Weekly Character Discussion: ROB the motha****in Robot

Glitches galore, high priority, one of if not the best recovery in the game, and fairly shallow weaknesses. He's a machine!

Try swallowing him with Kirby.

BEEEEP!

Next to G&W, he might require the most patience to play against.

His edge guarding *****. Also, a question worth discussing; what characters do well against Rob?

Meleeruler said:

His edge guarding *****. Also, a question worth discussing; what characters do well against Rob?

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G&W and Metaknight do extremely well. Donkey Kong isn't bad, and neither is Dedede. Falco and Fox do great offensively, but very poorly defensively; it is generally whoever is more experienced in the matchup and is more patient that will win that matchup.

Zelda also destroys ROB.

Ike seems to do surprisingly well vs ROB. Mostly forward air though.

UmbreonMow said:

Ike seems to do surprisingly well vs ROB. Mostly forward air though.

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Ike is one of ROB's easiest matchups. The edgeguarding is so easy it is almost laughable, and Ike has a lot of trouble hurting ROB from below, which is ROB's biggest weakness.

So many things ROB can do; one laser, one gyro, one b-throw to double fair... anything to force him to use his over-b results in death. Especially since ROB can utilize Ike's over-b's bad quality of swinging and missing at anything slightly above or below him and stopping mid-swing! ROB's spot dodge also owns Ike's aerial approach, which allows ROB to manhandle Ike as he pleases.

I think ROB may be the most fun character to play in the game.

Lasers: Awesome. If I am playing against a character that is hard to edgeguard, I spam them when they are approaching and after I knock them off the stage. If I am playing against a character that is easy to edgeguard, I save the laser and use it to keep them from reaching the stage. The super laser is obviously much slower but if you shoot a character that has a set path to recovery they will either have to take it or airdodge and risk getting hit with a fair, gyro, bair, etc as they come out of the airdodge (or they just make suicide).

Gyro: Awesome #2. I use basically the same strategy here as I do for the lasers. If it is a character that is easy to edgeguard I'll charge the top to the fullest and use it to kill them. If they are hard to edgeguard I just throw it out on the stage usually at around 30% or so charge. I'll either leave it for mindgames or I'll dash attack across it and glide toss it at the opponent.

Edgeguarding: I learned all kinds of tricks from watching OS. Using up B to chase characters like Ike, Link, Marth, Olimar, Squirtle, Venasaur, etc is amazing. You can pretty much chase someone to the ends of the stage and back because his recovery is so sexy. I've found several fairs work well for edgeguarding, as well as a nicely timed nair or bair. ROB has the ability to run off the stage and instantly bair someone into the edge just like Sheik, Snake, etc.

Sexy: ROB is sexy.

Matchups:

Hard for ROB - G&W, MK, Snake
Easy for ROB - Falco, Link, Ike, Diddy, Marth, Luigi, Olimar, PT, ICs, Ness, Lucas

All others aren't significant one way or the other (but ROB is still better )

Snake is one of ROB's easier matchups. ^_^

Snake can be effectively edgeguarded, out camped, out spaced, etc., etc.

The only problem with Snake is that you can't kill him from the stage. You HAVE to aggressively edgeguard, and that can be hard against a good snake.

Kirby does alright, but is not hard. He's just one of those characters that has something up his sleeve against ROB. Kirby can go toe to toe with him for a long time.

Yoshi actually doesn't do too bad. He can't be edgeguarded if Yoshi is smart, and his eggs can add a ton of damage to ROB. Seeing as how Yoshi's u-air is godly in Brawl and ROB can't do well when his opponent is below him.... Yoshi can be scary!

I hate fighting ROB with a passion. Even mediocre ROBs take me too long to KO. For some reason, as Snake, I have the ****dest time trying to KO this robot, and thats not even the beginning of my problems with him. He just doesn't seem to have many weaknesses other than lack of killing moves (which he can make up for with smart edgeguarding) and some of his aerials. IMO, the most effective way to KO a ROB is knocking him out of recovery, since he can't airdodge after the up B. I'm still trying to learn how to do that effectively against smart ROBs. Although, I probably struggle against him due to a lack of opponents that play him. Overswarm is the only real ROB player I've ever faced in a tournament... I'm sure people can begin to understand why I hate playing against ROB :D

Plus, OS taught me that ROB has a ridiculously good projectile spamming game. Approaching ROB with a lot characters is so difficult that its just plain silly. Given, its hard to KO with ROB, and matches can last a long time (I honestly couldn't watch the grand finals between OS and Anther... the games were SO LONG. And they played best of 10 :D) but players with enough patience can pull it off.

At this point in time, I've already decided that I'd rather play against ROB with a character other than Snake, but I'm not a huge fan of MK or G&W. Plus, I refuse to believe that DK does well against ROB, even if you're the one saying it OS =P (no seriously, how could DK even begin to get around the projectile spam?). Besides those few characters, who else fairs well, or at least fairly even, against the robot?

By the way, I mentioned this to you at the tournament OS, but I wanted to say it again here. Mario just might be a good counter to ROB if played correctly, mostly for the edgeguarding game. Mario's cape generally shoots opponents upwards in their recoveries when he uses it on them, and ROB is no exception. So when Mario uses his cape on ROB in the middle of ROB's up B, ROB will shoot upwards... using most of his fuel in the process. But, unfortunately, that only works if the ROB is actively using his fuel at the time. And oddly enough, Mario's FLUDD can also do great to force ROB to use the up B, or to make him use even more fuel (apparently its not completely useless :D). But the biggest problem with this matchup is Mario's range. Nearly all of ROB's attacks can outrange anything Mario has. I'm assuming there are ways you can make up for this (like approaching with the Bair), but for now I find this matchup difficult until it gets to the edgeguarding. I just wanted to throw this out there, in case people have some insight on it.

Darkrain plays DK. Getting inside ROB's range isn't hard when you approach with DK's bairs and tilts.

I can see rob being an amazing character and incredibly hard to deal with. Basically, he has very good projectiles and is very hard to punish. His spot dodge and speed on his downsmash make it incredibly hard to do anything near him without getting hit by the dsmash. His grab is also really fast, gotta be like the fastest in the game right?

I think what will make him a really tough opponent is when robot players figure out how to edgeguard insanely well with him, which i can see happening. Most characters will probably get destroyed by him off the stage, w/o being able to do much back to him, like fox in melee.

I agree that game and watch does well vs him, however i think that robot does the best at edgeguarding gw out of all the characters, which is definitely saying something. He just doesn't have the range to compete vs game and watch and his laser doesn't do so well in a campy setting.

~Omegablackmage

Falco/Marth vs ROB. Thoughts?

Pit sorta tears R.O.B. a new one. So long as Pit minds R.O.B.'s Nair all is well. I think I three stocked two different R.O.B.s during Critical Hit 2. One of which was in the fourth round or so. This doesn't say much as I can't attest to the skill level of my opponents. I don't know much about playing R.O.B. competitively but to my knowledge he seems pretty screwed when having to fight a Pit.

UndrDog said:

Pit sorta tears R.O.B. a new one. So long as Pit minds R.O.B.'s Nair all is well. I think I three stocked two different R.O.B.s during Critical Hit 2. One of which was in the fourth round or so. This doesn't say much as I can't attest to the skill level of my opponents. I don't know much about playing R.O.B. competitively but to my knowledge he seems pretty screwed when having to fight a Pit.

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http://youtube.com/watch?v=1Tpni11kWb8

1:35

ROB can edgeguard Pit to hell and back, and due to Pit's really low vertical rising speed, ROB has a really easy time just hitting him with fair after fair. Pit can't even glide because the laser will knock him out of it!

Pit has a few good things against ROB, but it only takes a few moments to get inside Pit's arrow range. Once you do that, ROB eats pit for breakfast. ROB's game is almost always about edgeguarding, and once Pit is off the edge he has a pretty hard time dealing with ROB if the ROB is patient.

Overswarm said:

Ike is one of ROB's easiest matchups. The edgeguarding is so easy it is almost laughable, and Ike has a lot of trouble hurting ROB from below, which is ROB's biggest weakness.

So many things ROB can do; one laser, one gyro, one b-throw to double fair... anything to force him to use his over-b results in death. Especially since ROB can utilize Ike's over-b's bad quality of swinging and missing at anything slightly above or below him and stopping mid-swing! ROB's spot dodge also owns Ike's aerial approach, which allows ROB to manhandle Ike as he pleases.

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From my experience, Ike's upair eats all of his moves handily. Also, getting around most gimps with Ike is surprisingly easy, something I'll address when the Ike topic comes up. But yeah, that doesn't work. As for the spamming and the sidestep downsmash, yeah, I have no argument there. Any spamming beats Ike and ROB is no slouch at it. ROB's sidestep downsmash is ridiculous vs everybody, at least good range characters like Ike have it better than short range ones.

UmbreonMow said:

From my experience, Ike's upair eats all of his moves handily. Also, getting around most gimps with Ike is surprisingly easy, something I'll address when the Ike topic comes up. But yeah, that doesn't work. As for the spamming and the sidestep downsmash, yeah, I have no argument there. Any spamming beats Ike and ROB is no slouch at it. ROB's sidestep downsmash is ridiculous vs everybody, at least good range characters like Ike have it better than short range ones.

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Ike shouldn't have the opportunity to up-air ROB; ROB should never recover from above unless he is lazy or out of fuel. ROB should almost always, when knocked upwards, fly off the side and use his fuel to get back to the ledge. Regardless, Ike's u-air is easily air dodged.

Overswarm said:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1Tpni11kWb8

1:35

ROB can edgeguard Pit to hell and back, and due to Pit's really low vertical rising speed, ROB has a really easy time just hitting him with fair after fair. Pit can't even glide because the laser will knock him out of it!

Pit has a few good things against ROB, but it only takes a few moments to get inside Pit's arrow range. Once you do that, ROB eats pit for breakfast. ROB's game is almost always about edgeguarding, and once Pit is off the edge he has a pretty hard time dealing with ROB if the ROB is patient.

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Do you have any other videos...? I mean, that Pit was... Well was easily the worse Pit I've ever seen. I don't mean to step on anybody's toes but the guy couldn't even recover. He didn't even glide once in that match, which is what he should've done if he wanted to travel underneath the stage. Not only would he have been a much smaller target for R.O.B.'s laser, but even if he were hit he wouldn't've died from it.

Plus whenever a Pit just 'dies' at the bottom of the stage... v_v However I would like to add the fact he should never have gone down there against R.O.B. I'm sure you noticed to that all it took was a R.O.B. Nair to stage spike him to his death.

UndrDog said:

Do you have any other videos...? I mean, that Pit was... Well was easily the worse Pit I've ever seen. I don't mean to step on anybody's toes but the guy couldn't even recover. He didn't even glide once in that match, which is what he should've done if he wanted to travel underneath the stage. Not only would he have been a much smaller target for R.O.B.'s laser, but even if he were hit he wouldn't've died from it.

Plus whenever a Pit just 'dies' at the bottom of the stage... v_v However I would like to add the fact he should never have gone down there against R.O.B. I'm sure you noticed to that all it took was a R.O.B. Nair to stage spike him to his death.

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He didn't die on the bottom of the stage by falling; I footstooled him.

And yeah, he wasn't an amazing pit. Just the 1:35 thing was all I wanted to show you.

The laser destroys pits recovery. If you are jumping and get hit with the weak laser, you lose all the height from that one jump. If you are gliding and are hit with the laser, you lose your glide. If you up+b and hit the laser, you lose your up+b. Recovery is sooooo easy to gimp.

AlphaZealot said:

I like that somehow when I shield the spinning to thing that the spinning top thing disappears.

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I do too!

The gyro is amazing.

ROB can effectively spam the gyro when his opponent shields it. Even better, if they don't powershield it, it eats away just enough to where you can shield poke with an angled laser!

Most good players end up shielding then advancing (eating % in the process) or rolling/spot dodging/jumping over the gyro. When they evade the gyro and it sits on the ground, ROB doesn't have the gyro anymore but he DOES have a lot of new options.

When the gyro is spinning, it damages the opponent and creates some good stun frames. If the videos of Anther and I go up soon, you'll see some cool gyro combos. Shoot the gyro, Anther dodges it, I forward air him, he hits the gyro, then I get to tilt him and smash him however I please.

The best thing to do against the gyro is to grab it and then just throw it straight up in the air. ROB can't use it against you, it disappears upon landing, and you don't have to worry about it for a few seconds.

I'unno. PM me if/when you participate in a tournament in the Maryland area. I think we both need to play good players of our respected characters. I don't have enough experience fighting good or even decent R.O.B.s but it's still hard to believe that he can gimp Pit's recovery that easily. Gimping the WoI I can understand, but I rarely use the WoI to recovery apart from the occasional novelty recovery.

UndrDog said:

I'unno. PM me if/when you participate in a tournament in the Maryland area. I think we both need to play good players of our respected characters. I don't have enough experience fighting good or even decent R.O.B.s but it's still hard to believe that he can gimp Pit's recovery that easily. Gimping the WoI I can understand, but I rarely use the WoI to recovery apart from the occasional novelty recovery.

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The idea is to force him to use it. My general strategy is to throw them off and fair them a bit, then hit them with a nair. The nair will send them upwards, and it seems obvious to use the glide. Unfortunately for them, I can laser them immediately. Pit can then recover from high, high above the stage... but he never does. They always drop down and get faired/lasered again.

I hope to travel to the EC soon :D

Overswarm said:

The idea is to force him to use it. My general strategy is to throw them off and fair them a bit, then hit them with a nair. The nair will send them upwards, and it seems obvious to use the glide. Unfortunately for them, I can laser them immediately. Pit can then recover from high, high above the stage... but he never does. They always drop down and get faired/lasered again.

I hope to travel to the EC soon :D

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Cool, in that case I withhold my meaningless opinion until then. lol

Overswarm said:

I hope to travel to the EC soon :D

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Every smashers dream right there.

http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=160646

I would suggest this thread to anyone wanting to know more about ROB. As time goes on, the earlier posts will become more and more outdated, but that's how it works.

The only thing I don't get about ROB is why he isn't doing better at tournaments, or even seen very often. Snake, MK, and G&W are doing great, but its not like ROB is any worse than those 3. Hell, I think he's better than G&W. But I haven't seen very many people that play ROB, and that confuses me to no end :/

SamuraiPanda said:

The only thing I don't get about ROB is why he isn't doing better at tournaments, or even seen very often. Snake, MK, and G&W are doing great, but its not like ROB is any worse than those 3. Hell, I think he's better than G&W. But I haven't seen very many people that play ROB, and that confuses me to no end :/

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ROB takes a lot of patience and a lot more spacing than anyone else. G&W and Snake have tons of range, but can hardly ever be punished if they have their attacks shielded or they poorly space them. Metaknight can generally go in and out of his opponents range with ease, and his priority on all his moves, especially his kill moves, is HUGE. Plus, there's the tornado.

ROB takes a lot more technical ability, a lot more spacing, and has even less KO potential than Metaknight. He's hard to play well. Using a move even once makes it impossible to be used as a KO move.

Overswarm said:

ROB takes a lot more technical ability, a lot more spacing, and has even less KO potential than Metaknight. He's hard to play well. Using a move even once makes it impossible to be used as a KO move.

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I actually chuckled when you used the word "technical". I forgot what that word meant.

ROB is clearly a good character but as OS said, the learning curve is a bit steeper than other, more popular characters.

The character provides almost limitless freedom in exchange for weaker KO ability. I'll take the freedom any day. I like to use characters that allow me to pull off what I want, when I want. I don't get that from other characters.

HugS said:

The character provides almost limitless freedom in exchange for weaker KO ability. I'll take the freedom any day. I like to use characters that allow me to pull off what I want, when I want. I don't get that from other characters.

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...That sounds like an underwear commercial.

AlphaZealot said:

Doesn't ROB KO early? I mean, I know my Diddy dies from Nair/some other attacks in the low 100%s

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Metaknight can survive all of ROB's attacks up until around 140% with decent DI.

ROB's KO moves are the forward smash, neutral air, down-air (spike), and to a lesser extent his back-air and downsmash.

If he uses an attack once, it is almost entirely useless as a KO move until it is fully recharged.

ROB's best bet at getting KOs is edgeguarding or using his up+b to catch someone high above the stage. Unfortuantely, when your opponent is at a high %, it is hard to edgeguard them, so you have to rely on getting a KO with one of your other attacks. This can become frustrating when you nair a Game & Watch at 170% and they don't die, and becuase of this you can't use your nair as a KO move for a while.

Overswarm said:

He didn't die on the bottom of the stage by falling; I footstooled him.

And yeah, he wasn't an amazing pit. Just the 1:35 thing was all I wanted to show you.

The laser destroys pits recovery. If you are jumping and get hit with the weak laser, you lose all the height from that one jump. If you are gliding and are hit with the laser, you lose your glide. If you up+b and hit the laser, you lose your up+b. Recovery is sooooo easy to gimp.

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To the guy's defense, he was never really an "enthusiastic" brawl player. He *****ed and whined about how it isn't like Melee (this guy lives near me), and about a week after this tournament he quit Brawl (or at least hasn't played with any of us since). Did you pick up on that, OS?

The kill at 1:35 was funny though.

Either way - although Overswarm probably would know better than I, ROB seems like he is just so good against Marth. Overswarm's shield grab ***** mine, and ROB's sidestep to d-smash is probably the most effective move of its type I've ever seen. I have absolutely no idea how to approach ROB with him. And he also does well against characters that he's able to out-camp, like Snake.

As far as Pit goes, I think Pit can annoy the hell out of ROB with his arrows, since Pit's arrows trump basically all projectile spammers and that's a selling point of ROB. But, Pit's inability to KO easily causes him to lose ground in the matchup once Pit's recovery gets gimped. I can visualize Overswarm falling below the stage to laser a Pit trying to recover in my head right now, and I'm sure I'll see ROB follow a Pit into the magnifying glass to hit him out of his Up B often as the matchup evolves.

SamuraiPanda said:

The only thing I don't get about ROB is why he isn't doing better at tournaments, or even seen very often. Snake, MK, and G&W are doing great, but its not like ROB is any worse than those 3. Hell, I think he's better than G&W. But I haven't seen very many people that play ROB, and that confuses me to no end :/

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Like OS said, it's because everyone sucks with him. You have people who picked up on MK or G&W immediately because they are so easy and they haven't ventured out. The last big tourney I went to, I was the only one to use ROB (I used him in the 3rd or 4th round against a Wolf) and everyone was amazed that he could be good. Then again, everyone from Texas is stupid

Like HugS said, I feel like I have more control over the match with ROB. Same with Link and Samus. They both have steep learning curves as well and I didn't see a single person play them at the last tourney either (except me).

Pit's arrows do nothing against ROB. NOTHING.

ROB can kill them with a forward air, regardless of how they are angled. Once ROB gets in close, Pit can't use arrows. GG Pit.

I feel like ROB will only become better and better as the game progresses, whereas characters like G&W and Snake I can see getting a little worse when people realize how to exploit their weaknesses (although I'm not too sure about how MK will go). Especially because right now, most people just don't edgeguard. In a game where nearly everybody has an amazing recovery, there shouldn't be a reason not to jump out and hit them with something before they get back. People will begin to edgeguard better (Snake will drop a bit, but not too much), and eventually people will learn how to better edgeguard with characters that have absolutely broken recoveries, like ROB/MK/Pit. Already you can see some people doing awesome edgeguards with Pit using his wing cancel thingy, and MK can jump after you to do a backwards up B and glide back to the stage (although its pretty easy to airdodge IMO). But I think once people learn the game more and the game progresses farther, ROB will likely have one of the strongest edgeguarding games, unless there is some sort of weakness I'm missing (i.e. maybe his aerials are easy to predict/airdodge with more experience). I can only assume we'll see much more of ROB in the coming days.

There's a delay before you can aerial after his up+b; to effectively edgeguard with ROB's up+b, you have to do it as a rising aerial. That means using a lot of fuel!

It becomes pretty risky.

Overswarm said:

Pit's arrows do nothing against ROB. NOTHING.

ROB can kill them with a forward air, regardless of how they are angled. Once ROB gets in close, Pit can't use arrows. GG Pit.

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... wait, the fair cancels the arrow, is that what you're saying? ****. okay, well the arrows can prevent ROB from stalling... but honestly I can't see Pit having superior combat skills when ROB is in position to attack. I thought Pit could prevent ROB from camping, but I guess that doesn't really matter when ROB doesn't need to camp to beat him.

i feel like anything i would add to this discussion would be vehemently refuted by overswarms brilliant robot logic.

with that said, play me online cooterface, ill show you all of robs weaknesses!

g-regulate said:

i feel like anything i would add to this discussion would be vehemently refuted by overswarms brilliant robot logic.

with that said, play me online cooterface, ill show you all of robs weaknesses!

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I lol'd at this for far too long.