Roy (SSB4): Difference between revisions

Roy's initial perception among the community was very positive; players almost immediately recognized his powerful offense due to the prominent strengths of his sweetspotted attacks, heavily damaging throw set-ups, and significantly improved mobility. These views were especially noted because his semi-clone, {{SSB4|Marth}}, and by extension {{SSB4|Lucina}}, were considered poor characters at the time. Despite his extremely low representation, which was unseen of a perceived high-tier character, most of the community believed that Roy was a viable character, with {{Sm|ZeRo}} notably going as far as saying he was the best sword-wielding character in the game. Even so, his viability was also disputed due to his sparse tournament representation and results. Furthermore, characters considered worse than him received a variety of buffs in later updates, with a corresponding increase in tournament results and representation than Roy, while his weaknesses were made much more apparent to the community. As such, opinions on Roy quickly started to change due to his vulnerability to combos, weak recovery, and an ineffective close-ranged playstyle due to his poor approach and unimpressive range. In spite of these flaws and his sparse representation and results, Roy was ranked 32nd on the first ''4BR'' [[tier list]], placing him at the top of the low-tier.

However, update [[1.1.4]] granted Marth and Lucina major buffs that significantly increased their effectiveness, while Roy only gained minor landing lag decreases to his aerials. This resulted in them, especially Marth, achieving improved results from professionals and saw their opinions reassessed as those of a high-tier and a mid-tier character, respectively. Conversely, Roy remained a low-tier character due to the minimal effectiveness of his buffs from update 1.1.4. His position relative to the cast was still disputed; some professionals like ZeRo reconsidered him to be on the lower portion of the mid-tier, whereas others like {{Sm|Abadango}} considered him one of the worst characters in the game. In spite of his sparse tournament representation, he received some results from the few professionals who do main him. The biggest upset occurred at [[Super Smash Con 2016]], where {{Sm|Ryo}} went on a two-game win streak while using Roy against Abadango's {{SSB4|Mewtwo}}. Although Abadango would defeat Ryo in their third match by counterpicking with {{SSB4|Rosalina & Luma}}, he only did so narrowly. These results, however, were not enough to repair Roy's negative perception, and subsequently saw Roy being ranked 50th on the second tier list, placing him at the bottom of the low-tier.

Afterwards, three Roy players in {{Sm|Manny}}, {{Sm|VoiD}} and {{Sm|ScAtt}}, managed to place 4th, 7th and 25th, respectively, at [[Smash the Record 2016]], with the former two having played against each other in a Roy ditto. Ryo also managed to achieve better results with Roy. When coupled with Ryo's previous feat at Super Smash Con, Roy was ranked 44th on the third tier list, placing him in the upper portion of the low-tier. Roy's results would improve even further after Cloudy's high placing of 9th at [[Smash Factor 6]] while upsetting {{Sm|Kameme}}, 33rd at [[2GGC: Fire Emblem Saga]] as well, {{Sm|Serge}} reaching 7th with Roy as a secondary, and {{Sm|komorikiri}} placing 16th at [[2GG Championship]] while defeating {{Sm|CaptainZack}}. Despite this, Roy remains ranked at 42nd on the fourth and current tier list, though due to the expansion of the tiers, he is now ranked as a mid-tier character. Throughout the game’s competitive lifespan, Roy's standing relative to the cast was among divisive compared to most of the cast. While a number of top players consider his placement to be accurate due to his polarized toolkit causing him to struggle against numerous characters, many players agreed that Roy could potentially rise slightly higher thanks to his good power and mobility.