It’s the first question everyone asks when they first start training their Figure Player, and it’s the one I get asked the most. Hopefully, this article will answer all your basic questions, and you can move on to more complex concepts.
Support Skills First, Always!
When it comes to first feeding your Figure Player, Support Spirits come first to set up your Skills just the way you want them. Actually utilizing one of your Skill slots cuts from your pool of available stat points, but as long as each Skill is worth more than around 6% in either Attack or Defense or both, it’s not a wasted slot. Most characters attack in just one or two ways, making Skills like Physical Attack ↑ or Weapon Attack ↑ safe to use one or two of before you start losing out on power; just one will give you a 10% boost to all relevant attacks, and two will give you an 18% boost. Stack your Skills smartly and you can stretch consistent damage much farther.
Other characters might attack a variety of ways, so low but universal multipliers may suit you better. On top of that, Defense-oriented Skills are somewhat rare, so having more points to invest in Defense can be valuable. Don’t be afraid to utilize a blank slot in your Skill set if you’re having trouble creating an otherwise effective set. 2.5% extra to all your damage and defenses can be valuable. Characters like Kirby or Palutena, whose attacks can be somewhat all over the place, come to mind.
Once you’ve got your Supports figured out, you can move on to Primaries and actually fill in your character’s stat spread.
Most Effective Overall: Balanced Stats
I won’t go to in-depth into numbers here, but I will let you know that according to both math and tournament results, balanced spreads will do the most consistent good work for you. The good news is, reaching those balanced numbers is easy, with a lot of ways to it. The fastest is through Level 99 Arceus.
At Level 99, Arceus’ stats lend themselves flawlessly to a Figure Player, bestowing you with perfectly balanced stats and a Neutral type with only a single Spirit feeding. That’s a one-and-done, and you can get right to training. Arceus can be found late in World of Light, or at random on the Spirit Board. It’s not an easy fight, but not so absurd as to be tilting.
Selectively Effective: Defense Oriented
While not as generally effective, Defense-heavy builds do have their place, especially when paired with (normally tournament-banned) Skills like Super Armor or Great Autoheal. -400/4600 Figure Players can be effective. Don’t let that negative number fool you, either; the game treats it the same as a 0, so it’s actually more effective than 0/4200 builds. In terms of specific characters, a Defense heavy build could help Lucario a lot, since Defense no longer lowers the effectiveness of Aura like it did in Smash 4. The only way to achieve those lopsided numbers is through the Absolutely Safe Capsule.
You can just plop one down onto your Figure Player and call it good, but it will very likely end up Shield-type as a result, and could lose matches to Grab-types that you perhaps should have won just thanks to participation in the triangle. Instead, I recommend feeding your Figure Player a few Neutrals first.
The Absolutely Safe Capsule is only available through the Summon sub-menu, and thus can be resource-intensive to obtain, since you’ll need a Mr. Saturn (themselves a summon of Specknose and Qbby) and six Shield-type cores.
Now That’s Comedy: Attack Oriented
Let me tell you a story. A Level 50 Ganondorf FP with 4600 Attack, Weapon Attack ↑, Hyper Smash Attacks, and Trade-Off Attack ↑ can do about 157% with a fully charged forward smash to an opponent with no defense investment. If that’s the kind of life you want to live, you need state-of-the-art weaponry. You need the Blast-o-Matic.
Now here’s where the bad news starts. The Blast-o-Matic is a true hassle to obtain, only purchasable one at a time at random from Sheldon’s shop, which restocks in real time – that means five minutes of actual waiting for another Blast-o-Matic to appear, and you’re going to need more than one to make this happen. Even after you go through all that, full Attack investment is the least viable on the sliding scale. But it scores major points in funny and intimidation factors.
But Most Importantly, Have Fun!
Don’t stress too hard over your stat distribution. If it’s not perfect, that’s fine. In truth, there’s only about an 18% difference between the ‘worst’ and ‘best’ stat totals. Squeezing every last drop of consistency out of your Figure Player only matters when it’s tournament time, or you’re a numbers weirdo like me.
Double-check your numbers to make sure they’re maxed out, and we can move on to actual training methodology.
Amiibo Doctor 