Marth Social Thread

[DarkStarStorm]

As Shadow mentioned above, I wouldn't worry with DACUSing. Marth's DACUS is about as hard as, if not harder than Brawl Sheik's, and since Marth's Melee USmash is....poopy, you REALLY have to know where the tipper hitbox is on it to utilize it effectively.

Okay, thanks. What about boost grabs?

 

[shadow0x0cloud]

Those are good. If you are first learning marth, stick to the videos me and spider mad linked. Once you start to understand him a little more you can learn things like pivots, sheild drops, and dacus.

The good thing about learning marth, is that all his techniques can be applied to other characters.

 

[shadow0x0cloud]

Those are good. If you are first learning marth, stick to the videos me and spider mad linked. Once you start to understand him a little more you can learn things like pivots, sheild drops, and dacus.

The good thing about learning marth, is that all his techniques can be applied to other characters.

 

[DarkStarStorm]

Hopefully I can stick to it. Which is more effective, a Ken or King Combo?

 

[shadow0x0cloud]

King Combo?

 

[DarkStarStorm]

King Combo?

The Ken Combo, except it finishes with a reversed up b.

 

[shadow0x0cloud]

Go with whatever works at that specific instance.

 

[DarkStarStorm]

Go with whatever works at that specific instance.

I've been training against Bowser, and though my Marth isn' very good yet, I can see the tele--sorry the wavedash out of bair has a lot of potential.

 

[shadow0x0cloud]

I mostly use double fair and fair wave land.

Does any one have any reason to use bair in neutral?

 

[CyberZixx]

I don't see any reason to use bair in neutral. Movement is Marth's best neutral tool. You can zone/poke people too if you pick your spots well and have good spacing/positioning.

 

[DarkStarStorm]

I don't see any reason to use bair in neutral. Movement is Marth's best neutral tool. You can zone/poke people too if you pick your spots well and have good spacing/positioning.

A great combo on heavies is: bair, waveland, up-tilt, grab f throw (you can skip the grab and go straight to), tippered f-smash.

I heard this today and I want to share it:
You say a man dresses up for the job he wants.
So why'm dressed like a pirate in this restaurant?
It's all because some hacker stole my identity
now I'm here every evening serving chowder and ice tea!

Should'a gone to Freee Credit Report.com. (Yehaaw!)
I should have seen this coming at me like an atom bomb!
They moniter your credit and send you free email alerts,
So you don't end up serving fish to tourists in tee-shirts!


I want this sung at my birthday.

 

[CyberZixx]

Did you just turn into a advertising bot? How DI dependent is that? I doubt it is like Marth throw combos in brawl that are guaranteed at certain percents.

 

[UMR | donmk]

OK, I played around with DarkStarStorm's bair combo on heavies a bit, and these are my findings.

Firstly, you can't reliably use this in neutral. The timing on bair in order to wavedash out of it means that it needs to be done early, so the only real way to do it is to RAR bair. Any other option requires you face away from your opponent, and doing so means you lose fair, nair (in most cases), dtilt, jab and ftilt as viable options. Keeping options open is good. Also, because it needs to be done early, if your opponent shields, you get punished. Hard. This means you need to use it in a situation where you are in advantage, so we are already out of neutral. Alternatively, you can use it as a mix up I guess, but you loose too much movement options for my liking. If you're using it in advantage, I think that generally there are better options (shffl double fair -> whatever you want for example).

Second, with the f-throw to Fsmash. This works well on heavies because they are so damn big. I don't have too much experience using it against heavies, but I know that it can be DI'd out of. I know for a fact that my friend's Ike can DI out at about 5%, but he's not heavy anymore, so that's a little moot.

In all, I think that if you have the chance to do this combo, then generally you have the chance to do more (since generally you will be punishing a miss or something, and heavies tend to have a lot of endlag). Also, and this is just my playstyle, I'm not a fan of approaching with RAR or even shffl in neutral. If they see it coming, you're dead. If you have them in slight disadvantage it can work, but for neutral, keep working on that movement and baiting.

I didn't really test if the combo was a true combo or not, I'll have to get on that. But that requires me to look at percentage ranges, and I have work now.

Edit: Forgot to mention that in the case where you dash dance away and they follow you this might be useful, but I'm not sure if its as useful as (say) turnaround dtilt or even turnaround/RAR fair.

 

[DarkStarStorm]

OK, I played around with DarkStarStorm's bair combo on heavies a bit, and these are my findings.

Firstly, you can't reliably use this in neutral. The timing on bair in order to wavedash out of it means that it needs to be done early, so the only real way to do it is to RAR bair. Any other option requires you face away from your opponent, and doing so means you lose fair, nair (in most cases), dtilt, jab and ftilt as viable options. Keeping options open is good. Also, because it needs to be done early, if your opponent shields, you get punished. Hard. This means you need to use it in a situation where you are in advantage, so we are already out of neutral. Alternatively, you can use it as a mix up I guess, but you loose too much movement options for my liking. If you're using it in advantage, I think that generally there are better options (shffl double fair -> whatever you want for example).

Second, with the f-throw to Fsmash. This works well on heavies because they are so damn big. I don't have too much experience using it against heavies, but I know that it can be DI'd out of. I know for a fact that my friend's Ike can DI out at about 5%, but he's not heavy anymore, so that's a little moot.

In all, I think that if you have the chance to do this combo, then generally you have the chance to do more (since generally you will be punishing a miss or something, and heavies tend to have a lot of endlag). Also, and this is just my playstyle, I'm not a fan of approaching with RAR or even shffl in neutral. If they see it coming, you're dead. If you have them in slight disadvantage it can work, but for neutral, keep working on that movement and baiting.

I didn't really test if the combo was a true combo or not, I'll have to get on that. But that requires me to look at percentage ranges, and I have work now.

Edit: Forgot to mention that in the case where you dash dance away and they follow you this might be useful, but I'm not sure if its as useful as (say) turnaround dtilt or even turnaround/RAR fair.

So in other words it's not a combo I should depend on but it would be okay as mix-up. Got it. I'm mostly training against Bowser since I'm just starting out with Marth.

I'd love to see a combo chart like this:
Light Low%: *list combos
Light Mid%:
Light high%:
Mid Low%:
Mid Mid%:
Mid High%:
Heavy Low%:
Heavy Mid%:
Heavy High%:
Fast fallers:
Ect.

 

[Shaya]

Smash isn't a traditional 2D fighter. The game design isn't about moves being specifically programmed to link between each other.

It isn't A > B > C at X% to deal %Y damage. There's just too many factors to these things.

You know what Marth does right?
He fairs and if it tips they don't go anywhere in an upwards motion. Now what do I have that can hit people going in an upwards motion in front of me? Oh, another fair. Crazy. Or maybe they're too high after that fair so I need to double jump to continue the 'combo'. All those things can vary in each instance they occur due to enemy percent and DI as well as the hitbox you actually end up hitting with. Oh, you also need to hit them in the first place. FF uair to up tilt may always combo but how is that something you could read and suddenly be better at beating people with Marth?

In other words, it's all about decision making. You know where your moves tend to move people, and you must know how to be efficient in maximising these things (timing for FFs/L cancels/hitbox placement). Understanding Smash is about being efficient, really knowing your character and the mechanics of the game.

 

[UMR | donmk]

We'd all love to see a combo chart like that, but unfortunately there's no mew2king to do amazing data for us in the Project M community. If you want to know fast faller combos go to melee boards. Pretty much anything that works on fox/falco in melee works here. Wolf is similar, but can get out of chain grabs easier. But all fast fallers fear up throw -> up tilt / shffl uair -> regrab / utilt / shffl uair / F smash. If you want good advice against old melee characters who havent changed much (Fox, Falco, Peach etc.) go to the Melee boards, they are amazing. A good place to start is this thread: http://smashboards.com/threads/compilation-of-matchup-guides.341532. In there there's things such as the optimal chain grab tree for Fox etc.

As for new characters, they're still a mystery to me (other than the ones I have proper experience against). I would really like to see a match up evaluation thread in these boards where we focus on new characters and we focus on each for a good solid week or so. Detailing things like what to watch out for, what can be punished, what combos are 'guaranteed', percentages on where throws could be followed up etc. But I doubt that will ever happen, because I for one am far too lazy to organise such a thing. It would just make things a lot easier for new players coming in, as well as some of us older players who have no idea about some new matchups and have no one in the area who plays those characters. At least then when we go to a tournament and see one, we have some idea of what to do.

When you're starting out with Marth, I've always loved telling people to go against foxes on FD and practice chain grabbing. It forces you to learn timing, grab length, the ability to pivot grab (sometimes even boost grab) and also it gets you into the habit of always being aware of your opponent's percentage. Also, its really fun to toss Fox around like a hacky sack, throw in a few utilt regrabs and then Fsmash him across the screen. If you're already comfortable with all this, then practice your movement, dash dancing, wavedashing (both normally and out of shield), ledge hopping, platform cancelling (which I just use a waveland for these days) and pivoting. Once you have all these down, you can start working on combos.

Marth combos by tech chasing, carrying characters across the stage and juggling them above him. You'll find that once you have all the movement down. you'll start being able to follow up on things much more consistently (or even where you couldn't before) because you can now chase and position yourself more effectively. I'm pretty sure this has all been said before, but I'm going to say it again because movement is the most important thing that Marth has. Also, most people assume you will do this so they don't say it, practice your tipper spacing. It can mean the difference between a hitting an opponent offstage or being shielded / crouch cancelled and punished.

A fixed combo diagram would be nice, but is almost impossible to make. Work on fundamentals. Use fundamentals to chase and combo. That is my playstyle. If you decide to pursue a different style of Marth, go for it. Post videos of your new look Marth. If you do really well, you'll start getting the low level players like me to incorporate your style into theirs. And then you can be the one who makes really long posts telling all the new players how to learn Marth,

 

[Deleted member]

most marths suck because they try too hard to combo. stop swinging in neutral and stop going for **** that clearly doesn't work. just upthrow and never lose position.

 

[DarkStarStorm]

Smash isn't a traditional 2D fighter. The game design isn't about moves being specifically programmed to link between each other.

It isn't A > B > C at X% to deal %Y damage. There's just too many factors to these things.

You know what Marth does right?
He fairs and if it tips they don't go anywhere in an upwards motion. Now what do I have that can hit people going in an upwards motion in front of me? Oh, another fair. Crazy. Or maybe they're too high after that fair so I need to double jump to continue the 'combo'. All those things can vary in each instance they occur due to enemy percent and DI as well as the hitbox you actually end up hitting with. Oh, you also need to hit them in the first place. FF uair to up tilt may always combo but how is that something you could read and suddenly be better at beating people with Marth?

In other words, it's all about decision making. You know where your moves tend to move people, and you must know how to be efficient in maximising these things (timing for FFs/L cancels/hitbox placement). Understanding Smash is about being efficient, really knowing your character and the mechanics of the game.

I don't appreciate your sarcasm. Coming from a moderator, a back roomer, and talking to someone who has said himself that he's learning the character: it's just not behavior that makes me want to continue to ask questions of the people on the Boards.
I never asked what are some GUARANTEED Marth combos. I said that it would be nice if someone could straight up list some combos so I don't have to sift through hundreds of posts to find a few combos. I know the game, I don't need a tutorial on how to play smash as if I just started out. Marth isn't my first character, he's someone I've decided to pick up after years of training with other characters. Yes I need to learn the character, but it doesn't mean that I should be played the fool for asking you guys for a few simple combos.

And to talk about reading people with Marth, maybe I'm asking for a few combos because I HAVE familiarized myself to a level where I should practice combos. Maybe I know how to read people to an extent where I can get that hit in but I'm unsure what the best course of action to follow it up would be. I'm not asking for a ICs chaingrab makes beating M2K easy. I'm asking for advice on how to use Marth, where it's up to my discretion on how to use that advice, and learn how to apply it in my gameplay.

I appreciate the advice you gave that wasn't patronizing,
DarkStarStorm

 

[Shaya]

I think there is a sheer lack of sarcasm throughout that post, although I'm usually quite sarcastic. How I'm typing my explanation to you would be how I would word it in person, I would literally be swinging my hand in an arc while wording just what I did, so the intended tone isn't so harsh. Explaining things in smash games isn't very easy, hence getting better for most people is about increments, your perspective of the game isn't 'there' yet, and no I don't think you're a fool because we've all been there. Nearly all of Marth's combos always are specified based on a really large list of factors. Learning the character in depth will give you all the answers you seek, but as you learn the game you won't be asking the same questions.

Let me answer the 'question' you want to be asking.

Marth's combo-game is heavily oriented around his grab game. The trajectories obtained from throws is usually pretty easy to work out/react to. Forward throw and up throw. You follow up their awful position by hitting them with aerials/regrabbing them or up tilt/fsmash. Your main comboing moves will be fair and uair as they easily chain into other moves. That's really just the beginning.

 

[Deleted member]

DarkStarStorm, if you're dead serious on this, start reading.

Read this first:

http://smashboards.com/threads/drastic-improvement-under-construction-for-apex.311129/

Read this second:

http://smashboards.com/threads/official-ask-dr-peepee-about-cactuars-stuff-thread.118998/page-231

Start at my post on August 8th, 2012. Read posts from me, Dr. PP, clowsui, cactuar, and kirbykaze. Skip the rest.

 

[Strong Badam]

Hey, I remember posting in that thread sometimes.
=(

 

[DarkStarStorm]

Hey, I remember posting in that thread sometimes.
=(

DarkStarStorm, if you're dead serious on this, start reading.

Read this first:

http://smashboards.com/threads/drastic-improvement-under-construction-for-apex.311129/

Read this second:

http://smashboards.com/threads/official-ask-dr-peepee-about-cactuars-stuff-thread.118998/page-231

Start at my post on August 8th, 2012. Read posts from me, Dr. PP, clowsui, cactuar, and kirbykaze. Skip the rest.

I think there is a sheer lack of sarcasm throughout that post, although I'm usually quite sarcastic. How I'm typing my explanation to you would be how I would word it in person, I would literally be swinging my hand in an arc while wording just what I did, so the intended tone isn't so harsh. Explaining things in smash games isn't very easy, hence getting better for most people is about increments, your perspective of the game isn't 'there' yet, and no I don't think you're a fool because we've all been there. Nearly all of Marth's combos always are specified based on a really large list of factors. Learning the character in depth will give you all the answers you seek, but as you learn the game you won't be asking the same questions.

Let me answer the 'question' you want to be asking.

Marth's combo-game is heavily oriented around his grab game. The trajectories obtained from throws is usually pretty easy to work out/react to. Forward throw and up throw. You follow up their awful position by hitting them with aerials/regrabbing them or up tilt/fsmash. Your main comboing moves will be fair and uair as they easily chain into other moves. That's really just the beginning.

So based on your post (I've read it before but it's so good that I'm reading it again :-): I need to play against people who are better than me. (that's not the only thing I got out of that post, but since you're all here I thought I could start with this)
So would you three be open to playing me sometime this week?
My Schedule:
Monday: Recording for PalPlays
Tuesday: Uploading but open for play
Wednesday: Recording for PalPlays
Thursday: Uploading but open for play
Friday: Recording for PalPlays
Saturday: Uploading but open for play
Sunday: my day off, open for play after Church

 

[Shaya]

Well living in a different continent to you (most likely) plus the general hatred of wifi may have you stumped in that regard.

But I'll tell you what Mew2King would do. In fact a lot of top players do something similar especially when they don't have regular human opponents to practise against. It involves murdering CPUs as fast as you possibly can. I'm not sure of the PM equivalent or what not atm, but level 1, 3 or 7 CPUs tend to work the best. Just keep hitting people until it seems natural. You can gain bad habits by trying to 'play against' CPUs, but if your goals are just to continually hit them efficiently and work on improvements one step at a time you'll get somewhere.

Also videos.
Watch a lot of videos. If you can't do something you see, you need to.

 

[_Ganondorf_]

Hi all couldn't find a thread for it so I decided to ask here.

Can anyone recommend cool alt costumes for Marth that work for PM 3.02? I'm not finding anything really nice at the moment.

 

[artofskjet]

Hi all couldn't find a thread for it so I decided to ask here.

Can anyone recommend cool alt costumes for Marth that work for PM 3.02? I'm not finding anything really nice at the moment.

brawlvault

 

[KABO0S]

most marths suck because they try too hard to combo. stop swinging in neutral and stop going for **** that clearly doesn't work. just upthrow and never lose position.

I get told that upthrow is bad all the time. I think it's great for getting a 'reset' of sorts. It gives you time to think and reposition. Not everything needs to be a combo.

 

[Deleted member]

I get told that upthrow is bad all the time. I think it's great for getting a 'reset' of sorts. It gives you time to think and reposition. Not everything needs to be a combo.

you're correct and whoever tells you upthrow is bad is flat wrong and you can ignore them.

upthrow is less of a reset and more of a "now i'm going to **** you hard" so just roll with it.

 

[Charby]

upthrow is really good against fastfaller and fthrow is realy good against floaty (yes i am looking at you ivysaur), personnaly i rather go for dthrow/fthrow and techcase than upthrow but it depends on the matchup

 

[shairn]

Something that's been bugging me for a while is ledge dash with Marth. I can do it fine with Sheik, but for some reason even after many, many attemps I can't seem to get it to work with Marth. I'm fairly sure I've airdodged into the stage as low as possible, to the point where Marth's body is halfway through the floor, to no avail. Is it possible? Should I just be content with wavelanding normally?

 

[Charby]

You can do it but since Marth is kinda floaty you won't be invincible. Plus it's realy hard to do

 

[KABO0S]

Just got back from a monthly, I got to see Chip's Marth in all it's glory. He seems to use dancing blades more than usual, I'm wondering should I be using it as well? I've never really practiced the timing of it and use it only to recover, is it a good mix-up option or combo starter? I just don't know when would be the best time to use it.

 

[shairn]

The only real use I find for Dancing Blade is first hit into utilt.
Anything else is either unsafe on shield or doesn't even string together properly so it's not really worth using at all I think. I could maybe see the last hit of downwards dancing blade poke shields but it sounds like a pretty risky option.

 

[KABO0S]

Yeah, downwards-ending DB seems like the best option if any. I am practicing right now and it seems like there's not much practical use for it in tournament unless they are pretty high percentage.

 

[Kuya the Red]

M2K used a single hit of Side B to pull in the opponent and then kill them with Up B initial hit.

aside from that i feel as though marth should get just as big a hit box with his tipper as roy does with his. For roy its so easy to get a tipper since its in the middle of his blade but marth has to be more precise with his tipper than his melee counter part.

the second thing is that his Fair doesnt send them up as much (unless tippered) like his melee counter part does. This allows melee marth to Ken combo far easier than PM marth can. If there are any back roomers reading this PLEASE send word or at least have someone take a look at PM marth in conjunction with melee marth. i love PM but for now Melee has the best marth and i want PM to have that Marth as well. Thanks for reading

 

[Shaya]

*cough*play meta knight*cough*

Chain grabs fast fallers to death, all of his moves are huge and safe; you have to respect his entire moveset, has an insane recovery, fantastic mobility and is small/short so considering his fall speed doesn't get combo'd as hard as Marth/Falco do, IMO. Marth's tipper mechanics in this game just aren't rewarding.

But yeah, I can't enjoy Marth in PM, and it really comes down to fair not feeling right. It generally feels shorter reach than it should, and nearly all hits just send people into the ground in a way that isn't usually grabbable (unlike the same scenario in Melee), including most tippers which makes his combo game/early-mid percent dominance pretty non-existent. Every PM-ified high tier+ having fantastic tech options makes it even more frustrating, it wouldn't be too bad if the standard tech options were Fox-ish level when getting knocked into the ground, but they all have Brawl Snake tech rolls !_!

 

[Kuya the Red]

*cough*play meta knight*cough*

Chain grabs fast fallers to death, all of his moves are huge and safe; you have to respect his entire moveset, has an insane recovery, fantastic mobility and is small/short so considering his fall speed doesn't get combo'd as hard as Marth/Falco do, IMO. Marth's tipper mechanics in this game just aren't rewarding.

But yeah, I can't enjoy Marth in PM, and it really comes down to fair not feeling right. It generally feels shorter reach than it should, and nearly all hits just send people into the ground in a way that isn't usually grabbable (unlike the same scenario in Melee), including most tippers which makes his combo game/early-mid percent dominance pretty non-existent. Every PM-ified high tier+ having fantastic tech options makes it even more frustrating, it wouldn't be too bad if the standard tech options were Fox-ish level when getting knocked into the ground, but they all have Brawl Snake tech rolls !_!

Appreciate the response, but just switching to meta knight is no solution. I feel the guys behind character design in PM could easily make adjustments not just to marth but the melee top tiers so that they play 90% as much as they do in melee. I like Marth's dash dance, and grab range better than meta knight's and his range plus spike. It's not really about switching to a different character, but making all the characters in PM unique and different from each other. Maybe some can do what others can't, and that's why i like PM better than Melee, because there are so many possible match ups and different scenarios.

 

[Shaya]

As a really long time Marth player, the superior ability to rush down/be aggressive while playing a spacing game is what I'd want out of Marth. i.e. what he can do in Melee. While stuff like Marth's dair feel amazing, I get the same enjoyment out of MK's back air (clutch spacing/timing required combo finisher) and he essentially gets the same rewards (stocks) while being less vulnerable in doing so. Marth is crouch cancel and shield fodder who's Melee rewards don't even work in this game (everyone with better recovery/survivability options [spot dodges/rolls/etc] + everything else), and all I've ever heard in response to this isn't [extreme] disagreement but "it's fine for Marth to be middle tier/not good in this game" :S.

If you enjoy Marth play patterns you'll likely come to enjoy them a lot more while playing MK in PM. I say the same thing to Sheik players, "why put yourselves through this? Just play Pit, it'll take you 5 minutes to start playing him better than Sheik"

 

[Kuya the Red]

As a really long time Marth player, the superior ability to rush down/be aggressive while playing a spacing game is what I'd want out of Marth. i.e. what he can do in Melee. While stuff like Marth's dair feel amazing, I get the same enjoyment out of MK's back air (clutch spacing/timing required combo finisher) and he essentially gets the same rewards (stocks) while being less vulnerable in doing so. Marth is crouch cancel and shield fodder who's Melee rewards don't even work in this game (everyone with better recovery/survivability options [spot dodges/rolls/etc] + everything else), and all I've ever heard in response to this isn't disagreement but "it's fine for Marth to be middle tier/not good in this game" :S.

If you enjoy Marth play patterns you'll likely come to enjoy them a lot more while playing MK in PM. I say the same thing to Sheik players in relation to Pit.

While i respectfully disagree with keeping marth as he is in PM, i will try out metaknight.
You have persuaded this fish to swim in different seas, but my marth faith with not falter

 

[Shaya]

I'll still put myself through the pain of playing Marth in PM for at least several hours a week. I doubt that bond will ever break .
It's for when I'm losing enough already so I don't care anymore, or when I'm winning too hard and need to start losing/getting annoyed at the game (oh look at the time of the day!)

 

[Deleted member]

If you enjoy Marth play patterns you'll likely come to enjoy them a lot more while playing MK in PM. I say the same thing to Sheik players, "why put yourselves through this? Just play Pit, it'll take you 5 minutes to start playing him better than Sheik"

i agree with the comparison of moving from marth to mk but not sheik to pit. mk is almost certainly a better marth for a bunch of reasons but sheik and pit have very little in common aside from simply being great characters.