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The Zombair: An Analysis

By Jack "Jackie Peanuts" Moore | 12/22/21

Call it El Diablo, call it the Zombair, call it whatever you want. ROB's back-air was lighting foes up all weekend at the Smash World Tour Championships courtesy of
R.O.B.
, the New York player who made a run all the way from the Last Chance Qualifier on Friday to a fourth place finish on Sunday, the best run we've seen from a ROB since major competitive play returned at Riptide in September 2021.

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Zomba's flawless run through the LCQ, culminating with a win over top seed
Palutena
, was strong, as was his run through the World Championship's pools phase, which included wins over
Kazuya
Terry
,
Greninja
Kazuya
and
Snake
. But what made this a breakout run for Zomba, one beyond even his fifth place just a couple weeks prior to the World Championships at CEO 2021, was his run through losers bracket. After falling to
Pyra/Mythra
3-2 in winners quarterfinals, Zomba went on one of the clutchest runs you'll see, winning consecutive game five sets over
Olimar
,
Sonic
and
Roy
. That's a trio that includes two players who have previously been ranked Top 20 in the world in Shuton and KEN and one who has played like a Top 10 player since the return of majors in Kola.
ROB is a character known for an arsenal full of incredibly strong moves: the Gyro and Laser, two of Ultimate's strongest zoning tools, especially when used in tandem; the three-frame down-tilt, an absurd boxing option on a character built to zone; the neutral-air, the get out of disadvantage free card; the side-b, one of the moves most responsible for robbery in the entire game. But the move that defined Zomba's run through three of Smash's best players was none of these. The soul-eater was the Zombair, taking 10 stocks in the 15 games of Zomba's losers run.
So, let's talk about ROB's back-air. It's a strong move, especially if you hit the good hitbox on the base, which deals 18.0% damage when fresh. As KEN found out, it can kill at the ledge as early as 60%, and earlier than that if you hit the move off-stage. It has the knockback growth to become a legitimate kill option from center stage fairly early as well, especially against lighter characters like Olimar and Sonic.
But first you have to hit it. It's a very slow move.
Just how slow is ROB's back-air? Click to expand.
Frame data sourced from here.
There are 445 aerials with start-up data in the game. Only seven have a slower startup than ROB's frame 19 back-air, and only three others have an equal 19-frame startup. Of the 445 moves in the game, 434 of them are faster than ROB's back-air.
Now, a lot of the remaining 11, like R.O.B's back-air, are fantastic moves. Nobody who's been backthrown by a ROB in a high pressure situation would deny the strength of his frame 20 down-air, for example, nor would anybody who has played against a Shulk spacing his frame 19 back-air deny the strength of that move. Nobody who has played against a Mega Man would deny the fear caused by the 23-frame (but potentially plus on shield) down-air.
But these are moves that are great in part because they present a great threat even when they don't hit, usually because of an autocancel window, shield pressure, or simply a ridiculously strong reward that forces an action out of the opponent.
And then there's Mii Gunner's down-air. We can't all be winners.
ROB's back-air, meanwhile, has just about every bit of utility you could ask for. It deals enormous shield damage and is safe enough to be used as a spacing tool. It has minimal end lag for its power and utility at 13 frames. And most importantly, it has immense movement capability and the ability to vary that movement, allowing ROB to either outspace you or cross you up depending on how they play it (while also making it critical to his recovery).
It's critical to understand this utility, all of the things that make ROB's back-air useful even when it's not hitting, to understand why the Zombair was so effective at the World Championships. Early in these sets, that back-air was not hitting. Zomba whiffed the back-air 25 times across the three Game 1s in his losers run, hitting just twice, a 7.4% hit rate. Opponents would be at the ledge or stuck on a platform, and Zomba would look for the back-air. They would either wait patiently enough or be just aggressive enough to find their way through whatever trap he would set.
As the games proceeded, Zomba's accuracy increased:
Zomba's back-air accuracy by game. Click to expand.
A test of Melee player reaction times at Smash Summit 12 found that many could visually react to a frame 12 or 13 move. Even with the input lag presented by Smash Ultimate, that makes ROB's frame-19 back-air reactable for many opponents, whether by shield or by throwing out a quicker option, as happened quite often in his set against Shuton, where purple Pikmin after purple Pikmin interrupted back-air after back-air
Zomba's back-air accuracy as his set against Shuton progressed. Click to expand.
Zomba didn't hit a single back-air through the first four games against Shuton. He just couldn't find a way to get 19 frames of unharassed time near Olimar and was routinely shut out by the purples in particular. But in Game 5, after 15 whiffs in the first four games, Zomba finally caught Shuton near the ledge, leading to a side-b kill. And then, to close the set, Zomba hit an ambiguous cross-up back-air just as Shuton was attempting to up-smash to take the set.
This theme: a steady stream of whiffs until the opponent broke down as the set progressed, with nearly every back-air that hit being a hit of significance, would continue throughout the losers run.
Zomba's back-air accuracy against KEN as the set progressed. Click to expand.
Again, it was all whiffs in Game 1, as KEN played it safe and used Sonic's speed to stay out of back-air range. But slowly but surely, Zomba found ways to challenge KEN's return to stage or his attempts to hold positioning on platforms. His hit rate of 24% may not look impressive, but considering 5 of the 6 back-airs Zomba hit managed to take a stock, it was unquestionably a successful set for the Zombair.
But the real reason ROB's back-air will now always be known as El Diablo was the final win of the night for Zomba, a third straight Game 5 victory, this time over Kola. Unlike Olimar and Sonic, Roy doesn't have the ability to harass ROB from across the stage. Instead, the onus is on Roy to get in, and ROB's back-air suddenly becomes an imposing wall, both in neutral and doubly so when Roy is forced off-stage.
Zomba's back-air accuracy against Kola as the set progressed. Click to expand.
As in the set against KEN, Zomba connected five back-airs for KOs against Kola, including the final two KOs in Game 5. Despite Roy's excellent frame data and Kola's terrific reactions, Zomba was able to connect the 19-frame back-air 44% (11/25) of the time in this set, and with some of these hits, even though they didn't directly KO, they formed the opening that made it possible.
ROB's back-air, especially in the context of his kit, is an incredible move. You tried to parry neutral-air? Hold this back-air. You tried to jump over a laser or a gyro off-stage? Hold this back-air. You tried to mash out of the shield pressure presented by down-tilt and neutral-air? Hold this back-air. The fact that it can do so much, and play off of ROB's other moves in so many situations, means that it's inevitable that more are going to hit as games progress.
But nobody had quite used it to this degree, especially against top players who have shown time and time again that they know how to deal with ROB, one of the scourges of the post-quarantine metagame. Zomba's ability to adapt and find ways to use El Diablo, even against players and characters well-suited to deal with it, was tremendous this past weekend, delivering the best performance we've seen from a ROB in 2021, a year full of big runs from the big robot.
Mural designs courtesy @ElevenZM and @MuralAltDrive.
Jackie Peanuts is the Director of PGstats. A sportswriter and statistician, Jackie's work has appeared on ESPN, CBS, Vice, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and others.
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