Shaya
Welcome back. This is a wonderful post and I'm really happy that nearly all the things that have been going through my head about Marth, Roy, and Cloud are mentioned here. I'd like to have a link to your post in my signature if you don't mind.
Anyway, here are my thoughts/comments written between your post:
Hmm, I'm not too keen on expressing personal things yet, I will get around to it at some point I'm sure.
In terms of business as usual (Marth), this diatribe written live now has been in the back of my mind for a while, full of negativity, I warn you not to read it if you think it will be worth getting upset [at me] over.
(begins spoiler box). Marth to me isn't a redeemable character at this time. I've had a lot of ups and downs in thought, and despite me knowing his match ups against his cohort and various stronger characters of a certain archetype are noticeably positive, he does feel low tier to me.
Same.
I've all but rekindled my love of Marth as a character through Roy; and any exercise I go through points further towards him. Marth in smash4 is completely and utterly a subset of Marth in Brawl, the only areas this isn't the case are his slight gains in weight (but he's the lightest swordfighter after MK and for his data/abilities is way too light) and shieldbreaker. In a game where nearly everyone has better mobility due to the game's speed up, Marth moves the same as he did in Brawl with a significantly worse moveset.
Exactly. His weight in unbalanced. With his weak kit, it does not match his hurtbox size and data at all. This is true especially this patch after other characters' mobility buffs, kill power buffs, landing lag buffs, and Cloud's existence. Yeah, he did get the nearly universal run speed increase from Brawl but that's it. He unfortunately wasn't among the lucky bunch that received huge air (or ground) speed buffs in the transition to Smash 4 (though IMO Marth would feel weird with more air speed; I actually prefer Melee's 0.9 air speed for him where it is coupled with the walking fortress Melee Marth is).
Marth lacks rewarding game play in Smash4, as in the whole "I have a goal to advance and when it's achieved I not only feel good about it, it means I've beaten my opponent and outplayed them in a consistent way". Marth is completely devoid of such capabilities, and is one of the only few characters in the cast that I feel has no light at the end of a tunnel, even if he is overall stronger and more consistent than lower chars. The closest thing to this would've been shieldbreaker medium charge breaking shields, but we lost that full second set up with multiple escape routes in the shield change patch; FAIRLY to some extent, shieldbreaker is cancer on wifi. Counter is also essentially cancer in the context of wifi, a lot of our 'power' is loaded in moves that aren't remotely useful 95% against competent players in 1v1.
This is exactly what I've been learning in tournament. I have been soul searching for a consistent game plan. Marth has consistency issues for many reasons in this game and I just can't organize my gameplay the way I want to. There comes a point where blaming yourself is not enough.
RIP Shield Breaker. We didn't even get close to its potential. Even a medium charge pre-nerf was overkill.
And that is unfortunately what it comes down to. I have no doubt in my mind that in their data, Marth sucks on For Glory, especially with it being FD only. But they feel that they gave him enough to work with. Unfortunately, your 95% statement is among the problems.
As I've been pushing Roy further, I've been thinking that Roy and Marth are "split" from Brawl Marth, and when you look at what S4 Marth is (and these conclusions were prior to Cloud's release, I'll get to that), a completely worse version of his previous self, and then look at Roy who has multiple gains over Brawl Marth and less things taken away than Brawl Marth, it's hard to think of Marth as not the "Dan" of Smash Bros; Cloud really sets this one in stone.
By looking at Roy's data and comparing it to Marth in S4/Brawl, it is pretty obvious to me that S4 Marth was very lazily put together, a heavy amount of copying and pasting with blanket changes/nerfs/removals. Roy on the other hand comes with larger hitboxes on his sword, with noticeably longer range than Marth's, maintained hilt hitboxes which are sizable, and comes with body hits which give consistent sweet spots in certain areas, travel in straight lines rather than following his sword and hence avoids a lot of the frustrations which we often have trying to play this character; **** missing or losing out because our moves aren't designed to hit other opponents (at least in contrast to other characters... including those as close to us as Roy). It's a very sad thing, and at this stage it's impossible to pretend it was an accident.
Heck, they could just copy Roy's extra 2-4 hitboxes per move, give them to us with the numbers adjusted (i.e. worse/as sour spots) and we'd have a significantly stronger character to use. Will we get this though? Chances are we won't if we haven't yet.
I can see that. Roy indeed has a lot of Brawl Marth in him.
Not sure what "the Dan" means.
There are far too many oversights in Marth's moveset that it is infuriating the more I discover how much better I can perform if this and that weren't so. Roy being DLC really helped him. He had that development time he needed and they knew he had to be impressive and "cool" so they could SELL$$$ his DLC to more people. He feels great in the hands and it's mostly his generous hitboxes doing that. It's very similar to the Melee Marth experience actually when you combine it all.
Can you please elaborate on "
travel in straight lines rather than following his sword"?
That would be nice. Marth has had sour-sour spots before and he still does. Example: Dash Attack, Utilt, Brawl Fair, Brawl Dtilt. He truly needs something to protect his body. They focused far too much on making it just the blade this game.
But Shaya, I can almost guarantee that nothing even partially like this will happen to Marth. This is probably what they falsely consider one of his "character traits" at this point.
The only optimal choices Marth has in this game (dash movement, fast fall aerials), going by the numbers we have, is achieved by Roy, in some cases literally twice as fast.
His sword is reaching roughly 10-20% longer [example, Roy's jab reaching 12.2 units to Marth's 10]. "Oh but it's sour spots shaya, they suck"; to some extent that's besides the point, but I can assure you his tipper hits are lovely to work with. Roy has poor match ups with characters Marth can handle; he has little chance against Rosalina or DK yet Marth can deal with both reliably. But besides these, Roy will be doing exactly what Marth would want to do but with a lot more reward against everyone else.
Aerials which string together (how nice is a fair/bair with 5+ frames less end lag?), air times which don't leave massive 20-30 frame windows of vulnerability where we have 0 options. Reliable and long lasting bread and butter combos with fair (or other aerials) and down tilt into dancing blade (things we had in Brawl but will never combo in Smash4). Fairs chaining into fairs. A jab that gives us real follow ups. A grab game that has DI mix ups and follow ups or huge positional gains we can capitalize on. Optimal use cases that are "REAL" and not reliant on mix ups that resoundingly lose to shield or having superior mobility options.
For that reason, despite the longer start up of fair and less weaving time, Roy feels very good to use his aerials. There isn't really ever a question on whether he should just fast fall or wait it out. He's rewarded more for either choice, while Marth gets the same reward if he waits 20+ frames first.
The extra shield stun/push back and implicit safety of higher damage on tippers is ultimately mute when you're reaching about 1/7th further on these sour hits. Oh and doubly so if you have a sweetspot vertically above you almost an entire sword's length in reach/size away from you too.
I noticed that other than Roy's Fsmash, his Bair, Fair, and Uair reach further horizontally for some reason. Can you please explain your "units" more and why both of our findings are the case?
RIP Dtilt to a working DB. I love the "Optimal use cases..." sentence.
Now Cloud's release has made me quite sad. Cloud has almost taken every single feature and capability of other sword characters (and also other good characters in general), and has received them in a stronger and better form.
When it comes to comparing Marth to Cloud specifically, there is not a single real thing I feel that Marth can do better than him. Marth's recovery has been almost as trash as Cloud's this entire time, yet people are still not fully capitalizing on this (why would they when they don't need to? you don't need to know the Marth match up in and out to beat him). Cloud weighs A LOT more, has the same start up as us with a bigger sword, a lot of range added to his attacks by stepping forward, significantly less cool down on everything he has compared to us, and has in 2 weeks achieved more than Marth has in an entire year+; at some point I'll go in length to describe how much Smash4 character design has reached League of Legends status (i.e. "how do we make someone new and exciting? oh I know, let's make their 4 abilities do 8 things instead of 4 like everyone else!"), but in particular Cloud's design makes me very very upset as a sword character enthusiast.
At least Roy has his better mobility and more rewarding + reliable sweetspots to match up with Cloud's braindead button mashing win approach.
Cloud's fsmash outranges shieldbreaker, yeah, the move that has Marth break his arm off from his elbow to have an extra moment of 25% extra range; his side-b is a better version of dancing blade, he has a lot better mobility and matches with super heavies. He doesn't lose to attrition because of his disgusting weight and ability to end stocks or make massive comebacks at any given moment (that don't have 40+ frames of end lag for your opponent to kill you in) when coupled with a charge ability and projectile. Spacing with him is a breeze because his attacks will beat out any other character, no random hand exposed completely in front of him several frames before hitboxes come along (dtilt, fair, jab, ftilt, etc), he will step forward just as much as Sheik does with forward air as he attacks before stepping backwards immediately after hitboxes end to make him immune to punishes unless you power shield. I actually don't want Cloud in this game competitively at all, he's the type of character to ruin it.
Everything we concluded was fair for Marth to not have so this game could be "good" exists on Cloud in arguably stronger ways in some instances than he was in Brawl.(ends)
This is also what I came up with while studying Cloud. I've never seen a character so young in the metagame rack up damage, pressure, kill, basically do everything better than most characters in one package. He truly does steal the best of Marth, Ike, and Roy (and some of their weaknesses) plus the LB and projectile. His throw game and recovery hold him back but I am still afraid of where this character will take things. His Uair alone in his sea of bull**** is enough to embarrass every other sword wielding character.
Overall Marth is still something I can't give up on and I enjoy playing him, but I think my decade of maining and mastering Marth is now inadequate compared to the year's development of every other better character. Come February (assuming no indications balance patches will continue), Marth will very likely be set in stone as a joke character in competition. I'm not looking forward to it. I think Roy's potential is still greater than we understand and he has room to develop while having the abilities to achieve more for less; if you really do like the play styles of Marth, learning to adjust to using Roy to do all the things you like is very likely worth the investment.
Despite all of that there is a long list of "meta" things I've come about to use that may not be common practice yet but I likely won't recall it all in a single instance. The DB3 down changes are pretty positive in my eyes as it may lead to more consistent tipper final hits on DB which will lead to kills. Jab into neutral air or dolphin slash is likely the ultimate 50/50 for it at best. Dolphin Slash as a tack on 7% for our vertical follow ups or to chase people jumping away is surprisingly good in practice. We should never be doing rising forward air as rising back air is noticeably safer and more useful. Dancing Blade is, after the shieldbreaker cut, our best move that we need to use constantly to keep up with the DPS and rewards of other characters. If you learn to time landing down air to hit at maximum horizontal range you get something which may lead to follow ups or a semblance of pressure. Back Air is our best choice for going for 2 frame vulnerability punishing, don't make the mistake of trying down air unless their recovery comes with no hitboxes. Playing facing backwards in 'neutral' due to the large amount of "good space" behind us in up air and back air, the mix up potential of DB1 and shieldbreaker, and little difficulty of grounded actions facing the right direction should be one's general focus; back air or up air out of shield on the late hit is very reliable for finding a follow up (ACing the up air, or if jumping and waiting a bit first before fast falling it is possible; even better).
I agree with your predictions on Marth.
While I've already been thinking Roy has more potential than Marth, I still have qualms with him that prevent me from investing real time into him. There are some moves or traits I don't like because they simply aren't Marth's. His Utilt, Fsmash, Uair, Dair, Uspecial, autocancels, landing lag, much worse Counter edgeguards (less base kb, faster falling/gravity, start-up, general risk of leaving stage), and (this also ties in with the point before this) inability to snap to the ledge quickly (one of the biggest benefits Marth has over nearly every character) especially during edgeguards. Edgeguarding in general in not recommended with Roy (it'll usually be more optimal to cover ledge options).
Dancing Blade ABSOLUTELY is our main move. It's my most common out of shield option and much more. This is why DB2 desperately needs to work. Because
as soon as more tournament Marths finally use DB like they should people will be able to consistently get out of the combo due to this issue. The reason being widespread familiarity in dealing with Dancing Blade. This gets Marth punished in whatever way. Using DB2 Up doesn't seem to be a solution either.
Edit: My last words... I have been extensively studying the changes characters endure in their transition from Melee to Brawl to Smash 4. The nerfs moving into each game are HUGE. Generally, hitboxes are nerfed in every way and lag is added (with IASA removals/nerfs and/or slower/redesigned animations). There are other common types of nerfs but those are the largest. Every single character in Smash 4 is heavily nerfed from Brawl. Every one of them. Even Sheik. Zelda, for example, who wasn't even strong in Brawl, had almost her entire moveset heavily nerfed when moving to Smash 4. Yes, design-wise she received some cool things like the Elevator but my point stands. Marth doesn't deserve all that he got but this stuff is good to keep in mind.
