What Happened to Marth? Why NO ONE Plays Him Anymore | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Echo Fighters have been a constant presence in every smash game and they've always had a pretty divisive reputation among the fandom for either being uninspired lazy duplicates to full of character slots or nuanced ways to enjoy a playstyle whatever the justification there's a recurring Trend when it comes to that ghosts and smash then usually I say usually not always downgraded versions of The Originals when it comes to competitive success in 64 Luigi was considered the worst character in the game and he was a semi-clone of Mario Jigglypuff was also noticeably worse than Kirby and was a clone of him occasionally the dynamic would take place in Reverse but more often than not the original would be superior to the Clone making it all the more jarring once said original performs worse than the knockoff and even more drawing when their movesets are quite literally identical buying One Singular aspect if you spend any amount of time following special ultimate you'll know what the greater community's viewpoint on marthas a fighter who for three straight installments dating back to his debut in melee was consistently ranked in the upper hierarchy of the game's meta has become the emblematic example of someone with all the tools necessary to find a spot in top tier once again only to have of that ruins because of circumstance Mark has to be arguably the most tragic veteran in Smash ultimate and for today's episode of why no one place we're gonna find out why if I were to be succinct about the whole thing to save your time yes the reasons I'll be listening for why is unpopular are almost guaranteed to match what you're currently thinking but I implore you to stay and watch this all the way through because it's one thing to know the problem is it's another to know how and why it's a problem as to me it explains why there's such a massive Gap in tear placement between Martha and Lucina but it doesn't necessarily excuse it Martha was the character who trailblazed an entire new archetype that has quickly become one of the largest in Smash the sword fighter a character who instead of battling out with punches kicks what have you chooses to quite pragmatically on my dad fight with the weapon in this case a sword naturally this gives his attacks more extended range compared to an unarmed fighter and more importantly the property of being disjointed since any attacks that Clyde but the sword don't deal damage to the wielder while punching the sword ought to be rather painful due to this sword fighters excel at playing the mid-range while their attacks are regarded as melee in nature their farther area coverage disjointed hitboxes give them a noteworthy advantage against those without therefore it's in your best interest to always keep your opponent far enough to where their attacks can't hit you but close enough to where you can still hit them further emphasizing this is the fact that Martha in particular Bears the unique property of what is now known as a Tipper mechanic the majority of his attacks have a sweet spot located at the farthest end of the sword dealing significantly more damage and knockback to the point where many of them are among the strongest of their kind this however comes with the repercussion that if you strike anywhere else on the blade it will land a weaker hit with far less power in essence Martha's a swordy is sortie that ever sorted in that is crucial for him more so than any other blade wielder to follow that rule ordinarily this wouldn't be too challenging to overcome as he actually possesses arguably the best raw Frame data out of any sword fighter in the game granted his floaty air physics make him look rather slow but comparing attacks to attacks his average startup surpasses that of even Mithra or Roy frame 84 adult frame 6 up till frame 7 downtail frame 10 forward slash frame 6 down smash frame 6 neutral airframe6 forward airframe 7 back airframe 5 up airframe 9 Diner frame nine side B frame five lucky frame six counter this guy's attack speed is on par with boxer type characters and by extensions clone Lucina a surprisingly easy timing ground to ground her air-to-air against even the fastest attackers within the cast complementing this uncharacteristically fast startup is the coverage of his attacks having arguably the best overall area coverage especially in relation to his speed many of his normals comprise arcing swings letting him cover large amounts of space in any direction of his choosing at in time with these two factors at play Mark should have no trouble playing the spacing game and that's how it's been for him in melee brawl and smash 4. so what happened between 4 and ultimate that sent him tumbling all the way down in the tier list it's kind of hard to pinpoint due to being largely circumstantial for melee took wall even though he lost access to his outrageous grab game and incredible ground movement in the removal of wave dashing and Nerfs to dash dancing he was indirectly compensated by the overall systems changes implemented in Brawl such as the almost inexplicable absence of his thundering combo characters in turn buffing stray hitters and the slow floatier pace to the game further benefiting his already immaculous facing in neutral the strength of his Musa remains and more or less the same relative position Smash 4 initially nerfed him in many aspects although many of them were backpedaled on the inversion up base to allow him to return to form in a similar fashion to brawl Smash 4 was also a rather slow paced scheme that worked in his favor Smash 4 however was also the iteration where the sword fighter archetype went from a niche one to a very prominent one which made Mark's range Advantage not as exclusive anymore with the introduction of six new sword fighters while technically 5 new and one returning Cora and Lucina Cloud Robin schulk and Roy yet even so the game environment was still agreeable to Mart's win conditions securing him a comfortable spot at 11 out of 54. ultimate appeared to at first echoed the same approach as its predecessors giving Marty a mixture of Buffs and Nerfs to his name moveset leaning more on the side of Nerfs but maintaining his position via changes to the game's engine without a doubt ultimate is a faster game than brawl or Smash 4 which inherently compromises its performance but the inclusion of Dash canceling grounded attacks improvements to his initial Dash and the reduced Landing lag on Aerials were a massive benefit to him and the rest of his culture additionally some adjustments given to his specialists namely dancing Blade's new animations and the ability to angle Shield breaker have mildly increased the number of use cases they now have unfortunately even though it feels like same old same old on paper there are three major distinctions to his gameplay experience in this game different to Prior ones that ultimately influence the greater player base to deem him Unworthy of the attention and praise he once garnered reason one Marth lost his ability to space whilst two that Martha has been given concessions in the form of better safety on Aerials and more use cases on his attacks as mentioned earlier those changes don't provide a one-to-one compensation for the single most defining aspect of his gameplay spacing which has become gradually less forgiving from game to game Mobility has been augmented across the board making it significantly more difficult for mod to execute his game plan the nature of his Tipper mechanic forces him to play a very defensive keep away play style continuously maintaining the line of scrimmage between him and his opponent assets both where he's at his strongest and his opponent is at their weakest the changes throughout the past three installments incrementally removed the mini any tools he had at his disposal to better force that Goldilocks zone in a manner of speaking movement options like wave dashing Dash dancing and perfect pivot allowed into position himself quickly and effectively regardless of the attempts his opponent made to break through his defenses none of those are accessible to him in Ultimate he still has Fox trotting and the addition of Dash canceling increases the range of his threat bubble but range and Mobility were never the priority it was the ability to space that's the primary contributing elements to the notorious consistency issues he's been played with ever since the game came out when you ask anyone why Mart sucks they're likely going to point out how inconsistent he is because in contrast to Roy whose strong hitboxes have priority mods we kickboxes have priority meaning even if it looks like you hit your opponent with the far end of your sword if so much as a pixel of the weak hitbox made contact with the hurt box they would get the weekend whereas for Roy sometimes Tipper attacks land a strong hit because a single Pixel of the hilltip Box made contact that does play a big role in Mark's consistency problem but that's how he's always been that backwards priority was the thing in Smash 4 brawl and even melee from not mistaken he the only difference is that those games have physics engines that were conducive to a spacing oriented wind condition ultimate's physics engine however is not mod has always struggled with Landing tippers at the right time it's just that in the past he had ways to not only Shuffle himself to increase the likelihood of Landing in Tipper but the movement speeding capabilities so the entire roster were limited enough to make it easy for him to do so not to mention the fact that ultimate is the first game in a long time where Landing Aerials are not only a common approach option but arguably the most integral approach option for many characters that's why it feels so much worse in this game to be fair the balance team has progressively nerfed his Musa to make those differs harder to land but just as he was circumstantially buffed in previous titles he was circumstantially nerfed in this one and those circumstantial busts in the past were the only thing making up for the nursing gradually sustained in every installment until day two were taken from them reason 2 most consistent aspects within his kit were removed one of the Lesser pronounced aspects of Mars deterioration compounding the mental strain it takes to play him is the increased dependence on Landing tip or straight hits and neutral tickles of stock as a result of him losing alternative ways to do so Chief among them being up though allowing him some semblance of an if all else fails do this option at higher percents with the presence of Rage being far more influential in four up there would usually close to stocks around 150 depending on the opponent it wasn't a very practical win condition in Bill 4 and it was preferable to score kills much earlier but at the very least it was a viable recourse in the event who failed to close the stocks before getting to that point in Ultimate however his upthrough and rage's knockback enhancement were both Nerf making a selector wouldn't begin to kill until around 190 or higher far too high of a percent to be considered an effective kill Pro another notable loss of consistency was his job confirmed back in Smash 4 Mark used to be able to do job 1 into basically any of his other attacks such as Job 1 into 4 till Job 1 and top tilt and so on not unlike how Roy's Chad leads into his other moves this provided Mark with a low risk way to go for kills and though there was still some degree of positioning required Landing in jail was far more Elementary of a task than Landing a straight hit on any of his other attacks in neutral a privilege no longer available to him in Ultimate those were to noteworthy examples among others such as dancing blades upward finisher being a kill at one point or the laggier Aerials making up yet a shield even easier to pull off in Smash 4 than it already is in Ultimate so while Martin was historically always dependent on space into land tippers he did have a few ways to threaten a stock outside of that whereas in this game he has virtually none Reason 3 Marth has in Congress ranges on his attacks all of his attacks have their own tip arranges that make it difficult to accurately and consistently land tippers every time with the loss of his job kill confirms there's no ideal range for Mark to be at in order to have the best chance to achieve a Tipper thus making it almost impossible to realistically combo tip us into more tippers every time I hear people say if only monster hitboxes have priority like Roy silt does that will solve all of his consistency problems I can't help but disagree as says statement fails to take into account the absence of a uniform length on all of his moves forward tilt has a different temperate distance to forward smash which is a different temper distance to four there which is a different temper distance to side B despite all four attacks aiming horizontally in front of you today better explain this one let's take a look at his original counterpart Roy who was drastically buffed in Ultimate calling back to the hitbox priority thing and talked about as the consequence of his health taking precedence over nonhills Roy has a very intuitive Tipper distance quote unquote in that he has none obviously some of its attacks have a more generous help box as I like to call it than others his backyard for instance is pretty lenient when it comes to Landing the strong hand as you can tell by looking at it on the other hand his forward tilt necessitates that Roy is standing practically right next to his opponents to get that dark red circle so he also has fluctuations that being said because it's on her box prevents the opponent from flying right past him you can essentially guarantee The Sweet Spot every time by simply being close to your opponent there's no such thing as too close for Roy there's only too far Mark doesn't have that luxury you can either be too far or too close since there's no physical walls on any legal stage marp has no shirt way to guarantee Tipper into Tipper and even if there was a scenario where you can pin someone down to a wall such as Steve and even if Mart's tip or hitbox is at priority he still has incongruous Tipper ranges on his attacks so not even been in the most ideal conditions can you land constant tippers a nowhere to kill confirmed marthas is a landing aerial into forward smash either near one or downer when executed correctly he straight up gets away with murder like seriously I died at freaking 45 even Roy can't kill that early but just because you land fare one or down there doesn't mean you're guaranteed to land a tip or four Smash in fact it's extremely unlikely that you will I know it was a while back but in my why not play Sora video I mentioned how Sora can only achieve near Loops if he lands a very specific hitbox on his snare and can't perform it if he hits any of the other ones that's Mart's entire existence even if you land your combos they don't lead into tippers it feels almost luck based in all honesty and what's the number one source of frustration when it comes to video games lack of agency or in layman's terms things that are out of your control this is particularly why Lucina feels so much more intuitive while she may not kill anywhere near as early as smart she at least has a guaranteed result letting you formulate a cohesive game plan based on expected results if you land near one or down near into forward smash it will produce the same results every time no matter where you're standing since forward smash covers every possible distance that near 1 or Diner can cover therefore Lucina has Congress hitboxes furthermore the strength of her attacks is equal to the weighted average of marks so for the sake of argument if Marth ranges from 50 to 125 power Lucina hovers at 100 instead of the average of those two numbers being 87.5 in other words her performance was balanced under the assumption that you land more tippers than you don't but anyone who plays Mark will know that's almost impossible hence why Lucina is played more often than her ancestor in totality what makes mod feel significant and worse in this game despite having some of the best balance of Frame data area coverage and flexible pressure tools is that up until now the conditions were always in his favor the prior games physics engines and movement options afforded to characters were conducive to his objective ultimate is the first title where that isn't the case contrary to popular belief buffing him to where say his tip or hitboxes would have priority over non-tippers wouldn't really make a difference in people's perception of him it would cause a few otherwise non-tipper hits to now be tippers but there are so many circumstances elements that played the hindrance experience they can't just be fixed by making a stepper hitboxes bigger the entire game would have to change with all that said though I don't think he deserves to be that low on the tier list Marth is no longer a top tier threat like he used to be but I'd be hard-pressed to call him a low mid tier that's a bit harsh of an evaluation to make although I understand why people saw Fade to put in there anyways that's gonna be it for today hope you enjoyed the video if you have it would be great if you liked to like and subscribed don't forget to follow me on Twitter at varsavaram join my Discord server and check out my other why no one Place episodes if you haven't yet but till next time thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon take care thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you

Channel: Vars III

Views: 57,999

Keywords: smash, super smash bros, smash ultimate, super smash bros ultimate, vars smash bros, vars smash, smash bros ultimate, ssbu, marth grab range, ssbu marth, ssbm marth, melee marth, smash ultimate marth, smash bros marth, why no one plays marth, marth history, marth tipper, marth montage, marth guide, marth fire emblem, super smash bros ultimate marth, marth vs lucina, what happened to marth

Id: yQgHJP27TQA

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023