I agree Marth ***** Snake while recovering off stage
But were you talking about while he is in the air on stage that he shouldn't get gain ground?
Because even though it's difficult there are still a good few tricks which can get you down which new people using Snake don't utilize and get absolutely air *****.
If you're talking about the general fight of them two on stage that you do not see Snake gaining any ground then I definitely disagree
Though I think this is still in Marth's favour I think a lot of the theory crafting for this MU is based off of experiences of what people know Marth can do and lack of experience and knowledge of what Snake can do and people end up over estimating it.
Every time I play this MU and learn more about what I can do with Snake I see this MU getting closer.
I've taken to ignoring hype when it comes to characters and it has served me well; I've been able to make some pretty accurate predictions just by following a few rules.
When you pick a character, you don't have to cross your fingers and hope the matchup is in your favor or neutral by the time everything gets figured out. There have been a few rules that have always been retroactively correct that we can use to judge future performance.
Does my character routinely die at high percentages or low percentages?
If your character, not you yourself but your character, frequently dies at low percentages, that is an obstacle. The more obstacles exist for a character, the less likely they will be good. This isn't necessarily a condemnation of a character; after all, Fox and Falco die at low % fairly consistently. But it IS an obstacle and one that causes considerable grief.
Does my character have a bad recovery?
I went over that in some detail before, but bad recoveries are another obstacle.
Does my character get gimped from a common setup (grab, common aerial trajectory, etc.) that is easy to achieve? Is my opponent's character gimped from one of mine?
If the former is the case your character is almost always going to have a negative success rate. Take Marth vs. Ness in Brawl, for example. No one knows how this matchup would go because Ness simply dies from one grab. Dedede vs. DK, same thing. People argued all day over the matchup but at the end of the day he still had the standing chaingrab. It was easy to start and thus, DK lost the matchup.
Does my character rely on the opponent making a mistake and punishing that mistake, or does my character create the situation?
One of the first things I tell people trying to get better is "stop approaching". To camp good is to be good. Your goal is to sit right outside their range, wait for them to flub something, then start a common setup for damage (whether that be grab, aerial, etc.).
At higher levels that advice still applies... but some characters defy conventional means and are able to actually approach and
create positive situations. Fox and Falco's shield pressure is a big and common one. You have like 4 or 5 situations in which you can punish Fox for drill shining or nair shining your shield, but Fox controls each of those situations. You don't punish Fox unless he
allows you to do so. Toon Link vs. Jigglypuff is a big one. TLink says "NO U" and throws bombs and boomerangs and arrows and creates dangerous situations for Jiggs. Doesn't matter what Jiggs is doing, doesn't effect TLink. Peach is able to throw a turnip and then follow in with an aerial, safely. Sheik can needle cancel. So on and so forth.
On an individual level it becomes more precise. You play Snake, opponent plays Marth. Does Snake wait for Marth to make a mistake, or is Snake able to reliably rush in and create situations where Marth is at a disadvantage
regardless of what he does?
Does my character rely on certain setups and, if so, are they easy to achieve?
Ice Climbers, perfect example. The ICs are not good characters in Melee or Brawl. Powerful, but not good. They require incredibly specific scenarios. If the stage list isn't tailored specifically for them they even fall apart! Getting a grab with the ICs against a good player is NOT easy.
Falco, another easy example. Falco's approach is
absolutely awful in almost every respect... except for where it isn't. Add in lasers and the possibility of a dair or grab and suddenly his awful approaches are amazing approaches. Falco relies heavily on lasers, dairs, and grabs (vs. shield) to maintain his offensive potential but it is incredibly easy to achieve.
How many negative engagements can my character suffer before losing a stock?
This is a big one. In Fox vs. Marth, for example, at high level play you'd find the answer hovering between 2-3 on average. Marth grabs Fox on Battlefield, does a ton of damage or kills him. Next grab or strong hit would result in death. Fox grabs Marth, u-throw uair uair uair. Next engagement almost always involved a u-smash that killed Marth.
Jigglypuff vs. Samus though, this allowed for a TON of back and forth. It wasn't some crazy ultra combo, it is a war of attrition. This gives you less variance in the matchup and is a huge advantage Brawl had over Melee. In Melee, at above average levels of play, you typically stuck to the average amount of engagements. A medium level falcon could downthrow to knee a Marth just as well as Darkrain ever could. In Brawl, every situation was a new challenge that involved players trying to outthink each other. When this is the case, the better player is given more opportunities to outthink his opponent and will more likely win.
The more engagements you can survive over your opponent, the higher your chances are. This is one of the reason Jigglypuff absolutely sucked until people started reliably comboing with her instead of just wall-of-paining with bair. If you win 3 out of 4 engagements that's great, but if Jiggs can only withstand 2 major engagements while doing a strategy that allows their opponent to survive 12...
When I hit my opponent, am I given a greater advantage?
This is something people don't think about often as they consider it a "duh" thing. If I hit my opponent, am I put in an advantageous situation. This does not mean "can I combo". It means do they have to do something special so that I don't continually harm them.
Good example? Marth vs. Snake in Brawl. If Marth got Snake in the air in Brawl, Snake took a ton of damage. Not because Marth was super human or anything; he just had a huge advantage. He could juggle him all day with his fair and u-air, no problem.
Marth's u-throw on Fox in Project M or Melee onto a platform was another one. When Marth hit Fox onto a platform, his properties didn't change... but Marth suddenly was in a enourmously advantageous situation. The more likely it was that he was able to maintain that situation, the more likely it was he would win.
There are some other rules, but those are the big ones. Looking at them, Marth is at a pretty consistent advantage over Snake in the long run. I can tell you right now that yes, Marth will begin camping edges or forcing you off them at lower and lower % as part of his gameplan and yes, they will make a "you are dead" edgeguarding algorithm that involves a dair. It's coming if it hasn't happened already. Your only hope is that no one plays Snake or Marth, because the opportunity exists.
Marth is given a much larger advantage over Snake once an engagement begins and, despite Snake's weight, Marth should be living longer than Snake in this matchup in terms of engagements.
If Snake is in the air, Marth should be able to juggle him. You'll find Marth's u-throwing Snakes at medium to high % as time goes on because even though it isn't a combo, Marth can control the space around Snake better than Snake can control it himself.
You'll find that neither Marth nor Snake can approach reliably, but Marth's spacing allows him a far greater reach than Snake and one tippered fair into a grab could be all he needs. Snake has no such luxury.
While the matchup likely won't be impossible, I do not forsee this matchup going well for Snake at all. This isn't a case of not knowing enough about the character, it's more a result of his physical properties. Marth gets Snake off stage and destroys him there. If Marth can get Snake off stage, Marth wins. End of line, pretty much how the cookie crumbles.