After alot of playing melee, I have come to understand the meaning of “holding center” and why people say that run in N-Air is bad for Marth.
Marth in melee is defined by his excellent ground control and disjointed range, but why does he have excellent ground control and how does he use this range.
Marth has a great movement on the ground; His dash, walk and wave dash length and speed combined with good aerial drift allows him to be able to out manoeuvre almost every character in the game (with a few exceptions) With shield stops and shield pivots, he can position himself on a dime in his initial dash, combined with perfect pivots allowing him to act out of his initial dash with smashes and pivot grabs. Additionally, his wave dash and using shield dropping after a dash allows him to position precisely on platforms too.
One move, D-Tilt defines Marth’s ground control. This move acts as a “Get off the ground move” / “Do something please move” and since its available after a crouch, Wave Dashing and Cactuar dashing allow you to hold down and enter crouch, making D-Tilt available on command. D-Tilt itself does not reward Marth directly, it is often only gives some additionally positional advantage and damage; However, using D-Tilt to control the ground forces opponents to take to the air. Furthermore, Due to Marth’s dash distance, he can cover a large distance around him; Along with the biggest non-tether grab in the game, this means there is a large area around Marth where you cannot be in lag without the risk of being grabbed.
Additionally, due to Marth’s range and dash speed, he has no problem catching dash backs from other characters like Fox and him self; Using a combination of D-Tilt, dash attack, grab and F-Smash can threaten people who don’t want to interact, forcing them to.
Despite having one of the longest dashes in the game, he wont throw out moves after a dash, as they are often not long lasting enough and laggy to be used this way; Marth’s dash forwards is often used to burst towards opponents when they are in a bad spot like in the air / trying to land, when they are off stage or to cross them up and return to center stage.
So with this massive advantage on the ground, how does Marth do in the air? Marth’s air speed is above average in the horizontal axis, but is fairly floaty in the vertical axis (Although he is NOT a floaty but a mid weight, he just cannot fall that fast). This means whenever Marth jumps into the air, he is committed in doing so. To combat this, Marth’s moves have excellent disjointed range above and in-front of him. This means, if the Marth spaces well, he will win air to air interactions.
This allows Marth to use his great ground movement and aerial drift to burst down peoples landing options, forcing them to respect his disjointed range above him, and forcing them to land further away / having to grab ledge as they cannot contest Marth.
However, Marth’s moves have alot of end-lag, this means if the Marth misses his aerial, he has alot of recovery time before he can throw out another. This means in juggle situations, that the Marth does not want to swing unless he knows he will be-able to hit you.
Due to Marth’s lag on aerials, that the Marth does not want to swing unless he knows he will be-able to hit you. So the Marth will want to be patient in when they will throw out their moves. This leads into the final part of Marth’s strengths, his footsies. To leverage positional advantage, Marth can play a very position based footsies game, where Marth will want to slowly edge towards the position he wants to find hm self in. This most often occurs by him dash dancing closer and closer to his opponent until he is close enough to edge forwards with his fast walk or slightly with his aerial drift. When doing this, it is preferred to have center. The reason behind this is as Marth Short hops drifts to micro space, he has to commit to jumping, leaving him vulnerable to being hit. Marth can either alleviate this risk by proper spacing and use of his disjoint, however this can lead to him getting whiff punished or stuffed before the attack comes out. Using grounded moves to catch people people trying to stuff out the move or come in grounded to beat his short hops, these can still be whiff punished. Or he can use his dash back to avoid attacks and whiff punish, but he does not have access to this option in the corner.
Marth has alot of weaknesses for being a top teir in melee, however he as alot of ways to mitigate them.
Marth’s recovery is excellent distance wise, his good aerial drift and Side-B stall allow him to find his way back to the stage almost any time he is sent offstage and up. His double jump is quite bad though, however, combined with his Up-B, dolphin slash (witch can be angled to recover from further away), gives him a increadble vertical recovery too. So, why is a recovery a weakness of Marth’s? Marth’s recovery is very exploitable. Most characters in the cast have tools to punish him before he gets back to the stage, or when he gets back to the stage. His Side-B has 21 frames of recovery, meaning it is easy to hit him out of. Additionally, if Marth lands on stage with his Up-B, he has alot of lag before he can act (unlink a certain space animal), witch means if he is force to go high above the ledge with Up-B, he is likely to be punished for it. However, Marth has the tools o mix up his recovery, the Side-B stall can be used to mix up timing along with his double jump; And Marth can also choose to riskily air dodge to ledge or stage as well.
As stated above, Marth’s fall speed is quite slow for him being a mid weight. This means jumping is quite a commitment for him. Additionally, if Marth is launched into the air, he struggle to find his way back down. Of course, this too can be alleviated, but not as much as his recovery, as he really only has the option to DJ and reset the situation, as he can’t fast fall out of his jumps for a long time; or to yet again mix up the timing with Side-B stalls.
Nearly all of Marth’s moves are have alot of ending lag on them. All his grounded normals apart from D-Tilt and Jab have more than 35 frames of animation. After Marth jumps (witch as said above, might be risky), it gets slightly better, with L cancel frames of 7 on F-Air, N-Air and U-Air but B-Air is 12 and D-Air a whopping 16 frames of L cancel lag. This, however is only half the problem, as if Marth had a fast option like Shine, this would be fine. However, Marth’s moves also take a while to come out. Moves like Jab and Side-B are his fastest moves, however they are very weak, and can often be CCed until very very late %. His next fastest move is U-Tilt at frame 6; This means if Marth wanted to cover him self with a move after an aerial, it would take a minium of 13 frames!, This is slower than some peoples reaction time. Of course, Marth has a way to alleviate this, for one, his moves are all disjointed, allowing him to stay at a range where his aerials can be harder to punish; and secondly, his incredible dash back animation allows him to quick dodge incoming attacks.
The only exception to this is his aerials witch have low stating and ending lag, however he can’t use them on the ground and he has to jump.
This means that Marth cannot brawl up close like someone like Fox can. Because his moves have alot of start up, Marth often has to use movement to threaten rather than raw hit-boxes.
In conclusion, Marth has excellent control over the ground and air, using his movement to position himself correctly an capitalising on mistakes made by his opponents, whitest also using disjoints to zone and create favourable interactions.
Speed ★★★★☆ Movement ★★★★★ Offence ★★★★☆ Defence ★★★★☆ Range ★★★★★ Out of Shield ★★☆☆☆ Boxing ★☆☆☆☆ Recovery ★★★☆☆ Ledge Trapping ★★★★☆ Edge guarding ★★★★★