point where side b is 1/3rd to half FD length and his rolls are still massive
. I was also enjoying not being able to shield Charizard's Side-B on reaction :<
Down tilt is amazing. But you cannot turn around in it anymore. This really sucks. Like really sucks. Forcing yourself into the laggy get up animation to turn around is disgusting.
Dancing blade out of dash is golden. Still very golden. I may be wrong, but it feels like subsequent dancing blade hits are less laggy, maybe even less so than the first.
Tipper forward smash killing with good DI on lightweights at like 60-70%? Golden.
Single hit neutral air is really easy to have happen, good utilt or forward smash fodder.
Dolphin Slash breaks out of a lot of characters multijabs still... not little mac's apparently though beyond 10%? (gotta love it working at 0% but not afterwards :<)
Shieldbreaker is so solid. I'm not sure if it'll be viable as is considering its still a 20 frame move, but it's range is huge and it's deceptively potent at killing, even uncharged.
Up Tilt has very low knock back untippered, hits of this in certain scenarios is guaranteed follow ups at kill percent. I think DI/VI has a thing to do with this, but probably workable.
Forward air is ... good on a rising short hop and full hop. It's... so... awkward/useless otherwise. Tall characters are golden, but otherwise it just isn't really a potent walling move at all anymore, it's kinda like this aerial forward tilt now, with every short character (and everyone else once they figure out crouching) just don't particularly care about it at all. It just isn't an effective move, there's no scenario I saw where being grounded and being in a position to down tilt or ftilt wasn't... better.
Marth's edge guarding is still dominant, I would say its actually worse for the opponent in Smash 4 than it is in Brawl. Just time an edge trump just as they recover, go onto stage and then "complete control" scenario.
Grab game is kinda fine, kinda bad. I don't know why so many other characters get down throw to free things at every percent, including at kill percent. Feels like I'm playing Project M :< In Marth's case it's just down throw into back airing their directional air dodge frame trap. If they're instantly jumping a lot or whatever, up throw is surprisingly helpful.
Up Smash is pretty potent. I kinda need to test this on both characters, but horizontally it felt the move was just... reaching where it shouldn't. This is possibly a huge the case with Lucina, but I was finding how successful I was just "using" up smash to be... surprising? Solid damage, solid start up, hitbox and can kill.
Down air... completely useless? Way way too slow, techable for opponents on the ground meaning
doubly completely useless once people know how to do that consistently.
Over all, he feels like he does in PM. A solid character but nothing exceptional, able to compete, but will still end up losing due to the whole risk/reward factor likely rarely if ever being in his favour. Way too many moves that don't seem to be useful in this game (like a lot of why so many of his moves were usable in brawl was because of the frame trapping nature of Forward Air; no frame trapping forward air = rest of his moveset actually
don't have use cases). Compared to perceivable high tiers, his grab game is very mediocre. On a character with no free **** out of grabs, the fact he's only getting 4% to most characters 10%+ really shows, those 10% throws into guaranteed 15% aerials also really starts to be noticeable in the long run, really really noticeable;
depressingly noticeable.
Getting kills is where we'll fall short in the long run (as in the PM comparator) I think. Sure scrape even with mac, lucario, bowser, get to a point where nothing you do follows up into anything and you're otherwise shield fodder (because you don't have anything out of grab), and then suddenly their single sub 10 frame kill move that covers infinite range is going to get you, and it's going to get you at 90%. While they're at 180% and you're really hoping up throw won't get VI'd down. But yeah, Marth has nothing with his default moveset that will help him cover the fact that people
running away from him
will not ever put themselves in a dangerous position against this character, at least on an FD ruleset.
Custom specials could be critical. The whirlwind shieldbreaker has been on my mind so hard. Like, oh, I actually have something that has competitive range with other characters in the game? That's helpful!
The horizontal up-b may have use cases. Sweetspots at it's max horizontal I think, it could have really weird usages.
Oh and before someone goes wahwah, I think optimally we would beat little mac.
