theunabletable
Smash Lord
Hey, just wanted to talk about something that I don't really see many people talking about. I've been playing smash competitively for a while, since '09 roughly. Been to tons of Brawl tournaments, plenty of Melee tournaments, I'm pretty comfortable with the series, and I'm, at least, pretty knowledgeable. Not that it's an accomplishment, but out of some 250 games, I have roughly an 85-90% winrate in smash 4, at least last I checked.
In that vein, I hope that the following isn't written off immediately for being a bad player; perhaps I am just bad, and I'll explore that as I see the metagame develop. In the mean time, rolls in this game are absurdly powerful. Not all of them, but a good chunk of them. Little Mac's, Sheik's, D3's, etc. They are so fast, with more than enough invincibility, that you cannot punish them on reaction. Very few characters have the frame data to even punish it on expectation (where you're waiting to see it, and then you attack afterwards,) most punishes will be powershielded, normal shielded, or miss due to a buffered roll/spotdodge.
Many characters can't even punish a roll on a completely hard read. For instance, Jigglypuff literally can't catch most characters as they're rolling away, she can't get there in time. Of course Jigglypuff is one of the slowest moving characters, but it isn't really an outlier of a situation. It would seem that many, if not most, characters arem't capable of it in the cases of the better rollers. I'm not as versed as with the middish rollers, nor have I made a list on which rolls are most effective.
Cross-up rolls can generally be punished, but many of them, especially in many matchups, require a read of both the roll, the direction of the roll, and the exact time the roll is done, because otherwise, the frame data is simply too fast for reaction time+punish-move-startup to hit. There's a very relevant analogue to Brawl here. In Brawl, Meta Knight has a very fast forward roll. I believe it has the fastest frame data (I think it was it or ZSS'? Someone here probably remembers better than I do.) It was fast enough to cross the opponent up with them actually not being able to punish on reaction.
People did punish MK's forward roll, with things like preemptive pivot grabs, charged smashes (think MK's stutterstep fsmash in the ditto,) etc, and it was largely enough to make the risk:reward not as favorable as other options, at least enough to make it a super common option. It was still a good mixup when you where in the range to do it, and it often baited the opponent to roll or spotdodge themselves.
In this game, some characters have rolls which are faster than MKs, and seem to have options out of those rolls which are quicker than MKs. As well, MK could never really use his roll repeatedly, because his backroll was ass. In smash 4, back rolls and forward rolls appear to be similar in speed. The metagame never developed, over 6 years, to the point where people could spot the forward roll and turn around and punish on reaction.
What I'm getting at is that when excessive rolling isn't completely mindless, the terrible kind you'll see on For Glory, for instance, it's completely unreasonable to punish, and the inability to punish will not improve if Brawl's metagame development is anything to go by. It looks, to me, like this is the direction of the game, with nothing really to prevent it.
Big wall of text later. tl;dr, rolls appear to be legitimately very powerful in this game, but because of how weak it is in prior games, it's associated with weaker play, and good players trend toward not abusing it. What is the community at large's opinion?
In that vein, I hope that the following isn't written off immediately for being a bad player; perhaps I am just bad, and I'll explore that as I see the metagame develop. In the mean time, rolls in this game are absurdly powerful. Not all of them, but a good chunk of them. Little Mac's, Sheik's, D3's, etc. They are so fast, with more than enough invincibility, that you cannot punish them on reaction. Very few characters have the frame data to even punish it on expectation (where you're waiting to see it, and then you attack afterwards,) most punishes will be powershielded, normal shielded, or miss due to a buffered roll/spotdodge.
Many characters can't even punish a roll on a completely hard read. For instance, Jigglypuff literally can't catch most characters as they're rolling away, she can't get there in time. Of course Jigglypuff is one of the slowest moving characters, but it isn't really an outlier of a situation. It would seem that many, if not most, characters arem't capable of it in the cases of the better rollers. I'm not as versed as with the middish rollers, nor have I made a list on which rolls are most effective.
Cross-up rolls can generally be punished, but many of them, especially in many matchups, require a read of both the roll, the direction of the roll, and the exact time the roll is done, because otherwise, the frame data is simply too fast for reaction time+punish-move-startup to hit. There's a very relevant analogue to Brawl here. In Brawl, Meta Knight has a very fast forward roll. I believe it has the fastest frame data (I think it was it or ZSS'? Someone here probably remembers better than I do.) It was fast enough to cross the opponent up with them actually not being able to punish on reaction.
People did punish MK's forward roll, with things like preemptive pivot grabs, charged smashes (think MK's stutterstep fsmash in the ditto,) etc, and it was largely enough to make the risk:reward not as favorable as other options, at least enough to make it a super common option. It was still a good mixup when you where in the range to do it, and it often baited the opponent to roll or spotdodge themselves.
In this game, some characters have rolls which are faster than MKs, and seem to have options out of those rolls which are quicker than MKs. As well, MK could never really use his roll repeatedly, because his backroll was ass. In smash 4, back rolls and forward rolls appear to be similar in speed. The metagame never developed, over 6 years, to the point where people could spot the forward roll and turn around and punish on reaction.
What I'm getting at is that when excessive rolling isn't completely mindless, the terrible kind you'll see on For Glory, for instance, it's completely unreasonable to punish, and the inability to punish will not improve if Brawl's metagame development is anything to go by. It looks, to me, like this is the direction of the game, with nothing really to prevent it.
Big wall of text later. tl;dr, rolls appear to be legitimately very powerful in this game, but because of how weak it is in prior games, it's associated with weaker play, and good players trend toward not abusing it. What is the community at large's opinion?
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) but you also have to keep in mind they can't roll back forever, sooner or later they're going to reach a ledge and put themselves in a bad position. That's when you punish them.
