Defense

Your defensive game against Ganon is, as usual, going to be your solid DD game, huge aerials, and using your recovery mixups to avoid getting tipman'd or otherwise hit.

When you get into the corner against Ganon, you must respect his aerials. They have ridiculous reach and are insanely powerful. It just becomes a mixup of your roll timing, dashing past him to take center stage or attacking OoS to either try and hit him or regain some stage since they will usually be doing fade back aerials or aerials in place. If they do fadeback aerials, you’ll generally want to try and slowly take back stage control. Attack OoS against fadeback aerials is risky and will often get you back aired or punched in the face.

If they misspace forward air or pretty much any aerial, you can shield grab it. Ganon forward air is -3 on shield and his jab is frame 3 so unless they do a frame perfect (or near frame perfect) fair into a jab, you’ll get the grab. If you’re unsure if the forward air was low enough to be safe, just wait for them to jab then grab. Most Ganons will habitually jab after forward air. Again, it comes with experience judging what you can or can’t shield grab.

Try not to be too predictable with your dash dances against Ganon. Getting hit by his forward air and dying at 50 sucks. Mix up your lengths and dashing in with dashing back. However, keep your presence onstage. And as I said previously, be aware of his waveland lengths, particularly when he’s on a platform trying to waveland into an aerial to hit you. Do not dash dance in the corner because that’s where Ganon thrives. He wants you in the corner. He practically NEEDS you in the corner. Make him know you’re not afraid of him. Use your head, don’t swing mindlessly and you’ll be just fine.

When you get hit offstage against Ganon, the first thing you’ll want to watch out for is the tipman. Many Ganons will wait for Marth to Side-B or for him to get too close to the stage, then drop off ledge and up air.

You avoid this by being just out of range of the ledge drop up air. It comes with experience, it’s hard to describe. I’ll update this with a gif or a chart or something of an example, as I believe I’m decent enough at dodging it most of the time.

Anyway, there is a very specific spacing where you can simultaneously avoid Ganondorf tipman but still Up-B back to the stage if they don’t go for it. The good thing about this is that if they go for the ledge drop up air and miss, you will usually have a free opportunity to kill them.

If they adapt to you avoiding tipman and instead opt to invincible ledge stall and force you onstage, they will most likely NIL grab you into an aerial. Try to buffer spot dodge or roll of course, but if they’re quick enough you’ll eat a small punish. Up until about 100 or so, I would advise DI’ing into the stage so you don’t get sent quite as far. Past that percent, I actually advise DI’ing behind Ganondorf because you get sent really far behind him. So far in fact, that you can often mash out forward air before he’s able to hit you, which means you can potentially live. Don’t just accept your death when you get grabbed at high percents, do everything you can to survive.

I believe Ganon gets one guaranteed regrab at 0, so try to just DI to a platform or do slight up and in DI to get out if they go for regrab. The only thing you need to be wary of is up smash because that does combo out of dthrow at some percents. Just try to mash out forward air, but save your jump. Getting hit offstage by the horizontal hitbox sucks after it steals your jump. Throw them off by doing DI behind sometimes because it’s not possible to reactively up smash Marth on slight DI up and in/DI in front. Up smash is very slow, it’s like frame 21 I think.

You can also DI in front of Ganon but DI behind gets you much further away from him so it’s preferable in my personal opinion.

Oh and one other random note: Ganon can shield stab every character in the game (with the exception of Sheik) by down airing the character’s feet. Be on the lookout for this as Marth. Try not to get stuck in shield too much.