Why is Roy worse than Marth?

[dakotaisgreat]

I'll start this off by saying I have never once played Melee competitively, in fact in the last decade I have turned on Melee once. I didn't even know Smash Bros had a competitive scene until a few years ago, so while I loved Melee casually a long time ago, I know jack **** about the meta game, outside of watching it for fun. I figure that would go without saying, I just wanted a disclaimer so people don't insult me.

I know Roy hits stronger at the base of his blade instead of the tipper like Marth, and I know Roy has stronger throws, but that's all I know. How can Marth be so good and viable in Melee yet Roy is said to be awful at the same time? I've never once seen anyone play Roy. Sure I could read their differences on paper but I wouldn't really be able to tell how that practically effects his gameplay, I figured you guys could explain it to me at length though.

So why isn't Roy the Marth as Falco is to Fox and instead deemed unusable garbage in this game?

 

[Sheep McLamb]

I'll start this off by saying I have never once played Melee competitively, in fact in the last decade I have turned on Melee once. I didn't even know Smash Bros had a competitive scene until a few years ago, so while I loved Melee casually a long time ago, I know jack **** about the meta game, outside of watching it for fun. I figure that would go without saying, I just wanted a disclaimer so people don't insult me.

I know Roy hits stronger at the base of his blade instead of the tipper like Marth, and I know Roy has stronger throws, but that's all I know. How can Marth be so good and viable in Melee yet Roy is said to be awful at the same time? I've never once seen anyone play Roy. Sure I could read their differences on paper but I wouldn't really be able to tell how that practically effects his gameplay, I figured you guys could explain it to me at length though.

So why isn't Roy the Marth as Falco is to Fox and instead deemed unusable garbage in this game?

http://www.ssbwiki.com/Roy_(SSBM)
This pretty much explains it. To summarize, Roy's moveset is way more unsafe than Marth's, mainly because of his garbage "sweetspot" which is at his sword's hilt- this means that instead of being rewarded for good spacing like Marth, Roy has too get in dangerously close for a good hit- something incredibly difficult to do in competitive play. This also means that if Roy can't get in close to his opponent (which is often), Roy doesn't have reliable KO options. Even when sweetspotted, his moves aren't generally very powerful (like his aerials), and those that are are usually pretty laggy and unreliable.
Also, his recovery is horrible.

 

[lolazerz]

Why didn't you just look it up before asking Smashboards?

 

[ChivalRuse]

Because Roy is a fast faller, he can't recover nearly as well as Marth, he is easy to combo, and he can't edgeguard offstage effectively. His moves do nothing if you hit with them from the farthest range, and if you hit with the strong hitboxes (close to the hilt), you risk trading hits, which Roy never wants because of his terrible recovery.

 

[lolazerz]

Because Roy is a fast faller, he can't recover nearly as well as Marth, he is easy to combo, and he can't edgeguard offstage effectively. His moves do nothing if you hit with them from the farthest range, and if you hit with the strong hitboxes (close to the hilt), you risk trading hits, which Roy never wants because of his terrible recovery.

Everything you just said is everything I hate hearing

 

[ChivalRuse]

I hate hearing it too, but it's all still true lol.

 

[Airpoizon]

Because they compare Marths strong points to Roys weak points lol

 

[ChivalRuse]

Roy's d-tilt is overall better than Marth's. But I can't think of any other moves that Roy has that are superior to Marth's.

 

[Link24a]

Roy's d-tilt is overall better than Marth's. But I can't think of any other moves that Roy has that are superior to Marth's.

Even that's debatable. Marth's can edge guard and poke

 

[ChivalRuse]

Which is why I said "overall". Obviously each one has pros and cons. But you can't ask for a much more perfect combo move than Roy's d-tilt, and Marth has other edgeguarding tools anyway, he doesn't NEED d-tilt to edgeguard necessarily.

 

[lolazerz]

I hate hearing it too, but it's all still true lol.

Never said you were wrong, but I still hate hearing it.

 

[1000g2g3g4g800999]

His higher fall speed is to his detriment the overwhelming majority of the time in comparison to Marth, leading to him getting cged and combo'd worse, his recovery is worse (though not in absolutely every way), he's laggier on a number of moves (uptilt, for example), his normals are weaker than Marth's with weaker sweetspots that go against the advantages of having a long disjointed hitbox, and far, far weaker weak hits. Some of hit hitboxes are also kind of messed up (see: dash attack). His sword's really bad on hit in neutral until you've built considerable percent, though thankfully he has a similar dash dance grab game to Marth. Unfortunately, he's also slower.

What does Roy have over Marth? All of his throws do 1 more damage than Marth's, an unstale upthrow will KO Bowser with no DI 30 percent earlier than one from Marth on FD (184 vs 214), his downsmash sweetspot does 21% unstale on the first hit uncharged (lol wut), his upsmash is safer out of shield, his dtilt is an amazing combo move, Double Edged Dance has some good properties vs Dancing Blade, including things like the upward third hit meteoring to punish an attempt to DI up, or the multihit downward third making it somewhat safer. His counter, while not strictly better, is stronger. Flare Blade gives him a literal One-Hit KO punish for a shield break (good luck with that), Blazer's multihit protects him from being Marth Killer'd (variations of lightshield edgeguarding that require more effort can still technically work vs some multi-hit recoveries), and it can force people to top platform from any percent, and OHKO extremely light characters on stages with sufficiently low ceilings. One could argue Roy has a better Royzone (area when you get to close to a fire emblem character for them to hit you) or punishes people for getting close to it than Marth.

While that second paragraph is longer, make no mistake: Roy is bad in comparison to Marth.

 

[TurboLink]

Because they compare Marths strong points to Roys weak points lol

You mean because they compare Marth's results to Roy's results. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) LOL

 

[Dingding123]

Roy's our boy

he's the 2-move wonder: fsmash, dsmash. 21 damage uncharged each. But other than these two moves and catching someone with the 3rd or 4th hit of Dancing Blade, he won't kill anyone until 150%+ lel. By that time his aerials sort of juggle which is silly 'cause his smashes can kill as early as 70 but imean it's free damage so why not. It's funny watching someone go whizzing offscreen at like 230 after about half a minute of playing hacky sack...less so if Roy dies 3 times before the kill finally happens

his pummel does 3 damage and is fast, so that's a thing I guess. I'm gonna go test if Marth's pummels are as good Edit: it is LOL

he's smaller than Marth, and yet some of his moves have as large of a hitbox as Marth's sword so that's nice

you can SHFFL his air stuff really fast even though they aren't safe

SH Dancing Blade done as fast as it can looks rad although it might not be incredibly practical

sweetspotting his fsmash and dsmash in neutral is impossible without a hard read, granted, but it's very easy to do against techrolls. On top of that they will beat a lot of moves they clank with

upB is bad as a recovery move, but can be done diagonally instead of straight-up. It can be used as a very quick way back onstage. If he gets launched far he's probably not gonna make it because that upB is easy to edgeguard, but if he can position himself adjacent for a diagonal upB fast enough an opponent might not get a chance to do anything to him before he makes it back

teh fire