Why do so few people play marth?

[jedyobidan]

Hello,
I'm relatively new to the competitive scene (couple months in), and for the most part I main Marth. I read somewhere (think it was the tier list) that Marth is a rare character to see in top level play. Marth is pretty high tier, no? Is there something about his playstyle that makes him less played/harder to master than the other high tier characters? Or am I just being silly?

 

[-LzR-]

What are you talking about? Marth is one of the most popular characters in the game. Its the good Marths that are rare.

 

[jedyobidan]

my bad, probably wasn't being clear enough. I guess I'm asking why good Marths are so rare then. xD Edited OP

 

[Life]

To play Marth at the highest level requires basically perfect spacing (to oversimplify, that means tippering everything). That's really hard to do, especially over an entire tournament.

 

[C.J.]

Oh hey

I wrote something about this earlier when someone asked me why (his) Marth was hit/miss.

Copy/pasting:
Like, Marth is a good character, a REALLY good character- in design. In practice though, he's pretty meh.
He has the tools to cover every option that every character in the game can throw at him. The problem is, you're guessing non-stop. He has the capacity to do everything, but it all is contingent on your ability to guess right. And when he messes up.. well, he dies.
DDD is fat and lives forever so he has a chance to just live and live until he gets a gimp. Snake sets up camp, punishes to a disproportionate level compared to frame data/range, and is fat. Diddy has bananas, Falco has lasers/sideB/jab.
Marth has "guess well"
That being said, the reward that Marth gets off of every single correct guess could end a stock really efficiently. Marth carries momentum incredibly well, can force defensive options (roll/SD/AD/etc) and punish them better than a very large part of the cast. His ledge trapping game is, imo, the best in the game. His ability to juggle is top 3 or 4. At high-mid %s, a good guess leads to a stock via fsmash. And so on and so forth.
The problem is, it all comes down to a guess; if you guess right you look like Ramin in "Messiah." It carries through, it was the right decision, everyone thinks you're brilliant/amazing/etc.
If you guess wrong everyone goes "wtf, that was a terrible option and he got punished for it so badly."
Marth is basically just **** or get *****, off of guesses. Luckily, and the reason that he isn't lower on the tier list, when Marth guesses wrong, if he catches himself, he has the tools to regain his safety (slow fall nair, a really good Broll, DS, etc) to reset the situation back to neutral. But still, it all comes down to a guess, and how quickly you can recognize that your guess was wrong. As a result, every Marth ever will always be hit/miss.

Don't get me wrong, I love Marth. And he's is a GREAT character. The reward that you get from a good guess is HUGE and it's so much fun. But yeah, still comes down to a guess xD

 

[-LzR-]

So if Marth didn't have such an amazing escape tool as DS he would be much worse? I don't really see how else he could reasonably reset the situation.

 

[etecoon]

To play Marth at the highest level requires basically perfect spacing (to oversimplify, that means tippering everything). That's really hard to do, especially over an entire tournament.

this is only true in certain MUs IMO but it does come out at times, you can completely outread an IC or DDD player as marth and still lose by missing your mark a few times by just a few pixels. other than that, what CJ said, marth has all the tools on paper to wreck some faces but it's hard for people to establish consistency with him, there's a lot of **** or get *****

 

[SSS]

I don't know. I'm getting pretty consistent with my tipper fairs.

 

[-LzR-]

And you are also landing them exactly at the same time as Marth lands to make it safe? And SH tipper fair is not safe at all, though it's still not so easy to punish.

 

[SSS]

I pretty much never have landing lag. I do a few high up. I typically don't just rush in and SHfair. Mine are normally retreating. I'll go in, throw it with C-stick while going back.

 

[-LzR-]

You still probably aren't doing them optimally. I don't have much experience myself, but people say it's hard and even Mr. R said he still practices it (I think) so I doubt you can consistently get it right.

 

[kismet2]

because we're all free

 

[deepseadiva]

No one said that you can play a smaller, faster, stronger version of Marth that can fly indefinitely.

Marth is chocolate when you can choose Rocky Road.

 

[Pierce7d]

My opinion is similar to CJs analysis. Marth is a character that translates well if you have a very high level understanding of the game. If you're just good at doing basic stuff, or just good at controlling yourself, but not actually outplaying your opponent, then Marth does not really have an optimal auto-pilot mode at higher levels.

 

[-LzR-]

But does anyone else agree that when not talking about higher levels of play, Marth is among the easier characters in the game. As long as you can keep up good spacing simple fair mixups and grabs will take you quite far. Fair is such a forgiving move when your opponents aren't very good, but I am very aware that of course doesn't matter since higher levels is all that matters.

 

[SnowCold]

Marth requires a LOT of precision. I don't mean just tipping everything, you don't always want to tipper things and it's not that bad if you don't, in fact in most cases it makes no differences, just extra damage. tipping starts to matter at higher percents. However, marth really requires you to capitalize off of everything. This is what determines a good marth from a bad marth, which one capitalizes better. that means punishing every airdodge, every roll, every missed shuttle loop/nado/phantasm/other punishable moves, every edgeguard situation, every landing, every missed read from your opponent, etc. Granted, this doesn't mean you have to be absolutely perfect to win any game. However, to be winning major tournaments with marth and beating top players like M2K, ADHD, Otori, Kakera, etc. You need to be 90-95% on top of everything. Essentially, Marth is just a hard character to play with. Also marth struggles in a couple areas. Those being: survivability (Marth is pretty light), recovery (marth's recovery isn't super bad, but it can still get gimped easily if you lose your double jump, and even if you make it back marth has so much Recovery Carry Over lag that your opponent can very easily just hit you back off. Needless to say, you have to get kind of creative with your recovery.), getting ledge trapped, (this is marth's lesser weakness. Marth can get Ledge trapped kind of hard but he does have a relatively good amount of options so it's not that bad). His weaknesses are all related to being off stage in a disadvantageous position. What I mean is, if you are off stage, and your opponent is onstage, you're in trouble.

Now why should you play marth? I'll tell you why. With practice, following up with marth becomes second nature. The reason for that is, marth has a GIGANTIC amount of viable options. Check this out, all of his aerials are very useful (I would say all equally useful, but each in a different scenario/situation.), all of his smashes are amazing (quick and powerful), all of his tilts are great though fairly underused for some reason, his up-b and side-b are really good, his neutral B eats shields for breakfast, and his counter can stop aggressive edgeguarders in their tracks, his throws all put his opponent in a favorable position for the marth player (though back throw is useless, it's just down throw with less damage and more ending lag). Do you see? Just about every move has its place. Some are a lot more useful than others, but every move can still be used effectively. This is rivaled only by MK. Not only that, but Marth is one of the absolute best at carrying and capitalizing off of momentum. Meaning, whenever you land a hit, you are winning fairly convincingly (as long as you can actually continue to make reads and punishes). The only other character that rivals this is again MK. It may seem like Marth is just a less good MK, but i disagree. Marth has a lot of gimmicks that MK doesn't have, as well as playing actually considerably differently from MK. MK has better recovery and edgeguarding capabilities, as well as a better neutral game. Marth also teaches a higher level of play better than any other character. This is because Marth focuses so much on what the opponent is going to do, and also on the precision of his own decisions.

So there you go, a very long and detailed explanation. I hope that covers everything

 

[DekuTree]

Like others have said here, it's just general difficulty with spacing out your tips. Plus a lot of advanced stuff requires insane precision as well. The ken combo is crazy but landing that last spike off the end of the stage is insane as you need to tip it, plus there is tons of lag on it if you miss, allowing the opponent to get the edge.

But why play marth? Well, is there anything more satisfying than landing a tipped smash? I think not.

 

[etecoon]

MK has better recovery and edgeguarding capabilities, as well as a better neutral game.

I disagree on neutral game, in a lot of MUs I find getting in with marth to be easier because of his better walk speed, better air speed, better shield, and having normal attacks that don't all have laser priority(not always a good thing). to MKs credit he has better resets, a faster rushdown, a much safer dragon punch that can stuff many approaches, and an easier time avoiding grabs in MUs where a single grab has disproportionate consequences. it depends on the opponent but I think both characters have their merits here, offense and defense is where MK is way too good

MK can do more with a single opening as his traps are primarily covering options automatically instead of reads, you don't read an air dodge and take a guess, you just uair them and if they dodge you hit them with something else anyway, nado and shuttle loop also can frequently take away most if not all of an opponents defensive actions. MK gets in = a good chunk of damage if MK executes well, marth getting in = a good chunk of damage if marth reads you well and if he executes perfectly. marth can **** you up with the right guesswork but that's what separates the top tiers from high/mids, less guesswork = more consistent results

likewise MK has an easier time getting out of opponents traps, marth might require a gamble on a counter or DS to get out of a trap where MK can fly to the ledge and plank until opening