Why NO ONE Plays: Rosalina & Luma | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 

LMAO 3 of my mains already have shown up in this series😭

As a rosa main I think you touched on just about everything that results in rosa being underplayed. She's a difficult character that requires more time to master than most solely because of lumas existence. She lacks range without luma and is significantly weakened without her. It's to the point where you need to adopt a new play style until luma respawns. Only things I would add are that not only do you need to be aware of where your opponent is, but yourself and luma too. I know that sounds like a no brainer but this is especially important with rosa. Knowing your own position along with lumas gives her options to deal with ledge guards/traps. As luma makes their way back to you, you can use luma to send the opponent offstage for a potential reversal. Alongside this I feel rosa requires knowledge of basic to advanced tech in order to fully master. You need to be able to use luma as efficiently as possible in order to win high level games, and without special movement tech for luma I feel this becomes much harder. You also need to be aware of when you need sack luma in order to get an advantage over your opponent, which is a double edged sword because if you end up losing the interaction then you're at a disadvantage until luma returns. As to if I think she'll be back in the meta eventually, I unfortunately don't think so. Unless Dabuz makes some waves at majors with the character or a new outstanding player surfaces using her, I think she'll stay the same and people will eventually forget about her. TLDR: Rosa requires much more knowledge on positioning, tech, and movement options in order to use luma efficiently, which keeps her underplayed.

I feel like one of the main advantages to Rosa is that while she certainly does cause her user information overload, in situations where she is played well she is able to impose that same information overload on her opponent.

Rosa mains rise up

As one of the only Rosa mains left, this one is interesting. I’m surprised you didn’t touch on her being extremely light as well as big bodied, cause this above all else has been the greatest gripe I have had with her since it makes her all the more inconsistent to do well with. Glad you touched on her out of shield options though cause that’s another big problem with her people don’t often consider. Good video, I’ve been waiting for this one lol

I'd say what makes Rosa so hard compared to other Puppet characters is that Luma is just like, straight up another thing you're always controlling. Other fighting games typically have puppets who act like assists (Most of the Melty Blood Puppets come to mind), or they have a sort of stance-change mechanic where the puppet can only deal and receive damage when "active". (Devo in JoJo) The reason fighting games stick towards those two designs is because it's kinda obvious that constantly controlling two characters will cause an information overload, which is exactly what Rosalina is.

I remember playing her against Cloud in Sm4sh, one of her worst matchups, every match felt like playing chess. It was so good

I’m a Rosalina main when I play, and she’s good! It takes a lot of effort to control luma well, and that’s a lot of her kit. If someone wants to try her, be prepared to put in the effort

Every time I watch one of these I think wow why am I not playing this character, then at the end I'm like oh, that's why

I adore rosalina. Like you said, she has a lot of utility that no one else in the game has, which is astronomically threatening. She can absolutely demolish certain high tier characters in ways no one else can with tether luma and her disjointed meteor smash. Also, the complexity of her combo game makes it extremely hard to read her during high percentages due to how her entire archetype 180's once luma dies or is separated from her. Now, despite solo rosalina being very reminiscent of smash 4 palutena (sluggish and virtually useless outside aerial attacks), she can still pressure a lot thanks to up tilt and fair exclusively. A multi hit fair is invaluable especially for edge guarding, and her intangibility on up tilt destroys bigger characters or character with a counter. The issue with her is like smash 4 palutena. It doesn't necessarily matter that rosalina can't kill on her own, it's that all of her attacks are disproportionately sluggish when compared to other characters. If her tilts were faster, their lack in kill power would be compensated for. She wouldn't be over powered if they were quicker, she'd be a reasonably balanced fighter. Hell, she'd still need to be buffed in other areas to be consistently good. The biggest buff rosalina could receive is if gravitational pull acted like nayru's love and had a hitbox, or if they gave her the custom move "guardian luma" from smash 4 and left it exactly as it was in that game. That custom move GREATLY improves her already great defensive options, and gives her a fantastic kill option as well as a risk free shield if luma is with her. Also, if luma and rosa's dash attack had less ending lag and more hit stun, she would be extremely threatening in neutral if she wer able to follow up with up smash, up tilt, up air or fair And, your point about split attention with the player is true, but it also hinders the opponent as well since they essentially have to fight 2 characters now. (Also her neutral air is fantastic)

If Bowser Jr could puppet his Koopa Clown Car with his Nuetral special, then he could have his Paintbrush and a whole variety of tools for *his* moveset. As long as this can be simplified and sized down for casual play while also being generally functional for competitive, then yeah, it would be really cool. The Paintbrush would also force development of him to have to be cooler and would have to encourage creativity in approaching the opponent, like turning projectiles into minions with the tipper as long as he has paint or etc.

rosa does do well against steve as well. It is pretty even because of human error, but she does theoretically beat steve on paper.

Orianna as a platform fighter is one level of complexity above what I'm capable of. I love playing Orianna, but in a fighting game context I can't possibly keep up.

I really like your videos; they seem well written and the production value is top notch. Keep up the great work 😃

I love Rosalina as a character, and I'm happy she's in Smash bros but I always found her gameplay to be kind of weird. I'd still play her from time to time but not optimally or anything

Because she's intensly difficult without the consistent sauce to back it up. If you're good enough you can make some matchups a near guaranteed win.

Former Rosalina main here. The character is super fun to use and a very solid character too... BUT: > Easily top 3 hardest character to use in the game. > Heavy and fast imputs, this character is full of super advanced techs that you NEED to know and use for the character to become decent. > she is very tall and big, it is very easy to hit her. what becomes heavy in a game dominated by disjoints. > Luma is mad easy to kill in this game, absolutely frustrating. Without Luma Rosa is low tier. > Down B is by far the worst anti projectile move in the game, many times it is better to use shield or jump, very rarely do you get anything good from correctly blocking a projectile. the move has enough ending lag to make impossible to block several projectiles in a row without being punished. Which makes some MUs feel a lot harder than they should (The belmonts, the links, Samus, etc.) > Apart from being very easy to hit, she is very very light. > her recovery is very exploitable. So yeah, I think it's pretty easy to see why a lot of people don't like using this character or drop her after a while. I think that in a game like smash, choosing her and using her is voluntarily playing the game in very difficult and it is very frustrating to see that a ton of other characters can do the same with much more ease, safety and consistency. She is a very good character and I greatly admire everyone who believes in her and pushes and develops her meta but she is not a character for everyone. I still have a lot of fun practicing some specific techs, and using her against my friends.

Two changes I'd love to see: 1)Luma having to be killed instead of just tossed of stage and wasted 0.25 seconds after respawning 2) Being able to recall luma in hitstun. I don't think either of these changes would break the character and would really lean into the puppeteer getting to use their puppet

She used to be top tier in ssb4 just like Sheik. But now they're both nerfed and not played as often :(

looking forward to th marth vid, good video man

What makes me sad is Rosa’s tech and advanced mechanics are so fun and cool to play around with but nobody knows because they won’t even give her a try.

Your videos are amazing man

I’ve got a pretty good analogy for Rosalina & Luma: Why use the joycons when you know they’ll go limp after using them for while, with furious motions, when you can just buy a full controller that also handles easier due to the increased size & internal durability? The skill required to use them is kinda like those joycons.

Love your script writing, enjoyed this episode just like all the others :>

Your humor in this video shown through a little more brightly lmao. Good vid as always mate!

I remember playing them back on the 3ds (I did not own a wiiu) and almost felt like it was cheating, I was constantly zoning others out. When I tried her out for the first time in ultimate, I immediately noticed the slower and shorter range neutral special that did not send Luma out as far as fast making setting up for a longer ranged assault harder to do. Thinking on it now it reminds me of the oppressive custom special Luma Warp, where you just teleport Luma forward with just enough hitstun to be able to land almost any move immediately after, like a smash attack.

I bet he’s gonna bring up the Ice Climbers in this video.

As someone who played Rosa as less of a puppet character and more of a Ice Climber esc sort of character in Smash 4, the one major nerf that bugged me was the reduction of Luma's damage when close to Rosa. It pidgin holed the character into that playstyle.

I would love to see a Sephiroth or even Banjo and Koozie maybe (since I main Sephiroth) and would love to encourage others to give him a shot since I have a lot of fun playing with him

She is my main, and yes, she has a lot of weaknesses. Though you can make her work if you train with her a lot. Thanks for the video, i love your content ^-^

as a rosa main i usually find my matchups to be easy and im not even that good. i think that because not a lot of people play her, people dont know how to react to what she can do

After that Kola post interview after beating Ferps' Kazuya, I can't wait for that "Hated characters in Smash Ultimate" video you are cooking up lmao

As of late I have been playing as mii characters, swapping between each archetype at random. I mostly play as them for the fun of maybe defeating someone with the absolutely most ridiculous cursed looking mii ever created

Rosalina is literally the only person I’m good at using somehow for reckless players like me who literally rush people in places that are hard to be saved from her little star boost thing helps me. She’s also my main in any game she’s able to be played in Rosalina forever.

I went to school with Hiko and used to play CSS with him. He was primarily a 1.6 player back then. Interesting guy.

12:30 "generally first impressions are lasting impressions" reminds me of the "barbarian barrel" card in "clash royale" it started out super weak. so they buffed it. at this point, it was secretly the most OP card in the game, but no one realized that, so no one played it. they went on to buff it three more times, and then suddenly it was an absolute SCOURGE that warped the metagame around it. they would need to nerf it many times until it was even weaker than it was at the first ignored buff! how did it go so unnoticed for so long? it was the first card of it's kind, and kinda complex to use, compared to other cards, since it was weak at a handful of things, but did more things, and it was really easy to use it as a weak version of one of it's components, and squander the rest. it took time for people to learn how to get the obscene value it offered.

Rosalina and Luma Haiku: No one really plays Rosalina and Luma They just kinda suck

I've never commented here before, but I watch a lot of your content. I do wonder if you're gonna do videos on Peach or Zelda, my favorite characters.

I would probably add duck hunt to the puppet category, simply because so much of its meta revolves around using his down b as a disjointed pressure tool.

Since you brought up Marth, a character who I play a lot for fun. I have my own point for why he's bad, not exactly a reason why no one plays him but I think it's noteworthy nonetheless. And I'll bring up the comparison to Lucina as well. Feel free to use it in or paraphrase in the next video. When people think about Marth's "inconsistent" tippers, they think of how many times they get the sour spot versus the sweet spot. But there is a third element to this that I have never heard people talk about (Or maybe I live under a rock idk). When it comes to landing a hit for Marth, there are 3 outcomes, you get the sour spot, you get the ideal sweet spot, or you miss your attack. Now with how Marth's tipper hitboxes are so small, Marth runs a greater risk of missing his target because he is trying to avoid the sour spot. Lucina doesn't have this issue to a large extent, because the only risk for her is missing which is far less prominent because she doesn't need to over space her sword in worry of getting a sour spot. And obviously due to Lucina being way easier to play because of this issue players prefer her over Marth. Which in turn makes Marth look worse then what he actually is. After all why play a harder character with overall less reward then a copy that is easier and is more consistent.

As a Rosa player myself, I think a lot of the main reason you don't see her more kinda goes hand in hand with the hard to play thing. A lot of top Ultimate players have a handful of characters they're comfortable pulling out in tournament. The thing with Rosa is - because of her high learning curve - she's not a character you pocket. Pocket characters are usually low skill floor, easy to play fundamentals characters like Wolf and Aegis. They're characters who succeed more by you being a good player and having good fundamentals rather than you mastering the character and all of their character exclusive challenges. Rosa isn't this at all. Sure, you need good fundamentals - you do with all characters - but good fundamentals aren't enough to get by with Rosa. You need to learn all sorts of things that apply exclusively to Rosa. As a result, she's a character that you either main or you don't use. Nobody is going to put that much time in for a pocket character. She was like that way in 4 to. Rosa was a top 8 at the very worst (but more likely top 5) character in Smash 4. Therefore, putting all that time in was justifiable. In Ultimate, she's high-mid tier. Definitely a respectable character, but not the absolute juggernaut she was in 4. Therefore, people don't see the use in putting in as much time with her and it makes sense. Hell, the only reason I was able to play her in Ultimate is because she was my main in 4. I got to "skip" a lot of the difficulty in picking her up. Rosa will never be a character that's common. Just by her nature of being a high-mid tier that's extremely difficult to play, she's destined to be one of the least common characters in the game. Also, I don't think solo Rosa is bottom 5. DEFINITELY a solid low tier, but not bottom 5. Solo Rosa still has things like Up Air and Up Smash, genuine good moves, and not the garbage Ganon and Mac are stuck with.

She sounds a lot like Oriana from League. With Oriana all her spells come from the ball, so you have to keep track of yourself and where the ball is.

Also her recovery is also kinda hard and week against swords xD I like her sometimes to play but its kinda sad how easy Luma dies in Ultimate. But oh well.

I don’t even play smash bros competitively because I’m horrible and I don’t understand any of the lingo I just enjoy your videos enough that you could talk about anything XD

That's exactly why I like her! She's not technically difficult, but has lots of strategies available to her! I like managing luma because of its potential to be so tricky to the opponent

Rosa main here: I think she has the ability to reach a higher tier but to explain we will have to go back to that mental compartmentalizing. Smash bros is a game that has a great deal of player expression (i.e. One person's Zelda will probably play different from anothers). For a Rosa player I think that there's more of a focus on positioning as like you said our Luma's are face tanking hits and are our disjoint. This would imply that besides playing "where's the luma" we will need to get an understanding of how our opponent is playing. A lot of big brain play is required (prediction) as we need to be adaptable all the time.

As a rosa main I absolutely think she's better than people think, and we just need more people like Dabuz who are willing to give her a chance. The main problem with finding her place in the meta is she requires too much investment to be a counterpick, and having a secondary would likely be difficult at top level (keeping up a secondary is difficult while having any main, even if it makes matchups much easier in the long run). Rosa has really cool tech like lunar landing, de-tethers and DAC into anything, and slingshotting seems to be helping her. The rosacord found out that slingshotting can lead to cool setups, combo extensions and her floaty nature makes her flickshot pretty good. While I don't think slingshots are meta-defining, it certainly is a slight upgrade with her pressure, neutral and combo game. Hope that this character keeps getting developed, and I hope this video helped with the low playerbase. More players means more potential discoveries, this character has a lot of cool and seemingly unusable stuff. Maybe we can find uses for it one day!

Sounds like the perfect character for me since I can not practice against other people very much so instead I can practice on my adaptation to the unique playstyle. I already can play other difficult characters and enjoy them too.

I've been playing SSBU since release, maybe this video will finally teach me what she does.

Great video! As a Rosa main I completely agree with the complexity of her design giving her a very steep learning curve... However, I fully believe that she can rise again! I think your CPU vs RAM example is perfect! Since I believe that's the actual answer. People who wanna play this character have to increase their ram to godlike ammounts; That's the requirement needed to play this character efficiently. People seeking to play her seriously need to treat their representation of Rosa, the same way Ash Ketchum treats wanting to be a Pokemon master! 🔥🔥🔥

Yo, great video dude :) For a potential character to feature on the channel, I think Samus might be a good pick. I'm one of the 4 Samus mains online 😆

I main as rosalina, she came pretty easy to me i didn’t know that she was hard to control among others

6:10 So Dabuz is literally galaxy brained lol

Would love to hear your thoughts on corrin and why not a lot of people play them (or I could be dumb and everyone plays them but idk I never see any)

“I will watch you from the cosmos” Yep she came down cause she got the smash letter

Thank you!!

I bet Vars wanted to do a video on Rosa just so he could use Mario Galaxy music

I know it takes a lot more mental strain during high level competitive play, but oddly enough, for me the act of multitasking in order to focus on both Rosalina AND Luma at the same time is part of _why_ I enjoy playing as her. I multitask ALL THE TIME, and get somewhat restless when only doing one thing at a time (though its not usually an issue while playing games specifically). It might be because I'm neurodivergent, but I honestly have an easier time playing as Rosalina & Luma compared to most other characters. But I mostly fight lvl 9 CPUs and rarely my brother (who hates when I play as Rosa), since I don't have Nintendo Online. Maybe I would feel differently fighting against actual people more often... :/

i love playing rosa, but im gonna be clear with you, she is kinda heavy on imputs. to desinc you nned 2 frames imputs, there is a lot of setups to put luma in wierd places. you need to know how to wave dash for many setups. ect now idk if im good with multi tasking or not. but i have a way harder time remebering what button i need to press on my controler for things like combos, tech and movement tech, than i have with analising everything. a thing that may help other play and i think is why the reason i dont have many problems playing her, is that whe luma is tied to you you can see it as not a second entity, if you send luma far with anything else than the neutral B its kinda like a cooldown, attack cancels are perfectly times attacks, and you can still attak in stun or things like that. Andthat take away half the struggle. now there is stll etups, more attacks and less time to rest (you an act more often) but thats it. (is my keyboard lakking half the keys or what?)

She's still pretty good with her Luma mechanic but got some nerfs. And in a game like Ultimate w here a lot of the more top tiers in this game either have amazing range, speed, combo game, or raw power (Pyra/Mythra, Pikachu, Wolf, Roy) or a very strong relecter that can shut down Luma (Joker and Kazuya), you can see why she fell from grace. A lot of her attacks are pretty slow compared to them and she is easy to hit thanks to her tall size.

Honestly, I love the idea of playing as these tricky characters that force their opponents to play their game. I play Rosa sometimes against my friends because it always feels nice to sneak in a Luma smash attack or allow them to kill Luma so I can get a grab and get stage control. (I love Lumas, honest lol) It feels satisfying knowing that even simple tricks I want to pull off with this rarely seen puppet master works pretty well. Plus, space princess. But of course, I’m not big-brain enough or dedicated to learn all the advanced Rosa tech to really push her trickery beyond the next level. Also, as you pointed out, she just gets stuffed out by the popular sword characters. Still, she’s super fun to play, and I love watching Dabuz’s Rosa. Btw, I love the Buoy Base Galaxy background music pick

I was actually a rosealina and Luma main in smash 4 and still do abit now in ultimate. I love using puppet characters and I like rosalina abit more then ice climbers. I judt find her abit more situational with Luma then something like ice climbers who aren't situational most of the time.

She was also a hard counter to Ness in 4, don't know if that matchup still holds up in Ultimate but given that Ness has a "why everyone plays" video now it's still worth noting. Also anyone who's had experience playing high-level RTS games might have an easier time with her compared to people who only play fighting games, as they already had to stretch the multitasking part of their brains to where it's not really a factor for them anymore.

Dual main Rosa and Aegis. She covers the odd/hard matchups for Aegis like diddy very well.

Me just looking at the title: " *And i took that personally* "

Good video as always, I'd only argue Rosa doesn't really do well against GnW. Maister not knowing the MU going against Dabuz may tell a different story but the reality is that GnW plays a lot like a swordfighter in the MU with the added benefit of having really good oos and frame data to consistently beat Rosa up close. I'm not saying that MU is free, it's probably like even or so, but yeah she's far from being a GnW counter

as a Rosa main, I agree with this video.

I wouldn't call Ice Climbers a puppet character in terms of game design, but in how they play I would definitely consider them puppet characters. One of the defining characteristics of puppet characters is that they have strong set-ups that utilise overlapping and alternating attacks between the "master" and "puppet". Ice Climbers can only do this when desynched, but desynch is not intentional design. Another characteristic that is usually present in puppet characters but I wouldn't consider necessary is that the puppet and master have different attacks. Both Ice Climbers have an identical moveset, but some people consider different movesets to be necessary in a puppet character.

Imo, I think part of Marth's issue is that everyone wants to play him like smash 4 and Brawl Marth. Contrary to common belief, only going for tippers is a bad idea. Forget "consistency". The actual tippers themselves at mid percents can launch opponents far enough that you don't get a proper frame trap. And for getting tippers, he has plenty of confirms for that, so it isn't all that necessary to go for tippers raw. Yet everyone wants to play him while only going for tippers. The sours apart from smash sours are actually very good for advantage and allow you to get more damage out of advantage. In short, master sour frame traps, and master sour-tipper confirms and he's really good.

Rosalina: Yeah I agree, its kind've the Olimar effect, not only do you have to know what order the pikmin come in, you have to also consider which pikmin is good for which match-up. The best ones being purple, blue and white. Rosalina is different obviously, but point is this game has a billion characters already so adding more because your character has a lot to keep in mind is pretty hard. Another small factor, but important thing on why someone may not want to play with her is her character design, people from the outside who play other fighting games or just got into smash, much like how those people find mario characters to be corny looking in general may also find her to be "corny" too cause if you've seen other puppet characters in other games they are generically a puppet character and look "cool". Granted thats not everyone and those people are really justified anyways, but they exist so its a point to consider cause competitive gaming is already stigmitized as it is, but tacked on to that game being this cartoony, or animated adds that extra layer of weird stigma that people get from playing the game and this character. From gameplay I agree too that without luma she crumbles because her as character alone is awful and idk if thats common in puppet characters, but its true for her. P.S. I don't agree that ultimate is not as precise as melee, rather just in different ways so yeah.

i think a video on why so many people play Rob would be good.

At this point, you should definitely make a video on "Why know one plays Corrin." As a Corrin main, Im interested to hear your viewpoints on them

My second time playing her I beat my brother with his main (link) and he isn’t a noob. I found out that I play well with her while doing random

Love Rosa as a character but yeah I really suck at playing her. I really can't wrap my head around controlling Luma so she always just feels really underpowered

7:51 Rosa a mechanically easy character to play. Lmao

Can’t wait to see the Lucas video!

Rosa has a shit ton of tech too

Can you do one on duck hunt? I love playing him but I see almost no representation for him anywhere!

Can u do a video like this on Wolf? Ive mained him for years but I barely see him in Tournaments nowadays

At this rate there will be a why no one plays for every single fighter

I played 3 very very good rosalinas so I say this character is not dead.

Rosa was so insane in Smash 4. I miss those days. The main reason I don’t play her in Ultimate is because of the comparison. That’s also why I can never play Zero Suit in this game it just makes me miss the Smash 4 version.

Yeah okay that’s great and all but that instant 180 headshot was ridiculous, wow.

Me a Rosalina main:

I won't try out Rosa because of her ariels, combos, and movement. You're making great videos. What about a video about Ice Climbers I watched Wadi play them recentley and I like seeing more be made about them.

Would love to see one on Villager next!

Maybe I just suck at this game but I have so much trouble against Rosa. I think in the right hands she's a force to be reckoned with against anyone who just doesn't know that matchup or the game as intimately as to players

I've seen a few groups claiming that multi tasking is impossible. We have to address one thing at a time and multi tasking is really just rapid switching between multiple trains of thought.

Hey! Do you think you could make a video on why no one plays Lucas?

I think Duck Hunt almost has a similar puppet master problem with the can

Roy and Chrom are indeed unfavourable matchups for Rosa but the worst are usually said to be Aegis or Belmont

i love rosa im a main for 2 factors: Nostalgia and gameplay

Dabus might be dabus, but he is also the man

Lol I've already had 3 mains covered in this series.

6:21 "i'm not trying to imply that gamers are stupid..." reminds me of the story about the employee pre-release tournament for the magic the gathering expansion "time spiral". it was for employees... so people who made it their JOB to be really really good at understanding the game... and people who were so good at tournament play, that they caught the company's eye, and they offered jobs to them... and something like half of them didn't even finish making their decks... less than 25% finished the first round of the tournament and less than 10% played the second round. the format was so complex that it was basically BRAIN MELTING some of the smartest people in the community. a lot of people mistake complexity for depth. but massive situational complexity is not the fun part of competitive (or casual) play. what you actually want is strategic depth, not confusion as to what's happening.

So does this mean I can download more RAM if I start playing Rosa?

I think next you should do bowser jr. next. He is probably one of if not the most un played character in the game. He may be low tier but I've picked him up and he is really fun. Would love to see why you think nobody plays Bowser Jr. and would like to so more of him played in tourneys and normal play.

It's not big but I love how you compare her to her smash 4 iteration

I wish Luma could respawn from falling offstage with enough HP

If there is only one Rosa main, I’m am that one. If there are no Rosa mains, I’m dead.