SSBM/Roy/Introduction

Introduction

Roy is currently ranked 21st on the tier list, sitting in D tier. Roy’s upsides are his grab game, a good dashdance, and his SHFFL, which make for a good approach. He also has powerful specials, his Neutral-B, Flare Blade, makes for a good ledge trapping and edge guarding tool, and his Down-B, Counter, can be good at picking up quick and early kills if you hit it. Roy’s weak points are that he’s a fastfaller with a terrible recovery due to poor air mobility. Also due to being a fastfaller, he can be comboed quite easily. Coupled with his poor air mobility and the sword sweetspot being on the base of his sword, Roy lacks a large combo game, usually getting short strings or chain grabs off of most of his hits. Also due to his sword sweetspot, Roy does not have an effective kill move and as such can take a while to take a stock without a proper confirm. All of these things are amplified against floaties, who wall him out the best and give him a near unwinnable matchup versus Peach.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Great Crouch Cancel: Roy has a great crouch cancel, since his crouch is extremely low and he can easily open up with down tilt off of a successful CC and begin his punish Punish Game: Despite all his flaws, a skilled Roy can wield a surprisingly scary punish game. Dtilt can lead into many combo routes at all percentages, and he has a strong endpoint to work towards with a confirmable Fsmash. His punish game is especially good on fast fallers, where he has access to longer strings Grab Game: Roy has a great grab, which he can both threaten raw and confirm into off openers like dtilt. On fastfallers, he has access to a powerful chaingrab with up throw, which can also lead into platform tech chases or set up DI mixups Good Ledge Trapping: While Roy cannot edge guard, he can ledge trap fairly well with Neutral-B and dtilt, which have their own followups Dashdance: While his movement isn't as fluid (or as threatening) as Marth's, he does have the same basic tools to work with. Roy shares Marth's long, low dashdance, which he can use to threaten safe openers like grab or dtilt

Wet Noodle: Roy has an inverted version of Marth's sword - the sweet spot is at the base, and the sour spot at the tip. For some reason, the base starts bad, and the tip is even worse; Roy's sour spot can be so weak that landing hits with it can put you at disadvantage. Some moves' hitboxes don't actually cover the entire sword, and his frame data has been made worse than Marth's across the board. The result is that Roy's range is highly misleading Susceptibility to Camping: Roy cannot really deal with being platform camped at all. He lacks the platform sharking tools, juggle potential, and mobility around platforms that make Marth powerful in the same position. Another reason to go to Final Destination ASAP! Weakness to CC: Roy also struggles with his pathetically weak attacks being crouch cancellable for days. Although he can combat this with grab, it remains a huge issue at the beginning of every single stock Terrible Recovery: Roy falls like a literal rock, with a hopelessly short double jump and lackluster air speed. Worse, Roy’s Up-B is very easy to exploit; it's slower, shorter, and weaker than Marth's equivalent, and opponents can easily slip out of the multihits and punish anyway even if caught Fall Speed: Roy is a fastfaller, and suffers all the ways they do, but with few of the tools that let characters like Fox mitigate those weaknesses Edge Guarding: Due to his previously mentioned recovery issues, going offstage for any reason as Roy is likely to sign off on his own death. He usually needs to remain on stage to ledge trap unless a good situation is presented to him to capitalize on, which limits his options Floaty MUs: Roy just doesn't have good combo routes against floaties, and he doesn't have the raw power to beat them with stray hits. Roy has no recourse to being camped, dies to a light breeze offstage, where many floaties are in their domain, and is basically incapable of challenging their recoveries in return. Worse, his anti-air hitboxes are universally pitiful