Glyph
Moderator
I have been toying with making this post for a long time, and its starting to come up in multiple threads so I figured I'd just finally get something put down.
I'm going to put modesty aside and say something some people will probably roll their eyes at, but at the moment I consider myself the best ROB on the site, and one of the best players in brawl minus in general. I really really hate having to play that card, but my opinions are not coming from a place of bias or inexperience; I've played ROB at levels most people were completely unaware existed.
That doucheyness aside, I want to say ROB is not broken. ROB is not even in need of nerfs. The problem is next to no one has ANY experience against a ROB who plays the way I do. There's a reason the complains about ROB prior to my playing online were 'his fair hits into itself' and 'his multilaser is pretty dumb (a point I actually raised) and now you can't turn a corner without hearing about how ROB is S Tier.
The biggest problem currently standing in this community is not knowing where to DI against ROB. Case in point, take a look at some of my early games against our good friend Bent, the best Falcon player I've seen thus far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ZypBFw6dM - This is one of our first games, in fact in might BE the first time my ROB faced off against his Falcon. If ROB was truly S Tier, this game would have been a bloodbath. I would have been able to shut down every one of Falcon's approaches, every attack would have combo'd into death, every recovery would have been a success without any issues.
But that's not how that game goes. His instincts on how to play against a ranged character were on the money, he rushed down in my openings, kept pressure on me. Even my 'for sure win' laser at the end damn near doesn't do the trick. I rematched Bent later on after giving him some ideas on how to better combat a stupid robot, and while I still managed to keep my head above water he took me to last stock last hit on a NUMBER of occasions. If I were to sit down in person and play against Bent, within a week his Falcon would be going even with my ROB. Easy. Same thing applies to a number of people I've played online, like Gum's Jiggs and owo's Ganon. That not mentioning I've lost to Lucario countless times, and Wolf/Sheik/D3 at times as well.
The whole point I'm trying to make here is that you shouldn't lose games to a character and then dismiss that character as broken, you should strive to be even MORE broken that that character is. I will NEVER forget the first time Bent landed a down throw to double knee combo and I said 'wow that was goddamn broken'. But I didn't, I learned to watch out for Falcon's grabs and to DI up and away from Falcon when he's chasing you. When you watch replays of me playing against Poo and Jomo you will almost never see me land any of those chains of attacks where I carry someone offscreen with a wave of nairs or fairs, because they know EXACTLY where to DI it to prevent my followups. And spoiler, its not that my brother and friend just happen to be the best smashers in the world, they just have put in the time to know the matchup.
And I really hope you guys do too.
Ok, that's not as concise as I would have liked but I think I hit all the major points. I still stand saying if I see a ROB playing as well as I do against someone who knows that matchup I would happily see him in S Tier, but that hasn't happened yet. I've recorded and documented support for my argument and am more than happy to upload any other ROBs out there as well, or just to play on wifi with them. I honestly feel like my ROB has stagnated at this point so anyone who could show me something new would be my hero.
Because I'm not stupid, I want to also open the floor to you guys proposed ROB nerfs. I REALLY don't think they're needed OR deserved, but when I watch some of the games I've played its not at all hard to understand why the call is there. In a perfect world I'd like to see ROB changed, not nerfed. Something I saw Newb point out was that ROB's extra jumps give him a lot of aerial mobility to follow up on attacks, which is absolutely right. Its not unbeatable, but against someone who's not expecting a rush it often spells death. But removing the extra jumps also puts ROB back at his vBrawl recovery, and that's just not brawl minus. My proposed solution to this problem would be to remove ROB's extra jumps and instead give him a significantly larger fuel tank for his up-b. This CHANGES ROB, but it doesn't necessarily make him any worse. It closes the aerial chase game, but opens up a much meaner offstage and hover options. I'd really like to hear some specific complaints about ROB from you guys, and I'll suggest something that I think would remove that complaint without drastically killing ROB's viability.
Sorry for the rambling post guys, hope you can see where I'm coming from!
I'm going to put modesty aside and say something some people will probably roll their eyes at, but at the moment I consider myself the best ROB on the site, and one of the best players in brawl minus in general. I really really hate having to play that card, but my opinions are not coming from a place of bias or inexperience; I've played ROB at levels most people were completely unaware existed.
That doucheyness aside, I want to say ROB is not broken. ROB is not even in need of nerfs. The problem is next to no one has ANY experience against a ROB who plays the way I do. There's a reason the complains about ROB prior to my playing online were 'his fair hits into itself' and 'his multilaser is pretty dumb (a point I actually raised) and now you can't turn a corner without hearing about how ROB is S Tier.
The biggest problem currently standing in this community is not knowing where to DI against ROB. Case in point, take a look at some of my early games against our good friend Bent, the best Falcon player I've seen thus far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ZypBFw6dM - This is one of our first games, in fact in might BE the first time my ROB faced off against his Falcon. If ROB was truly S Tier, this game would have been a bloodbath. I would have been able to shut down every one of Falcon's approaches, every attack would have combo'd into death, every recovery would have been a success without any issues.
But that's not how that game goes. His instincts on how to play against a ranged character were on the money, he rushed down in my openings, kept pressure on me. Even my 'for sure win' laser at the end damn near doesn't do the trick. I rematched Bent later on after giving him some ideas on how to better combat a stupid robot, and while I still managed to keep my head above water he took me to last stock last hit on a NUMBER of occasions. If I were to sit down in person and play against Bent, within a week his Falcon would be going even with my ROB. Easy. Same thing applies to a number of people I've played online, like Gum's Jiggs and owo's Ganon. That not mentioning I've lost to Lucario countless times, and Wolf/Sheik/D3 at times as well.
The whole point I'm trying to make here is that you shouldn't lose games to a character and then dismiss that character as broken, you should strive to be even MORE broken that that character is. I will NEVER forget the first time Bent landed a down throw to double knee combo and I said 'wow that was goddamn broken'. But I didn't, I learned to watch out for Falcon's grabs and to DI up and away from Falcon when he's chasing you. When you watch replays of me playing against Poo and Jomo you will almost never see me land any of those chains of attacks where I carry someone offscreen with a wave of nairs or fairs, because they know EXACTLY where to DI it to prevent my followups. And spoiler, its not that my brother and friend just happen to be the best smashers in the world, they just have put in the time to know the matchup.
And I really hope you guys do too.
Ok, that's not as concise as I would have liked but I think I hit all the major points. I still stand saying if I see a ROB playing as well as I do against someone who knows that matchup I would happily see him in S Tier, but that hasn't happened yet. I've recorded and documented support for my argument and am more than happy to upload any other ROBs out there as well, or just to play on wifi with them. I honestly feel like my ROB has stagnated at this point so anyone who could show me something new would be my hero.
Because I'm not stupid, I want to also open the floor to you guys proposed ROB nerfs. I REALLY don't think they're needed OR deserved, but when I watch some of the games I've played its not at all hard to understand why the call is there. In a perfect world I'd like to see ROB changed, not nerfed. Something I saw Newb point out was that ROB's extra jumps give him a lot of aerial mobility to follow up on attacks, which is absolutely right. Its not unbeatable, but against someone who's not expecting a rush it often spells death. But removing the extra jumps also puts ROB back at his vBrawl recovery, and that's just not brawl minus. My proposed solution to this problem would be to remove ROB's extra jumps and instead give him a significantly larger fuel tank for his up-b. This CHANGES ROB, but it doesn't necessarily make him any worse. It closes the aerial chase game, but opens up a much meaner offstage and hover options. I'd really like to hear some specific complaints about ROB from you guys, and I'll suggest something that I think would remove that complaint without drastically killing ROB's viability.
Sorry for the rambling post guys, hope you can see where I'm coming from!
