ROB- this is sure as hell one hard character rank on the tier list. as far as character traits go ROB is an amazing character. the majority of his MUs rock either his advantage or even. however he is also beaten quite hard by a few characters and unfortunately MK is one of them.
R.O.B. has plenty of difficult matchups, and most of those are the high-tier characters. A lot of lower-tiered characters give R.O.B. a difficult matchup (Link, Lucas, Ike, to name a few). The problem is the lack of players of lower-tiered characters so the meta game doesn't really progress and there's only a conclusion of "Well, it's a low-tier, so R.O.B. probably has a 60:40 advantage" that never changes.
Even still, the difficulties of the higher tiered matchups can (for the most part) be overcome, but it takes the R.O.B. players as a whole to get better at it and find out their strengths in this matchup. And since I post primarily on AiB and (for no good reason) many SWF users have an aversion to going to AiB they miss out on the majority of the meta game I am developing, so the character as a whole suffers (Mr. Eric has been kind enough to transcribe some of my postings over to SWF here and there).
I don't believe R.O.B. is "beaten quite hard" by Meta Knight. In the past the majority of R.O.B. players complained the most about this MU; sneakytako was actually pro-ban. When I was in Columbus I made my arguments why I am (strongly) anti-ban, but his argument mainly revolved around the problem that MK was an absolute win against R.O.B. and held the belief the only way he could win was to get the character band. A few months later he posted saying he watched my videos and found that the matchup was not that bad.
This may sound shocking, but I have proclaimed R.O.B. to have an advantage on Meta Knight -- with stipulations. The stipulations being that the
CURRENT (overall) meta game would show undeniable proof that Meta Knight is a hard counter to R.O.B. (this is because the majority of the R.O.B. players do not know how to take advantage of every situation). The other stipulation is that the R.O.B. player must play at a level of play far beyond what the MK player has to play at -- this simply means that the MK player can simply spam the B-button and C-stick down and have a decent chance at winning with little effort, whereas the R.O.B. player has to play a near-perfect game in order to capitalize on the advantages.
This is why you see me with a 1st place win in my regional (PNW) having to play vs Jem, Nerd, Eggz, et al (Meta Knights), whereas when Bees wins a CO tourney, someone posts saying he just happened to miss out on facing every Meta Knight as those players will win against him due to character matchup.
Because I focused on that matchup I changed the potential loss into a potential victory.
in the tournament scene ROB has always done rather well in all categories. however since the majority of ROB users aren't actually winning most tournaments let alone in the pro bracket...
I've won PNW regionals since '08. I'm consistently in top 4 at tournaments... and in nationals/large regionals I'm usually 1st seed when I get into the pro bracket. I just don't post my data on SWF, and I really don't accept results on AiB because things like bonus events (eg low tiers) and other games (SSF4/Mariokart/etc) affect score display.
But just let it be known I've always been the highest placing R.O.B. in nationals, yet most results for R.O.B. disregard my records (they're largely east coast based).
Although I think it largely doesn't matter simply because I alone do not represent the
CURRENT R.O.B. meta game, but the players as a whole. So it's fine. But just wanted to post some info there because you really won't be finding it anywhere else.