Problems with Marth...

[Valkyrie8492]

I consistently play one of my friends as a sort of training partner who mains Marth. We were basically even skill and matches went either way until just recently when he decided that d-tilt was the only move he needed in neutral. Normally I'm ok at adapting to what he changes but I'm at a total loss for how to beat this.

Essentially he camps under a platform holding down and spams tilts if I approach at all. If I try to needle then he either just shields if I'm farther or shffls a nair/fair approach if I'm close while I'm charging the needles. What am I supposed to do? Sheik already has pretty bad approaches and him doing this seems to shut out all of them. I even have a hard time getting a needle grab since he'll sit under platforms whenever he can. How should I approach this? Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[The Lemon]

Well, if you bait out the move, it is not fast enough in that if it whiffs, you can't punish it with a grab or dash attack. So I would run>WD back and bait it out.

Other solutions are simply to SH fair. Most stages have platforms high enough where Sheik will not land on them. And even if it is a stage like FoD where the platforms are lower, you can still fall through the platforms after your SH and land a (possibly "late") fair.

 

[Gいたん]

Just continue to camp him with needles. If he's far away just sitting there down tilting and shielding, what's he going to do?
He's going to want to approach you. If he approaches you, you dash dance and bait it out and get that punish.
Grab leads into amazing things on Marth
You can grab, dthrow, regrab a few times, up smash neutral DI on grab at lower percents and follow up with an arial, or just forward tilt fair or just fair (If at lower percents i suggest ftilt fair but higher throw fair to get them off stage.)
If he's doing the approaching down tilt where he dashes in and crouches to cancel his dash to dtilt just shield it and either shield grab if its badly spaced (shield DIing it towards him helps) or WD out of shield back and return to neutral.

If he's staying under a platform doing nothing, go to the top platform and camp him. If he tries to approach you from under the top platform with up air or something run off and reverse needle onto another platform and fall off and fair.
Here's a video of what i mean, the faster you turnaround needle as you run off the higher the needle will cover

If he jumps on another platform first to try to get to you you've already got him out from under that platform and you should be in control again.

 

[Sempai]

CC grab, also Dtilt is what like -10 on block? You could prolly react to that.

 

[Ray_Rages]

I also have a friend that I play with regularly, he switched between Falco and Marth to try and counter Sheik, trapping me with up tilts under a platform used to constantly get me, learning to light shield and baiting out the tilts, then dropping from the platform and approaching with a forward air, neutral air, or back air. Also spot dodging Marth's downtilt and either rolling behind and punishing, normally I do this with a down smash. Learning to shield drop as well will really help your approach, it's a pretty easy technique that can be very useful if used wisely!

 

[Claing]

You should also be able to time your approach in between his down tilts. If he is at high enough percent that his crouch cancelling won't work anymore you can even dash attack him but otherwise doing dash grabs in between the down tilts should get him. Otherwise back off and charge up full needles and then hit him with a full set. Marth should ultimately have to approach you in this match up.

 

[Valkyrie8492]

Hey thanks for the replies everyone. I've definitely been doing better as of late thanks to some of the responses here. So far I've had the most success with spacing auto-cancel fairs but I've definitely seen a number of ways to work around my problem.