Need basic advice

[Kor_Hey_1]

Hello Marth mains.

After seeing M2K 3-0 Armada, I thought about give this character a new chance. I also thought about marth as a counter pick to puff (I'll explain this later).

So, I would like to have some advice on things that are good to do and other that are bad.

From my experience :
- fair is good for spacing
- nair is good when your opponent get close, it covers behind marth, but is risky in neutral
- D-tilt is good for poke your opponent
- using dash dance + WD for mindgame is important in neutral, you can bait and get a grab or space to throw a monster tipper or... It opens many options
- Up air is super good for platform tech chasing and juggle with your opponent

Combos are pretty simple and can be crispy once your opponent is in the air.

I main Falco and I find Marth far more defensive, that's why I'm not good with him, I often go for aggro and am not patient enough.

I tried Marth because I don't like to play falco against puff on certain stages : FoD, I hate the platforms and BF because I kinda dislike the edge on it. Plus I don't like to play against Puff with falco on small stage (exception on yoshi because Puff can die pretty early).

I tried Marth against a friend who main Puff. My feeling is that the matchup is good for Marth. You can land a tipper from the main platform when puff is on a side platform, that can lead to early KO. Good spacing and timing with fair can beat wall of pain (I try to hit with fait right after Puff did his bair). Finally, Marth can do some small combo on Puff (like fair, up-tilt, up-air at low %) but with Falco I think it's hard to land a more than 2 hits combo on Puff...

Please tell me if I understand this character wrong, give me details if I tell the truth, give me advice (for example, I can't chaingrab fox, at 0% I fail to regrab him after up-throw, maybe I'm ********...)

 

[Life]

I'm a huge fan of PPMD's Marth and the style he plays with it. I have his Marth rules in a sticky note (this is in general, not really matchup specific):

1. less is more
2. jump when they jump
3. throw them up and kill them

My understanding of the rules is as follows:

1. Marth's moves are deceptively slow, partially due to end lag, partially because he swings in an arc rather than just having the move active immediately in front of him for the whole duration like a Fox nair would be. Because of this, you have to make your movement scary without actually swinging more than you absolutely have to, at least at first. As you play Marth more, you'll get a feel for where you can move in response to certain things (check the last page of PP's Marth thread, there was a pretty good example vs. Falcon nair) to create advantageous situations. It's pretty much an experience thing.

2. The corollary to "jump when they jump" is "make them jump." Marth is very strong ground-to-ground and air-to-air but not so much air-to-ground (and his ground-to-air in neutral situations is merely alright for reasons that will become apparent in a moment--juggling is a different beast ofc, I mean like how he deals with jump-ins). Marth's dtilt, as you've noted, is a really strong poke: huge range, quick, not nearly as laggy as the rest of Marth's moves. Its weakness is that it's low to the ground, i.e. it gets beaten by jumping. Marth's options that beat jump-ins are not fantastic; DD grab can work but is very hard to time correctly sometimes (it'll get spotdodged or jabbed or out-DD'd or whatever), utilt is laggy, jab is very low-reward. So if you dtilt your opponent's approaches a lot, they'll be forced to jump to get past it. If you can then note how they go about doing those jumps, you can fair to stuff it.

3. Should be self-explanatory. Most characters are not good at getting down vs. Marth.

Puff-Marth is a weird beast. She spends most of her time airborne but can outweave your fair, she can duck under grab and get a guaranteed rest on reaction, she's aerially mobile enough to come down from a juggle... it's a bizarre matchup in the context of the three rules.

I'd honestly consider staying Falco vs. Puff. Lasers mess up her back air game, shine->shine kills her off the top of Yoshi's, dair gives you reasonable combo options. Learning a new character for a matchup your main wins is probably not worth it.

That said, Marth is a super cool and rewarding character, so I don't wanna discourage you from playing him LOL. Try just playing Marth against stuff in general for a while until you better understand what he wants to do, then go back and apply that to Puff if you really think it'll do better than Falco.

 

[Kor_Hey_1]

Thanks, I did'nt think about look at PP's advices. It's great that people nicely answer you even if someone already answered somewhere on the forum.

PP and M2K are the 2 marth beast. PewPewU is getting slowly better and better. This character is insterresting, even if it's not my main. I think being able to play other characters help : -to not being bored by the game
-to better understand the matchups.

From my point of view, it's not a waste of time to train a little with other characters.