@@bananaplane5494 That video doesn't reall explain it because he's measuring distance wrong. He's measuring the disjoint off of the hand, instead comparing neutral position to grabbing position hitboxes. Watching the video and compare those
@@iv624 Someone who clearly doesn't watch melee much. Also there aren't many great characters in ultimate either and given the more homogenization of the cast over the games there is even less incentive to even play a bad character than ever before lol.
I've mained Marth since Melee until Ultimate. He's always been a reliable, efficient swordfighter until now, which is pretty sad to witness. I tried to make him work, but the meta unfortunately just wasn't kind to him. I ended up switching to Chrom pre-patch and Roy afterwards. The irony is I did play some Roy in Smash 4, but _he_ was the one who was inferior and mid-to-low tier, just like in Melee. How the turntables turn.
That's because the Ultimate's engine is quite hostile against perfect spacing. They even removed perfect pivot, something Marth relied a lot to get said tippers. Jab is no longer a consistent tipper setup, everyone moves faster. The only buff that could fix him is to reintroduce perfect pivoting.
Yeah I was in the same position. I main Marth in Melee, and also mained him in Brawl and Sm4sh. Ults lack of microspacing made him impossible to play, so I struggled to find a new character. I tried all the swordies: Ike was popular early but I knew it was just early meta and his speed and recovery would be bad long term. Chroms recovery being too inconsistent. He would honestly be the strongest swordie if not for that. Roy being too boom or bust. See every top Roy being upset or getting upsets constantly. Lucina being too defensive, lacking comeback potential with no early kills, and frankly too simple and boring to fully main (did secondary her though, which she's one of the best for) Cloud who was my co-main in sm4sh being too nerfed (before he got buffed he just couldn't kill whatsoever) I ended up maining Wolf instead and I think he's the closest to Marths previous style of play from Melee to 4. He's very much about looking to use versatility and above average range to outplay the opponent, with the occasional early kill setup from hard reads or if the opponent massively blunders. I see why Leo plays Byleth because she's similar in that way, just worse neutral but better range. I also think Cloud plays a similar style especially post buff seeing Spargo use him. If I played now I would likely add him back to my lineup. During covid I quit competitive ult because of the online, and though I don't play comp anymore I still watch, and frankly seeing where the game and meta developed with FP2 and stuff, I think I made the right choice. I went through Bayo in 4, I have no desire to go through Steve now lol.
The problem with making Marth's tipper a priority like Roys is that it _doesn't work._ If you made the tipper the priority hitbox then every hit would be near guaranteed to be a tipper. You'd have to be basically standing inside of Marth to get hit by the sour spot, and even then it would be difficult. Trust me... I've made Brawl moveset mods and the way hitboxes work are almost exactly the same. I once tried to give Luigi's side smash an electric sweetspot, and I had to give it lower priority otherwise every hit would be the sweetspot.
Part of the many reasons why Roy’s sweet spots feel more consistent is also the fact that, unlike Marth, some of his moves have a “middle” hitbox that is almost as strong as his sweetspot. F-Smash and F-Tilt both have that.
Another huge thing is marth roy and all variations don't have good range generically. Difference is with all the others, range doesn't matter as much. Roy doesn't need range cuz he wants to get in. Chrom and lucina don't need range cuz they can act like pseudo brawlers. But marth is still trying to fight like a swordsman and space, but so many characters have the same if not more range. So now marth tipper is a hindrance. You are trying to keep people at tipper range when they have same range or outright out range you without the tipper restrictions. Sora has a longer sword but no tipper, corrin has a longer sword but no tipper. Heck, half of zeldas moves have more range but no tipper. So the tipper is actually hurting marth cus theyre balancing him around it instead of making it a reward for keeping people out. You know how easy it is to press marth when his threat range is the same or shorter than mine?
Lucina's boring though. If I want to play a sword character and win, I'm playing Cloud. If I'm just playing for fun, it's Marth. Lucina doesn't really have anything special, so it's really easy to read most Lucina players.
Pretty much. I have a theory that people would see Marth as a much better character and probably have reached a higher skill ceiling with him if Lucina wasn’t literally just the same character with more consistent and reliable hitboxes. The faster engine and loss of Marth’s reliable kill confirms from Melee and Smash 4 definitely didn’t help either
Giving Marth the sweet spot priority of Roy would "fix" things in a rather broken way. It *would* make Marth's tippers much more reliable, but it would do so by effectively turning most of his sword into the "sweet spot". Marth might even be able to connect tippers when pushing right up against larger opponents. That would throw of the design balance between Marth and Roy. Roy *has* to have his sweet spot have the highest priority, else he'd never trigger them. Marth is the opposite, giving his sweet spot the highest priority would make it so he triggers it even when he's really close. Though a possibly priority fix would be to make Marth's tipper the second lowest priority, while the hit box directly adjacent is the lowest priority. That would give Marth a bit more forgiveness, while still forcing Marth to keep his distance.
You don't even have to go that far. While it takes more effort, the hitboxes simply need to be adjusted by hand to have less overlap, rather than just slap them on the sword and letting the animation play out, especially with how janky frame interpolation is in this game.
I was going to comment something similar to this... Giving sweet spots priority on Marth would make sours really hard to hit. It would be pretty much a pure upgrade from Lucina, and everybody would likely switch to him because he's probably top 2 in the game at least lmfao
I think the bigger issue is that he lost a lot of his most reliable kill setups from Melee and Smash 4, while also not benefitting as much as Roy or Lucina from Ultimate’s faster engine. If he had at least a couple ways to reliably net kills without fishing for tippers and often suffering from Marthritis, I feel like he’d see much more consistent results
I think his tipper vs hilt hitboxes need to be less polarized for him to be successful in ult. In Brawl and Melee, landing his sourspot usually had its own merits and would even be ideal in some scenarios. Starting with sm4sh, the dmg/knockback gap became far too polarized to give his sourspot much use, and that only continued to grow in the transition to Ultimate
Sour spots still combo very well in Ultimate so I'm not sure what you mean by that. They also start tech chases at the mid percents, which is huge in this heavy-punish meta.
@@Spyder-Marth Characters who are prominent in the heavy-punish meta aren't so reliant on tech chases like Marth is. The only one would be Roy or Fox, and their tech chasing ability is far better as well as their overall kill power and damage output.
agreed, it also combines horribly with how terribly nerfed his range is in 4 and ultimate. tipper and sour spot are literally near inches apart to the point where in some cases even near-perfectly spacing an attack in some cases will just have the sour pot overlap partway through and cancel it out
Nah, they should be even more polarized so that sourspots can almost always combo and tippers can almost always kill. If sourspots had a lot less knockback growth and higher base knockback, it might make Marth as good as if not better than Lucina, because at that point, it wouldn't matter if you land a sourspot since it would just confirm into a tipper anyway. The problem isn't that Marth's tippers are too weak, nor is it that they don't combo. It's that they don't combo at higher %s so they're not always reliable, and they're sometimes too weak to get much started at lower %s, so it can be hard to get started. Marth is strongest at mid %. He struggles at high %s because his sourspots send too far and he struggles at early %s because they don't send far enough. If they fixed just one of these problems, he'd be better, and if they fixed both at the same time, he'd have all that he needs, apart from maybe a kill throw.
The risk/reward just isn't there - He's "too" fair. He's as good as you are, but in this meta where characters easily make you 2, 3, or 5x "better" than you really are, you're just volunteering to put in more effort than your opponent for less results :(
Here is the thing about melee, all of his tilts, dash attack, and most of his aerials have blade hitboxs in the middle. This blade hit box has the highest priority except for up air and down air where the tipper has the highest priority. Dolphin slash's tip also has the highest priority. Meanwhile nair, neutral b, and side b don't have a tipper mechanic. All of this vastly increases his consistency on hit. Marth's tipper hitboxes are also slightly bigger in general in melee. The bigger difference though is hitbox placement and it's effect on interpolation. In his f smash for example, the first active frame has the sword more vertical than ultimate. This means that there is less overlap in interpolated hitboxes to the second frame. The second frame has marth fully extending the blade so it is more parallel to the ground compared to the angle he is holding it in ultimate. This again makes for less overlapping when transitioning to the final active frame. Another thing that is important about melee marth is that he doesn't really need to hit tippers in the first place to get KOs. A lot of his KOs don't come from the side blast zones like in ultimate but instead from the bottom blast zone. Marth's goal is often just getting the opponent off stage to edge guard his opponent or getting a dair spike.
Marth feels like an unfinished character, ironically due to being a veteran. It seems that receiving incremental changes from game to game, games with different design philosophies, pacing, teams, etc. made all his moves balanced in unequal ways over time or added some bugs or weird stuff along the way. The more you dig into Marth’s frame data, moves damage and knockback values, hitboxes size and positioning, visuals of each move, etc. the more disparities you notice. Some moves seem bugged such as Side-B Up 4 not ever killing despite an in-game tip literally saying “this swing is excellent for netting some KOs!”. Then you look at its knockback values and they’re like 80 Base and 40 Scaling, which is completely backwards compared to all other moves, indicating the values were erroneously swapped and should have been patched. Fully Charged Neutral-B has smaller hitboxes than uncharged, which also makes no sense and seems like a bug. Back-Air is weak af relatively to Lucina. Back-Air hitboxes are also not slightly offset behind the sword like all his other moves, which makes the move whiff point blank more easily than it should to properly match the visuals. Could be for balance reason, but again it's inconsistent with his other moves. There are many more inconsistent or just illogical designs like these throughout his moveset, but these are only a few examples off the top of my head. Most are minor problems by themselves, but they add up. Now, most characters in this game probably lack that level of fine-tuning as well, including Lucina as good as she is. Thing is, those small problems are exacerbated on Marth due to being a “precision” character by design. In order for a precision character to work well, it needs precise and consistent hitboxes to work with. A lot of small smart changes here and there could have made Marth way better and consistent overall even in the “Ultimate engine”, but it seems they never took the time to polish him up.
@@Aloly0490 Yeah man it used to kill at around 125% or something like that in Smash 4. Somehow they fucked it up when modifying Side-B going into Ultimate. If you go into the Tips section for Marth in-game you’ll see the tip I’m talking about.
I think you are underestimating what reversing the hit box priority would do for marth. His tipper becomes easier to hit than even roy's middle hits. F-tilt for example becomes a garenteed tipper on most grounded opponents. In order not get hit f smash, you would literally have to be touching marth's frame or be very short.
yeah I think having the hitbox priority reversed would be HUGE for Marth. Sure the game hasn't been nice aside from that either way but it would at least help Marth a LOT.
@@houseking9211yes make him even MORE EXTREME Lolololol He’d still be fucking broken in that case. His tipper low priority is the only thing keeping him from breaking the game
Marth's "buffs" were also poorly handled. One of his best confirms was landing up air (sour) into tipper f smash from above. They made the tipper bigger on up air at the front and now it's far less safe to go for this confirm. As someone who mained Marth for over 12 years, into the first several years of ultimate, during my PR days, and finally demoted him last year cause he just isn't good enough (especially online), the way he was handled in ultimate pains me.
Marth is just too precise for what you get in return for playing him. You have to outplay your opponent basically the entire match. He's an example of "working too hard for minimal reward".
Not really. If you feel that way then you are overthinking it. You can utilize sours to land tippers with enough practice. Even so, landing tippers becomes easier the more you play Marth and learn about his hitboxes. Once you get that down, everything becomes far easier and more natural. Nowadays, I'm not worried about landing a tipper or not since the spacing and timings are now engraved into my muscle memory. The real problem is winning the game by not being predictable, which is a me problem and not a Marth problem.
@@Eggss_B He literally has one of the better match-up charts out of most characters. He does not lose to many meta characters (at least not badly). Yeah he's more difficult but he isn't THE hardest char in the game. That title would probably belong to chars like Peach. Marth is only difficult to most because nobody wants to space and just go all out aggro. Every character that focuses on spacing are not popular. Corrin and Byleth went through the same phase but are now seeing results. The same will happen to Marth thanks to Ignaize playing him at bigger tournaments.
I did a little experiment and tested out how early Marth kills compared to Pyra and Roy. The vast majority of the differences were in the single digit range, meaning that Marth gets almost no real reward for immaculate spacing, vs Roy and Pyra who can press buttons like monkeys and kill just as early. There's no mistaking that Sakurai legitimately just didn't want Marth dominating another tier list. Any other swordie will do, but not him.
Which is ironic since they purposely made characters like Ganon bad to appease casuals Meanwhile Marth just can't do anything at all regardless of competitive or casual play
Ironic since Sakurai says he doesn't like competitive, yet he makes Marth terrible in every game mode including casual play instead of at least making him good in those modes like other low tiers
Marth has been my main since melee and is the reason I got into Fire Emblem so I have a very soft spot for him. It always kinda feels like ppl just hate on him no matter what, I remember melee players I played against hating him for being OP and now ppl hate him for not being OP, it's kinda weird tbh
Honestly feel like Marth has an incomplete moveset because of side B not being reliable. In Lucina's case I can depend on it sending the opponent decently far when trying to regain advantage but with Marth I'm just tickling them. Same goes for a lot of other moves but that one stands out the most.
I really hate the down smash difference, great move to read rolls but on marth it feels like the spacing never tippers a roll read so it kills super late
@@rossstrickland1722Down-Smash is one of the many moves that should have had its tippers made easier to hit. Not to mention the damage values of the front hit are pitiful. Sour spot is literally weaker than F-Tilt makes no sense.
SideB's reliability really depends on the matchup, every different character type requires a different spacing and/or different combination, large characters are specially difficult to hit with the 4F sweetspot. But at least thinner, human characters like marth himself and his clones are free to hit with 1-2U-3F-4F (spaced so 2U hits sour). Usually that one and 1-2F-3D-4F (spaced so 3D hits either max range sour or sweet) are the more reliable ones. It can take an unreasonable amount of time for someone to get close to reliable with that move. But at least sending them up is usually a better punish than grabbing.
Ultimates engine is the problem, Marth's core design is actually insanely good and tbh, if his tippers worked perfectly I think Marth in ultimate would be hella busted, he's got so much raw power
He also lost his reliable kill confirms from Melee and Smash 4, which didn’t help him at all, especially in addition to the faster engine that benefitted Lucina and Roy much more
Collision is such an underrated topic of discussion in the conversation of just how much it actually changed 2 very similar games at first glance into 2 very different games mechanically, I think it's a significant underlying root of many problems with the game
If Marth had priority on his tippers, he'd be the best character in the game and it wouldn't be close. You would EASILY be able to memorize the inconsistent hitboxes and then easily combo tipper to tipper with no problems. I hope someone can mod this into existence!
on top of that change knockack growth to be better at low% and match up to where it is around 55% and make sourspots hit 25% less hard than lucina, he'd be insane
The tippers such as forward air never kill and that’s another problem The prevalence of hurtbox shift also hurts when trying to land tippers I’ll go by experience I used to know Marth’s tipper ranges by memory but because of hurtboxes shifting so much I get a hilt hit instead of a tipper even if I am in the right range
I recently dropped Marth for Corrin but my stint with him online was fun. I like feeling good about properly spacing tipper and it’s helped me comeback from many matches I nearly lost.
Being a Marth main in melee, the thing that sticks out the most to me is that in ult his tippers are *way stronger* while the rest of his hitboxes are *way weaker*. In melee, spacing is neat an cool, but you don’t really need to rely on it to close out a stock or get damage. It’s more a “if I get this it’s cool, if not I can still do what I need to effectively.” In ult it doesn’t feel like that and he feels much harder to get solid hits with. Couple that with recent games’ ease of recovery, difficulty of edge guarding, and ease of getting in past the tipper range, and most of what makes Marth good in Melee is just absent or inaccessible in ult, with nothing to replace it.
It's hard to play a sniper when everyone else is playing rushdown. No time or distance to line up your shots means no good shots are made. Marth also has to deal with shot deviation in the form reverse priority hitboxes and generally undesireable hitbox placement, and he's no longer being compensated with a good chaingrab. Looking at it from that perspective, he could benefit greatly from moves dedicated to either getting opponents out of his face, or leading into the tippers of specific other moves. I think his jab and dash attack would be good candidates for those kinds of changes.
And yet, playing sniper against rushdowns in a movement-heavy fps is one of the most satisfying things if you do manage to do it. Meanwhile Marth feels like your sniper had random bullet spread, so the bullets only go in the general direction of your crosshair
honestly imo the biggest issue with Marth in Ult is that his sour spot hits have absolutely no kill power and dont do enough % to feel rewarding at all. Sometimes it actually feels like you're punished for hitting with the sour spot. You might think that forward smash at 130 will kill at ledge, but it doesn't. That back air at 50 near the edge of the screen? Nope. Sure his tippers are ridiculously strong, but his sour spots are ridiculously weak. I've always been a Marth fan, but Ultimate really gutted him. Sour hits have no use anymore like they used to. Somehow Melee did the character the best due to the different directions an attack would send an opponent. Forward air tipper sends up, sour spot up tilt sends out and kills, back air sour spot barely sends anywhere and can extend combos, dancing blade sends them wherever you are, etc. Somehow his design just got less creative as the games went on. It's really a shame to see a character with a unique mechanic and gameplan get completely outshined by a clone character that lacks it.
Bro Marth’s sour spots literally have negative priority against shields and don’t reliably chain into anything while Roy’s sour spots can chain into combos, it’s tragic. I feel like they should make tippers slightly weaker, while making his sour spots slightly stronger. I’ve always felt like Lucario should’ve been handled the same way-make him less weak without aura, but less broken at high levels of aura
@@StealthFoxx_Sakurai said it's more "fun" for casuals to have polarizing characters instead of making them "all the same", but then we have literal clones and semi clones while Marth the original source material isn't even playable for casuals
Marth just feels like Sheik but with a sword. I know Sheik has some confirms and setups, but the meme about "Sheik can't kill" went on for so long for a very good reason - because it was true due to such abhorrent damage output. You hit the opponent 15 times and they end at 30% meanwhile with Wolf for example you hit the opponent 15 times and they're at 95%. Marth takes this concept into the realm of swordfighters in the sense that he just can't rack up the damage efficiently, but also can't close out stocks very well because of the tipper nonsense, and with no solid foundation or string to aim at consistently he suffers a lot. Like he's a lot of fun to play and I love that they've kept him in every title so far because I really enjoy having a character who I can look at and go "oh, I fundamentally know how to play him, even though this game's mechanics are kind of different." But with Ultimate Marth... idk man. It's hard to justify him over Lucina, even with the nostalgia goggles on. You have to play so so SO perfectly in order to get the same kind of mileage as almost any of the other swordies. To argue one of your points, you say that giving the tipper hitbox priority instead of the way it is now, would not change his overall gameplay or people's perception of him. I have to disagree pretty handily here. There are plenty of examples in video game history where a single buff or nerf completely kills a character or playstyle, or completely brings it back from the dead. The one that immediately comes to mind is that one mod for Smash Ultimate, I forget what it's called but it's like the Project M for Ultimate. Ridley is still a mid character for the most part, and so the mod devs decided to buff him a little bit by making his tail extend all the way out for his back air. This one single change rocketed Ridley to the top tiers in record time because it was basically Melee Jigglypuff bair on crack - twice the range, multi-hit, on a heavy, who has 3 jumps. If I'm remembering correctly, it's the only change to the mod that the developers have ever reverted because it was simply too strong. I think that giving tipper priority could be a way bigger buff than you're implying here. You already mention how great his frame data is compared to all the other swordies and his ground speed isn't that bad despite being floaty. A simple change could very well be what takes him over the edge and into the top tier conversation. He has a lot of potential but Nintendo simply declined this time. Really, the dream "what if" would be to change nothing else about him aside from a) giving the tippers priority, and b) unify the distance of them, aside from maybe f-tilt or something, for a little mix up. Either of these buffs would be incredible on their own, but put together Marth would rocket past Lucina, maybe Roy, and could land comfortably in S-tier. He'd have a similar matchup chart to Roy but could arguably get even more mileage out of the matchups he wins since he has overall better frame data generally, the tipper mechanic would be an immense reward, and you'd actually have strings to utilize the mechanic consistently, along with having the option to land the sour hits by keeping closer and carry the opponent across to the edge where the tipper would be most effective. Roy's upB is a surprise out of shield option and can be pretty explosive, but if Marth's tippers were all in better shape, his whole entire kit would be explosive. (This isn't to say I want Roy to be bad or anything, it's just the longtime standing comparison lol.)
Giving his tippera priority just make him broken and easy. Lucina exists for you players who want the game handed to you on a silver platter. The truth is there is some things wrong with Marth. Like his fully charged neutral b having smaller hitboxes and fair not having a hitbox at the top of its move. But overall. You're just bad at landing tippers and want an easy way out. He has better kill confirms, shield pressure and special moves compared to Lucina. That is the reward for getting good at the character. if you don't like the trade off play Lucina. Don't try to incentivize him over Lucina. That is useless and purposeless. He quite literally has no purpose if you take away his only functionality off of tipper being easy. It's a valuable trade off and it's supposed to create people who like a challenge and get rewarded from it. Not soften the blow on your ego when you realize you're not as good at the game as you thought.
@@TwinHacari lol a Marth apologist would be the one to start shit on a year old comment, doubly so being an alt. Marth's prime is gone, get over it. I was gonna write out some even bigger paragraph to argue with you about game mechanics but I realize I'm better than arguing with a smash player since I left the scene. It's never worth arguing with people like you, especially you specifically since you're awfully condescending buddy lol skimming through the rest of the comments I see you're just looking to stir the pot over an objectively mid character, so thanks for going ahead and confirming my suspicions that even this comment I'm writing is a waste of time. I didn't even play Marth when I was playing smash, and my whole entire comment is based on facts in the first half, and then a what-if presented by the video in the second. You know, participating in the comment section because I enjoyed this channel's content at the time. Participating in the conversation about the topic at hand doesn't mean I'm trying to advocate for anything or that I'm writing Sakurai angry emails every day or some shit. Believe it or not, a lot of people who watched this video and commented, arguably the majority, also do not play Marth. I'd tell you to learn some reading comprehension but again, average smash player. Anyways enjoy your weekend replying to everybody here, being an apologist for a mid character. Congrats on being the best at a character nobody cares about. Hope Sakurai sees all your hard work bro 👍 Make sure to rest them thumbs too though champ, don't want them too tired or you might go 0-4 instead of 1-3 at locals again.
The “there’s no such thing as ‘too close’ for Roy” comparison you made makes so much sense, made me have an epiphany. The points in your why “no one plays” vids are usually so sound that it discourages me to play characters due to your argument being so good. Hands down, you have some of the most interesting smash content on YT
I feel that honestly given what you seek to gain from attempting to learn marth you would be better suited learning anyone else. I feel its not unfair to call marth one of the hardest characters to approach with if not the hardest. If you play defensive against a marth, odds are you will win the matchup. It feels like given how much harder he has to work to commit to safe pressure he should be far more rewarded then he is. Sure he may still have swordie privelages when it comes to landing aerials, but there are a multide of characters who get safer aerials and they dont have to be spaced as well, not to mention that in terms of grounded spacing with moves, it could stand to be a lot better. Theres also everything mentioned in the video and smaller details that janky or bad. He's just compeletly outclassed inside and outside of his archetype. It's just a shame because i think this marth shines above all the others with how sakurai handled his, sound design, hit effects and just how ridiculous it feels kill early as this character. It leaves me feeling like a heroin addict looking for my next fix, while living in a shanty town of low tier bs.
Agree. I almost feel like if you developed the skill to use Marth, then honestly Ridley might be a better return on those skills than Marth, as Marth is now. You have better range or area on a couple equivalent tools that use everything you learned, have better offstage game and a marginally better approach, and then have the terrible, terrible things Ridley does around a ledge. Mind, Ridley is still a very fundamentally flawed character, but the strengths he does have, have similar skill requirements, and have a few complementary features Marth just doesn't have, that I feel would be more rewarding than all the times Marth doesn't really feel like working. I could be wrong, of course.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 ridley is fine but not a alternative to Marth. I've stomped just about every ridley I've fought as Marth, granted I've never fought any high seeded Ridleys. If would recommend a switch it's going to be rob, shulk, or sora. All of those characters have high skill ceiling, with early kills kills as reward for mastery.
This was inevitable, I agree that game's engine really screwed him over. Ult is so fast that it can be hard to space and sometimes you get a sourspot when it looks like a tipper. I still like playing Marth but I'll never use him in tournaments when Lucina and Corrin are right there, at least Corrin's tippers are more forgiving
You can land every tipper for a single stock. After that you’re lucky if you’re not fishing for a kill till 150%. It’s so frustrating to fish for up throw kill when in theory you should get the kill at around 40-60% with a tipper forward smash.
I'd like to add that ON TOP of everything said in this video. Marth is also unimpressive. You want a character with good spacing? Cloud has the best Bair in the game + Limit to push his gameplan. Pyra/Mythra are faster and hit harder. Shulk is busted if you put in the time to learn him. You can get away with using Wolf, Palutena and G&W as swordies because of how safe and disjointed their aerials are. All three Links can play the camping game alongside being a good spacer. Heavies like Bowser and DK have almost equally large range, but infinitely more kill power. Lucina in general is a little too fair compared to most other characters, so basically you play Marth if you accept the flaws and don't really want the multiple more enticing and fun features a bunch of other characters offer.
Personally I think a weakness of marth and something that will eventually reach lucina is how much neutral they need to win and how much right guessing they have to make in comparison to other top tiers.With other characters you usually need to win neutral a maximum of 3 times to get you to kill percent and you have either reliable kill confirms or safe kill moves.Marth and lucina have like fair to side B at 0 then everything is tech chase,edgeguard and relying on reading your opponents,other character can do 0-60s while marth and lucina need to get 3-4 consecutive reads to get opponents to 60sh percents.
It's already hitting lucina. In year 1 lucina was considered a top 5 character. Now she is considered top 25 but her win rate is low tier at best. One of her biggest problems is that she was considered good because she is one of the best edge guarders in the game. That was fine in the early meta but the meta has drastically shifted away from edge guarding as it is seen as risky with increasingly diminishing returns.
Marth was thrown to the wayside quite early in Ult’s meta when fundies and consistency were more valued in characters (Wolf, Palu, Lucina, etc). This also caused Marth to become quite under-explored. Nowadays Marth is considered a high risk but high reward character that rewards a keen awareness of spacing and setup windows. Would be nice to see the result of what could be if we got a combination of Leo’s excellent fundamentals and spacing and Ignaize’s aptitude for Marth’s combo game.
This is what I've been saying. MKLeo was just pure fundies and that's why he can't make Marth work. He doesn't do the crazy combos Ignaize does. Ignaize is super technical and knows way more combos and strings than Leo, but he doesn't have the fundies to win neutral against most top 100 players. I remember Spyder mentioning this in a video where he noticed that Ignaize had many opportunities to beat Fatality's Falcon at a Genesis but Ignaize kept throwing out an attack that was fast but not rewarding compared to a combo starter that would have easily closed out the set without tippers. I just hope we get a Marth main with top level fundies and pure technicality because otherwise nobody will see how good Marth actually is. The amount of people who think Marth's tipper Fair is his strongest aerial while Bair and Nair are right there is so sad.
I was a Marth main back in Melee, and I was always one of the best players when it came to my group of friends even when I picked another character. I loved Melee to death, thought Brawl was pretty good and fun, and thought 4 was serviceable but felt a little weird. When Ultimate came out I was very excited for the game only to constantly lose badly against people who didn't even know what they were doing (completely new players). I couldn't put my finger on it, but Ultimate felt "gross". After playing it for a while I honestly started to hate the game; despite everyone calling it the best smash since melee. I thought there was something wrong with me. I couldn't pick this up like everyone else, but I after watching this video believe I finally have my answer. Marth was my favorite character in melee, because he was a very fundamental neutral game footsie fighter that played well into the games physics, but the Smash Ultimate is a completely different beast despite being in the same franchise. Keeping your opponent where you want them is far more difficult and the fighters overall have a much different feel to their movement than in Melee and Brawl. Not to mention are a lot faster. It makes sense that I'd be uncomfortable with and dislike the game that goes completely against my entire playstyle since I first fell in love with the franchise. It's ironic that the changes that slowly chipped away at my favorite characters viability also slowly deteriorated my interest in the series without me knowing it. Even though I played a lot of characters other than Marth. And as nice as it is that people are enjoying Smash as much as they are. As long as the new physics engine stays; I doubt I'll be one of those people no matter how much I want to like it.
I still play a lot of ult but I really dislike it for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. Ult is not fair, it has so much bullshit that lets people play bad and get rewarded for it.
@@Huckle777Ultimate is melee but for casuals, fast but not because of combos and techniques but because of speed and lagless but powerful aerials and bread and butter combos I'd rather have smash 4 rage at this point over the braindead mashy DLC and Nintendo favorites in ultimate
I still prefer playing him over most of the other swordies, but it is the hardest current version to land tippers with. It feels super good when you do. But sometimes the Marthritis kicks in hard and it is disproportionately harder to kill characters than they can to you.
True. People who don’t play Marth often assume that tippers are easier to get on bigger characters, but in reality it’s the opposite as there’s higher chances of some part of the character sticking out and interfering with your spacing.
I find pichu specifically easy to tipper for some reason while it's basically impossible for me to tipper dk in the face. I think people tend to underestimate the effect of hurtbox shape. Humanoid characters with vertical frames or short and flat characters also feel a lot easier
Its always been interesting to me to think about potential vs results with some characters in ultimate, in particular marth and shulk. Both are characters that on paper have the potential to be amazing if the right player masters them, but have always underperformed. But for some reason people still place shulk high on tier lists but place marth in mid at best
Because Shulk on paper is far better. And Shulk has never been played by players like Leo who then dropped them citing they weren't good enough like he did with Marth. The thing with Marth, it's not 'possible' to really master him. No matter how skilled you are at the character, you will always have consistency issues. Nobody will ever 'master' tippers to the point of them being consistent.
Good points overall but 100% disagree on tipper priority. If his tipper had priority he'd be completely broken strong. I think what he actually needs to succeed in ult is a middle hitbox that's between the other two in strength, with priority descending from the hilt.
Yes the engine did screw him over but not the way most think. The real reason the speed difference is an issue has nothing to do with speed but removal of spacing options and removal of crossups. Add in some other bad changes like balloon knockback and you have a recipe that keeps marth from being the best he can be.
I think the worst engine change for him was how the hitbox interpolation between frames works. It makes the sourspot bleed into the tipper where it REALLY shouldn't, and that will take his consistency
I know there really isn't a way to fix this issue without breaking the game, but one of the most frustrating things in this game is landing a hit and getting punished for it. Between moves dealing no knockback, and shields (OoS punishes too), Smash feels like it's always going to be a defensive game.
If are Marth and aren't playing completely out of your mind against a competent opponent, you're loss will feel that much worse from all the effort you put into it.
I think the lack of micro-movement is a big nerf, other smash games have strong tools to allow for incredibly precise spacing, which helps him land tippers.
I never played Marth until Ultimate, oddly enough. I was just playing around after some Snake matches and I fell in love instantly. I play him now more than anyone else regardless of how he preforms.
You can tell from ultimate that Marth’s sword has gotten thinner, and it shows because the sour spots feel weaker without much reward. The knockback from previous games allowed you to connect sour spots with other moves, but the floatier mechanics from the newer games makes it more difficult to combo. Especially when Marth got nerfed in sm4sh with dairs spike hitbox and removing short hop double fair. That’s when Marth had to rely on tippers to get any reward, but it worked in sm4sh because the slower game with less combos made it easier to react, but Marth is now stuck having to space instead of using combos like many other characters
I generally prefer Marth over Lucina since his tippers add an extra layer of skill and flavor to what would otherwise be the lukewarm water of swordies. Landing tipper after tipper really makes you feel like a god when it strings just perfectly to close out a stock, and is the reward for your hard work mastering a character who might as well be called a Space Animal due to how much spacing you need to employ to master him
@@Matanumi not everyone wants to or can mod the game, and making every hitbox a tipper would drastically devalue landing it Not to mention Nintendo will nuke your house if you try to play with those mods on Elite Smash
but does he has to be as bad as he is though? Bringing back his Sm4sh Jab or even the Sm4sh Up throw would do wonders without keeping him feeling so bad. I would even argue that flipping the priority of the tipper hitbox would make him feel "As intended", rather than living on copeium.
@@Athorment While those things would be nice, Nintendo isn't doing that, and most of the people complaining about Marth either don't play him or haven't labbed to find every single spacing technique in the game that they can utilize with him.
@@bluyu Dont try to hint that he is "Unexplored" because even if that's true, that's not the reason why he is "Bad". Don't try to "Sm4sh Shulk" excuses to make him sound "better". People have labbed and even have had successes in tournament here and there. MK Leo Vs. Riddles or Ignaize comes to mind. Character has flaws and the few tech he has arent as consistent to make him a consistent threat. That's just what it is.
I'm still playing him but he takes a LOT of work/patience. You can't afford to "pitbull" as much You have to be willing to back off and catch your breath to keep the clarity of mind to somewhat land tippers. And especially with Marthritis. You either kill early or it becomes a slugfest waiting for tippers. And in a slugfest Lucina fares much better but if you love tippers you play Marth even if you don't get as much as you want. Takes tremendous conditioning. If I'd buff him at all I'd increase his shieldbreaker shield damage that is all. That would definitely solve Marthritis. But I can also see how it's broken but GIVE MY BOY SOMETHING GDI
I used Marth since Melee from watching Ken. He still feels the same in Ultimate to me. Mkleo usually wins with Marth, not all the time but most of the time. I feel Marth is still the same high tier character in Ultimate. He deserves to be at least top twenty
Mkleo usually loses with him. Whenever he brings him out he's almost always forced into dropping him for someone else once he gets deaep into whatever tournament/local that he was playing him at.
13:13 Vars, that's HIGH MID TIER, not Low Mid tier; that's for Wii-Fit Trainer to Lucario/Bowser Jr. He's on the lower end of that but is kinda deserved, he's barely a 6/10 character, unlike Falco who you could argue is a 7/10.
I think one important thing keeping Marth from relevance is the sheer level of slander directed towards him. I have a Marth main I go to locals with, leading the the character coming up in conversation every now and again. EVERY time, let me repeat, EVERY time Marth gets brought up somebody (who is not the Marth main) says something along the lines of "tippers inconsistent", "can't kill", or "worse Lucina". Same goes for social media. Someone runs into Marth on elite, they say "hey look, it's worse Lucina", commentators on stream will point out moves that didn't tipper for not killing, even though Lucina's version wouldn't have killed in that scenario either. Even characters like Doc seem to get more respect Marth's in a weird spot because he's so closely related to other, better characters. Not only are the (generally considered) 2nd and 5th best swordies his clones, but sword fighters in general get compared to each other way more than other archetypes. Marth players don't help either. From the way they talk about the character you'd think tippers were as random as hero's crits. I personally think Marth is far closer to Lucina's level of strength than he's given credit for, but constant badmouthing keeps people from giving him a real shot. Maybe they try him for a week or two, but they don't hit enough tippers right off the bat, and drop him because "tippers are too inconsistent".
I watched a match between mr e (lucina) and kreeg (marth) a while ago and i pointed out in the video that kreeg won because he was significantly more consistent dispite it being very apparent that mr e was the better player. The "lucina is more consistent" and "marth can't kill" thing is really over blown. Lucina can be very inconsistent if she can't get the edge guard and it's not like she has amazing kill power either.
Yeah finally somebody says this. That's why I like Spyder-Marth because he is one of the few active Marth mains that doesn't constantly talk crap about his own main, whilst also not being overly passionate about it. He just knows Marth is A- tier. I hope he goes to a major. Apparently he has never been to one before. He might actually slay if he is close to Mr. E's skill level.
As someone who mains Lucina I can see her limitations at my very low level. When I play online I often play a couple round with Marth to warm up. I'll admit its pretty surprising seeing some flew off the stage at 90 with something like a tipper forward tilt. But other times when you do a sour spot forward air it feels like you are just going right through the opponent. It sometimes does feel like luck to hit those tippers.
I played against 4 different Marths yesterday online, but haven’t played a Lucina in like 5 days. 11mil-13mil gsp. Either just blind luck, or marth is really popular in NA elite smash still.
Interestingly, as the meta goes on while marth seems to be only getting better at killing, lucina has seemed to only be more and more burdened by her own underwhelming stock taking ability. Yet regardless, she still performs better overall, and i think a factor that gets overlooked a lot is how much more effective her shield pressure is in comparison to marth. Tipper spacing on shield is almost never equal to tipper spacing on the opponent's hurtbox, especially in the case of landing aerials, and he is far weaker at covering landings and rolls into shield because of the requirement to take extra chase time to position shield breaker correctly, which more severely limits his ability to maintain pressure in neutral in comparison to lucina than it's often given credit for
I've been trying to get marth into elite forever. I sometimes get in, but I'm mostly out of it. The gameplay is ruined by campers who basically dominate the tactic he's trying to win at.
I feel like that Marth's Falchion tip getting shifted in this game was the biggest cause of why he's not doing so great. But you made a good point with him having to rely on the physics from every other game to get his results and Ultimate changing the physics really hurting him. If the next game doesn't respond to that statement in the slightest, Marth could doomed to be stuck in this scenario. Also, I hate the idea of Echo fighter concept with Marth and Lucina. Considering the footage of their mods in different and personal class changes, we could've gotten exclusive concepts that make them unique, personally.
Marth is in my opinion one of the top 3 characters that should have been buffed since he's so close to being top tier. the other two are Plant and Kirby since the former is basically an incomplete character and the latter is just unfairly bad
Marth is the character I play when I want to just fuck around and I gotta say he’s a lot more consistent than people give him credit for. Lucina is still better but it’s not as difficult to land tippers as you make it out to be
@@oblivion2674 Except better players play at a MUCH faster speed than low level players. I'm able to land a lot more tippers in Elite Smash than Mkleo can in tournament games at times. That's obviously not because I'm better at spacing, it's because my opponent isn't very good at the game. The reason Marth is so mid at top level is because he is inconsistent af. Also stop liking your own comments.
Ironically, he has been top tier and the highest ranked FE character in three Smash games prior to Ultimate. Ignaize and MkLeo are probably the only two who are carrying Marth at this point. Heck, I would say that MkLeo and Ignaize are the only two reasons why Marth is even relevant at this point.
I'm willing to believe that it would be worth it to give Marth's tipper priority because of considering buffs as something that isn't meant to give a character TOO much of a boost. It's certain that there would be a difference, and while likely small, I think that's a good size considering his simplistic, general character archetype
I disagree to an extent when you say that making his tipper hitbox bigger wouldn't make a difference. Marth in Smash 4 was known to be very bad until the patch update that increased the tipper hitbox of all his moves along with minor buffs to the tipper damage. After that, he began seeing more and more success with Mr. E and eventually MKLeo who skyrocketed the character's ranking in tier lists.
You have to be very skillful to use him at a high level. It takes patience and precision to use him effectively. Definitely more rewarding than Lucina if you can meet the requirements needed to play him at that level. But Lucina is more carefree. You don't have to worry about tippers. Edit: Just to point out some stuff. Lucina has kill power and can be carefree and not worry. She is 100% consistent. Marth still has forward tilt as a kill option, has Dancing Blade ender as kill option, those tipper forward smashes can kill at like 40% near ledge to some, etc. He has kill potential. Lucina has less kill power than Marth with tippers. Even charge neutral special will kill earlier. Edit 2: I saw vid and can agree in a lot that he has lost. Jab 1 into stuff as you said, the tipper inconsistency is probably the biggest. If it is factual, then yes. That needs to be fixed. I saw him almost kill in mid stage with a Dancing Blade on 87% after the final hit on ender.
This is always brought up that he's more rewarding at a high level, but in the past 5 years there's really no evidence that he is. No real significant representation from top level players, especially when MKLeo tried him and dropped in. It's more probable at this point that all the effort you'd put into Martha's spacing would have been better spent working on Lucina's... everything else. In the end, Lucina is more likely the more rewarding of the two in high level play, and the evidence speaks much more to this conclusion.
@@Fisherington He dropped Marth prior to Marth's buffs and never picked him up again as a main because he likes Byleth, Aegis, and Joker way more. Every time he actually plays post-buff Marth he performs very well and even has wins over players who tanked him when he used other chars. Problem is that Marth is unnecessary for Leo. Other than Leo, Ignaize is gradually getting better placements with Marth (and beat many top players to back it up), and the best player in Utah is a Marth main who has wins over many PR players, including Scend. Post-buff Marth has the results but nobody talks about it.
@@Spyder-Marthhe did play marth post buffs although it was online and he did use marth in tournaments post buff but like the dude said lucina or his other charcters are just better to play heck even byleths tipper mechanic is fucking better
It always seemed to me like the high risk/high reward characters were top tier because the highest levels of play are able to maximize reward while minimizing risk. So it seemed very odd to me that Lucina would be more popular than Marth. But yeah, this video really explains a lot about why.
Great video Vars. Honestly tho, Marth isn’t as bad as people say. The thing with Marth is that his tippers are harder to hit than ever, but they aren’t necessarily inconsistent. I think he’s really fun regardless and I really do enjoy watching/maining him
His tippers are inconsistent, though. Sometimes your opponent will live up to very high percents, while other times they die super early to a tipper f smash. You have to work hard if you wanna play Marth, and the risk/reward is not in your favor if you do so. I don't think he's bad, however.
@@Eggss_B That's not his fault but the fault of the player. There was no moment where I lost a match and said "Marth should have landed a tipper there." The problem is that people don't seem to know the actual size of the tipper hitboxes, so they just assume where it is and perceive it as bigger than it actually is... then get surprised when they land a sour. The many players I played against all thought my "sour" was a "tipper" but I'd know what hitbox actually landed and why. The best way to get over this is to actually look at his hitboxes and *then* play him. I did this for about a week and now I know why I landed a tipper and why I didn't. If you think you landed a tipper, watching the replay then seeing your opponent shuffle into the sour spot range helps show Marth some mercy. I don't think his tipper hitboxes have to be any bigger than they are now (besides Dancing Blade). Trust me, doing this exercise every now and then helps a LOT. People ask me how I always land tippers and this is the answer.
@@Spyder-Marth Stop gaslighting yourself bro. Even in the highlight videos you upload on your channel, there are clearly times where failing to land the tipper is hurting you and even making you lose games. You don't need to lie to yourself to defend the competitive viability of a video game character by using evidence from your objectively low level gameplay. Both Leo and Ignaize suffer from the same issue.
Weird how this is a marth specific problem, because there are other characters that rely on tippers and they can hit them more consistently, like Ridley, corrin, charizard, and the belmonts
As a Lucina main, playing Marth doesn't really feel so bad. Combo game isn't that great anyway, so you're still sticking to fundamentals, spacing, and out playing. I've played Lucina trying to make the most of my sword range and going for reads and plays rather than a "rushdown-like" advantage state and I get rewarded more when I play Marth like this, just sucks when edge guarding isn't consistent anymore. Lucina is more consistent, but Marth is deadlier, still not a character to sleep on. Id say high mid tier
“Remember how fun it was to play Marth when you were little, and your disappointment when you tried him in Ultimate? It was me, Barry. I nerfed Marth at Super Sonic Speeds so you would think you suddenly suck!” - Eobard Thawne
I feel they purposefully neutered Marth in Ultimate to make Lucina stronger, or at least more chosen against Marth. Lucina was considered good in Sm4sh but basically everyone just played Marth because his reward system was just better at higher level than Lucina's all around strength. In Ultimate, his tipper hitbox is not only tragically small, but it's so small that it's the most inconsistent thing in the world. The tipper only registers if the tipper hitbox hit first without another hitbox interjecting, but because it's so small, a lot of the time the non-tipper hitbox will just connect on the same frame as the tipper and will cancel it out. So basically he's just Lucina except your weaker than normal with like a 50% chance to actually get reward for spacing versus just being consistent. I hope in the next smash game they fix his tipper mechanic, it is tragic how inconsistent it is.
The change they made to dancing blade made it feel so much worse to use. I used to make use of the long input window to really drag out dancing blade to catch people off guard. Now it feels less satisfying to land, more punishing to miss, and less useful overall.
I'm telling you the way you buff marth is simply to give him a longer sword. Marth in melee and partly brawl was a one of the few swordsman, and with that he had more range and discounts than other characters. With an added benefit that if you space well(which you're supposed to do anyways) you'll be rewarded with more damage. The issue is marth sword is no longer a range advantage, most sword ls have his range if not greater and several brawler have more range as well. Marth gets zero benefit from his tipper if he doesn't have a way to keep people at that range. If mart sword has as big as corrins I promise you'd see more marths, more tippers, and way more success. I wouldn't even say make lucina sword bigger, than would be the benefit/difference between them. You don't have to be accurate with lucina but in turn you don't get the more spacing based character.
I have been a Marth main since Melee, and this video was hard to watch. It’s sad, but with the right amount of training he is still 🔥. What’s nice about him is that he has multiple play styles; it’s not the same basic boring crap you get with Pyra/Mithera, Falco etc.
One other thing to mention is that his archetype doesn't work in smash ultimate. The concept of a floaty fundamentals and neutral-based sword-fighter doesn't work in this game. Too many characters outshine that archetype in one way or another (power creep being partially responsible). Longer range swordies exist now, and while they don't outright kill Marcina, their one advantage of disjointed mid-range, doesn't exist anymore. Every character that comes out now, has atleast a decent (if not fantastic) combo game so neither his nickle and time style or combo oriented styles are as effective as a combo swordie (roy, corrin, sora, steve). There's a higher requirement to have a good keepaway game due to the amount of projectiles and speed, so the archetype he would have succeeded in has been destroyed outright, not just in terms of relatives. And his disadvantage state is horrid in a game swamped by the aforementioned factors. He doesn't have a place. And if you want to be technical, marth's sword used to be longer than lucina's, which I'm pretty sure isn't true anymore, so even compared to his clone (who also falls for the same potholes), his trade-offs are even worse.
Melee marth would be low top tier in ultimate and would have done wonders for marth. Also why isn't marth the swordie sheik when he is like that in his games. Very fast, agile and has a very fencing oriented style of combat overall yet none of that is seen in any of his smash iterations. Your comment about his archetype not working is so true and more reason to hate ultimate imo because imagine not rewarding skillful play like reading and fundies. Whiff punishing doesn't even exist anymore.
@@dave9515 Mythra is swordie sheik, which is why Pam is top tier in this game. This game doesn't respect fencing styles as much as cheese machines or braindead dmg min-maxing so go figure. I picked up wolf, and it's the only character I've used that felt like I could honest to god focus on a whiff-punish style of play, manes sense considering he has like top 5 airspeed. My previous main was Marcina (and pit before that) so that should give you an idea about why I had to switch.
In melee i believe that the tipper has a priority over the rest of the sword, one of the reasons why he was so good in this game. (and for roy the tipper had also priority making him even worse)
That's not true*, aside from melee d-air and brawl u-smash, sourspot always has priority, and for that matter generally the hitbox that's closest to the character is the one that has priority over the other, which is why Roy's sweetspot generally has priority
In melee only uair and dair have their tippers with higher priority than the rest of the sword. Dair's case is pretty significant because it's one of the few moves that are spikes in Melee, for uair it's not usually too relevant, but it's def much easier to hit the sweetspot than in the games that came after. But generally what holds the character together in melee is his ground mobility, grab range and very powerful grab game, but he can still suffer with opponents living to very high percenatages because he doesn't have kill moves in the air besides dair and upB and once he stops being able to combo he's limited to killing in neutral with smash attacks, uptilt or upB.
I think it's a shame what they did to Marth. He's honestly one of my favourite characters to play ever since I got into Smash in Brawl. While Lucina is pretty much the same, Marth's tipper hitboxes are what makes him fun imo. I think having the priority of his hitboxes reversed would help Marth a LOT. Sure it would be a band-aid fix to the other issues he has in ultimate but I definitely think he'd be a high tier if that were to happen.
Love this character because of his design I think he looks awesome but my problem when using him is that it feels incredibly difficult to earn kills. You have to work extremely hard and be careful for them while the rest of the roster has much easier kills
Another big issue is that his combo game got butchered and he has no kill confirms, ff landing dair into fmash works about as well as trying to kill someone by throwing a gun instead of shooting it, and same goes for nair fmash which the most consistent ends up being reverse nair 1 hitbox dashback fmash, in meele his ken combo depends on sour spots to work, now he doesn't even have an use for them
Agreed on the landing dair, disagree on the nair1 to fsmash. If you fade back with Marth and hit nair1 it tippers every single time. I always get people on the ledge with this option. It's also safe if the nair1 hits the shield.
No one plays Marth because there's no reason to opt into his sour spots when there's Lucina. Shame too since Marth has been my favorite FE style character in smash since introduction.
They Nerfed his Grab Range
It was crazy in melee
There is a whole video by asumsaus that shows how his grab if perfectly fine
@@bananaplane5494 That video doesn't reall explain it because he's measuring distance wrong. He's measuring the disjoint off of the hand, instead comparing neutral position to grabbing position hitboxes. Watching the video and compare those
@@bananaplane5494in unfinished game from like 20 years ago where only a quarter of the cast is good, yea it’s good for it’s time 💀
@@iv624 Someone who clearly doesn't watch melee much. Also there aren't many great characters in ultimate either and given the more homogenization of the cast over the games there is even less incentive to even play a bad character than ever before lol.
I've mained Marth since Melee until Ultimate. He's always been a reliable, efficient swordfighter until now, which is pretty sad to witness. I tried to make him work, but the meta unfortunately just wasn't kind to him. I ended up switching to Chrom pre-patch and Roy afterwards. The irony is I did play some Roy in Smash 4, but _he_ was the one who was inferior and mid-to-low tier, just like in Melee. How the turntables turn.
Oh how the turns have tabled
That's because the Ultimate's engine is quite hostile against perfect spacing. They even removed perfect pivot, something Marth relied a lot to get said tippers. Jab is no longer a consistent tipper setup, everyone moves faster. The only buff that could fix him is to reintroduce perfect pivoting.
@@N12015 or just make tippers more consistent and easier to hit.
It's crazy how Roy is the swordie demon of the basic FE characters
Yeah I was in the same position. I main Marth in Melee, and also mained him in Brawl and Sm4sh.
Ults lack of microspacing made him impossible to play, so I struggled to find a new character.
I tried all the swordies:
Ike was popular early but I knew it was just early meta and his speed and recovery would be bad long term.
Chroms recovery being too inconsistent. He would honestly be the strongest swordie if not for that.
Roy being too boom or bust. See every top Roy being upset or getting upsets constantly.
Lucina being too defensive, lacking comeback potential with no early kills, and frankly too simple and boring to fully main (did secondary her though, which she's one of the best for)
Cloud who was my co-main in sm4sh being too nerfed (before he got buffed he just couldn't kill whatsoever)
I ended up maining Wolf instead and I think he's the closest to Marths previous style of play from Melee to 4. He's very much about looking to use versatility and above average range to outplay the opponent, with the occasional early kill setup from hard reads or if the opponent massively blunders.
I see why Leo plays Byleth because she's similar in that way, just worse neutral but better range.
I also think Cloud plays a similar style especially post buff seeing Spargo use him. If I played now I would likely add him back to my lineup.
During covid I quit competitive ult because of the online, and though I don't play comp anymore I still watch, and frankly seeing where the game and meta developed with FP2 and stuff, I think I made the right choice. I went through Bayo in 4, I have no desire to go through Steve now lol.
@N12015 I know exactly why Marth is mid lmao. I didn't feel the need to go over it because the video already does.
The problem with making Marth's tipper a priority like Roys is that it _doesn't work._ If you made the tipper the priority hitbox then every hit would be near guaranteed to be a tipper. You'd have to be basically standing inside of Marth to get hit by the sour spot, and even then it would be difficult.
Trust me... I've made Brawl moveset mods and the way hitboxes work are almost exactly the same. I once tried to give Luigi's side smash an electric sweetspot, and I had to give it lower priority otherwise every hit would be the sweetspot.
Melee marth does the ingenious action of leaning forward when he grabs, hence the length
Ultimate marth still leans in but he forgot how to extend his elbow
Part of the many reasons why Roy’s sweet spots feel more consistent is also the fact that, unlike Marth, some of his moves have a “middle” hitbox that is almost as strong as his sweetspot. F-Smash and F-Tilt both have that.
Another huge thing is marth roy and all variations don't have good range generically.
Difference is with all the others, range doesn't matter as much. Roy doesn't need range cuz he wants to get in. Chrom and lucina don't need range cuz they can act like pseudo brawlers. But marth is still trying to fight like a swordsman and space, but so many characters have the same if not more range.
So now marth tipper is a hindrance. You are trying to keep people at tipper range when they have same range or outright out range you without the tipper restrictions. Sora has a longer sword but no tipper, corrin has a longer sword but no tipper. Heck, half of zeldas moves have more range but no tipper. So the tipper is actually hurting marth cus theyre balancing him around it instead of making it a reward for keeping people out. You know how easy it is to press marth when his threat range is the same or shorter than mine?
@@plastickkerorolm4889
Amazing explanation
It’s so easy to do what you want to do with Lucina that playing Marth just feels like you’re intentionally handicapping yourself.
Lucina's boring though. If I want to play a sword character and win, I'm playing Cloud. If I'm just playing for fun, it's Marth. Lucina doesn't really have anything special, so it's really easy to read most Lucina players.
@@bluyuthis is one of the dumbest comments i’ve read
it hurts,, doesnt it ToT yet we keep doin it
Pretty much. I have a theory that people would see Marth as a much better character and probably have reached a higher skill ceiling with him if Lucina wasn’t literally just the same character with more consistent and reliable hitboxes. The faster engine and loss of Marth’s reliable kill confirms from Melee and Smash 4 definitely didn’t help either
watching lucina I sleep
watching marth is real shit
Marth 🤝 Tyranitar
Once great picks throughout many installments
who have fallen from grace
Giving Marth the sweet spot priority of Roy would "fix" things in a rather broken way. It *would* make Marth's tippers much more reliable, but it would do so by effectively turning most of his sword into the "sweet spot". Marth might even be able to connect tippers when pushing right up against larger opponents. That would throw of the design balance between Marth and Roy. Roy *has* to have his sweet spot have the highest priority, else he'd never trigger them. Marth is the opposite, giving his sweet spot the highest priority would make it so he triggers it even when he's really close. Though a possibly priority fix would be to make Marth's tipper the second lowest priority, while the hit box directly adjacent is the lowest priority. That would give Marth a bit more forgiveness, while still forcing Marth to keep his distance.
You don't even have to go that far. While it takes more effort, the hitboxes simply need to be adjusted by hand to have less overlap, rather than just slap them on the sword and letting the animation play out, especially with how janky frame interpolation is in this game.
I was going to comment something similar to this... Giving sweet spots priority on Marth would make sours really hard to hit. It would be pretty much a pure upgrade from Lucina, and everybody would likely switch to him because he's probably top 2 in the game at least lmfao
I think the bigger issue is that he lost a lot of his most reliable kill setups from Melee and Smash 4, while also not benefitting as much as Roy or Lucina from Ultimate’s faster engine. If he had at least a couple ways to reliably net kills without fishing for tippers and often suffering from Marthritis, I feel like he’d see much more consistent results
@@StealthFoxx_ I disagree, he has set ups they're just harder in Ultimate because he doesn't have jab into imagination lol and the knockback
I think his tipper vs hilt hitboxes need to be less polarized for him to be successful in ult. In Brawl and Melee, landing his sourspot usually had its own merits and would even be ideal in some scenarios. Starting with sm4sh, the dmg/knockback gap became far too polarized to give his sourspot much use, and that only continued to grow in the transition to Ultimate
You can see in the footage smash 4 marth still had uses for jab and sourspots
Sour spots still combo very well in Ultimate so I'm not sure what you mean by that. They also start tech chases at the mid percents, which is huge in this heavy-punish meta.
@@Spyder-Marth Characters who are prominent in the heavy-punish meta aren't so reliant on tech chases like Marth is. The only one would be Roy or Fox, and their tech chasing ability is far better as well as their overall kill power and damage output.
agreed, it also combines horribly with how terribly nerfed his range is in 4 and ultimate. tipper and sour spot are literally near inches apart to the point where in some cases even near-perfectly spacing an attack in some cases will just have the sour pot overlap partway through and cancel it out
Nah, they should be even more polarized so that sourspots can almost always combo and tippers can almost always kill. If sourspots had a lot less knockback growth and higher base knockback, it might make Marth as good as if not better than Lucina, because at that point, it wouldn't matter if you land a sourspot since it would just confirm into a tipper anyway. The problem isn't that Marth's tippers are too weak, nor is it that they don't combo. It's that they don't combo at higher %s so they're not always reliable, and they're sometimes too weak to get much started at lower %s, so it can be hard to get started. Marth is strongest at mid %. He struggles at high %s because his sourspots send too far and he struggles at early %s because they don't send far enough. If they fixed just one of these problems, he'd be better, and if they fixed both at the same time, he'd have all that he needs, apart from maybe a kill throw.
The risk/reward just isn't there - He's "too" fair. He's as good as you are, but in this meta where characters easily make you 2, 3, or 5x "better" than you really are, you're just volunteering to put in more effort than your opponent for less results :(
Here is the thing about melee, all of his tilts, dash attack, and most of his aerials have blade hitboxs in the middle. This blade hit box has the highest priority except for up air and down air where the tipper has the highest priority. Dolphin slash's tip also has the highest priority. Meanwhile nair, neutral b, and side b don't have a tipper mechanic. All of this vastly increases his consistency on hit.
Marth's tipper hitboxes are also slightly bigger in general in melee. The bigger difference though is hitbox placement and it's effect on interpolation. In his f smash for example, the first active frame has the sword more vertical than ultimate. This means that there is less overlap in interpolated hitboxes to the second frame. The second frame has marth fully extending the blade so it is more parallel to the ground compared to the angle he is holding it in ultimate. This again makes for less overlapping when transitioning to the final active frame.
Another thing that is important about melee marth is that he doesn't really need to hit tippers in the first place to get KOs. A lot of his KOs don't come from the side blast zones like in ultimate but instead from the bottom blast zone. Marth's goal is often just getting the opponent off stage to edge guard his opponent or getting a dair spike.
Marth feels like an unfinished character, ironically due to being a veteran. It seems that receiving incremental changes from game to game, games with different design philosophies, pacing, teams, etc. made all his moves balanced in unequal ways over time or added some bugs or weird stuff along the way.
The more you dig into Marth’s frame data, moves damage and knockback values, hitboxes size and positioning, visuals of each move, etc. the more disparities you notice.
Some moves seem bugged such as Side-B Up 4 not ever killing despite an in-game tip literally saying “this swing is excellent for netting some KOs!”. Then you look at its knockback values and they’re like 80 Base and 40 Scaling, which is completely backwards compared to all other moves, indicating the values were erroneously swapped and should have been patched.
Fully Charged Neutral-B has smaller hitboxes than uncharged, which also makes no sense and seems like a bug.
Back-Air is weak af relatively to Lucina. Back-Air hitboxes are also not slightly offset behind the sword like all his other moves, which makes the move whiff point blank more easily than it should to properly match the visuals. Could be for balance reason, but again it's inconsistent with his other moves.
There are many more inconsistent or just illogical designs like these throughout his moveset, but these are only a few examples off the top of my head. Most are minor problems by themselves, but they add up.
Now, most characters in this game probably lack that level of fine-tuning as well, including Lucina as good as she is. Thing is, those small problems are exacerbated on Marth due to being a “precision” character by design. In order for a precision character to work well, it needs precise and consistent hitboxes to work with.
A lot of small smart changes here and there could have made Marth way better and consistent overall even in the “Ultimate engine”, but it seems they never took the time to polish him up.
Yup
Bruh no way that side b up was meant to kill, i’mma be sick to my stomach, my whole character is a lie
@@Matanumi An eloquent response!
@@Aloly0490 Yeah man it used to kill at around 125% or something like that in Smash 4. Somehow they fucked it up when modifying Side-B going into Ultimate.
If you go into the Tips section for Marth in-game you’ll see the tip I’m talking about.
@@MerryBlind i know it used to kill in smash 4 but i just assumed they wanted to screw us over in this game lmao 💀
I think you are underestimating what reversing the hit box priority would do for marth. His tipper becomes easier to hit than even roy's middle hits. F-tilt for example becomes a garenteed tipper on most grounded opponents. In order not get hit f smash, you would literally have to be touching marth's frame or be very short.
yeah I think having the hitbox priority reversed would be HUGE for Marth. Sure the game hasn't been nice aside from that either way but it would at least help Marth a LOT.
I say give tipper priority and make his sourspots hit 25% less hard than lucina
No. Lucina exists for scrubs like you. Let's keep it that way 😀
@@houseking9211stick to Lucina then scrub
@@houseking9211yes make him even MORE EXTREME
Lolololol
He’d still be fucking broken in that case.
His tipper low priority is the only thing keeping him from breaking the game
Marth's "buffs" were also poorly handled. One of his best confirms was landing up air (sour) into tipper f smash from above. They made the tipper bigger on up air at the front and now it's far less safe to go for this confirm. As someone who mained Marth for over 12 years, into the first several years of ultimate, during my PR days, and finally demoted him last year cause he just isn't good enough (especially online), the way he was handled in ultimate pains me.
You have to fast fall the sour up air to hit it now, it's so inconsistent. I feel like the buffs were stupid too.
Now you have consistent falling up air into up smash. What are you yapping about.
Marth is just too precise for what you get in return for playing him. You have to outplay your opponent basically the entire match. He's an example of "working too hard for minimal reward".
More or less how I feel about Sheik and Fox tbh, reckon it's a "we were too good in Melee" thing?
@@pjs232 Fox is actually really good in this game. Can't say the same for Shiek tho.
Not really. If you feel that way then you are overthinking it. You can utilize sours to land tippers with enough practice. Even so, landing tippers becomes easier the more you play Marth and learn about his hitboxes. Once you get that down, everything becomes far easier and more natural. Nowadays, I'm not worried about landing a tipper or not since the spacing and timings are now engraved into my muscle memory. The real problem is winning the game by not being predictable, which is a me problem and not a Marth problem.
@@Spyder-Marth He takes more effort than most characters in this game regardless, as well as not being that good of a character.
@@Eggss_B He literally has one of the better match-up charts out of most characters. He does not lose to many meta characters (at least not badly). Yeah he's more difficult but he isn't THE hardest char in the game. That title would probably belong to chars like Peach. Marth is only difficult to most because nobody wants to space and just go all out aggro. Every character that focuses on spacing are not popular. Corrin and Byleth went through the same phase but are now seeing results. The same will happen to Marth thanks to Ignaize playing him at bigger tournaments.
I did a little experiment and tested out how early Marth kills compared to Pyra and Roy. The vast majority of the differences were in the single digit range, meaning that Marth gets almost no real reward for immaculate spacing, vs Roy and Pyra who can press buttons like monkeys and kill just as early.
There's no mistaking that Sakurai legitimately just didn't want Marth dominating another tier list. Any other swordie will do, but not him.
Which is ironic since they purposely made characters like Ganon bad to appease casuals
Meanwhile Marth just can't do anything at all regardless of competitive or casual play
Ironic since Sakurai says he doesn't like competitive, yet he makes Marth terrible in every game mode including casual play instead of at least making him good in those modes like other low tiers
If you actually tested youd realize Marth easily can kill around 40 off fsmash alone.
Marth has been my main since melee and is the reason I got into Fire Emblem so I have a very soft spot for him. It always kinda feels like ppl just hate on him no matter what, I remember melee players I played against hating him for being OP and now ppl hate him for not being OP, it's kinda weird tbh
Honestly feel like Marth has an incomplete moveset because of side B not being reliable. In Lucina's case I can depend on it sending the opponent decently far when trying to regain advantage but with Marth I'm just tickling them. Same goes for a lot of other moves but that one stands out the most.
I really hate the down smash difference, great move to read rolls but on marth it feels like the spacing never tippers a roll read so it kills super late
@@rossstrickland1722Down-Smash is one of the many moves that should have had its tippers made easier to hit. Not to mention the damage values of the front hit are pitiful. Sour spot is literally weaker than F-Tilt makes no sense.
I wish side B F4’s sweet spot hitbox was actually on his sword
SideB's reliability really depends on the matchup, every different character type requires a different spacing and/or different combination, large characters are specially difficult to hit with the 4F sweetspot. But at least thinner, human characters like marth himself and his clones are free to hit with 1-2U-3F-4F (spaced so 2U hits sour). Usually that one and 1-2F-3D-4F (spaced so 3D hits either max range sour or sweet) are the more reliable ones.
It can take an unreasonable amount of time for someone to get close to reliable with that move. But at least sending them up is usually a better punish than grabbing.
Meanwhile people have been claiming Roy's side b is stronger then limit cross slash since day one
Ultimates engine is the problem, Marth's core design is actually insanely good and tbh, if his tippers worked perfectly I think Marth in ultimate would be hella busted, he's got so much raw power
Tippers only Marth is easy A tier
@@Matanumis tier, he would be Lucina with kazuya killpower
He also lost his reliable kill confirms from Melee and Smash 4, which didn’t help him at all, especially in addition to the faster engine that benefitted Lucina and Roy much more
His tippers work perfectly fine.
@@StealthFoxx_he has multiple reliable kill confirms
Collision is such an underrated topic of discussion in the conversation of just how much it actually changed 2 very similar games at first glance into 2 very different games mechanically, I think it's a significant underlying root of many problems with the game
THANK YOU! Finally somebody else who gets it. The body blocking and hurtbox shifting in this game is too much.
If Marth had priority on his tippers, he'd be the best character in the game and it wouldn't be close. You would EASILY be able to memorize the inconsistent hitboxes and then easily combo tipper to tipper with no problems. I hope someone can mod this into existence!
. etc agr+ he is jst so fun to play.
on top of that change knockack growth to be better at low% and match up to where it is around 55% and make sourspots hit 25% less hard than lucina, he'd be insane
Sounds like you want the easy way out. Stick to Lucina my guy
The larger issue is that most people assume you play marth and lucina the same because they have the same move set.
The tippers such as forward air never kill and that’s another problem
The prevalence of hurtbox shift also hurts when trying to land tippers
I’ll go by experience I used to know Marth’s tipper ranges by memory but because of hurtboxes shifting so much I get a hilt hit instead of a tipper even if I am in the right range
I recently dropped Marth for Corrin but my stint with him online was fun. I like feeling good about properly spacing tipper and it’s helped me comeback from many matches I nearly lost.
Bro every time I kill someone under 60% with a tipper setup I feel like the best player in the world
Being a Marth main in melee, the thing that sticks out the most to me is that in ult his tippers are *way stronger* while the rest of his hitboxes are *way weaker*. In melee, spacing is neat an cool, but you don’t really need to rely on it to close out a stock or get damage. It’s more a “if I get this it’s cool, if not I can still do what I need to effectively.” In ult it doesn’t feel like that and he feels much harder to get solid hits with. Couple that with recent games’ ease of recovery, difficulty of edge guarding, and ease of getting in past the tipper range, and most of what makes Marth good in Melee is just absent or inaccessible in ult, with nothing to replace it.
It's hard to play a sniper when everyone else is playing rushdown. No time or distance to line up your shots means no good shots are made. Marth also has to deal with shot deviation in the form reverse priority hitboxes and generally undesireable hitbox placement, and he's no longer being compensated with a good chaingrab.
Looking at it from that perspective, he could benefit greatly from moves dedicated to either getting opponents out of his face, or leading into the tippers of specific other moves. I think his jab and dash attack would be good candidates for those kinds of changes.
And yet, playing sniper against rushdowns in a movement-heavy fps is one of the most satisfying things if you do manage to do it. Meanwhile Marth feels like your sniper had random bullet spread, so the bullets only go in the general direction of your crosshair
You're not playing a sniper. That's on you for going for headshots when you could just grab or nair then aim
I really would like more spacing tools for him
honestly imo the biggest issue with Marth in Ult is that his sour spot hits have absolutely no kill power and dont do enough % to feel rewarding at all. Sometimes it actually feels like you're punished for hitting with the sour spot. You might think that forward smash at 130 will kill at ledge, but it doesn't. That back air at 50 near the edge of the screen? Nope. Sure his tippers are ridiculously strong, but his sour spots are ridiculously weak. I've always been a Marth fan, but Ultimate really gutted him. Sour hits have no use anymore like they used to.
Somehow Melee did the character the best due to the different directions an attack would send an opponent. Forward air tipper sends up, sour spot up tilt sends out and kills, back air sour spot barely sends anywhere and can extend combos, dancing blade sends them wherever you are, etc. Somehow his design just got less creative as the games went on. It's really a shame to see a character with a unique mechanic and gameplan get completely outshined by a clone character that lacks it.
Bro Marth’s sour spots literally have negative priority against shields and don’t reliably chain into anything while Roy’s sour spots can chain into combos, it’s tragic. I feel like they should make tippers slightly weaker, while making his sour spots slightly stronger. I’ve always felt like Lucario should’ve been handled the same way-make him less weak without aura, but less broken at high levels of aura
@@StealthFoxx_Sakurai said it's more "fun" for casuals to have polarizing characters instead of making them "all the same", but then we have literal clones and semi clones while Marth the original source material isn't even playable for casuals
Marth just feels like Sheik but with a sword. I know Sheik has some confirms and setups, but the meme about "Sheik can't kill" went on for so long for a very good reason - because it was true due to such abhorrent damage output. You hit the opponent 15 times and they end at 30% meanwhile with Wolf for example you hit the opponent 15 times and they're at 95%. Marth takes this concept into the realm of swordfighters in the sense that he just can't rack up the damage efficiently, but also can't close out stocks very well because of the tipper nonsense, and with no solid foundation or string to aim at consistently he suffers a lot. Like he's a lot of fun to play and I love that they've kept him in every title so far because I really enjoy having a character who I can look at and go "oh, I fundamentally know how to play him, even though this game's mechanics are kind of different." But with Ultimate Marth... idk man. It's hard to justify him over Lucina, even with the nostalgia goggles on. You have to play so so SO perfectly in order to get the same kind of mileage as almost any of the other swordies.
To argue one of your points, you say that giving the tipper hitbox priority instead of the way it is now, would not change his overall gameplay or people's perception of him. I have to disagree pretty handily here. There are plenty of examples in video game history where a single buff or nerf completely kills a character or playstyle, or completely brings it back from the dead. The one that immediately comes to mind is that one mod for Smash Ultimate, I forget what it's called but it's like the Project M for Ultimate. Ridley is still a mid character for the most part, and so the mod devs decided to buff him a little bit by making his tail extend all the way out for his back air. This one single change rocketed Ridley to the top tiers in record time because it was basically Melee Jigglypuff bair on crack - twice the range, multi-hit, on a heavy, who has 3 jumps. If I'm remembering correctly, it's the only change to the mod that the developers have ever reverted because it was simply too strong. I think that giving tipper priority could be a way bigger buff than you're implying here. You already mention how great his frame data is compared to all the other swordies and his ground speed isn't that bad despite being floaty. A simple change could very well be what takes him over the edge and into the top tier conversation. He has a lot of potential but Nintendo simply declined this time.
Really, the dream "what if" would be to change nothing else about him aside from a) giving the tippers priority, and b) unify the distance of them, aside from maybe f-tilt or something, for a little mix up. Either of these buffs would be incredible on their own, but put together Marth would rocket past Lucina, maybe Roy, and could land comfortably in S-tier. He'd have a similar matchup chart to Roy but could arguably get even more mileage out of the matchups he wins since he has overall better frame data generally, the tipper mechanic would be an immense reward, and you'd actually have strings to utilize the mechanic consistently, along with having the option to land the sour hits by keeping closer and carry the opponent across to the edge where the tipper would be most effective. Roy's upB is a surprise out of shield option and can be pretty explosive, but if Marth's tippers were all in better shape, his whole entire kit would be explosive. (This isn't to say I want Roy to be bad or anything, it's just the longtime standing comparison lol.)
This man is writing a freaking essay about ONE CHARACTER in a video game.
I approve.
We need more of this.
I think if you hit an opponent 15 times with Wolf, they die
@@PrimeFlash93 a fair assessment, but you get the point I'm trying to make.
Giving his tippera priority just make him broken and easy. Lucina exists for you players who want the game handed to you on a silver platter. The truth is there is some things wrong with Marth. Like his fully charged neutral b having smaller hitboxes and fair not having a hitbox at the top of its move. But overall. You're just bad at landing tippers and want an easy way out. He has better kill confirms, shield pressure and special moves compared to Lucina. That is the reward for getting good at the character. if you don't like the trade off play Lucina. Don't try to incentivize him over Lucina. That is useless and purposeless. He quite literally has no purpose if you take away his only functionality off of tipper being easy. It's a valuable trade off and it's supposed to create people who like a challenge and get rewarded from it. Not soften the blow on your ego when you realize you're not as good at the game as you thought.
@@TwinHacari lol a Marth apologist would be the one to start shit on a year old comment, doubly so being an alt. Marth's prime is gone, get over it.
I was gonna write out some even bigger paragraph to argue with you about game mechanics but I realize I'm better than arguing with a smash player since I left the scene. It's never worth arguing with people like you, especially you specifically since you're awfully condescending buddy lol skimming through the rest of the comments I see you're just looking to stir the pot over an objectively mid character, so thanks for going ahead and confirming my suspicions that even this comment I'm writing is a waste of time. I didn't even play Marth when I was playing smash, and my whole entire comment is based on facts in the first half, and then a what-if presented by the video in the second. You know, participating in the comment section because I enjoyed this channel's content at the time. Participating in the conversation about the topic at hand doesn't mean I'm trying to advocate for anything or that I'm writing Sakurai angry emails every day or some shit. Believe it or not, a lot of people who watched this video and commented, arguably the majority, also do not play Marth. I'd tell you to learn some reading comprehension but again, average smash player.
Anyways enjoy your weekend replying to everybody here, being an apologist for a mid character. Congrats on being the best at a character nobody cares about. Hope Sakurai sees all your hard work bro 👍 Make sure to rest them thumbs too though champ, don't want them too tired or you might go 0-4 instead of 1-3 at locals again.
The “there’s no such thing as ‘too close’ for Roy” comparison you made makes so much sense, made me have an epiphany.
The points in your why “no one plays” vids are usually so sound that it discourages me to play characters due to your argument being so good. Hands down, you have some of the most interesting smash content on YT
I feel that honestly given what you seek to gain from attempting to learn marth you would be better suited learning anyone else. I feel its not unfair to call marth one of the hardest characters to approach with if not the hardest. If you play defensive against a marth, odds are you will win the matchup. It feels like given how much harder he has to work to commit to safe pressure he should be far more rewarded then he is. Sure he may still have swordie privelages when it comes to landing aerials, but there are a multide of characters who get safer aerials and they dont have to be spaced as well, not to mention that in terms of grounded spacing with moves, it could stand to be a lot better. Theres also everything mentioned in the video and smaller details that janky or bad. He's just compeletly outclassed inside and outside of his archetype. It's just a shame because i think this marth shines above all the others with how sakurai handled his, sound design, hit effects and just how ridiculous it feels kill early as this character. It leaves me feeling like a heroin addict looking for my next fix, while living in a shanty town of low tier bs.
Agree.
I almost feel like if you developed the skill to use Marth, then honestly Ridley might be a better return on those skills than Marth, as Marth is now.
You have better range or area on a couple equivalent tools that use everything you learned, have better offstage game and a marginally better approach, and then have the terrible, terrible things Ridley does around a ledge.
Mind, Ridley is still a very fundamentally flawed character, but the strengths he does have, have similar skill requirements, and have a few complementary features Marth just doesn't have, that I feel would be more rewarding than all the times Marth doesn't really feel like working.
I could be wrong, of course.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 ridley is fine but not a alternative to Marth. I've stomped just about every ridley I've fought as Marth, granted I've never fought any high seeded Ridleys. If would recommend a switch it's going to be rob, shulk, or sora. All of those characters have high skill ceiling, with early kills kills as reward for mastery.
Absolutely
In short: The sourspots now take priority over the sweetspots if both hitboxes overlap on the same frame.
This was inevitable, I agree that game's engine really screwed him over. Ult is so fast that it can be hard to space and sometimes you get a sourspot when it looks like a tipper. I still like playing Marth but I'll never use him in tournaments when Lucina and Corrin are right there, at least Corrin's tippers are more forgiving
You can land every tipper for a single stock. After that you’re lucky if you’re not fishing for a kill till 150%. It’s so frustrating to fish for up throw kill when in theory you should get the kill at around 40-60% with a tipper forward smash.
I'd like to add that ON TOP of everything said in this video. Marth is also unimpressive. You want a character with good spacing? Cloud has the best Bair in the game + Limit to push his gameplan. Pyra/Mythra are faster and hit harder. Shulk is busted if you put in the time to learn him. You can get away with using Wolf, Palutena and G&W as swordies because of how safe and disjointed their aerials are. All three Links can play the camping game alongside being a good spacer. Heavies like Bowser and DK have almost equally large range, but infinitely more kill power. Lucina in general is a little too fair compared to most other characters, so basically you play Marth if you accept the flaws and don't really want the multiple more enticing and fun features a bunch of other characters offer.
Personally I think a weakness of marth and something that will eventually reach lucina is how much neutral they need to win and how much right guessing they have to make in comparison to other top tiers.With other characters you usually need to win neutral a maximum of 3 times to get you to kill percent and you have either reliable kill confirms or safe kill moves.Marth and lucina have like fair to side B at 0 then everything is tech chase,edgeguard and relying on reading your opponents,other character can do 0-60s while marth and lucina need to get 3-4 consecutive reads to get opponents to 60sh percents.
Agreed, especially as a marth you have no idea how annoying it is to be dealing with floaties when they don't have to tech anything ever lmao
It's already hitting lucina. In year 1 lucina was considered a top 5 character. Now she is considered top 25 but her win rate is low tier at best. One of her biggest problems is that she was considered good because she is one of the best edge guarders in the game. That was fine in the early meta but the meta has drastically shifted away from edge guarding as it is seen as risky with increasingly diminishing returns.
Marth was thrown to the wayside quite early in Ult’s meta when fundies and consistency were more valued in characters (Wolf, Palu, Lucina, etc). This also caused Marth to become quite under-explored. Nowadays Marth is considered a high risk but high reward character that rewards a keen awareness of spacing and setup windows. Would be nice to see the result of what could be if we got a combination of Leo’s excellent fundamentals and spacing and Ignaize’s aptitude for Marth’s combo game.
This is what I've been saying. MKLeo was just pure fundies and that's why he can't make Marth work. He doesn't do the crazy combos Ignaize does.
Ignaize is super technical and knows way more combos and strings than Leo, but he doesn't have the fundies to win neutral against most top 100 players. I remember Spyder mentioning this in a video where he noticed that Ignaize had many opportunities to beat Fatality's Falcon at a Genesis but Ignaize kept throwing out an attack that was fast but not rewarding compared to a combo starter that would have easily closed out the set without tippers.
I just hope we get a Marth main with top level fundies and pure technicality because otherwise nobody will see how good Marth actually is. The amount of people who think Marth's tipper Fair is his strongest aerial while Bair and Nair are right there is so sad.
I was a Marth main back in Melee, and I was always one of the best players when it came to my group of friends even when I picked another character. I loved Melee to death, thought Brawl was pretty good and fun, and thought 4 was serviceable but felt a little weird. When Ultimate came out I was very excited for the game only to constantly lose badly against people who didn't even know what they were doing (completely new players). I couldn't put my finger on it, but Ultimate felt "gross".
After playing it for a while I honestly started to hate the game; despite everyone calling it the best smash since melee. I thought there was something wrong with me. I couldn't pick this up like everyone else, but I after watching this video believe I finally have my answer.
Marth was my favorite character in melee, because he was a very fundamental neutral game footsie fighter that played well into the games physics, but the Smash Ultimate is a completely different beast despite being in the same franchise. Keeping your opponent where you want them is far more difficult and the fighters overall have a much different feel to their movement than in Melee and Brawl. Not to mention are a lot faster.
It makes sense that I'd be uncomfortable with and dislike the game that goes completely against my entire playstyle since I first fell in love with the franchise. It's ironic that the changes that slowly chipped away at my favorite characters viability also slowly deteriorated my interest in the series without me knowing it. Even though I played a lot of characters other than Marth. And as nice as it is that people are enjoying Smash as much as they are. As long as the new physics engine stays; I doubt I'll be one of those people no matter how much I want to like it.
I still play a lot of ult but I really dislike it for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. Ult is not fair, it has so much bullshit that lets people play bad and get rewarded for it.
@@Huckle777Ultimate is melee but for casuals, fast but not because of combos and techniques but because of speed and lagless but powerful aerials and bread and butter combos
I'd rather have smash 4 rage at this point over the braindead mashy DLC and Nintendo favorites in ultimate
I still prefer playing him over most of the other swordies, but it is the hardest current version to land tippers with. It feels super good when you do. But sometimes the Marthritis kicks in hard and it is disproportionately harder to kill characters than they can to you.
Apparently hurtbox placement also makes it harder to get tippers on bigger characters like Ridley as well
True. People who don’t play Marth often assume that tippers are easier to get on bigger characters, but in reality it’s the opposite as there’s higher chances of some part of the character sticking out and interfering with your spacing.
I find pichu specifically easy to tipper for some reason while it's basically impossible for me to tipper dk in the face. I think people tend to underestimate the effect of hurtbox shape. Humanoid characters with vertical frames or short and flat characters also feel a lot easier
Its always been interesting to me to think about potential vs results with some characters in ultimate, in particular marth and shulk. Both are characters that on paper have the potential to be amazing if the right player masters them, but have always underperformed. But for some reason people still place shulk high on tier lists but place marth in mid at best
Because Shulk on paper is far better. And Shulk has never been played by players like Leo who then dropped them citing they weren't good enough like he did with Marth. The thing with Marth, it's not 'possible' to really master him. No matter how skilled you are at the character, you will always have consistency issues. Nobody will ever 'master' tippers to the point of them being consistent.
Good points overall but 100% disagree on tipper priority. If his tipper had priority he'd be completely broken strong. I think what he actually needs to succeed in ult is a middle hitbox that's between the other two in strength, with priority descending from the hilt.
0:05 that's so sick
Yes the engine did screw him over but not the way most think. The real reason the speed difference is an issue has nothing to do with speed but removal of spacing options and removal of crossups. Add in some other bad changes like balloon knockback and you have a recipe that keeps marth from being the best he can be.
I think the worst engine change for him was how the hitbox interpolation between frames works. It makes the sourspot bleed into the tipper where it REALLY shouldn't, and that will take his consistency
Marth’s DAir is hard too because Melee and Brawl, Marth’s is more easy to connect but now in Ultimate is directly from the tipper.
I know there really isn't a way to fix this issue without breaking the game, but one of the most frustrating things in this game is landing a hit and getting punished for it.
Between moves dealing no knockback, and shields (OoS punishes too), Smash feels like it's always going to be a defensive game.
If are Marth and aren't playing completely out of your mind against a competent opponent, you're loss will feel that much worse from all the effort you put into it.
I think the lack of micro-movement is a big nerf, other smash games have strong tools to allow for incredibly precise spacing, which helps him land tippers.
I never played Marth until Ultimate, oddly enough. I was just playing around after some Snake matches and I fell in love instantly. I play him now more than anyone else regardless of how he preforms.
You can tell from ultimate that Marth’s sword has gotten thinner, and it shows because the sour spots feel weaker without much reward. The knockback from previous games allowed you to connect sour spots with other moves, but the floatier mechanics from the newer games makes it more difficult to combo. Especially when Marth got nerfed in sm4sh with dairs spike hitbox and removing short hop double fair. That’s when Marth had to rely on tippers to get any reward, but it worked in sm4sh because the slower game with less combos made it easier to react, but Marth is now stuck having to space instead of using combos like many other characters
Marth was my first main in Smash, it’s sad to see him in this state.
I generally prefer Marth over Lucina since his tippers add an extra layer of skill and flavor to what would otherwise be the lukewarm water of swordies. Landing tipper after tipper really makes you feel like a god when it strings just perfectly to close out a stock, and is the reward for your hard work mastering a character who might as well be called a Space Animal due to how much spacing you need to employ to master him
Or just mod the game for every hit to be a tipper and feel the busted gameplay as your opponents cream on the side effect
@@Matanumi not everyone wants to or can mod the game, and making every hitbox a tipper would drastically devalue landing it
Not to mention Nintendo will nuke your house if you try to play with those mods on Elite Smash
but does he has to be as bad as he is though?
Bringing back his Sm4sh Jab or even the Sm4sh Up throw would do wonders without keeping him feeling so bad.
I would even argue that flipping the priority of the tipper hitbox would make him feel "As intended", rather than living on copeium.
@@Athorment While those things would be nice, Nintendo isn't doing that, and most of the people complaining about Marth either don't play him or haven't labbed to find every single spacing technique in the game that they can utilize with him.
@@bluyu Dont try to hint that he is "Unexplored" because even if that's true, that's not the reason why he is "Bad".
Don't try to "Sm4sh Shulk" excuses to make him sound "better". People have labbed and even have had successes in tournament here and there.
MK Leo Vs. Riddles or Ignaize comes to mind.
Character has flaws and the few tech he has arent as consistent to make him a consistent threat. That's just what it is.
I'm still playing him but he takes a LOT of work/patience.
You can't afford to "pitbull" as much
You have to be willing to back off and catch your breath to keep the clarity of mind to somewhat land tippers.
And especially with Marthritis.
You either kill early or it becomes a slugfest waiting for tippers.
And in a slugfest Lucina fares much better but if you love tippers you play Marth even if you don't get as much as you want.
Takes tremendous conditioning.
If I'd buff him at all I'd increase his shieldbreaker shield damage that is all.
That would definitely solve Marthritis.
But I can also see how it's broken but GIVE MY BOY SOMETHING GDI
I used Marth since Melee from watching Ken. He still feels the same in Ultimate to me. Mkleo usually wins with Marth, not all the time but most of the time. I feel Marth is still the same high tier character in Ultimate. He deserves to be at least top twenty
Mkleo usually loses with him. Whenever he brings him out he's almost always forced into dropping him for someone else once he gets deaep into whatever tournament/local that he was playing him at.
13:13 Vars, that's HIGH MID TIER, not Low Mid tier; that's for Wii-Fit Trainer to Lucario/Bowser Jr. He's on the lower end of that but is kinda deserved, he's barely a 6/10 character, unlike Falco who you could argue is a 7/10.
Totally random point, but I Love that Marth is holding that shield at 9:50 to make it look like he has the Fire Emblem.
I think one important thing keeping Marth from relevance is the sheer level of slander directed towards him. I have a Marth main I go to locals with, leading the the character coming up in conversation every now and again. EVERY time, let me repeat, EVERY time Marth gets brought up somebody (who is not the Marth main) says something along the lines of "tippers inconsistent", "can't kill", or "worse Lucina". Same goes for social media. Someone runs into Marth on elite, they say "hey look, it's worse Lucina", commentators on stream will point out moves that didn't tipper for not killing, even though Lucina's version wouldn't have killed in that scenario either. Even characters like Doc seem to get more respect
Marth's in a weird spot because he's so closely related to other, better characters. Not only are the (generally considered) 2nd and 5th best swordies his clones, but sword fighters in general get compared to each other way more than other archetypes. Marth players don't help either. From the way they talk about the character you'd think tippers were as random as hero's crits. I personally think Marth is far closer to Lucina's level of strength than he's given credit for, but constant badmouthing keeps people from giving him a real shot. Maybe they try him for a week or two, but they don't hit enough tippers right off the bat, and drop him because "tippers are too inconsistent".
I watched a match between mr e (lucina) and kreeg (marth) a while ago and i pointed out in the video that kreeg won because he was significantly more consistent dispite it being very apparent that mr e was the better player. The "lucina is more consistent" and "marth can't kill" thing is really over blown. Lucina can be very inconsistent if she can't get the edge guard and it's not like she has amazing kill power either.
. etc 100%. th’is n accurate summation tbh. marth is only underrated for now tho.
Yeah finally somebody says this.
That's why I like Spyder-Marth because he is one of the few active Marth mains that doesn't constantly talk crap about his own main, whilst also not being overly passionate about it. He just knows Marth is A- tier.
I hope he goes to a major. Apparently he has never been to one before. He might actually slay if he is close to Mr. E's skill level.
As someone who mains Lucina I can see her limitations at my very low level. When I play online I often play a couple round with Marth to warm up. I'll admit its pretty surprising seeing some flew off the stage at 90 with something like a tipper forward tilt. But other times when you do a sour spot forward air it feels like you are just going right through the opponent. It sometimes does feel like luck to hit those tippers.
I played against 4 different Marths yesterday online, but haven’t played a Lucina in like 5 days. 11mil-13mil gsp. Either just blind luck, or marth is really popular in NA elite smash still.
Popular character tipper may be easier to hit online.
Meta is completely different online. Sonic and banjo are much higher. Joker much lower
you’re playing online
Poor Marth. He's getting mobility crept :(
He also got range crept. A lot of non swordies have threat ranges beyond his
I love the use of the Radiant Down music
Interestingly, as the meta goes on while marth seems to be only getting better at killing, lucina has seemed to only be more and more burdened by her own underwhelming stock taking ability. Yet regardless, she still performs better overall, and i think a factor that gets overlooked a lot is how much more effective her shield pressure is in comparison to marth. Tipper spacing on shield is almost never equal to tipper spacing on the opponent's hurtbox, especially in the case of landing aerials, and he is far weaker at covering landings and rolls into shield because of the requirement to take extra chase time to position shield breaker correctly, which more severely limits his ability to maintain pressure in neutral in comparison to lucina than it's often given credit for
I've been trying to get marth into elite forever. I sometimes get in, but I'm mostly out of it. The gameplay is ruined by campers who basically dominate the tactic he's trying to win at.
I feel like that Marth's Falchion tip getting shifted in this game was the biggest cause of why he's not doing so great. But you made a good point with him having to rely on the physics from every other game to get his results and Ultimate changing the physics really hurting him. If the next game doesn't respond to that statement in the slightest, Marth could doomed to be stuck in this scenario.
Also, I hate the idea of Echo fighter concept with Marth and Lucina. Considering the footage of their mods in different and personal class changes, we could've gotten exclusive concepts that make them unique, personally.
If anything, she should fight more like Chrom...
@@shinigamimiroku3723 *YES! THANK YOU!*
@@shinigamimiroku3723 It makes no sense why Lucina and Chrom don't fight parallel to each other! They're literally holding the exact same sword!
@@RaheemRollairit makes a lot of sense if you play the game they are from.
@@gameboyn64 I already have. The devs should’ve took examples from the games they were playable in.
Marth is in my opinion one of the top 3 characters that should have been buffed since he's so close to being top tier. the other two are Plant and Kirby since the former is basically an incomplete character and the latter is just unfairly bad
Marth is the most engaging character to play against at high level, so it sucks to see him lose out to cookie-cutter combo characters.
Marth is the character I play when I want to just fuck around and I gotta say he’s a lot more consistent than people give him credit for. Lucina is still better but it’s not as difficult to land tippers as you make it out to be
You don't play at a high level though. This video is referring to high level.
@@JonathanFingers yeah but anyone at a high level would be better at spacing with Marth so they’d have an easier time landing tippers
@@oblivion2674 Except better players play at a MUCH faster speed than low level players. I'm able to land a lot more tippers in Elite Smash than Mkleo can in tournament games at times. That's obviously not because I'm better at spacing, it's because my opponent isn't very good at the game. The reason Marth is so mid at top level is because he is inconsistent af. Also stop liking your own comments.
Ironically, he has been top tier and the highest ranked FE character in three Smash games prior to Ultimate.
Ignaize and MkLeo are probably the only two who are carrying Marth at this point.
Heck, I would say that MkLeo and Ignaize are the only two reasons why Marth is even relevant at this point.
Kreeg is a Marth main ranked 1st in Utah. Also Rizeasu.
@@TUZOIVAN16rizeasu is cracked man
Martha is still my second main. Right after Wii Fit Trainer
Maybe they should just give him back his up throw kill throw. Or his jab combo confirms
I'm willing to believe that it would be worth it to give Marth's tipper priority because of considering buffs as something that isn't meant to give a character TOO much of a boost. It's certain that there would be a difference, and while likely small, I think that's a good size considering his simplistic, general character archetype
I disagree to an extent when you say that making his tipper hitbox bigger wouldn't make a difference. Marth in Smash 4 was known to be very bad until the patch update that increased the tipper hitbox of all his moves along with minor buffs to the tipper damage. After that, he began seeing more and more success with Mr. E and eventually MKLeo who skyrocketed the character's ranking in tier lists.
You have to be very skillful to use him at a high level. It takes patience and precision to use him effectively. Definitely more rewarding than Lucina if you can meet the requirements needed to play him at that level. But Lucina is more carefree. You don't have to worry about tippers.
Edit: Just to point out some stuff. Lucina has kill power and can be carefree and not worry. She is 100% consistent. Marth still has forward tilt as a kill option, has Dancing Blade ender as kill option, those tipper forward smashes can kill at like 40% near ledge to some, etc. He has kill potential. Lucina has less kill power than Marth with tippers. Even charge neutral special will kill earlier.
Edit 2: I saw vid and can agree in a lot that he has lost. Jab 1 into stuff as you said, the tipper inconsistency is probably the biggest. If it is factual, then yes. That needs to be fixed. I saw him almost kill in mid stage with a Dancing Blade on 87% after the final hit on ender.
This is always brought up that he's more rewarding at a high level, but in the past 5 years there's really no evidence that he is. No real significant representation from top level players, especially when MKLeo tried him and dropped in. It's more probable at this point that all the effort you'd put into Martha's spacing would have been better spent working on Lucina's... everything else. In the end, Lucina is more likely the more rewarding of the two in high level play, and the evidence speaks much more to this conclusion.
@@Fisherington He dropped Marth prior to Marth's buffs and never picked him up again as a main because he likes Byleth, Aegis, and Joker way more. Every time he actually plays post-buff Marth he performs very well and even has wins over players who tanked him when he used other chars. Problem is that Marth is unnecessary for Leo.
Other than Leo, Ignaize is gradually getting better placements with Marth (and beat many top players to back it up), and the best player in Utah is a Marth main who has wins over many PR players, including Scend. Post-buff Marth has the results but nobody talks about it.
@@Spyder-Marthhe did play marth post buffs although it was online and he did use marth in tournaments post buff but like the dude said lucina or his other charcters are just better to play heck even byleths tipper mechanic is fucking better
It always seemed to me like the high risk/high reward characters were top tier because the highest levels of play are able to maximize reward while minimizing risk. So it seemed very odd to me that Lucina would be more popular than Marth. But yeah, this video really explains a lot about why.
Great video Vars. Honestly tho, Marth isn’t as bad as people say. The thing with Marth is that his tippers are harder to hit than ever, but they aren’t necessarily inconsistent. I think he’s really fun regardless and I really do enjoy watching/maining him
His tippers are inconsistent, though. Sometimes your opponent will live up to very high percents, while other times they die super early to a tipper f smash. You have to work hard if you wanna play Marth, and the risk/reward is not in your favor if you do so. I don't think he's bad, however.
@@Eggss_B That's not his fault but the fault of the player. There was no moment where I lost a match and said "Marth should have landed a tipper there." The problem is that people don't seem to know the actual size of the tipper hitboxes, so they just assume where it is and perceive it as bigger than it actually is... then get surprised when they land a sour. The many players I played against all thought my "sour" was a "tipper" but I'd know what hitbox actually landed and why.
The best way to get over this is to actually look at his hitboxes and *then* play him. I did this for about a week and now I know why I landed a tipper and why I didn't. If you think you landed a tipper, watching the replay then seeing your opponent shuffle into the sour spot range helps show Marth some mercy. I don't think his tipper hitboxes have to be any bigger than they are now (besides Dancing Blade). Trust me, doing this exercise every now and then helps a LOT. People ask me how I always land tippers and this is the answer.
Is as bad as people say. He's a textbook example of mid tier.
@@Spyder-Marth Stop gaslighting yourself bro. Even in the highlight videos you upload on your channel, there are clearly times where failing to land the tipper is hurting you and even making you lose games. You don't need to lie to yourself to defend the competitive viability of a video game character by using evidence from your objectively low level gameplay. Both Leo and Ignaize suffer from the same issue.
If they at least designed the sour spots to combo he'd be decent
So hope you continue both series and get to Everyone Plays: PAC-Man, Palutena and Game & Watch and No one Plays: Swordfighter.
Weird how this is a marth specific problem, because there are other characters that rely on tippers and they can hit them more consistently, like Ridley, corrin, charizard, and the belmonts
As a Lucina main, playing Marth doesn't really feel so bad. Combo game isn't that great anyway, so you're still sticking to fundamentals, spacing, and out playing. I've played Lucina trying to make the most of my sword range and going for reads and plays rather than a "rushdown-like" advantage state and I get rewarded more when I play Marth like this, just sucks when edge guarding isn't consistent anymore. Lucina is more consistent, but Marth is deadlier, still not a character to sleep on. Id say high mid tier
“Remember how fun it was to play Marth when you were little, and your disappointment when you tried him in Ultimate?
It was me, Barry.
I nerfed Marth at Super Sonic Speeds so you would think you suddenly suck!” - Eobard Thawne
I just love how people act like landing a tipper is impossible.
I feel they purposefully neutered Marth in Ultimate to make Lucina stronger, or at least more chosen against Marth. Lucina was considered good in Sm4sh but basically everyone just played Marth because his reward system was just better at higher level than Lucina's all around strength. In Ultimate, his tipper hitbox is not only tragically small, but it's so small that it's the most inconsistent thing in the world. The tipper only registers if the tipper hitbox hit first without another hitbox interjecting, but because it's so small, a lot of the time the non-tipper hitbox will just connect on the same frame as the tipper and will cancel it out. So basically he's just Lucina except your weaker than normal with like a 50% chance to actually get reward for spacing versus just being consistent. I hope in the next smash game they fix his tipper mechanic, it is tragic how inconsistent it is.
The change they made to dancing blade made it feel so much worse to use. I used to make use of the long input window to really drag out dancing blade to catch people off guard. Now it feels less satisfying to land, more punishing to miss, and less useful overall.
I'm telling you the way you buff marth is simply to give him a longer sword.
Marth in melee and partly brawl was a one of the few swordsman, and with that he had more range and discounts than other characters. With an added benefit that if you space well(which you're supposed to do anyways) you'll be rewarded with more damage.
The issue is marth sword is no longer a range advantage, most sword ls have his range if not greater and several brawler have more range as well. Marth gets zero benefit from his tipper if he doesn't have a way to keep people at that range. If mart sword has as big as corrins I promise you'd see more marths, more tippers, and way more success. I wouldn't even say make lucina sword bigger, than would be the benefit/difference between them. You don't have to be accurate with lucina but in turn you don't get the more spacing based character.
I have been a Marth main since Melee, and this video was hard to watch. It’s sad, but with the right amount of training he is still 🔥. What’s nice about him is that he has multiple play styles; it’s not the same basic boring crap you get with Pyra/Mithera, Falco etc.
One other thing to mention is that his archetype doesn't work in smash ultimate. The concept of a floaty fundamentals and neutral-based sword-fighter doesn't work in this game. Too many characters outshine that archetype in one way or another (power creep being partially responsible). Longer range swordies exist now, and while they don't outright kill Marcina, their one advantage of disjointed mid-range, doesn't exist anymore. Every character that comes out now, has atleast a decent (if not fantastic) combo game so neither his nickle and time style or combo oriented styles are as effective as a combo swordie (roy, corrin, sora, steve). There's a higher requirement to have a good keepaway game due to the amount of projectiles and speed, so the archetype he would have succeeded in has been destroyed outright, not just in terms of relatives. And his disadvantage state is horrid in a game swamped by the aforementioned factors. He doesn't have a place. And if you want to be technical, marth's sword used to be longer than lucina's, which I'm pretty sure isn't true anymore, so even compared to his clone (who also falls for the same potholes), his trade-offs are even worse.
Melee marth would be low top tier in ultimate and would have done wonders for marth. Also why isn't marth the swordie sheik when he is like that in his games. Very fast, agile and has a very fencing oriented style of combat overall yet none of that is seen in any of his smash iterations. Your comment about his archetype not working is so true and more reason to hate ultimate imo because imagine not rewarding skillful play like reading and fundies. Whiff punishing doesn't even exist anymore.
@@dave9515 Mythra is swordie sheik, which is why Pam is top tier in this game. This game doesn't respect fencing styles as much as cheese machines or braindead dmg min-maxing so go figure.
I picked up wolf, and it's the only character I've used that felt like I could honest to god focus on a whiff-punish style of play, manes sense considering he has like top 5 airspeed. My previous main was Marcina (and pit before that) so that should give you an idea about why I had to switch.
please do Yoshi next he's much better than before a lot of Yoshi players are popping up
In melee i believe that the tipper has a priority over the rest of the sword, one of the reasons why he was so good in this game. (and for roy the tipper had also priority making him even worse)
your talking about roys inverse tipper right?
@@pumpkincoffee when i say tipper i mean the end of the sword
That's not true*, aside from melee d-air and brawl u-smash, sourspot always has priority, and for that matter generally the hitbox that's closest to the character is the one that has priority over the other, which is why Roy's sweetspot generally has priority
In melee only uair and dair have their tippers with higher priority than the rest of the sword. Dair's case is pretty significant because it's one of the few moves that are spikes in Melee, for uair it's not usually too relevant, but it's def much easier to hit the sweetspot than in the games that came after. But generally what holds the character together in melee is his ground mobility, grab range and very powerful grab game, but he can still suffer with opponents living to very high percenatages because he doesn't have kill moves in the air besides dair and upB and once he stops being able to combo he's limited to killing in neutral with smash attacks, uptilt or upB.
@@LealFireball wait u-air too? I feel like I knew that and forgot about it for some reason
I think it's a shame what they did to Marth. He's honestly one of my favourite characters to play ever since I got into Smash in Brawl. While Lucina is pretty much the same, Marth's tipper hitboxes are what makes him fun imo.
I think having the priority of his hitboxes reversed would help Marth a LOT. Sure it would be a band-aid fix to the other issues he has in ultimate but I definitely think he'd be a high tier if that were to happen.
Why nobody plays Pac-Man, regarded in the high tier of the official tier list, yet doesn’t have many reps, the main one only being Tea.
The tip is very small. If he had a bigger tipper everyone would be satisfied.
Love this character because of his design I think he looks awesome but my problem when using him is that it feels incredibly difficult to earn kills. You have to work extremely hard and be careful for them while the rest of the roster has much easier kills
Another big issue is that his combo game got butchered and he has no kill confirms, ff landing dair into fmash works about as well as trying to kill someone by throwing a gun instead of shooting it, and same goes for nair fmash which the most consistent ends up being reverse nair 1 hitbox dashback fmash, in meele his ken combo depends on sour spots to work, now he doesn't even have an use for them
Agreed on the landing dair, disagree on the nair1 to fsmash. If you fade back with Marth and hit nair1 it tippers every single time. I always get people on the ledge with this option. It's also safe if the nair1 hits the shield.
Do you plan on making a video on meta knight? I swear he's one of the rarest characters to show up online and in tournaments.
They should give him his grab range from Melee back and give him back his FE1 design because we deserve pantsless Marth and his funny grabs.
Me when I got my ass whooped by a Marth online for 2 hours straight: *you lieeee*
Nice videos dude, keep up the Good work
I miss marth probably the main reason I like smash 4 is because marth was pretty solid
They removed a middle hit box from his sword that keeps him in the game when it comes to kill power. You either hit the top, or don’t kill. That’s why
every other FE character to Marth: "The future is now, old man!"
No one plays Marth because there's no reason to opt into his sour spots when there's Lucina. Shame too since Marth has been my favorite FE style character in smash since introduction.
Take a shot every time 'tipper' is said challenge.