Question about what marth can do to respond to spotdodges

[YNZ]

Hey guys! Im still a pretty new melee player and I've recently been having trouble against a friend of mine who plays samus pretty casually.

He's not a really technical player (cant wavedash, L cancel, or do anything fancy) but dang the way he plays is really tough to get around for me - basically, whenever I approach he either uses CC Dtilt/Dsmash to pop me up (my spacing is probably not the best but even when I hit tipper Fairs sometimes I'll get Dtilted) or he uses spotdodge. If I dashdance to bait out the spot dodge, he just keeps spotdodgoing until I try for a grab and either whiff the grab or get straight up samus Fsmashed in the face.

Somehow I usually beat him but I think that's because I get lucky and can punish him harder than he can punish me.

TLDR: I just got 2 questions:

Are there any ways Marth can reliably straigh up beat spotdodge spam? (Would Nair work? I feel like Samus would be able to CC it. Sometimes I try to spam Dtilt when he spotdodges but if its spaced improperly that just leads to me getting CC punished)

Also, when my friend is recovering back onto stage, he almost always just lands with a Nair. Are there any ways marth can punish samus for doing this (Ive been DD grabbing when he does this but I feel like all marth can do to samus off of a grab is get an F throw and 2 fairs if hes lucky. At high percents i feel like he literally gets nothing!) Should I try WD fsmash instead? or are there better options? (Fox, for instance, can just run under em and upsmash which is so satisfyingly easy to pull off)

Thanks so much in advance!! :D

 

[thomas76]

So marth actually has a great toolkit for beating stuff like that. Basically, every time you approach him, you say he either spotdodges or cc hits you. So, the solution to beating that in my opinion would be dd grab. You can dash dance close to her (outside of dsmash/dtilt range) and then since hes inexperienced and wont wd in and hit you, you can be sure he will eventually do either the move or the spotdodge, either way just run in grab or at higher percents rising fair. Anyway those should work with some practice eventually.

Secondly, if he is landing with nair every time you can do a lot of stuff. There are a few different options that you could do depending on his and your percents. If you're both pretty low then i would dash back / wavedash back and then run in fair after he nairs. If he is at a higher percent then you could tipper uptilt which will kill. If youre at a low percent you could also cc it and then grab him quickly, but i think fair could be better. If you nairs and then fades back off stage then just fsmash him I guess.