[v3.6] R.O.B. Community Matchup Chart + Discussion

[BlackMamba]

So in the marth matchup, does ROB have an answer to well-spaced fairs?

 

[DrinkingFood]

A better spaced ftilt can outreach them, assuming marth isn't drifting backwards as he fairs
And like any other character, run in CC/shield can have desirable effects, tho the correct response varies greatly based on just what direction he jumps/drifts

 

[Xpo20]

Could I get some thoughts on the Samus matchup?

 

[Rajikaru]

I'd say ROB has at least a slight advantage due to a better projectile game and a reflector.

 

[Taytertot]

Could I get some thoughts on the Samus matchup?

a lot of the samus players in the samus MU thread said that ROB was a somewhat rough MU. ROB's laser can kinda interrupt and beat every campy thing samus wants to do and the gyro limits samus's movement. ROB's boosted fair works really well on samus and ROB's tilts are all pretty good in neutral in this MU.

 

[DrinkingFood]

How does ROB's boosted fair work better on samus in particular? if anything she can CC it better and punish, it should be worse in the matchup not better
most of the time, missiles and zairs should knock us out of low boosts anyways, meaning we would be better off committed to the ground, where we can reflect missiles with grounded side-b
ROB's laser can only work so well to interrupt missiles when it doesn't put them at significant frame disadvantage unless it's a strong laser, and weak laser has 3 seconds cool down so there's plenty of time after that where missiles can happen
Really the selling point for ROB in this matchup should be that it's relatively easy to get gyro in hand, which makes dealing with missiles super easy as you can just glide toss at them. And with a gyro in hand otherwise, ROB's neutral is fantastic

 

[Taytertot]

How does ROB's boosted fair work better on samus in particular? if anything she can CC it better and punish, it should be worse in the matchup not better
most of the time, missiles and zairs should knock us out of low boosts anyways, meaning we would be better off committed to the ground, where we can reflect missiles with grounded side-b
ROB's laser can only work so well to interrupt missiles when it doesn't put them at significant frame disadvantage unless it's a strong laser, and weak laser has 3 seconds cool down so there's plenty of time after that where missiles can happen
Really the selling point for ROB in this matchup should be that it's relatively easy to get gyro in hand, which makes dealing with missiles super easy as you can just glide toss at them. And with a gyro in hand otherwise, ROB's neutral is fantastic

ah ok. i was making some guesses there. youve got a good point. I just know that in the samus MU threads ive been told that ROB is a rough match.

 

[Dandizzle]

So I played a ZSS on netplay who is one of the top ranked guys there (not that that means much right now but he was the best ZSS I have personally played) and while the first game was pretty close the more and more we played the more and more my lead would increase. He didn't know anything about R.O.B really at all so I think when it comes together the match up is even, ZSS can punish us very hard and her disjointed moves can be troublesome especially offstage but we dominate the neutral game and we can mess with tether pretty harshly. I wanna know what ZSS you play @ Sneez so I can watch or maybe play him/her for myself because honestly even if some of her stuff is annoying for R.O.B, that character kind of got whipped coming into 3.5 and will probably get buffed in the coming patch. (hopefully she's fun)

I also played against some Sheik which we already deemed as bad. I managed to win but I imagine when I play a top Sheik offline when I get to my local it may be troublesome. We can deal with the needle camping on stage pretty well but in the midrange and most other departments she flat out wins. Needles are also ridiculous offstage with our recovery. I did like what I could do when she was in my hands but I think a fully optimized Sheik (which are not the most common in P.M, she may be popular but most P.M Sheiks can't hold a candle to the top Melee ones) would be ridiculous if they grabbed gyro to get in and maxed out combos on our weight.

Marth has become less torturous for me because of improving my punishes and spacing in the neutral game. Shield DI is very very useful against Marth and it's kinda a shame that we couldn't do it up until this patch. I still think at the top level Marth would be a huge problem but majority of them don't apply brawl techs as much as they should.

There was also a Yoshi match up thread that went up that I haven't really noticed until now. I don't really know why it needed it's own thread but it is way easier to just link the thread instead of quoting everyone in. Having had to learn the Yoshi match up in 3.02 Yoshi now seems pretty good overall but it is a match up you have to learn how to play. We have a clear advantage in the neutral game and if you don't get too aggro and get baited into a cc or an armored aerial Yoshi will have to directly approach which isn't that good. Having the gyro in hand or on the ground to control his movement is very important. Be careful to bait out Nairs when going for aerial combos and when he is trying to get grounded from above you stall near directly below him to bait his high priority options going down and punish. Fully charged laser can break his double jump armor, which is pretty funny. I would have to put this match up as a slight advantage because of all of this. I don't really like fighting Yoshi from memory but recently playing supposedly good Yoshi's it has been pretty free. I think taking R.O.B against him is a much better bet than most other character's so maybe if we got a non-salty Yoshi main to speak we could maybe put it as a flat out advantage. I can answer questions about this MU if anyone has any.

I don't really want to write more, but I have had no trouble beating Samus players as well. I think this may be a flat out advantage but I think Samus could utilize ice beam more to even it out some more. I have beaten Chevy on some netplay tourney stream and have beaten le P.M social thread regular MechWarriorNY in tournament in which he was salty so yea.

 

[DrinkingFood]

@ Dandizzle you wanna try my sheik on some netplay? I like to think it's pretty good

 

[Dandizzle]

Hit me up later I have a big exam tomorrow I don't even know why I am here. I just felt obligated to post something. And I would appreciate if you or someone else would finish off some of these match ups otherwise I'm just adding **** like mad.

EDIT: And thanks for recconmeding that adapter works like a charm. I never set up the wii u driver correctly though have been busy and I've been fine with the PC mode. All the plebs on smashladder still use 652 anyway so I would only use it when I hit up one of my boys on Skype.

 

[DrinkingFood]

I usually just tell people to download the dirty build, seems to work, seeing more people with it now

 

[Boiko]

I don't really want to write more, but I have had no trouble beating Samus players as well. I think this may be a flat out advantage but I think Samus could utilize ice beam more to even it out some more. I have beaten Chevy on some netplay tourney stream and have beaten le P.M social thread regular MechWarriorNY in tournament in which he was salty so yea.

It's a pretty bad MU for Samus, IMO.
GJ beating Chevy, that's a really solid win.

 

[Dandizzle]

gtfo nerd this is my swamp

 

[Sneez]

the zss i play is jason waterfalls though i've only played like 2 sets with him. also played some friendlies with vixen in az. probably the two people that know the rob zss matchup the best are virus and legit, they are from sacramento. they are pretty much the exact same skill level and always play each other, they seem to agree that zss has the advantage. and has anyone played a good squirtle? i played yador (socal's best squrtle) and it really didn't seem like a good mu for rob though i didn't really know what i was doing.

 

[DrinkingFood]

ZSS moves like fox and punishes us better than fox, while also being harder for us to punish than fox, I would be totally unsurprised to find that she wins. She even has a combo tool that beats CC in the form of her side-b, afaik we can't even punish it unless we're already overhead or have a gyro in hand (or laser I guess for like 5 percent). Or if she spaces it super badly.

 

[Zaa]

I haven't seen anything about it in a while, so what's the consensus on the Dedede match up? I had a lot of trouble with it and I feel like Rob has a tough time killing him. Id love to be proven wrong but D3 seems hard to kill off the top and his 3 jumps + a strong up b gave me a hard time edge guarding him. I didn't use the top nearly enough, but is there anything blatant to do in this match-up to gain an advantage?

 

[DrinkingFood]

Well ROB can't gimp DDD very well at all, one of the few MUs he can't gimp well in. DDD has no shortage of ways to cover and gimp ROB's recovery options, from one of the biggest fairs in the game to waddle dees to lingering hitboxes.

ROB can combo DDD pretty hard thanks to him being a FFing fatty, but DDD takes so long to die, even off the top, that we are probably gonna have to beat him several times in neutral for long combos to build the necessary damage, or push staggered advantage for a very long time before we get a kill; DDD mostly needs to get us offstage and he can convert that either to a kill, or to big damage that will become a kill next time he gets us offstage.

The thing is, this MU confuses the **** outta me because ROB's neutral is so confusing to begin with and DDD's is the next level up of wtf. I can't fathom how these characters interact without playing it out a lot with a high level DDD, whereas I've had less than a dozen matches combined between ripple and Machiavelli, not enough to figure out that matchup. If we have the tools to win neutral twice as often as DDD (and by winning neutral I mostly mean converting to a grab or getting a good launcher on him like a quickly landed nair, utilt, maybe dsmash) then it'd probably be in our favor for sure.

Unfortunately, a lot of stuff I know for other matchups isn't really that significant against DD. You aren't gonna be CCing his aerials as he comes down, either dair just straight up beats CC into a grab or fair knocks you down. I'm pretty sure fair is safe on shield, maybe only when spaced but it's got plenty of reach for that regardless. Trying to take the hit and retaliate just in general against DD is a bad idea, which is bad for us given how much we thrive off that usually. Gyro controls neutral really well for most matchups if you get it in hand, but DDD doesn't operate horizontally- he approaches and spaces vertically. It's hard to believe how that works, but ripple can show you. It's so bizarre. And it's a place where gyro doesn't help us nearly as much. We can't use laser against him up there either. Or most of our tools that are designed for horizontal spacing. If you try to out DD him, he has enough jumps to mix-up his landing well enough that most of the time, he can land (often on a platform) without an aerial and passively take up stage space. The only way that felt right to me to deal with him was to combat him directly, unfortunately it was often very difficult to even reach him before he could react, and trying to do so got me punished. fullhop nair seemed like the best tool to hit him out of the air, but unless you land on a platform (like BF's lower two platforms) you probably aren't going to follow it up, meaning you get some damage and that's about it, not really much positional advantage since DDD likes it up there anyways, unless you catch him with no jumps. He definitely has enough reach and lingering moves to stuff or trade with our boosted aerials, generally if you go for that he has plenty of time to prepare for that since he's so high up, or if he's grounded he can CC grab our boost fair for a pretty long time.

I dunno, this is a strange matchup, if you want a consensus on something you're asking the wrong question.

 

[Zaa]

Hmmm ok. I agree with what you about having to rack up heavy percent to get anywhere, in that case should i just always go for down throw > follow up for percent instead of back/forward throw > edge guard?

 

[DrinkingFood]

Well it depends on where you are on the stage, and what percent to determine the follow up
under 22%, dthrow->reverse bair leads into another dthrow, netting you about a total of 40%, + you have him grabbed again. You can actually dthrow CG him for the first 21%. The reverse bair can be hard to hit if he DI's behind you tho, I think SH uair while drifting backwards can lead to either another grab or a fair depending on how he DI's, and then you go from there. I haven't worked out the punishment tree very far vs DDD, usually I can just wing it at that point for a kill but DDD resists gimps; at that point I would normally try to carry them off with fair if they were a character that actually feared to DI down and away from our fair once at the edge, but DDD doesn't. Regardless you could still get good damage off follow-ups from there, but getting the first grab is the hardest part against a good DDD.

 

[Sneez]

i haven't tried this but i figure a good dthrow followup on ddd at low percents could just be like 3 upsmashes since theyre easy to hit on him and hes really heavy. and rob's upsmash hits taller than you'd think when looking at the animation which is nice.

 

[DrinkingFood]

You don't get really anything off the upsmashes, it can send him onto platforms to tech, and usmash trades easily instead of winning. Maybe the usmashes combo on him at that percent but there's no flexibility for anything else, once you do the upsmash you're putting him in a position where he's too high up for certain follow-ups you could get off grabs/fairs/reverse bairs. Plus DDD likes being up there anyways, at least more so than he likes being in the middle of a combo or offstage. It's better to just send him offstage and push your advantage once you can't get anymore true combos. DDD is probably the character that is almost equally comfortable no matter where he is so long as he's not missing his options. Most characters are best while grounded, don't like be airborne, and suck offstage, DDD isn't that great while grounded compared to other characters but he's just as good on the top platform or in the air next to it, and being offstage for him is more frequently a matter of how long he until he gets back onstage/to the edge rather than if. That's why I like CG to reverse bair to regrab, because it lets you keep him close to the ground where you don't have to commit hard to continue a punishment. Send him too high up, you might have to fullhop to get a follow up or get onto a platform, both meaning your next follow-up is a worse one on a character who doesn't mind being in that position so much as like, marth would or something.

 

[Zaa]

A quick question about facing Dedede, let's say that he's used his up-b and landed on stage, what is the optimal punish? I usually just try to go for a grab or nair but I feel like there's better things to do while he's stuck in the end lag.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Depends on percent and where you are. Generally you aren't gonna get them offstage at low percents, mid percent and after is probably what you'll be looking at, especially if you get them to the edge using one of the combos I mentioned above. Dair usually leads into whatever you want (keep in mind it has weak and strong hitboxes but that doesn't matter much when they aren't at low percent) plus it's easy to do from the edge, so it's just an extra percent before the real punish. Bair sends at a great angle with good strength, so you could also do that, or dair to bair. Bair is actually really good in that they can't ever DI too high for laser follow-up, so if you get bair into super laser it can score you a kill or at least push them further out to exhaust more of their recovery distance.

 

[bubbaking]

I'm very surprised that this thread hasn't been stickied yet, seeing as how the Zard MU thread was stickied immediately... Despite my incessant complaining, I've actually been playing a lot of ROB lately. I still think he's solidly a mid-tier character right now, but he's also still ROB, right?

Right now, I'm starting to feel like Sheik is possibly our worst MU. It's just...really bad.

Also, I know a lot of other people feel that ROB beats Fox, but I just don't see it. If we get Fox offstage, then we win; I get that. However, onstage is a whole other ballgame against a good defensive Fox who can transition seamlessly into flawless shield pressure. We don't have a way of combating a Fox who's on top of us (and behind us). We're also not fast enough to catch him if he's not. We can bait him into approaching at best, or we can attempt to pin him by the ledge with good gyro and tilt/fair placement, but on stages that aren't PS2 or SV, it's way too easy for him to maneuver around us.

Now to bring up the only "Unclear" MU in the OP: Zelda. After playing Face, a high-level Zelda (has a good number of wins against other high-level players like Poob and Malachi), in this MU for literally years, I believe that ROB loses. I don't think he always lost. Rather, I think he had a pretty decent time (at least an even MU) in 3.02, but this patch....this "patch" buffed Zelda way too much and nerfed ROB way too hard in this particular MU. Where do I even begin? Well, I guess I'll start with the ROB nerfs...

The boost aerial nerf made it practically impossible to combo Zelda into a kill.....ever. At high percents, the only thing you can hope to get off a dthrow is uair. Oops, boost uair is way weaker now. You're left throwing out isolated hits at Zelda and hoping you can trick her into letting herself get hit with nair or usmash raw. Otherwise, you're just fishing for uthrow at really high %'s. Zelda, despite being much lighter (and I think floatier) just heavily outlives us. Even at high %'s, Zelda has a d/fthrow mix-up that combos into kick (which will kill us at 100 or lower), and her bthrow kills us before our uthrow kills her on most stages. The recovery nerfs made things really hard as well. Zelda is really good at limiting recovery options with Din's, and not having that boost dodge mix-up really did a number on us. A higher ledgegrab means she also has an easier time blocking off the ledge with a quick low Din's. The increased shield size kinda helps us, it really does, but it's still too small. After a teleport mix-up, I have to pray that I don't get poked by usmash/tilt, a lightning kick, or nair if I'm on a plat. Speaking of teleports, why is it so ridiculously hard to challenge the teleport explosion? Everything loses to it except for the most charged of fsmashes. Also, I never really thought about it before, but our ftilt is the same range as her kick and it's very minus on block (-17). In other words, ftilting Zelda's shield earns us a nice kick to the face. Also, for some very strange reason, Zelda's CC game is better than ours. If we dtilt her, even at upper-mid %'s, she can CC dtilt (and her dtilt knocks us down in some weird way that doesn't seem CC-able) or dsmash us, neither of which we can CCC very well. You can't really CC anything from Zelda, which is terrible since our shield sucks in this MU and our CC sucks in this MU.

Now to get to Zelda's buffs: while our recovery was downgraded, Zelda's recovery was upgraded into some omnidirectional, omni-length BS with a strong explosion at the end of it. Most of the time, she has the option to go for the ledge, a plat (or some other various point on the stage), or straight for you. On top of that, while she's drifting back, she can place a Din's somewhere to cover herself. It could be by the ledge to prevent you from taking it, or somewhere offstage to prevent you from hitting her, or even onstage to cover her subsequent teleport close to it. When you're worrying about all this stuff and trying to avoid getting kicked from the ledge for overcommitting (which is extremely easy to do in this MU), you don't really get the chance to do much edgeguarding.

Finally, there's the issue of the 'Sheik side' of Zelda. Zelda can always safely switch to Sheik (potentially our worst MU) if she feels that it would fit the situation, and Sheik can always switch to Zelda for things like recoveries. In all honesty, the entity that is Sheilda should be a real consideration in all chars' MU discussions. Since we have such a hard time against both Sheik and Zelda, it stands to reason that Sheilda would be an absolute nightmare for us.

@ Dandizzle has also been getting his fair share of games against Face, so he can probably give some decent input as well.

 

[Sneez]

trust me man zelda really isn't that bad once you figure out what to do. i've never done this but im guessing we can just cc fsmash her up b if she tries to land on us. just stay at mid range, if she throws out the dins just run forward past it for a free grab. upthrow will kill her around 140 which is good to keep in mind. if you have top in hand, just dash dance for a bit till you bait out the neutral b, then you can just boost fair it (maybe even boost dair if you time it right). fighting zelda is chill since she really doesn't have any good approaches, its kinda up to you to **** up. and im pretty sure there's no way zelda will be able to fair you after a well spaced ftilt.

 

[bubbaking]

Zelda gets to punish ROB's ftilt on her shield with a kick. ROB's ftilt is -17 on block, which is pretty much the same amount of frame disadvantage that Samus' ftilt has on shields in Melee. Strangely enough, Samus:Zelda is actually one of my most played MUs in Melee (thanks to the strange character composition that makes up some of the upper echelon players on LI). I know for a fact that Samus' spaced ftilt on Zelda's shield earns her a nice sweetspotted kick to the face. This is not even just from watching myself play. LI is also home to Knut and Minty, two of the better Sami on the EC, and I've personally witnessed both of them get kicked consistently for ftilting Zelda's shield.....and that's Melee Zelda. If that gets punished so consistently, I'd have no problem believing that PM Zelda can consistently punish a spaced ftilt from ROB on her shield.

Of course, it's also just happened to me while playing, so yeah, I definitely think that's a punish she has.

We can also just look at frame data. Interestingly enough, Zelda's lightning kicks have the same range as ROB's (and Samus') ftilts. We know ROB's ftilt is -17 on shield. Zelda's jumpsquat is 5 frames and her fair comes out on frame 8, so she can fair our ftilt OoS with 4 frames of leniency. If you thought it would be better to ftilt her from behind, then start thinking differently, because her bair comes out on frame 5. This can even punish spaced fsmash (-12), which is generally safer than ftilt. That's disgusting. We try to space a 'safe' move on shield and we risk dying.

You can't CC her upB explosion because it starts knocking us down pretty early due to the ridiculous amount of KBG (120) it has.

Btw, like I said, I've played this MU against a high-level Zelda for years. I have a pretty good handle of what to do. Dandizzle and @Rubba Prime have done this MU multiple times as well, recently. Zelda isn't a MU we're clueless on. I'm aware of baiting Zelda's reflector with gyro (or angled lasers), but Zelda can counter that by using land-cancelled Nayru's Love. Honestly, I've already figured out what to do, which is to switch to Sheik since Sheik has a much easier time against her counterpart.

 

[Dandizzle]

I really don't wanna write a full write up yet but I gotta ask what Zelda's you guys have actually played in a tournament. Sure there's the whole circlejerk that she's trash but she has some good players. And I can roast you just as hard for saying ZSS beats R.O.B @ Sneez but I am not gonna talk about characters I don't play much and I'd hope everyone has some experience against a good main of these characters before saying too much. Theory crafting doesn't really amount to anything and I think Zelda in particular has some strengths against certain tools and play styles of R.O.B and if that doesn't work out they can just press Down-B so it isn't the biggest deal if you have a half decent Sheik. And let's be real if you have a move that turns you into a top tier character and you don't work utilize it you are just hurting yourself so picking R.O.B into a real good Zelda will always be problematic. I'll probably play some of the MU tomorrow and possibly write a huge writeup on it so it hopefully reaches some conclusion. I don't want to seem like I'm taking Bubbaking's side espically since I haven't been happy with my play against Face in awhile, but he had some damn good analysis in comparison to the other side of the argument.

 

[Construction ROBE]

Squirtles side B help?

 

[Dandizzle]

Boost --> Nair

 

[Serj28]

How do I deal with G&W?

 

[Construction ROBE]

Since squirtle is so short hitting nair out of boost doesnt alwayswork not being all that reliable and punishable

 

[bubbaking]

I'm not too experienced at this MU, as the last times I played it were against TKO and Jewchainz in 2.6 or 3.0 or something. Most of the Squirts kinda fell off after that. IIRC, one of the nerfs Squirt received was being unable to turn his WiDr around, right? In that case, couldn't we just SH AC nair over it? Also, having a gyro out makes it very hard for Squirt to use that move since he'll bounce off it. That bounce always follows the same trajectory, so if you know it's coming, you can just have a hitbox prepared behind the gryo. I find moves like nair to be more problematic since they're harder to react to and also have armor.

 

[DrinkingFood]

How do I deal with G&W?

pick another character
or be notably better than your opponent


Also ROB still beats fox, @ bubbaking . You can just spend a huge portion of the game running in and crouching giving him basically no way deal with you except dair/shine. Grab doesn't really work because he gets **** all out of it, uthrow doesn't lead to upair. Dsmash punishes cross-ups easily, and sets up either for a grab or tech chase. Nobody's denying that fox wins neutral, but there are very few instances in smash where a character wins neutral 100:0. Most neutral game in smash revolves around playing as safely as possible while threatening space, but if your opponent threatens space more aggressively you have to either risk getting hit or back up. You can counter-aggress to show them they need to respect your space, but ROB is good at denying this with CC and dash back->boost fair (not actually a lot of burst range, it's good because low endlag). Anyway at the end of the day fox doesn't really have any good ways to punish us, whereas we can consistently 0-to-death him, and it's not even hard. He can win neutral 5 times as often as us and it wouldn't even matter.

 

[moonfolk]

Picked up ROB as a secondary to deal with my troublesome matchups and I'm perfectly happy now. Having 2 characters with 5-frame jumpsquat and great mobility really helps, but otherwise they're practically polar opposites.

 

[Construction ROBE]

Yeah squirtle cant turn it arou d but he can follow it up with another attack instantly so you have nothing todo to get out of it the gyro works if you have it out but getting the gyro out takes so long that sometimes it can be troublesome we hav a very Strong squirtle main here, I feel its an extremely hard matchup wanted to see if you gys had anything ive just switched characters for it

 

[bubbaking]

Welp! I haven't really been playing at all this past couple of weeks, but I'm still hung up on that Fox MU (but this is the MU discussion thread, so it's OK, right?)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHLXr_F4oiQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKhaenl_sqQ

Well, I don't know... Lucky literally won every single match he played as Fox. If arguably the best ROB is having this much trouble with a Melee Fox who barely touches PM and doesn't really know this MU... I did notice one thing in these sets that I've personally noticed in my own sets vs Fox, and I kinda alluded to it here earlier but I didn't directly mention it because I thought it may just be me. I mentioned that we're not fast enough to catch him if he's not on top of us. What I didn't say was that he can really spam those lasers safely, even if he isn't really that far away. He can easily stop and shield, run away, or even retaliate in response to us trying to punish him for shooting the lasers. It sounds kinda silly that I would complain about Fox's lasers when I have a reflector, but that reflector is actually useless in this MU as an actual reflector. We want to reflect projectiles with hitstun so that they hit or threaten to hit the opponent in order to cover the Arm Rotor. When we reflect Falco's laser, there is now a laser with hitstun travelling back at Falco to cover our Rotor and possibly trap Falco right in front of us. Needless to say, all of this is lost if the laser simply doesn't have any hitstun. If anything, grounded sideB functions as a burst approach option against Fox, but not as a very good one. If you try to rush in too hard against Fox, you risk getting punished hard, so while we're trying to be tactful and strategic about pinning Fox, he's just shooting away and making our percents skyrocket, ready to switch it up and punish if we try to rush in and directly punish the lasers. Because of this, we don't get as much time to play around in neutral as we'd like. Also, it may seem trivial, but our laser is borderline reactable, and if it is reflected, we get hit with something around 1.5x the damage would have dished out.

As a bonus, here's another non-PM Fox beating an experienced ROB:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4PjZv5-hSk

These were literally all the high-profile (that I could recognize) recent examples of the MU I could find on YT.

 

[Dandizzle]

I like playing Fox more than most other Melee top tiers but the match up obviously has been exaggeratedly pushed in our favor due to the community wanting a "counter" to a top tier character to make the game seem more balanced and help argue to keep Fox the same. The truth is you will never get a hard counter to a character on the tops of tierlists, the reason they are top tier is because they can adapt and beat other characters tools with the proper play.

Also if you still wanna talk about Zelda even though I'm sick of it I don't see R.O.B beating (as in the MU is in his favor) even a solo Zelda at the top level. It can't be better than even. Zelda's weak spot that everyone whines about is her midrange game where dins is too committal and her tilts and Neutral B where R.O.B doesn't really thrive as well. Moves like Ftilt are the opposite of the optimal punish plus it's laggy and moves his hurtbox foward soooo far. Zelda's reflector can also stop basic midrange gyro approaches. She can anti air aerial approaches very easily with strong moves with good frame data (Upsmash Uptilt, wavedash or waveland back into ftilt/fsmash for style) and isn't too afraid to be full screen. Smart teleport mixups usually with platforms can allow her to switch which range she wants to fight R.O.B at on occassion, it is still a pretty laggy landing. Plus that recovery is godlike Embarrass If you are getting to use multiple long fair chains against her they are just playing so wrong either from DI or getting caught out when they really shouldn't. You shouldn't let it happen much but Zelda has insane kill potential with her lighting kicks, if she can land one and get an early kill it can be really bad for a fat character with a good recovery like R.O.B. She also has a decent item game, better with 3.02 teledashes but still quite good.

I am also going to change the current discussion into this: What characters have you lost to in tournament with R.O.B and why do you think you lost? How did your R.O.B interact with the opponents pick? May also fill in the front page with some good quotes and write about some more match ups.

EDIT: I reordered some stuff I'll write more later also reddit is funny http://prntscr.com/7cfxs9

 

[bubbaking]

Recently, I believe I've only lost to Fox and Sheilda (both parts). ROB is usually the character I default back to when I can't clutch it out against someone with Zard, but I've had lots of trouble against those two (three?) characters.

All my sets vs Fox always end up the same. They go to game 5 because I win game 1, lose on Fox's CP, win on my CP, lose on Fox's CP, and then somehow win/lose on my own CP at the end. Currently, I'm 2-2 against Darktooth's Fox in 3.5, and all of those sets always go down to the wire. I also have a fairly big mentality problem as I easily get frustrated when nonsensical things happen (which happens a lot with Fox's shine and other various proportionally huge hitboxes). Generally, as the set starts out, I'm on a roll as the Fox player is overly confident in his character's offensive toolkit, allowing me to nab him him with shieldgrabs (yes, it can happen if the Fox isn't properly varying his shine pressure to mix up where the holes are), CC dsmashes, long tech-chases, and gimps. As the set progresses, however, the Fox always invariably begins to play way more defensively and campy. A multitude of lasers are shot, and if I'm not careful with how I approach, even usually safe things like boost fair end up getting me comboed. ROB is also pretty easy to combo fairly extensively. I often go between banning the stages I personally dislike (FD and GHZ) and the stages I should just get rid of because I die way too early (YS and WW). One thing that often catches me if I don't get the inital laser hit when Fox is offstage is his sideB mix-up. Essentially, he chooses whether he wants to sideB onto the stage (probably through me) or at the ledge. SideB is slightly too fast to react to out of the blue, so you kinda have to know what he wants, but even if you know that he will sideB, you can still end up missing if you don't know which of those two choices he picked. The annoying part is Fox can sweetspot the ledge below dtilt and dangled fsmash.

Recovering against Fox is also really tricky. Yeah, ROB has a pretty good recovery, but it's still very linear and Fox is really good at covering that. When I go low, I'm constantly worried about dropzone shine or ledge invincible tricks (drop shine and deep ledgehop bair mostly). If you go high, Fox is still capable of beating or trading with pretty much everything with bair, and if he trades, he's fine 'cause he got hit with a weak fair or a nair that won't kill while he sent ROB offstage again. If you try to zoom right at Fox with a surprise boost fair and he's at least ready for it, he can just tick usmash it.

Sheik is just terrible. She can constantly put herself into ROB's blind spot, throw out needles from that blind spot, put out obnoxiously big aerials that are still safe on block or CC, and she flat out wins in CQC. She wins the camping war too unless you're close enough to sideB grounded needles and stop right in front of her. I only see this MU being OK for us on large stages where we just live long enough to potentially get her offstage before she kills us.

Zelda was always weird when it comes to stages. On small stages, there's barely any room to avoid really stupid hitboxes like fsmash, nair, and kicks, but on large stages, Zelda lives a long time while still killing us relatively early. I've always felt that the best stages for this were the happy medium (PS2, Norfair, SV, etc) where we have room to maneuver around hitboxes and Din's alike, but the blastzones are small enough for us to kill with usmash and nair at respectable %'s.

 

[Serj28]

Played an annoying as **** kirby on the weekend. How do you guys find this match up? Neutral is easy enough to win however I found it extremely hard to kill the little bugger. Aside from a random Nair or Dacus I could only kill him after chipping away at him and up throwing. How do you guys do it?

 

[DrinkingFood]

Welp! I haven't really been playing at all this past couple of weeks, but I'm still hung up on that Fox MU (but this is the MU discussion thread, so it's OK, right?)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHLXr_F4oiQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKhaenl_sqQ

Well, I don't know... Lucky literally won every single match he played as Fox. If arguably the best ROB is having this much trouble with a Melee Fox who barely touches PM and doesn't really know this MU... I did notice one thing in these sets that I've personally noticed in my own sets vs Fox, and I kinda alluded to it here earlier but I didn't directly mention it because I thought it may just be me. I mentioned that we're not fast enough to catch him if he's not on top of us. What I didn't say was that he can really spam those lasers safely, even if he isn't really that far away. He can easily stop and shield, run away, or even retaliate in response to us trying to punish him for shooting the lasers. It sounds kinda silly that I would complain about Fox's lasers when I have a reflector, but that reflector is actually useless in this MU as an actual reflector. We want to reflect projectiles with hitstun so that they hit or threaten to hit the opponent in order to cover the Arm Rotor. When we reflect Falco's laser, there is now a laser with hitstun travelling back at Falco to cover our Rotor and possibly trap Falco right in front of us. Needless to say, all of this is lost if the laser simply doesn't have any hitstun. If anything, grounded sideB functions as a burst approach option against Fox, but not as a very good one. If you try to rush in too hard against Fox, you risk getting punished hard, so while we're trying to be tactful and strategic about pinning Fox, he's just shooting away and making our percents skyrocket, ready to switch it up and punish if we try to rush in and directly punish the lasers. Because of this, we don't get as much time to play around in neutral as we'd like. Also, it may seem trivial, but our laser is borderline reactable, and if it is reflected, we get hit with something around 1.5x the damage would have dished out.

As a bonus, here's another non-PM Fox beating an experienced ROB:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4PjZv5-hSk

These were literally all the high-profile (that I could recognize) recent examples of the MU I could find on YT.

Both me and oracle agree I am better than Oracle at the spacies matchups. Whether or not you think oracle is a better ROB than me isn't relevant for this matchup, where I am the better ROB. I'll watch that last game and see if even he has my punish game on foxes. Because I know that oracle doesn't, and I stand by my statement that it's the axis of this matchup.

EDIT: Sorry but that alpha dash match vs mango is just a terrible example. It's 3.0, 3 stock, alpha dash used a lot of super sub-par punishes and SD'd a third of his stocks, it was only one game, and I saw several opportunites where Mango was on top of him with shine nairs that I can and do punish all the time. For instance first stock, around 4:55, mango shined alpha dash and alpha dash shielded the nair that came after out of panic. I would have been holding down the whole time, and as soon as the nair hit me, it would have been punished with a dsmash. Mango would likely have DI'd away, and I would have had, at worst, at 50/50 on the tech chase. If he had missed the DI away I would have had a grab and thus a stock. And this isn't even like, a question of whether or not it would have happened, if the fox flubs pressure like that the punish is super easy and super reliably, you don't have to do other things like shield/roll out until you know the fox has you in a position or at a percent where they aren't going to flub/get punished for trying to excessively shine-nair you.