hmm..sounds like a troll post, but i'm bored so i'll bite.
marth has amazing pressure. once an opponent is trapped in shield you can almost always punish any attempt to (waveland the side platform / jump to the top platform /roll) on reaction. roll is a decent mix up because oftentimes marth needs to dash back preemptively to catch the roll. However, the opponent is never ever remotely safe once they are in shield.
Dear God help them!
if marth sh on a proper arc toward the opponent 80% of the cast can't do jack. The other 20% has to give up space in order to deal with it. Most platform stages don't have much space to give up.
Of the stages that do have room to give up space, one of them is FD. FD gives you chaingrabs on fox, falco, and combo setups on falcon. Non guaranteed combo setups from upthrow on marth sheik with advantage from being below you with your godlike range.
Vs jiggs attempts to cross over horizontally above marth are bad because marth has too much range with upair and bair. Ice climbers/fox/falco don't have anywhere near the coverage marth has.
vs luigi/IC the WD reliant char. you have the best boxout in the game.
correcting for accuracy. technically against luigi/iC, peach has a much better boxout. Sheik would have a decent one but I think trades are too dangerous for sheik cause of that chaingrab.
and what are you giving up for all this?
tech skill spam (you can't tech skill people to death)
recovery - you absolutely must learn angled recoveries, how to fake the height of your recovery, how to tech.
you must learn opponent's edgeguarding techniques so that you will know when they will take the ledge and the best times to make them either lose invuln or if they are likely to leave the edge the right timing for up bing slightly high while fastfalling to the ledge (varies by character's edgeguard of choice)
you must master dashdance, including half distance wavedash for slight adjustments to your spacing.
Hmm, was going to write more about how to use dashdance but then i realized all my falco and fox enemies are listening in. Just watch PP; he has the best dashdance in the world.
aerial timing. You must absolutely be able to hit opponents coming up from underneath you with the underside of your fair box. If you just attempt to use the horizontal one like a scrub, you will be ***** ***** ***** *****
must learn to stand still at the right spacings because marth has the best reactive game in the world and reactive tippers are far stronger than running around like an idiot throwing out your fsmash.
must learn to powershield to deal with campy falcos. campy falcos **** you without it. But luckily only like 1/10 falcos is campy enough that it's a problem. Those falcos tend to lose to powershielding marths because they can't mix it up, so then they stop lasering as much. Therefore most falcos these days aren't even laser camping that hard. you can just play from shield somewhat and utilize platforms and still be fine. Important thing to realize is that lasers that tag you while they are not in the correct range to land a solid hit don't matter that much. so eat a few lasers while closing if you call the wrong laser height, just don't eat one that gets you comboed.
vs falcon, your techchasing is goldlike, easily averaging 15-25% and sending opponents offstage or comboing them into the air afterwards. Don't just techchase only grab like a scrub. you can set up tippers, fairs, dairs, the works.
Marth isn't that bad. at least you can approach both on the ground and the air. ICs have to be facing backward to have a decent aerial approach
Reactive Marth >>>> stupidly attacking Marth
best part is you can be moving and reevaluate the spacing constantly. The biggest gap i've noticed between marths at the top is that they reevaluate every dash length or movement and don't just continue going for an attack because they planned to 15 frames ago.
However, this is true of every char, even fox. It's just that when fox screws up he has a much higher chance of getting out for free (shine, jabs, decent spotdodge, and better recovery once set off stage).
Honestly though, in my opinion any top 6 character is capable of getting within top 10 at a national. People are bad at this game. Every time I watch myself I see a million places for improvement in every matchup. Also marth gets freaking ***** if he mistimes a dash away by even a frame or two. Always use the same controller for tourneys, but break in a new controller in advance for when you break the control stick. If your controller starts to go bad during a tourney, switch to a more ground based style so you don't have to dash away after aerials or try to insert more moves after aerials than you would normally. You will probably trade at times, but it's probably better than relying on dash away when your timing is off. Personally I would probably just not enter if I thought my controller had gone bad, but most people try anyway.
