OK, so I missed a week. I got sick, so I ended up playing Smash the beginning of the first week and the end of the second week. But let’s just treat it as one week going forward for simplicity’s sake.
So this week I mained Robin. Like always every night I started off in Training Mode refining techniques, warmed up against the CPU, and then played Online Quickplay. Robin ended up being a surprisingly deep character, so it wasn’t just learning her (I played as the blonde female so I’m going to refer to the character as a her) bread and butters, kill confirms, kill percents, and priorities. It was also learning things like B-Reversing, managing tomes and more. MadIceKing has a lot easy to follow 1 minute videos that go over Robin’s advanced tech. Though to be completely honest, I couldn’t perform all of them. I also watched some of the Smasher Jul’s matches. He’s one of the best Robin players in the world and seems to be able to beat all characters with Robin somehow.
After a week of only playing Robin, I think I’ve got a decent Robin. I think the character is very bad though, easily in the bottom 10 of the entire roster. I might play her sometimes in friendlies, but she’s not even going to be a pocket character for me. I’m more likely to pull out Rosalina or Byleth honestly.
Let’s talk about her positives first though. She’s got decent kill power. She’s got a lingering effect on some Smash attacks that can allow some cheap kills. She’s got combo breaking moves. Her projectiles are good at spacing out opponents and forcing them to make a mistake which you can then take advantage of. She can harass opponents trying to recover with projectiles, wracking up damage or even taking some kills. A lot of people don’t know the matchup, which can lead to some easy heavy damage or kills, especially with the more obscure tech.
But all her positivies can’t outweigh two very limiting factors- her speed and the usage meters she has on her specials and her Levin Sword. She is one of the bottom three slowest characters in terms of ground speed. Her aerials aren’t very fast easier. Pretty much every character can’t use a speed advantage against her, staying in her face and throwing out attacks before she can even respond. If her specials were unlimited that might not be so bad – she could keep distance by spamming her projectiles, but they ran out and need to re-fill. More than once I tried to use one of her specials when it had run out and it completely ruined my momentum.
Just in terms of per skill level I don’t think she’s worth playing even as a counter-pick or a pocket character. To win with Robin I always felt I had to be significantly better than my opponent. And I lost to some players I felt were pretty far below me skill-wise, but I lost because they exploited her weaknesses. If I’m playing my Robin against an opponent with the same skill level as me, they are ALWAYS going to win. Unless they’re playing a big heavy with no projectiles? I feel like her projectiles and strength of her aerials let her get some good strings in against people like Bowser and Ganondorf. But I think everyone else wins. The rush down characters kill her by just staying in her face refusing to let her attack. The other projectile characters win by outcamping her with their superior projectiles. The swordies may not be such a bad match up actually, but I found when the opponent knows when to counter and how to recover well as a swordie, they negate most of what Robin can do well.
Even though she has some tools that are better than Rosalina and Byleth, she’s just not at much fun to play. I can embarrass people with Rosalina and Byleth (very rarely, but sometimes). With Robin, even if I three stock someone it doesn’t look impressive, isn’t that much fun, and is a lot of thinking.
I let Random character select choose next week. Next week I’m maining Kirby! Another low-tier, I’m determined to be a low-tier hero I guess.