I feel like Roshi would be the better choice as he can scale up for the whole fight, is immune and the only thing that you'd need for him are ninjas who could get you up to a 30hit combo.

Ay the 3rd needs chakra to scale up so it's limited and he can be immobilized/ignited/poisoned and so on.

These are Roshi and Ay's stats.

As you can see, roshi has better offensive scalings than Ay, who has better HP stat. They are 2 really different ninjas.

Most of Roshi's damage comes from his 30 combo chase, so if you want to use him fully you need to have a way to proc it. He is immune to CC but at the same time he is vulnerable to burst damage (like lightning blitz) since he isn't a "proper" tank. You need a team that could keep him alive enough to scale into a real monster.

Ay instead is a massive tank who becomes quite ineffective if debuffed. He could oneshot one line of enemies with his mystery turn 2... but if paralyzed he'll lose all of his utility (most teams works around proc'ing his 2 high damage/paralyze chases + his immobile chase). Also his scaling could be boosted almost to the max thanks to CF's 4th mystery, but at the same time depleted by chakra stealing.

Which one is better depends on your playstyle and, above else, by the ninja you own.

To use efficiently ay you need to be midnight blade, while crimson fist can still let you use him better than other mains won't give him what he needs to shine.

On the other hand the only lineup that let you use efficiently the 30 chase of roshi with earth main requires dbp hidan and king of hell, two requirements quite hard to meet for a f2p.

So you can try or the full shield immortal lineup with gakido/bee sst and gaara kk (or hashirama if you get lucky in dropping him from a pack) that can't care less about the 30 chase or the less optimal solution for the 30 chase with yagura and bee sst or utakata.

If you want to stay cf, anyways, roshi is better since your shields will let him survive and stack up defense and ninjutsu, that's the real op passive he owns. The 30 chase is not that important since as cf you put him in front row and you spread ignition by letting him be hit.

So in other words, you either go "full aoe" and forget about him getting killed with blitz teams in top of it requiring some p2w ninjas/summons, or play more "scaling tortoise" style and forget about his 30 chase, which comes out to not exploiting him fully in both cases...

In the other hand, I can understand why most recommendations goes towards Roshi, meanly because we still don't have Ay 3rd treasure for more people to give a more "based on experience" opinion, btw @Shryke how comes ay with 2781 life growth still have nearly same hp as roshi with only 1898 life growth (both at ~12k HP) i can't seem to understand how those "stats" growth works, only explanation i can think of is HP mood for roshi and something else for ay.

Yes, roshi is mooded in hp for better survivability and ay in atk, to maximize his turn 2 burst (around 21 k damage if i crit).

In the end, ay could be more f2p friendly since his dream team comes straight out of his treasure.

Roshi instead is more flexible, but at the same time requires more resources to build a team around him.

Roshi dies to 99% of lightning teams round 1 if you put him in the front especially to lightning armor blitz teams, Roshi also dies to a Round 1 high damage combo (basically chases that are high damage like jiraiya lion mane or garras sand coffin), ay 3rd on the other hand does not need to be damaged to scale and he can actually scale to 80% more damage on round 1 if you use samui with him plus he is a ''healer killer'' ninja especially those mabui 1010 teams will disappear real quick once we get cloud treasure. However as good as he is I am still going to skip cloud because I wan't either kurama naruto or Madara from gnw treasure that's why I am saving all my scrolls.

21k damage with roshi?, maybe against a player with 20k less bp because No matter what if you aren't using atleast 2 healers with your roshi he will die round 1-2. I don't think roshi scales that high if bp difference is similar roshi takes more damage compared to his ninjutsu gains. also if you are talking about ay 3rd then my bad otherwise roshi can't do that much damage maybe combined with his chase but his mystery alone doesn't scale that high against a similar bp opponent.

He's referring to Ay lol. "Ay in atk, to maximize his round 2 burst (around 21k damage if he crits)"

Honestly, its about your playstyle preference. Also take into account where your Bp is at. Roshi is a monster if you help him survive. In order to do this though, you would have to be willing to 1 Most likely play Earth as a f2p(most people hate this main) and 2 have enough resources to put into him and have an extremely good set of gear. At around 50k or lower roshi will provide no benefit to you simply because he wont survive. I think 60k is where he's decent but still lacks survivability. You would also need a way to get his chase off to maximize his damage. He's just very and I mean VERY susceptible to burst damage. I'm at roughly 95k and my roshi will still die to lightning blitz against people 10k lower round 1. Usually happens if I'm not playing earth main though.

Ay on the 3rd on the other hand will most likely help you excel more pvp wise. Super armor, and depending on team composition can maximize his capabilities round 2. Like others have stated, he can one shot people or get close to it if you are needing a burst ninja. Some are arguing that you have to play lightning main but he works with earth much better in my opinion. Wind main works well with him as well but only after we get 4.0 which is probably when we'll be getting the treasure so it works out. Only downside to him is that he can be cc'd and debuffed due to lack of immunity. Providing feedback on him is a little difficult though simply because a lot of us don't have him yet. So our opinions stem from matches we've seen or gameplay of him on YouTube.

As far as end game meta's are concerned, Roshi is used more often without a doubt. Mostly see him paired with Kurama link on the CN side. Also we get more ninjas that are able to trigger Roshi's chase which becomes deadly round after round. The 3rd raikage is more difficult to place meta wise in CN simply because meta is always changing; as it should. I think you will still get a good use from the 3rd Rakage for a long time, I don't think I would consider him "end game though" although he's very close.

The fact that ay 3rd shine on "second round" in addition to the fact that his damage is from his "mystery" and the fact that he will be your "tank" as well in "position 1" means that no matter how they CC him on that first turn as long as you have a debuff cleaner ninja on your 3rd/4th position to clean him up and make him turn 2 ready there should be no worries about CC (supposed you have higher initiative on 1st move of course)

Roshi would be better for you, Raikage A is also good but needs his samui to really shine and we still dont know when we will get cloud treasure and buying him just like that is just dumb.

about that isn't ay 3rd also an edo-tensie ninja? if so then Nagato can remove ALL of his debuffs on each round (that's basically a free immunity skill for 3rd)

Ay 3rd is an "edo tensei", but again as a f2p i don't think i can afford Nagato unless i'm missing something, i guess gakido or jigokudo would be more attainable.

with full immortal shielding team no (you have bee or gakido shield, gaara shields and 50% shield from the passive + you grant him shields also with your mysteries if needed. On par power it's enough to let him stack enough defense to not die before your main shields him again with standard attack and/or mysteries).

gakido is free, is a drop from plot/elite instances completion.

the higher the basic ninjutsu is the higher the multiplier lets it become while the enemy resistance don't get boosted.

So a 7k ninjutsu roshi against a 5k enemy resistance will land WAY WAY less damage than a 15k ninjutsu roshi against a 12k enemy resistance (those are the usual values for the related power).

use Darui,samui and Ay 3rd

From my experience most ppl who use roshi use 50% of the ninja cause they cant make the 30combo necessar for his chase and if they do reach it they use ninja that are below average atm. Although Roshi is an end game ninja its good to get him as fast as you can. BUT Ay DEVOURS all the Roshis, ive used Ay with earth main and samui darui and i absolutely have destroyed all the roshi lineups ive been against. So for now i would recommend to get Ay cause that will give u the edge for now and make better progress than you would have done with roshi. I hope i helped in the slightest