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mario vs marth not that bad

HeavyLobster1120

Smash Cadet
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Feb 8, 2016
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A gimmick I use to beat Marths is spot dodging when I know they're coming in because they always want the grab. But they're usually pretty low level.
 

JipC

Smash Journeyman
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nah its pretty bad
alright good discussion we had here
 

ChivalRuse

Smash Hero
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If the Marth player doesn't get kills from tipper, he will struggle to end Mario's stocks. You need a good out of shield game in this matchup as Mario. Wavedash out of shield is your friend.
 

cooran

Smash Rookie
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I think I just figured it out its one of the only match ups i win more consistently with mario than with spacies
 

-ACE-

Gotem City Vigilante
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Lol Armada's marth is nowhere near ready for a mario of that level. He wasn't abusing marth's superior range nearly enough, and mango got some clutch reads/won crucial exchanges. The matchup is baaaad for Mario.

It amazes me how many conclusions can be drawn solely off the final result of a single match or set lol.
 

cooran

Smash Rookie
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Yeah i think its actually marios best matchup of the top tiers unless you count falcon
 

ChivalRuse

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I had this very argument with Wenbo a while ago. He kept saying that Marth destroys Mario. Then I played a game of Mario vs his Marth and won handily. I've always thought that if you play your out of shield game similar to how Sheik would, Marth doesn't really have much of an upperhand vs you in neutral either.
 

-ACE-

Gotem City Vigilante
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Well PPMD, mango, and several others nowadays think marth beats sheik, mostly due to his neutral. At top level his mobility and absurd range with fair, tipper dtilt, etc. make neutral a huge challenge for all 3 plumbers. Top level is where comparisons should be made, and lacking super reliable KO setups means less when you're constantly winning neutral. As far as punish game, Mario has to work for his KO's also, as his best finisher usually requires a read. And edgeguarding is also in marth's favor. I think one big issue is that most marths are unfamiliar with the matchup (not that many marios around, while most Mario mains have played several marths before), similar to how most Ganon mains know the marth matchup decently while the average marth player has never played a good Ganon.
 

ChivalRuse

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Killing Marth doesn't require a read. Grab combos into nair which puts Marth in a rough spot. You can also back-throw Marth offstage at mid percents to basically kill him 1/3 of the time if you know how to intercept his recovery. Unspaced Marth f-smash on shield leads to wavedash d-smash. And Mario's f-smash is borderline spammable in the matchup. As long as you have positional security and Marth commits to an option and whiffs. Don't forget caping Marth's up-b is great if the Marth fails the sweetspot.

I agree that we should be analyzing the top level, but you have to realize that Mario isn't completely limited to playing like a Sheik would. You have better aerial options in neutral in some regards, because you have a lower, faster short hop. You can SH nair cross up Marth's shield, and you can SH bair to zone with less fear of Marth getting under you or punishing your landing.
 
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-ACE-

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Killing Marth doesn't require a read.
Never claimed that. I said his best finisher usually requires a read. But I assumed you meant killing at a reasonable percent.

Grab combos into nair which puts Marth in a rough
Not that rough really, unless you are close to ledge. Even with a nearby platform, you have to rinse/repeat little combos like that until he's dead. Lots of effort means not super reliable (human error factor). Marth can usually DI the bair appropriately and not be in such a bad spot.

Marth offstage at mid percents to basically kill him 1/3 of the time if you know how to intercept his recovery.
Ehh, that's a stretch. At mid percent + good DI (no one misses DI on a throw with an animation that long), marth is high up enough to have several recovery options.

And Mario's f-smash is borderline spammable in the matchup.
True, but marth has a ton of moves that fit this description.

you have to realize that Mario isn't completely limited to playing like a Sheik would.
I realize that, agreed.

You have better aerial options in neutral in some regards, because you have a lower, faster short hop.
That's really only when Mario has a decent frame advantage because marth over-committed in neutral. Marth's aerial game is definitely superior.

You can SH nair cross up Marth's shield,
Marth can often pivot shield stop into grab this, or reverse up-b OoS when it would land an edgeguard opportunity. Shield DI helps this.

you can SH bair to zone with less fear of Marth getting under you or punishing your landing.
True, sh bair is pretty sick.
 
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ChivalRuse

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Never claimed that. I said his best finisher usually requires a read. But I assumed you meant killing at a reasonable percent.
Yeah it's true that you will be killing Marth at pretty high percents, considering Mario is not Ganon. But the reverse is true, in that Marth generally will not kill you below 130-145% if your DI is solid.

Not that rough really, unless you are close to ledge. Even with a nearby platform, you have to rinse/repeat little combos like that until he's dead. Lots of effort means not super reliable (human error factor). Marth can usually DI the bair appropriately and not be in such a bad spot.
Yeah but still being able to combo guaranteed from a throw is more than Marth has against our floaty little man.

Ehh, that's a stretch. At mid percent + good DI (no one misses DI on a throw with an animation that long), marth is high up enough to have several recovery options.
Fair enough. But again, having a high knockback throw is a boon vs Marth. Marth is good at damaging us, but bad at killing us. This is where the matchup can swing in our favor, in closing out stocks.

True, but marth has a ton of moves that fit this description.
Marth doesn't have a single spammable move that can kill, except nair, which depends on terrible DI to even force us to up-b back to the stage, and u-tilt, which is generally telegraphed and avoidable, except on FD. D-tilt is spammable af, but doesn't lead to a kill commonly.

Marth can often pivot shield stop into grab this, or reverse up-b OoS when it would land an edgeguard opportunity. Shield DI helps this.
I feel like fighting Mario out of shield isn't particularly good. Marth wants to keep characters with good close range games at an arm's length where his sweetspots are. Anyway, the bottom line is that Mario's aerials are probably better than Sheik's in neutral, at least for winning exchanges. Obviously, Sheik's aerials connecting tend to be more profitable though.
 

cooran

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in terms of ledge guarding you can really abuse Mario's magnet to ledge and just use bair and regrab and react to what options he chooses i never really found it to hard.
 

-ACE-

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Yeah it's true that you will be killing Marth at pretty high percents, considering Mario is not Ganon. But the reverse is true, in that Marth generally will not kill you below 130-145% if your DI is solid.
Marth doesn't have a single spammable move that can kill, except nair, which depends on terrible DI to even force us to up-b back to the stage, and u-tilt, which is generally telegraphed and avoidable, except on FD. D-tilt is spammable af, but doesn't lead to a kill commonly.
Yeah but still being able to combo guaranteed from a throw is more than Marth has against our floaty little man.
Marth doesn't have a single spammable move that can kill, except nair, which depends on terrible DI to even force us to up-b back to the stage, and u-tilt, which is generally telegraphed and avoidable, except on FD. D-tilt is spammable af, but doesn't lead to a kill commonly.
Again I agree marth doesn't have super reliable KO setups but his huge advantage in neutral trumps all these points imo.

="ChivalRuse, post: 21118932, member: 64610"]Fair enough. But again, having a high knockback throw is a boon vs Marth. Marth is good at damaging us, but bad at killing us. This is where the matchup can swing in our favor, in closing out stocks.
Again, Mario will lose neutral too much for this to be a deciding factor imo.

I feel like fighting Mario out of shield isn't particularly good. Marth wants to keep characters with good close range games at an arm's length where his sweetspots are. Anyway, the bottom line is that Mario's aerials are probably better than Sheik's in neutral, at least for winning exchanges. Obviously, Sheik's aerials connecting tend to be more profitable though.
Well there's always fair OoS too, which is always money when spaced, just didn't mention it because it's obvious. Marth doesn't always want a tipper for aerials, more follow-ups come from maximum spacing without tipper + fade back when necessary. Not so sure about that sheik statement.

Basically the neutral advantage matters most (top level).
 
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ChivalRuse

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People always exaggerate the neutral so much with Marth. Sure, Marth has a significant edge in that department, but stage control is more important in the matchup imo. Really, it just comes down to who knows the matchup better and plays it well. I don't see Marth players beating Mario players of similar skill by a large margin or overwhelmingly consistently at any level.
 

-ACE-

Gotem City Vigilante
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Well that sort of leads back to lack of Mario experience for the average marth main (which is the only way I compared him to Ganon, it had nothing to do with killing power) imo. Almost everyone knows how to fight marth to an extent. Very few people have been forced to truly learn the Mario mu. Stage control is big but it's just a hope/dream if you're losing neutral. Think about how insane doc's punish game is on fox, but he gets booty-blasted due to losing neutral more times than preferable. But I'm done debating :denzel:
 
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-ACE-

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One last thing. The other day during the iron man competition at Smash Summit 2, shroomed's marth beat mango's Mario fairly heavily (I've actually never seen scorp get rekt). Mango's marth did the same to shroomed's doc. Given it's an anecdotal example, they are probably the best marios vs marth in the world, with extensive knowledge of mario, doc and marth. I think those matches do a decent job of showcasing how hard it is to get in and recover.
 

Diana's Safe Landing

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Honestly it's all over once Marth stops doing unsafe things on your shield. Openings are few and far between on any marth with semi-competent dash dancing.
 

ChivalRuse

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It's not that hard to dash dance nair or grab a Marth for whiffing aerials in neutral. And while d-tilt is pretty unpunishable, you can get around d-tilt spam with SH fair. You can also just throw fireballs at him to make him approach you or jump.
 

Diana's Safe Landing

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Dash dance nair? That's a pretty big stretch from my experience in the MU. Mario's SH nair is slow and weak. Trying to punish marth's whiffed aerial with one is not reliable. Nair OOS can punish marth for misspacing on your shield and even then its only a good punish option when hes at kill percent. Punishing a whiffed aerial with grab is also really hard for mario since hes too slow and has an abysmal grab range, leave that to falcon and fox. Fireballs are definitely strong in the MU but they can get punished very hard if you are predictable with them.
 

ChivalRuse

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SH nair is relatively weak, but it's not slow. It's fast enough that usually you can at the least cross up Marth's shield after he whiffs an aerial. You can sometimes directly hit him in his landing lag. Obviously, you have to react well to whether he does a nair or a fair, but I do this all the time and it works wonders for me.
 

j3ly

Smash Champion
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Nair is our best knockdown tool, has the most stun out by far of our aerials and I think it comes out the fastest. It's a great move to hit marth with around 40% mid stage, as he will knock down near the edge, with his back to it. Pat yourself on the back, you just used marios only legit mid % reaction tech chase option from the middle of the stage. Proceed to QQ, no it isn't fair, and pick fox.

I've played some top marths and one thing they love to do is space mario out with late fair and dtilts and jabs. Marth combos us like a mofo at low % if he hits the tipper fairs, so it's his job to keep center stage and wall us out, mixing in DDs to bait out unsafe options from us if they're great.

It's our job to get him off stage, as it's the only place in the matchup we have the advantage - between bair/cape/amazing ledge dash, we have marths number off stage, and get grabs, and land WD in uptilts and dsmashes.

His fair outranges our ftilt, we can't run in and shield it because if he plays well, he can mixup and do an instant/double fair and fade away etc so that option isn't reliable. We can WD in and jab, but the payoff isn't as big as him landing a tippered fair. WD jab works well to interrupt his DDing, not so much his walling. Jumping above or infront of him is a terrible idea, so we've limited options here.

Its extremely important to play the matchup out of shield, and to stay grounded as much as possible. Don't burn the double jump, ever, take a uair or 2 and live to fsmash another day. Seeing as we're going to struggle keeping center stage, I like to play a ledge-heavy game and fireball him to certain %s, then score heavy combos with invincible ledge dash utilt. I dthrow -> nair into follow ups and can usually bair him for a stock off stage

It's a very hard matchup... maybe the hardest.
 

T^2

Smash Cadet
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With the range disadvantage you're going to be struggling right from the start. picking mario or doc against marth is (paraphrasing DJ nintendo here) "a prayer that you're going to win on the character selection screen". what i've found is that its like a worse captain falcon matchup against marth. your best options are to either ledgecamp and catch them doing something unsafe with a ledgedash downsmash or something of the sort, or wavedash in and out of marths range to bait out attacks and punish the whiff. It can be really frustrating, but once you get in you're going to get 60-80 percent or a ko most of the time. Also, at low percent crouch canceling his arials can lead to some heavy punishes, but be cautious about crouching too much because his grab is always a threat.
best of luck with your play, I hope you get the cape timing down on his up b!
 

j3ly

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ledge camp -> punish is a very strong option in this MU, and totally counters late fair forcing them to adapt and use different strategies.

For caping the sword, you need to stand well far back from the edge and almost tipper his sword tip.
 
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T^2

Smash Cadet
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ledge camp -> punish is a very strong option in this MU, and totally counters late fair forcing them to adapt and use different strategies.

For caping the sword, you need to stand well far back from the edge and almost tipper his sword tip.
Caping his up b isn't too hard, you just need to force out an option or two of his flow chart recovery by shooting projectiles and/or grabbing the ledge. after hes forced to recover high with an up b, you can drop down turnaround cape his up b and kill him with good timing. It takes practice but is marios version of the marth killer (with more swag).
 

j3ly

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fwiw I'd say dropzone bair is the best option to edgeguard marth
 
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