This is actually one of my favorite matchups to play, because both characters body each other pretty hard. Feels like there is no such thing as a lead in this matchup.
Falcons dashdance is really good against rob, it shuts down any approach he can do. Once you are dash dancing, you have the advantage in the neutral game.
Rob does not have any really fast attacks to get him out of pressure(such as Peachs nair) so you can combo fairly easily once you get something started. His oos game also isnt that great, so try to catch him in shield.
As for playing against rob offstage, it generally isn't a good idea to extend offstage and try to edgeguard him. Just see what rob does the moment you get him offstage. Does he boost up? Does he drop down and go for the edge? Alot of these options are possible to intercept. Remember that Rob does not get any boosts back until he touches the ground.
As for the projectiles, they are possible to react to in the neutral game. If you are dash dancing a safe distance away, you can react to the laser (and even powersheild it back), and the gyro is slow enough that you can just punish him for trying to pull it out.
Recovering is going to be the hardest part about the matchup. Try to mix up what you do each time, this is where rob wins. Focus on when you use your double jump. Robs fthrow/bthrow is very effective at setting up for edgeguards. Just remember that he is going to be looking for grabs near the edge, try to keep him at center stage.
Bstuk's got it right for the most part. As for specific things to look out for...
Since ROB is fat, he can crouch cancel things to ridiculous percentages like Samus. Because of that, spacing nairs properly is very important, otherwise you'll eat a CC down smash and ROB can chain/tech chase with a couple of those down smashes.
Now, there's one certain thing in particular that I want to emphasize about this MU because Falcon has an option that 99% of Falcon player in Melee and P:M don't use for some reason. When Rob does his airdash ---> fair correctly on your shield, he has a positive frame advantage on your shield. As a result, you tend to see ROBs spam jab in case you attempt to grab him. If he uses both jabs, the cooldown of the 2nd jab should give you enough time to grab. But sometimes Falcon is out of range because his grab range is ****. So you wiff a grab and get down smashed. And if you try to aerial OoS, he'll probably get his shield up in time. This sucks, right? Oh what could Falcon possible do OoS?
Up-B OoS, son.
Falcon's up-b is basically a command grab and I know in Melee that it has a pretty big grabbox, especially on frame 13. Falcon's Up-B OoS covers a lot of ROBs wiffed attempts on shield, including:
- 2nd hit jab
- Down smash (Here, you could bait a CC down smash by Shuffling a nair and immediately shielding so that you can Up-B the down smash wiff OoS)
- F-tilt? (Probably not max ranged f-tilt, but I would assume a close to mid-range f tilt. If you can get a guaranteed up-B OoS on Sheik f-tlt and Spacie up-tilt in Melee, pretty sure you can on Rob's f-tilt.
- All of his other laggy Smash attacks, probably
Up-B does like 17 percent. That's pretty much like getting an unblockable Knee to the face (literally, you can't block Falcon Dive), it can help alleviate pressure, and it has many more situational uses than just in the ROB MU. Especially in the Zelda MU. Wiffed Up-smashes and non-land canceled Naryus have guaranteed Up-B OoS follow ups.
However, it's important that you use this at
MID TO HIGH PERCENTS!!!! Doing this at 0%-low percents would not knock your opponent far away enough to prevent a counter attack as you're coming back down from the Up-B.
Please guys. Falcon up-b OoS is godlike. Use it moar.
P.S. Also, as another general thing, always look out for airdashed fairs when you're dash dancing in the neutral game. If you know how to punish correctly OoS or how to evade when they decide to mix it up by air-dash --> grab (buffer roll away in this situation), then airdash is significantly less annoying than many people claim.
