Survey the Battlefield: Robin Stage Tactics Ed. 1.10

Foreword

Hi there! I'm Raziek. Most of you Robin players probably know me already, as I moderate the boards here and post a lot of content/info all over the place. I have mained Robin since 3DS launch and consider myself a pretty strong and knowledgeable player, so I'm here to impart that knowledge to fellow mains of the characters.

Today's topic: Stages!

Knowing which stages are strong for Robin and which aren't is critical to playing the character properly. Robin is not a high-mobility character, and as such, her ability to compete in the neutral game often depends on her movement and landing options and how well those are facilitated by the stage. I'm going to be covering most of the commonly legal stages for the Wii U version of the game, complete with annotated screenshots and maybe some video examples if I'm feeling frisky.

Additional Sidenote: I use female pronouns for Robin since I play the female Robin, and I can't be bothered to be pro-noun sensitive every single time I have to refer to the character. Please don't crucify me over something trivial.

Overview + Cheat Sheet

So, I'll start by giving the list of stages I'm going to be talking about and roughly categorizing them.

Great Stages: Battlefield, Town & City, Delfino, Skyloft, Halberd,
Decent Stages: Smashville, Dreamland 64, Duck Hunt, Lylat Cruise, Wuhu Island
Poor Stages: Final Destination (Omegas), Kongo Jungle 64, Castle Siege

I believe Battlefield is our best 'standard' stage. By that, I mean stages you'll frequently see in Starter lists for Game 1. There are a number of reasons for this, but they boil down to 3 major points:

1) The Platforms are all extremely easy to pressure as Robin. Their size and height is excellent. They are small enough that most of our aerials cover the entire platform, and just high enough off the ground that we can easily pressure them with SH (short hop) aerials and hit the AC (Auto-cancel) window, giving them only 4 frames of landing lag.

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This allows Robin to exercise her extremely strong juggle game by trapping the opponent's landing with LSUair and her dash-grab. Once she has stage control here, she is difficult to dislodge.

2) The platforms assist Robin's Zoning. Platform cover is extremely important. With a platform overhead, Robin is much safer when she casts Arcfire, as it makes it harder for the opponent to jump over it and punish with an aerial.

Elthunder, Arcthunder and Thoron can all be used in similar manner to the above. They cover a lot of space and allow Robin to restrict her opponent's options.

3) The platforms aid Robin's RECOVERY. This one is big. One of Robin's main weaknesses is landing from a juggle. The number of platforms on Battlefield means she has a lot of options to pick from when recovering high, which aids you in successfully getting back to the ground.

That said, be warned: characters with extremely strong ground control can still make it very difficult to get back to the ground. Just as the platforms impede your opponent getting back to the ground, the reverse is true. If you're frequently pushed out of center stage, this may not be the stage for that particular match-up.

Battlefield also has pretty kind ledges to Robin's recovery. The 'guiding lip' extends almost half of the way down, allowing you to just ride up the inside with Elwind and snap directly to the ledge.


Overall, I think Battlefield competes with Town & City for our best 'starter' stage and is a solid option for the Game 1 stage pick.

Town & City is basically a combination of Smashville with Delfino-esque platforms and ceiling height. The ceiling is quite low, which facilitates very early kills with Uair. The sides are also rather short, making off-stage Fair and Jab by the ledge exceptionally reliable kill tools.

Robin's biggest strength on Town & City is her ability to effectively pressure the platforms. In the lower arrangement, it is very easy for her to shark the platforms by mixing up Uair/Fair and Nosferatu to grab people who stick in their shields.

The Uair/Nos mixup is even MORE threatening on the high platform arrangement, as a Uair that close to the ceiling is often lethal around 75%, making people even more likely to shield, making them easy Nos targets.

About the only other special thing worth noting is that when the platforms leave the transition, they do so QUITE quickly. Don't get left behind, and note that you cannot RUN off of them. You MUST jump.


Delfino Plaza has basically everything we could ask for in a counterpick. Here are the layouts you will see for the 'traveling' portion of the stage that moves between locations.

All of them feature at least one platform that is about the same height as those on Battlefield. This is fantastic for us for all the reasons previously outlined. All of the layouts are well-suited to us pressuring the platforms with Uair/Fair, and the ceiling is usually pretty low during the traveling portions, so you can get early kills by catching people on the high platforms. This is especially true given our access to the D-throw Uair combo.

The base of the stage is also semi-permeable, which means we can not only attack through it, but we can also rise through the bottom of it with Elwind. This offers us an additional means of mixing up our recovery direction, since you can easily switch between heading for the ledge or towards the middle of the stage thanks to the horizontal mobility on default Elwind.

The grounded sections of the stage are a mixed bag, but mostly positive. The only ones that really hinder us are the beach portions where the stage is sloped upwards towards the center. Though we can fight UP the slope well, we do not control the top effectively, and fighting with our back to the water is dangerous.

The other transitions all offer a discretely defined 'low ground' we can go to to make it extremely tough to approach us. This lets us camp to charge projectiles and run the clock as we take up a strong defensive position.

Almost all of those transitions also feature a walk-off portion, which allows us to get cheesy kills with Fire Jab, Thoron, B-throw, F-throw to Nair traps, etc. Take care against certain characters, but generally we can exploit these transitions quite well.

The last transition of note is the '3 pillars' transition, which is pretty strong for us. The small platforms means Arcfire and the Thunder series control airspace effectively since the opponent cannot simply WALK towards us. The ceiling is EXTREMELY low here, and Elwind is excellent at safely attacking opponents who fall into the middle portions of the stage.

Delfino is a VERY strong counterpick for us, and I would take most any character in the game here save for maaaaybe some of the good sharking characters like Jigglypuff or Meta Knight. I would also probably avoid characters with extremely effective spikes like DK or Ike, and instead take them to Skyloft, which lacks the 'water' transitions Delfino features.

Pretty much everything I just said about Delfino ALSO applies to Skyloft, except there's no disadvantageous water transitions. Instead, those are replaced by walk-offs.

Here are the transitions that are most favorable to us:

Basically every single traveling transition is favorable to us, and everything that isn't a pure walk-off benefits us in one way or another. There's even a '4 pillars' variant to mirror Delfino, offering all the same benefits.

The other transitions are a mixed bag of varying flavor of walk-offs, which neither aid nor hinder us to any significant degree.

Also, be aware: When the stage is traveling around it sometimes passes through a cave area where the rock walls become a temporary hazard that you or your opponent will bounce off of if slammed into.

Skyloft is my personal favorite stage, but Delfino is pretty much just as good. They have slightly varying strengths (water vs. walk-offs), but offer strong defensive positions on most transitions, and a very juggling-oriented traveling platform that plays well to Robin's strengths.

With the 1.10 patch, we gained access to D-throw Uair and an extremely buffed Elthunder. As such, I have re-evaluated my position on Halberd, and have come to enjoy it as a very strong counterpick stage for Robin.

Halberd can be feast or famine. If you can stay in the center, you will DESTROY people. If you can't, it's extremely hard to get in, and they'll abuse the platform protection that you WANT to be the one using. The middle platforms notably are just low enough to prevent you from using Arcfire out of a short-hop, which makes it much less safe for Robin to use. Instead, focus on using Elthunder to poke towards the middle, or simply charge towards Thoron to encourage them to approach you and give up that position themselves. Or even just wait until the ship lands, if they're super patient.

Main reasons for Robin to pick Halberd are its low ceiling and short sides. You can get EXTREMELY early kills with Uair/Bair. Be wary of the lip on Halberd, however. It is extremely unfriendly to Robin's recovery and has almost no leniency on letting you 'ride' it to the ledge.

Halberd is now a great stage for us, but takes some getting used to, due to the platform heights and how they interact with Arcfire. Avoid Halberd against characters who can better exploit the low ceiling (DK comes to mind), but otherwise it is a strong choice.

The next batch of stages I'll talk about are ones I would consider either 'just ok' or those that have some benefits, but some drawbacks. Their layouts generally don't support Robin's kit as well as the stages in the 'Great' group.

There's really not a lot I have to say about Smashville. It's FD with a lazy part-time platform that floats back and forth. Fortunately, that alleviates the main problem FD has to a degree. I think SV is generally inferior to BF/TC/Halberd since it's much harder to set up good Arcfire traps, but there's nothing particularly bad about the stage, per se. Mainly stick to Elthunder over Arcfire here, I would say.

No pictures at the moment, but I figured it necessary to add an overview of Dreamland. Basically, treat Dreamland like Battlefield Minus. It shares the same platform arrangement, but offers more space in between the platforms (not usually good for us). The ledges are less forgiving, and Wispy can at times disrupt bouncing projectiles like ejected tomes or swords, making them more difficult to catch properly.

It is not a bad stage for us, but there is basically no reason to choose it if Battlefield is available. Even then, if BF is banned, you should probably be picking something from Delfino/TC/Halberd instead.

Duck Hunt is a weird stage. It's basically a smaller FD with some oddly placed platforms and shorter sides. Makes it much better than FD since you have more landing options and Bair kills earlier.

Duck Hunt does present us some problems on recovery. The vertical walled sides of the stage mean we do not have a lip to recover safely under, making it easier to edge-guard us from above.

I pick Duck Hunt only if I strongly control the ground game. Not a great stage otherwise.

Has a few small quirks:

1) The Dog is a platform.
2) You can hide in the grass sometimes.
3) Ducks are hitboxes and thus can eat projectiles and ejected tomes/swords right up.

Lylat offers most of the same strengths that Battlefield does, but there are some key differences.

The first thing to note is that the platforms are lower to the ground than on Battlefield. In addition, there is no 'high' platform. This in combination with Lylat's fairly high ceiling means Uair is somewhat less reliable as a vertical kill move, though it is still potent.

The platforms are also SMALLER than Battlefield's, making them even easier to pressure.

As expected, they also offer the same variety of overhead cover that BF's provided:

Something that surprised me was that I had heard some Robin mains complaining about the lips on Lylat Cruise. Now, I know they can sometimes be a pain, but we have NO REASON to complain here. We're not Wolf, for crying out loud. I went and did some testing, and due to the sheer amount of hang-time Elwind has, all you have to do is hold towards the ledge and you'll snap right to it. The only exception to this is if the stage also tilts upwards as you recover, but as long as you're not exceptionally sloppy with your recovery, you really shouldn't have any problems here.

Speaking of the tilting, that is something to be quite aware of while fighting on this stage. Robin controls the 'low ground' better than most characters thanks to the angle her Fair swings from, so take to the Sword when the stage is tilted towards you, and the spell when it tilts away for best results.

The biggest problem Lylat Cruise presents to us is its tilting. The tilting makes it extremely difficult to place Arcfire directly onto the ledge as a trap. For match-ups where this is important, this is really bad. You instead have to stick to more aggressive edge-guards offstage, or less threatening on-stage options that require reacting to their get-up option.

Overall, Lylat is a fairly strong stage for us, but can disrupt certain zoning tools that we rely on. Avoid this stage against characters like ROB who can take advantage of the tilting to ricochet projectiles off the stage floor.

Author's Note: Wuhu is legal almost nowhere at this point, but I leave this write-up here for posterity.

Wuhu Island is the third transitioning stage in the 'Holy Trinity' and I personally feel it to be the weakest of the 3. That said, it is still a very strong stage for us, it just fills a very defined role. Wuhu Island's transitions are HUUUUUGE. Like, 'could play in Mega mode and it would still feel big' size. So unlike Delfino/Skyloft, which focus more on the mid-range game, I would use Wuhu Island as a stage to take characters who have a hard time dealing with the Thunder variants. Abuse that massive amount of horizontal space and just force them to run at you. (Poor Ganondorf) Avoid the stage against very fast characters like Captain Falcon who can run you down and make use of the extra space.

Basically all of the transitions above are just REALLY, REALLY BIG. The traveling platform has a good variety of beneficial platforms for us, but is so large that it's more difficult to effectively trap people on them.

The rest of the transitions are.... you guessed it, ones that facilitate defensive play.

Really not much else to say about the stage. I made small notes for transition-specific quirks, but that's about it. Big stage is big, run the clock, pitch that tent!

The stages in this group are stages that DIRECTLY hinder Robin's gameplan or aid opponents in exploiting her weaknesses in some manner. I avoid them almost all the time. FD receives my primary stage ban. Kongo or Duck Hunt usually gets the second. Castle Siege is not frequently picked, so I can usually get away without banning it, and it's not so bad in all match-ups.

Castle Siege's first transition has the 'feast or famine' problem Halberd and Kongo share. If you control the bottom side, it's great. If you don't, you're in for a bad time. The transition is also quite small, which does not lend itself well to zoning. Arcfire from the high side will hit the ground on the low side, but only BARELY, and not if you cast it in the air.

Fortunately, you can't get lipped.

Second transition has 2 major problems:

1) All of our projectiles except Thoron are impeded by the statues. Thunder, Elthunder, Arcthunder all get blocked, and Arcthunder doesn't even trigger the 'X'. Arcfire ignites on the statue itself.

2) The platforms are just too damn high. You can't trap people at ALL. Robin's groundspeed is bad and her airspeed is only okay, so people can just run around up on the top platforms if they don't want to deal with us. We're completely unable to exert any real offensive pressure against an opponent dedicated to avoid us here.

The third transition is just a tilting FD that screws with our recovery, our projectile zoning, AND has nowhere for us to land. Baaaaad baaaaad bad. I don't really need to say much more.

The transition between the stages even screws with us, as the stage gravity appears to warp in weird ways that make Elthunder fly into the ground. I haven't been able to consistently re-produce it to understand exactly how it works, but it has happened enough times to be really bothersome.

Fortunately not many people counter-pick this stage because it's generally not a SUPER strong pick for most characters, but be aware that it isn't good for us.

Kongo, Kongo, Kongo. I love this stage, but jesus it's (almost) everything Robin doesn't want. Problems first: The blast zones are GIGANTIC. Impedes getting kills from Uair/Bair badly. The barrel can save opponents from Nair gimps/Elwind spikes. The platforms are too high to pressure effectively. Very difficult to approach an opponent who holds center stage, due to the slopes.

Main benefits it DOES have: If you're really good at landing Nosferatu, you can live forever. If you can control center stage, you're impossible to approach. Barrel can save YOU, as well. It also is semi-permeable like Delfino/Skyloft/Halberd, offering more recovery options.

Pick Kongo only if you're very confident it will work for the match-up. Generally, the stage just does not assist us in ways that it doesn't ALSO assist the opponent.

So, I didn't even take a photo of FD because I hate it that much. And everybody already knows what it looks like.

FD is BAD. It exacerbates Robin's crippling flaws worse than any other stage.

The biggest problem Robin has is that the characters who beat her badly (Sheik especially) prevent her from safely landing thanks to their absurd ground speed. FD has no platforms to mix up your landing. Nothing to aid you in anyway to get back to the ground. All the opponent has to do is wait and react.

Similarly, there is nowhere for Robin to TRAP her opponents. Arcfire is extremely easy to navigate for all but the slowest characters. Ganondorf is about the only person I would ever take to this stage.

Only pick FD if you really think you have no other alternative. And only if you're playing a match-up where you already win the neutral game. Basically only against really floaty characters who have poor landing options, really slow characters, or Ganondorf.

This stage aids you in no way whatsoever, and actively hinders everything you stand for. Avoid like the plague.

The 3DS version's stage selection is pretty bad, and it isn't the primary version that will see play, but I'll offer some short 1-liners here regardless.

Everything I said about BF/FD still applies.

Yoshi's Island Brawl is pretty meh. If you can hold center it's ok, but that's hard to do because the stage is small.

Prism Tower is excellent. It's like a weird cross between Delfino and Skyloft.

Arena Ferox is FD some of the time, and every other time it's a super favorable campy transition we can stall and camp on. Solid pick unless you'll get destroyed on the FD portion.

Brinstar, if legal, is awesome. Super close blast-zones mean early kills, and Robin's aerials control the angles of the stage exceptionally well.

Tomodachi Life is like an exaggerated Battlefield. If you can hold the bottom it's godlike. If you can't, avoid at all costs.

Reset Bomb Forest is great. Camp a lot. Platforms are great heights/layouts.

Rainbow Road is okay. Traveling portion is just FD, but the transitions are generally favorable for us.