BBR Weekly Character Discussion #8: R.O.B.

Once again, at least consider:
-Strengths/weaknesses
-Matchups
-Tournament performance
-Current tier list placement and potential for the future

will post later.

Also have stuff to say... but I have a meeting tomorrow. -placeholder-

though IMO, I think he's somewhat underrated.
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Anyways, I think ROB has high survivability and some unique mobility traits. He's gets out of spikes quite nicely too. Maybe I've just been watching t0mmy a lot. If people are not careful, there's a dthrow glide-toss gyro --> usmash that can getchya. I've seen it work properly against a Snake (the character it was originally developed for) and against an MK during the N-Oregon vs S-Oregon crew match (not to throw around big names or anything... ha ha ha).

But really, I think he could move over Kirby. I also think he's better than G&W overall, but seeing G&W's current Tier placement, that opinion may be more indicative of G&W moving down as opposed to ROB moving up.

I don't really know what to say. I don't actually think R.O.B. is anything better than upper Mid tier and I have always thought this. His placement in tournaments reflects that he could stand to move up one or two character slots, but beyond that he seems to, for the moment, to have settled into natural placement for the time being. Like many characters, in the current tournament environment, he suffers from too many MKs running around. Everyone knows his weaknesses pretty well at this point I would think. He has some great tools, a nice recovery, but low damage output on a lot of attacks. Also his shield is balls.

Overall, I think I'd move him over Kirby and just leave it at that.

ROB seems pretty solid where he is.

He has a good recovery, good tilts, a decent grab, good ranged game, decent gimp game, etc. He lacks killing ability, but so does almost everyone else. He's not particularly great at anything, but he's good at many things and only has a few weaknesses / badmatchups.

He's a great character but he's not vastly superior in any way, really. I think he could possibly move up a spot or two if he had representation, but he doesn't at the moment, so he seems pretty good where he is.

ROB always seemed very... linear to me. Kind of like Game and Watch in that he's got good tools, but it's tough not to be predictable.

On second thought I think he deserves to go up a tier just because he's everyone's buddy. Sucking up has to count for something.

The only reason i think ROB is good is because of chibo. Other than that i never really though ROB was that good and other chars should be above him. Rob just doesnt have that diversity in the game strategy.

Ally said:

will post later.

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Someone delete his post.
Its getting ******** now.
Post now or don't post Ally. At least be serious for the character discussions.


Anyway MMM pretty much reflects my thoughts. He is the jack of all trades and master of none. Can he camp? yes, but not as good as other characters like Falco. Can he edgeguard? yeah just not as good as MK and he needs to refuel which means it can be potentially dangerous for him.
Can he kill? Kinda. better than most but poorer than those above him.

I dont think he can rise any higher, maybe without ledge grab rules (which do harm him against characters who can just continuously harass him offstage *cough MK*) because he MUST touch the ground to renew his ^B.

Btw I suck against him while using Marth. I just...cant seal the deal. Its extremely frustrating!

The gyro has some very nonobvious properties and uses, and CPUs (surprise, surprise) don't provide very good training. Also, ROB's attacks do often leave openings if predicted, but not easy ones to punish. This is a matchup that you have to practice.

Incidentally, there seems to be a strangely large number of ROBs around my area. Sil, Tako, Mr. E, to a lesser extent Fizzle, and to an even lesser extent OS. I've been getting significantly better with the matchup, and I now come close to winning games vs ROBs that do much better in tournaments than I do.

ROB is cool, and I wouldn't really call him linear given his rather large gimmick count. The trouble is that most of his gimmicks get a lot worse once your opponent gets used to them, whereas nonsense from the characters in the high tiers is hard to deal with even once you understand it. As an item, though, the Gyro is legit.

The only thing that comes to mind is Ocean, from Japan. He was doing some pretty neat things (b-reversal gyro charges I hadn't seen before), which suggests that ROB's metagame might not be completely stale yet. Nothing revolutionary though...

ROB is currently underrated a bit imo

In terms of matchups (in order within tiers):

Hell matchups - DDD, MK
Very hard matchups - Falco, Lucario, Snake
Tough matchups - Insert a bunch of random mid tiers and others like ZSS, Toon Link, Olimar, Pikachu, etc

Where ROB however shines in matchups is that he beats both Diddy and Ice Climbers, two huge tournament threats, especially since both of these characters are some of the ones that give MK the most trouble (though MK still beats them )

Beyond Diddy and ICs ROB has a bunch of other good matchups for him that's great to have, such as Marth, DK, Wario, and Kirby - and I believe he wins all 4 of those matchups.

People like to bring up GaW as being a ridiculous matchup for ROB but that's not true at all, get your mind out of the '08 ROB mindset lol, ROB doesn't do worse than go even with GaW. I've beaten Vinnie in tournament recently, and in a crew battle @ Columbus we did in a hotel room I went up 3v3 stocks against Vex's GaW and 2 stocked him to name a couple of recent examples.

Another problem with ROB matchups wise is that he doesn't **** anyone really. Even bottom tiers can be a tough battle for him, despite winning. Ganondorf is surprisingly harder than you would expect lol, and Yoshi does probably the best on him out of any low tier matchup.

Strengths/Weaknesses:

ROB has so many amazing traits, but it's like every one of them has a big ol asterik on it with an but clause that makes it terrible lol

ROB's recovery is amazing and he can use any aerial out of it... BUT
-You can't air dodge out of it
-The upB does no damage itself
-There is a short period of immobility the moment you use it
-You run out of gas

ROB has two great projectiles.... BUT
-Laser has a long start up lag, so you run into a lot of examples such as when you laser a Snake, and if you get a grenade thrown at you, the laser you shoot will explode in your face. The lag is long enough that you start up the laser before the grenade is on it's way to you (though it's not enough time for Snake to punish on command thankfully)

ROB is a heavy weight character.... BUT
-Has very low gravity making him fall slowly which is AWFUL which makes him die off the top at a lower percent than a character of his weight slow, and get juggled very easily. Think the same mechanics of Samus in Melee

ROB has a great glide toss and has a lot of options out of it... BUT
-Can't spawn a gyro into his hands, he has to shoot it then pick it up

ROB can recover under the stage like gliders can... BUT
-Running out of gas can make this extremely risky, and there are some invisible wall glitches on stages (the one I know of is on Smashville but I wouldn't be surprised if there are others). If you upB hugging the top of the bottom of the stage (which makes sense to get to the ledge the fastest), at the end ROB will bounce backwards as if he hit a invisible wall which essentially kills you.

ROB's upB fully carries momentum (only character to have a move that does this I believe) which opens up a lot of new abilities, especially out of glide toss.... BUT
-It doesn't cancel momentum at all which can sometimes hurt recovery

ROB has a reflector... BUT
-It is god awful slow with an extremely small reflect box

Other strengths:
-Very good tilts
-usmash is very strong
-uair does A LOT of damage for an aerial drill move
-nair covers a large area which is great for covering rolls/techs since a single nair covers 3 of 4 get up options (nair beats get up attack, stand up, and roll towards rob, while it only misses to connect with the opponent rolling away)

Some shortcomings not mentioned yet:
-ROB has a terrible time killing. Nair won't kill for a while if it's staled, usmash is hard to hit with, and uthrow can be DI'ed easily to survive until about 180%-190% on medium weight characters
-ROB is a huge target. The physical model and hurt box of ROB is huge. He's a giant easy target for lasers and projectiles, and makes recovering an even harder task than it should be.

Tournament Placements

Unfortunately theres a bit of a skill gap after myself, T0mmy, and Stingers, but it doesn't really matter that much. There's some other ROBs out there that get some good things here and there, but there is a clear skill gap after the three of us, and Stingers technically mains MK lol, but used to main ROB and still uses him sometimes and is still very good with him. There are so few ROBs that it's tough to get tournament results to prove what he can do. Furthermore, get a bracket of MKs and DDDs and your ****ed, seriously lol

However, throughout my adventure of maining ROB I have garnered tons of awesome results that people would not expect. I've been ranked on the PA power rankings every single season never falling below 5th, and reached as high as 2nd two times (currently ranked 2nd to Squall).

In tournament I have beaten Logic/Pyronic~Star (Olimar), Candy (Snake), Omni (MK), Rogue Pit (Pit), Lain (ICs), Takeover (Snake), GDX (Diddy), Xzax (MK), dmbrandon (MK), Will (DK), Smurf (MK) and like a million other people
I've also taken a ton of players to third game consistently such as ADHD (Diddy), Blackanese (MK), Shadow (MK), Kingtoon (Toon Link), Orion (MK), NinjaLink (Diddy/ICs), NEO (Marth), and a lot more

I also have a handful of money match wins versus players like Seibrik (MK), Wes (Sonic), and idk like a million people, my mind is drawing a blank

Even further though to make it better is that ROB does amazing in doubles. Half of the mad batchups he has are gone. No more problem with Falco, DDD is no where near as bad, MKs aren't an amazing threat anymore, etc.

I have a bunch of doubles achievements such as beating:
Anti and Will with Dabuz (Olimar)
NinjaLink and Jash with Dabuz (Olimar)
Keitaro and Orion with Stingers (ROB)
Keitaro and Malcom with Vex (GaW)
Inui and Shadow with ADHD (Diddy)
Kingtoon and Squall with Vex (GaW)
and idk like a million more things

Other ROBs have some noteable accomplishments like T0mmy's recent beating of Jem and Felix but tbh other ROBs don't have the kind of results I do.

Tier List Placement

ROB either belongs in the tier he is currently in or in the lower run of high tier. I'm not sure if it's that he deserves to be moved up, or if some of the high tier characters deserve to be moved down like GaW. Either way, ROB should be a bit higher, even if it just means being higher in the top of middle tier. Despite some of his awful matchups (mainly the trifecta of DDD MK and Falco), the fact that he beats tourney threats such as Wario, Marth, Diddy, and ICs is toooooo valuable to have in tournament.

ROB is awful. Everyone should drop ROB.

You can shield and punish virtually everything he does, and ROB has literally no defense when someone is behind him or below him; simply tossing him in the air does wonders.

To add to this, his worst matchups are against top characters that are prevalent in tournaments.

He's not good enough to be a solo main, and not specialized in important matchups to be a good secondary.

Good stuff OS.

Wario beats ROB clean. That is a bad matchup for him. 6:4

I don't think ROB beats Diddy either, 50:50 at best. The only ROB I've lost to in tournament is OS, and T0mmy visited me and I won more than I lost (they were just friendlies but we played like ~25-30 games) I will do a long post on this matchup if necessary later, I need to do a project now

The Diddy Kong/ROB matchup is the single most fun matchup in the game for me. I could play it every day probably and not get completely tired of it. I think R.O.B. mains who have practiced lots of use of gyros can be just as adept at Banana control as many Diddy players and this is a distressing situation for Diddy Kong who often isn't used to that kind of thing to begin with. The Banana fortress doesn't work on ROB (Gyro blocks glide toss bananas, laser beats peanut, forcing the diddy to jump and throw bananas over the gyro, which is easier to just catch, also Dash attack usually won't pick up a spinning gyro, any attempt to try should just be lasered or tilted).

I don't believe ROB will drop, but he(it?) may not rise too much, either(probably only one spot). In my opinion, C Tier is a solid placement. He doesn't have many representation at tournaments, and most of his matchups are around 45-55 and 55-45. He doesn't counter important characters, and is countered by Meta Knight and King Dedede. However, I do believe ROB beats Diddy Kong and Ice Climbers. I think that he isn't the best option for these matchups though.

Overswarm said:

ROB is awful. Everyone should drop ROB.

You can shield and punish virtually everything he does, and ROB has literally no defense when someone is behind him or below him; simply tossing him in the air does wonders.

To add to this, his worst matchups are against top characters that are prevalent in tournaments.

He's not good enough to be a solo main, and not specialized in important matchups to be a good secondary.

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This.
ROB is a character that only does well sometimes because he's underplayed, basically you only need to learn how to proprely block ROB's projectiles and he instantly suck. He has no kill moves, except for a fresh bair placed near ledges and that's it.

Gimping with ROB only works when the opponent is terrible at the game or is using someone like Link, he has trouble racking damage since you can't land projectiles and gets ***** in the air by 3/4 of the cast. ROB will either drop down or stay where he is, but he's not going to go up and will never win a national unlike most of the top tiers.

I also would like to state that his aerial mobility is the worst in the game iirc.

Are you talking about just horizontal air speed, or how fast they can weave back and forth? Dedede is slower than him at horizontal air speed, and I think ROB is better than Ike at least at weaving.

HolyNightmare said:

This.
ROB is a character that only does well sometimes because he's underplayed, basically you only need to learn how to proprely block ROB's projectiles and he instantly suck. He has no kill moves, except for a fresh bair placed near ledges and that's it.

Gimping with ROB only works when the opponent is terrible at the game or is using someone like Link, he has trouble racking damage since you can't land projectiles and gets ***** in the air by 3/4 of the cast. ROB will either drop down or stay where he is, but he's not going to go up and will never win a national unlike most of the top tiers.

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When sopo can recover from most of a chars options, you know that char sucks at gimping.


Furthermore, Rob vs Ics is probably 50-50, but definitely not in Rob's favor. He does not "beat" ice climbers. Even with diddy its iffy if the diddy knows how to exploit robs weaknesses. Rob can't kill without an exceptionnal read either.


EDIT: MK is way more of a threat to rob in doubles than in singles chibo.

@DMG I'm talking about Base Aerial Mobility, which is the acceleration characters have. If ROB jumps straight up and then holds right, he will accelerate to the right with acceleration 0.01, Ike and King Dedede with 0.04. Sorry for not specifying.

Edit: I learned the above reading this thread.

Oh. Well yes that is quite poor. That's terrible poor lol

swordgard said:

EDIT: MK is way more of a threat to rob in doubles than in singles chibo.

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I whole heartedly disagree

It's much harder for MK to focus a lot on spacing in doubles and ROB's nair is going to end up hitting him more. Also MK can not slowly approach safely with tilts as safely, and is going to end up using a lot more dash attacks and dash grabs on the ground which are punished easily by rob.

It depends. MK on his own in teams is not as big of a problem as in singles. However, Double MK is easily worse than Singles MK even if you have a MK on your team.

yea, hence me not mentioning double mk. that team is a ***** for rob lol

Double MK in doubles on ROB usually equals out to the same thing it does on everyone else not named Meta Knight, which is an assload of Tornado.

swordgard said:

EDIT: MK is way more of a threat to rob in doubles than in singles chibo.

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vVv ChiboSempai said:

I whole heartedly disagree

It's much harder for MK to focus a lot on spacing in doubles and ROB's nair is going to end up hitting him more. Also MK can not slowly approach safely with tilts as safely, and is going to end up using a lot more dash attacks and dash grabs on the ground which are punished easily by rob.

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DMG said:

It depends. MK on his own in teams is not as big of a problem as in singles. However, Double MK is easily worse than Singles MK even if you have a MK on your team.

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It just depends, Yeah if Rob's partner is Captain Falcon, .I agree MK is more of a threat in doubles. if Rob's partner is MK, opposing MK is less of a threat in doubles. The reason you guys are conflicting is probably your expriences of MK which is directly influenced by what characters you have teamed with before in the doubles matchups. Yeah Falcon's an extreme example but I'm sure there are several viable chars Rob can team with and it won't make facing MK any easier for him.

I think on average, Rob has no more or no less trouble in doubles vs MK than he does in singles. It depends entirely on who his partner is really.

ROB in doubles vs. a team with any MK is basically like playing Resident Evil 4, and ROB is that dumb girl that keeps getting into trouble. Ashely or whatever the **** her name was.

OS, you seriously just write off most of ROB and hardly even give him a chance anymore. Take a look at results (esp doubles now that you're bringing it up)

I generally have no trouble at all when the other team has an MK. Even a double MK if I have a good teammate isn't as bad as some make it out to be.

Stinger's and I went double ROB to take a game off of Inui and Vex when they went MK/DDD

When I teamed with Dabuz in winners we lost to Anti and Will (MK/DK) when I primarily fought Will, since I know how to fight him extremely well. In losers finals I stayed on Anti like the whole time and we won somewhat easily.

ADHD and I beat Shadow and Inui's double MK

Stingers' and I went double ROB and beat Orion and Keitaros MK Falco easily

etc etc

Stinger's and I went double ROB to take a game off of Inui and Vex when they went MK/DDD

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Hey remember that time Inui lost a MM as Snake to a little kid's Fox? Man, that was awesome.

Anyway, I think ROB in doubles works pretty well for a support character, It's best IMO to team him up with someone who can be a heavy aggressor like Snake, MK, Marth and the like. I like MK especially well since a well placed laser can be just what the doctor ordered to set up a gimp that otherwise wouldn't have happened (also Dtilts between them are funny)

Again, ROB is a poor man's choice.

Yeah, he can work in doubles if he has the right teammate and is up against the right team. But you know what? No matter what job you give him, there's someone out there that can do it better. Not just MK either; you need someone to deal damage from afar? Tank? Edgeguard? Get KOs? Combo? Save you? No matter waht you need, ROB is a 2nd best choice on his best of days.

the video will be online tonight OS

unfortunately we lost the set, I kind of cost it for us since both Vex and Inui know pretty much exactly how I play. I put in work but Stingers caught them both off guard.

Overswarm said:

Again, ROB is a poor man's choice.

Yeah, he can work in doubles if he has the right teammate and is up against the right team. But you know what? No matter what job you give him, there's someone out there that can do it better. Not just MK either; you need someone to deal damage from afar? Tank? Edgeguard? Get KOs? Combo? Save you? No matter waht you need, ROB is a 2nd best choice on his best of days.

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Most of these characters that do ROB things better can't do the other things ROB can do however, and ROB will have other things about him that no one else has. Name some characters that do things better than ROB in doubles and I'll counter with what ROB does better than them at.

Most of these characters that do ROB things better can't do the other things ROB can do however, and ROB will have other things about him that no one else has. Name some characters that do things better than ROB in doubles and I'll counter with what ROB does better than them at.

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Metaknight.

So OS basically you are trying to say Rob isn't great but he's decent and solid in some areas. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that analysis.

Overswarm said:

Metaknight.

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Oo I got this one! Shoot lasers!

Overswarm said:

Metaknight.

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Projectiles and lives longer

vVv ChiboSempai said:

Projectiles and lives longer

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Metaknight is his own projectile, and still lives longer than ROB.