Garcia and Final Atomic Buster (and Sirlin and I, a little bit) have discussed this matchup a lot.
It feels really bad for Rook, but is probably more even than it feels.
Sirlin says he very very rarely loses to Geiger as any character, and Garcia says he beats nearly everyone he fights when playing Geiger.
So I really want challenge matches to happen, so we can see who is right!
As for my personal take on the matchup, Geiger is definitely at an advantage. Spirals, Gears and air kicks all keep Rook out very well. So I realised that Rook’s ideal range is not actually what you might think.
If Rook is standing about two body lengths away from Geiger, that’s a bad range. Because Geiger can throw Spirals that Rook can’t do anything about. If Rook tries to jump forward, Geiger can Flash Gear. If Rook tries to jump neutral (or forward) Geiger can j.A, which beats all of Rook’s air options.
The ideal range for Rook is slightly closer to half screen; the distance that Rock Armour travels. Because from that range, Geiger can’t punish Rook for jumping (without jumping forwards, but that means Geiger is coming to Rook??), and if Rook gets a knockdown with Thwomp, he can Rock Armour right over to Geiger’s poor, knocked down body. Then he starts up the blender.
Good luck, and happy Gear hunting!
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Not at all an expert (only played the two free weekends), but having played pretty exclusively as Rook during that time I can say it definitely feels hard as a matchup.
I really agree with your spacing analysis though @Bomber678; it’s all about being pretty far or really close. What seemed to work “best” for me is walking up to about that half-screen spot you mention, using Clap to stop gears reactively, and then trying to bait a bad read (jump in + block when expecting Flash Gear, or thwomp) to get right up on Geiger, or B through a gear to get to him. If he supers out, the next approach is the window to rinse, repeat, and get on him.
Not saying it was easy or foolproof (I lost a lot ^_^) but that was definitely the best success I had.
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Do be careful about using lariat too close to Geiger. It’s unsafe and can be punished by flash gear.
It’s good sometimes though, because of altering your jump arc and going through projectiles.
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At a certain point, lariat becomes a “use only when absolutely necessary” or to fake out your opponent. It’s great going up into an opponent or air to air clash if you get it out fast enough (except for grave jB)
Lariat is really bad coming down because though it dodges projectiles, it has long landing lag and has exposed hurtboxes on his legs. This gets rook blown up by Geiger jA, Jaina fA, and Grave nA
Clapping is the most useful against Geiger since gears are relatively slow (and pretty useless against grave’s fast fireballs)
Careful about getting too predictable with clapping though since you can get backhanded if you’re close enough. The alternative is to just jump over, but jA is really good against that. It’s a pretty straight guessing game at that neutral point. If you can jC after jumping a gear, that will close the distance but it’s a freaking scary match up
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