Technomancer's Roy Playbook

[technomancer]

4106087490
4107890302

I'd like to preface this guide by saying that I no longer play Roy, though I stay familiar with him. This guide has been sitting on my HD for a very long time, however, so I figured I'd post it. Special thanks to Neo, Lord Knight, Seth, and all the Roy guys for sticking it out with him, because he's such a beast! And also for basically providing everything I have for this guide lol.

Techno's Roy Playbook
A pocket guide for the Serious Roy Player

This guide is meant to serve as a supplement to the Roy FAQ sticky; essentially, it's an article on how to play Roy in a competitive sense. I have no intention of discussing Roy's full moveset in this guide in detail, and it is assumed that you are familiar with the character and all of his attacks, including each hit of the DED combo, and the difference between sweetspots and non-sweetspots. Again, the FAQ sticky in this forum has all the information you need (as well as lots of great advice from great Roy players).

This guide is intended for the average to advanced player who can't seem to find a groove with Roy and win consistantly. For the majority of other terminology, please refer to the terminoligy sticky by AlphaZealot in the Melee Discussion Forum.

This guide is copyright 2007 by Technomancer, and should only appear in the Roy forums at SWF. Feel free to borrow the info, but if you're going to copy and paste, have the decency to send me a PM first.


Introduction
Playing Roy at an advanced level is not a difficult task to accomplish. Applying SHFFL, chainthrowing, and simple combos to any character's game merely takes a reasonable amount of dedication and time playing with friends, or at local tournaments. However, with Roy, as with many other mid-tiered characters, it is simply difficult to win consistantly; at least consistantly enough to blow through a tournament and make the prize money a large percentage of the time, even if you are better than a chunk of the compitition. This is possibly due to Roy's high lag attacks, but more likely due to a few bad matchups with High-tiered characters like Falco, Ganondorf, and Captain Falcon. For these reasons it is not uncommon for Roy players to have a strong second like Falco, Ganondorf, Peach, or Jigglypuff, and I recommend doing so. Roy cannont answer every strategy adequately (few characters can), and if you're out to prove otherwise, well, it's been attempted.

Technical
For those of you who don't have the technical skill required to do any of the techniques explained in this guide, please, learn them. At twenty minutes a day, if you set aside the time to work on your techs, you can master anything in this guide and learn to waveshine and RDSHL with Fox on the side. Every technique you learn that is effective is another asset to your gameplan and will help you win matches if used correctly. Also, the more stuff you know, the more you can mix it up, and one of the keys to winning with Roy is to get people to shield, which is not difficult, but if you telegraph yourself by repeating the same tactic, you're not only setting yourself up for counters, but blatantly giving away your strategy and allowing them to adapt and exploit you. Additionally, it is essential that you learn Roy's techniques, because without them, he is at a significant disadvantage vs. every character, including MewTwo and Bowser; his attacks are too laggy and often to weak to be messing around with a double jumped fair poke with no fastfall. Roy is very light and gets combo'd easily, and doesn't have a solid recovery unless you are quick about it and sweetspot or hit the opponent. Bad opponents you can beat with any character, but to beat good opponents with Roy you MUST KNOW THE TECHS.

SSBM Gameplay Theory (as pertains to Roy)
1. How to Win a Match
Matches in SSBM generally consist of three, four, or six stocks, which are removed by forcing your opponent to clear one of four blast lines - the top, bottom, and left and right sides. You win by removing all of your opponent's stocks with Vertical KOs, Horizontal KOs, and off-the-bottom KOs (through spikes and edgeguarding).

Roy lacks diversity in KOs. He can KO off the top with D-Smash, off the side with F-Smash, DED (hits 3 and 4), and kinda with sweetspotted F-tilts at high percents, and he can edgeguard fairly well with his charge B and forward smash in conjunction with edgehogging. His two spikes are considered too inconsistant to use effectively. Therefore you will win most of your matches by A) dealing more damage than your opponent, and B) effectively landing KO moves, and following with a successful edgeguard where necessary.

A. You should be landing more hits than your opponent. Roy is quick, has good range, his combos are simple and technical, and he does a little under average damage. In the movement deparment, his wavedash is excellent, his dash animation is very fast and long in duration. His short jump is short and his fastfall is fast. In this, I believe him to be the second most all-around manuverable character in the game, aside from Jigglypuff. Essentially, your low damage strategy should be to get your licks in and get out, and repeat as many times as possible, using all of your mindgames to their best effect. (the character you're playing against tends to change this up a bit).

B. Most of your opponents should not be living past 90%. At about 50%, start looking for a combo or mindgame that will lead to a sweetspotted forward smash. At higher percents look for opportunities to dsmash as well. Effeciency is the name of the game.

This is of particular note against fastfallers and semi-fastfallers, because if you don't hit them with a forward smash before 80%, it becomes **** near impossible to combo into them, and you have to rely heavily on your mindgames and techchasing skills to fit in a forward smash and finish them if you don't want them to live until 150% or better.

2. Sweetspotting/Non-Sweetspotting
I'm not entirely sure how accurate this is, but Roy's blade has three basic sections, and I'd like to take a second to go over them. Essentially, you have the sweetspot (the center of the swing near the hilt), the tipper sourspot (the weakest point of the blade at the very tip), and the rest of the blade, which does less than the sweetspot. Mess around a little with the DED and you'll be able to achieve all three; there are also color variations in the blade that can help you locate them, and you can also hunt around in the Roy FAQ by Rebel and MookieRah for more info, but they don't have much on the different effects and combos, so here you go, move by move:

A Attacks

Smashes; Obviously always try to land a sweetspot; the sourspot on your smashes will leave you very open. Good things to note are that a sweetspotted Usmash kills at sexy percents, but I still don't recommend it.​

F-air; Tippered F-airs do very little damage and have little knockback and stun. At low percents, prefer to hit with the sweetspot, at med-high percents, prefer to hit with the sourspot so you can continue to chain into grabs.​

U-air; It's hard to chain tippered U-airs because they have so little stun, so if you're juggling someone and it starts getting to the tip of the U-air, it's time to land a smash.
D-air; The sweetspot is a meteor spike and virutually impossible to land, as well as being dumb in general.​

D-tilt; Tippering this can lead to a nice smash or wavesmash setup at medium percents, but watch out for someone to DI or jump out, because they usually can. You'll want to hit with the tip more for spacing purposes, but the sweetspot has a bit better damage and stun, so keep that in mind, and is much better against fastfallers. At early percents, a nice sweetspot dtilt->fsmash is good to send people sprawling off the side for edgeguarding.​

F-tilt; Tippered F-tilts are even more terrible than tipped smashes.​

U-tilt; In general, you should shy away from U-tilt, but sweetspotting this gives much better stun and can occasionally combo vs. fastfallers.​

N-air; Generally prefer the sweetspot to gaurentee that the second hit lands, as it is possible to DI out of the tipper. This move looks like it has a little more range than it does as well, especially if you're used to playing Marth.​

B Attacks

Flare Blade; Roy and Marth's charge B attacks are reversed; the flare blade is strongest at the tip of the attack, and weakest in the chewy center.​

DED 1+2; No discernable sweetspots or sourspots that I can see, I haven't messed around.
DED 3; Standard strength and damage reductions.​

DED 4; Standard strength and damage reductions. 4 down does a good bit more damage when sweetspotted, but you leave yourself open to grabs.​

DED hits don't have a "sourspot" per se, just do less knockback at the tip.​

Blazer; Sweetspots have much greater stun and knockback, and you must hit with the sweetspot to pull off the Jigglypuff Reverse Blazer trick.​

3. Spacing
Spacing is the most basic component of SSBM play; to not understand how to space is to be a scrub forever. Spacing is the art of using movement techniques to stay just out of range of your opponent's advances, so that you can either outprioritize them or dodge them and immediately counterattack in their lag. It requires prediction, timing, a good eye and knowledge of range, and a basic knowledge of where you should definately not be and what your opponents can do to you. For instance, against Marth, you can sit just a smudge outside of Fsmash range, so that you can't be hit with a blind tipper, but if he tries it, you can hit him back easily or fit in a grab. With Peach, you can hang out outside the range of her dash attack, or you can be closer, at the edge of the range of her downsmash and paying attention to make sure you don't get quickly grabbed or hit with a dash attack. Your own moves have an effective spacing as well, and you should adjust and space more for where they will be, rather than where they are if they are moving.
While the spacing is different for every matchup, a good rule of thumb for Roy is that on flat stages you should be within range of a SHFFLed f-air, and out of range of most of their fast attacks. There are many notable exceptions. For Marth, you should generally be at your sweetspot range, or well distant and trying various baits and spacing tricks. Against Fox and Falco, you should generally be following their momentum; retreating as they advance, advancing as they retreat. With Peach, it is more important to preempt her attacks than to outspace her, and to remember that she is very good at making minor adjustments with her float and wavedash. Spacing also varies against certain strategies; for instance, if you notice Marth never forward smashes unless it's in a combo, you can space closer, or space to shieldgrab a short hop double forward air attempt.

Another solid rule of spacing is to absolutlely not stand still when you space.

The Verb, "To Space", has a slightly different meaning, but follows similar principles. Essentially it means to move just out of range of a predicted attack so you can immediately counter, rather than waiting for your spot dodge, shield stun, or roll to subside, or relying on a quick attack to win out. Roy is VERY good at this, his F-smash was made for it, and against poor opponents this is really the only technique you need to win with Roy. Even against advanced opponents, spacing with tilts and smashes needs to be an integral part of your game to punish overaggressive players and sloppy play in general, and you should practice pivotting and varying your wavedash to improve your spacing ability. If your techs aren't quite up to snuff you can substitute DED combos, which are very easy to space out of a dashdance. You can also space to outprioritize, generally with your F-smash or f-tilt as well.

4. Level Positioning
This most directly relates to the pressure section described later... I'll fill in details eventually.

Most players don't even pay attention to where they are on the level, being Final Destination bred and trained, but it is good to be aware of where you are and have that affect your play. This is all really stage specific, and again, details later, but for the most part you want to be the one closer to the center of the stage, and the closer your opponent is to the edge the better. That way you're not the one messing around with risky edge techniques and in danger of getting smashed off, and also, if they feel disadvantaged fighting over there, they'll try to go around you and you can land some hits.

Roy Playbook - Basic Techniques
HIL and SHFFHIL - Stands for "Hitbox Interrupt L-Cancel", and "Short hop, fast fall hitbox interrupt L-Cancel." Yes, I made that up. The act of a using the landing animation to cancel an aerial while the hitbox part of the aerial is still active, or has just finished. The point is to eliminate the wind-down lag on the aerial by L-Cancelling it as soon as it hits, maximizing the effectiviness of the SHFFL. This term is used to differentiate between standard SHFFLing (where the attack generally comes out as fast as possible, and steps to reduce the lag are taken from there), and hitbox-interrupting, where the goal is to be able to attack again as quickly as possible after the hitbox appears.
How to do it:
Short-hop, fast-fall, and perform your attack as you are about to hit the ground, then L-cancel immediately. For best effect, Roy's blade should still be in the swinging animation as you land.

Approximate Timings - (when to press A or C-stick) (untested)
Forward Aerial - Just after you fastfall.
Up, Down and Back Aerial - Same time as you fastfall (C-stick is recommended) The down aerial is a touch slower.
Neutral Aerial, first hit - As you are falling
Neutral Aerial, second hit - A perfect SHFFL will just about do it; HIL isn't as important for this move.

SHFFHIL F-airs are your basic setups, have great speed and priority, and are top notch for chaining into grabs and smashes. SHFFL and Full-hop N-airs are going to create opportunities to tech-chase and combo. D-airs and U-airs serve basically the same purpose, which is juggling and popping opponent's up, and for this reason, a SHFFHIL U-air is almost always better than it's D-air counterpart, and will hit most grounded non crouching opponents.

Chainthrowing
Roy can chainthrow fastfallers using the U-Throw, and many semi-floaty characters with his F-throw, depending on DI. A character-by-character list (will eventually) follow:

Fastfallers
Fox - Chainthrow with U-throw, 0~50%. Most difficult to chase behind. Can be extended with a SHFFL'd U-air to re-grab or d-tilt to re-grab. DI behind can be difficult to catch - you can use d-tilt to get in the next grab and continue the chain, starting at about 30%?
Falco - Chainthrow with U-throw, 0~50%. Can be escaped at very low %s by DIing behind.
CF - Can always jump out, however, at medium %s SHFFL U-air to Regrab can chain effectively.

Neo's Fastfaller Chainthrow to Edgeguard from 0%:
Fthrow, re-grab, B-throw, reverse d-tilt, re-grab, chain with U-throws to ~45%, re-grab, jab once, u-throw, shffl U-air, F-Smash. Total damage is approximately 70%. Also,

Let ME say the truth.

I STOLE THAT **** OMG WTF LOL K THX.

Anyway you should put that you have to start dash jc grab if they DI away at 12%. (should be)

Apparently the truth is that LK stole it from M2K who stole it from Neo anyway basically Neo is too good.

Notes - The first Fthrow is not techable - they will land standing, and you can grab them almost as fast as they can spot dodge. It is possible that Fox and Falco may shine, however, your grab range can supercede this, and you can generally also beat out a jump and wavedash. The Bthrow is techable, but if they do not tech-roll, the dtilt will likely land anyway, and if not, it's possible that the grab will still catch them.
Variations - If you miss any part of this combo, it is likely that your opponent will pull a hasty aerial or shine, and you can generally just dashdance to re-grab, and then SHFFL U-air to F-smash. Dtilts can be used as in the regular chainthrow desc to extend the grab, and are good if they DI behind.

On Final Destination (and to some extent Pokemon Stadium and Battlefield), the LK chainthrow can be almost the entirety of your strategy against Fox and Falco. Anywhere from zero to almost seventy percent, if you can pull a grab, you can almost always pick up the chainthrow at it's appropriate part and finish with the SHFFL U-air to F-Smash and edgeguard, and you should, because they will be gaying you right back when they return. The essential part is learning how to get in the grab.

Still to Come:
Basic Grab Combos and Setups
Floaty Characters (Peach, Jigglypuff, MewTwo, Kirby, Ice-Climbers, Marth)
Medium-Fallers (Y-Link, Roy, Sheik, etc.)
Heavyweight Mediums (Ganondorf, Link)
Fast-Fallers (Falcon, Fox, Falco)

Movement
Dash-Dancing - Roy's Dash-Dance is the second longest in duration and the third longest in distance, and is as fast as Marth's. The dash-dance is your neutral stance and allows you to adjust your spacing on the fly, however, it tends to distract you and open you up for projectiles, so it's not a very good idea to just hang out and dashdance. Generally, stand still, make minor adjustments with your wavedash, and dash-dance when you need/want to move quickly.
Fox-Trotting - Dash forward, release the stick, and dash again as soon as your dash animation is over. This is significantly faster than running, and gives the added benifit of allowing you to pivot or dash-dance in the opposite direction every time. Don't ever let me catch you sprinting ever, unless you dash-cancel into a forward smash. If preformed correctly, you'll look a bit like you're ice-skating.
Wavedashing - Essential for wavesmashing and spacing, but don't use it as your primary method of movement.
Platform Dashing/Wavelanding - Using your airdodge to slide across a platform while jumping, similar to a wavedash, but while falling. Perfect this, because it's used often, though not all the time, and it's not good to be wasting your frames doing a slow airdodge.
Edgehop Wavedash - This gives you a non-laggy edge wakeup and can lead to grabs and give you an opportunity for a safe roll or dodge. Perfect this as well. You can practice on Yoshi's Story, and in the caverns entrance with a grabbable ledge in Hyrule Temple.

Offense
SHFFL Game - SHFFHIL F-air is your standard thing to do when you need something to do. It doesn't have to hit, it's very safe, if they try to follow up you can shield, grab, jab, ftilt, or jump with plenty of time. When attacking a "neutral" opponent (one that is free to shield or counter), space it so that you'll land just at the tip of your grab range, which will generally lead to you being able to grab. SHFFL'd n-airs are used to keep distance, and are useful for combos at lower percents. D-air and U-air are situational, and should not be used against neutral opponents.
Tipper DED - The first hit of the DED combo is extremely fast to come out, but it's a bit laggy, and will generally get you grabbed or aerialled if you whiff. The trick to it is to just barely hit with the tip of the red swipe, that way they have to attempt a slower and more difficult aerial or wavedash to counter it, by which time you should be free to move again. Generally, follow this with a dashdance and try to keep pressure. If you get your opponent in the habit of retaliating, use a counter to catch him off-guard and possibly score a KO.
Cross-Up - This is a SHFFL where you land behind an opponent to prevent shield-grabbing. Cross-up U-airs are actually pretty neat because they give decent advantage, are generally unexpected, and can lead to a reverse grab if you're quick, and if they hit it's pretty much an automatic F-smash.
Wave-F-tilt - Useful against opponent's that are at high damage, this swipe is quick to knock people off their feet for some tech-chasing.
Tech-Chasing - You have several options for tech-chasing with Roy. First of all, you can force a tech with throws, your f-tilt, and your neutral air, though generally DI and teching away will reduce your ability to chase off of standard attacks. The idea is that you predict where they are going to tech to (one of three directions), and go there, and follow with an attack. You can follow with any attack, but the suggest attacks are JC'd Grab, Forward Smash, and DED. DED is most useful for racking damage, JC'd Grabs are great to mindgame into further tech-chasing and smashes, and the F-smash is your finisher. In my opinion, these are both the best and easiest moves to pull off after a tech, however, if you want to go beyond that, feel free. Dtilt to Nair is also a common alternative.
Pivot-Smash - An extra way to fit in a forward smash is always good. Useful for tech-chasing and punishing whiffed SHFFLs/grabs/dash attacks. You can also dash behind a sheild-grabber and perform a pivot F-smash to catch them off guard. In my opinion, this technique is essential to winning with Roy; it's the difference between a F-smash and a F-air or DED hit. Master it.

Defense
Shield Game
Side-B vs. Jab
Jab:
Damage 2-6%
Total Frames: 31
Hit Frames: 4-7
IASA: 26

Side-B
Total: 29
Hit: 6-8
Window for the next move: 8-26
1st hit: 3-4%

Thanks to the Roy FAQ by Rebel and Mookie for those. Jab has longer range and a slightly faster startup and slightly longer duration, but really that's not that big of a deal. Jab also hits higher in the air, and has a longer stun time and knockback. However, Jab cannot be used out of a dash in the same way that your side-B can. Anyway, if you need a quick poke, you should generally use Jab, and try to hit the IASA with a jump or WD to reduce the lag a little, but if you need a poke on the run, use your side-B. Side-B is obviously also easier to follow up.

vs. SHFFLers
If it's not Fox and Falco, shieldgrab them to death. Shieldgrab is the best move in the game, and if they're ranging you (Marth, Ganon, Sheik, some other specific moves), you should practice WD-Fsmash and WD-Grab out of shield, and get famliar with when it is safe to use them.
vs. Grabbers
Link and Marth are very difficult for Roy to Deal with because they both have a very long grab range. Sheik too, but you shouldn't be playing Roy vs. Sheik anyway lol. Anyway, just cut down on your SHFFLs and rely on your ground game, and play more campy/spacy than usual and you'll be the one grabbing them.
vs. Mixup
Obviously someone who mixes it up and has alot of little tricks is going to be hard to predict and react to. One of the reasons Roy is low tier is because he doesn't have a solid shut-down strategy which allows Roy players to basically get mindgamed to death. One of the first rules of playing against a tricky player is not to overextend yourself. Things like using your double jump to chase, overusing your counter, or spamming aerials will be picked up on and quickly dealt with. Your best bet is to work on their patience, use alot of the first hit of your DED to space and trip them up, and make effective use of your dtilt to bait aerials and pop them up for quick juggles. You should also look for patterns in what works and try to conceal them with your own mixups when you can, and use mindgames!
Help! CC!
Roy sucks against people who just sit there and crouch cancel and dtilt, seriously, because CC > Fair, DED, and anything else that misses a sweetspot, unless you magically land a meteor Dair on them (this is both impossible and stupid, do not attempt). Your best bet is to CC the counterattack yourself and attempt to Dtilt them back, and follow with juggles or an Nair. You can also try to be too fast with a grab follow up, or replace your DED with an occasional dash attack at high %, or even try to counter their follow up (counter isn't fast enough if they're fast enough, usually). Shielding is another option, however, if they start CCing -> grab you're done son. CC->grab is a Roy counter with everyone except Samus and Yoshi lol, just try to jab or grab out if they get good with it, or even better, cross them up or try to dash behind them and smash.
Recovery/vs. Edgeguarding
I should put some character specific notes in the character specific section for being edgeguarded by particularly troublesome ones (coming soon?). Roy is pretty bad against people who like to edgeguard with edgehogs, but remember your Blazer attack can go up at a 45 degree angle and cover good horizontal distance to recover quickly, or up at a more vertical angle and over slightly to recover more slowly. Generally you should recover quickly, as this gives you the best chance to survive, but if they edgehog alot you can use your DED to stall and wear out their invulnerabilty and then go for the stage. If you're forced to make the stage, you should almost always go for the first hit of your DED towards your opponent, because it's just barely slower than putting up your shield; this is another timing you'll want to memorize, or get really good at spamming the B button hehe.

Advanced Concepts
Pressure
What is Pressure?
Many people believe that pressure is equivalent to aggression. This is a misnomer, probably spawned from Fox and Falco's Dair-Shine Pillaring to essentially force opponents to either take a hit or have their shield broken. That's a form of pressure, but that's not the real idea behind it.

This is a short list of things that can apply pressure without being aggressive.
-Taking a stock lead in the match
-Weakening an opponent's shield
-Advancing on an opponent
-Forcing an opponent to grab the ledge
-Getting an opponent to a high percent
-Repeating the same sucessful attack or sequence several times
-Hanging out too close for comfort
-Presenting no obvious openings

Applying pressure is the art of making your opponenet feel like he must do something. The more you apply it and think about it, the more you can see that by applying pressure, you can react to and eventually predict your opponent's reactions. I'm going out on a limb here, but this is why Ken is better than Isai; he knows how to manipulate pressure. Ken vs. Bombsolider - who was on the defensive, fighting for hits, for most of those sets? Falco has the best approach in the game, and yet Bombsoldier had to resort to triangle jumping and spent much of his time in the air and off the stage, creating an impatience in his play that lead to more Chaingrabs and more KOs. Because Bombsoldier has to adapt to a pressure game on the fly, he can't spend as much time thinking about DI, which lead to a few tippers.

Now look at this match:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3AXjYtpU94
Neo is my hero, but anyway, watch the balance of pressure shift back and forth. At the start of the game, Neo is tight and on point, and Ken is having serious difficulty dealing with his grab game, and almost takes an early stock. Now Ken is feeling it, and when he comes back, he attempts to even the score, which results in him taking a full 50% from a slick grab combo from Neo. A Ken combo later, however, the pressure is back on Neo, and Ken is taking advantage of some poor decisions. Neo doesn't lose his cool, however, and after taking a devastating combo and edgeguard, he puts the pressure right back on Ken, saying "If you don't finish me, you'll lose this fight." Ken makes several mistakes on the level and a mistake off the side, and Neo wins the match. This match is a very good example of how to create, exploit, and relieve pressure in Marth dittos; you'll notice that the player that was on top at any particular moment was the patient player, who took his dashdance seriously and took advantage of and created shieldgrab opportunities.

Anyway, more on that later, I need to sleeps.

Mindgames and Mixups
ZOMG Mr. G-Reg wannabe, tell me, wut is teh mindgamez? Well I'll tell you sonny. See, you have your basic tactics. This is what you would do in training mode to a dummy to get a KO. You can do anything you want to a dummy, and it'll pretty much work, but for the sake of arguement, lets just say you have enough respect for this dummy to give it your all and do your best combos.

So anyway, when you play a person, your style isn't going to work as well against a person as it is against a dummy, ever. Mindgames are what you do to adjust your style, so it will work better and win more against people you play against. For instance, lets say in training mode, your combo du jour is Dtilt, SHFFL nair, dashdance, grab, fthrow, chase with an Fsmash, and edgeguard. In real games, if your dtilt gets shielded, gg no combo. So we have to mindgame the Dtilt. To do this, we hit our opponent's shield with a charge B, and then SHFFL a uair behing him, again hitting his shield causing it to diminish. Now, when he rolls, we can chase with a dtilt, and there's a good chance it'll poke under because his shield is diminished, and we can now do our combo. Zomg mindgamez!

Mindgaming your opponent is a different situation. For instance, you know that getting grabbed by Marth sucks, cuz you eat like 40% and maybe it ends with a dair or fsmash and you're dead. However, you also know that this guy is a little slow on his combos, and you counter out of his utilt/fair a few times. Now he's feeling less inclined to grab or do grab combos, and you can be more aggressive with your SHFFL. Basic mindgame. Another example would be a Samus who likes to CC your DED combos, and counter with a dtilt. So the next time you DED you catch her just barely on the tip, and do F-F-D, the third hit of which does a ton of damage to CCers. Now she is less likely to CC your crap, because she's afraid of that, and after a rep or two, you can kill her with F-F-F or FFUF on the DED.

Mindgames beyond that sort of thing can get pretty player specific, and friends that play each other often generally play completely different against each other than they do against strangers, because they already have preestablished mindgames. I'm not going to detail a whole list (:/ sorry, that's mostly because I don't play Roy seriously anymore), but here's a few rules to get you started.

1. Work on your mindgames IN ADVANCE. The order of operations should be "I am having problems with ________ when I play seriously. I have a potential mindgame solution, I've tested it on a crewmate or with some guys at a fest, and now I can try it at a tournament."
2. Pay attention to your opponent. Mindgames get 100 times easier when you stop playing CPUs and learn to notice basic stuff, like what they do when you Fair them, and how they react to your dashdance.
3. Experience is the best mindgame. The more you play, the more player patterns you pick up on, and the more stuff you can see through. Mindgame experience is the only way to counter good mindgames, so practice adaptation, and try to learn to recognize it in your opponents.
4. Learn Learn Learn! The more you play the more you learn, and the more mindgames become available. Priorities, lag times, advantage, angles, awkward hitboxes, character specific techs and strategies. Chill on smashboards reading CunningKitsune's Fox guide if you want to learn what Fox does, that sort of thing.
5. Anything than ends in forward smash is a good mindgame.

Prediction and Baiting
Prediction is another type of mindgame that's mostly based on experience and your history with this player. Basically it's a spacing thing; you can predict an attack and space it just so it misses and you can counter. You can also predict when people will try to similarly space you, and do things like running up to them and grabbing them, wavelanding, or using your slightly longer ranged charge B attack to beat out their counterattack.

Baiting is a similar sort of thing. When an opponent is under pressure, they're often looking for an opportunity to break that pressure and bring the match back under their control. You can counter this by predicting their offensive, by using your double jump to go over it, WDing back, or outpriorizing it. Pros do this all the time against lesser players after they pull off a quick combo that they can't immediately continue; they'll run up and shield, and then get a free WD grab off of a hasty attck, or just dash forward, dashdance, and grab. There are a ton of mindgame available if you get very good at baiting, but if you overuse it, you'll find yourself getting baited out of your bait.


Appendix
Useful Links
The Roy Forums! - Old Roy FAQ, Old Roy Matchups post, and NJ'zFinest's Roy Video Links are all great links to get you started, and amazingly, all stickied. Post in this thread or just in the forums if you have questions, and if you're afraid to post, feel free to PM me and I'll answer with what I know.

Percentages
If you guys are interested, I could use some help on this. For each move, I need minimum KO% for Yoshi's Story (from the center of the stage), Final Dest (from a roll's distance from the edge, or the cpu spawn is fine), and DL64 (from a roll's distance from the edge), for each character. Obviously Vertical KOs can be anywhere on the bottom platform of the stage. Post 'em in a reply and I'll put them up.

These are without DI unless otherwise stated. The numbers listed next to the move name are averages (coming when I get a few numbers up). For reference, the Fsmash tipper starts killing at around 165% on normal weight characters.

Move | Sweetspot | Notes | YS | FD | DL64
>>F-Smash | Perfect Sweetspot
Bowser
Captain Falcon
Donkey Kong
Doctor Mario | 57 | 70 | 75
Falco
Fox
Ganondorf
Ice Climbers
Jiggly
Kirby
Link
Luigi
Mario
Marth
MewTwo
Game and Watch
Ness
Peach
Pichu
Pika
Roy
Samus
Sheik
Yoshi
Young Link
Zelda

>>D-Smash | Perfect Sweetspot
Doctor Mario | 104 | 112 | 132

>>DED | Blue Swipe(3rd)/Forward/Sweetspotted
Doctor Mario | 97 | 112 | 113

>>DED | Red(4th) Swipe/Forward
Doctor Mario | 63 | 75 | 77

>>DED | Red(4th) Swipe/Up
Doctor Mario | 72 | 84 | 86

>>F-Tilt | Sweetspotted
Doctor Mario | 153 | 163 | 167

FAQ for testers For the sweetspot on the third hit of the DED, use the spawn invincibility to whiff the first 2 hits. Make sure you suicide after each attempt (to avoid stale moves, which decreases knockback and damage) and that you are getting the actual sweetspots (including the DED), and not charging the smashes.


Credits
Neo - Best Roy, GG sirs, no johns etc. Come to some freaking tournaments that aren't at Chu Dat's house so I can play you.
Aho - Stole Neo's Roy and owned me in some friendlies back when I was noob, this was my real inspiration to play Roy.
NJ'zFinest - For his video sticky, good Roy vids are rare, alot to learn here.
Blue-Rupee (Aka FrozenFlame) - My crewmate, better than me at Roy, and at alot of characters, but needs to stop killing himself haha.
Roy Forum Dudes - Sethalon (sp?), Lord Knight, Roy-San, Exarch, anyone else who posts down here in the depths regularly, makes videos, or just plays Roy good. I'll add more names as I remember them :D
Rebel/MookieRah - Roy FAQ; good stuff, but needs an update, and ffs take out the terms list and link to AlphaZealot's sticky.
M2K - Lol just kidding back to the Fox boards kids.

Postscript
That's it so far. If you have anything to add, please do. In the future I intended to add various "plays" in matchups section (things like a Cross-up SHFFL U-air to DED) what throws force what characters to tech when, how "mindgames" apply to Roy and what mixups he can use on his standard approaches. Also, probably some color or something :D

Video???
There might be a video of some of the stuff in this guide maybe eventually, but it's not in development right now.


Matchups
Matchups are done using a 10-sum rating scale. Disadvantages are in red, advantages in blue.

Bowser - 5.5-4.5​

Specifics:
Fat - Bowser is a big fatty, and therefore doesn't die until a slightly higher percent to your fsmash, and can CC alot of stuff into his up-B.
Forward Air, Klaw, and Flame - This is Bowser's essential air mixup. When the boozer jumps, he's probably going to F-air, and you can shieldgrab. But if you make a habit of it, Boozer will mix in teh hax klaw and grab you. If you wait just out of his range, he can catch you with his breath attack (which is suprisingly hard to punish). He can also waveland and grab or Ftilt in this situation. It's not hard to get around this, but you could set yourself up for...
Up-B - The Whirling Fortress! This move is !@#$ing GOOD. If you land on top of Bowser, for any reason, expect to eat one. It hits on frame 4 or 5, and is invulnerable until it hits, and can be used out of shield as well, and if they're close to the edge, they can edgehog with it and use his top notch attack wakeup or klaw immediately. It can also KO at high %s, so be careful.
Yoshi's Story - Bowser's best stage because his edge wakeup is the best in the game and his attacks have tons of knockback; he has a good advantage here, so you may want to ban this from the random stage select.

Combos:
All combos work against Bowser, haha. Dtilt is your best combo starter, try to tech-chase with it off of throws when you can, and then you can continue combos with your N-air. Also, all four of your aerials can lead to a grab, and your F-air and U-air are fine for chaining to a F-smash (as well as Nair at lower percents), just watch out for that CC fortress. Juggles aren't really that good against him, so just stick to beating him down with d-tilt->aerial->smash/grab/dtilt.

Style:
Space your F-airs so you can grab after them. Bowser is pretty easy to grab even if he shields when you do a HIL shffl, and his spotdodge is pretty bad too, so just go at him whenever he's hanging out.

Tech du Jour:
Edgehop U-air to F-smash. If you learn this, edgeguarding Bowser becomes cake; just hog, and then hop up a U-air when he goes over you, and fsmash him back off. He'll often have no jump and you can just hog again for the KO.

Mindgames:
It's important to not feel pressured and not get mindgamed yourself. Feel free to be aggressive or defensive, but if you take advantage of his laggy moves you should be able to win this match more than you lose.

Captain Falcon - 8-2​

Specifics:
DI - CF can U-air juggle Roy into a knee very easily. The U-air sends you up at a 45 degree angle away from Falcon, so your two best options for DI are Down and Away, and Up and Towards, to hit the perpendicular. At low %s, down and away is a much better bet, while at high %s it won't help you and up and towards may send you too high to follow up and mess up his rhythm. DI N-air combos away, however, make sure you don't DI the knee away because you will die so hard. I'm pretty sure Roy can't escape d-throw to knee with DI, but DI away anyways for posterity, and try to tech while DIing up and towards the stage.

Combos:
Dtilt->Nair->tech-chase is a pretty good one, and you can often land the D-tilt off of a throw.
U-air->Fsmash
F-air->Grab
N-air->D-tilt (no tech or very low %. You can also tech-chase with Dtilt to extend this)

Whenever I get the time I'll put the whatever->Fsmash combos in here.

Style:
Generally in this matchup, I'm the Falcon, so I don't really know what to do, haha. You're going to want to shield alot of his aerials and try to shieldhop nair or uair if he crosses you up. If he's spacing nairs on your shield, try to resist the urge to shieldgrab unless you see a really good opening, because that will often get you hit with a side-B or grab. You can also roll immediately as he jumps, and he won't be able to land quick enough to grab you out of it, but don't make a habit of this. I'll visit this later with more.

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Donkey Kong - 6.5-3.5​

DK is capable of destroying the best Roys around with Grab->Cargo->Uthrow->Uair, repeat. He can juggle you nearly to death, and you have no effective escapes, your best bet being your airdodge or crappy dair, and counter. On the other hand, DK is fat and weighty, which makes him a perfect target for your nair, and his shield is bad and very very d-tiltable. This matchup is not unwinnable by any stretch. You can also usually counter out of Cargo->F-air, which is a good thing to pay attention to at medium percents.

When you're edgeguarding, you must pay attention and get those crucial edgehogs. Once DK drops to a certain height, you can always get that hog and the KO. Face towards the center of the stage; if DK goes low, edgehog. High, fsmash. Over you? Chase with Fsmash. Onto a platform? Uair-Fsmash. It takes alot of concentration and some good prediction skills, but you should be able to keep DK off the side once you have him. DED FFD is also effective due to it's duration; many monkies will try to hover out of your range, and this can catch them and force them to come back without a jump.

Specifics:
Cargo Uthrow -> Uair - If you're getting hit by multiple Uairs after a Cargo, you should be able to jump out after the first one. If you still have trouble or don't have a jump for some reason, try to smash DI in the opposite direction of DK's momentum to escape. A quick Fair can often get you out as well.

Crappy Shield - Dk's shield doesn't really cover his feet, so he eats Dtilts like crazy, which are also pretty good for comboing DK. Dtilt->DED is a good trap as well if the shields the tilt.

B-air - Try to bait these, and punish with a DED combo.

CC Game - CC Dtilt and CC grab are solid options for DK out of a CC, and he can CC everything you have haha. If he likes Dtilt, you can CC it back and fsmash his ***, otherwise, try to follow your aerials with DED, jab, grab, and Dtilt to discourage this, and throw in a few FFD DED combos.

Combos:
DK is a bit floatier and not as heavy as Bowser, but the same things apply in general.
Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Doctor Mario - 6-4​

Doc isn't a terrible matchup for Roy. The more aggressive the Doc is, the better chance you have of winning, because the more grabs you will recieve. The two things you have to watch out for are grabs and mid-percent smashes; let everything else go by the wayside, but obviously don't take too much unneccesary percentage. Doc's uairs are badass damage dealers and juggle Roy perfectly, so don't get grabbed or otherwise launched. You can escape them the same way you'd escape CF's Uair juggles; DI down and away.

Specifics:

Combos:

Style:
Play aggressively where you are able, and try to cross him up often. Doc will win a camping game; you need to put pressure on him in order to elicit shieldgrabs and narrow misses. He's also not very good at reacting to a good mixup of cross-ups and well-spaced SHFFLs, and will often set himself up for medium percent forward smashes; don't go crazy on those, of course, because Doc has a good spot-dodge... TBC

Tech du Jour:
Platform Dashing. It's a way to get around Doc's pill spam, and relieve pressure and reset near the middle of the stage, as well as a way to land chip damage hits.

Mindgames:
I mentioned above that Doc will set himself up for Forward smashes if he plays aggressively, but can mindgame you with spotdodges.

Falco - 7-3​

Falco owns your face with laz0r hax! Ban final destination, oh wait no pick it because you can chaingrab! Get good at tech-chasing with the F-throw on platform stages is your best bet, more to come.
Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Fox - 5.5-4.5​

Stage-dependant​

Fox, the fastest character in the game, with lagless SHFFLs, the dreaded Shine, lasers, great grabs and combos, and all kinds of fun gay stuff.
Specifics:
Fox is trouble indeed, but Roy has a few advantages here over Marth vs. Fox that are worth noting.
Roy Falls from the Shine - This prevent's Waveshining, and Waveshine->grab, but you need to be on your toes and ready to tech it, or at least stand quickly so he can't follow up with a wavesmash.
Smashes - It's tough for me to recommend spamming F-smash at Fox, because Fox can **** you in the lag. You have to understand that when I say it, I mean do it intellegently; you want to fit in as many forward smashes as you can because it puts him off the stage and vulnerable. Remember, against your sword, Fox has zero priority; you can smash right through any SHFFL, smash him out of double jumped and full hopped attacks. If you make it obvious you WILL get mindgamed, so don't overdo it.
Counter - Don't counter in this matchup, for a variety of mostly obvious reasons, however you may want to use counter to edgeguard if the Fox is returning from a distance where he can barely make the stage, can obviously not sweetspot, or from directly below the stage.
Up-Throw->Up-air - Fox's bread and butter grab combo, it's pretty imba and really really ***** Roy. If they are slow, you can jump out at most percents, and that's something to pay attention to, however, the best way to deal with it is to not DI the throw, and then wiggle the stick violently left and right, like rapid dashdancing, in an attempt to smash DI the first hit and escape the more powerful second hit.


Combos:
D-Tilt->Fsmash works until ___ percent, or ____ percent if they DI away. Dtilt ->grab starting at around 30%.
For grabs, see the LK chainthrow; U-air to Fsmash works if you catch the Fox fairly high until almost 90%.
Follow your F-airs with Dtilts (or the DED, but prefer D-tilt for safety), to build a little pressure, and open up mindgames. If they start jumping out of their shield on you try a quick DED to catch them before they can get away and when they aren't DIing.

Style:
Please see the first section of this manual; How to Win a Match. You need to land more hits than Fox, and KO at reasonable percents. The more hits you land the less laser, aerials, throws, and smashes you have to eat.

One of the big keys is going to be mastering your fastfaller combos, at various percents and DIs. There are many more combos available to you than d-tilt->whatever, and you can do neat edge tricks like Fthrow->run off edge->f-air to set up for low % gimps, so practice!

Tech du Jour:
Work on your combos!

Mindgames:
This match is one big mindgame. Fox can **** you with a number of things, and you can **** him right back with a grab. If you give Fox free reign to go on the offensive, you will lose. If you give him space for laser play, you will probably lose. Fox will push one side or the other to make you slip up so he can punish mistakes, and both Foxes are very hard to counter.

You need to mix up when you attack and when you don't. Pushing the ON button and going SHFFL crazy is like jumping into the back of the ice cream truck; no free candy, only ****. You need to be one with the art of pressure and semi-aggression, fitting in the option that they don't expect, and ****** them back. Fox isn't going to try to outprioritize much of your arsenal, so you can try running up and shielding, and hoping he either counters a predicted attack or retreats, instead of trying a SHFFL setup. You can also run further forward than normal and SHFFL for a crossup, or empty short hop waveland into a grab, or go for the sex and fake a crossup shffl and then waveland backwards as you land to go through them and grab (follow with a 41% flare blade for best results). Anyway the point is don't just jump on the Fox, use your head and predict him. Overall, the only thing Fox has a significant advantage of Roy with is his lasers and anti-shieldgrab; the rest is very even.

The last thing you need to do is come up with an effective way to deal with SHFFL->Shine out of your shield, and it's mixups. Remember, once you eat the aerial, you must then eat the shine, but everything else is fair game. Fox's options out of shine are: JC Shine, JC Grab, Wavedash back, Wavedash in place and shine, Waveshine behind, JC N-air, and JC Drill. The problem here is that there isn't one more that beats all of those. Generally the best thing to do is to roll away from the Fox, and mix it up with grabbing after the shine, but there are a number of things you can do to improve your odds, like shield hopping a quick F-air or N-air after the shine if they like to try to waveshine. Spot-doges can be good too to get out of your shield and back to a neutral stance, but you can be caught after you recover from it. Anyway, the reason you should come up with a standard and practice it is that SHFFL->Shine is very fast and you don't have alot of time to think about perfect timing for your roll or F-air, and you don't need to be thinking about how to mindgame Fox's basic super-safe approach while you're playing; deal with that before the match, and you'll have a much easier time with Fox.

Ganondorf - 6-4​

Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Ice Climbers - 7.5-2.5​

Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Jiggly - 6.5-3.5​

Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Kirby - 5-5​

I don't have much experience in this matchup, but Kirby is someone I play on the side, and I can't imagine him having an advantage over Roy, because he doesn't really have an approach that he can use, and you can be very aggressive vs. him because his grab combos are weak. Your Dsmash also kills at friendly percents, and your F-air also sets up perfectly for your F-smash.
Specifics:
Aerial Hammer - Kirby's Aerial hammer will autocancel when he hits the ground or a platform, and he can use it's speed and priority to start combos out of a shorthop.
KirbyCide - If you get caught in a swallow of the stage, don't try to wiggle out, it sends you down and at an angle without a jump (unless you haven't used one). You should, however, wiggle out of throws (f and bthrow kirbycides can be wiggled out of, causing the Kirby to die and you to recover), and out of swallowcides at low percents.
Huge Grab Range - Kirby has one of the longest grab's in the game. It's not quite on par with Link and Marth, but watch out for shieldgrabbing.
Triangle Jump - Good Kirby players use his quick spotdodge and quicker triangle jump to evade your attacks. If you're having trouble with this then you need to mix up your attacks more, and be more patient. Try switching between DED and Fsmashes when Kirby seems to be approaching with a triangle jump; one of the two should hit fine.
Reverse Blazer - Not the brightest idea, but on stages with low ceilings you can reverse blazer KO Kirby. Stages I can name off the top of my head are the fin on Corneria, Green Greens, and Yoshi's Story, but there may be a few more.
Short Duck - Kirby can duck your grab, so don't grab so much unless he's sheilding.


Combos:
Kirby falls for standards floaty combos, and you can be fairly aggressive against his front side because his fair, uair and dair all are pretty slow comparatively and won't come close to outprioritizing you. Dtilt alot after aerials, and if he starts trying to jump over, mix it up with an Fsmash.

Style:
Good Kirbies make good use of pressure and dodging to push you towards the side of the stage, where they have a semi-WoP that with good spacing is tough to break, and good edgeguarding. Basically, you don't have to deal with that crap, because the first hit of your DED will break the timing and allow you to return the pressure, and is very hard to punish. Don't overdo crossups, because his utilt is his favorite move of all time, and there's no real point when you can just space tilts on him all day. Basically, you can range ***** Kirby sideways with your Ftilt.

Tech du Jour:
Wiggling; you should practice this if you play against alot of Kirbies. One of the best ways to wiggle is to rotate the stick and rotate around the four buttons on the other side of the controller with both thumbs while pressing the triggers. You are released faster for each input (a new direction on the stick or L+R). This can also be used to break out of the Ice Climber's Blizzard grab.

Mindgames:
Not alot to say really, just mix it up, try a few baits, and try to land smashes at 80 or 90. Kirby is a pretty mediocre punisher, so you can play it a little risky and usually come out on top, but don't be reckless.

Link - 7-3​

Link needs two moves to beat a Roy: Nair and Boomerang. This matchup is all mindgames for Roy; the impetus is on you to get around the spam and get in every hit you can, and the main way you will do this is by punishing the Link player for his mistakes with grabs and charged smashes. If you shield one hit of his grounded up-B, the rest of the attack wont hit you, and you are free to Wavesmash away. On the same token, this matchup is not friendly to your mistakes, so use safe moves like HIL Fairs and Uairs and stay away from laggier attacks like Nair and F-tilt.
Specifics:
Link can juggle you fairly well, so make sure you DI away from his throws and continue to smash DI away from uairs, and you should be able to beat it out with a properly timed Fair if he tries to continue. I would avoid countering during juggles in this matchup, because it'll set you up for being mindgamed, but feel free to use your airdodge when appropriate; you may even want to practice wiggling out of the tumbling animation.

Many Link's like to use their b-air and f-air to pull a grab. You can CC or shield the aerial and roll, and then punish his laggy grab with a smash.

Link's up-B is very hard to edgeguard, and with an appropriate mixup with his hookshot it's going to be almost impossible to finish him off the side consistantly. If Link is a big fan of the hookshot, you can f-air or b-air him out of the hookshot animation just fine with some practice and timing. If he's coming back without a hookshot, try to quickly edgehog and then roll onto the stage into a smash to knock him back off, or counter it at the edge. Use you ledge stand if you're running late, and try to take advantage of ledge invulnerability.

Combos:
Link is difficult to juggle due to his weight, fall speed, and sex kick until med-high percents, so when you land Dtilts, take a Smash, Uair or Bair and make a quick exit, and then prepare to either pre-empt a boomerang or react to one. Due to his weight, Link is very vulnerable to Fair->grab or smash, but due to his huge grab range you're going to want to limit these to punishment.

Style:
Be patient with the match and observant. Always be on the look out for attacks that you can outspace or beat out, but don't be afraid to throw less than ten moves this fight. Beating on Link with your Fair and DED isn't going to improve your situation much. Try to use platforms to evade the spam if your sheild starts to diminish, and sweetspot your recovery, remembering to DI any nairs that come your way.

Tech du Jour:
Rolling. Rolling is a solid counter to Link's SHFFL and full hop game and sets you up perfectly to counter a number of things, so if Link short hops, go for a quick roll behind him and see if you can't land a nice smash or tilt. Don't roll while he's grounded, but many of his aerials are fairly laggy and can be punished with a roll.

Mindgames:
Link is a bit difficult to combo at low %s, primarily due to his sex kick, however, if you get him in the habit of sex kicking after you land a low/med % launcher, you can just counter it, dashdance around it and grab, or shieldgrab it. Your grab setups in this matchup are quite good.

Luigi - 5-5​

I have Luigi down for an even matchup, but the Luigi I play with isn't good at Luigi, and isn't a main. I beat him pretty squarely with almost all of my characters. Anyway, this matchup comes down entirely to knowledge. 5150, I believe, stated that you can beat Luigi entirely by spamming DED, and he can't do anything. With good timing, however, he can just spotdodge this, and jab or grab to punish. Also, his ftilt has more range than the first hit of your DED, so he can outspace it. Essentially, Roy has the ground power, and Luigi has the air power. Luigi has better combos, Roy has easier setups, and they can both edgeguard each other kind of OK, but nothing beyond the normal, so essentially this match comes down to I can counter your gay janx with my gay janx and is gay.
Specifics:
Luigi can do 2 of any aerial in a short hop, and likes to, so keep your sheild charged and be patient with those shieldgrabs.

CC can be really good against Luigi's sex kick if he's spamming it to punish your launchers and will help you get grabs and smashes.

Combos:
Luigi is hyper floaty, so for grab followups I just dthrow to B-air or uthrow and try to get some U-airs to build damage. Most of your stuff will chain into a u-air to build damage as well, and with a good SHFFL you might be able to link a few together, but don't get carried away and don't get nair'd.

Style:
Patient, gay. Your ground game against Luigi is very good, and a good mixup of grab and outprioritize should allow you to get more hits in and win, and you shouldn't have too much trouble with pressure.

Tech du Jour:
Sheildhop cross-up bair. That's right I said it lol. Basically Luigi's air game involves hitting you with a bunchastuff then WDing around and doing it again, and you can counter most of his aerials, if you're fast, by shieldhopping through him and bairing. This covers more of the squeegee's mixups (double jump, double aerial, SHFFL) than grabbing or trying something silly. To do it, just jump right after an aerial connects while holding forward, then immediately Bair, and fastfall L-cancel.

Mindgames:
These are pretty player specific. Start with some janx, like spamming F-tilt or DED. Now pay attention to what he does, and mix in a new tactic that beat it. Now you can go back to spamming F-tilt or DED, and mix it up as you like, but it's hard to lose if you do it right.

Mario - 6-4​

Mario is pretty good overall, with a couple of quick juggles that lead to smashes at just the right percents, and he's a good punisher and spacer. His only real drawbacks to Doc are that his smashes aren't as powerful, and his fireballs aren't nearly as good or easy to time.
Specifics:
Mario wants to play a quick attack counterattack game, tit for tat back and forth, and this is his department of excellence. Too bad for him, you don't have to really play around with that. Stick to the ground and keep yourself neutral, and use your F-tilt and jab to range him, your dtilt as a quick grounded poke, and sheildgrab him alot to frustrate him. The more you take to the air the more chances you give him to space you and land grabs, juggles and smashes.

Combos:
Mario is average in most departments, a little on the floaty side, so you'll have trouble landing a smash out of really anything. Stick to dtilt->uair->uair for most of your combos, otherwise just enjoy your chip damage.

Style:
Playing to win here. Don't go flashy, Mario's flashy > your flashy, just stick by your priority.

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Marth - 6-4​

|This section is under construction while I figure out how to actually beat the character in question; please take everything here with many grains of salt| Marth isn't as bad as most people think. Neo regularly beats Husband with Roy (so I hear, wait ok I made that up but he probably does), but I'm going to go ahead and draw the conclusion that Neo > Husband (<3 Husband tho). This matchup is 70% about who can dashdance and grab more, and hit the fsmashes at the best percent, and 30% about correct DI and smash DI.
Specifics:
DI is the most important thing you can learn in this matchup, and it's entirely about mindgames, but for the most part DI everything away from Marth unless it's a smash, and if you have a choice, go towards the center of the stage.

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

MewTwo 7-3​

Both characters can combo each other reasonably, M2 can effectively chaingrab and combo with his dtilt into damaging attacks, but the gist of it is that Fair->Fsmash and Fair->Dsmash destroy M2 in a very unfair way. Your approaches are also better (fair mainly), and your grabs can be used to mindgame him away from shieldgrabbing. Remember, he has a fairly slow roll (though it covers good distance), no spotdodge, and a terrible tech, so you can feel free to just run up and grab him. Once you've established the grab, switch to the Fair, then go back to the grab. Counter is a solid interrupt because most MewTwo combos are not 100% combo on Roy.
Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Game and Watch 6-4​

Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Ness 6-4​

Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Peach 5-5​

Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Pichu 6-4​

Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Pikachu 6-4​

Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Roy 5-5​

Show off your stuff. Mix in grabs often but don't overdo it, because there will be times that you will need to grab and throw quickly to fit in that smash. Everything you do hinges on the effectiveness of your dashdance to evade your opponent and outpace him.
Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Samus 5-5​

Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Sheik 10-0​

My grandma can beat you with Sheik. Her Ftilt outprioritizes all of your aerials and if she gets lazy she can just shieldgrab you into a chaingrab. Needles > your approaches and your friend's approaches, there are no mindgames because nothing really works, you can't space because she has better range, and she can edgeguard you expertly with her Bair, Nair, and edgehop dair to fair.
Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Yoshi 5-5​

​

This matchup is pretty fun. Yoshi's going to CC quite a bit of your stuff into a dtilt (just make sure you tech away) can use his F-smash to juke your approaches and land a free smash, and can juggle you very well with eggs. Unfortunately, Yoshi's shield is terrible and this is abusable. Yoshi can't jump out of shield, and his grab is too slow to use out of shield. Any time Yoshi shields, you should be able to land a grab, and Yoshi is weighty enough to just F or Dthrow and smash most of the time. Be wary of spotdodge->downsmash, and roll->downsmash, and steer clear of the side of the stage, and you'll be fine. Respect the Yoshi's attack speed and priority, and punish his bad defense and lag.
Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Young Link 5.5 - 4.5​

Roy can have a strong advantage in this matchup if he is effective at spacing and pressuring Young Link. YL's Boomerang is not nearly as effective as Link's, and the windup on bombs and arrows allow you to advance and apply pressure. YL still has a very strong sex kick in this matchup and good combos, but in the end, his light weight is his undoing, as F-smashes on Yoshi's story kill at absurd percents like 40. A few tips are to use your roll when he jumps to get behind him safely, be patient with the projectiles and make him catch his boomerang so you can advance. Also, making good use of your platform dash gives you a very effective approach.
Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

Zelda 7.5-2.5​

Zelda ***** Roy with her Fair and Bair, which you will space perfectly into. She can also combo off of her Nair, has good priority and little lag on her fsmash. She's not too manuverable, but that's really not a problem because she doesn't have to move. Roy's grab combos on Zelda are very limited, so stick to things like Dtilt->Uair juggle and DED. Your best move in this game is your fsmash, because it will eat most of her moves and does alot of damage, but mostly because all of your other moves are hard to land without getting ***** in this matchup. Cross-up Uairs into utilt (don't tell anyone I said to use utilt) can set up for a juggle decently and are fairly safe as well. Your best bet is to pressure her, and be very patient, and effectively land those smashes when she rolls or whiffs to discourage her.
Specifics:

Combos:

Style:

Tech du Jour:

Mindgames:

 

[NJzFinest]

"Lord Knight's FastFaller's Chaingrab?" I believe it was Mew2King who first invented that and taught it to LK and later 5150
It was supposed to be kept a secret

 

[technomancer]

My badz yo I got it from LK vids, considering that's all he does against Foxes haha.

 

[Cherokee Warrior]

"Lord Knight's FastFaller's Chaingrab?" I believe it was Mew2King who first invented that and taught it to LK and later 5150
It was supposed to be kept a secret

actually, neo invented it, cuz he did it to mew2king like 10 times in a match and got him everytime. mew2king then told me, THEN LK. get facts straightened, like in wario ware (mortal and pedistile if you were wondering)

 

[technomancer]

Also, guide suggestions and comments are appreciated. I'll edit eventually and put in that it's the chaingrab that LK uses that he got from M2K that M2K got from Neo cuz Neo kept doing it to him, but for now it stays the LK chaingrab.

 

[Lord Knight]

Let ME say the truth.

I STOLE THAT **** OMG WTF LOL K THX.

Anyway you should put that you have to start dash jc grab if they DI away at 12%. (should be)

 

[technomancer]

Bump for updates. More coming soon.

 

[ZoSo]

In regards to the section on chainthrowing:

I'm almost positive that you can't smash DI grabs.

Everything else looks good.

 

[zL.tyranT]

label

good stuff tech. I am looking forward to playing you sometime (provided we play half-decent this time ;D).

 

[technomancer]

Haha yeah :D <3 Delaware peeps

I have a job now so I owe you Sushi

I'mma try to make it to CyCom this weekend

 

[technomancer]

In regards to the section on chainthrowing:

I'm almost positive that you can't smash DI grabs.

Everything else looks good.

Haha, oh yeah, I keep reading that and thinking I should change it. You can smash DI Jiggly's F-throw, and I think one more (maybe Peach's?), but that's it, because they don't have hitboxes.

 

[zL.tyranT]

I don't usually take people up on offers like that, but i think i will this one time :]. I'm not even sure what is going on. I might go to catonsville i'm somewhat sure which is 70%

 

[Foxxx17]

yo techno good guide, very helpful towards my new roy play. And and good job with that combo on ahoa in the yoshi ditto, that was crazy good.

 

[technomancer]

yo techno good guide, very helpful towards my new roy play. And and good job with that combo on ahoa in the yoshi ditto, that was crazy good.

Aho >>> me lol, like I told Tru=, that combo was 100% bogus

 

[Reese]

Thanks Technomancer for making a good Roy guide. I just started picking up Roy and this guide (when its done) will be my new bible.

 

[BigRick]

Good guide man. RagnaRok's guide is better though.

 

[Reese]

No its not

 

[technomancer]

I'm not gonna fight vs. Ragna until I see him in action. From the looks of his guide he's pretty fast and has a mad ownage style, if everything works the way he says it does :D. Anyway, more updates prob as of tomorrow, I'm gonna go hang out in training mode w/ Roy some and mess around.

 

[marthsword]

BigRick was joking. I hope.

 

[technomancer]

Updates: Added more stuffs in the more to come section, including some stuff on CCing.

Edit: Also mindgames :D

I'm hesitant to bump this thread because bumping your own sh*t is lame, however, for anyone checking up on me I'll be looking for help on the matchups section.

Edit 2/13
Credits and KO% appendix started, looking for help in the %s section. I did Doc because he's fairly average. If this post doesn't get bumped until Valentine's day I'll probably bump it and be a douche anyway :D because Roy is my valentine.

 

[technomancer]

Valentine's day bumpage. Updates since last bump include Mindgames, started the appendix and links sections, general tidying and typo fixes and some fill ins where things were missing. I'm especially interested in knowing what you think of the mindgames section, and what you would like to see in the future.

 

[falco freak]

whats a reverse d-tilt?

 

[Sky2042]

Watch AHTP vid #3 again. I don't remember the exact spot, but that's in there iirc.

Could be wrong... :/

 

[technomancer]

whats a reverse d-tilt?

Turning around and D-Tilting by angling the stick down and backwards just enough for it to register the backwards direction. It's fairly easy to do, but doesn't have significant combat use unless you're comboing off of a cross-up, or Roy's D- and B-throws.

 

[technomancer]

Updates as of 2/25:

Matchups up and and rolling. Of course, they're all IMO, and if you're better than me at Roy and would like to update me on them please feel free. For each matchup, you can see I have a general intro, specifics to watch out for, a tech to practice if you're having trouble in the matchup, and some notes on mindgames (which as of right now have absolutely no good mindgames in them, I suggest you not read them). I need to go through and fix some colors and fonts and stuff as well.

Future updates are going to include a redo on the spacing section, which is old and doesn't cover mindgames which are half of spacing, a redo on the general mindgame notes which as of right now suck, and filling out the parts of the guide that aren't done.

Also, 1000 posts gg noobs I'm hax prozor

edit: lol I definately spelled jour wrong 26 times

 

[[Deuce]]

Hey this guide has a lot of useful info, it should be added to the roy faq or at least stickied or something it wouldnt be good to let stuff like this go to waste.. gj technomancer though its hard to pronounce shffhil.... effort required -___-

 

[technomancer]

Hey this guide has a lot of useful info, it should be added to the roy faq or at least stickied or something it wouldnt be good to let stuff like this go to waste.. gj technomancer though its hard to pronounce shffhil.... effort required -___-

I don't think I've ever said it out loud (I'd just say "Shuff hill") :D thanks for the props appreciated

 

[[Deuce]]

I don't think I've ever said it out loud (I'd just say "Shuff hill") :D thanks for the props appreciated

LOL thats the point! the "hh" sound forces you to exhale



but anyway Im looking forward to the expansion of the character specifics, since a lot of higher-tier matchups aren't done.. (ie fox falco peach etc) but I think we can gather tidbits of info from the character specifics sticky..

 

[technomancer]

The character specifics that ARE done aren't really that great as is, I have to warn everyone :/ Like the Marth one lol "Dashdance alot and grabz!". There's also a ton of testing and fooling around to do with combos and such, and I need to specify that alot of his Aerial and Grab combos only work at very low and mid percents.

 

[technomancer]

Updates 3/15:
More matchups up, sweetspot notes, redid the section on spacing, some visual improvements and typo/error fixes and stuffs.

Some edits that I need to put in:
D-throw mini-chaingrab on floaties/semifloaties (Jiggly, 0-15% or so, Marth, 30-40%, hard timing).
F-air to F-smash %s
Throw to smash combos; cap at like 30% on Jiggs?

Unsweetspotted U-air to F-smash works pretty much to 120% on Jiggs, so it's a solid way to fit it in.

Combos|Marth| 50%: D-tilt->Uair->U-air->Fsmash is GOLDEN, go practice kids.

 

[Zettai Kurayami]

Hmmmmmm..............really long lol

 

[E_Ress]

Why isn't this stickied?

 

[technomancer]

I haven't asked for a sticky because alot of this info is in the Roy FAQ already; I'm looking into more actual gameplay uses and counters for various characters and tactics, and of course I need to finish the KO percentages and stuff.

 

[E_Ress]

oic.

Regardless, you are doing an excellent job on this. This has really helped my game along (I find easier to read than the FAQ, for some reason).

Props to you.

 

[KevinM]

Hey this guide is really good technomancer but a good question to ask is with everyone and their brother having a guide and some are decent and some like yours are really good why in god's name are their so many posts that ask for pointers and small help me questions on this board hahaha I now realize why you said we we're going to look like the roy boards

 

[technomancer]

It's also because only Neo really knows how to play Roy lol, so everyone wants to know "How do I use move X" and the real answer is "Well that move really kinda blows and you shouldn't really be in situations where it matters," but the only person douchebaggy enough to say it is 5150 and he is a good combination of A) Not at all helpful, and B) Generally Banned. See my sig for further details lolz.

 

[Sky2042]

we're pretty sure hank != 5150...

 

[technomancer]

I thought it went 5150->Magnum Opus->Hank? Anyway he's th same thing.

 

[En.Ee.Oh]

rrrrrrr-uint

 

[Sintenal]

rrrrrrr-uint

qft

<3 Neo