Wow team I got promoted!
Also something I'm working on, no real proof reading/proper editing here, forgive me
Mars, God of War
Among other things; agricultural cultivation
Marth is a somewhat unique existence in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, since the game's inception he has been considered a high tier character, following on from the considerations at the time of him being the tied best character in Super Smash Bros. Melee, the legacy of SephirothKen and Mew2King (to name a few) bringing in large constituetes of casual and competitive fans alike. However, many a cynic have felt Marth's position to be biased and nonvalidated due to his ongoing reputation of being a strong character in many many facets, not being backed up by consistent multiple and frequent tournament results and character match up results. How one chooses to interpret his abilities is not of true concern here.
Marth in Japanese is written as Marusu (マルス), before Smash Bros. localisation, he was commonly referred to as Mars, as マルス is the transliteration of that name. In Roman paganism/mythology, Mars is the God of War and his namesake is seen today in our calendar month March as well our neighbouring planet. Playing this character has always been about the community and its well developed culture, and the associated respect and notoriety we receive due to our patriotism. We've always prided ourselves on our maturity, high level thinkers and strong mateship between our kinsmen. Our character by nonmechanical design accentuates this, our namesake accentuates this, and our family of players uphold our standards. I truly hope this never changes.
This guide's purpose is to wrap up as much knowledge as I can muster in an attempt to 'finalise' Marth's incarnation in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Hopefully much of this information will segue into Smash 4, where our God of War is seemingly mostly unchanged at face value and who's design has been mostly consistent throughout the two games thus far. I will be going over the efficient use cases of each of our moves, our general play patterns as well as summarising match ups.
On paper Marth is an exceptionally potent character, who I feel is possibly one of the best designed fighting game characters of all time (n.b. not the 'strongest'/'most broken'/etc). His moveset is relatively simplistic, with one protruding mechanic, well defined and understood weaknesses and the depth of his strength correlates directly with the user's precision and decision making prowess. The common notion is that we have all the tools to win, and we always have an option to choose from. I consider Mars the most consistent punisher in Brawl, having a large slew of some of the most potent out of shield options in the game which when coupled with Power Shielding is literally god-like. He is also one of very few characters in the game to be have as many safe moves on shield as he does, and the only one which comes with these frame advantages and disjoints. Motions such as Full Hop (FH) retreating and Fast Falled (FF) Forward Airs (fair) tend towards absolute safety, even with impeccible enemy execution including power shields. In what is/will be a routine comparison, Meta Knight achieves safety with fair through auto cancelling; a buffered short hop (SH) fair or a full hop FF fair, whilst Marth does so with fast fall/landing fair, full hop fair, mid air jump fair and SH reactive-> fast fall auto cancelled fair [very hard, MikeNeko please]. Although oft crippled in the reversed situation (read below), Mars' edge guarding against the cast is arguably the strongest in the game, to the point that enemies at 100% or above should be consistently dying or taking excessive damage trying to regain stage control.
It isn't all joy though, Brawl's engine and mechanics hit Marth hard in two/three ways.
Firstly, what is most crippling to us is "Triple Jump Glitch" (called many different things by many different people); essentially an unavoidable situation where if we ever have to use Dolphin Slash (Up-B) to recover to the ledge we're in a lot of trouble against competent players, especially if we're 100% or above. The game does not properly recognise that we've entered a different state other than free fall, which results in us taking lag upon our next landing, in the worst case the same amount of lag one receives landing on the ground after Dolphin Slash (well over half a second). This means that for Marth to get off the ledge his usual safety/frame advantages from aerials are heavily rescinded, leaving us very prone to punishment. It's game changing and game losing. Getting around this will be one of your most frustrating experiences in tournament sets. Asides from the ledge, if we're hit out of our free fall we don't regain regular aerial mobility, which requires us to aerial to start accelerating again (people who know the match up will abuse this), and if we're hit at all and are in hitstun upon touching the ground we will still maintain the dolphin slash lag (giving a nice 30 odd frame advantage enemies wouldn't usually have on us).
Marth's on hit frame advantages, especially on non-tipper hits at low percent are very low. In these situations it is easily better to hit an enemy's shield than actually hitting them. This is one of those critical mistakes nearly everyone makes, and isn't unique to Marth (there are far fewer characters who don't suffer this than otherwise: MK[soso], Snake, Olimar, Diddy w/bananas). With melee's crouch cancelling not existing, we still deal with the same issue against the competant players due to the prevelance of good Smash DI in Brawl's High Levels and enemies being aware of Marth's shortfalls here.
When an enemy is low percent, we are forced into a defensive option (shield, roll, spot dodge, mid air jump) after attacking lest we get easily punished, or go for the grab to get our free 30%, at which point moves are safer on hit; however, both are very telegraphed. This means that when we get a KO on the enemy and are at kill percent, we are in a lot of danger with very little options when they return, the ledge is dangerous for us to stall the invincibility (if we need to dolphin slash we're crippling ourselves), and a hit-confirm on an enemy can easily have us hit by a kill move. This effectively turns characters with grab options that can kill into match ups we have to stall.
The move decay queue accentuates the early percent problem and our safety options as well. The damage and knock back growth of a move is impacted by the move decay queue, and damage values correlate with safety on-shield and knock back values correlate with frame advantage on-hit. A tipper forward air at 20% would normally be safe against the entire cast, but a very staled one will still have characters like Snake or Olimar Up-Tilt or Up-Smash us, respectively. A fresh ff fair is -3 on shield, but a staled one scales towards -7, giving enemies punishment options they would not normally be able to pull off. Managing the move queue is that paramount.
Being fully aware of all three of our hard to manage flaws will make you play smarter and reduce the shortfalls of what other players abuse us for. But that is only one small part of it all.
