Getting around Marth's spamming edge guards?

[Deleted member]

I fight my friend and he has a very spammy playstyle. A really easy thing he does to get kills on me is stands next to the edge and only uses fsmash and dtilt and throws me off when he can and spams dtilt. I haven't found any good counters with my Link or Marth to get around this even though I know it's coming when I try and recover. Any tips? Getting kills with Marth shouldn't be THAT easy.

 

[Praxis]

Sweet spot the ledge.

 

[UMR | donmk]

Sweet-spotting the ledge is generally optimal, however recovery mix-ups can be worthwhile too (especially when he starts to edge-hog your sweet-spotted recovery)

If he's using f-smash, even if you can't sweet-spot the ledge, if you learn to edge tech you can often get out of these sticky situations. It is a difficult but worthwhile technique.

Otherwise, you can try to mix-up your recovery and air dodge back on stage through his move. Dtilt is really nice for edge-guarding because it is fast, but it is not impossible to avoid. If you find that you are always below him when you recover try to do the following:

1. Recognise why you are always below him. Is there a certain move he uses to always get you off stage? If so try to avoid it. Try to avoid the situations where it is a viable option. Prevention is better than a cure. If he can't get you off stage, you don't have to worry about being edge guarded. People tend to ignore this aspect.

2. Improve your DI. By DIing correctly, you vastly improve your recovery options. DI up and recover to a high platform away from his edge-guards, or fake that you are recovering high and air dodge through his attempted intercept. DI throws so that you don't get the instant follow up. You'd be surprised how much of Marth's 'cheapness' is erased by good DI.

In short, don't try to 'beat' Marth's edge-guard, try to avoid it if you can. If you can't, try to figure out why you couldn't. If you can't figure that out, well, sweet spotting is always good, but be wary of wavedash ledge-hogs.

 

[Deleted member]

Sweet-spotting the ledge is generally optimal, however recovery mix-ups can be worthwhile too (especially when he starts to edge-hog your sweet-spotted recovery)

If he's using f-smash, even if you can't sweet-spot the ledge, if you learn to edge tech you can often get out of these sticky situations. It is a difficult but worthwhile technique.

Otherwise, you can try to mix-up your recovery and air dodge back on stage through his move. Dtilt is really nice for edge-guarding because it is fast, but it is not impossible to avoid. If you find that you are always below him when you recover try to do the following:

1. Recognise why you are always below him. Is there a certain move he uses to always get you off stage? If so try to avoid it. Try to avoid the situations where it is a viable option. Prevention is better than a cure. If he can't get you off stage, you don't have to worry about being edge guarded. People tend to ignore this aspect.

2. Improve your DI. By DIing correctly, you vastly improve your recovery options. DI up and recover to a high platform away from his edge-guards, or fake that you are recovering high and air dodge through his attempted intercept. DI throws so that you don't get the instant follow up. You'd be surprised how much of Marth's 'cheapness' is erased by good DI.

In short, don't try to 'beat' Marth's edge-guard, try to avoid it if you can. If you can't, try to figure out why you couldn't. If you can't figure that out, well, sweet spotting is always good, but be wary of wavedash ledge-hogs.

Thanks for the help, I'll practice a lot of that. When I do sweet spot a ledge and my friend is spamming dtilts slightly away from the ledge, what's a good option? When I try to do back on left stick then double jump and air dodge onto stage I usually end up not going far enough and falling into the dtilt or he hits when I'm still in the double jump before the air dodge, is there a way to get around this?

 

[UMR | donmk]

Depending on the spacing and timing you can try rolling, or even a ledge jump (hitting jump when you are holding the ledge).

The other option if you can learn the timing is to just simply do a stand from the ledge (pressing towards the ledge while holding). This depends on the character, but I can give data for Marth. This might get technical, so hold on.

Marth's (<100%) stand from ledge has its First Actionable Frame (FAF) on frame 33 and is invincible up until frame 30. What this means is that you are only vulnerable on frames 31 and 32, since you can act on 33.

Marth's Dtilt hits on frames 7-9 and its FAF is on frame 20. What this means is that if you time it perfectly, you can get up, eat his attack, and have 15 frames to act (eat the last frame with frame 30 of your get up. Have 2 frames of non-invincibility and his frame count is at 11. If he keeps spamming and ALSO times it perfectly, you get frames 19-11 + 7 where he cannot act). If his timing is not perfect, you get more frames.

If he chooses to use another move, you have at most 12 frames, since Marth's fastest move is Jab, which hits on frame 4 (again, assuming perfect timing).

In 12 frames, you can do almost any move. I would suggest going for jab, shield or grab. Jab is Marth's fastest move, so if you mess up the timing a little, you still wont be punished. Shield is good because if he is mindlessly dtilting he may hit your shield and then you can shield grab him. Grab is good because even if you mess it up (it comes out on frame 8) you get grab armour during the grab itself, which will allow you to eat his attacks.

Of course, if he is mindlessly spamming, there's a good move that everyone overlooks, and that is counter. Counter is 'active' from frame 5-29, so you can do it out of a roll, ledge drop (dropping down and jumping to the platform) or even from the stand I mentioned earlier. However, the risk with counter is that if you don't get it off, it's a free punish.