What's up with R.O.B.?

[herbmaster%]

I barely dabbled into Brawl in it's prime days, and only came across a couple Robs. What I do know is he has sick aerials that move him different directions, and that he has two projectile moves. Other than that I have little knowledge of his properties/utilities. I'm going to gaze upon the other threads for info, but meanwhile I'd like to ask peeps about him.

 

[Baky]

ROB requires a certain type of playstyle, I feel like he's exclusive in the way he's played relative to the other cast. Its a type of playstyle that requires you to read players and generally play defensively. I feel like many players just want to dive in with a character and start doing combos and while ROB has his fair share of auto combos, the stage-control, approaches and reads required to use them seems comparatively harder to the rest of the cast.

I also feel that many ROB mains quit their character for reasons that only ROB mains understand. I feel that ROB is most fun to play against players who know the matchup decently but absolutely unfun when playing against players who know how to fight ROB well. I try to think of an example of this... and Drinkingfood vs Aerolink comes to mind. Drinkingfood in that match seemed to do many of the right things but Aerolink exploited all of nuances in the matchup. In a way I actually feel like Drinkingfood played better but was limited by ROB, (of course he did do many predictable Nairs from offstage back on).

I am quite hopeful though. ROB seems to have a lot more potential than even the ROB mains are giving him credit for. I feel that we can thank Drinkingfood for that. From a mechanically proficient standpoint it seems like Drinkingfood leads the pack. When I think of Drinkingfoods consistency combined with the mindgames of a top level melee player, I have a feeling ROB will get in the spotlight again, (since Oracle and Jceaser).

 

[DrinkingFood]

Actually, as committed as I am to pushing ROB as far as I can, I feel like he will get comparatively worse, not better, as time goes on.
My match against aerolink was not a very good example because I did not play as optimally as I could in those games. I won my most recent set against him, but sadly it wasn't recorded, but what I do remember was spending a lot of time ducking his boomerangs and using recatch AGTs to approach through his projectiles, among other things I never did in that recorded set I have up on YT.

 

[herbmaster%]

I think that as a defensive chararacter, ROB would shine brightest in Brawl. For such a floaty game, having that much aerial mobility mixed with the top and laser makes him fairly dominant.

 

[ECHOnce]

I think that as a defensive chararacter, ROB would shine brightest in Brawl. For such a floaty game, having that much aerial mobility mixed with the top and laser makes him fairly dominant.

He was fairly good in the early meta from what I've read, for those reasons. But as in PM, most of his moveset has weaknesses that can be easily exploited once the opponent understands the MU better. He fell from high- to mid-tier within a year or two of the game coming out iirc. He still has some of those weaknesses in PM