Emblem Lord
The Legendary Lord
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2005
- Messages
- 9,720
- Location
- Scotch Plains, NJ
- NNID
- ShinEmblemLord
- 3DS FC
- 3926-6895-0574
- Switch FC
- SW-0793-4091-6136
*DISCLAIMER*
*I did not write this article about Marth. It was written by Nintendude_1189 on the Nintendo forums. He's a good author and a smash theorist/philosopher. I copied and pasted all of this from his original thread, because I wanted to share this with the community. I got the idea from Sandtiger in the Falco Forums, where he posted Nintendude_1189's analysis on Falco. Read on to see what Nintendude_1189 has to say about Marth.*
One of the two representatives of the Fire Emblem series, Marth is a very popular character in SSBM, but he also falls victim to false misconceptions, especially the one of him being weaker and lighter than Roy. Well, as players have demonstrated time and time again, Marth’s power is superior to Roy’s, and he’s also the heavier of the two. In fact, he’s better than Roy in almost every possible way, making Marth one of the best characters in the game.
Marth has all of the qualities of a good character: speed, power, range, and combo ability. Utilizing all of these, Marth becomes an outstanding overall character that can deal with just about anything when played correctly. One of Marth’s best attributes is his approach. Since he has a long dash animation, he has one of the most potent dash-dances in the game. He can easily vary the lengths of his dashes in order to stay unpredictable, and from dash-dancing he can pull off jump-cancelled grabs, aerials, and smashes.
Since all of Marth’s attacks are sword-based disjointed hitboxes, they have extremely high priority. This means that Marth doesn’t need to be concerned with attacking the opponent often, as he can usually just slice through any attempt the opponent makes to attack. This also gives his attacks a lot of range, which make up for his lack of a projectile. His forward-smash in particular has a ton of range, making forward-smash spamming, or attack spamming in general, potentially effective with Marth.
Marth’s combo ability is superb, and it is based on his aerial forward-A attack. He can use this attack repeatedly, even doing two in one short-hop, to combo into almost anything he has. If this goes off the stage, he can combo straight into his aerial down-A spike, one of the best spikes in the game. If he lands on a platform, he can land a tippered forward-smash, and, if he is unable to do much at the end for whatever reason, he can finish with an uncharged Shield Breaker to hopefully hit the opponent off of the stage. He has a lot more options too, such as using up-tilts lead into forward-A combos or forward-smash. Also, since aerial back-A turns Marth around in midair, landing a back-A means Marth can continue the combo with forward-As and/or a forward-smash. Forward-B is also a way to combo with Marth, but it generally isn’t very effective. Occasionally, though, Marth’s forward-A combos can lead into a forward-B combo. If this happens to be right at the edge, the forward-B’s meteor smash strike (3rd hit aimed down) can be utilized.
Marth also has one of the best grab games in SSBM. First of all, he has one big advantage. For whatever reason, Marth’s grab range is the size of his sword, making it really easy to land grabs. Additionally, unlike other characters, all of Marth’s throws have good uses. Against fastfallers, or even semi-fastfallers such as Roy, Marth can up-throw into an up-tilt / AUA juggle, leading to a forward-smash or forward-A combo. He also has a really nasty chainthrow that’s great on Fox, Falco, and Captain Falcon, and with the ability to end it with a forward-smash, it can result in 0-death combos. Against other characters, Marth’s forward and down-throws are great for comboing. Floaty opponents with very low damage can be chainthrown with forward-throw, which can also combo into forward-smash or aerials depending on DI. Back-throw also leads to forward-smash and aerials. There’s one great thing about these two throws though. DI’ing away from Marth’s forward-throw is the same as DI’ing into Marth’s down-throw and vice versa. This means that by mixing up these throws well, Marth can trick opponents into DI’ing into follow-up attacks. Back-throw, Marth’s least useful throw, lacks the potential of his other throws but is still useful for comboing into forward-smash once and awhile. He can also tech-chase fastfallers with this throw, as well as his other ones.
Despite all of Marth’s potential, he is somewhat easy to play well but really difficult to play amazingly well. This is because a lot of the stuff he has is damage-specific. Most importantly, he needs to build up damage on the opponent but needs to try to get the KO before building up too much damage, because Marth is incapable of comboing heavily damaged opponents into his KO moves. Often, when Marth puts too much damage on his opponent, he resorts to up-B as a KO move. Since it is one of the fastest moves he has, it’s easy to replace shield-grabs with up-B or dash-dance into up-B. When sweetspotted it’s actually a very powerful move.
Marth is notorious for being a pain to edgeguard. While he doesn’t have the greatest range, and he isn’t a really fast recoverer, his up-B has an annoying tendency to hit you through the stage when you are trying to edgeguard. It also has a good amount of range. When Marth is close enough to have flexibility with his recovery, he is even tougher to edgeguard since he can throw forward-As and forward-Bs at you. If he manages to hit the edgeguarder off the ledge and gets on himself, he can ledge-hop down-A to quickly turn the tide of the fight by transforming a battle to survive into a KO on the opponent. If there is any problem with Marth’s recovery, besides the fact that it sometimes can’t cover enough distance, it’s that he falls victim to edgehogging quite often. He also is really susceptible to the light shield edgehog.
Marth is also a really good edgeguarder, mainly due to his ability to attack through people’s up-Bs easily with tilts and forward-smashes. Most of the time, he can just down-tilt or forward-smash to cover the sweetspot and then edgehog, and from there he can ledge-hop or drop-off the stage with an aerial if that wasn’t enough. Also, one unorthodox but potentially effective technique is jumping into predictable up-B attacks with Counter. If this is against a character with crappy recovery, like Dr. Mario, this is a simple way to KO, but sometimes edgehogging is easier and achieves the same result. This is one of the only uses of Counter, besides breaking out of combos, hitting predictable opponents, or countering Falco’s SHB approach.
With so many great qualities, it’s easy to see why Marth is a popular choice. In fact, he’s the choice character for Ken Hoang, who is considered by many to be the best SSBM player in the world. He practically invented Marth’s modern-day metagame too, and while he’s been slipping lately, he consistently ranks well and is always capable of dealing with the strongest of players. If Marth makes it into Brawl, he will probably be as popular as ever. It’ll be interesting to see how good he turns out to be, especially since the developers were aware that he was somewhat overpowered in SSBM.
I believe the best Marth players out there, besides Ken obviously, are Azen and EK. EK is one of the more unknown Smash players since he comes from Europe, but he's widely considered the best on the continent. Azen, master of diversty, is capable of going even with Ken, but Ken usually comes out on top.
*I did not write this article about Marth. It was written by Nintendude_1189 on the Nintendo forums. He's a good author and a smash theorist/philosopher. I copied and pasted all of this from his original thread, because I wanted to share this with the community. I got the idea from Sandtiger in the Falco Forums, where he posted Nintendude_1189's analysis on Falco. Read on to see what Nintendude_1189 has to say about Marth.*
One of the two representatives of the Fire Emblem series, Marth is a very popular character in SSBM, but he also falls victim to false misconceptions, especially the one of him being weaker and lighter than Roy. Well, as players have demonstrated time and time again, Marth’s power is superior to Roy’s, and he’s also the heavier of the two. In fact, he’s better than Roy in almost every possible way, making Marth one of the best characters in the game.
Marth has all of the qualities of a good character: speed, power, range, and combo ability. Utilizing all of these, Marth becomes an outstanding overall character that can deal with just about anything when played correctly. One of Marth’s best attributes is his approach. Since he has a long dash animation, he has one of the most potent dash-dances in the game. He can easily vary the lengths of his dashes in order to stay unpredictable, and from dash-dancing he can pull off jump-cancelled grabs, aerials, and smashes.
Since all of Marth’s attacks are sword-based disjointed hitboxes, they have extremely high priority. This means that Marth doesn’t need to be concerned with attacking the opponent often, as he can usually just slice through any attempt the opponent makes to attack. This also gives his attacks a lot of range, which make up for his lack of a projectile. His forward-smash in particular has a ton of range, making forward-smash spamming, or attack spamming in general, potentially effective with Marth.
Marth’s combo ability is superb, and it is based on his aerial forward-A attack. He can use this attack repeatedly, even doing two in one short-hop, to combo into almost anything he has. If this goes off the stage, he can combo straight into his aerial down-A spike, one of the best spikes in the game. If he lands on a platform, he can land a tippered forward-smash, and, if he is unable to do much at the end for whatever reason, he can finish with an uncharged Shield Breaker to hopefully hit the opponent off of the stage. He has a lot more options too, such as using up-tilts lead into forward-A combos or forward-smash. Also, since aerial back-A turns Marth around in midair, landing a back-A means Marth can continue the combo with forward-As and/or a forward-smash. Forward-B is also a way to combo with Marth, but it generally isn’t very effective. Occasionally, though, Marth’s forward-A combos can lead into a forward-B combo. If this happens to be right at the edge, the forward-B’s meteor smash strike (3rd hit aimed down) can be utilized.
Marth also has one of the best grab games in SSBM. First of all, he has one big advantage. For whatever reason, Marth’s grab range is the size of his sword, making it really easy to land grabs. Additionally, unlike other characters, all of Marth’s throws have good uses. Against fastfallers, or even semi-fastfallers such as Roy, Marth can up-throw into an up-tilt / AUA juggle, leading to a forward-smash or forward-A combo. He also has a really nasty chainthrow that’s great on Fox, Falco, and Captain Falcon, and with the ability to end it with a forward-smash, it can result in 0-death combos. Against other characters, Marth’s forward and down-throws are great for comboing. Floaty opponents with very low damage can be chainthrown with forward-throw, which can also combo into forward-smash or aerials depending on DI. Back-throw also leads to forward-smash and aerials. There’s one great thing about these two throws though. DI’ing away from Marth’s forward-throw is the same as DI’ing into Marth’s down-throw and vice versa. This means that by mixing up these throws well, Marth can trick opponents into DI’ing into follow-up attacks. Back-throw, Marth’s least useful throw, lacks the potential of his other throws but is still useful for comboing into forward-smash once and awhile. He can also tech-chase fastfallers with this throw, as well as his other ones.
Despite all of Marth’s potential, he is somewhat easy to play well but really difficult to play amazingly well. This is because a lot of the stuff he has is damage-specific. Most importantly, he needs to build up damage on the opponent but needs to try to get the KO before building up too much damage, because Marth is incapable of comboing heavily damaged opponents into his KO moves. Often, when Marth puts too much damage on his opponent, he resorts to up-B as a KO move. Since it is one of the fastest moves he has, it’s easy to replace shield-grabs with up-B or dash-dance into up-B. When sweetspotted it’s actually a very powerful move.
Marth is notorious for being a pain to edgeguard. While he doesn’t have the greatest range, and he isn’t a really fast recoverer, his up-B has an annoying tendency to hit you through the stage when you are trying to edgeguard. It also has a good amount of range. When Marth is close enough to have flexibility with his recovery, he is even tougher to edgeguard since he can throw forward-As and forward-Bs at you. If he manages to hit the edgeguarder off the ledge and gets on himself, he can ledge-hop down-A to quickly turn the tide of the fight by transforming a battle to survive into a KO on the opponent. If there is any problem with Marth’s recovery, besides the fact that it sometimes can’t cover enough distance, it’s that he falls victim to edgehogging quite often. He also is really susceptible to the light shield edgehog.
Marth is also a really good edgeguarder, mainly due to his ability to attack through people’s up-Bs easily with tilts and forward-smashes. Most of the time, he can just down-tilt or forward-smash to cover the sweetspot and then edgehog, and from there he can ledge-hop or drop-off the stage with an aerial if that wasn’t enough. Also, one unorthodox but potentially effective technique is jumping into predictable up-B attacks with Counter. If this is against a character with crappy recovery, like Dr. Mario, this is a simple way to KO, but sometimes edgehogging is easier and achieves the same result. This is one of the only uses of Counter, besides breaking out of combos, hitting predictable opponents, or countering Falco’s SHB approach.
With so many great qualities, it’s easy to see why Marth is a popular choice. In fact, he’s the choice character for Ken Hoang, who is considered by many to be the best SSBM player in the world. He practically invented Marth’s modern-day metagame too, and while he’s been slipping lately, he consistently ranks well and is always capable of dealing with the strongest of players. If Marth makes it into Brawl, he will probably be as popular as ever. It’ll be interesting to see how good he turns out to be, especially since the developers were aware that he was somewhat overpowered in SSBM.
I believe the best Marth players out there, besides Ken obviously, are Azen and EK. EK is one of the more unknown Smash players since he comes from Europe, but he's widely considered the best on the continent. Azen, master of diversty, is capable of going even with Ken, but Ken usually comes out on top.
