Link as a CP to Marth

[Benny P]

First, an introduction:

Hi. Benny P here, the same guy who posted curiously about the idea to use Link as a Counter to Peach. To my surprise, it sparked a lot of conversation and helpful advice. One suggestion was Young Link. I decided to put some time into young link, and found his style was a lot easier for me to use than ice climbers, and has become my main.

So far things have been looking good, i'm playing a lot better and fluidly using YL as opposed to ICS. Now i have a new predicament and notion

PLEASE BEAR WITH ME ITS A LONG DESCRIPTION

So i think i got kind of lucky playing vs a friends Marth, (as young link) and won a friendly B05 set (i can post the vod if you want, its bad grassroots footage though, couldnt use capture at the time.) but the MU i feel is still kind of difficult- YL has to run around constantly to evade Marth, with Young Link also having to throw many of his personal possesions (boomerangs,bombs, fire arrow) at Marth like an angry wife in order to fight and create an opening.

Due to having the need to run around a lot and have Marth approach, Dream Land is a good choice for Young Link (generally less tippers through plats and marth has to fight more to hold center) but also bad because a larger stage= less raw kill potential, you'll only ever kill via good gimps/reads.

TLDR for this section; YL cannot fight on proper ground with Marth and play the spacing game. If he cant run around/run away, it will get messy

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(HERES WHERE YOU GUYS COME IN)

I kind of got the idea after seeing SAUS vs the moon, watching the links vs the stinks and just other vods/matches that make link look crazy awesome.

in theory on smaller stages, would Link not only last longer, Have better range, and have more sheer kill power/earlier percent kills than Young Link?

I took a quick glance at the first post in the MU thread that @RetroGamersGuru made, and its given me some insight regarding how Link works in the MU. I may need to make slight adjustments because i'm PAL but its really cool to hear.

So if possible, please give me your thoughts, reccomendations, or advice and conversation.

Link boards are a really cool place. i love your discussions and theory crafting.

Love you guys, Benny P

PS. If this is considered SPAM/Annoying please let me know and I/someone else can close the thread

 

[SAUS]

PS. If this is considered SPAM/Annoying please let me know and I/someone else can close the thread

Definitely not. If anything, this is discussion being started in a rather quiet board. It is very welcome.

Link is actually generally worse at kill at low percents than Young Link. Aside from his weak up-b hit which semi-spikes (which you don't even have in PAL), he doesn't really have a solid gimp move. He has to hit with a nair way off stage to get gimps against Marth. It basically won't really happen. Young Link, on the other hand, has his d-smash. It is a very powerful tool for low percent kills.

The thing is that you don't need to get low percent kills. Link is better at building up damage with solid combos and juggles. His moves tend to do more damage and also keep your opponent within your grasp for longer (main ones are d-smash and dash attack). Marth is fairly light and has a sort of floaty fall speed, so he is very susceptible to Link's combos - even starting at very low percents. Marth also hates being juggled and that is something Link does well.

To top it off, Marth doesn't exactly have great or easy follow ups on Link off of his grabs, and his other moves almost all have a hard time against crouch cancel. He doesn't have many guaranteed setups into kill moves, so has to rely on edge guards to kill you most of the time (my first set vs the moon definitely show cases this since his edge guard game against Link was greatly lacking). It's possible to edge guard Link with Marth, but not very easy. I think it also ends up in mixup scenarios a lot as well, so it's not guaranteed most of the time either.

I think the matchup will play a lot like Young Link vs Marth, except you will be a little more in his face abusing crouch cancel. Your combos will generally be stronger and Marth will have a harder time killing you. If you fight a marth who knows what he's doing, though, you will have your work cut out for you. He can definitely get pretty annoying if he is comfortable throwing you a lot and tech chasing.

 

[Bravo_10]

Link is almost certainly better against Marth than Young Link. It's really the combo game that makes the biggest difference. Young Link seems to have a hard time stringing hits together against Marth, at least if we're talking more than like a 3 or so hit combo. Link seems to get a huge amount of mileage out of his grab. Marth has ways to DI out of a lot of Link's combos, but it always feels like if he DI's to avoid a certain follow up, a different move will connect to continue the combo. It's a really fun, freeform sort of combo game where you can easily rack up 50-60 damage off of a single hit.

Otherwise, I don't see the differences being that huge. Link has better priority, but that doesn't really matter against Marth unless you're trying to space moves on his shield (his fair can still easily beat all of Link's moves). The fact that Link is slower makes pulling bombs and safely using projectiles a little more tricky; however, you'll find that bombs and boomerang are still extremely useful. Link is a lot heavier than Young Link, so Marth gets almost nothing guaranteed off throws. Link can also crouch cancel the mess out of Marth, just so long as you're not too obvious about going for it.

Also I feel like I always comment right after SAUS, but I guess it's just because there aren't many people who post on this board anymore.

 

[SAUS]

Ya not too many people on here, that's for sure. I like when discussion happens, though.

 

[Benny P]

Thanks so far guys. Let's see if we can get some more discussion! My original post got a bunch of attention, maybe we just need some time.

 

[Thor]

I don't think Link beats Marth except at low levels of play, or levels where Marth can't edgeguard [then it's roughly even]. His dtilt kinda bodies Link's recovery, forcing us to either have ridiculous upB spacing [I'm not sure if there's a sweetspot distance for him where up+B won't him but we can't snap or not, but if there it is recovery is awful and if not it's still a big 50-50 that's hard to mix up for us and not as hard for him to adjust to], OR tether, but of course taking ledge lets him try to bair us out of tether [at least on Battlefield, which you can strike if you prefer FoD or FD, since he'll always take away Dreamland and you'll always take away Yoshi's (I hope)].

However, Link does have the tools to at least hold his own onstage vs Marth, and I can say with confidence that if I switched to Fox or Falco, I would still keep Link around for Marth on FD for quite a while [being that Marth punishes spaices harder on FD than he does Link]. His extra range over YL, with both grab and up+b, is a boon as well [you can grab Marth's non-tipper dtilt I believe (or it seems to occur more than it should if it's easy to avoid), but I know for certain TL's grab is too short for that sometimes].

If you main Young Link and are comfortable playing Link too, by all means, Link will probably do better against Marth than Young Link [as has been said above]. But if you are looking for a secondary to Young Link that beats Marth, I'd honestly recommend Sheik - sure, she requires a lot of tech skill and intricate MU knowledge that will take more time than trying to transfer YLink to Link, but she actually wins or is even in the MU, and there's little risk of your new Link throwing off your Young Link, or vice versa [as I know that playing Young Link is, at least for me, usually pretty awkward because dsmash works differently, I can't CC as long, nair is worse, and boomerang is different - these things might throw you off too].

 

[Benny P]

I don't think Link beats Marth except at low levels of play, or levels where Marth can't edgeguard [then it's roughly even]. His dtilt kinda bodies Link's recovery, forcing us to either have ridiculous upB spacing [I'm not sure if there's a sweetspot distance for him where up+B won't him but we can't snap or not, but if there it is recovery is awful and if not it's still a big 50-50 that's hard to mix up for us and not as hard for him to adjust to], OR tether, but of course taking ledge lets him try to bair us out of tether [at least on Battlefield, which you can strike if you prefer FoD or FD, since he'll always take away Dreamland and you'll always take away Yoshi's (I hope)].

However, Link does have the tools to at least hold his own onstage vs Marth, and I can say with confidence that if I switched to Fox or Falco, I would still keep Link around for Marth on FD for quite a while [being that Marth punishes spaices harder on FD than he does Link]. His extra range over YL, with both grab and up+b, is a boon as well [you can grab Marth's non-tipper dtilt I believe (or it seems to occur more than it should if it's easy to avoid), but I know for certain TL's grab is too short for that sometimes].

If you main Young Link and are comfortable playing Link too, by all means, Link will probably do better against Marth than Young Link [as has been said above]. But if you are looking for a secondary to Young Link that beats Marth, I'd honestly recommend Sheik - sure, she requires a lot of tech skill and intricate MU knowledge that will take more time than trying to transfer YLink to Link, but she actually wins or is even in the MU, and there's little risk of your new Link throwing off your Young Link, or vice versa [as I know that playing Young Link is, at least for me, usually pretty awkward because dsmash works differently, I can't CC as long, nair is worse, and boomerang is different - these things might throw you off too].

Thanks for the reply.

But nair being worse for YL? According to sources i've read, its stronger. only by 1% of course though haha http://www.ssbwiki.com/Young_Link_(SSBM)

 

[Thor]

Thanks for the reply.

But nair being worse for YL? According to sources i've read, its stronger. only by 1% of course though haha http://www.ssbwiki.com/Young_Link_(SSBM)

I was not aware the percents were different. However, the last time I recall checking, Young Link's nair is active from frames 4-31, ending frame 40, and Link's nair is active from frames 4-39, ending frame 39. I don't know about the IASA on Young Link's nair, but Link's has IASA on frame 36, meaning that there is 3 or [I think] 4 frames [36, 37, 38, 39] where Link has what I'll call an "optional" hitbox, where he can let the hitbox linger or cancel into a jump or another aerial [never mind that it autocancels from frames 32 onward, so you can technically make his nair +1 on shield if perfect, but even if you're not, it can be somewhat safe and lead to deceptively early shields].

So Ylink's does 1% more I suppose, but Link's is active for 8 frames more than YLink's is. I suppose then "better" is just a question of what you want, but I personally think the 8 extra frames is probably going to be more useful [for gimping, combos using the end of it, etc.]. I'm not going to say that's a fact though, and others might disagree for completely different reasons.

 

[Benny P]

I was not aware the percents were different. However, the last time I recall checking, Young Link's nair is active from frames 4-31, ending frame 40, and Link's nair is active from frames 4-39, ending frame 39. I don't know about the IASA on Young Link's nair, but Link's has IASA on frame 36, meaning that there is 3 or [I think] 4 frames [36, 37, 38, 39] where Link has what I'll call an "optional" hitbox, where he can let the hitbox linger or cancel into a jump or another aerial [never mind that it autocancels from frames 32 onward, so you can technically make his nair +1 on shield if perfect, but even if you're not, it can be somewhat safe and lead to deceptively early shields].

So Ylink's does 1% more I suppose, but Link's is active for 8 frames more than YLink's is. I suppose then "better" is just a question of what you want, but I personally think the 8 extra frames is probably going to be more useful [for gimping, combos using the end of it, etc.]. I'm not going to say that's a fact though, and others might disagree for completely different reasons.

yeah, that 1% is pretty negligible when you have a slightly longer linger. did not realise YL's nair was out for less during the animation, i'd assumed it was the same to links.

 

[Uchihadark7]

You know. I think this is actually a better matchup for Link then most people would think. Marth isn't exactly great at some of the lower tier match ups like Yoshi. And one of Marth's most notorious match ups is Peach. Peach's weakness against Marth is her floatiness, and her strength is her turnip pull. Link has good projectiles and variety and is a heavy character so I think a skilled Link could definitely beat a Marth.

 

[SAUS]

Link is also bigger causing his nair to be bigger compared to Young Link's. The 1% is negligible in almost every case - the only important one is if it actually adds a frame of shield stun or not, but I don't know if it would.

Auto cancel nair into up-b is also a combo for Link because of the absurd hit boxes lol.

I don't think Link is "counter" to marth, but I think he is better at the matchup than young link.

 

[Looticforgothispassword]

I really think Marth doesn't have the tools to edgeguard Link. All you need to do is full-range sweetspot hookshots.

 

[SAUS]

I really think Marth doesn't have the tools to edgeguard Link. All you need to do is full-range sweetspot hookshots.

If they are on the edge at the proper timing (as in, they grab the edge so that you can't hit them at all with your hook shot), they can drop, double jump back, and bair you, or they can just wait from there. It is the most reliable way to edge guard Link. He has to activate the hook shot first, so you either just wait or get him before he can do anything about it.

If you always recover the same way, they can kill you fairly easily (if they know what to do). That said, I think you can always up-b instead at weird timings or just hook shot differently. It ends as a mixup situation at best, for Marth.

 

[Looticforgothispassword]

that might be true, I never get punished by it though