Let me refresh your memory real quick. Remember this? From this post?
It’s wrong. Well, it’s kinda wrong. The concept is right, but I drew it too low, because I forgot to include a pretty important variable. Two variables, actually, and it’s kind of a shame that I forgot to include them in my initial analysis.
The Hero of Time
In my own testing, I was under the impression that Link wasn’t much better than any other mid-level amiibo. Although I had only trained a dozen amiibo (and still haven’t trained any more than those dozen) it seemed to me that Link, Mii Swordfighter and Yoshi were mid-tier. As it turns out, my expectations were too high.
Link is undoubtedly the best amiibo in vanilla play, save for Olimar until his glitch is patched. While he’s not unbeatable in any sense, he does win most tournaments that he’s in. Heck, I submitted a half-trained Link amiibo who just hit level 50 to ASMR #1 and he won my tournament! The prize still went to the runner-up, though.
Link’s best KO move, which I also believe to be a natural tendency for him, is his up smash. It does very large damage, KOs vertically which makes DI difficult, comes out quickly and covers a wide area. The fact that it reaches so high means that the conceptual green area is much smaller in matchups where Link is concerned. The bottom of the green area basically reaches to just above the top of Link’s up smash.
Final Destination has stupid blastzones
Mew2King has actually suggested putting FD as a counterpick in mainstream competitive play for its unusual blastzones. Final Destination has somewhat low blastzones, which isn’t much of an issue for most casual players because the stage is also set pretty low. However, getting hit vertically while already in the air is significantly more dangerous because of the low blastzones. This has the effect of lowering the top of the green area and replacing it with red, because going too high means you’re that much closer to the blastzone.
If you go too high, you can get hit from below with an aerial and easily KO’d. If you go too low, you’re in danger of Link’s up smash. One is a permanent factor that I should’ve taken into account when writing the original post, and the second detail hinges on if you’re fighting Link or not.
I’ve shelved exploring the heatmaps of Battlefield and Smashville for a while, because there’s just so much to explore I don’t know where to start! Tournaments need to be started, replays need to be processed, research and training needs to be done… there’s a lot. They will come at some point.
