Need help with Marth's side platform punishes on spacies!

[YNZ]

Hey guys! Still kinda new to melee! I was wondering if anyone could give me a simple run down of side platform punishes vs spacies! (sorry I couldnt find any info on this so i took to smash boards to see if anyone knew)

Right now I mostly just uptilt, u-air, and waveland grab, but sometimes when my opponents use slideoff tricks, shield drops, and it tricks the crap outta me. I heard nair is good for covering this but is that all marth has going for him in his platform punish game?

In some zain sets I see him Dair his opponents on platforms and bthrow, shield drop, Uair spacies. Are these good tactics I should be using? because when I try them they usually whiff and ill end up getting shined or grabbed or something!

Thanks in advance for any sort of help!

 

[Vivace_SSBM]

Usually you'll want to cover a mis-tech/regular get-up with an up-air, and drift to cover other options with up-tilt. If you opponent uses slide-off techs, then you probably want to read that and punish what they do after it with either a grab. All of your platform punishes don't need to lead to a stock, just getting the spacie into mid/high-mid percent is good enough, or off stage.

As for the Zain B-Throw trick, I don't he usually does a shield-drop, he just Back Throws, and then drops through the platform. The reason does this is because of the weird throw animation and trajectory compared to Marth's other throws. More often than not, you'll see people focus on just teching than choosing options, so Zain can read that and convert it into a big punish.

Final thoughts: It's really good that you're copying what you see high level melee players do! That's a really good way to get better. Though, you also want to analyze your play and when you miss a punish such as getting shined, ask yourself why that happened. Were you too close to the spacie? Were you still on the platform by the time he got up?