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VS Diddy Kong- Matchup Discussion and Analysis

DariusM27

DariusM27

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I am really hoping that someone can post some helpful information about how to deal with Diddy, especially the banana, and his superior speed.

To be honest, I'd rather fight a decent Sheik or ZSS than a decent Diddy. Which means I probably just don't know the MU as well as I should.

In general, off the top of my head, I think Marth needs to be precise with his walling areals. Again, pecision is almost certainly a necessity, as throwing out empty attacks with result in getting overwhelmed by Diddy's speed.

If you get hit with a dtilt... DI...away. Or you will die. You might even consider upb to break the followup, depending on situation.

If you perfect shield the banana, it will bounce off your shield.

When Diddy throws the banana, you might be able to get to it before he does, which might be good for us?

I think it may be a good idea to stay up close on Diddy, while using enough evasive mixups to avoid getting shieldgrabbed or hit by Diddy's superior frame data.

If Diddy dtilts you, you have time to shieldgrab, or roll backward, but you don't have time to dashgrab or much anything else.
If Diddy is beyond grab range, roll backwards, I guess.

I think if someone is good enough at dealing with the banana, I think we have a chance if we are solid on our fundamentals.

Diddy's fair can be shieldgrabbed. Diddy tends to roll after the fair autocancel, often behind you.

If Diddy uses his side b approach, fair or nair can swat it away.

If Diddy drops below the stage, he can be gimped with Marth's up b. Drop down fast and up b while Diddy is flying up.

Please post any helpful info you may have, thanks!
 
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AvengerV

AvengerV

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As a Diddy Kong main, I feel that this is one of Marth's worst MUs due to having trouble getting in on Diddy due to banana, Fair, Dtilt, and Monkey Flip.

My best tip is probably pick a secondary like Sheik in order to deal with Diddy because it is going to be rough. But if you insist on playing Marth you need to be willing to play really patient and out predict your opponent which will be difficult.
 
DariusM27

DariusM27

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yqCpQB7p7-o

A recent Diddy game of mine. He certainly wasn't a top level Diddy by any means, but strategies I use should apply in this matchup in general.

I spent some time playing as Diddy. Here's what I found.

When Diddy pulls out the banana, that actually is a pretty laggy move. In this video, I was able to take advantage of that once or twice. Marth's speed helps with that.

I definitely recommend spending some time using the character that is giving you the most trouble, and walk yourself through their combo setups.
That alone helps in more ways than I could list, and I think that is where most marth's fall short.

I found that Monkey Flip grab version is not going to lead into followups for Diddy, and really doesn’t do alot of damage.
Monkey flip kick definitely benefits Diddy more.
It might be good in general to bait the kick flip and shield or counter at the last moment.

In neutral, a few well placed grabs, dancing blades, and airdodge attacks can give marth the advantage.

I think of Diddy as two different characters in one. Normal Diddy and Banana Diddy.

Banana Diddy can not grab Marth until after banana is thrown, obviously.

Diddy won't throw banana out of a run unless he has a perfect shot at you, because throwing an item out of a run makes him lag. So Diddy may throw banana in mid air, or land and throw, or approach in shield and throw. Diddy definitely wants to be close to you and throw the banana while standing still, because that leads to his most brutal followups (banana dtilt D-smash or usmash or grab, ect)

Once in this video Diddy did get a dash banana throw on me, but then messed up his follow up dtilt because he dtilted too quickly, if he waited a few frames he would have landed the dtilt.
 
LoreLes

LoreLes

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Definitely patience and spacing. You don't want to trade with Diddy's fair at all, usually never ends well for Marth. Staying grounded is the better option, I also feel like monkey flip is easy to predict so you can bat it away with jabs or ftilt/fsmash on reaction.

Other than that, I feel like this is one of Marth's worse match up.
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
Marth has gotten quite a large number of buffs in 1.1.4, I think we got a better chance out here!
 
DariusM27

DariusM27

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It's a little frustrating that, after so much time, Marth's MU vs Diddy is still so very difficult.
Marth isn't alone in this. ESAM has never beaten ZeRo in Smash4, for instance - so I'm guessing no Pikachu has either.

So how do you beat Diddy? Is he broken? Well, some say he is not. Some say he is entirely beatable. Some have beaten him, 3-0d him, 0-deathed him.

I'm not going to be able to say how to beat Diddy, because as of now, I'm not a competition Marth. But I will make some observations and I encourage you to consider them and make observations of your own.

I also think it is important to understanding how to play neutral vs Diddy, because I think it carries over to how to play neutral vs other hard MUs for Marth - (Zss, Sonic, ect...)

So to that end...

A modern analysis of Diddy vs Marth - speculated analysis status progress - 30% complete -

Current post - presentation of available data for analysis & initial speculation

After all the time this game has been out, we haven't seen a lot of footage of Diddy vs Marth.

That's because Marth is used by very few players for reasons we needn't get into now.

(In contrast, there is much more Marth vs Sheik footage, and I don't know about you, but I am much better Sheik vs Marth than I am vs Diddy)

The footage we can work with is mostly Mr E vs other Diddys, just because there seem to be no notable Diddy's in Pugwest's local, and no Diddys he commonly uploads videos against - unless I am mistaken.

So yeah - the first set I see of Mr E is from 2014, so I'm not going to use that in a modern analysis of the MU.
Mr E Vs ZeRo
EVO 2016 - July (E wins 2 - 0)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=318NGGaR_Ds

SHINE 2016 - August (E loses game 5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM0KeuW3NAY

UGC 2016 - December (E loses 3 - 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP4HoGhW9og

Genesis Saga 2017 - January (E loses 3 - 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIJDVz3ENcI

Mr E vs Zinoto
Endgame 2016 - August (E loses 3 - 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYUoSBPjYYA&t=604s

Frostbite 2017 - February (E loses 3 - 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTVVFfO_HME


I want to say that there's another one of Mr E winning vs ZeRo, and I think they played other times in events and crew battles, but I'm not finding those sets right now.


Pugwest has played against Zinoto also, the set was very close (Zinoto wins game 3 - 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMszWrHgLrY&t=565s

Pugwest has recked a lot of other Diddy's I will leave you to look up for yourself, unless you are Pugwest reading this, in which case, your call dude. Mr E and Leo also do well vs less well known Diddys, though not in all cases.


And of course we have sets of ZeRo vs MkLeo.
It's important to note that MkLeo's Marth has a losing record vs ZeRo's Diddy.

MkLeo vs ZeRo
Exhibition Match 2016 - November (Leo's Marth loses vs ZeRo Diddy in the last game of 3 games)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foDfWO4lWHs

KTAR XIX 2016 - November (Leo loses 3 - 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj4Usq4YjHk

ZeRo Saga 2016 - December (Leo wins 3 - 0!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atA0CcUZwqs&t=190s

MkLeo Vs Zinoto
FNSD #26 2016 - December (Leo's Marth loses game 1, his Cloud loses game 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBU3L3_zSDc


So I post all that to now focus primarily on two sets and make some quick observations and contrasts.

Observations and contrasts

The Leo vs ZeRo - ZeRo saga - set,
and the most recent notable set,
Pugwest vs ZeRo - PAXArena 2017 - March 12th (ZeRo wins 3 - 0)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/128201061 match starts at 28:57


Both players did good things and bad things, so I will just list them in those categories, because this post is already getting rather long.

1. Movement
GOOD
-Changing up your movement options at a pace that is FASTER THAN THE DIDDY IS ABLE TO ADAPT TO.
(Examples
-Strategic use/but not over-use/of P.Pivoting, dashing away, full hop fair landing into spotdodge or occasional roll, rolling through monkey flip, spot dodge, shielding monkey flip kick, dashing into shield/spotdodge, nair, fair, dtilt, walk into jab, even a dash attack to catch a landing - ect...)

BAD
-Linear movement that becomes easy to predict where you will be next
(Examples
-walking steadily forward for half or a quarter's length of the stage
-Using jabs, Dancingblade, and dtilts in quick succession, without dashing away in between attempts
-Unsafe landings and off stage approaches)

2. Defense
GOOD
-Using Marth's options to shut down monkey flip - VITAL!
If this were a chess game, Diddy automatically gets the first move, all the time, in neutral. Your job is to discourage Diddy from using monkey flip, and punish when he does, because if you take that option away, Diddy becomes considerably easier to deal with - relatively speaking
(Examples
-Run in range to dancing blade to stuff monkey flip
-Nair approaching monkey flip
-Shield flip kick, turn and punish with DB
ect...)

BAD
-Being indecisive. This leads of an opening for Diddy to strike with flip kick.
(Example
-Linear predictable approaches and movement as before stated

3. Offense
Not really my strong suit to be honest. I think once Marth gets an opening, it's usually pretty straight forward what to do next.
The important thing is to make the best of each opening - the hard part is creating the opening through movement, counter-play, and straight up hard-@dollarsigndollersign aggressive reads on fair, grab, jab, Db, and whatever.

-I think a good offensive Marth is a Marth who knows the opponents options and when exactly it is a good idea to be aggressive, either because the opponent is at a disadvantage or because you have a good read on their movement habits...
Or,
Sometimes a good offensive Marth is a lucky idiot who just goes ham and gets a random string because he just blindly went for it.

In my case, sometimes I have to resort to being the second one, because I don't have MU experience vs top level players.


General speculation
-You shouldn't always passive aggressively respond to Diddy's actions in neutral and wait for an opening, just because he gets the first move.
This allows Diddy to manipulate your movements. Sometimes you have to go for somewhat aggressive reads and commitments to applying pressure
(Pug running up to get the initial grab, Leo running into shield)
Even when you seem to be at a disadvantage, just pick an strategy option and commit to it! Don't allow Diddy to pressure you into a corner while you constantly wait for an opening, because you will never find one. You have to create an opening through implied pressure and successfully counter-playing Diddy's Fair and Monkey flips.

Specific cases of note
-In the second match of Leo vs ZeRo, Leo was able to spam shield vs Diddy and made it look pretty viable, at that stage of the set. This is only possible if the Diddy has not overwhelmed the Marth with movement options.

-In the third match of Leo vs ZeRo, ZeRo's first stock was "Camping Diddy". After Camping Diddy got KOd, then ZeRo came back with Aggro Diddy.

I am afraid of Aggro Diddy.

However, Aggro Diddy can take some serious damage from jabs and dancing blade. So there's that.

-At some point in the set, the announcer, I think it was D1, said "Ahhh ZeRo respected the H*ll out of that jab", and if you pay attention to how Leo used his jab, it's exactly true. ZeRo wanted none of that jab.

Walking jab apparently should still be a thing - used situationally/strategically - to apply pressure.
The monkey fears the jab.

-Dtilt seems to be good for not getting bopped by Diddy's Fair.


That's it for now.

If I left out any notable videos, I will update the list I made here if anyone tells me.

I still think the MU is 60 - 40 at best in Diddy's favor, at best. At worst it's 70 - 30. That's my opinion, and my opinions are unpopular and often wrong.
The amount of work the Marth has to do in order to maintain an even playing field is ridiculous. Marth has to run around like a mad man constantly, making huge hard reads constantly about what to do or not to do next, and only has small windows to punish Diddy, a character he can't hope to catch, so he has to wait until Diddy is within range.

Diddy gets to run his standard offense, with a good probability it will just work anyway, regardless if Marth is playing "correctly" or not, because of small and almost unpredictable variables in timing and spacing.

I think Mr E and Leo beat ZeRo because they applied enough offensive pressure. The problem with that strategy is, it shouldn't work, on paper. But perhaps it works because the Diddy you are playing against is only human after all, even if it does happen to be ZeRo.

Pugwest said:
Diddy is probably our worst or 2nd worst Mu next to sheik
Click to expand...
A quote made before the 1.14 buffs I think. Still true perhaps?
 
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DariusM27

DariusM27

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Bumping the thread in light of ZeRo's recent 6-0 over Leo.

I was really disappointed by this. I feel like, tbh, the MU went exactly how it always has gone.
I was hoping Leo had solved this MU like he did the Sheik MU.

At this point, it doesn't seem that he has.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOOr_gdz2dM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuU3jLER6yg

What did Leo do wrong?

What could he have done better?

How did ZeRo change his approach since ZeRo saga?
 
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TheGulpingMonkey

TheGulpingMonkey

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All I can say is that, when I'm dealing with Diddy, a well-timed jab can beat out most approaches. Particularly banana, and flip kick. You shouldn't do that every time obviously, but precision Marth is a lot of fun.
 
DariusM27

DariusM27

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I noticed that too. In the ZeRo saga match, there was a point where D1 said "ZeRo respected the hell out of that jab".

In the F.P.S.2 match, Leo never gave ZeRo a reason to respect Marth's jab, because he just wasn't using it in Diddy's face.

I think that, at this point, one important way to improve on this MU is for Marth players to learn how to use Diddy themselves, and see it from the other side.

EDIT

Here are recent videos of ZeRo using Lucina vs Diddy players

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK72xYI7TzI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojry6Q0SzXY&t=81s

If anyone should know how to fight Diddy, it would be the best Diddy player.
 
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Buffoon

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Grass said:
since when did leo have a marth? Didn't he play MK exclusively?
Click to expand...
The "MK" in his tag has nothing to do with Meta Knight; it stands for "Monster Kingdom", the name of a game store his brother owns.
 
Bowserboy3

Bowserboy3

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Grass said:
since when did leo have a marth? Didn't he play MK exclusively?
Click to expand...
He used to play MK exclusively... a loooooooong time ago; the times when he beat Mr R with Meta Knight are long gone.

Marth is currently his main, with Cloud and the newly announced Corrin as his secondaries. Meta Knight occasionally makes appearances, but it doesn't usually go too well now (such as him being eliminated at Civil War in the ditto).

It also might explain why Corrin is one of his new secondaries.
 
DariusM27

DariusM27

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Moving forward, almost too obvious to need mentioning - I personally recommend everyone to study ZeRo's PersistentBlade games vs Diddy players, often which are him vs JJrockets, but not all of them.

I believe that after comparing how PersistentBlade approaches the MU vs other top Marths Leo and Mr E, you should be able to see several things PersistentBlade is doing that makes him much more effective in the MU.
 
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