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Marth video critique thread

C.J.

Smash Master
Joined
Nov 30, 2008
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Florida
Nope.
I'm probably gonna buy a tablet for books/maps/etc but the goal of the trip as a whole is to get away from people. Being able to be contacted by them so easily seems counter-productive.
 

Shaya

   「chase you」 
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ChKn,

Jumping where you do when you recover is wrong.
As long as Marth has his double jump, he retains a lot of control in his movements off stage + can nearly always recover. Think about holding onto that jump off stage forever. Try just weaving backwards/forwards off stage a bit and just try to get to the ledge with just bubble-aerials and take whiffs / lag from them as a free opportunity to recover. Marth can be in the "1% per second bubble" on the low blast zone and with his jump still recover.

Figure out what hitting someone actually does. Untippered fairs pre-40 is usually not enough time to combo, so you should be taking defensive options rather than a second swing (you get shielded a lot here). When you get tipper aerials though, you need to go in. Tipper fairing MK or Sonic and then walking away feels awfully dumb. Learn how far people travel and just follow people's DI. There's no jumps, there's no b-reverses. When someone gets hit by a move there's on average one and a half directions someone will travel in.

Swing later.
Everyone likes to punish marth after swinging. Sonic and MK are pretty good examples of characters which do that. A lot of your swings are (from a logic standpoint) often completely useless and are just giving you lag + time for your opponent to react + obtain a better position. You may not feel comfortable with your reaction speed, but there's still better ways to keep strong in neutral situations. Yeah. your neutral doesn't apply pressure because you swing for no reason, you rescind after getting hits (So you don't continue pressure, so to them getting hit is fine if 2/3 times they're not getting hit).
Swinging and hitting followed by you landing is always a walk forward (for the most part). In low percent/untippered times, your immediate action after walking forward is usually shield, because they're going to try to hit you. It's obvious. It's what everyone does. Just walk forward and power shield just as they're about to reach your height coming close to the ground. Or suddenly get into a good space where they're worried about your PS and dtilt or ftilt or read their jump with a dash fair. So if you hit someone with a fair that you can't fair them again before they can hit you, you know it because you know your character, be prepared to retreat. Obviously untippered fairs at even 10% can combo, but this is based on your frame advantage due to: swinging as last as you possibly can (more frame advantage due to landing), and you'll get to "feel" when those are safe to continue from or not (untippered fair at lowish percent when I know I can follow up due to a near immediate landing is pretty sexy, up until around 40-50% it almost always combos into dash full hop fair).

Jumping is very important to Marth. It's a laggy movement. Once you're in the air as Marth, you are safe to react. But this means that you need to figure out where to jump / question the reasons why you jump like you do. Marth shouldn't get punished for jumping (because you shouldn't be jumping when they can hit you / have such a good positional advantage in the first place). Blinking + dash dance back rolls to give you more freedom to get to the spots you need to jump safely.
Starting a match and jumpng as Marth into ff-fair as a pattern, when you're about 75% of battlefield's stage away just isn't smart. It's not providing you anything. Literally nothing. The time between each jump + ff fair is like THIRTY TO FORTY FRAMES. Ganondorf is charging a warlock punch in your face. You wouldn't do that against Ganondorf. So why would you do it against a significantly better character?. (Yes ganondorf can't dash fast enough, but you get the point)

Your other weakness is landing. The more comfortable you get with the specific matchs up + their range, you'll find yourself thinking about where you can land assuming you know what they're doing (i.e. fsmash from either sonic or MK). Marth's double jump held backwards is an amazing pseudo air dodge that's gets you out FOR FREE against a lot of this landing ****. Marth's backwards double jump flattens his body like snake's bair from Marth's head (so no dangley legs). Learn that animation and how you can forward air out of it. Marth's backwards double jump + forward air is the exact same thought process as crouching and then shielding for a power shield on the ground, except you're in the air and you can retreat/backwards forwards and also fast fall.


Frame four of forward air.
It's what you need to learn the most.
Both people you played DI the same way. Both people are set up in a position where frame 4 auto tipper fair is as free as the sun, moon and the stars. So you're slightly below them, but in their face. Tons of pressure. If you're in the position where frame 4 fair will hit, you ffing that aerial will always be a significant positional advantage if they do any combination of air dodging, fast falling or jumping.

You know enough about Marth to know all the traps. You know enough about Marth to know what move is generally appropriate at around the time you're in. Now you need to get your timing on point and get better at spacing because of it. Fair to dtilt is amazing. But that fair has to actually be applying pressure in the first place.

-

Match up stuff
When MK is gliding off stage, he's either good at tech skill and is able to fly past the ledge, or he's going to grab the ledge. Chances are he's the latter (Your MK is definitely the latter). Don't be afraid of gliding from off stage when he's not going above the ledge. When you play someone who doesn't grab the ledge there, then you need to be smarter/safer in other ways, but I'm sure you could figure that out if they're mixing that up + you're aware of that possibility + reaction speed.
At 2.18, I think you made a beautiful positional play. You've zoned MK towards the edge and you're in a position for down tilt to beat/trade (and considering that dashing off stage into fair is saving you 6 frames of jump time and is **** **** **** that combos from down tilt, trading with ftilt or "whiffing" in these scenarios IS NOT BAD (especially if you're comfortable with buffering things out of dtilt such as smash di/grab break mashing [but you know its ftilt, so SDI]). Instead you jumped. Not only, IMO, was it a bad jump (safety wise), you got the jump for free, but didn't even try to space fair to hit his grubby little hands while he ftilts. Spacing frame 7 of fair properly hits MK while he's ftilting in the first two hits and also covers you from shuttle loop.

Talking about recovery. 3minutes in the MK match is a really good example. You use your second jump. When you could've held it for a lot longer until you were closer to the stage. You were completely safe to do this. If you have an inkling of MK dashing off stage with a ff dair, then what the ****, react to that and fair it. But you're afraid of something your opponent isn't good enough to do yet.

MK's shuttle loop loses to spaced fairs. MK's love taking a position and then shuttle looping the moment you get too close / swing. There's your problem. Getting too close (think of hitting with frame 7 of fair) + swinging way too early.

Shielding fsmash from MK is one of those things where shield to reshield is ****.
Nearly every level of MK has an fsmash taken on shield into another attack. Usually down smash. You can't shield drop + db1 fsmash, but you can shield drop, walk slightly forward and shield. And get a free powershield on dsmash or tilts.

Sonic stuff..
yeah swinging later will help you a ton. Not trying to hit sonic while he's charging specials on the ground (although you can with DB1). You're better off trying to hit sonic in the air. Sonic wants to hit you with those specials and then auto-execution into some combos. Dodge that hit and punish their habits for what they do afterwards.
Aerials clash with sonic's up b. Getting edgeguarded by Sonic's Up B is definitely not a thing. So in other words, a planking fair will give you the safety you need to let go off the ledge and reclaim your invincibility.
 

ChKn

Smash Ace
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Thanks for responding Shaya. I have some follow up questions:

Untippered fairs pre-40 is usually not enough time to combo, so you should be taking defensive options rather than a second swing (you get shielded a lot here).
After 40%, what would be good followup options for an untippered fair?


your neutral doesn't apply pressure because you swing for no reason, you rescind after getting hits (So you don't continue pressure, so to them getting hit is fine if 2/3 times they're not getting hit).
How would I go about remedying my use of nair?

Blinking + dash dance back rolls to give you more freedom to get to the spots you need to jump safely.
What is blinking? (inb4eyemovement)

Frame four of forward air.
It's what you need to learn the most.
Both people you played DI the same way.
Out of which moves?


EDIT: Also, just played a little. This is gonna take a while to fix these habits lol.
 

Shaya

   「chase you」 
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Blinking = shield to reshield. Try walking in between each successive reshield (against moves you can do this against, which is not all, but most).

From 40% untippered fair will probably be comboing into tippered fair. At the least, if both myself and my opponent are in the air and I hit them with untippered fair, I'll be manoeuvring to hit them again.

Umm, I meant "neutral" as in the neutral situation, not neutral air. If I was to say anything about your use of nair (you didn't do much) it's giving you more space when using it against people (be further away horizontally when you use it, wait longer before you use it so you're in a better spot vertically)
Applying pressure in the neutral means that you aren't being laggy/predictable and you're capable of punishing. Take being a certain distance away from MK, if he can get away with dash grabbing you for any reason (random jumps, dashing weirdly or whatever) then you weren't really applying pressure. Making sure their most immediate option isn't viable (or that you're ready to **** them for it) is instantly massive dread for everyone you play in tournament. Now back to punishing, when you punish someone you want to press the advantage. As I was saying, fair doesn't always combo freely, so you need to be ready with a defensive measure or be in a much better position. Even when it doesn't combo freely, after you hit someone, you have an advantage in which they can't jump or special for at least 40 frames, can't fast fall for like 20 frames, and they're travelling within knockback of your move, you need to go:

"Okay, so they're going to travel HERE."
I'm going to [land/walk/etc] into a position which I'm capable of following up my last hit safely. And also likely power shield their aerial as they leave their hit stun/tumble animation and are about to reach the ground. Because people always aerial at the same heights before reaching the ground.

This is why hitting with frame 4 of forward air is very important/strong. If you're aiming to hit with it there, you're generally slightly below the opponent. Your control of Marth in terms of his jump times/fast fall/use of your second jump to get that right height is a skill, but it's learnable. When I say your opponent's DI the same way, it's a "you hit them" and they DI in a such a way that a medium forward movement into a jump (likely full hop or if you were in the air after hitting them, a properly timed usage of your second jump so that you can swing and fast fall at around the same time at the right height) is very easy to set up for frame 4 of fair and be COMPLETELY SAFE and if it whiffs/they air dodge it still be in a positional advantage.
 

Shaya

   「chase you」 
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Let me say that one of my favourite things to do from "not too easy to get a second hit" scenarios
(fairs at low percents and stuff like fthrow) is moving into a position where I'll dtilt their landing / shield from good range. When most characters land, their "landing" animation is wide spread (larger hurtbox) usually than if they were just standing neutral and their hurtbox will rescind when they can shield. So if you time it badly you're getting dtilt power shielded (when not out of a dash which means its generally SUPAR SAFE) or you hit them. Remember dtilt hits well above the ground. This is Mikeneko's application of down tilt in most situations he uses it in.
 

Raziek

Charging Limit All Day
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So I'm not looking for critique, as I don't actively practice a ****load anymore, these are mostly for your enjoyment because I can't think of anywhere better to put them: (Some lack sound, sorry about dat)




Winner's Finals Singles


Grand Finals


 

smashkng

Smash Lord
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It's hard to critique a doubles match, but from what I can see you need to be better at reacting to ROB's projectiles (they're slow enough to be reactable to) and it's important to PS them. PSing in general is **** against ROB (allows to punish things like Bair and Nair much easier). You also should learn to SDI out of ROB's Dsmash (it's one of the easier ones as Marth, done exactly the same as SDIing Pika's, just that it's a bit harder cause of less time to react to the Dsmash).

ROB is a MU that takes a while to learn (and you will get destroyed if you don't know it) but once mastered I believe is slightly in Marth's favour (not a free MU at all for sure though, ROB has plenty of tools to win it). Approaching in a diagonal way is pretty effective against ROB, he has trouble dealing with well diagonally spaced Fairs (especially when those are aimed at his head, 95% of the time aim at that when you do it). His answers besides changing positioning positioning and shielding are pretty much up angled Ftilt, Up angled Fsmash and jump Fair. Up angled Ftilt and Fsmash aren't very reliable cause they are laggy enough to be easily baited and punished (they have to read you like almost perfectly to throw you out). Fair is risky cause if he misses he easily gets into a juggle position (and Marth juggles ROB very hard when executed correctly). Don't get frustrated by getting hit by ROB, most of his moves deal unimpressive damage (except like Gyro which does 18% damage when fully charged, and Uair if you fail at SDIing out). ROB is pretty much like a much weaker and floatier DK with projectiles and a better recovery in this MU (a range vs disjoint MU pretty much). He doesn't have very reliable options to kill us except by gimping (and even then it's not impossible to recover against him, we can make it back most of the time). Because of his large range you'll be forced often to play a bait and punish game instead of zoning while momentum is neutral. Fortunately we have plenty of tools to use that kind of play pretty effectively. His Ftilt may have a ton of range but shielding it will always guarantee us a shield release run and DB if reacted fast enough and some other punishments OoS too if PS and not perfectly spaced.

Get ROB to the air. We **** him there. Uair for example can frame trap ROB easily (he air dodges first Uair and then gets hit by our 2nd aerial we do) when full hopped and performed early. ROB doesn't have many anti juggle tools. His Dair is bad because you can't fall with it and Bair slows him down (doesn't do anything unless almost reaching the ground (if you're on the ground, PSing may be required to punish it reliably). His other anti-juggle tools are Nair (really slow and spaced Uairs will beat it) and wavebounce Gyro. Like Bair, you may have to PS to reliably punish his Nair if you're on the ground when he does Nair. That's where crouching can make it a role by increasing the PS window. Abuse his floatiness and try to put as much damage as you can each time you get him to the air (this is mostly in singles, in doubles his teammate can stop you from doing that).

Oh and lastly, you will be poking very often with Nair and diagonally spaced Fairs if done correctly because of ROB's small size of his shield.
 

Foodies

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jan 19, 2009
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This is wifi but I'll still post it because the thread is dead anyway. Zero gives some comments in it as well so maybe it'll help someone else?


I'm open to comments/critiques but don't really expect them since the OP says no wifi :p
 

Malcolm Pickering

Smash Cadet
Joined
Sep 22, 2014
Messages
27
Location
Millburn, NJ
I'd be really gratefull for tips from experienced players on my Marth gameplay. I've (obviously) never played competitive smash but i really would like to try and become a competent player. I can already tell from my gameplay that i need to utilize grabs, and tilts more, as well as improve my edge guarding, but i'm unsure of how to improve myself from there? WHAT ARE MY GREATEST WEAKNESSES?(v. CPU lvl 9s, srry for the extremely poor quality)
drive. google. com /folderview?id=0B-qNJuzqcjDwZXJBbWI3X1pSNnc&usp=sharing
 
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