Hey guys, I'm a competitive PM and Melee Smasher and I usually place 5 in most Project M tournaments I attend. There's this one player known as Neri and he mains Luigi, and he's WAY better than I expected him to be. I faced him 3 times, in this PM tournament I lost to him in Round 4 in Winners, I fought my way to face him Grand finals, he 3-0'd me. Before the tournament I challenged him to a $5 money match for a first to five which we had later after the tournament. He 5-0'd me, and I'm not a horrible Marth main like it sounds, I've won many tournaments and I was close to beating him several times but he always got the best of me.
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Marth VS Luigi Matchup Help
- Thread starter RinsePunk
- Start date
Stride
Smash Ace
This is mostly Melee knowledge, though in PM the matchup is still in Marth's favour and played the same way. Luigi has a somewhat better pressure and punish game (mainly because of Cyclone), and his recovery is slightly better, but otherwise he's basically the same as in Melee as far as you should be concerned. I'm just going to cover the things that immediately come to my mind.
This matchup is all about being safe and maintaining control. Once you get used it it's relatively easy to play consistently without having to work/think very hard. Or maybe I'm just biased because I'm a low-mid level Luigi player.
Down tilt a lot; it shuts down Luigi's ground movement and controls his space extremely well and safely, and there's not a whole lot that he can do about it. If he doesn't shield it (which leaves him in a bad position; you can punish his out of shield action with something like dash-dance->rising fair->heavy combo, or else just by assuming stage control), then he's either forced to give up stage control or jump to avoid the down tilt, neither of which are something he wants to do. The matchup from Luigi's side revolves heavily around baiting out the down tilt and punishing it.
There is no need for you to do anything unsafe in neutral; you should really be almost exclusively down tilting and dash-dancing while reactively intercepting aerial approaches. Forward smash gives Luigi a guaranteed punish when he shields it (wavedash out of shield->grab/up smash/up-B sweetspot) and there's little reason to do it in neutral even though players do get caught off guard by it sometimes. Crouch-cancel extensively; he can't space aerials to build damage very safely so he will have to heavily rely on either grabs or punishable wavedash smash attacks to get you off of your crouch-cancel percent.
Be aggressive with your control of space; Luigi cannot approach safely at all, so you want to limit his opportunities to do so and force him to decide between giving up vital space and approaching unsafely. Once you get him above you there's very little he can do (with or without platforms); his air speed is slow enough that you can follow his drifting and you can easily outspace any attacks he could come down with, and you can easily punish any airdodges he might do. Anything that gets him in the air is good, but don't reach for it too hard; there's no reason to when you can be so safe.
To edgeguard, just be ready to down tilt if he goes low and react to a high recovery with a jump fair/nair/Shield Breaker. Forward smashing to edgeguard is often suboptimal as it is easy to tech and he can keep DIing up so he can recover high; down tilt is hard to tech and sends him at an angle which he can't really recover from. Wait out his Cyclone before you climb or drop off the ledge; too many players that don't know the matchup will give up the ledge for free by rolling off expecting an up-B when the Luigi does a Cyclone instead. If he's low and drifting towards the ledge but isn't yet within up-B range then you can ledge drop back aerial (like you would against an up-Bing space animal), which should beat anything he can do if you space properly.
It's practically impossible for him to ledge-tech your down tilt after a previous ledge-tech, so he has to sweetspot perfectly. If he ledge-techs a shallowly spaced attack (roughly tipper spacing), then walk forwards and down tilt otherwise he has the opportunity to up-B early grab the ledge from outside of your range. Alternatively you can edgehog after the ledge-tech. See this post for some detail on Luigi's ledge-tech related options: http://smashboards.com/threads/luigi-general-social.373274/page-2#post-18611016
When he's recovering he's able to shoot a fireball to try and interfere with your edgeguarding (he'll do things like jump->fireball->fastfall/drift to ledge or up-B). You can jab to clank with it, but it will still make it more awkward to edgeguard him. If you have the opportunity then just go out and hit him before the fireball reaches you/before he launches it.
DI his combo throws (up/down throw) behind him in order to get away; DIing in front sends at a similar angle to no DI. His back throw is slow enough to DI (up) on reaction. At mid-high percentages he has a DI trap of orts between his kill aerials (fair/dair) and up aerial (kind of like Falcon does); if you DI up then you will set up for a combo from the up aerial but if you DI away then you will have bad survival DI for the forward/down aerial.
His punish game on you is pretty good (though yours is both harsher and more reliable). Up throw to forward aerial is guaranteed at 0% and practically guaranteed until approximately 20%. At higher percentages he'll be doing down throw->forward aerial instead. At about 50-80% he can forward throw to wavedash forward tilt if you DI away (which you would be doing if you're expecting the down throw). He can juggle you and combo into his kill moves pretty well. When you're coming down from the air he can hit you pretty safely with his up smash (during which his head is intangible) or up tilt; just focus on getting to the ground and re-establishing your (far superior) neutral.
Once you're at mid percent then he can start fishing for wavedash forward tilt to get you offstage, which you can shield or crouch-cancel (until surprisingly high percentages; significantly over 100, I think). He'll probably also be going for grabs, wavedash up smash/up tilt, and rising Cyclone->aerial a lot.
When being edgeguarded, the main thing to watch out for is his back aerial; jumping or stalling in the air anywhere near the ledge will get you hit away with a jump->bair, and when going low you will set up for a guaranteed intangible ledge drop bair unless you're very close to the stage. An onstage recovery can be covered by a regular getup/ledgedash to up-B sweetspot or throw offstage, or a ledeghop aerial. Going high leaves you susceptible to a fullhop/ledge jump aerial. If you're high and close to the stage then you might be able to bait/force him to commit to coming away from the ledge and jumping up to hit you, at which point you can fade back or fastfall and slip by.
You have to respect his intangible ledgedash, but even with the distance that it covers and things like the ledgedash->up smash you can still maintain control by getting straight back into your standard dash-dance/down tilt game. You can also just space yourself at max ledgedash distance and wait with an attack if he's being to predictable (coming back on immediately every time, etc.). If he tries to roll behind you after he lands onstage then up tilt will cover it, and most other options can be covered by down tilt. Up tilt is also good for covering crossups (such as dash/wavedash behind->pivot grab) and rolls behind in general.
This matchup is all about being safe and maintaining control. Once you get used it it's relatively easy to play consistently without having to work/think very hard. Or maybe I'm just biased because I'm a low-mid level Luigi player.
Down tilt a lot; it shuts down Luigi's ground movement and controls his space extremely well and safely, and there's not a whole lot that he can do about it. If he doesn't shield it (which leaves him in a bad position; you can punish his out of shield action with something like dash-dance->rising fair->heavy combo, or else just by assuming stage control), then he's either forced to give up stage control or jump to avoid the down tilt, neither of which are something he wants to do. The matchup from Luigi's side revolves heavily around baiting out the down tilt and punishing it.
There is no need for you to do anything unsafe in neutral; you should really be almost exclusively down tilting and dash-dancing while reactively intercepting aerial approaches. Forward smash gives Luigi a guaranteed punish when he shields it (wavedash out of shield->grab/up smash/up-B sweetspot) and there's little reason to do it in neutral even though players do get caught off guard by it sometimes. Crouch-cancel extensively; he can't space aerials to build damage very safely so he will have to heavily rely on either grabs or punishable wavedash smash attacks to get you off of your crouch-cancel percent.
Be aggressive with your control of space; Luigi cannot approach safely at all, so you want to limit his opportunities to do so and force him to decide between giving up vital space and approaching unsafely. Once you get him above you there's very little he can do (with or without platforms); his air speed is slow enough that you can follow his drifting and you can easily outspace any attacks he could come down with, and you can easily punish any airdodges he might do. Anything that gets him in the air is good, but don't reach for it too hard; there's no reason to when you can be so safe.
To edgeguard, just be ready to down tilt if he goes low and react to a high recovery with a jump fair/nair/Shield Breaker. Forward smashing to edgeguard is often suboptimal as it is easy to tech and he can keep DIing up so he can recover high; down tilt is hard to tech and sends him at an angle which he can't really recover from. Wait out his Cyclone before you climb or drop off the ledge; too many players that don't know the matchup will give up the ledge for free by rolling off expecting an up-B when the Luigi does a Cyclone instead. If he's low and drifting towards the ledge but isn't yet within up-B range then you can ledge drop back aerial (like you would against an up-Bing space animal), which should beat anything he can do if you space properly.
It's practically impossible for him to ledge-tech your down tilt after a previous ledge-tech, so he has to sweetspot perfectly. If he ledge-techs a shallowly spaced attack (roughly tipper spacing), then walk forwards and down tilt otherwise he has the opportunity to up-B early grab the ledge from outside of your range. Alternatively you can edgehog after the ledge-tech. See this post for some detail on Luigi's ledge-tech related options: http://smashboards.com/threads/luigi-general-social.373274/page-2#post-18611016
When he's recovering he's able to shoot a fireball to try and interfere with your edgeguarding (he'll do things like jump->fireball->fastfall/drift to ledge or up-B). You can jab to clank with it, but it will still make it more awkward to edgeguard him. If you have the opportunity then just go out and hit him before the fireball reaches you/before he launches it.
DI his combo throws (up/down throw) behind him in order to get away; DIing in front sends at a similar angle to no DI. His back throw is slow enough to DI (up) on reaction. At mid-high percentages he has a DI trap of orts between his kill aerials (fair/dair) and up aerial (kind of like Falcon does); if you DI up then you will set up for a combo from the up aerial but if you DI away then you will have bad survival DI for the forward/down aerial.
His punish game on you is pretty good (though yours is both harsher and more reliable). Up throw to forward aerial is guaranteed at 0% and practically guaranteed until approximately 20%. At higher percentages he'll be doing down throw->forward aerial instead. At about 50-80% he can forward throw to wavedash forward tilt if you DI away (which you would be doing if you're expecting the down throw). He can juggle you and combo into his kill moves pretty well. When you're coming down from the air he can hit you pretty safely with his up smash (during which his head is intangible) or up tilt; just focus on getting to the ground and re-establishing your (far superior) neutral.
Once you're at mid percent then he can start fishing for wavedash forward tilt to get you offstage, which you can shield or crouch-cancel (until surprisingly high percentages; significantly over 100, I think). He'll probably also be going for grabs, wavedash up smash/up tilt, and rising Cyclone->aerial a lot.
When being edgeguarded, the main thing to watch out for is his back aerial; jumping or stalling in the air anywhere near the ledge will get you hit away with a jump->bair, and when going low you will set up for a guaranteed intangible ledge drop bair unless you're very close to the stage. An onstage recovery can be covered by a regular getup/ledgedash to up-B sweetspot or throw offstage, or a ledeghop aerial. Going high leaves you susceptible to a fullhop/ledge jump aerial. If you're high and close to the stage then you might be able to bait/force him to commit to coming away from the ledge and jumping up to hit you, at which point you can fade back or fastfall and slip by.
You have to respect his intangible ledgedash, but even with the distance that it covers and things like the ledgedash->up smash you can still maintain control by getting straight back into your standard dash-dance/down tilt game. You can also just space yourself at max ledgedash distance and wait with an attack if he's being to predictable (coming back on immediately every time, etc.). If he tries to roll behind you after he lands onstage then up tilt will cover it, and most other options can be covered by down tilt. Up tilt is also good for covering crossups (such as dash/wavedash behind->pivot grab) and rolls behind in general.
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weegee the green wonder
Smash Apprentice
Man I wish I had his skill as the green wonder Marth always kills me...I would say use fair and dair if he approaches from ground just look out for that cyclone
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