Okay, I'm gonna go video by video and see if I notice more as I go along. Prepare for a wall of text.
Video 1:
First of all is your recovery. You're recovering much too high, much too often. It killed you multiple times, and really, it should've killed you more. Roy's recovery is better than most people give it credit for, as long as you have good DI, but the landing lag is extremely easy to punish. Keeping that in mind, you should only rarely be recovering onstage, and then only when you're punishing a mistake on their part using Blazer's hitboxes or when you're forced to due to edgehogging. Recovering high as Roy is extremely risky, since a single poke offstage without your double jump available often means the end of a stock. Almost all of the time, you should probably be recovering to the ledge if it's possible to do so. Don't be afraid to drop down a little bit to get closer to the sweetspot range.
Second is your dash attacking. You are incredibly fond of Roy's dash attack. And, well, it's a useful move. But at one point in the final game I decided to count, and you did four dash attacks in a row. That's pretty much never something you should be doing. There are better options as far as coverage, combo extenders, combo finishers, etc. that would have done much better in those situations. It
is a useful move, but you're very much overusing it and neglecting the rest of Roy's toolkit. Roy is very well-designed in that
every single one of his moves is useful. Don't get hung up on using just one.
Related to the dash attacking, you should grab more. Roy has one of the best standing grab ranges in the game. Jump-cancelled grabs out of dashdance are your friend. They allow you to punish whiffs effectively, help techchase, and can be very effective at racking up percent early on. Instead of just dash attacking out of your dashes, you should try to start grabbing more often. It'll also help keep your opponents on their toes, as they can't just shield once they catch on to your fondness for the dash attack.
Counterpicks and stage banning. Okay, so this one can be a little tricky. But I found your choice of bans rather questionable. When you're banning stages, you need to think about your opponent as much as yourself. True, dreamland isn't a great stage for Roy. Big blast zones mean that he doesn't kill as early and his recovery doesn't go out that far, so opponents often die later than he does. But against Marth, banning Dreamland typically isn't necessary. Marth is disadvantaged almost just as much as Roy on this stage. He can't tipper through the platforms, and his recovery isn't too much better, and at those distances, is also very predictable and easy to edgeguard. On the flipside, Yoshi's Story is usually a good stage for Roy. Small blastzones mean he kills early, and low platforms are good for his combos. But against Marth, this is one of his strongest stages. He can tipper through the platforms and also gets easy combos out of them, along with fast kills from the blast zones. On Yoshi's, being on a platform suddenly becomes extremely dangerous - that's how your game on Yoshi's ended, in fact, as you were tippered through the platform. The Dreamland ban, then would likely have been better spent on Yoshi's Story, since in that MU, Yoshi's is worse for Roy, and Dreamland is fairly neutral.
Video 2:
Another move you're over-relying on is your Flare Blade. You pop it out much more than you should in neutral and to try to chase people. It's a pretty slow move, and it forces you to overcommit a lot of the time. Overall, you really didn't connect with it that often. You should try to only use it as a guaranteed aerial combo finisher or to edgeguard. A lot of the time you're using it to try to chase people down when they're out of range, and often you miss and the commitment the move requires means that you have no real options to follow up in time. Taking your time a bit more and searching for a safer, more reliable option often would pay off for you. Another way you're overrelying on it is in your edgeguards. You use it on the edge almost without fail. This makes you very, very predictable, and makes it safe for your opponents to sweetspot without fear, or recover high. While Flare Blade may seem at first to be a very good edgeguard, it often covers fewer options than one might think. When enemies are recovering just above the ledge, oftentimes an ftilt or a dtilt into combo is just as, if not more, effective, and also is much faster to come out and requires less commitment to the option, allowing you to be more flexible.
Use your shield, and use your shieldgrabs. You opponent wasn't shield grabbing you
nearly as much or punishing a fraction as hard as he should have (or punishing you for your onstage recoveries, either) on your dash attacks. It's slow, it's shield grabbable. This Ness was being pretty bad about it. You dash attacked him multiple times while his shield was up, and he failed to take an easy guaranteed punish and shield grab you. You should be making use of shield grabs too. It's a great way to punish unsafe aerials and other attacks, and helps convert into techchase opportunities or juggles.
I'm gonna have to stress your recovery again here. You're recovering onstage
way too much, and you definitely should have been punished much, much harder for it. Ness could've ended several stocks substantially earlier if he had effectively punished, or punished at all, your onstage recoveries.
You're also much too eager to end your combos. I saw a lot of situations where at low percents you popped them up in the air and immediately fsmashed when you could have utilted or dtilted to continue a juggle and use a combo finisher later on. Racking up damage at those percents is more important than putting the game into a staggered state. You may be in a better position than them after that fsmash, but they're in a better position than they would have been if you had continued the combo. At low percents, you can juggle effectively with utilts and uairs, pop them up with dairs or dtilts, extend combos with jabs, grabs, or fairs, etc. etc. Roy is great at combos, and learning to use them will up your game a lot.
Also related to combos, is you should watch out for and pursue conversions into combos. I was puzzles a few times when I saw you neglect to follow up on an attack for pretty much no reason. At
12:59, you hit Ness with a dash attack and then... just kind of... walk away. But this was a great opportunity for a juggle or a combo. Make sure you're aware of how your moves knock people back and how to convert that into more damage.
Video 3:
Game 1 could easily have been a 4 stock if that last section you'd recovered to the ledge instead of pushing onstage into his fsmash.
Is banning Lylat just a personal preference thing? Lylat is a fairly good stage for Roy because of the platforms allowing him to uair and utilt through them. Banning Skyworld would have been a
much better choice than Lylat or Yoshi's Island, since Skyworld is one of Roy's worst stages. The platform placement is terrible for Roy, as he can't often recover to them like many other characters can, and he struggle to combo or juggle through them like he can on other stages.
Blazer isn't a combo move, and you shouldn't treat it as such. You've used it a couple of times in the previous videos too, but it doesn't do much damage and minimizes your chances of following up or killing. When you're chasing somebody upwards, it's always better to double jump and uair or wait for them to fall and try to hit them on their way down. Using Blazer does very little damage and opens you up to a punish due to the massive landing lag.
Game 2's huge turnaround was a combination of how bad Skyworld is for this MU and, again, that game-ending high recovery. Especially when your opponents catch on to that tendency, they may just pull a little bit back from the ledge, out of your range, and if they do, they can punish you very hard for it.
Watch game 3 and note how many times Charizard charges an fsmash on the edge as your recovering. Almost every time, if he'd spaced it properly, you would've died.
In all three of these sets, I have yet to see you do a nair. A lot of the times you're throwing out Flare Blade, a nair would be a better option, along with many of your dash attacks. Nair also outlasts spotdodges, so you can often hit people out of dodges with it. It also has great coverage, which means it can be effective for techchases.
Now, Ravioli didn't beat you because of his combos or his tech skill of because of the MU or the stages. Ravioli beat you because he figured out how you play. Watch the set, and you'll see how he catches on to how you recover high, how you tend to roll, how you attacked his shield, and how you move. With that knowledge, he began edgeguarding you the same way every time - because you recovered the same way every time. He started smashing in the direction you tended to roll. He started shieldgrabbing you and converting it to an edgeguard. And he began calling your movement to grab you out of it.
So how do you counter that? By being able and willing to mix it up. Recover low and safe, and punish his edgeguards. Tech in place, spot dodge, grab his shield, make your movement unpredictable. All of these are fundamental skills, but that does not, by any means, mean that they are simple or easy. They are something you
have to be aware of and actively try to improve.
Overall:
Recover to the ledge. Practice it. Go on a stage, by yourself, and just jump off and practice the sweetspot range, or play with a friend and have them hit you off, and practice recovering to the ledge. Cut down on dash attacks and Flare Blades. Make sure you use all of your kit, and pay special attention to JC grabs/shieldgrabs, nair, and your tilts (particularly the combo tilts like dtilt and utilt). Grind out your SHFFLs a little bit and practice extending your combos. You should use fair much more than you do. Fair and uair are your bread and butter for extending combos, and if you start using them I think you'll see a lot more success in your combos. Practice uair/utilt juggles. Practice JC grabs and chaingrabs. Figure out what stages are best for Roy, and think about what stages are best or worst for your opponents when you counterpick or ban.
And, most importantly, keep playing, and have fun! Small communities can be tough to grow, but having people to play with is
always better than not having anyone at all. I'm sure you guys will all push each other to get better. Good luck! And let me know if you have any questions or want any feedback, or anything at all.
