What would change if Marth Tipper was easier to hit? (General Buff Discussion)

Rebel13 · Jan 22, 2016

Not related to the above points, but has anyone else been whiffing jabs at point blank vs short characters? Like, you get a spaced nair on shield and attempt to throw out the jab for shield pressure/mixup game, and it just misses with the sword trail clearly going right through them. This happens in other situations too, like vs characters in tumble animation as they land (jab doesn't hit). This mostly happens vs short characters.

Utilt, uair, and jab are all so unpolished. I'd actually main Marth if they would just fix his hitboxes and not buff him in any other way.

Vipermoon · Jan 22, 2016

Rebel13 said:
Not related to the above points, but has anyone else been whiffing jabs at point blank vs short characters? Like, you get a spaced nair on shield and attempt to throw out the jab for shield pressure/mixup game, and it just misses with the sword trail clearly going right through them. This happens in other situations too, like vs characters in tumble animation as they land (jab doesn't hit). This mostly happens vs short characters.

Utilt, uair, and jab are all so unpolished. I'd actually main Marth if they would just fix his hitboxes and not buff him in any other way.

Yeah we have major discussions about this all the time (especially in the Marth general thread). Basically the problem is that for almost all of Marth moves, he has two hitboxes on his sword and one smaller one on his arm and that's it. It is very sad. He also doesn't have enough active frames in his moveset (that is, how long hitboxes last) so you'll see that his sword trails are half dead zones.

This is Vs. Melee/Brawl Marth and Roy who have multiple large body-mounted hitboxes and more active frames. Almost nothing misses with those Marths. Granted, most characters have nerfed hitboxes in Smash 4 but none are as nerfed as Marth's. It was probably supposed to emphasize 'precision' but really it's bad design.

Bowserboy3 · Jan 22, 2016

Vipermoon64 said:
Yeah we have major discussions about this all the time (especially in the Marth general thread). Basically the problem is that for almost all of Marth moves, he has two hitboxes on his sword and one smaller one on his arm and that's it. It is very sad. He also doesn't have enough active frames in his moveset (that is, how long hitboxes last) so you'll see that his sword trails are half dead zones.

This is Vs. Melee/Brawl Marth and Roy who have multiple large body-mounted hitboxes and more active frames. Almost nothing misses with those Marths. Granted, most characters have nerfed hitboxes in Smash 4 but none are as nerfed as Marth's. It was probably supposed to emphasize 'precision' but really it's bad design.

I'll be honest, I just think it's all come about by the balancing team doing anything they could think of to try and nerf Marth. Like seriously, how could precision come into it when your arm or sword just completely goes through the opponent? That's not precision at all, you said it, its bad design. It really is sad. Though it's not something that can stop you playing Marth, it is still really annoying when you try an Up Tilt for example and it misses, when you clearly hit the opponent.

SmBootZ · Jan 29, 2016

things to improve marth...
lag reduction on his D-air and increase the sweet spot on the spike hit box. his off stage game is already pretty good but this would really help him out by making D-air a viable move to go for.

i also wish there was a much faster window to act out of dancing blade...like on hit two or 3. it would be great shield pressure to mixup into grab.

wall jump...

Bowserboy3 · Feb 1, 2016

I've been analyzing this Umbra Clock Tower preview looking for any Marth changes seeing as he is included in the fight. Unless I am completely missing something or they are playing with custom equipment on, I noticed a couple of Marth's aerials deal more damage...

Here's the video:

Right, at 0:15, watch Bayonetta's damage counter. She get's hit by Marth's tipper Fair, and then by Corrin's Fair. The damage counter briefly stops before Corrin hits her. She is at 30%, and by my knowledge, tipper Fair should deal 10%, taking her to 40% right? Well in the video, the counter briefly stops at 43%, just before Corrin hits her. Looking at this, unless customs are being used, tipper fair could do a whopping 3% more, 13%. It can't be a one off, because I see at 1:01, a staled tipper Fair does 12%, still more than a fresh current 10%.

The second thing I saw was at 0:35. Marth hits Bayonetta with tipper Uair. She is at 82%, so tipper Uair should deal 12% damage, meaning she should end up at 94% right? Well she ends up at 96%... This is another I can't explain. Unless they buffed Uair tipper to 14% too, I really can't find explanations for these. Also, at 0:54 I see Marth hit a sourspot Bair that does 10% damage, rather than 9%. Does Bayonetta take extra damage or something? I don't see how, because Marth lands a sourspot Fsmash at 0:46 and that does the expected 13% damage. Huh, who knows.

I heard somebody say that it looks like Marth's Fsmash has an altered animation that gives it more reach, but to me, that looks like placebo, I can't see a change.

Thoughts and opinions other Marth players?

Edit: I have since realized that this is being discussed in the Marth General thread. No matter. However, if these buffs do indeed come on Thursday (UK) but with nothing else, though nice, they aren't what Marth needs. He needs better AC windows or less landing lag, better throws etc. Still, buffs are buffs, I won't reject them!

kesterstudios · Feb 1, 2016

Bowserboy3 said:
I've been analyzing this Umbra Clock Tower preview looking for any Marth changes seeing as he is included in the fight. Unless I am completely missing something or they are playing with custom equipment on, I noticed a couple of Marth's aerials deal more damage...

Here's the video:

Right, at 0:15, watch Bayonetta's damage counter. She get's hit by Marth's tipper Fair, and then by Corrin's Fair. The damage counter briefly stops before Corrin hits her. She is at 30%, and by my knowledge, tipper Fair should deal 10%, taking her to 40% right? Well in the video, the counter briefly stops at 43%, just before Corrin hits her. Looking at this, unless customs are being used, tipper fair could do a whopping 3% more, 13%. It can't be a one off, because I see at 1:01, a staled tipper Fair does 12%, still more than a fresh current 10%.

The second thing I saw was at 0:35. Marth hits Bayonetta with tipper Uair. She is at 82%, so tipper Uair should deal 12% damage, meaning she should end up at 94% right? Well she ends up at 96%... This is another I can't explain. Unless they buffed Uair tipper to 14% too, I really can't find explanations for these. Also, at 0:54 I see Marth hit a sourspot Bair that does 10% damage, rather than 9%. Does Bayonetta take extra damage or something? I don't see how, because Marth lands a sourspot Fsmash at 0:46 and that does the expected 13% damage. Huh, who knows.

I heard somebody say that it looks like Marth's Fsmash has an altered animation that gives it more reach, but to me, that looks like placebo, I can't see a change.

Thoughts and opinions other Marth players?

Edit: I have since realized that this is being discussed in the Marth General thread. No matter. However, if these buffs do indeed come on Thursday (UK) but with nothing else, though nice, they aren't what Marth needs. He needs better AC windows or less landing lag, better throws etc. Still, buffs are buffs, I won't reject them!

It looks like tipper fair does 12% damage now. the 13% was just a freshness bonus. I'm not sure about the other moves.

Also, I just saw a video where corrin did a fair to upair on bayonetta. its not fair man... ):

Vipermoon · Feb 14, 2016

You know what's hilarious? This thread's title paired with the fact that 1.1.4 did that exact thing!

Anyway, time for my new post on my ideal, solo-viable Marth. The 1.1.4 edition.

(For those that don't know exactly what hitboxes are, Melee Marth is completely covered in them: Enjoy).

First thing's first. This isn't just a buff/nerf list. It also looks at Marth's design and makes changes that wouldn't help Marth compete at all. For that reason, the stuff in here is very meticulous (if you don't play Marth, you'll find yourself asking "who cares about that?" for some of these... especially in "special stuff"). Most of the length is because of explanations so sorry, but some people need background and help understanding.

Edit: there's a hitbox visual now (yes, Lucina has the same positions and sizes as Marth)
*Marth's "tipper" is the slang term for the powerful hitbox positioned near the tip of his sword
As you can see in the (1.1.4 Patch Notes), Marth had his hitboxes moved outwards for Jabs, Ftilt, Dtilt, Nair, Fair, and Bair. It was mostly the sword's tipper hitbox but sometimes it was also the sourspot. This increases range and makes tippers easier at the same time because by moving the tipper away from the sourspot, you get less overlay between them. The hitboxes now tend to go past the sword and some tippers are just too easy. I'm going to normalize Marth's entire moveset. I'm going to make all of these the same because it's a sword and swords don't change depending on the move. This will nerf some while buffing others. There is (especially since the patch) a lot of inconsistency in his moveset which, frankly, is bad game design.

The way it currently works is, the hitboxes (usually the same radius) are positioned in different places depending on the move. The sword and sword trail during the move is usually adjusted in length to keep things looking normal (check out Heavy Blade, the sword looks enormous during HB). If in each move Marth's sword offers the same disjoint (because why shouldn't it?), then there is no reason to do this. What will this do to tippers vs non-tippers? This will make them consistent too, no move (except Dtilt) will have different tipper difficulty than another because all hitbox positions will be the same (unless when I have to compensate for different hitbox sizes).(here's a visual of what goes on during changes like these)! I am using his Smash attack positions as my template for the rest of his movesets because they have what I think is good tipper positioning and disjoint. I am NOT saying everything will have the same range because Marth's range is also determined by the position of his feet, body, and arms which is different for every move. Anyway, to celebrate, check out the first change:

Everywhere when doing he isn't doing a move that uses his sword: make the blade of the sword longer. Yes, I just made his sword visually longer (canon Falchion, by the way, is still larger). You're welcome. Just a little bit though... enough to match the stuff I'm about the do. Keep in mind once again that I am normalizing his moveset so the sword and sword trail length won't deviate from this length and will match the hitboxes perfectly.
Jab 1: Tipper X position 7.0 > 7.3
Jab 2: Tipper X position 7.0 > 7.3
Jab 2: Adjust the animation so Marth reaches further because at max Jab 1 range, Jab 2 will always miss.
Dash Attack: Tipper X position 6.5 > 7.3
Ftilt: Tipper X position 7.7 > 7.3, Sour X position 2.5 > 2.0
Utilt: Tipper X position 6.7 > 6.8 because I will also increase the tipper hitbox size by 0.5 units. This is to lessen the issue where the tipper sword trail area between frames 6 and 7 is a huge deadzone.
Utilt: Both sword hitboxes' Z-axis position 0.0 > 1.0 (so the inner sword trail doesn't ****ing whiff an entire character)
Dtilt: Tipper X position 8.2 > 7.8, Sour X position 16.7 > 16.3. 0.1 of this is to normalize disjoint, the rest (0.3) is because I'm increasing both hitbox sizes from 2.7 > 3.0 to improve edgeguarding.
Fsmash: Adjust the animation so Marth is crouched a little less. This will improve Battlefield platform reach and will slightly improve horizontal range. This'll be enough so that it reaches every character on the platform but definitely not too different so that it's as easy as Melee.
Usmash: Dust Cloud X position 9.0/-9.0 > 5.6/-5.6. Lower Sour X position -3.0 > -3.6. Upper Sour X position 2.0 > 0.7. Tipper X position 7.3 > 6.4. Hitboxes sizes will be the same as Melee's with Dust Cloud, Upper Sour, and Tipper at 4.4, 4.8, and 4.4 (down from 5.5, 5.8, 4.6). The Lower Sourspot hitbox doesn't exist in Melee but I will reduce that hitbox size to 5.2 from 5.8 while moving it down 0.6 units so it has the same lower coverage. I normalized disjoint once again (Usmash had way too much with the 7.3 tipper location in addition to its larger size). This tipper was way too hard due to an even larger sourspot hitbox size taking up too much tipper space so I moved the upper sour hitbox to the location required to match tipper with the rest of his moveset. I will explain the nerfs (the movements and resizes above) and the compensation in the Total Frames section below.
Nair 1: Tipper X position 7.7 > 7.3 with a slight animation change to reach 0.2 units further to compensate for the 0.2 disjoint lead it had over Nair 2 to help both hits connect.
Nair 2: Tipper X position 7.5 > 7.3
Fair: Tipper X position 7.7 > 7.3
Bair: Tipper X position 7.7 > 7.3, Sour X position 2.5 > 2.0
Uair: Tipper X position 6.7 > 7.3. I have wanted to move the sour hitbox more inward because it really is hard to tipper a move with Uair's type of usage but I'll stay true to my beliefs and keep everything the same.
Dair: The hitbox IDs of the vertical knockback sourspot and the horizontal knockback sourspot should switch places allowing the former to out-prioritize the latter enabling a better combo game (because in a situation when both hitboxes connect with their target, the hitbox with the lower ID number (0x0, then 0x1, 0x2, etc.) gets the hit; the same way sourspots out-prioritize tippers). There is a consequence to doing this and that would be Dairing off-stage will help your opponent recovery more often (rather than gimping them with horizontal knockback) but it's worth it.
Dair: Tipper X position 6.7 > 7.3; Spike Y position -3.0 > -2.4 (moved the spiking hitbox down so that the tipper change doesn't make it harder to get).
Shield Breaker: Tipper hitbox now mounted on sword. Tipper X position 27 > 7.8, Y position 8.5 > 0. The moving sour hitbox (a type of hitbox that also exists on sour Dtilt, Usmash Dust Cloud, and sour DB3-down) will move the whatever locations that allow the same tipper difficulty as the rest of his moveset. All sizes are still 3.0, like Dtilt. 3.0 is the smaller, more precise size for single stabs. Shield Breaker's tipper used to go way past the sword. Even with the visually longer sword, the new perfectly matched hitboxes don't reach as far. The animation will be toned down a bit so you can actually see the whole sword. More changes to SB in Damage and Knockback and Total Frames and Animations sections.
Dancing Blade 1: Tipper X position 6.5 > 6.8, Sour X position 2.0 > 1.5 because I'm also increasing sword hitbox sizes from 3.5 to 4.0 since all other DB (except DB3-down) is already at 4.0. I will reduce the step forward he takes in the animation (which used to compensate for this hitbox difference) so that range doesn't improve more than the rest of DB.
Dancing Blade 2: Tipper X position 6.5 > 6.8, Sour X position 2.0 > 1.5. Raise the sword in the animation just barely so that the sword doesn't end up even lower due to its length increase.
Dancing Blade 2 (Up): Tipper X position 6.5 > 6.8, Sour X position 2.0 > 1.5
Dancing Blade 3 (Up): Tipper X position 6.5 > 6.8, Sour X position 2.0 > 1.5. Also, Marth swings close to his body so this move can miss after the tipper DB2-up hit. The solution is for Marth to swing just a little bit further out (by about half a unit) using arm adjustments.
Dancing Blade 3: Tipper X position 6.5 > 6.8, Sour X position 2.0 > 1.5.
Dancing Blade 3 (Down): Tipper hitbox now mounted on sword. Tipper X position 18 > 6.8, Y position 4.0 > 0. The moving sour hitbox will move the whatever locations that allow the same tipper difficulty as the rest of his moveset. Tipper hitbox size 3.0 > 4.0. Sour hitbox size 4.6 > 4.0. There will now be a 3rd hitbox mounted on his forearm; size 4.0. This move is no longer a weird outlier in DB. And with how close the hitboxes were to each other in addition to the hitbox size difference, it was looking like an Agar.io eat in here.
Dancing Blade 4 (Side and Up): Tipper X position 6.5 > 6.8 only. For the sake of balance, I will not move these DB4 sourspots inward. They'll stay at 2.0. You should need skill with DB to be able to get the powerful tipper on multiple characters. I already change tipper knockback on the first 3 hits of DB as you'll see in the Damage and Knockback section. Those changes make it a little easier to get the tipper 4 by using other tippers (tippers 1-3 are useless in current Marth as you'll hear more about below).
Dancing Blade 4 (Down): Tipper X position 6.5 > 6.8, Sour X position 2.0 > 1.5
Dolphin Slash: move the sweetspot hitbox outwards until it matches the sword length (THIS is one of the biggest buffs to Marth competitively, with this he can punish many more things out of shield rather than only being able to punish poorly spaced things. That's huge against top tiers who are usually safe on shield. This also improves edgeguarding). Marth will hold his sword slightly different so that the new sword length only has the same range as Brawl/Melee DS which is still great.
Dolphin Slash (late hit): sword's outer hitbox X position 4.5 > 5.8 (improves edgeguarding and sharking at the ledge while making him harder to edgeguard due to more hitbox coverage/disjoint). This is also part of the normalization but it will come with a slight animation change so that actual range only goes up about half that amount (similar to DS sweetspot balances above^). With the animation change, his arm won't be caught by Dairs as easily.

*Hitbox sizes are in radius, not diameter
**DB stands for Dancing Blade
Aside from the aforementioned^ Dtilt (2.7 > 3.0), Usmash (huge > Melee), and DB3-down hitboxes (Agar.io > 4.0) size changes above...
Most of the following are to correct his inner hitboxes against small characters.

Jab 1, Jab 2, Dash Attack, Ftilt, Utilt, Fsmash, Dsmash, Nair, Uair, Dair, all of Dancing Blade: Bone 22 (Marth's sword arm) hitbox size 3.0 > 3.5 (or for DB: 3.5 > 4.0). This is not including Fair and Bair (already at 3.5), and Dtilt and Usmash (they don't use Bone 22). I made it so every attack that mounts a hitbox on this Bone gets the same hitbox size as the ones on the sword (the sword is Bone 1002). It's nowhere near the inner hitbox luxury thattake/took pleasure in but it should make him feel just a little bit more like them and in the end, stuff won't miss as often.
Other body-mounted hitboxes 2.0 > 2.5. This additional hitbox is only present in Dash Attack, Utilt, Fsmash, Dsmash, Nair, and Uair in Smash 4. Dolphin Slash and Counter are not included; they have relatively enormous ones anyway.
Dair: Spike hitbox size 4.3 > 4.6
All grabs: His grabs should have just a little bit larger hitboxes because he's Marth.
Fully charged Shield Breaker: Hitbox sizes 2.5 > 3.0 (I have no idea why partial/uncharged SB has them at 3.0 while this is 2.5 but I fixed it)

First, this one ASAP...
Jab 1: Frame 4 hitboxes added with 1.0.0 Marth knockback angles and values, effectively giving him a "jab lock frame" to revive his lost Jab Lock. Jab had a frame 4 in previous games and frame 4's positioning is just perfect for reaching knocked-down characters.

Anyway, in many cases his sword trail animations must be toned down and/or hitboxes last longer. One of them buffs the character; they both fix the character. Win-Win.
I get that it's nicknamed the Blade of Light but come on! Brawl's sword trails were reserved and I like that.

Moves that should last 1 frame longer (the new last frame): Jab 2 (frame 6), Ftilt (12), Utilt (13), Fair (9), Uair (10), Dair (14), Counter's Attack (8; including intangibility).

Current moves that have misleading trails: Jabs, Dash Attack, Ftilt, Utilt, Fsmash, Fair, Bair, Uair, Dair, DB1, DB4-up, all of DB to a degree, Counter

One great example of this is DB4-side. It was nerfed in start-up by a frame from Brawl which removed its ability to hit above. The sword trail addresses this change unlike the rest of his moveset. By the way, I agree with this nerf actually because it gives DB4-up more use. That's also why I agree with DB4-up missing in the lower areas (was also a start-up nerf, but without the trail adjustment)

Changes are underlined so they are easier to notice in this wall of text.
BKB = base knockback, KBG = growth knockback / knockback growth / or Melee players say KBS (knockback scaling)

Dash Attack: Knockback angle for both sword hits 45° > 110°. Sourspot and sour-sourspot damage 10 and 9% > 9 and 8%. Tipper BKB 80 > 70. After much thought I decided that he wants his Melee Dash Attack. What is another tipper/dash attack that kills? He has more than enough kill moves (and more than enough horizontal knockback moves) so let's give him the Melee vertical/backwards knockback for ultra uniqueness on a DA whose animation looks like it should be doing that anyway. I went with the exact Melee angle and knockback values (kb is the same except for the tipper's base). The damage reduction is to have a tipper vs. sour damage difference in-line with the rest of his moveset (if curious, Melee's did 9, 11, or 12%). The sour-sourspot (hitbox on his arm) still has a Sakurai (361°) angle and low BKB like Melee/Brawl/S4. Of course, the end lag will be chopped off to match Melee's (for combos of course!) but we talk about that stuff in a future spoiler box. Alternative: unchanged angles with 12 > 13% for tipper and 55 > 60 knockback growth (KBG) on both sword hitboxes to make it your typical strong tipper.
Utilt: 5, 6, 9% > 6, 7, 10% and 65 base knockback (BKB) > 55 BKB; late hit 52 BKB > 45 BKB. Utilt still has two more issues... 1) Too little damage and 2) Too high knockback at low percents. So we raise the damage and, based on a knockback calculation I did, compensate by reducing BKB so neither version kills earlier. Combo ranges are obviously extended.
Dsmash (front): 8 and 12% > 10 and 14%. What is the point of a frame 6 Smash attack? To punish things, yes! This Dsmash has early start-up so its primary use is to punish rolls, spot dodges, and guys that hit Marth's shield. Why don't we use it? Um, hello!? 8% and super weak! Any other punish was better but not anymore.
Fair (tipper): 11.5% > 11%, KBG 90 > 91. This is too strong and makes Bair a little less useful. Plus I buffed the landing lag and autocancel. Sour still does 8% and 80 growth.
Bair: Tipper 12.5% > 13% and KBG 94 > 91. Sour 9 > 9.5% and KBG unchanged. There are lot of 13% Bairs in this game, a tipper deserves it. The KBG nerf to 91, in this case, makes the knockback exactly the same at practically any percent (according to a calculator). How convenient. So it isn't stronger. The sourspot is stronger though but it's nowhere near as strong as Brawl's sourspot
Dair (sour): 12 > 11% (undo the buff) to put some distance between this and the 14% tipper. It'll combo for longer ranges too. Just another tipper reward change (especially when you're trying to hit shields, more reason to space the tipper).
Dair (tipper): BKB 20 > 30, angle 361° > 30°. Because tipper Dair's knockback is stupid low. The knockback is way too small for its start-up, cooldown, and damage. This change is also to match what I'm about to do to Dair spike's knockback. As for the angle, lowering the angle gives you a reason to try this instead of the Bair off-stage. Furthermore, if the spike fails and you get the tipper, you then have a better chance at gimping them anyway.
Dair (spike): 15 > 14% (another undo) they thought this is what Dair spike needed but it has no reason to do more damage than the tipper. What Dair spike really needs is...
Dair (spike): BKB 20 > 30. In Brawl and Melee, Dair had a lot more base knockback allowing for earlier kills and safer useage on stage. This spike is ****in hard (relatively speaking) to get so it should be killing when we do get it in a game where recoveries are really good.
Fthrow and Dthrow: 100 and 95 BKB reduced to 80 BKB for both. KBG on Fthrow 50 > 60, Dthrow 50 > 70. Like I said before, Marth doesn't need a great grab game to be a threat (look at Cloud). This BKB reduction does nothing about Dthrow's end lag for example but at least he can threaten shields better with some low to mid percent throw stuff. For throws that do 4% or 5%, he really needs more reward. The KBG nerfs are to avoid kill confirms. If I didn't do that he'd be doing almost the same knockback he used to do at 0%... at 100%, which would be super kill confirms. This is because 50 knockback growth/scaling is nothing and 10 or 20 higher seems like a lot but the lower the damage of a move, the less a knockback growth change affects things. It truly was only the base knockback that ruined his throws. Fun fact, bkb/kbg of Bthrow and Fthrow are now the same.
Shield Breaker: Tipper's bonus shield damage 25 > 30 (nerf undo). Tipper BKB 60 > 50, KBG unchanged at 100. Sourspot BKB unchanged at 30, KBG 90 > 100. Aerial full charge does 16 and 18% instead of the usual 22 and 24 (explained in Total Frames and Animations section). Undo the shield damage nerf for the tipper only. Puts some skill into breaking shields while at the same time allowing a move called Shield Breaker to breaks shields (what kind of knucklehead nerfs the shield breaking aspect but allows the OP kill power?). The knockback values now match Brawl's.
Dancing Blade 1: Tipper KBG 75 > 50. Sourspot KBG 75 > 70. Tipper DB1 is messed up. Because it does more damage with the same KB and sends opponents straight up, it's very easy to miss DB2 (DB2 animation is angled way low at its tip) at even low percents (and then get punished from a fast aerial, perfect shield, roll, jump or something else before DB3). And if you have rage, forget about it. What kind of tipper reward is that? I can't help but to space it well only to be reminded that I did it wrong!
Dancing Blade 2 (Up): KBG for Sourspots should be 70 > 60, Tipper stays at 50. This is notorious for doing too much knockback on anyone except the highest gravity characters. In general for Dancing Blade, I'm sure to not do anything drastic. He can't have OP Brawl DB (where the combo hits do almost no KBG) because this is a game where the average power level of a character is lower. So DB isn't free but it's a little bit more functional. He needs a consistent-ish punish.
Dancing Blade 3 (Up): BKB and KBG on Tipper for only frame 8 should both be 40 > 50. Everything else is good. The tipper has weak KBG but that usually still works out fine for frames 9 and 10. Frame 8 hits very low to the ground so for a better chance at getting tipper DB4 (up) you simply have to raise knockback. At kill percents, if you don't get the tipper, you usually have to wait a little bit before inputting the 4th swing. I'm keeping it this way to separate good Marths from the bad.
Dancing Blade 3: Tipper BKB 40 > 50, KBG 35 > 40. This move's knockback is horrendous. It doesn't put you in tumble until about 200%. Where's the tipper reward if it doesn't set-up for the tipper 4th hit? Now it has the same numbers as the sourspots only with switched KBG and BKB.
Dancing Blade 3 (Down): BKB 50 > 48, knockback angle 44 > 40 degrees. Unless it's a fast faller, this new DB3-down angle (from 1.1.3) sends them a little too high.
Aerial Dancing Blade 3 (Down): knockback angle 44 > 270 (sourspot) and 44 > 315 degrees (tipper). BKB stays at 50, KBG 28 > 100. Yes, I brought back the spike (but aerial only like Brawl; Melee was both). There are two hitboxes on this move... one will send you downwards diagonally and the other straight down. The knockback values I borrowed from Melee. You'd never truly get the chance to use this without fishing for it but I want it I want it I want it.
Dolphin Slash: 11% hitboxes BKB 70 > 80, KBG 74 > 70. 7% hitboxes BKB 20 > 30, KBG unchanged at 90. These should do more base KB. Marth needs this. It makes following up out of Dthrow safer. It makes sharking through the stage safer. It lets him attempt gimps earlier (you need tumble knockback to stage spike). The proof is in Crescent Slash. That move is always safe on hit because the sourspot deals tumble knockback at 0% (but that one has 60 BKB and we can't go that far).

Jab 2: Total frames 28 > 25. I don't know why they reduced Jab 1's to this but not Jab 2's. Jab 2 comes out faster too (frame 3 vs 5) than Jab 1 so that's even more cooldown. Anyway, now it'll set-up tech chases a lot better and it's safer in general.
Dash Attack: Total frames 49 > 39. Melee is at 39 frames (with the same animation only interrupted right before Marth stands up) so I revived it. This provides you with a similar end lag (difference between hitbox frames and end frame) as the front section of Utilt so it won't combo at Uair kill percents. Like Utilt, at low percents it'll combo into Utilt and barely combo/string into Fsmash/Usmash. It'll barely combo into Uair for a while later (thanks to low knockback growth). The sour-sourspot while unchanged, may string into tipper Fsmash at specific percents due to the lag reduction. This DA will bring the hype and serve a real purpose (imagine something flashy like a landing Nair or Fair > DA > tipper Usmash at low percents). The alternative DA mentioned above in the dmg/kb section would end on frame 44.
Dtilt: Total frames 23 > 22. Why 22? Many small reasons. 21 is like Brawl but it didn't seem fair to do that since its range is so huge now (Melee is 19 btw and has comparable range to 1.1.4). Dtilt to DB is popular and since they took a frame off the start-up of DB, why not compliment that with Dtilt? Roy's lower range Dtilt is 21. Lastly, I wanted to put more frames between Dtilt and Marth's Jabs.
Usmash: Total frames 58 > 48. Now his Smash attack end frames are 48, 51, and 54. I also want to change Usmash's cooldown animation to be Melee/Brawl's. The current one is super crappy and twitchy. It looks like they made it that way to purposely stall for time (as Usmash used to have 45 and then 49 total frames in the games before). NOW time to explain... as you know, I nerfed the hitboxes sizes and positions as described above (but reduced/normalized tipper difficulty). Smash 4 Usmash doesn't make much sense. Why does magic dust cloud have so much range? Why does the tipper have to be so much harder than all the other tippers? Why is the least physically strenuous move out of Marth's Smash attacks the LAGGIEST? I brought the dust cloud to Melee's dust cloud size and positioning and that was a HUGE nerf to range which also nerfs Usmash out of shield's range. I then brought the other hitboxes to Melee sizes and did something similar to the extra sour hitbox. An upwards stab doesn't need to be so fat with hitboxes. One issue with the old Usmash is sometimes at max dust cloud range, it will fail to send you into the sour hitbox like it should which then only makes your punish deal 3% and not kill. This won't happen again with how close the dust cloud is now. Summary: The move is way safer and the kill power is the same except better due to the tipper being a factor now. Most importantly, the animation is beautiful again and Usmash is normalized and makes sense in every way.
Shield Breaker: Total frames 50 > 47, aerial charging time severely reduced so that full hop charged Shield Breaker releases just before hitting the ground (this explains the reduced damage). The aerial charge time reduction also allow Marth to use the full charge as a recovery move and B-reverse mix-up on stage when trying to land from above (like what Diddy can do with Monkey Flip and B-reverse Popgun cancel). The total frames reduction is to make-up for the reduced range and kill power by matching the cooldown to Melee's cooldown (from the first active frame).
Grounded Dancing Blade 1: Total frames 41 > 37. Cloud's Cross Slash 1 has 29 cooldown frames (the # of frames after the hitboxes end) so this will too. I sped up the animation a bit to match this new end frame because this animation is seriously slow. The difference in animation speed between the grounded and aerial version of DB1 just sucks to witness.
Dancing Blade 4 (Down): Total frames 71 > 65 like Brawl. Better for tech chases and hitting shields (though it still wouldn't be that safe). Melee is at 60 but I thought that's too drastic.

*Autocancelling/Autocancel windows is when you take the normal 4 frames of landing lag during aerial attacks (and sometimes special attacks). In other words, you are "cancelling" your landing lag as if you were normally landing during these frames.

AC
This isn't just for the sake of buffing his horrid autocancel windows (I like to call them arrow slits instead for how small these "windows" are). This is also from a design perspective to bring his autocancel windows down to a frame where you'd say "it makes sense that he would physically autocancel from and after this frame". His Fair and Dair especially are guilty of this (partly because they don't AC so late in the animation and partly because of how the aerials' landing lag animations look like).

Nair: 1 > 1-3, 47 > 43. (description->) Pre-hitbox AC on frames 1-3, then later on and after frame 43. This is up from on frame 1 and on and after frame 47. It doesn't have to AC in a short hop so 43 is the number (Marth lands on frame 42 of his SH). This should enable full hop fast fall. By the way, I'm increasing pre-hitbox AC around the same amount for all aerials (I chose Uair as the improvement limit as its hitbox is frame 5 so it can't increase more than 2 frames from where it is now).
Fair: 36 > 32. No pre for Fair since it didn't have any in Brawl either. 32 because not only does it match Bair but Corrin's Fair ends 2 frames earlier and ACs on 30. So Marth, naturally, should be 2 behind.
Bair: 1-2 > 1-4, 32 unchanged.
Uair: 1-2 > 1-4, 38 unchanged. I decided to lower Landing Lag instead (to make short hop fast fall better) and that since Marth does a delayed flip in the animation and he just finishes that flip at about frame 38. It wouldn't be fair physically to say he ACs in the middle of his flip.
Dair: 1-2 > 1-5, 55 > 48. I decided to inherit the entirety of Brawl/Melee Dair's AC windows.
His pre-hitbox autocancels now look about as effective as the average Smash 4 character (Melee and Brawl's had almost all aerials pre-autocancel up until the hitbox)
Like most characters, these autocancel windows are not nearly as good as Melee/Brawl's.

LL

For landing lag, I wanted the same total landing frames (of all aerials combined) as Roy. In this patch, he's at a 6 frame lead over us (for reference, in 1.1.3 Roy was worse than us by 8; yes he got buffed by 14!). So we have 6 credits... HOWEVER, we have 8 because of changes I make to Roy. So 8 credits...
Nair: 12; unchanged
Fair: 16 > 15 frames. Like Melee's without L cancel.
Bair: 17 > 15 frames. Fair already has the major benefit of being a forward facing aerial. Bair shouldn't have more landing lag.
Uair: 14 > 12 frames. I want another low LL aerial and this would give dominance over Roy's 14 the same way Roy Fair's 13 dominates our Fair. This will make falling Uair combos more consistent and safer to try.
Dair: 24 > 21. We need to have a reason to land with Dair. It feels like Bair or something is almost always better. You saw how I swapped hitbox IDs up there on Dair for combos? This will make those combos way more consistent.
Dolphin Slash: 20 > 26 frames if landing during freefall/helpless. I can explain. Special moves that put you in freefall/helpless (the fall when your character flashes and can't do anything) are technically able to have different landing lags at different times. That is, landing before the special's animation ends vs. landing after the special's animation ends (when you're in freefall). If Marth lands before it ends, that means he either went slightly above the ledge or reached a platform like Battlefield's top. He can keep 20 frames there (and that 20 is from a buff in a previous patch; used to be 23). If he lands later in freefall he now takes 26 because doesn't it make sense to take more landing lag if you fell further down? I heavily buffed DS's range so when Marth uses this move on stage (likely from out of shield), he better be sure it'll hit because landing after falling for a while is more risky now. Still way lower than Melee/Brawl's 34 frames.

I could have gone harder on the landing lag (e.g. focus more on Nair and Fair) but I don't want to: 1) invalidate any characters and 2) make him too aerial focused so I went for a balanced diet.

I've added enough to this section that it got cluttered. Moveset is white bolded and change topics are underlined.

Marth's run speed at 1.785 is 0.015 less than Melee's 1.8. Let's flip flop. Now it's at 1.815. Something that small is not going to make a difference but hey we passed Bowser! It's some form of compensation for what I'm about to do to his walk.
Marth needs a better accelerating walk! Sonic, ZSS, Sheik, and Fox's walks... despite having slightly slower walks are better because acceleration is key. No one will give you time to get to top speed. Increase walking acceleration value from 0 > 0.05 (the highest are at 0.1).
Grounded Dolphin Slash's intangibility frames: 4-5 > 3-5
I'd create a 1/1000 chance that Marth will say "Let's Dance" in 'Engrish' with the actual voice actor (this was an unused sound file in Melee). The 1/1000 lottery will be applied to the start-up of Dancing Blade, successful shield breaks, Counter's successful activation, and all three Taunts. Just something funny to experience once every blue moon, especially if heard on stream or at tourney.
Counter's quotes will be brought back! Saying "There it is!", "I saw through it/your attack!", and "Like I'd let you!" in Japanese is WAY cooler than some random grunt.
Dolphin Slash should have a 1/10 chance of Marth yelling "Twah!" just like Melee because it sounds cool in Melee
IMO, Hitlag modifiers on tippers should decrease 1.25 > 1.2 while Smash attack tippers should be 1.5 > 1.4. Shield Breaker goes from and 1.6 > 1.2, sourspot SB stays at 1.0. Especially with how much damage he's been doing, this is just me thinking tipper hitlag is overdone.
Remove all forward movement that comes from acting out of Ftilt and Utilt. In my opinion, Marth should just stand where I want him to stand. You don't see Marth taking an extra step forward in Fire Emblem do you? To successfully make this change, you may have to speed up Utit and Ftilt animations (while keeping the interruptible frame the same), because that is the reason for these movements. We know this because with how many times they took frames off Ftilt and Utilt over the patches, we saw Marth start to move forward and go further every consecutive patch due to how early he's been interrupting his animations. Brawl and Melee have way faster animations on these moves anyway.
Take 5 frames off the aerial DB1 to DB2 timing window (another buff undo) so we stop doing DB2-up suicides off-stage when going for Dolphin Slash
Aerial Dancing Blade 1 should air stall better than it currently does when Marth is falling (and help him rise just a smidge better when uses it while rising). The first use should basically reset his fall speed (then gravity kicks back in to accelerate him). The next 2 uses stall less and less. The 4th use does nothing (kind of like Roy).
I'm going to reference (this) again. In there, scroll to Dsmash. Do you see how he has a second front strike? (the second time is to bring the sword around to hit behind). Well I am going to add hitboxes to that second strike. His Dsmash isn't unique. Almost every Dsmash in the game has that typical strike front then back kind of thing; especially swordsmen Dsmashes. This change will make Dsmash extremely unique; there is nothing like it. Adding hitboxes there, of course, won't make it look any different and it usually won't matter since you're sure to connect the first hit when you commit to Dsmash. It will be useful for beating spot dodges and hitting shields twice in case it does get dodged or shielded. Specifics are that it will hit on frames 16-18 (this comes from looking at Melee's downloadable frame-by-frame images which is what those GIFs were created from) and with the same 8 and 12% and other hitbox properties (incl. angles/knockback/positions/sizes) as the rest of the pre-Vipermoon-buff front-hit Dsmash. I made it that weak because he is obviously focusing his strength on the powerful back hit; this second front hit is merely him moving his sword fast. Note that this new hit does have less range due to Marth's arm not extending as much and you'd see that if you check it out in training. Another note is yes the patch lowered the interruptible frame and I do not want to speed up the cooldown animation to go with it. Marth stays crouched really low during most of that cooldown animation and I want to keep it that way. I've had people miss punishes, (even Bayonettas miss Witch Time punishes) due to that crouch.
Get rid of this

In conclusion, I tried to give him gradual improvements in every aspect of his character. Not only does this create a 'finished product' feeling but it also ensures that we won't be invalidating any characters like previous Marths obviously did. I would estimate that this Marth is somewhere in high tier but with nothing too stupid/overtuned like the rest of them have. Because his moveset is so solid, he won't really have bad MUs (nothing that's a big deal at least) and that is what would make him solo-viable.

Thanks for reading. Eventually I will actually make this Marth once I find that I have enough free-time to learn how to hack my Smash 3DS like others have done (there are already some crazy "what if" character changes all over youtube).

Edit: reworded parts of most areas, improved formatting, corrected mistakes, changed a few little details, and added/removed stuff (if you must know, I mention it more below)

Edit v.2: redesigned the hitbox position/range section to be even more consistent (basically I ignored the last patch entirely)

Edit v.3: probably final version, I am interested in doing the other FE characters. Anyway: completely normalized the sword/hitboxes; I also made Marth's blade slightly larger visually. everything will have the same disjoint and tipper difficulty. Made major Usmash and Shield Breaker changes; their changes and split between the sections. I combined two sections and improves the others. Other small things.

ElementUser · Feb 14, 2016

If there was a Marth that I would dream of to be in Smash 4, Vipermoon's Marth with those buffs would be it. I can only dream...

In a nutshell, what people generall want from Marth is for him to feel more like Melee (pretty much everything that Vipermoon tweaked), all while not being at the same level as Melee since Marth still has to fit in the balance & game mechanic baseline in Smash 4.

==

Question though - what would happen to Lucina's Shieldbreaker shield damage values if Marth only gets a buff at the tip? I still think Marth should just get like a +3 shield damage untipped and he'll be fine, rather than that shield damage tipper/non-tipper stuff you wrote in your post. The main reason (IMO) being that Shieldbreaker is already unsafe on shield if you don't break a shield with it, and its startup time & end lag are already quite long, making it a high risk/high reward move. At the moment, it's pretty difficult to find a reason to use it other than a mixup (yet unsafe) kill move/mixup due to it being Marth's longest-ranged move/B-reverse momentum shifts because it's so generally unsafe at the moment.

Also, I believe I read your post about characters being able to too easily jump out of DB2-Up, making it a pretty unviable setup move/provides less mixup options at higher percents. Would the knockback changes you proposed fix this issue? Or would a little bit of an end lag buff be necessary for that?

==

EDIT: Small thing to maybe add to your post: can we make Marth not move himself forward if he does consecutive UTilts & FTilts?

Vipermoon · Feb 14, 2016

ElementUser said:
If there was a Marth that I would dream of to be in Smash 4, Vipermoon's Marth with those buffs would be it. I can only dream...

In a nutshell, what people generall want from Marth is for him to feel more like Melee (pretty much everything that Vipermoon tweaked), all while not being at the same level as Melee since Marth still has to fit in the balance & game mechanic baseline in Smash 4.

==

Question though - what would happen to Lucina's Shieldbreaker shield damage values if Marth only gets a buff at the tip? I still think Marth should just get like a +3 shield damage untipped and he'll be fine, rather than that shield damage tipper/non-tipper stuff you wrote in your post. The main reason (IMO) being that Shieldbreaker is already unsafe on shield if you don't break a shield with it, and its startup time & end lag are already quite long, making it a high risk/high reward move. At the moment, it's pretty difficult to find a reason to use it other than a mixup (yet unsafe) kill move/mixup due to it being Marth's longest-ranged move/B-reverse momentum shifts because it's so generally unsafe at the moment.

Also, I believe I read your post about characters being able to too easily jump out of DB2-Up, making it a pretty unviable setup move/provides less mixup options at higher percents. Would the knockback changes you proposed fix this issue? Or would a little bit of an end lag buff be necessary for that?

==

EDIT: Small thing to maybe add to your post: can we make Marth not move himself forward if he does consecutive UTilts & FTilts?

Lucina can get a +2 (25 > 27). A +3 or 2.5 (if half even exists for shield damage values) would be too high since tippers are only small areas so she shouldn't be right in between.

Melee also did it this way with the tipper. I like it, it would be really cool IMO. It can be safe to throw out sometimes, it has much less cool-down when compared to Fsmash for example.

The only jump I mentioned is jumping out in the DB1 section about how they can jump out (or something) if DB2-neutral misses due to how much knockback DB1 deals/how low DB2 strikes

I forgot about that movement stuff, thanks. I'll add it to special stuff.

kro_ · Feb 16, 2016

Pugwest said:
Nothing would change since our Pro/Top tier players always space extremely well and only land tippers anyway.

But if I had to say a change would occur then spiking would be easier.

That's a pretty stupid thing to say, isn't it?

SirLink · Feb 19, 2016

Vipermoon64 said:
You know what's hilarious? This thread's title paired with the fact that 1.1.4 did that exact thing!

Anyway, time for my new post on my ideal, solo-viable Marth. The 1.1.4 edition.

(For those that don't know exactly what hitboxes are, Melee Marth is completely covered in them. Enjoy: http://smashboards.com/threads/complete-marth-hitboxes-and-frame-data.285324/)

As you can see in the patch notes (http://smashboards.com/threads/1-1-4-patch-notes.430023/), Marth had his hitboxes moved outwards for Jabs, Ftilt, Dtilt, Nair, Fair, and Bair. It was mostly the sword's tipper hitbox but sometimes it was also the sourspot. This increases range and makes tippers easier at the same time because by moving the tipper away from the sourspot, you get less overlay between them. The hitboxes now tend to go past the sword and some tippers are just too easy. I'm going to nerf some of these while at the same time adjust the others because (only since the patch) there is a lot of inconsistency in his moveset which, frankly, is bad game design.

Jab 2: Tipper X-axis position 7 > 7.5; Sour X-axis position 2 > 2.3. This is to fix the issue where you get tipper Jab 1 but Jab 2 is out of range so it misses. This will come with a slightly different sword trail to show it reaching further.

Dash Attack: Tipper X position 6.5 > 7.0

Ftilt: Tipper X position 7.7 > 7.5; Sour X position 2.5 > 2.2

Utilt: Tipper X position 6.7 > 7.0

Utilt: Both sword hitboxes' Z-axis position 0.0 > 1.0 (so the sword trail doesn't ****ing whiff an entire character)

Dtilt: Tipper X position 8.2 > actually never mind, he should keep it

Fsmash: Tipper X position 7.3 > 7.7 (for a slight Battlefield platform buff); Sour X position 2.0 > 2.4

Usmash: Sour X position 2.0 > 1.0 (this tipper is way too hard due to a large sourspot hitbox size)

Dsmash: Tipper X position 7.3 > 7.5

Nair 1: Tipper X position 7.7 > 7.5

Nair 2: Tipper X position 7.5 > 7.3

Fair: Tipper X position 7.7 > 7.5

Bair: Tipper X position 7.7 > 7.5; Sour X position 2.5 > 2.2

Uair: Tipper X position 6.7 > 7.2; Sour X position 2.0 > 1.7 (tipper is also too hard on this but I can't move things around too much because tipper Uair does 13% and kills early now)

Dair: Tipper X position 6.7 > 7.2; Sour X position 2.0 > 2.5, Spike Y position -3.0 > -2.5 (moved the spiking hitbox down so that the other changes don't make it harder to get)

Dair: The hitbox IDs of the vertical knockback sourspot and the horizontal knockback sourspot should switch places allowing the former to out-prioritize the latter enabling a better combo game (because in a situation when both hitboxes connect with their target, the hitbox with the lower ID number (0x0, then 0x1, 0x2, etc.) gets the hit; the same way sourspots out-prioritize tippers). There is a consequence to doing this and that would be Dairing off-stage will help your opponent recovery more often (rather than gimping them with horizontal knockback) but it's worth it.

Dancing Blade 2: Sour X position 2.0 > 1.5. It's literally impossible to get tipper DB1 into tipper DB2 (always sour) so I fixed it.

Dancing Blade 3 (Up): Tipper X position 6.5 > 7.0. Marth swings close to his body so this move can miss after the tipper 2nd upwards hit. I made it a little bigger.

Dancing Blade 3: Sour X position 2.0 > 1.5. Too hard to get the tipper in most situations (not that you wanted it; more on that in the knockback section).

Dancing Blade 3 (Down): Sour X position 14 > 12.5, Sour Y position 5.6 > 6.1. Even purposely missing DB1 and DB2, DB3 down's tipper is almost impossible to get (esp. in the air) because of the sourspot's relatively enormous hitbox and nearby positioning.

Dolphin Slash: move the sweetspot outwards until it matches the animation (THIS is one of the biggest buffs to Marth competitively, with this he can punish many more things out of shield rather than only being able to punish poorly spaced things. That's huge against top tiers who are usually safe on shield. This also improves edgeguarding).

Dolphin Slash (late hit): sword's outer hitbox X position 4.5 > 5.0 (improves edgeguarding and sharking at the ledge while making him harder to edgeguard due to more hitbox coverage).

*Hitbox sizes are in radius, not diameter
**DB stands for Dancing Blade
Most of the following are to correct his inner hitboxes against small characters.

Jab 1, Jab 2, Dash Attack, Ftilt, Utilt, Fsmash, Dsmash, Nair, Uair, Dair, all of Dancing Blade: Bone 0x16 (or in decimal form, 22) hitbox size 3.0 > 3.5 (or for most of DB: 3.5 > 4.0). This is not including Fair and Bair (already at 3.5), Dtilt and Usmash (don't use 0x16). Bone 0x16 covers Marth's hand to elbow. I made it so every attack that mounts a hitbox on this Bone gets the same hitbox size as the ones on the sword (sword is called 0x3ea or 1002 in decimal form). It's nowhere near the inner hitbox luxury thattake/took pleasure in but it should make him feel just a little bit more like them and at the very least, stuff won't miss as often.

Dair: Spike hitbox size 4.3 > 4.5

All grabs: His grabs should have just a little bit larger hitboxes because he's Marth.

Fully charged Shield Breaker: Hitbox sizes 2.5 > 3.0 (I have no idea why partial/uncharged SB has them at 3.0 while this is 2.5 but I fixed it)

Before I explain, this one will happen for sure...
Jab 1: Frame 4 hitboxes added with 1.0.0 Marth knockback angles and values, effectively giving him a "jab lock frame" to revive his lost Jab Lock. Jab had a frame 4 in previous games and frame 4's positioning is just perfect for reaching knocked-down characters.

Anyway, either they tone down his late and/or early sword trail animations or they allow hitboxes to last longer. One route will buff the character; both routes will fix the character. Win-Win.

Moves that should last 1 frame longer (the new last frame): Jab 2 (frame 6), Ftilt (12), Utilt (13), Fair (9), Uair (10), Dair (14), Counter's Attack (8; including intangibility).

Moves that have misleading trails: Jabs, Dash Attack, Ftilt, Utilt, Fsmash, Fair, Bair, Uair, Dair, DB1, Counter

Changes are underlined so they are easier to notice in this wall of text.
BKB = base knockback, KBG = growth knockback / knockback growth

Dash Attack: 12 > 13% tipper because 12% is out of place among Marth's damage buffs (plus 12 is too close to the 10% sour) and 55 > 60 knockback growth (KBG) to match the 9% sour-sourspot. It still wouldn't be that strong (still not much growth) but pitifully weak would no longer be an adjective. I guess we could raise the 10% sourspot's growth from 55 to 60 as well but that really wouldn't matter either way (I was just hoping we could put more reward on the tipper in general so yeah).

Utilt: 5, 6, 9% > 6, 7, 10% and 65 base knockback (BKB) > 55 BKB; late hit 52 BKB > 45 BKB. Utilt still has two more issues... 1. Too little damage and 2. Too high knockback at low percents. So we raise the damage and, based on a knockback calculation I did, compensate by reducing BKB so it both isn't stronger and combos at a larger percent range.

Dsmash (front): 8 and 12% > 10 and 14%. What is the point of a frame 6 Smash attack? To punish things, yes! This Dsmash has early start-up so its primary use is to punish rolls, spot dodges, and guys that hit Marth's shield. Why don't we use it? Um, hello!? 8% and super weak! Any other punish was better but not anymore.

Fair (tipper): 11.5% > 11%. This is too strong and makes Bair a little less useful. Plus I buffed the landing lag and autocancel. Sour still does 8%.

Bair: Tipper 12.5% > 13% and KBG 95 > 92. Sour 9 > 9.5% and KBG unchanged. There are lot of 13% Bairs in this game, a tipper deserves it. The KBG nerf to 92 in this case, makes the knockback exactly the same at practically any percent (according to a calculator). How convenient. So it isn't stronger. The sourspot is stronger though but it's nowhere near as strong as Brawl's sourspot.

Dair (sour): 12 > 11% (undo the buff) to put some distance between this and the 14% tipper. It'll combo for longer ranges too. Just another tipper reward change (especially when you're trying to hit shields, more reason to space the tipper).

Dair (tipper): BKB 20 > 30. Because tipper Dair's knockback is stupid low. Just giving you more reward if you for some reason need to use this instead Bair. This change is also to match what I'm about to do to Dair spike's knockback.

Dair (spike): 15 > 14% (another undo) they thought this is what Dair spike needed but it has no reason to do more damage than the tipper. What Dair spike really needs is...

Dair (spike): BKB 20 > 30. In Brawl and Melee, Dair had a lot more base knockback allowing for earlier kills and safer useage on stage. This spike is ****in hard (relatively speaking) to get so it should be killing when we do get it in a game where recoveries are really good.

Fthrow and Dthrow: 100 and 95 BKB reduced to 80 BKB for both. KBG on Dthrow 50 > 60. Like I said before, Marth doesn't need a great grab game to be a threat (look at Cloud). This BKB reduction does nothing about Dthrow's end lag or much about Fthrow's DI-away issue so they still won't be very good but at least he can threaten shields better with some low percent throw stuff. For throws that do 4% or 5%, he really needs more reward. The KBG nerf on Dthrow is to avoid kill confirms. Fun fact, now Dthrow has the same knockback values as Bthrow.

Shield Breaker: Tipper's bonus shield damage 25 > 30. Undo the shield damage nerf for the tipper only. Puts some skill into breaking shields while at the same time allowing a move called Shield Breaker to breaks shields (what kind of knucklehead nerfs the shield breaking aspect but allows the OP kill power?).

Dancing Blade 1: Tipper KBG 75 > 50. Sourspot KBG 75 > 70. Tipper DB1 is messed up. Because it does more damage with the same KB and sends opponents straight up, it's very easy to miss DB2 (DB2 animation is angled way low at its tip) at even low percents (and then get punished from a fast aerial, perfect shield, roll, jump or something else before DB3). And if you have rage, forget about it. What kind of tipper reward is that? I can't help but to space it well only to be reminded that I did it wrong!

Dancing Blade 2 (Up): BKB for all 30 > 25. KBG for Sourspots should be 70 > 60, Tipper stays at 50. This is notorious for doing too much knockback on anyone except the highest gravity characters. In general for Dancing Blade, I'm sure to not do anything drastic. He can't have OP Brawl DB (where the combo hits do almost no KBG) because this is a game where the average power level of a character is lower. So DB isn't free but it's a little bit more functional. He needs a consistent-ish punish.

Dancing Blade 3 (Up): BKB and KBG on Tipper for only frame 8 should both be 40 > 50. Everything else is good. The tipper has weak KBG but that usually still works out fine for frames 9 and 10. Frame 8 hits very low to the ground so for a better chance at getting tipper DB4 (up) you simply have to raise knockback. If you don't get the tipper, you have to wait a little bit before inputting the 4th swing. I'm keeping it this way to separate good Marth's from bad.

Dancing Blade 3: Tipper BKB 40 > 50, KBG 35 > 40. This move's knockback is horrendous. It doesn't put you in tumble until about 200%. Where's the tipper reward if it doesn't set-up for the tipper 4th hit? Now it has the same numbers as the sourspots only with switched KBG and BKB.

Dancing Blade 3 (Down): knockback angle 44 > 40 degrees. Unless it's a fast faller, this new DB3-down angle (from 1.1.3) sends them a little too high.

Aerial Dancing Blade 3 (Down): knockback angle 44 > 270 (sourspot) and 44 > 225 degrees (tipper). BKB 50 > 70, KBG 28 > 40. Yes, I brought back the spike (but aerial only like Brawl; Melee was both). There are two hitboxes on this move, one will send you downwards diagonally, the other straight down. I took Heavy Blade's DB3-down knockback, switched the base and growth, and there it is. Should be just barely enough to provide tumble knockback. You'd never truly get the chance to use this without fishing for it but I want it I want it I want it.

Dolphin Slash (late): 7% hitboxes BKB 20 > 30. These should do more base KB. Marth needs this. It makes following up out of Dthrow safer. It makes sharking through the stage safer. It lets him attempt gimps earlier (you need tumble knockback to stage spike). The proof is in Crescent Slash. That move is always safe on hit because the sourspot deals tumble knockback at 0% (but that one has 60 BKB, we can't go that far).

Jab 2: Total frames 28 > 25. I don't know why they reduced Jab 1's to this but not Jab 2's. Jab 2 comes out faster too (frame 3 vs 5) than Jab 1 so that's even more cooldown. Anyway, now it'll set-up tech chases a lot better and it's safer in general.

Dash Attack: Total frames 49 > 44. I thought 5 frames were good to make this Dash Attack decent. Melee is at 39 frames so I definitely didn't go too far.

Dtilt: Total frames 23 > 22. Why 22? Many small reasons. 21 is like Brawl but it didn't seem fair to do that since its range is so huge now (Melee is 19 btw and has comparable range to 1.1.4). Dtilt to DB is popular and since they took a frame off the start-up of DB, why not compliment that with Dtilt? Roy's lower range Dtilt is 21. Lastly, I wanted to put more frames between Dtilt and Marth's Jabs.

Usmash: Total frames 58 > 57. Why 57? Fsmash is at 51. Dsmash is at 54. Now Usmash can continue the sequence...

Dancing Blade 1: Total frames 41 > 40. They took a frame off start-up, do end lag too! Furthermore, Cloud's Cross Slash 1 is at 40.

Dancing Blade 4 (Down): Total frames 71 > 65 like Brawl. Better for tech chases and hitting shields (though it still wouldn't be that safe). Melee is at 60 but I thought that's too drastic.

AC

Nair: Pre-hitbox AC 1-3, then on 43 and beyond. Up from on 1 and on 47. It doesn't have to AC in a short hop so 43 is the number (Marth lands on F42 of his SH). Hopefully this enables full hop fast fall. I'm increasing pre-hitbox AC around the same amount for all aerials (I chose Uair as the improvement limit as its hitbox is frame 5 so it can't increase more than 2 frames).

Fair: 36 > 32. No pre for Fair since it didn't have any in Brawl either. 32 because not only does it match Bair, but Corrin's Fair ends 2 frames earlier and ACs on 30. So Marth, naturally, should be 2 behind.

Bair: 1-2 > 1-4, 32 unchanged.

Uair: 1-2 > 1-4, 38 unchanged. I decided to lower Landing Lag instead (to make short hop fast fall better) and that since Marth later does a flip and he just finishes that flip at about F38, it wouldn't be fair physically to say he ACs during his flip.

Dair: 1-2 > 1-5, 55 > 48. I decided to inherit the entirety of Brawl/Melee Dair's AC windows.

LL

For landing lag, I wanted the same total landing frames (of all aerials combined) as Roy. In this patch, he is 6 frames ahead of us (for reference, last patch Roy was worse by 8). So we have 6 credits...

Nair: Unchanged.

Fair: 16 > 15 frames. Like Melee without L cancel.

Bair: Unchanged.

Uair: 14 > 12 frames. I want another low LL aerial and this would give dominance over Roy's 14 the way that Roy Fair's 13 dominates our Fair. This will make falling Uair combos more consistent and safer to try.

Dair: 24 > 21. We need to have a reason to land with Dair. It feels like Bair or something is almost always better. You saw how I swapped hitbox IDs up there on Dair for combos? This will make those combos way more consistent.

Dolphin Slash: 20 > 26 frames if landing during freefall/helpless. I can explain. Special moves that put you in freefall/helpless (the fall when your character flashes and can't do anything) are technically able to have different landing lags at different times. That is, landing before the special's animation ends vs. landing after the special's animation ends (when you're in freefall). If Marth lands before it ends, that means he either went slightly above the ledge or reached a platform like Battlefield's top. He can keep 20 frames there (and that 20 is from a buff in a previous patch; used to be 23). If he lands later in freefall he now takes 26 because doesn't it make sense to take more landing lag if you fell further down? I heavily buffed DS's range so when Marth uses this move on stage (likely from out of shield), he better be sure it'll hit because landing is more risky now. Still way lower than Melee/Brawl's 34 frames.

Alternate LL

Still have 6 credits but this time I'm doing it more traditional.

Nair: 12 > 11

Fair: 16 > 15

Bair: 17 > 16

Uair: 14 > 12

Dair: 24 > 23

DS freefall: 20 > 26 (as explained above)

I could have gone harder on the landing lag (e.g. focus more on Fair) but I don't want to: 1 invalidate any characters and 2 make him too aerial focused

Marth's run speed at 1.785 is 0.015 less than Melee's 1.8. Let's flip flop. Now it's at 1.815. Something that small is not going to make a difference but hey we passed Bowser! It's some form of compensation for what I'm about to do to his walk.

Marth needs a better accelerating walk! Sonic, ZSS, Sheik, and Fox's walks... despite having slightly slower walks are better because acceleration is key. No one will give you time to get to top speed. Increase walking acceleration value from 0 > 0.5 (the highest are at 0.1).

Grounded Dolphin Slash's intangibility frames: 4-5 > 3-5

I'd create a 1/1000 chance that Marth will say "Let's Dance" in Engrish with the actual voice actor (this was an unused sound file in Melee) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vbWBbewqI. The 1/1000 chance will be applied to the start-up of Dancing Blade, Counter's Attack, and all three Taunts. Just something funny to experience every blue moon, especially if heard on stream or at tourney.

Counter's quotes will be brought back! Saying "There it is!", "I saw through it/your attack!", and "Like I'd let you!" in Japanese is WAY cooler than some random grunt.

Dolphin Slash should have a 1/10 chance of Marth yelling "Twah!" just like Melee because it sounds cool in Melee

IMO, Hitlag modifiers on tippers should go from 1.25 > 1.2 while Smash attack tippers should be 1.5 > 1.3. Shield Breaker goes from 1.0 > 0.8 and 1.6 > 1.3. Especially with how much damage he's been doing, this is just me thinking tipper hitlag is overdone.

Remove all forward movement that comes from acting out of Ftilt and Utilt. In my opinion, Marth should just stand where I want him to stand. You don't see Marth taking an extra step forward in Fire Emblem do you? To successfully make this change, you may have to speed up Utit and Ftilt animations (while keeping the interruptible frame the same), because that is the reason for these movements. With how many times they took frames off Ftilt and Utilt over the patches, we saw Marth move forward further every time due to how early he's been interrupting his animations. Brawl and Melee have way faster animations on these moves.

Take 5 frames off the DB1 to DB2 timing window (another buff undo) for aerial DB1 (so we stop doing DB-up suicides off-stage when going for Dolphin Slash)

In conclusion, I tried to give him gradual improvements in every aspect of his character. Not only does this create a 'finished product' feeling but it also ensures that we won't be invalidating any characters like previous Marths obviously did. I would estimate that this Marth is somewhere in high tier but with nothing too stupid/overtuned like the rest of them have. Because his moveset is so solid, he won't really have bad MUs (nothing that's a big deal at least) and that is what would make him solo-viable.

Edit: changed a few details, added stuff

Well, I can definitely say that I'd love to play this Marth you envisioned here. I'll go into more detail for each section...

I fully agree with the sentiment that they created inconsistency in his moveset with the recent changes. While the range increase is nice, moves like Fair really didn't need a bigger tipper hitbox as any Marth main should be getting those very consistently anyway. Meanwhile, they didn't touch the two moves that are too hard to tipper, which are Uair and Usmash. I've gotten better at tippering Uair since the patch because of the increased reward but it's still hard to get consistently. Just a bit easier and it'd have a good balance considering its kill power. Tipper Usmash almost never happens in a real match and isn't worth the risk, so that one really needs the change too.

Your proposal for Dair sounds interesting, it would be cool if it could be a decent combo tool. I'd trade ability to gimp horizontally for that too.

Out of these, I love the Dolphin Slash changes the most. It would definitely be a game-changer for Marth, like you said, you can only punish with DS OoS if your opponent's spacing is poor. I was fighting a pretty good Fox yesterday, a DS like that would have been great because his stuff was so safe on shield.

Some very appreciated fixes of issues that bring up that feeling of an unfinished character every time it happens. I get that they're going for the whole precise spacing archetype with Marth but stuff missing like it does goes too far. We already have sourspots to punish poor spacing (although they are quite useful in their own ways), for me this is one of Marth's biggest design flaws.

I second the slightly increased grab hitboxes, it would be more than fair given the rather small reward of his grab game.

"Anyway, either they tone down his late and/or early sword trail animations or they allow hitboxes to last longer. One route will buff the character; both routes will fix the character. Win-Win." Hah, I love this because it's so true. We wouldn't be expecting a lot of our hitboxes to last longer if the sword trails weren't as misleading as they are. It looks fancy, sure, but it creates unneeded false expectations.

An early "Jab Lock" frame 4 on Jab1 sounds amazing. The Jab change is one of the best changes since 1.0.0 because you can do so many cool things with it, but I'm definitely missing a jab lock to play with.

A lot of good stuff in here, Dash Attack, Dsmash and Utilt would be so much better that way without being too good. I agree with the undo on Dair, it almost feels like they buffed the damage values to distract people from its real issues. Given its difficulty and risk, it should kill beyond early percents no matter how good a recovery is.

I'm not quite sure what I would prefer, your throw changes or some more damage on them with similar knockback. I'm still surprised every time I get thrown by characters that do double to nearly triple our damage with them, it feels so unreal as a Marth main. More damage would make people respect our grab more at mid-high percents, way before we can finish them with Uthrow. Right now all you get is a bit of percent and some stage control, just feels a bit underwhelming to me.

Shield Breaker needs a change to justify its name, for sure. Having the full 30 bonus shield damage on a tipper would be fantastic. A medium charged Shield Breaker could still fail to break a shield like this, but then we'd just have to focus more on spacing it with less charge to get a break, instead of charging and hoping they put up their shield out of instinct/panic (wishful thinking). It would reward skillful usage, as it should be.

YES, someone who also wants the DB-Down 3 spike back (seriously, a spike can't get much more badass than this). I wouldn't even care about how practical it would be, I'd fish for that and it would be worth it.

Increased knockback on Dolphin Slash in addition to the previous changes would make it a very versatile move, I'm all for that.

Seeing the Melee values on some of these in contrast to Smash 4 is quite amusing. You're right with going for something in the middle there, even if it's for an imaginary Marth, we still want a fair character here. Jab 2, Dash Attack and DB-Down 4 need these the most to make them more useful.

I'd be happiest with the suggested values for Uair and Dair. The change to Dolphin Slash is more than justified given the other buffs it got.

Out of all of these things, Counter quotes have top priority. They didn't re-record his other lines, so it makes absolutely zero sense for them to be absent. From a practical perspective, I'd definitely welcome the walking acceleration. Marth's walk is really good, but in practice it takes too long for him to get going.

I see why you'd think the tipper hitlag is overdone, though I'm not sure I'd really want that to be changed because it greatly contributes to the satisfaction of landing them.

I get the DB-Up style suicide more with Roy than Marth. Either he has a different timing window on his DED that's throwing me off or I just panic because Roy drops like a rock. Correct me if I'm wrong, would be interesting to know.

Phew, still took a good while to read this, imagine the changes and possibilities and write down anything notable that came to my mind. Well worth the time, though!

Vipermoon · Feb 19, 2016

SirLink said:
Well, I can definitely say that I'd love to play this Marth you envisioned here. I'll go into more detail for each section...

I fully agree with the sentiment that they created inconsistency in his moveset with the recent changes. While the range increase is nice, moves like Fair really didn't need a bigger tipper hitbox as any Marth main should be getting those very consistently anyway. Meanwhile, they didn't touch the two moves that are too hard to tipper, which are Uair and Usmash. I've gotten better at tippering Uair since the patch because of the increased reward but it's still hard to get consistently. Just a bit easier and it'd have a good balance considering its kill power. Tipper Usmash almost never happens in a real match and isn't worth the risk, so that one really needs the change too.

Your proposal for Dair sounds interesting, it would be cool if it could be a decent combo tool. I'd trade ability to gimp horizontally for that too.

Out of these, I love the Dolphin Slash changes the most. It would definitely be a game-changer for Marth, like you said, you can only punish with DS OoS if your opponent's spacing is poor. I was fighting a pretty good Fox yesterday, a DS like that would have been great because his stuff was so safe on shield.

Some very appreciated fixes of issues that bring up that feeling of an unfinished character every time it happens. I get that they're going for the whole precise spacing archetype with Marth but stuff missing like it does goes too far. We already have sourspots to punish poor spacing (although they are quite useful in their own ways), for me this is one of Marth's biggest design flaws.

I second the slightly increased grab hitboxes, it would be more than fair given the rather small reward of his grab game.

"Anyway, either they tone down his late and/or early sword trail animations or they allow hitboxes to last longer. One route will buff the character; both routes will fix the character. Win-Win." Hah, I love this because it's so true. We wouldn't be expecting a lot of our hitboxes to last longer if the sword trails weren't as misleading as they are. It looks fancy, sure, but it creates unneeded false expectations.

An early "Jab Lock" frame 4 on Jab1 sounds amazing. The Jab change is one of the best changes since 1.0.0 because you can do so many cool things with it, but I'm definitely missing a jab lock to play with.

A lot of good stuff in here, Dash Attack, Dsmash and Utilt would be so much better that way without being too good. I agree with the undo on Dair, it almost feels like they buffed the damage values to distract people from its real issues. Given its difficulty and risk, it should kill beyond early percents no matter how good a recovery is.

I'm not quite sure what I would prefer, your throw changes or some more damage on them with similar knockback. I'm still surprised every time I get thrown by characters that do double to nearly triple our damage with them, it feels so unreal as a Marth main. More damage would make people respect our grab more at mid-high percents, way before we can finish them with Uthrow. Right now all you get is a bit of percent and some stage control, just feels a bit underwhelming to me.

Shield Breaker needs a change to justify its name, for sure. Having the full 30 bonus shield damage on a tipper would be fantastic. A medium charged Shield Breaker could still fail to break a shield like this, but then we'd just have to focus more on spacing it with less charge to get a break, instead of charging and hoping they put up their shield out of instinct/panic (wishful thinking). It would reward skillful usage, as it should be.

YES, someone who also wants the DB-Down 3 spike back (seriously, a spike can't get much more badass than this). I wouldn't even care about how practical it would be, I'd fish for that and it would be worth it.

Increased knockback on Dolphin Slash in addition to the previous changes would make it a very versatile move, I'm all for that.

Seeing the Melee values on some of these in contrast to Smash 4 is quite amusing. You're right with going for something in the middle there, even if it's for an imaginary Marth, we still want a fair character here. Jab 2, Dash Attack and DB-Down 4 need these the most to make them more useful.

I'd be happiest with the suggested values for Uair and Dair. The change to Dolphin Slash is more than justified given the other buffs it got.

Out of all of these things, Counter quotes have top priority. They didn't re-record his other lines, so it makes absolutely zero sense for them to be absent. From a practical perspective, I'd definitely welcome the walking acceleration. Marth's walk is really good, but in practice it takes too long for him to get going.

I see why you'd think the tipper hitlag is overdone, though I'm not sure I'd really want that to be changed because it greatly contributes to the satisfaction of landing them.

I get the DB-Up style suicide more with Roy than Marth. Either he has a different timing window on his DED that's throwing me off or I just panic because Roy drops like a rock. Correct me if I'm wrong, would be interesting to know.

Phew, still took a good while to read this, imagine the changes and possibilities and write down anything notable that came to my mind. Well worth the time, though!

Now that I have time to reply...

Thank you.

The way I see it is Marth's throws do the same damage they did in Melee and Brawl and it wouldn't make sense for a simple throw to do as much damage as some sword strikes. 20 less knockback on Fthrow should keep it comboing for a while (Fthrow Nair at low percents into even more stuff) and we have this buffed Dancing Blade for the rest (as long as you use it correctly like spacing tippers and whatever else I set-up). Dthrow will get the most damage against fresh stocks. Marth can be a lot more creative.

It used to have 30 and with that combined with 9% damage, it should only need to charge 2 or 3% more to break full shields just like it used to. It's not even about that; I'm doing this more to break the common barely-damaged shields without charge because if there isn't charge they probably can't react/act against it). It won't be easy though. Shields make you hurtbox bigger so the tipper may be able to reach a shield but if there isn't a shield it'll miss entirely and you get punished. On the other hand, you may accidentally space the tipper so that it hits their body but when the shield comes up (like you read it's going to), you get the sourspot due the wide hurtbox.

Yeah I wanted some more love for DS as I've always been jealous of how safe Crescent Slash's sourspot was on top of all of its invincibility and large range. Truly a broken custom move when you combine it with the air grab release combo.

If you want to see more, the Melee moveset is linked in the beginning of the post (incase you didn't already take a look) and keep in mind that IASA is the frame after the last frame (aka the 1st frame of your interruption).

Reducing the tipper hitlag will also give people less of a chance to DI correctly which is a big deal. That's not why I did it though. Like I said, his moveset was because compared to the first Marth of Smash 4 (and my god what a horrible Marth it was), he is doing A LOT more damage across the board and damage is the main contributor (other than the modifier which isn't simply multiplication btw) in the hitlag formula.

IIRC, Roy never received the Fspecial window changes Marth did. He still has a 5 frame smaller window across the board ground and air. When I remember, I'll test it to make sure (you can easily tell because in Marth's case he is able to input the next attack even on the last couple of frames of the last one). Not that you have a reason to use that move off-stage with Roy. You reminded me of something that I mentioned in my 1.1.3 write-up but forgot to put here. I want DB1 in the air to stall a little bit better. Marth isn't very good at landing so I'd like it if the first use pretty much resets his fall speed while consecutive DB1s stall less and less (maybe 3 maximum until it stops stalling.) I'll add that now.

Thanks for reading. Eventually I will actually make this Marth once I find that I have enough free-time to learn how to hack my Smash 3DS like others have done (there are already some crazy "what if" character changes all over youtube).

Kil3r · Feb 20, 2016

Vipermoon64 said:
You know what's hilarious? This thread's title paired with the fact that 1.1.4 did that exact thing!

lol it's been a few months since I have been able to smash. The changes reminded me of this thread. They even added my dsmash buff idea:

Kil3r said:
I think end lag on d-smash really needs a huge buff here.

And then 10 frames taken off of dsmash.

Sakurai... Is that you?

BozzMac · Feb 20, 2016

I see a lot discussion going on about what buffs you guys would like Marth to have, but not much going about the buffs he just received. I know people talked about the buffs he got but not many people are talking about how this changes Marth. I've been playing 1.14 Marth a lot and I have to say this character feels really solid to me. Ftilt and Utilt getting three frames shaved off makes his neutral spacing and combo game so much better. So long as you don't throw out either tilt in the wrong direction (like after an opponent crosses you up and you don't expect it) you're fine. Most characters can't punish our tilts on reaction now. Ftilt's range is so much better thanks to Marth scooting forward now and the tipper hitbox increase so we can pressure a lot better with this move. I think we also can combo off of Ftilt now. Sour Ftilt on an aerial opponent at low percent can lead into another Ftilt or Dtilt if they fall fast enough. I used to instinctively go for Dtilt after an Ftilt but would always miss thanks to Dtilt's poor range. Now our Dtilt is much better so anti air Ftilt to Dtilt works now and I'm so happy! Also reverse Ftilt to Ftilt seems to be a thing but good luck hitting with the back hit of Ftilt. I think that's something even a top player wouldn't be able to do consistently but who knows, with proper knowledge of where the hitboxes are on Ftilt and with good spacing you might be able to do it often. Dtilt covering the ledge better also seems to help with edge guarding, I've been landing dtilt at the ledge a lot more now. Utilt is money, it's so good now. Back hit of utilt combos into whatever you want at 25-40%. Utilt to Fsmash, Utilt to Utilt, Utilt to Bair, Uair, and even Dolphin slash all work so much better now. I wish they buffed Utilt's active frames and damage but oh well, the move is more than good enough right now. Fair also KO's so much better now.

I've always been a tilt based Marth so I hope this patch makes everyone realize how great our tilts are. The one thing I don't like how our Fsmash got no love. Ftilt has better coverage, comes out 2 frames earlier, has more range, end 18 frames earlier, the tipper is so much easier to hit, and tipper ftilt KO's around the same time as sour Fsmash. I think Fsmash KO's like 5-10% sooner. Fsmash will always do more damage but Ftilt is so much easier to land and MUCH safer to throw out. All my KO's are coming from Ftilt, Utilt, Fair, and Bair now! I mean most of them were before but now more are.

kesterstudios · Feb 20, 2016

I guess I'll give my opinion on the ideal marth:

Visual hitbox and sword trail adjustments on jab1, jab 2, dash attack, forward tilt, up tilt, forward smash, forward aerial, back aerial, up aerial, and down aerial (Marth really needs this, I mean up air's sword trail behind Marth goes right through the opponent. Ugh.)
Jab 2: Ending lag reduce 29 frames -> 26 frames (Don't understand why jab 1's ending lag was reduced but not jab 2.)
Up tilt: Tipper x hitbox made larger 6.7 -> 7.7 (At this point, I would be fine a bigger tipper hitbox.)
Dash attack:
Tipper x hitbox made larger 6.5 -> 7.5 (Dash attack is bad, this move needs buffs.)
Ending lag reduce 50 frames -> 45 frames
Down smash: Damage increase 8%/12% -> 9%/13% (hit 1) (+1 damage would be enough for me, but +2 would be nice too.)
Neutral aerial:
Damage increase 7% -> 7.5% (hit 2, base) (2nd base hit of nair is more powerful.)
Damage reduce 5% -> 4.5% (hit 1, tip) (To compensate, 1st tipper hit deals slightly less damage.)
Forward aerial:
Hitbox duration increase frames 6-8 -> frames 6-9 (Fair needs this.)
Landing lag reduce 16 frames -> 14 frames (Fair has crap auto canceling, so landing lag should be slightly better.)
Damage reduce 11.5% -> 11% (tip) (To compensate for fair's buffs.)
Back aerial: Damage reduce 12.5% -> 12% (tip) (Because fair tipper's damage is reduced.)
Up aerial:
Tipper x hitbox made larger 6.7 -> 7.7 (Don't understand why all aerials but uair and dair got range buffs.)
Damage reduced 13% -> 12.5% (tip) (To compensate for the larger hitbox.)
Down aerial:
Tipper x hitbox made larger 6.7 -> 7.7 (Again, don't understand why all aerials but uair and dair got range buffs.)
Damage reduce 12%/15% -> 11%/14% (base/tip meteor) (We really didn't need the damage buff, except for the sour tipper.)
Forward throw: Knockback reduce 100 bkb -> 80 bkb (Makes it a better combo throw.)
Down throw: Damage reduce 5% -> 4% (Lower damage makes it a better combo throw)
Up throw:
Damage increase 4% -> 5% (The most powerful of Marth's throw should do the most damage.)
Knockback reduce 70 bkb -> 60 bkb (Knockback slightly compensated.)
Dancing Blade: Multiple changes to make the hits connect better (So basically anything, less lag, more range, etc.)
Counter: Marth talks again when doing his counter (I miss this so much.)

Vipermoon · Feb 21, 2016

BozzMac Ftilt's range isn't better because Marth scoots forward. This is because he ONLY scoots forward with Utilt and Ftilt after he buffers another move out of them.

Since I've posted this^^, I've been adding and doing other things to it.
Here's some patch notes of the patch that I did to the patch notes...

Intro

Added some stuff like talking about design

Hitbox Positions

Changed hitbox positions of Uair again
Added Dancing Blade 2, 3-up, 3, 3-down tipper hitbox position changes

Hitbox Sizes

Included Fsmash, Dsmash, and DB in my widespread inner hitbox size increase

Damage and Knockback

Added damage changes to Fair and Bair
Added extra knockback growth to Fthrow and Dthrow after realizing how broken I made them during later calculations (read more on it in the post if you want)
Added DB3 and DB3-up knockback changes
Revived the holy DB3-down spike

Total Frames

Added animation change to Usmash's section
Further reduced DB1 total frames to match Cloud's CS1 cooldown rather than his total frames. I also sped up the animation a bit to match because it really is a slow animation.

AC and LL

Added autocancel description
Increased my "total landing lag credits" to 8 and used it towards back air (Roy's Bair too)
Increased landing lag to the freefall animation of DS only (explained it up there if you don't get it)
Removed the alternate landing lag section as I'm now confident in the original

Special

Added successful shield breaks to the "Let's dance!" lottery
Added a Dolphin Slash Melee "Twah!" lottery
Added hitlag modifier reductions
Remembered to add the forward movement, DB timing window, and air stall sections I meant to have
Added the genius Dsmash design change I thought up of a long time ago

Conclusion

Improved the conclusion
Reworded most things, improved formatting, corrected mistakes, and changed a few little details

Vipermoon · Feb 23, 2016

I updated Dash Attack in the damage/knockback and total frames sections (and posted them below). I realized Melee Marth's Dash Attack is a beauty and going any other route would be too bland.

Dash Attack: Knockback angle for both sword hits 45° > 110°. Sourspot and sour-sourspot damage 10 and 9% > 9 and 8%. Tipper BKB 80 > 70. After much thought I decided that he wants his Melee Dash Attack. What is another tipper/dash attack that kills? He has more than enough kill moves (and more than enough horizontal knockback moves) so let's give him the Melee vertical/backwards knockback for ultra uniqueness on a DA whose animation looks like it should be doing that anyway. I went with the exact Melee angle and knockback values (kb is the same except for the tipper's base). The damage reduction is to have a tipper vs. sour damage difference in-line with the rest of his moveset (if curious, Melee's did 9, 11, or 12%). The sour-sourspot (hitbox on his arm) still has a Sakurai (361°) angle and low BKB like Melee/Brawl/S4. Of course, the end lag will be chopped off to match Melee's (for combos of course!) but we talk about that stuff in a future spoiler box. Alternative: unchanged angles with 12 > 13% for tipper and 55 > 60 knockback growth (KBG) on both sword hitboxes to make it your typical strong tipper.

Dash Attack: Total frames 49 > 39. Melee is at 39 frames (with the same animation only interrupted right before Marth stands up) so I revived it. This provides you with a similar end lag (difference between hitbox frames and end frame) as the front section of Utilt so it won't combo at Uair kill percents. Like Utilt, at low percents it'll combo into Utilt and barely combo/string into Fsmash/Usmash. It'll barely combo into Uair for a while later (thanks to low knockback growth). The sour-sourspot may string into tipper Fsmash at specific percents due to the lag reduction. This DA will bring the hype and serve a real purpose (imagine something flashy like a landing Nair or Fair > DA > tipper Usmash at low percents). The alternative DA mentioned above in the dmg/kb section would end on frame 44.

kesterstudios · Feb 23, 2016

DOUBLE POSTER!!

Vipermoon · Feb 24, 2016

That 1st one was from Saturday night and this is a thread with low traffic. I usually never double post but I couldn't get around it here.

DariusM27 I remember this one guy once triple posted in the Marth video analysis thread hahaha.

DariusM27 · Feb 24, 2016

If there is a delete comment button, I don't see it. There should be one tho

Vipermoon · Feb 29, 2016

The redesigned the hitbox position/range section, basically undoing 1.1.4's changes in that department.

This is a definite nerf to both tipper ease and range/disjoint. I had to do it though. I don't believe in making tippers too easy. If they want to increase range the right way, they can make his sword visually bigger like it is in Melee and Fire Emblem. Otherwise, hitboxes will match animations and I mean it.

To summarize what I did if you don't feel like going back to the section:
You know how in the last patch Jab's tipper position went from 6.5 > 7, an increase of 0.5? This is while Ftilt, Nair, Fair, and Bairs' tipper positions went up by 1.0 from 6.7 > 7.7? Well I gave those moves the same 0.5 increase Jab got (a decrease of 0.5 from the patch and of 0.3 from where I already had it). I could have moved the sourspot positions outward instead of moving the tipper inward, but as I have been noticing with Ftilt and Bair this patch, doing this really throws off your spacing.

I also changed my methodology for fixing Jab 2, Utilt, Fsmash, and Usmash's issues but the end result is the same. Basically, they're more clever.

Now his moveset is as consistent as before 1.1.4.

Edit: I also gave Dair tipper a 30° knockback angle instead of the typical sakurai angle. This way you could have a reason to try this off-stage instead of Bair. And if you wanted the spike but got the tipper, you have a better chance at still getting the gimp.

Edit: I decided to make tipper difficulty all exactly the same across his entire moveset because why should the sword change depending on the move? Tipper positions are all 7.3 (to match the smash attacks) with sour at 2.0 (unless not size 3.5 hitboxes; then they're adjusted accordingly).

IAmHorse · Jul 12, 2016

Honestly, i dont think it would be that helpful. It's already a somewhat generous hitbox when examine it. If anything, it might make certain combos harder to land, like weak hit FF up air into tippered upair and such. Maybe if the extra tipper hitbox extends outwards instead of replacing some of the sour-spot hitboxes, we might get certain combos to work for a few percent more.

kesterstudios · Nov 19, 2017

I feel like alot of those changes go overboard and would make him op even for prepatch Marth.

GreenTeaAddict · Dec 4, 2017

Kil3r said:
Check out the latest post to see which buff ideas are being discussed .

Side note: The goal here is to discuss buffs that would help give Marth more even matchups and put him into being just as good BUT not better than top tier characters.
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First post in thread:
Let's say the tipper hitbox increased by 5-10% how much better would he be\what tier would he be given by most players?

IMO for him to make top tier he needs that, less cooldown on fairs, and buffs to dair lag\dsmash in general. Maybe even a very small range buff.

I don't main Marth but I started playing him a nice bit more(because of Roy release) and I feel like he is missing options due to some meh moves and features. My main Falco got some serious buffs and I feel that alot of other characters deserve\will eventually receive the same treatment.

EDIT: I currently do not agree with the above idea. It sparked some discussion and for that I am happy .
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Some other topics that were talked about(These summaries can still be changed):
1. Damage and\or knockback buff to dsmash hit 2. Make dsmash hit 2 have more kill potential than fsmash due to being a much harder read (very risky) move. Quite literally every other option Marth has is better dsmash 2(when compairing endlag, framedata, damage, and knockback). Giving dsmash 2 this buff would let it have a unique but useful spot in Marth's moveset without overriding his other options. (This idea had positive reactions I think)

2. Fair speed buff. Bring back short hop double fair. This will add in other options to Marth SH (fair > uair for example). His fair will have to be respected a nice bit more. Finally, he will be able to combo fair>fair much more consistently(during punishes for example). Improving fair like this, in theory, is the key to helping marth deal with top tiers(of course without being OP). It will also not change Marth in a way that doesn't fit his playstyle\character design. (This idea had positive reactions I think)

Marth could/would go from a low A tier to a high or to a low S tier if the hitbox was more than 10. One big thing about the tipper is that it can kill with an fsmash at really any percent (above 50), it could just come out of nowhere. Another big part about it is that spiking and spacing would be 4x more easier. I think that it would be a good idea if the hitbox was slightly increased, which would most likely come with no consequences if it was only 5-10%, so some slight nerfs just to balance the buff would most likely not happen. If the tipper was buffed extremely (20-25%), there would probably be some consequences (as mentioned before). If anything were to be taken away from the buff, it would most likely be the amount of damage or the tipper or the knockback.

Locuan · Dec 4, 2017

Try not to bump old threads everyone. I'm keeping it open but please take this as a warning.

What would change if Marth Tipper was easier to hit? (General Buff Discussion)

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