Learning Marth

[m0ll0y]

Hello , i main falco in melee ,but i want to start working on a secondary. I started playing around with him a few months ago but now i wanna start getting serious . i feel like i play pretty well with him and i have good control but i am lacking alot of general information about him . Lately i have been watching a ton of old marth videos on youtube , trying to learn alll about him . So can anyone here fill me in on some basic info about him and give some pointers that i should in specific know about and practice ?
Thanks

 

[AirFair]

Marth's game is about control. You normally want to stay grounded during the neutral and try and go for a grab. Once you have that, a good Marth can punish and techchase well enough to get a good amount of damage in. Marth requires good movement (dashdancing, wavedashing, wavelanding, to name a few).

Tipped attacks have a couple different properties, and can be used in juggles and other combos, like the famous Ken Combo, which you have probably seen already. Recovery involves side b and up b, and Marth's edgeguards are awesome, with dtilt, fsmash, and other ledge options.

 

[Preacher]

I'm in the opposite boat trying to play Falco as a secondary and so far its been a hard conversion.

Marth really shines when you have good movement and good fundamentals. Get well acquainted with the tipper range of all his smashes and tilts. Stay grounded until you send someone into the air. Grabs are the core part of his game and help him take stage control easily. Never forward smash randomly, it's not as great of a move as people believe it is. Instead space with d-tilt and practice dashing forward after it (because d-tilt has IASA frames) into a grab. And always remember that the flashier you play the more you will fail.

 

[MudkipUniverse]

I think that marth is actually better than falco, IDK why I stopped maining marth. I still have a really solid marth though

 

[MarthGuardsEdges]

Honestly, backthrows followed by SideSmash/UpSmashes work really well when my opponent is near KO range but not to the point when a few jabs and maybe a throw followed by another will kill.

 

[Mr Cats]

Fundamentals. You want to utilize dash dancing to maintain control of stage space. Your goal will be to keep your opponent at a sword length the whole game. And further and you get camped. Any closer and you get combo'd.

 

[AirFair]

Go read some guides man. Check out my resource post on these boards.

 

[Bullys]

Edit found the links / thread. Lots of reading to do!

Ive just started playing melee again and ironically enough couldnt decide between falco and Marth. Ive found better initial success with Marth, likely because I spent a lot of time on smash4 on him. Also I really struggle with a lot of key moves for falco right now (short hop/x under pressure, waveshining etc).

Just enjoying going back to learning a game, been so long since ive had to sit down on mechanics completely from nothing. There's something exciting about coming in and having to learn and have those little bits of sucess, a far departure from the goals I had for the past decade in the previous two games I played.

 

[AirFair]

Yeah, it does take awhile but playing melee, and it looking good is something to be real proud of. You will get there.

 

[DerpyDayha]

I think the first things to work on are definitely Marth's movement options. Get used to the wavedash timing, the wave landing and his dash dance game. These are crucial. If you watch any pro Marth you will see that dash dancing combine with wavedashing is super crucial in the neutral, which is the most important part of the match. Mind games are huge as well, since, for the most part, you're trying to bait for a grab, or really whatever punish works. I'm not an expert on this since I haven't had many oppurtunities to practice against other good players. Hope this helps!

 

[Bullys]

Yeah, it does take awhile but playing melee, and it looking good is something to be real proud of. You will get there.

Fortunately I've had my success in gaming already, but I would be remiss if I didnt say now, having looked at competitive melee, that I didn't focus those literal decades of time I put into competitive games into Melee instead, I think I'd have had more fun over all, and not to mention being less reliant on teams and teammates.

But like I mention, going back into learning a game is great. Even since the the last post, I've had great enjoyment in just soaking up this wealth of knowledge. I am a great believer in affirmation of knowledge, even as a competitive gamer in other games, I'd listen to and talk to newer players who wanted information or "thought they were right" - as being able to declare WHY what you do is the correct method or affirming it was beneficial and kept you reevaluating your own game. Reading articles for that one nugget that might change your though process. For me to go into a completely new genre of game, I have some general transferable skill and knowledge (namely on how to apporach improving and training) but, going to any article or video is like a new topic, no prior knowledge, and like I said - at my age, it makes me feel like a young gamer again.

I mentioned on reddit to a guy who had his first time tournament nerves at Apex, what I'd give for that feeling again, that anxiety to get up and just play.

BUT I will say this about Melee - and I think you allude to this, and I am not sure if people outside the community notice this, but most games, when the best become the best, there is generally very little evolution and continual learning, games that are 10+ years old are often "solved" (I use this term loosely) in terms of mechanics and raw knowledge, but Melee KEEPS evolving, while maybe new mechanics on the level of wave dashing aren't being found, but you see players creating new approaches to the game, I was just reading above how PPMD at Apex changed his methodology to his throw options on Marth opposed to just Uair - after 12 years of this game it still has that room to just change. That has to be in no small part whats help this games resurgence over the past couple of years, the new elite arent just rehashing what the old guard did - its still evolving.

 

[AirFair]

What games did you used to play?

 

[Sycorax]

Read this.

 

[Bullys]

What games did you used to play?

Started my competitive journey in '99 with CS, moved onto rtcw shortly after with my team, a fun development here was it started a side "job" in exports journalism here. We moved around games after the second quakecon (I was managing the winners infensus at the time, my god those guys were talented). Ended up in wow, played with one of the top pve guilds for a long time but my passion was PvP where I enjoyed some great success.

I quit true competitive play a long time ago. I am sure many can appriciate that age catches up, I could go into length about just how differently I visually and mentally see games now compared to say 2007.

My team mates joke that we peaked too early with the advent of twitch and social media and gaming becoming popular once we got old, slow and likely senile.

I've gone back to old games I played and still can do well but I hold myself to unreasonable standards in those games that is not sustainable for me.

Outside of it being a fantastic game i truely wished i found esrlier, this is part of the atteaction to me for smash - no expectations, I'll likely be mediocre at best but that's great, I've never been better than mediocre at smash, so I have no problem with it. I get the new game feel, I have no expectations at all, and it scratches that competitive itch I have without me really going crazy.

It also cannot be over stated but the smash community is one of the best gaming communities I've seen in 15+ years.

I could go on and on, happy to chat about it in pm but I don't want to bore anyone!

On the subject of learning Marth really had some strides forward, DI is getting much better, spacing and movement (dash dance is solid wave dash still non-exsistent). Recovery has started to click in melee as well. Smash 4 I found a bit easier to get the basics down, but I think thats the case for everyone (vs melee).

 

[DerpyDayha]

It also cannot be over stated but the smash community is one of the best gaming communities I've seen in 15+ years.

Amen, this is the community that always respects, works hard, and is willing to do anything.

It's the things like raising $100k for breast cancer so that we could have a spot in evo, and people like Sky Williams buying people hotel rooms so they could stay for Apex 2015.

Just the thought of these things can cheer me up. I love you smash.

 

[m0ll0y]

Thanks for the input guys , I'm gonna read all the links and keep the mentality you guys suggested .

 

[m0ll0y]

One last thing , what MU should I switch from flaco to Marth on ? I hear peach is bad for Falco bUT easier for Marth , are there any other specific ones ?

 

[AirFair]

Depends. Look at ppmd. I think switching to Marth vs Fox is pretty good idea myself, considering Fox can gimp falco hard.