hi guys, I know I'm FAIRly active on the marth boards, but I'm really not getting the success with marth that I want I have problems being patient and overcommiting to things that are not guaranteed so I was wondering with marth, what is guaranteed? what are his safe options in both approaching and evading? spacies have spotdodge -> shine, puff has uptilt rest, samus has downthrow charge shot (sometimes) but honestly, what does marth have that isn't DI or reaction dependent?
IMO being DI and reaction dependent means its guaranteed if you practice enough. E.G.(shield grabbing fox's drill frame perfectly, chain grabs, wd grabbing fox/falco dash attack, any of kadano's combo charts, platform tech chasing, etc.)
I think what you are really asking for are more general options regarding the neutral game and you're confused with which options to use when you don't have guaranteed followups. Marth doesn't have "easy options" like shine grab or tech in place shine. But he does have safe options in neutral and when pressuring an opponent in the corner. And he has a lot of guaranteed combos.
In terms of "safe options", the one that comes to mind is dash back. Or wavedash back. Doing so covers a lot of your opponent's options without committing to anything. Of course you will eventually get cornered but dashing back is the epitome of safe options. But what if your opponent predicts that you will dash back? Pivot ac nair is probably the next "safest" option to do. But you can only get so far with safe options. As I said early you only have so much stage to retreat to. So if you want to apply some pressure try wavedash dtilt. If you whiff you can always dash back, pivot nair, etc. Of course there is more to applying pressure than that so I which I will explain below because I also used to have problems with this.
I'll explain a problem that I used to have with playing marth which I think might help you. I used to have consistently close games with my practice partner(also a marth main) and it frustrated me since I used to be pretty far ahead of him in terms of skill. The realization I had was that I wasn't applying enough pressure with my dash dance. What does this mean? I'll break down my problem below:
- when I run-cancelled d-tilt or wd d-tilted I would never hit it. My opponent was always ready to retreat, jump, or shield--> what ever mixup
- my dash dance never baited any followups and i would get run cancelled dtilt on my dash backs.
The point of a dash dance is to conceal the options you choose. Since my d-tilt was getting beaten everytime I realized my dash dance wasn't working correctly: there was something different in my movement when I was committing to a dtilt than when I was dash dancing which is a huge problem. So I decided to actually do most of the movement where I would dtilt and then retreat at the last second. If I would run dtilt I would wavedash back right before I predicted my opponent would respond to it. If I was going to wavedash forward dtilt I would wavedash back immediately to catch a nair or other reaction. Instead of just dashing back all of the time I would try to "push forward" with my dash dance to try and force a reaction or take up space. Instead of waiting for my opponent to overcommit I decided to apply pressure and as a result I've made large strides in my play.
TLDR: use guaranteed options liberally but you need pressure and mixups(which i only kind of addressed). My biggest mistake came from the mantra of "only dash dance, grab, and dtilt" which only works if you understand the dash dance game and have godlike punishes out of throws.
Disclaimer: I'm not claiming that this is all there is to the neutral game: please realize that my view of the neutral is still evolving. Use your own experience to understand the neutral game and take from my theory what works for you.
I've just been having a hard time winning and getting better and I feel like there's a lot I can learn and improve before I just give up and never play smash again because I hate it.
You can always switch to fox if you want to just press buttons and have autopilot or "guaranteed" options. It depends on what you want from the game. Of course playing fox also requires a knowledge of the dash dance game not unlike marth.
