Dolphin Slashin'

Hey guys and welcome to this Marth guide. I will be showing some information that may be useful from beginners, to low and high intermediate, to top level play.

Be aware that most of, if not all of this guide can be applied to Lucina and work the same, if not better because of the lack of tippers on Lucina’s sword.

First of all: Your neutral game, spacing and guiding the match to get an advantage.

In the first stance of every fight is the neutral game, in which both players are spacing each other with the purpose of applying pressure to the level of getting advantages, convert it into an edgeguarding situation and eventually, taking the stock.

To play in this stance, you rely on your ground game, or low in the air. Your jab is an amazing tool to stop your opponents in their way, also your ftilt and the first hit of Dancing Blade, since all of these work practically the same. Now, in the case of your jab, you can follow up in case you baited your opponent to do an air dodge with a non charged fsmash (in this case, Lucina is better). In the case of your ftilt, you do not have another option but to keep brickwalling your opponent with it or tech-chase and follow with a dtilt or a grab. Since the first hit of DB launches slightly upwards, you can follow with th DB combo or wait a second, and do your Dolphin Slash, but this leaves you quite vulnerable, so be careful.

In order to keep this guide comfortable to both, I will be referring to the special attacks the following way:

Shield Breaker: SB or NB
Dancing Blade: DB, an each hit with its variation’s initial (i.e DB NNUD is Neutral-Neutral-Up-Down)
Dolphin Slash: DS or UB
Counter: Counter.

In your combo game, you are quite limited to you dthrow,

Dthrow-Uair, Dthrow-Bair or Dthrow-DS are common, and...that's practically it, here are some specifications

Uair: At low-mid percents, is almost always tipper, can be followed by FF (fast fall) Uair-Utilt, or normal Uair to lead into more Uair.

Bair: Not as useful, use on heavy fighters only if they DI away in mid percents.

DS: WILL hit until high, high, high percents. We’re talking about 90-100% depending on the character. You MUST B-reverse it

Also, in the air, low altitude your Fair can sometimes lead to Dtilt, if they’re still in hitstun or in tumble state.

I should mention, Dtilt can also stop people on their way, but it is not as good of a set up as the other options.

Now, let’s get into spacing: spacing is the use of active, passive and probable hitboxes to apply pressure or to get out of it

Your best spacing tools are Fair, Bair, SB and DB.

Fair is good at making and seting up walls, ruining combos and of course, the epic Ken’s Combo, which it is not possible in this iteration. To use your Fair fairly good (see what I did there?) you should try to put your opponent on a fixed distance, a tipper distance, if you may, wich, as you should know if you play Marth, is optimal. On the Tipper Distance (TD from now on) you hace more knockback, which is essential if you’re setting up walls, but if combo is what you want, then try using Inverse TD (ITD), which is self explanatory. ITD is the optimal point when playing Roy and Ike, but we’re not talking ‘bout’em. ITD combos aren't as good as they were in Melee or Brawl, still, they're nice mix up options. Do not spam them, you may be punished hardly. Try using a Short Hop Air Dodge (SHAD for short) while moving forward, you will have enoough time to land a Fair inmedeatly out of your AD. It will do fair (OK, last one, i promise) knockback and suprise your enemy

Bair works basically the same as Fair. Same damage, frame data and stuff…only backwards, it is good only if you are in a extreme case of being against the wall and SH Bair to start setting up or when you are simply facing backwards. I usually don’t use it, but I’ve got to admit it’s fairly good.

SB works for Air Spacing, not so good on the ground since you’re not moving, but used in the air, you get a small momentum useful to start applying pressure

DB is a good tool, to space you can NNU-D (just to be clear, when used like this, the “-“ means a little delay) or NU-N-D or simply N-U-N. The last Up hit is great for netting some KO’s. If have your opponent’s get up from ledge pattern you can quickly N.U.U-D (The dot means REALLY fast) to cover the get up option and deal some damage with the multi-hit

Now let’s get into the good stuff…EDGEGUARING!!

Not so exciting when you know it…

Marth’s EG game is pretty straight forward…Fair and Bair if you’re off and down the stage or on the ledge and their recovering low. Dtilt, Ftilf or Utilt if their recovering high (sometimes Uair if TOO high) and to catch in the air, some mix up by SBing or Fairs.

NO DAIRs, ONLY throw a Dair if you are 100% sure that it will hit, it has a lot of lag, and the spike sweetspot is at the very center of the arc AND tippered.

Now some tips:

-Jab1 is good to bait an airdodge, then you can fsmash, but Jab2 will have some serious knockback. Although, you can chain a lot of Jab1 if they keep air dodging…

-If you SH Air Dodge (SHAD) WHILE having some momentum is useful, you are invincible most of the time but, you still haave time to INSTANTLY Nair1 or Fair, so you can SHAD.Nair1 o SHAD.Fair, it is an defensive way to move with an offensive output.

-You’re kawaii as hell

-Your counter will do at least 8%

-Your Juggle game is one of the best, but you’re grabs and uthrow are not so good now. Uthrow will start killing from 150% depending on the character, rage and stuff, I suggest doing 2-4 pummels before throwing if they just don’t want to die

-SHAD land and then grab, it wil be a nice surprise.

-Mix up your recovery, try SB to recover high or gain some forward momentum while recovering low. Be careful, after autoreleasing, you are not able to move during the move ending animation, this means, if you auto release, you cannot ggrab the ledge for a few frames.

Thanks for reading an try reading my next guides on:

-Kirby (http://smashboards.com/guides/poyo-how-to-puffball-101.588/)
-C. Falcon
-Shulk
-Duck Hunt