Problem: My Ness is better than my Marth T_T;;

[Proverbs]

Okay. So this is my list of people I main, only the first three I play seriously.

In this order:

1. Marth
2. Ness
3. Captain Falcon
4. Zelda
5. Game and Watch



So, when I first started playing Brawl I mained Marth and Zelda and that was it. But my friends kept saying I was better with Zelda than Marth. Eventually they got used to my Zelda tactics and it seemed that things evened out again. Later on my friend starting maining Zelda and so I let her slide lower on my list (she has been number 4 for a while now, but only recently have I had the inspiration to put someone at number 3). Soon after leaving her, Ness became number 2 while there was a brief period in which I gave up on Brawl and only played Melee (ironic, I know). After seeing Simna's videos, I was convinced I could make Ness work. However as time went on I came back to Brawl and brought Ness with me (*just remembered* the reason I put Ness as my secondary was because of 64. I recently played it and completely OWNED with Ness and wanted to keep using him).

So, here lies the problem. It's been a while since I've established these mains (except Captain Falcon which I only decided less than a week ago), but my friend recently said something to me. Now, he's a bit of a n00b at smash in general and doesn't even like Melee because he wasn't great at it the first couple of times he played it. However, he told me that he thought my Ness was better than my Marth. That shocked me a bit as I have been maining Marth ever since I was playing Melee competitively. I replied that others said the same thing before when I was playing Zelda, and now things had evened out. He then said that he thought my Zelda (number 4 on the list, you recall) was better than my Marth as well. At that point I pulled out some excuse about how we normally both used Marth and I couldn't exploit the differences in characters as easily while with Ness I did that more often as we didn't do Ness mirror matches.

But deep down I realized what he said held truth. In fact, I spend so much more time on the Ness boards than I ever do on the Marth boards. I even started developing a Green Greens strategy for Ness and so far have not done much for Marth.

I guess the problem is, I don't know how to play Marth intelligently. With Ness I see lots of room for innovation and creativity--but not so with Marth. So my problem lies in being able to make Marth creative and surprising so that not only will I not get bored of him and focus more on the other characters, but also will be able to keep fresh gameplay that will constantly keep my opponent on their guard--or off it, if that's what I'm planning for.

So this is the area I'm looking for help in. I realize it's a bit vague, but I hope you can enlighten me a bit. I don't have any videos (that I can upload) of me playing Marth, but my FC is to the left if you want to play me as Marth or as my other mains to help me get a better understanding of why my Marth playstyle is seriously lacking.

Take note that I don't want another character to take number one for me. Marth will always have that place even if I'm horrible at him. He is my favorite character, however I'm having a harder and harder time with making that jive, so to speak. Help?

 

[Emblem Lord]

Sometimes you vibe with a character and sometimes you don't.

I vibe with Peach waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more then Marth in Melee, so I made her my secondary. I still mained Marth though because I like sword play and his style is cool.

Eventually I began to vibe with Marth more as I began to understand him more.

How exactly do you play Marth? What is it about Ness that draws you to him? Maybe you need to understand yourself a bit more before anyone else can help you.

 

[Proverbs]

I must say that is insightful and definitely true, Emblem Lord. Well, my problem is I don't know how to use Marth, really. I make use of aerials a ton, am extremely aggressive, go for gimping whenever possible, spike whenever possible, and go for shieldbreaks when possible. I rarely use Dancing Blade but am trying to incorporate that more. I tend to use f-air more than I probably should. I love using b-air to edgeguard. I tend to rarely use counter, but when I do it's almost never at a wrong moment. I use n-air a lot less than I probably should and I tend not to use his tilts much. Only his u-tilt do I really take advantage of. I leave tap jump off and so I cannot Dolphin Blade out of my shield. Overall I go for combos as much as humanly possible and chase tons.

With Ness, however, I chase with f-airs, abuse b-airs, tailwhip, use my ridiculous Green Greens strategy when I can (too much to explain, check the Ness boards for that), go for PK Fire combos, use PKT2 a whole load, try to trap with tailwhipping, never use PK Flash, and I also tend to go for combos a ton. Oh, and I also tend to try spiking probably more than I should.

I guess I like Ness because he owned in 64 and he was the underdog in Melee who comboed extremely well. I just like Ness' style, I guess.

Marth I originally started maining because my friend said he was the best in Melee. I listened and started using him. After that I loved the character and no one else really seemed appropriate for me to use as my main.

I recently started having my third main be Captain Falcon because I love the way he moves and his ability to use dashdancing effectively in Brawl *gasp* and Scar's video "I Killed Mufasa", as I mentioned eariler, definitely helped.

Zelda I loved because she was horrible in Melee and her sweetspots were ridiculous. I just liked the ability to be good with her and use Din's Fire to barely allow someone to touch me without taking loads of damage or without being extremely frustrated having to dodge all the time.

G&W I just like because he's very unique and behaves oddly, as he's two-dimensional.

Does any of this help?

 

[Emblem Lord]

Seeing you mention I killed Mufasa is awesome. My crewmate Scar is the star of the vid. Good ****.

lol.

Sounds like maybe you just haven't been bring out Marth's potential at all.

You seem to care ALOT more about bring out Ness' potential then Marth's.

 

[2.72]

Woah, Scar's your crewmate? That is indeed a stunning video. It's one of my favorite combo videos.

Anyway, I'm having the opposite problem. Marth was my Melee main, but I more-or-less switched to Diddy when Brawl came out. Now I miss my Marth. 'Tis ironic that, when playing the little chimp, I want to be an elegant swordsman, but when I'm playing Marth I just wanna throw bananas at people and **** their faces.

My advice: main both. It's what I'm doing. It looks like counterpicking chars might be very important in Brawl, so having more than one main is good.

 

[AdmiralComrade]

well.. diff people have diff ways of working.. patterns of thinking.. thats why not every1 plays marth.. some characters u will feel more comfortable with.. like me i tired sum1 else beside marth and im like WOW HES SLOW as i got accustomed to marth.. hmm soo i like marths pace and flow =] as for u, ness might be more "natural" so to say.. to u

well ill throw in another example from another game
ever heard of Dota? :D

well theres like heaps of character and i like using this character called meepo (it conists of 4 heros bound... if 1 dies the rest die bla bla bla) it was natural for me to micro manage... soo i like him


anyways back on topic... go explore which charater u like most.. i dont REALLY thing it matters than ur ness is better than ur marth.. it isnt a problem as such =D

tho.. if i wana play marth.. and force urself then.. ok =P go practise =D tho.. i dont really kno why u would force urself if it feels more awkward ...

and yeah... u could have 2 mains.. dunno xD

hope u resolve ur problem!

 

[phi1ny3]

Me agree with flow. I mained marth in melee at first, but then ppl kept saying my melee falco was more potent, despite me liking my marth better. This just prompted me to up the ante and make my marth and falco balanced. Still, Falco was slightly better. When Brawl came, I found myself still stabilized with Falco, somewhat unfamiliarized with marth, and found my new "demi-marth": Lucario. I found both similar in playstyles, but then through lucario, I found an unorthodox way to play marth. Oddly the moral of this story is: Who cares, vibes come and go, but also let the new chars u experience give u new insight of ur old. U'd be surprised how many ways u can use ur old char after seeing similar tactics of a new one. Now this doesn't always work, but boy, it worked for me.

 

[Proverbs]

Seeing you mention I killed Mufasa is awesome. My crewmate Scar is the star of the vid. Good ****.

lol.

Sounds like maybe you just haven't been bring out Marth's potential at all.

You seem to care ALOT more about bring out Ness' potential then Marth's.

Once again I think you're right. I think the reason I don't tend to care as much about bringing out Marth's potential is because I've been playing Marth for a while and feel like I don't need to keep exploring him as I know him well enough already. But the problem is that I don't.

I'm either going to try to redefine my playstyle by analyzing again everything that Marth can do, or take a break from playing him altogether and come back to him with fresh eyes, so to speak.

I'll see what I can do. Thanks, though.

Emblem Lord, whenever you're available, mind playing my Marth and giving me some pointers about him? You can try my other characters if you want too, it's up to you. But maybe this way I can see what I'm missing in my playstyle.