Roy isn't Marth

[GhettoNinja]

Now by reading the title you're probably thinking "well no *** Roy isn't marth, one has blue hair and one has red." So I'm gonna ask that you read all of this so you'll be able to fully understand what I mean. To start off with I'm not the most experienced Roy main by any means. So I'm not claiming to have some amazing knowledge or anything but it seems that everyone always seems to forget Roy isn't Marth. What I mean by this is look at Fox and Falco. The two characters at high level of play play completely different and look really different(movement wise and such) What does high level Roy look like in the year 2015? Well basically the same as he did in 2007, which looks like a wanna be 2007 marth. My point is that Roy is being held back by us using Marth as the base for our play. Like For example I've been working on mastering d-tilt into Up Smash spike. Like do you know how insane that combo is if you can do it consistently? Roy's, Roy aspects are being discarded as "useless" and instead the focus is put on emulating Marth. Roy will never be Marth. We can't Ken Combo...but we can Down Tilt into Up smash spike..which is more skillful and more powerful. So ya just some food for thought I guess. If you disagree and think I'm stupid or something you can give me your reasons. Or if you agree and have more Roy specific stuff we should incorporate that'd awesome.

 

[Link24a]

Usmash spike is so unreliable its really not worth

 

[GhettoNinja]

Usmash spike is so unreliable its really not worth

IMO its really not as unreliable as people say. I mean you can get Up Smash Spikes for days off the Dreamland platforms. I'm not saying its something that'll be easy. But if Yoshi mains can use parrying I think we can use the spike.

 

[Link24a]

IMO its really not as unreliable as people say. I mean you can get Up Smash Spikes for days off the Dreamland platforms. I'm not saying its something that'll be easy. But if Yoshi mains can use parrying I think we can use the spike.

The fact that it's intended to link into the other hits of the move is a glaring issue. It knocks at an angle of 259, which is 1 degree outside of a meter smash (good) but it knocks the person noticeably behind you (bad)

Say the person gets hit in front of you by the hitbox, it's knocking them down, but also 11 degrees behind you in order to make it so if you're too far out you get pushed in a little. The opposite happens if the person gets hit behind roy.

It's really problematic as its something so so small it's almost down to the .05 coordinates... The fact that no one competitively has ever used it far as I've seen is something

 

[GhettoNinja]

The fact that it's intended to link into the other hits of the move is a glaring issue. It knocks at an angle of 259, which is 1 degree outside of a meter smash (good) but it knocks the person noticeably behind you (bad)

Say the person gets hit in front of you by the hitbox, it's knocking them down, but also 11 degrees behind you in order to make it so if you're too far out you get pushed in a little. The opposite happens if the person gets hit behind roy.

It's really problematic as its something so so small it's almost down to the .05 coordinates... The fact that no one competitively has ever used it far as I've seen is something

Doesn't help that you can only find 2 good Roy's. And one of them hasn't played for 5+ years. Like I just feel you can't use competitive use as a basis because the well of good Roy's is small.

 

[Link24a]

Doesn't help that you can only find 2 good Roy's. And one of them hasn't played for 5+ years. Like I just feel you can't use competitive use as a basis because the well of good Roy's is small.

Sethlon damn near put his all into roy. If he hasn't done it, it probably isn't a thing

 

[NIFOFD]

I think you make a very valid point in saying that improving Roy will require us to move away from just playing with the mindset that we are essentially playing an inferior Marth. Unfortunately, we are actually playing an inferior Marth so the Roy meta will always be tied into Marth's. There have been plenty of advances in general gameplay that haven't really been applied to Roy very well. Shield drops are nice, but Roy's options out of a shield drop are not as good as Marth's by virtue of his superior aerials. Pivot's are fantastic and should be applied by any competent Roy. Pivot Fsmash can transform weak fsmash followups into powerful fsmash kills in certain situations (upthrow on fastfallers at certain %s, DI away on dtilt, etc.). Still though, Marth benefits equally as much from this tech (and Roy's follow ups still have a tendency to be dependent on your opponent's poor DI or delayed double jumps out hitstun). There's definitely room for Roy to improve, but the sad reality is that most strategies applicable to Roy are equally as applicable to Marth by virtue of his similar/superior moveset. I like your out of the box thinking with UpSmash (though I'll admit I think it's a fruitless idea against actual human opponents), but I actually feel like our best bet is to follow the advances of the Marth meta and take what's applicable since that character actually receives frequent tourney play. I do still applaud the effort though, best of luck in your Roy journey!

 

[GhettoNinja]

I think you make a very valid point in saying that improving Roy will require us to move away from just playing with the mindset that we are essentially playing an inferior Marth. Unfortunately, we are actually playing an inferior Marth so the Roy meta will always be tied into Marth's. There have been plenty of advances in general gameplay that haven't really been applied to Roy very well. Shield drops are nice, but Roy's options out of a shield drop are not as good as Marth's by virtue of his superior aerials. Pivot's are fantastic and should be applied by any competent Roy. Pivot Fsmash can transform weak fsmash followups into powerful fsmash kills in certain situations (upthrow on fastfallers at certain %s, DI away on dtilt, etc.). Still though, Marth benefits equally as much from this tech (and Roy's follow ups still have a tendency to be dependent on your opponent's poor DI or delayed double jumps out hitstun). There's definitely room for Roy to improve, but the sad reality is that most strategies applicable to Roy are equally as applicable to Marth by virtue of his similar/superior moveset. I like your out of the box thinking with UpSmash (though I'll admit I think it's a fruitless idea against actual human opponents), but I actually feel like our best bet is to follow the advances of the Marth meta and take what's applicable since that character actually receives frequent tourney play. I do still applaud the effort though, best of luck in your Roy journey!

I do agree we should take and optimize what we can from marth, but we shouldn't just focus on the marth stuff. We should evolve the Double Edged Swords Dance Meta, Up smash, etc. Basically I believe Roy can only get better by evolving in areas Marth hasn't. Such as the Flare Blade strategies and uses, The sword dance, and even our superior counter. Like no marth in his right mind is gonna learn all these swords dance stuff because they can get the same results with the tools they already have. We dont have those tools so we gotta make them.

 

[GhettoNinja]

Sethlon damn near put his all into roy. If he hasn't done it, it probably isn't a thing

What kind of justification is that? No one man will unlock Roy's potential. I have the up most respect for sethlon and he was a great melee Roy. But and this is the keyword, but he's not the end all. Like imagine if V3ctorman was the end for Yoshi? He's an amazing player that evolved the character and showed off how good he could be, but there eventually will be a aMSa that's able to push the character in a way you didn't think possible. Roy needs some of that evolution pumped into him.

 

[lolazerz]

You keep talking about the ways the Roy meta needs to develop (a conversation that has been going on since like 07'). But I think that people need to understand that even when you push yourself and your character to the limits Your still limited by the character and don't take this as me complaining I made the conscious decisions to switch from MARTH to ROY. Roy is still always gonna have bad match-ups and really all he can do in most scenarios. Is try to catch people off-guard with side-b and down-b shenanigans. But once people catch on to his tricky ways they'll adapt. And it doesn't help when we currently live in a meta-game where being frame perfect is the norm.

 

[GhettoNinja]

You keep talking about the ways the Roy meta needs to develop (a conversation that has been going on since like 07'). But I think that people need to understand that even when you push yourself and your character to the limits Your still limited by the character and don't take this as me complaining I made the conscious decisions to switch from MARTH to ROY. Roy is still always gonna have bad match-ups and really all he can do in most scenarios. Is try to catch people off-guard with side-b and down-b shenanigans. But once people catch on to his tricky ways they'll adapt. And it doesn't help when we currently live in a meta-game where being frame perfect is the norm.

Im by no means saying Roy is a secret S tier character by any means. But I do believe if he's pushed he could be a lot better and first off its physically impossible to play frame perfect but I get what you're saying. But Frames will only get you so far. You can never count out the mental game. I think if enough solid players start using Roy and evolving him we could really get somewhere.

 

[Comet7]

well no *** roy isn't marth, one has teh PH1R3 and one doesn't

roy will need another person like sethlon to play him to squeeze whatever potential you think he has out of him.

 

[Delta Chae]

Im by no means saying Roy is a secret S tier character by any means. But I do believe if he's pushed he could be a lot better and first off its physically impossible to play frame perfect but I get what you're saying. But Frames will only get you so far. You can never count out the mental game. I think if enough solid players start using Roy and evolving him we could really get somewhere.

I understand your feelings. I mained Roy for a while before switching to Marth. The problem is that Roy was clearly intended to play as a slightly different version of Marth and what we got was a half-assed character. Roy's dash attack is just terrible, the hitboxes don't even match the animation. The hitbox placement on most of his attacks, while easier to sweetspot than Marth's, results in several attacks that do not give followups unless the opponent just DIs in the absolute worst way possible. The fact that he only has one reliable finisher (His Fsmash which isn't even that good to begin with) also severely limits his potential. The sweetspot placement of his attacks also require that he put himself directly in harm's way to optimize his damage output. His recovery is also one of the worst in the game being a worse version of Marth's already mediocre recovery.

The problem isn't so much that people don't realize that Roy isn't Marth but that Roy just has too many flaws to be a good character. Sethlon tried for years and didn't achieve anything. If you want to play a tournament viable Roy you'd probably be better served going to Project M or Smash 4, both of which Roy was buffed for.

As for being physically impossible to be frame perfect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwDHs6UXgR8 Note that this is NOT a TAS video, this is an actual person controlling Fox.