Marth (SSBB)/Down aerial

Hitbox visualization showing Marth's down aerial.

Overview

Marth does a forward to backward downward sword slash. When tipped, it is a powerful meteor smash with high knockback. However, unlike in Melee, the sweetspot is outprioritized by the sourspots, making the meteor smash much more difficult to land. The end of the swing is slightly easier to tip with, so a RAR may help sweetspot it. With very low start-up of 6 frames, it is the second fastest meteor smash in the game (both Falco's and Fox's down aerials have a 5 frame startup). It is a risky and highly situational edgeguarding move, however, as it has very high ending and landing lag and the sweetspot cannot be consistently landed, especially on more competent players. Potential setups exist, but most are highly unreliable, like stringing a forward aerial into his down aerial meteor smash on Snake. True set ups are rare, however, on Wolf, King Dedede, and Snake, two forward throws (or in Dedede's case, 3) can be chained together into a down aerial, if spaced correctly. Those set ups can lead to potential 0-deaths unless the opponent successfully Smash DI's to get sent onstage. Other set ups are landing the sweetspot out of a grab release, is notable for being more reliable and feasible in competitive play. However this setup only works on a few characters - working on Meta Knight, Lucas, Squirtle, Wario, a solo Ice Climbers and Ness only. In Squirtle's case, Marth can grab release chain grab across the stage and the platform in Smashville cannot save him from this because of Squirtle's short grab release animation. Furthermore, other than Squirtle, the setup is only fatal if Marth grabs those characters at a very specific distance from the ledge. The most reliable setup is a footstool jump and a down aerial; however, this must be done as soon as Marth jumps. Another good, arguably less situational use of down aerials for hitting opponents trying to juggle him when Marth is above them. It hits lower than his forward aerial but it's still not the most reliable down aerial to intercept juggle attempts with because it has low hitbox duration and while its range below is decent, many up aerials still outrange his down aerial vertically.

Hitboxes

ID	Part	Damage	SD	Angle	BK	KS	FKV	Radius	Bone	Offset			SDIx	H×	T%	Clang	Rebound	Type	Effect	G	A	Sound	Direct
0	0	12%	0		30	70	0	4.32	61	0.0	0.0	1.0	1.0x	0.7x	0%							Slash
1	0	12%	0		40	70	0	4.32	65	0.0	0.0	0.0	1.0x	0.7x	0%							Slash
2	0	14%	0		40	80	0	4.32	65	0.0	0.0	5.0	1.0x	1.25x	0%							Burn
3	0	14%	0		40	80	0	6.0	0	0.0	-3.4	2.0	1.0x	1.0x	0%							Burn

Timing

Attack

Initial autocancel	1-5
Hitboxes 0, 1, 2	6-9
Hitbox 3	7
Ending autocancel	48-
Interruptible	60
Animation length	64

Landing lag

Animation length	32