Tier List Speculation

[Bazkip]

Moves having niche usage is fine. Not everything needs to applicable everywhere.

 

[Soft Serve]

Moves having niche usage is fine. Not everything needs to applicable everywhere.

unless it hits frame 1 and is jump cancelable

 

[masterpad]

Moves having niche usage is fine. Not everything needs to applicable everywhere.

i am fine with that, it's just many former comments tends to say that marth will not be that competitive viable in the future and it makes me sad

 

[Deleted member]

i think marth has a place as a counterpick character to gaw if that makes you feel better

 

[DMG]

Although some CP potential will be up to whether Character First becomes the standard. Bowser as a CP is decently less threatening when you can see him, vs him springing onto you like a big Chicken shot out of a cannon

 

[Warzenschwein]

Apologizing in advance but I cba to wade through the cesspool that is Tier List Speculation to find out:

Can someone sum up why Marth isn't supposed to be viable as a solo main now?

 

[DMG]

If ur a god you can solo Marth, but I don't recommend it if you have anything else viable to use. Dropping Marth was one of the best moves I ever made in PM.

 

[eideeiit]

just go look up stuff on why fox is bad in maylay from like 2007.

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

marth isn't even solo mainable in melee anymore

a luigi has gotten top 8 at a national more recently than a solo marth main has

 

[Ya Boy GP]

I can't tell if this is all heavy sarcasm or not. Do people really think Marth isn't solo mainable or am I just dumb

For once I hope I'm just dumb

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

depends on your definition of "solo mainable"

 

[Life]

PPMD's on another hiatus and M2K's character choices only count when he picks Sheik or Fox. Next best Marth is PewPew "9th place" U. Then, what, The Moon?

There's a pretty distinct lack of Marth rep in high-level Melee. But I believe that Marth can save the world.

Need to get around to watching Marthgo vs Hax. I mean obviously Mango's Fox is miles better, but if his barely-even-a-secondary Marth can take Hax to last hit in a Bo5, well, clearly Marth can't be THAT bad.

As for PM Marth, the big deal for him is that dair landing lag reduction. Marth's a lot less fragile when he can throw that out with less risk, he can start combos with it, use it OOS... Yeah, stages suck, and better heavies hurts, but also I think the players from Melee with the most developed Marths barely play him in PM. (Same reason Fox barely wins anything bigger than a local these days. We all know he's good, but if you're good at Fox, might as well play him in Melee instead.)

 

[Bazkip]

and M2K's character choices only count when he picks Sheik or Fox

???

 

[Strong Badam]

marth isn't even solo mainable in melee anymore

You gotta be trolling on this one dude lmao

 

[Ya Boy GP]

People consider Ice Climbers solo mainable in Melee even though they lose to basically every character above them on the tier list. Marth might lose like 5-7 matchups, most of which aren't popular characters (charizard, DDD, etc) and he's considered not solo mainable now? wtf

 

[Jolteon]

Toon Link is bottom 5.

 

[shairn]

People consider Ice Climbers solo mainable in Melee even though they lose to basically every character above them on the tier list. Marth might lose like 5-7 matchups, most of which aren't popular characters (charizard, DDD, etc) and he's considered not solo mainable now? wtf

PM players are so used to getting things handed to them that playing a losing matchup is now unacceptable.

 

[eideeiit]

Only ICs get stuff handed off to them

 

[ilysm]

People consider Ice Climbers solo mainable in Melee even though they lose to basically every character above them on the tier list.

This exactly. Thank you, GP. I think about this a lot. This is actually the attitude with which I treat a lot of the tier-related thinking I do. Melee Icies are a complicated character. Their counterplay is way easier to perform than it is to get around. They only arguably beat one character above them in the tier list, and even then it's by no means a blowout. But not only are they considered solo-mainable, they're top tier even. Better than Falcon on the most recent tier list (whaaaaat? crazy right??). Even Melee Marth struggles with a couple random mid tiers but I have yet to see anyone seriously and credibly dispute the fact that Marth is super good. I feel like the "solo-main viable or not solo-main viable" argument is a little misguided, especially in PM, just because people give losing matchups a lot more weight than they have to throw around.

(also eideeiit i need to grudgingly give that one to you you rapscallion)

 

[TheGravyTrain]

It is worth mentioning that PPMD thinks that both Marth and Falco are solo mainable. He picked up Marth because he wanted to prove to everyone that he was still good, not necessarily that he needed him.

As for this whole "solo mainable argument" thing. General consensus seems to be that there are hardly any characters that are solo mainable. I personally don't buy into this, but even if that is true, why is it that everyone takes it as a huge knock against a characters viability? If it's so common, it should be an expectation outside of maining a select few characters.

 

[G13_Flux]

well lets start here: what MUs and on what stages does marth do poorly on?

i know he loses to CF, shiek, ZSS, and DDD. Spacies are all in that 0/-1 range (maybe has a slight advantage on FD). Ive heard he loses to zard, lucario, and MK. diddys been tossed out there.

Im not the most familar with all those MUs however. The only one id really be prepared to speak about is ZSS.

 

[1FD]

There's a pretty distinct lack of Marth rep in high-level Melee. But I believe that Marth can save the world.

i'm sure you meant this

 

[Life]

well lets start here: what MUs and on what stages does marth do poorly on?

i know he loses to CF, shiek, ZSS, and DDD. Spacies are all in that 0/-1 range (maybe has a slight advantage on FD). Ive heard he loses to zard, lucario, and MK. diddys been tossed out there.

Im not the most familar with all those MUs however. The only one id really be prepared to speak about is ZSS.

So I haven't played a lot of PM Marth lately (W O L F B O Y Z, and a backup MK for when being fragile gets me dead), so I'm speaking mostly from Melee experience here.

CF, sheik, ZSS

CF is hard to tell because it's very volatile, Sheik hasn't been a Marth counter in a long time, and I can't speak for ZSS but nothing about her screams "beats marth" to me aside from escaping juggles well. They all seem pretty close to even. Probably depends on stages?

DDD I'll buy.

zard

Ehhh I thought it was even back when I mained Zard but that was long ago, haven't really thought about it much since.

lucario

what? every lucario I've heard from on the subject hates fighting marth

MK I'm not sure about, Diddy eh sure why not

 

[Chevy]

I think that because of the sheer size of the roster, and the comparably low skill level across the board. People get away with complaining about bad matchups, because:

A. They do not know the matchup
B. The matchup is generally easier for one side at that level, and it's lack of development makes it skewed
C. The lack of top player representation of most of the cast combining with A and B means that complaints about bad matchups can oftentimes go unrefuted

I think these and a few other factors(general negativity in this thread and elsewhere) results in most characters "not being solo-mainable". I like to believe that matchups generally have a tendency to even out as the overall player level rises, but I guess we'll see. Maybe I'm just blindly optimistic.

 

[Avro-Arrow]

CF is close to even in Melee but I think the margin of error on Marth's end hurts him a lot. Especially in PM's environment where CF has more room to run around and Marthritis is also therefore more prominent hurts him as well. Minor buffs to CF might help but IDK.

As for MK, I've heard a lot of buzz about it being really bad for Marth but I think it's pretty close to even at a higher level. Marth has good tech chasing, relatively good edge guards against him, and great juggles. Marthritis is what separates the MU from Roy in difficulty; Roy's moves link a lot easier into kill moves and he has more DI mix-ups. It's a totally playable MU regardless and I find it quite fun.

About Zard, I've always felt comfortable in the MU and used to think it was 55-45 Marth but people like Kysce obviously know better than me and he says it's a +1 for Zard. It's also a totally reasonable and fun matchup.

Diddy was just recently covered. Slight Diddy because the banana negates Marth's shield pressure.

Sheik / Marth is more playable than it was in Melee and that was a pretty close MU.

ZSS / Marth is playable as well. ZSS' punishes are a lot harder than Marth's are and that's why it's likely a slight advantage to ZSS.

 

[G13_Flux]

So I haven't played a lot of PM Marth lately (W O L F B O Y Z, and a backup MK for when being fragile gets me dead), so I'm speaking mostly from Melee experience here.



CF is hard to tell because it's very volatile, Sheik hasn't been a Marth counter in a long time, and I can't speak for ZSS but nothing about her screams "beats marth" to me aside from escaping juggles well. They all seem pretty close to even. Probably depends on stages?

DDD I'll buy.



Ehhh I thought it was even back when I mained Zard but that was long ago, haven't really thought about it much since.



what? every lucario I've heard from on the subject hates fighting marth

MK I'm not sure about, Diddy eh sure why not

just for the record, a number of those from my post were ones i specifically said that "ive heard these MUs were bad". wasnt making too many claims there, especially on lucarios end. Lunchables has been quoted saying hed prefer to fight lucario as roy as opposed to marth, and i do not believe he was talking about personal preference. Just some food for thought.

i was understood that shiek generally beat marth. the difference in punish games is very extreme, and marth has to approach neutral much more cautiously as a result. getting grabbed or dtilted from neutral isnt quite as threatening to shiek, and she has a lot more room to peg marth with good conversion options like ftilt, dtilt, and grab out of CCs.

a lot about ZSS actually suggests that she beats marth. rewarding CCs, an extremely fast, mobile character with a very quick projectile, great recovery, marth lacking any notable punish after forcing a tether jump, escaping juggles relatively well (as you mentioned), and possesing moves with some serious disjoint to contend with marths (when coupled with the insane mobility and projectile, this ones actually pretty big). dont get me wrong, its not like its -3 or anything for marth. I think its a solid +1 for ZSS with it shifting closer to even on FD and some of the smaller stages like WW, YS, FoD. PS2 might be closer to even as well with the lack of a top platform which ZSS usually enjoys the benefits from with heightened mobility.

ill gladly welcome some expert input however. Pretty sure @Umbreon @Lunchables are relatively smart with some of these characters

 

[Deleted member]

uhh basically i think it helps to describe it in terms of melee first. marth is super good in melee because he can dashdance you out of the game, attacks your attacks because disjoint, has more range that everyone else, combos the crap out of the relevant characters, edge guards them to death pretty much, upthrow is super good on the relevant cast, etc. so marth has some very good tools, but also his tools line up against the cast well.

in PM, you can still dashdance people out of the game but speeds and/or neutral game in general are more normalized so it doesnt come up nearly as much. you can still attack their attacks, but you dont have a huge range advantage and trades are awful for marth so its much less powerful. lots of good chars have combo weights that marth doesnt work well with, and a good amount of chars are super heavy so throw conversions are weaker. then stages are bigger and recoveries are better so marthritis becomes a real weakness where in melee you can generally solve it by holding position harder.

so vs CF for example, the MU is largely the same, but CF goes from having 0 sweetspots to 2, and stages are bigger, so he lives longer which turns into real margin. so in melee some people think CF already wins (i think it's 50/50 in melee) but in PM its like 6/4. same with fox, fox can always ban flat stages where marth cant possibly hope to (correctly) ban big stages like DL64/bowsers alt / distant planet and still cover PS2 like a normal character would. marth actually hard loses neutral to ZSS because shes just faster than you with a gun and has an easy way to escape juggles. MK literally does everything you do but better, and also edge guards marth horribly w/ ledge jump nair from like 60% while marth has no reliable way to set up a kill unless the MK is sloppy. the list goes on and on, but the short version is that marths tools are much weaker for circumstantial reasons, and they also dont line up as well vs a much more diverse cast.

 

[Kulty]

Can we all say that solo maining is not something to consider when you play PM? I've learned this lesson many times before. Even though(my poor guy ) might not be looking too good in the future, you can still play him and solo main him just like its Melee counterpart (I think...). Depending on your level of skill you want to go, you can solo main any character (well almost anyone but you know...)! Sure, if you go at nationals, that's where issues about only playing Marth really do come into play. All in all, it really depends on the mindset that a player has over a certain character. If you play to win, pick a few characters or even solo main if you're confident enough. Look at MrLz, perfectly fine with only. If you play to have fun or for character loyalty sake, just do whatever. In my case, I just play Marth for the sake of character loyalty just like in Smash 4 with Mario and Shulk.

 

[Tomaster]

uhh basically i think it helps to describe it in terms of melee first. marth is super good in melee because he can dashdance you out of the game, attacks your attacks because disjoint, has more range that everyone else, combos the crap out of the relevant characters, edge guards them to death pretty much, upthrow is super good on the relevant cast, etc. so marth has some very good tools, but also his tools line up against the cast well.

in PM, you can still dashdance people out of the game but speeds and/or neutral game in general are more normalized so it doesnt come up nearly as much. you can still attack their attacks, but you dont have a huge range advantage and trades are awful for marth so its much less powerful. lots of good chars have combo weights that marth doesnt work well with, and a good amount of chars are super heavy so throw conversions are weaker. then stages are bigger and recoveries are better so marthritis becomes a real weakness where in melee you can generally solve it by holding position harder.

so vs CF for example, the MU is largely the same, but CF goes from having 0 sweetspots to 2, and stages are bigger, so he lives longer which turns into real margin. so in melee some people think CF already wins (i think it's 50/50 in melee) but in PM its like 6/4. same with fox, fox can always ban flat stages where marth cant possibly hope to (correctly) ban big stages like DL64/bowsers alt / distant planet and still cover PS2 like a normal character would. marth actually hard loses neutral to ZSS because shes just faster than you with a gun and has an easy way to escape juggles. MK literally does everything you do but better, and also edge guards marth horribly w/ ledge jump nair from like 60% while marth has no reliable way to set up a kill unless the MK is sloppy. the list goes on and on, but the short version is that marths tools are much weaker for circumstantial reasons, and they also dont line up as well vs a much more diverse cast.

Something doesn't line up.. you say marth has glaring weaknesses in PM. That would mean he would have some very one sided matchups. You mentioned Falcon marth which you think is 6/4. How many other matchups do you think he loses and are any of them bad enough to justify the claim that he's not solo mainable?

 

[Deleted member]

uhh i think marth loses to CF zard DDD fox link mk mewtwo yoshi ZSS. DDD is probably the worst of the group, but thats not the real issue, which is that you're also about even vs more than half the cast so theres not much upside to playing him over a better character.

so i think the best characters in the game are fox mk wolf diddy zss CF rob mewtwo sheik falco lucario, and those are the characters i prepare for most. i play sheik, and i think sheik loses to fox mk rob gaw, and might also lose to zss diddy wolf but the jury is still out. but 1 those are mostly some of the best characters in the game anyway so almost any char is going to struggle with those MUs, and then 2 marth doesnt really give me a lot of benefit where i wouldnt just want to refine my sheik instead except maybe the GAW MU. if i really wanted coverage for sheik i would play MK because MK covers my bad MUs, but if you havent noticed MK covers everyones bad MUs because the character is just really good. so i more or less dropped marth.

i think as a marth player you have to answer the question "why would i not just play MK instead?" to which thats just really hard to justify. same with falco, i think falco is 10th in the game but 95%+ youd rather just be on fox. you'd have to REALLY be soft to DK to justify using falco over fox as a main which can be solved by labbing the MU for like 2 days tops.

i will say that marth is an excellent CP character because when his tools are good, theyre REALLY good. if you play a main where you lose to like GAW luigi zelda or something, then by all means keep a pocket marth as a snap CP on game 3. but yeah otherwise i dont think marth is all that good.

 

[Tomaster]

uhh i think marth loses to CF zard DDD fox link mk mewtwo yoshi ZSS. DDD is probably the worst of the group, but thats not the real issue, which is that you're also about even vs more than half the cast so theres not much upside to playing him over a better character.

so i think the best characters in the game are fox mk wolf diddy zss CF rob mewtwo sheik falco lucario, and those are the characters i prepare for most. i play sheik, and i think sheik loses to fox mk rob gaw, and might also lose to zss diddy wolf but the jury is still out. but 1 those are mostly some of the best characters in the game anyway so almost any char is going to struggle with those MUs, and then 2 marth doesnt really give me a lot of benefit where i wouldnt just want to refine my sheik instead except maybe the GAW MU. if i really wanted coverage for sheik i would play MK because MK covers my bad MUs, but if you havent noticed MK covers everyones bad MUs because the character is just really good. so i more or less dropped marth.

i think as a marth player you have to answer the question "why would i not just play MK instead?" to which thats just really hard to justify. same with falco, i think falco is 10th in the game but 95%+ youd rather just be on fox. you'd have to REALLY be soft to DK to justify using falco over fox as a main which can be solved by labbing the MU for like 2 days tops.

i will say that marth is an excellent CP character because when his tools are good, theyre REALLY good. if you play a main where you lose to like GAW luigi zelda or something, then by all means keep a pocket marth as a snap CP on game 3. but yeah otherwise i dont think marth is all that good.

Sounds to me like you do think Marth is solo mainable, but you think that other characters can do what he does, better. Makes sense.. That's kind of just how it works, if you don't play a top 5-10 character you have to accept that there will be characters who are just better.

 

[Deleted member]

yeah like if you just really like a character thats your favorite then by all means play them, this is the game to do it. personally im just good at marth without any practice so its whatever.

 

[Life]

Kulty Solo maining is better than multi-maining for like 90+% of people who play PM. Overcoming bad matchups through counterpicking robs you of opportunities to grow.

 

[Bazkip]

ban big stages like DL64/bowsers alt / distant planet and still cover PS2 like a normal character would

Don't (some?) Melee Marth's think PS2 is good for them or at least not bad vs spacies?
Like PPU (and iirc PPMD has done it a few times too?) counterpicking spacies there and whatnot

 

[eideeiit]

That's melee PS, where you got tipper platforms. They're a bit higher in PM, so you can't cover them quite as well.

 

[Deleted member]

its also melee where youd rather take spacies to FD or YS. melee only having 6 stages changes its dynamic quite a bit, where having 9-10 stages with 2 bans in PM is nothing like melee ever had.

 

[JOE!]

How much would you say Stage First vs Character First would sway viability for the cast as a whole?

 

[Ya Boy GP]

Marths like PS against Fox these days because there's no top platform for Fox to take advantage of.

 

[DMG]

The main difference comes in CP viability. Bowser or niche CP choices are worse off in Char first (when it is their turn to CP). On the flip side, characters with split stage flaws (ex: 5 characters on small stages beat me up, and 5 different ones beat me up on larger stages) becomes more reliable in Char first since you can ban with certainty.

Some chars, given realistic situations against dual/split main opponents, find their bans meaningless and their viability hampered because they can't ban both small and big choices. Viability would change the most for fringe / niche CP characters, or characters who get more into trouble over CP splitting than hardcore MU flaws.

Char first is probably a net positive, but it clearly impacts characters who thrive strongly on CP's and realistically it impacts some Players who leverage multiple mains / unpredictable options for advantages.

 

[shairn]

Character first works perfectly for CP characters so long as your stage list is designed correctly. For example, I play Bowser, and here in Montreal our stagelist only has 6 legal stages with 1 ban in BO3 and no ban in BO5:

Battlefield
PS2
Smashville
FoD
Bowser's
Warioland(CP)

So I get FoD or WL as my CP as Bowser, which will most often end up being FoD but that's just as good as WL in my opinion.