So I was playing with a friend of mine (who plays mostly casually) and he started playing a very campy marth, that stuffed any of my approaches with Doc with Fsmash basically (mixing in some ftilt, dtilt and fair occasionally). I tried to pill to interrupt the attack, and I've also tried dash dancing to bait it out, but neither seems to give me sufficient time to actually punish. By the time I got close enough to grab, he'd have a second attack out and I just get hit away again. I've read the match up guides that are stickied but I can't help but feel like the match up is near impossible. Is there anything I'm really missing or will it just always be ridiculously hard? Also what other match ups feel this stupid? (I've picked up doc rather recently, since I mained marth for a few years)
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vs Marth
- Thread starter jihaeng29
- Start date
My experience with Marth is that you have to play campy, force him into agression, wait for a mistake, and capitalize upon it. This is just a stupid hard MU.
Four tips on most non-floaty top tier MU's:
1. Pills are OP
2. Docs combo game is swaglicious
3. Chaingrab
4. Cape 2 win
Try doing some full hop pills -> Waveland dsmashes/ftilts, this seems to work pretty well. Another good strategy is to just wall off with pills until you get to a percent where things like dthrow -> fair and your combo starters start getting easier to pull off. Just pretend like you're playing a worse version of Sheik lol
I believe that the Peach MU is the hardest one for Doc. Everything you do she can do better, she has way more approach options, TURNIPS, and her punish game is just mean. I just try (the keyword here is TRY) to out maneuver her with wavelands, wavedashes, and pills until I get things like grabs, SHFLL'd uairs, ftilts, or whatever.
Finally, Doc is a character that is all about mind games, successful reads, and knowing your MU's. That, along with some solid defensive game, good combos, and cape edgeguards, can really elevate your game.
Hope this helped =D
Four tips on most non-floaty top tier MU's:
1. Pills are OP
2. Docs combo game is swaglicious
3. Chaingrab
4. Cape 2 win
Try doing some full hop pills -> Waveland dsmashes/ftilts, this seems to work pretty well. Another good strategy is to just wall off with pills until you get to a percent where things like dthrow -> fair and your combo starters start getting easier to pull off. Just pretend like you're playing a worse version of Sheik lol
I believe that the Peach MU is the hardest one for Doc. Everything you do she can do better, she has way more approach options, TURNIPS, and her punish game is just mean. I just try (the keyword here is TRY) to out maneuver her with wavelands, wavedashes, and pills until I get things like grabs, SHFLL'd uairs, ftilts, or whatever.
Finally, Doc is a character that is all about mind games, successful reads, and knowing your MU's. That, along with some solid defensive game, good combos, and cape edgeguards, can really elevate your game.
Hope this helped =D
if you're facing a marth that is constantly throwing hitboxes at you i find that run up shield if a very effective tactic. if they hit you with fsmash on your shield they are very vulnerable and you can wavedash out of shield then do whatever you want to them. wavedash jab grab or jab dsmash is pretty good, even ftilt can work sometimes.also try to remain out of his range and just harass him with pills. If your spacing game is good enough you can even poke him with ftilt. full hop pill into waveland is good if you see them shielding your pill. its a free grab. Some marths might try to hit your pills with fair. If they do that just keep throwing pills until you find an opening. full hop dair can be okay for this i guess. Also crouch cancel dsmash is pretty good. If you see the marth coming down at you with an aerial you can easily cc dsmash it (except down air). I used to think that the matchup was very hard too; but now i agree with amPunk and think that peach is one of doc's worst matchups.
You can CG Marth or are you talking about other characters?My experience with Marth is that you have to play campy, force him into agression, wait for a mistake, and capitalize upon it. This is just a stupid hard MU.
Four tips on most non-floaty top tier MU's:
1. Pills are OP
2. Docs combo game is swaglicious
3. Chaingrab
4. Cape 2 win
Try doing some full hop pills -> Waveland dsmashes/ftilts, this seems to work pretty well. Another good strategy is to just wall off with pills until you get to a percent where things like dthrow -> fair and your combo starters start getting easier to pull off. Just pretend like you're playing a worse version of Sheik lol
I believe that the Peach MU is the hardest one for Doc. Everything you do she can do better, she has way more approach options, TURNIPS, and her punish game is just mean. I just try (the keyword here is TRY) to out maneuver her with wavelands, wavedashes, and pills until I get things like grabs, SHFLL'd uairs, ftilts, or whatever.
Finally, Doc is a character that is all about mind games, successful reads, and knowing your MU's. That, along with some solid defensive game, good combos, and cape edgeguards, can really elevate your game.
Hope this helped =D
And no kidding about Peach, you dont even have the hope of using an upB cancel to her shield pressure most of the time since she can just go behind you or stay in the air
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I believe Doc can only reliably chaingrab Fox, Falco, and Capt. Falcon.
Sheik isnt that hard either but its kind of a 50/50 like Ganon's CGs I guess
Superw0rri0
Smash Ace
Ok... before you get into this wall of text let me say this:
I tried to come up with a helpful and informative post but the more I type the more I think it sucks and doesn't give you the answer you're looking for because to be honest... the answer you're looking for doesn't exist.
There is no "this is how I beat Marth so just copy it, do it, and you'll win" kind of answer
So just read on and hopefully you'll find something useful.
I spent about 20min writing this up because I wasn't sure how to get across what I really wanted to say and I've given up on making it better so just get what you can out of this...
and good luck on the Marf match up
Post begins:
Yo... Marf is a hard match up... not his hardest though... that would be Sheik but that's another story
Basically here's what's going on
Why marth is good against Doc:
- Most of Marth's moves outrange almost all of Doc's moves
- Marth has an easy time to grab doc
- Easy edgeguards on Doc
Those are the basic reasons why Marth beats doc
There are two solutions:
1. Pick up Sheik
2. Get good at the match up
So how do you do #2?
Honestly... I can't tell you what to do. There is nothing that you can find or I can say to start beating marth.
If there's one thing I learned from playing Smash these past two years it's this: Everything you read and learn from the forums will never make you better. You will never get better by reading these boards.
So why read these forums?
To gain knowledge. After that it's up to you how to use it.
I suggest to go back and read the Marth match up post and instead of reading it with the mindset of "this is how you beat Marth" read it as "these are tools that I can use to beat Marth".
For example, shielding Marth's f-smash > wavedash towards Marth > grab is a great tool to help you win the neutral.
Here's another one: forward wavedash > ftilt is another great one because f-tilt is one of the few moves that contests Marth's spacing
But these tools will never win you the game. These are options available to you and not a "I win" button.
Once you learn your options, practice them. Then implement them into your play style.
For me, I know that I have a defensive reaction based play style. What I do when I play Marth is I move around and try to bait out attacks or I try to move around his attacks and then when I think I found a chance to go in or I find a chance to punish, I go in.
I know all my options and all my tools to play against Marth and I utilize them.
Saying things like "I can't help but feel like the match up is near impossible" is never going to get you anywhere.
It's a hard match up. I know this very well since my practice partner during my first year of competitive smash was a Marth main. And guess what, I lost almost every game, but every game I would get closer and closer to beating him until eventually our matches were even. Yes it was frustrating as hell. I would even tell him. But I knew that one day I'm going to leave the Utah scene and go back to SoCal where there are tons of Marth mains.
When I played in my first big tourney, which was KoC4, I played against 3 Marth mains in my pool. I beat two of them. One of them was from luck though.
Now I'm not afraid of the Marth match up anymore because I know my options, I know how to get around his attacks, I know how and when to punish him, and I know how to edge guard him. But it in order to get to this point I lost to Marth so much that I lost count.
In order for you to get to this point, who you need to learn these options your self and implement them.
What I'm trying to say here is this:
Don't get discouraged... keep going. It's tough I know but the more you lose the more you learn and eventually you will beat your friend. Then you go play other Marth's in tourney and you will lose to them... but you will learn and eventually beat them.
Here's an old video of me when I was learning the Marth match up... it might help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_KQPIOegB0
Edit:
Lol I just watched the video... man I was so bad XD but I did a few cool things... notice how at the end I was so flustered and how I noticed how bad I was doing XD
I tried to come up with a helpful and informative post but the more I type the more I think it sucks and doesn't give you the answer you're looking for because to be honest... the answer you're looking for doesn't exist.
There is no "this is how I beat Marth so just copy it, do it, and you'll win" kind of answer
So just read on and hopefully you'll find something useful.
I spent about 20min writing this up because I wasn't sure how to get across what I really wanted to say and I've given up on making it better so just get what you can out of this...
and good luck on the Marf match up
Post begins:
Yo... Marf is a hard match up... not his hardest though... that would be Sheik but that's another story
Basically here's what's going on
Why marth is good against Doc:
- Most of Marth's moves outrange almost all of Doc's moves
- Marth has an easy time to grab doc
- Easy edgeguards on Doc
Those are the basic reasons why Marth beats doc
There are two solutions:
1. Pick up Sheik
2. Get good at the match up
So how do you do #2?
Honestly... I can't tell you what to do. There is nothing that you can find or I can say to start beating marth.
If there's one thing I learned from playing Smash these past two years it's this: Everything you read and learn from the forums will never make you better. You will never get better by reading these boards.
So why read these forums?
To gain knowledge. After that it's up to you how to use it.
I suggest to go back and read the Marth match up post and instead of reading it with the mindset of "this is how you beat Marth" read it as "these are tools that I can use to beat Marth".
For example, shielding Marth's f-smash > wavedash towards Marth > grab is a great tool to help you win the neutral.
Here's another one: forward wavedash > ftilt is another great one because f-tilt is one of the few moves that contests Marth's spacing
But these tools will never win you the game. These are options available to you and not a "I win" button.
Once you learn your options, practice them. Then implement them into your play style.
For me, I know that I have a defensive reaction based play style. What I do when I play Marth is I move around and try to bait out attacks or I try to move around his attacks and then when I think I found a chance to go in or I find a chance to punish, I go in.
I know all my options and all my tools to play against Marth and I utilize them.
Saying things like "I can't help but feel like the match up is near impossible" is never going to get you anywhere.
It's a hard match up. I know this very well since my practice partner during my first year of competitive smash was a Marth main. And guess what, I lost almost every game, but every game I would get closer and closer to beating him until eventually our matches were even. Yes it was frustrating as hell. I would even tell him. But I knew that one day I'm going to leave the Utah scene and go back to SoCal where there are tons of Marth mains.
When I played in my first big tourney, which was KoC4, I played against 3 Marth mains in my pool. I beat two of them. One of them was from luck though.
Now I'm not afraid of the Marth match up anymore because I know my options, I know how to get around his attacks, I know how and when to punish him, and I know how to edge guard him. But it in order to get to this point I lost to Marth so much that I lost count.
In order for you to get to this point, who you need to learn these options your self and implement them.
What I'm trying to say here is this:
Don't get discouraged... keep going. It's tough I know but the more you lose the more you learn and eventually you will beat your friend. Then you go play other Marth's in tourney and you will lose to them... but you will learn and eventually beat them.
Here's an old video of me when I was learning the Marth match up... it might help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_KQPIOegB0
Edit:
Lol I just watched the video... man I was so bad XD but I did a few cool things... notice how at the end I was so flustered and how I noticed how bad I was doing XD
Last edited:
schmooblidon
Smash Journeyman
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2014
- Messages
- 496
superw0rri0 hits the nail on the head when he says the info here wont make you better. You can learn a matchup and you can learn how to do some new tech, but it won't teach you how to play melee (some bits might help i guess).
Marth for me was my worst matchup from when I started playing and for probably the following year, but I played the matchup a lot, and learnt a huge amount and now it's one of my best. It's still hard sure, but I'm comfortable in it. Playing marth will force you to play smart and carefully. He has such better tools for hitting you then you have for hitting him, that the only way to really beat him is to outsmart your opponent.
If marth is mindlessly approaching/camping and spamming randy fsmashes, you cannot mindlessly approach/camp and spam randy fsmashes, you will lose. You need to be thinking a step ahead of him, knowing when he will fsmash, waiting and baiting him.
Movement is the single most important aspect of this matchup hands down. You have to be weaving in and out without flubbing techskill, so that you can effectively bait something, and then punish. Having good spacing is also very important, because your opportunities will be tight and precise.
This is easier said then done, and unfortunately that's kinda how this MU goes, you need to get a lot better as a player before you will find this matchup at all fair. But you can channel your progression to the right areas to make this improvement quicker.
I suggest training movement a lot whenever possible, some pretty big things to have down are waveland bairs, short hop insta upair fast fall autocancel (a true staple combo starter), ledgedash, wavedash out of shield, waveland off plat > fastfall aerial, full hop pill wavelands, instant ledgehog.
But like superw0rri0 said these are just tools, the real challenge is the melee part, the neutral and the mindgames. I've played scrubby fsmashing marths so damn much, I could hop into a game right now and shield just before they start each of their fsmashes. I can do this, because I know exactly when they will do it, and the way I know is from experience. Explaining this part of melee is very difficult, I can tell you that they fsmash whenever given room to breath, but thats quite general and not something you could immediately apply to your play.
My best suggestion is to play patiently! In neutral, dont mindlessly approach, dash dance outside of his range, do movement mixups like short hop towards airdodge down midway, wavedash in place, empty hops, empty hop wavelands, platform wavelands. If you do this well, I have no doubt that your opponent will start throwing out moves and whiffing. Of course your goal is to hit him when he makes himself vulnerable, but don't feel compelled to do this straight away, first observe his whiffs and look for openings.
Then there are the mindgames outside of neutral, which are generally more linear much there are hundreds of them. Stuff like recovering (from offstage or from above), counterattacking during combos (when attacking and being attacked), DI, tech patterns, ledge getups. Your opponent will have an answer for all of these, and you job is to figure it out and find an answer for that answer. The best way to get better at this is whenever you miss an attack in a combo string, or whenever you get hit, or whenever you drop an edgeguard, ask yourself why that happened. Aside from you flubbed some tech, the answer will probably be, you didnt cover that option, so now you need to cover that option the next time that opportunity arises. A lot of situations you can't cover all the options, and that's the beauty of melee, that's when you begin to play your opponent and read his options.
Just yesterday I had a netplay session with a marth a little bit worse than me: http://www.twitch.tv/schmooblidon/b/684714332
Hopefully you can look at each of my openings and understand why it worked and vice versa look at each time I get hit and figure out why and what I could of done
Marth for me was my worst matchup from when I started playing and for probably the following year, but I played the matchup a lot, and learnt a huge amount and now it's one of my best. It's still hard sure, but I'm comfortable in it. Playing marth will force you to play smart and carefully. He has such better tools for hitting you then you have for hitting him, that the only way to really beat him is to outsmart your opponent.
If marth is mindlessly approaching/camping and spamming randy fsmashes, you cannot mindlessly approach/camp and spam randy fsmashes, you will lose. You need to be thinking a step ahead of him, knowing when he will fsmash, waiting and baiting him.
Movement is the single most important aspect of this matchup hands down. You have to be weaving in and out without flubbing techskill, so that you can effectively bait something, and then punish. Having good spacing is also very important, because your opportunities will be tight and precise.
This is easier said then done, and unfortunately that's kinda how this MU goes, you need to get a lot better as a player before you will find this matchup at all fair. But you can channel your progression to the right areas to make this improvement quicker.
I suggest training movement a lot whenever possible, some pretty big things to have down are waveland bairs, short hop insta upair fast fall autocancel (a true staple combo starter), ledgedash, wavedash out of shield, waveland off plat > fastfall aerial, full hop pill wavelands, instant ledgehog.
But like superw0rri0 said these are just tools, the real challenge is the melee part, the neutral and the mindgames. I've played scrubby fsmashing marths so damn much, I could hop into a game right now and shield just before they start each of their fsmashes. I can do this, because I know exactly when they will do it, and the way I know is from experience. Explaining this part of melee is very difficult, I can tell you that they fsmash whenever given room to breath, but thats quite general and not something you could immediately apply to your play.
My best suggestion is to play patiently! In neutral, dont mindlessly approach, dash dance outside of his range, do movement mixups like short hop towards airdodge down midway, wavedash in place, empty hops, empty hop wavelands, platform wavelands. If you do this well, I have no doubt that your opponent will start throwing out moves and whiffing. Of course your goal is to hit him when he makes himself vulnerable, but don't feel compelled to do this straight away, first observe his whiffs and look for openings.
Then there are the mindgames outside of neutral, which are generally more linear much there are hundreds of them. Stuff like recovering (from offstage or from above), counterattacking during combos (when attacking and being attacked), DI, tech patterns, ledge getups. Your opponent will have an answer for all of these, and you job is to figure it out and find an answer for that answer. The best way to get better at this is whenever you miss an attack in a combo string, or whenever you get hit, or whenever you drop an edgeguard, ask yourself why that happened. Aside from you flubbed some tech, the answer will probably be, you didnt cover that option, so now you need to cover that option the next time that opportunity arises. A lot of situations you can't cover all the options, and that's the beauty of melee, that's when you begin to play your opponent and read his options.
Just yesterday I had a netplay session with a marth a little bit worse than me: http://www.twitch.tv/schmooblidon/b/684714332
Hopefully you can look at each of my openings and understand why it worked and vice versa look at each time I get hit and figure out why and what I could of done
Superw0rri0
Smash Ace
At 2:11 did nair spike or did he hit the wall?
schmooblidon
Smash Journeyman
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2014
- Messages
- 496
There is a small lip by the edges of yoshis. He would of been stage spiked by one of the more horizontal parts of it.
SmashMac
Smash Lord
The Marth matchup is really about getting inside for close-combat with Doc.. Tools to assist you in doing this are Decoy Vitamin and Placebo, which are essentially full-jump rising pill -> double-jump rising pill -> waveland footsies, both toward and away from him. The Marth matchup you will find is not nearly as difficult once you get close to him, since this is where you will excel with Doc. Dthrow grab combos at low percentages setup for great full-jump rising dair -> FF juggle combos. Dthrow him around 87 - 92 (somewhere around there) percent or so and follow his DI with a rising fair to kill him. If you're fighting against fsmash heavy marths, you can challenge it with utilt for the cling, then WD in. Also, WD out of shield is very good. SH nair feints work well where you create space by SH fairing his shield but go past him. It forces him to turn around since attacking from behind with Marth is not optimal for him at all. When recovering to the stage from above, throw pills as well. This will force the Marth into other edgeguarding tactics outside of fsmash, since pill neutralize his fsmash. The biggest thing in this matchup is creating and closing space with correct pill spam and getting close to Marth.
As far as other matchups for Doc that aren't good, well, let's first assume the opponent understands the Doc. matchup. If that is the case, I will say every character above Doc. on the tier list is there for a reason. CF, Falco and Fox stand out more-so than others because of their ability to lock Doc. down. CF if played correctly can neutralize Doc's pill game, Falco's pressure with lasers keeps Doc. isolated, and a smart Fox with good tech skill can also be extremely difficult to keep up with ... like before you know it you're at kill percent and find yourself playing the catch-up game. My best advice as a Doc. main is play off your opponent's technicality, and establish a good posture during the game. You do this by letting your opponent know what they cannot get away with immediately, so they are constantly trying to react to you opposed to act.
As far as other matchups for Doc that aren't good, well, let's first assume the opponent understands the Doc. matchup. If that is the case, I will say every character above Doc. on the tier list is there for a reason. CF, Falco and Fox stand out more-so than others because of their ability to lock Doc. down. CF if played correctly can neutralize Doc's pill game, Falco's pressure with lasers keeps Doc. isolated, and a smart Fox with good tech skill can also be extremely difficult to keep up with ... like before you know it you're at kill percent and find yourself playing the catch-up game. My best advice as a Doc. main is play off your opponent's technicality, and establish a good posture during the game. You do this by letting your opponent know what they cannot get away with immediately, so they are constantly trying to react to you opposed to act.