Some general questions about marth

[Acton]

Well I've been into the "competitive" scene of brawling for two months or so now. I've gone to two tourneys and I main falco. I haven't picked up a second character yet, and after looking at matchups it seems like marth would be a great character to use as my second since I main falco.

Marth obviously is very different from falco, his pace is totally different, and he relies on tilt attacks much more then falco. Also after reading some of the so called "guides" around here it seems its actually better to play with tap jump on with marth, whereas its better to play with it off with falco because of dacus.

Anyway I'm just looking for some general information, since there doesn't seem to be a comprehensive marth guide around here.

For instance, his "Dancing Sword" technique, or his tilt b tech is proving kind of difficult for me to master, and even more so to know how to use it properly in a given situation.

Does marth have a spike tech, and if so how do I use it correctly?

I like marths nair, but I'm not really sure how to follow up after it.

I'm just looking for some basic tips on the basics of marth gameplay. If someone could maybe make a very basic list of his moves and what they are good for it would be nice.

For instance, how do I recover from the edge correctly? Should I come right off the ledge with a dolphin slash, or should I try to air dodge?

I'm just so used to playing falco so I guess its proving harder then I thought to adjust.

 

[Zero Hour]

For future reference please go to the Q n A thread, it's stickied.

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=188570

But to answer your questions, the dancing blades as I assume you know has 3 versions. Which version you use is very dependent on the situation/character. For example on snake match-ups, the up version of dancing blades can be useful if you are looking to keep him out of his position of power (camping with nades), where as on say dedede the down version is useful to shield poke and avoid being shield grabbed. *important---* dancing blades is used to refresh moves because if you didn't know, 4 attacks refreshes your moves, most multi-hit moves count as on but this one is special so use it for Fair

Also, marth's spike works only at the tip of his sword, otherwise its sort of like any other airial.

The neutral air for me is more of a gtfo move to be used when either Fair is dull or you want to get some extra knock back, however, there is a thead listed in the important marth threads post that has marth's known combos, at least to the point of whenit was updated thats a good place to start looking for follow-ups.

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=218194

Also as far as general marth rules, spacing and patience for marth.

 

[Albert.]

DIAF
..
Now.

 

[Acton]

Yeeeaaah.

I clearly said I looked in all the Q and A etc before I made this topic. None of it really articulated it very well.

For instance the Marth Section doesn't have any guide like this falco one:
http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=221988

If you don't feel like responding. . . then don't respond? You don't need to spam the topic.

 

[Shaya]

Topics such as these should be fine.
Opening up discussion of a topic is a lot different to answering a one liner question.

You follow up nairs with landing fast falls (both hits at low percents) into the normal db1, rising fair, etc etc.

First hit of nair you just fast fall into an utilt/upsmash/fsmash.

 

[GPEternity]

At low percentages nair combos into quite a few things if you ff the second hit.

at medium percentages you'd generally use nair knock your opponent away to set up edgeguard.

at high percentages nair becomes a kill move.

at any percentage you can use a ff'd first hit to set up: fair, uair, full nair, utilt, ftilt, db, ds and somtimes smashes. what you can use depends on the angle of attack, how close you are to the ground when the first hit connects, and how they DI the hit. if they get popped upwards you get utilt/uair, if they stay in front of you you get tilts/db. if they get close into you you get fairs and nairs.

Dancing Blade comes out in 4 frames, use it as a punish anything and everything. it keeps your other moves fresh which is important because marth has a hard time killing with degraded moves. depending on who your fighting you can use DB for shield pressure against characters with poor grab range or OoS optios. the forward variation knocks the opponent out, the up variety hits them upwards, the down variety kinda does an inbetween but sacrifices knockback for more damage. The red is generally more useful overall, but the blue is very good against lighter characters , low ceilings, and characters with bad aerial games. there are some gimmicks like DB1 -> fair/grab but these are unreliable if your opponent DI's or mashes attack buttons.

Marth's useful moves depends on the fight and situation. DB, DS, grabs, and Fair are the ones you'll use in almost every fight. Dtilt you'll use in most fights as a poke but is less reliable against things like MK. Ttilt is used more often in juggles, platform traps, and characters who like to approach you from the air. Nair becomes better on tall enemies because you don't have to FF to hit them when they're grounded but its still useful against shorter enemies when you get them in the air.

marths recovery relies on mix ups, any trick you can think of you'll want to employ given certain situations but you generally don't want to AD into your opponent because marth isn't comfortable when enemies are 2 inches from his face.

marths spike is unreliable in most situations but against some characters like Falco marth can chain fthrow to dair spike off the edge. for others its really about reading airdodges if you want to spike, but those don't happen very often.