If Roy had Marth's Tipper (Revisited)

[The Young Izzy Iz]

This thread got me thinking and is the impetus for this little thought exercise. The reason I'm making a completely new thread is because I want this to be more organized and the topic given a better chance to be discussed in depth. That being said it's going to be broken into four parts with the first three addressing completely separate issues and the fourth being a combination of the first two.

1) Assuming that Roy's current sweetspot was moved to the tip of his blade a la Marth how would this change up his game / representation on the tier list? What would his combos look like? Would he have better options out of shield with retreating fair / nair? Would Roy's base power make him more of a prediction based character like CFalcon where the big pay-offs came from predicting the opponent and punishing via proper spacing? Would this change be for better or for worse?

2) What would Roy look like if his sweetspot remained in the same place but he was given all of Marth's frames? What kind of advantages would these changes give him and how would it alter his current playstyle? Could he be a superior character to Marth in such a case? This question really addresses Roy's lack of options out of shield and some of the difficulty with his combo game originating from his inability to follow up on successful pokes.

3) If Roy had Marth's weight / running speed / wavedash length and things of this nature how would it change him? One of the biggest problems with Roy is that he's able to be chain-grabbed by a majority of the cast, these changes would fix that and give him a much better dash dance game. In addition the increased run speed might make comboing easier even with his unfortunate hit boxes.

4) How would Roy look, feel, and play if the first two were combined together? This would make him a slightly slower Marth who still had to deal with things like relentless chain-grabs but who had much better pay-offs to compensate. Personally I think this would make him a much more balanced character, as it would keep one of his significant weaknesses as a trade-off for improved frames and ability to combo / KO.

I know all of this is a lot of theory-crafting and that none of it has anything to do with pushing the Roy meta per-se, but it's an interesting thought experiment and I hope everyone will still contribute. I look forward to seeing everyone's answers and evaluations.

 

[Link24a]

1. I think it would just make his game a little more about spacing/make him harder to use without being much more rewarding. His sourspot really is terrible and most of his sweetspots are subpar. He doesn't get combos really from his sweetspot or anything so I think it would really make him worse due to his mobility not being good enough to space well and the fact that tippers are just harder to land. Retreating fair oos might be a benefit, maybe, but retreating nair oos not so much as his first hit has no sourspot anyways and the sourspot on his second hit isn't that terrible iirc. He's just too weak for it to be worth it, in addition to some of his sweetspots having a larger radius than marth's sourspots

2. Uhhh... That's hard. Overall roy is not all that more laggy than Marth except for in the air. His fsmash and dsmash would be scary as hell, his aerials would possibly be usable, his utilt might actually be able to chain into itself, ftilt would be pretty nice, so yeah he'd be about 4 spots higher imo due to aerials and smash attacks.

3. That's not all that significant, save for falling speed/gravity. Yeah, their run speed and traction are different but not too much. I don't think it would make him significantly better but it would be nice. As for falling speed/gravity, it would make his recovery just about as good as marth's. Their side b's are practically exactly the same and their air speeds are exactly the same so roy could recover just like Marth except his up b can be angled more and can't be crouch canceled. His double jump height would be a difference in recovery though. Their weight is barely different so that would just make his survivability slightly better.

Edit: he'd be a lot more difficult to combo that's for sure and that would probably place him higher

4. He wouldn't be that much better tbh. Roy is just too weak and the knockback his sourspots do are just too terrible to be landing with more of the time. His fsmash would take a major hit, but his aerials would be pretty nice.

I think what would benefit him the most is if he was given stronger, faster aerials and tilts and his sourspots weren't atrocious. He doesn't need better mobility or anything like that. He just needs to have remotely usable aerials and sourspots that don't punish you for landing them by accident

 

[Orion_]

As it stands, Roy has a ton of range that he does not necessarily want to use. Marth has range and wants to use it. A lot of players struggle against Marth because it's difficult to get past his gigantic intangible sword hitboxes, especially when proper spacing allows Marth to KO very early with tippers. If Roy posed the same threat, that would be rather useful.

1. He would probably go up quite a ways on the tier list, but it is very difficult to imagine exactly how that character would work. His forward smash would be pretty silly, of course. But does that apply to moves like Blazer? Blazer would be awful if it weren't a massive wall of hitboxes to get people out of Roy's grill while he recovers. The possibility of hitting people who are still rising up to hit you with the bottom of the hitboxes is really important. A down air with a tipper could be pretty dope. Down tilt would be okay, but I think ultimately less useful for ducking-then-stabbing people who come in too close with a high attack like Falcon/Ganon's forward tilt or a too-high aerial. That move is useful because it does its popup at just about any range. Flare Blade would probably be a lot stronger because there'd be little reason not to space for the tip, and the tip has the biggest hitbox already.

2. Being able to SHFFL with less lag would be incredibly useful for a fast faller. you could practically float along the ground spamming Nair and do fairly well for yourself. I'm not sure to what extent you mean 'copy Marth's frames', though. If it includes things like how long the counter hitbox would stick out, that would be nuts. Marth's counter sticks out forever, but it doesn't instantly kill people at high percents.

3. I don't think changing Roy's weight would change much of anything. He weighs two less than Marth; it would be almost imperceptibly more difficult to chain grab him with weight-dependent throws, but that mostly stems from his fall speed. His run speed and wavedash length are both already very close to Marth's, with only Yoshi separating them on ranking lists. (Although some wavedash length lists put Dr. Mario /Mario /Mr. Game & Watch also between, they are all very very close to Roy as well.) A slight run speed buff would be welcome, it would make it slightly easier to chain dash attacks on people who DI behind at low percents, amongst other perks.

I'm not much of a Marth player, beyond attempting to play him like Blue Roy, so I don't really have much to say about 4. It seems to me that he'd become the Doc to Marth's Mario. Worse offstage, but generally better onstage with some weird quirks to separate them.

 

[The Young Izzy Iz]

1. He would probably go up quite a ways on the tier list, but it is very difficult to imagine exactly how that character would work. His forward smash would be pretty silly, of course. But does that apply to moves like Blazer? Blazer would be awful if it weren't a massive wall of hitboxes to get people out of Roy's grill while he recovers. The possibility of hitting people who are still rising up to hit you with the bottom of the hitboxes is really important. A down air with a tipper could be pretty dope. Down tilt would be okay, but I think ultimately less useful for ducking-then-stabbing people who come in too close with a high attack like Falcon/Ganon's forward tilt or a too-high aerial. That move is useful because it does its popup at just about any range. Flare Blade would probably be a lot stronger because there'd be little reason not to space for the tip, and the tip has the biggest hitbox already.

Just wanted to clarify that in the first scenario we're only moving the sweetspot not the individual hitboxes themselves. For example Blazer is still going to cover him and dtilt will still pop people up. Knockback/damage isn't changed either.