SSBM/Marth

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Introduction

Marth is a mid range monster. Being rewarded for proper spacing like no other character with his tipper mechanic (where he deals increased damage and knockback when hitting his opponent with the tip of his massive sword), an obscenely large grab range which can convert into touch of death combos, and the best grounded movement option in the game by far in his dash, there's a reason Marth has been a consistent sight at the highest levels of play throughout Melee's history.

When Marth dashes, he leans forward dramatically. This causes a Low ProfileA move or action that greatly shrinks a character's hurtbox, to avoid certain moves that would hit a normal stance otherwise. effect wherein everything besides his ankles instantly move out of the way of any attack or grab that might be coming his way. This, along with by far the best disjoint and grab of any top tier, and the ability to instantly threaten these all in conjunction with each other mid dash, combine to make him feel almost impossible to open up in neutral.

Furthermore, due to his gigantic sword, Marth has an extremely oppressive and difficult to escape advantage state. Being below the other character, or juggling them, is always good in Melee. For Marth, it's checkmate.

However, Marth is nearly as easily juggled as he is potent at keeping you above him. Think of Marth as a porcupine, if you're under him there are no spikes protecting him. There is also the infamous "Marthritis", where if a Marth player misses an edge guard or drops a combo, finishing their opponent's stock will be much harder than you might initially suspect. This is because he doesn't have great stray hit kill moves to throw out to minimize his losses. Finally, tricky movement from his opponents can cause him to misspace, a potential death sentence for a Marth.

In summary, Marth elegantly dances around his opponents, striking from far outside of their range and seeming to remain virtually untouchable in neutral. However, once he's hit or grabbed things can go from bad to worse very quickly.

Strengths

Weaknesses

A Big Sword Big, completely disjointed hitboxes mean that Marth walls out the majority of the cast, and forces everyone else to work around his buttons.
Strong Advantage State: Marth can keep someone in the air or in the corner and is able to edgeguard most of the cast very effectively
Movement: A low dashdance and long wavedash give Marth phenomenal mix ups in neutral and make him very hard to hit.
Grab: Probably the best one in the game. High range and reward, excellent out of ASDI down. What more could you want?
Tons Of Hitboxes To Work With: Different properties and angles depending on what part of Marth's sword hits gives him access to a variety of options to punish.

Difficulty At Ledge: A max 4 GALINTShorthand for "Grounded Actionable Ledge Intangibility", which is the number of actionable intangible frames after a ledgedash ledgedash and few invincible options out of it lets characters challenge Marth safely and keep him in the corner.
Moderate Weakness To CC: Even spaced Marth’s main neutral tools can be favourably called out with fast movement out of CC or by moving inside of sourspot range.
Bad Shield: Marth's normal shield leaves large parts of his hurtbox exposed even at full shield health, making him more susceptible to shield poking than most other characters, and his slow attacks leave him with very few good out of shield options against opponents who respect shieldgrab.

Note: Hitbox Priority is especially relevant to Marth, and his framedata heavily features information on specific hitboxes.

Physics

Weight	87 (16th)
Fall Speed	2.2/Fast 2.5 (6th)
Gravity	0.085 (19th)
Ground Movement
Walk Speed	1.6 (1st)
Initial Dash Speed	1.5 (9rd)
Initial Dash Length	15f (2nd)
Run Speed	1.8 (5th)
Traction	0.06 (15th)
Jumping
Jumpsquat	4f (8th)
Jump Height	Full 35.09/Short 13.995/Air 25.188 (7th/12th/15th)
Air Speed	0.9 (12th)
Air Acceleration	0.05 (12th)

Ground Moves

Jab 1
5a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
4	4	21	19	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
4/6	20/30	50/60	361	slash	0
Marth's fastest grounded normal, can be very unsafe on hit on a grounded opponent. Mostly used to EdgeguardThe act of preventing the opponent from safely returning to the stage., catching SpaciesA nickname for the Star Fox characters of SSB (Fox, Falco, Wolf). side-b or denying grabbing ledge from above. Note: Recovery able to be cancelled into Jab2 after 11 frames

Jab 2
5aa

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
4	5	20	18	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
4/6	20/30	50/60	361	slash	0
Follow up for Jab 1. Note: Recovery able to be cancelled into Jab 1 after 10 frames

Dash attack
d.a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
12	4	35	25	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
11/9/13	70/35/70	55/60/55	110/361/110	slash	0

fTilt
t.6a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
7	4	26	26	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
9/13	30/60	70	361	slash	0

uTilt
t.8a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
6	7	35	27	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
early: 9/9/8/12 clean: 10/9/9/13	early: 40/40/40/50 clean: 40/30/30/50	early: 120/118/116/100 clean: 120/118/116/100	early: 110/361/361/110 clean: 85/361/361/85	slash	0
A fast and versatile move with several different useful hitboxes, uTilt can be used as a launcher, a combo move, and a kill move on different characters at different percentages. It can also be used to counteract slideoff DI.

dTilt
t.2a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
7	3	40	11	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
9/8/8/10	40/25/20/50	40	30	slash	0
One of Marth's most powerful neutral tools, acting as a very safe poke due to its large hitbox and very fast IASA in conjunction with Marth's excellent dashback making it very difficult to punish without a hard callout, even on crouch cancel. Also a useful edgeguarding tool as its low hitbox goes below the stage and can prevent many characters from grabbing ledge without precise movement and can prevent some characters grom grabbing ledge outright.

fSmash
s.6/4a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
10	4	37	35	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
14/20	60/80	70	361	slash	0
Tippered fSmash is Marth's most powerful kill move. Fast, massive, excellent killing power, can be comboed into consistently, and creates a massively advantageous edgeguard scenario even if it doesn't kill outright. To compensate, it is very laggy and leaves Marth wide open to being punished on whiff.

uSmash
s.8a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
13	4	39	30	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
8/15/18	0/30/60	0/80/80	70/90/90	normal/slash/slash	0
Slower, laggier, and barely stronger than uTilt with a much worse hitbox, uSmash is almost never used. The hitbox doesn't even reach the end of Marth's sword. Note: id0/1 have 100 set kb

dSmash
s.2a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
hit 1: 5 hit 2: 20	hit 1: 3 hit 2: 3	43	40	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
hit 1: 11/11/11/16 hit 2: 11/11/11/16	hit 1: 70/20/16/70 hit 2: 70/30/15/70	hit 1: 72/100/100/100 hit 2: 72/100/100/100	hit 1: 75/361/361/70 hit 2: 75/361/361/75	slash	0
Very powerful and fast kill move, but difficult to space and very punishable on hit if not tippered or if whiffed due to its extremely long duration. As a result it is largely relegated to use in niche setups and for showing off.

Aerial Moves

nAir
j.5a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
hit 1: 6 hit 2: 15	hit 1: 2 hit 2: 7	29	29	15 L-cancelled: 7	<6 24>
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
hit 1: 4/4 hit 2: 10	hit 1: 30/30 hit 2: 50/50	hit 1: 40/40 hit 2: 80/80	hit 1: 100/90 hit 2: 361/361	hit 1: slash/normal hit 2: slash/normal	0
Marth's nAir is an excellent and safe neutral tool due to its large, powerful hitbox and its early autocancel window.

fAir
j.6a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
4	4	27	23	15 L-cancelled: 7	<1 26>
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
10/9/13	30/20/42	70	361/361/67	slash	0
Marth's fAir is arguably his best and most versatile move, being excellent for comboing and edgeguarding and invaluable in neutral due to its good framedata, excellent hitbox, and low landing lag. It is used to set up Marth's infamous Ken combo.

bAir
j.4a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
7	5	29	24	24 L-cancelled: 12	<1 31>
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
10/9/9/13	30/25/10/30	70	361	slash	0

uAir
j.8a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
5	4	38	38	15 L-cancelled: 7	<5 26>
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
10/9/9/13	30/20/18/40	70	80/80/80/90	slash/slash/slash/normal	0

dAir
j.2a

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
6	4	51	51	15 L-cancelled: 7	<6 47>
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
10/9/13	30/20/42	70	361/361/67	slash	0
dAir is an excellent combo ender, being powerful, fast, and a SpikeAn attack that sends down at an angle outside of the meteor smash range, and thus cannot be meteor cancelled.. It also has niche use as an out of shield option as it is fast and has special knockback properties.

Special Moves

Shield Breaker
5b/j.5b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
16-137	6	24	24	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
7/12/17/22/27/28	30/34/40	100	361	slash/burn	0
Holding b charges the move, increasing damage and changing properties upon a full charge.

Dancing Blade 1
6/4b/j.6/4b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
6	3	22	22	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
4	55	25	85/96/80/76	slash	0
First part of Marth's rekka, also used to confirm into t.8a/uTilt for kills on floaties Note: Cancellable into Dancing Blade 2 frames 7-25

Dancing Blade 2-6
db1>6b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
14	3	25	25	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
5	16	100	105/80/70/50	slash	0
Note: Cancellable into Dancing Blade 3 frames 16-32

Dancing Blade 2-8
db1>8b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
12	4	26	26	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
5	20/60/70/85	40	90/90/85/79	slash	0
Note: Cancellable into Dancing Blade 3 frames 16-31

Dancing Blade 3-6
db2>6b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
11	4	32	32	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
10	0	160	361	slash	0
Note: Cancellable into Dancing Blade 4 frames 15-36

Dancing Blade 3-8
db 2>8b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
13	5	23	23	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
6	60	60	80	slash	0
Note: Cancellable into Dancing Blade 4 frames 17-37

Dancing Blade 3-2
db2>2b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
15	4	32	32	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
12	50	100	270	slash	0
Note: Cancellable into Dancing Blade 4 frames 18-34

Dancing Blade 4-6
db3>6b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
23	4	24	24	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
14	15	120	361	slash	0

Dancing Blade 4-8
db3>8b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
20	6	25	25	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
10	40	140	80	slash	0

Dancing Blade 4-2
db3>2b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
13,19,25,31,37	3,3,3,3,2	22	22	-	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
3,3,3,3,5	2,2,2,2,20	40,40,40,40,130	80,80,80,80,361	slash	0

Dolphin Slash
8b/j.8b

First Active	Active	Recovery	IASA	Landing Lag	Autocancel
5	6	-	-	32	-
Damage	Base Knockback	Knockback Growth	Angle	Effect	On Shield
Clean: 13/10 Late: 7/7/6	Clean: 80/60 Late: 20	Clean: 70 Late: 90	Clean: 361/74 Late: 361/74/74	Clean: slash Late: slash/slash/normal	0
Note: Can grab ledge frame 22, be angled and reversed, and is intangible frame 5