The 3 Amiibo That Disappoint Me in the Current Meta

by Doc – Owner, Founder, Principal Skinner

If you look at the amiibo tier list, you’ll notice that heavier amiibo and harder-hitting amiibo tend to do better in the meta. If an amiibo is light but it gets kills fast, it does well. If it’s heavy and gets kills slowly, it does well. If it’s both heavy and gets kills fast, it’s Bowser.

However, there’s some exceptions to this trend. These are the 3 most disappointing amiibo in the current meta.

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Yoshi amiibo

I recently trained a Yoshi amiibo for the purposes of a video, and used the Yoshi training guide that I linked to above. Before I trained him, I was a bit surprised at Yoshi’s poor position on the tier list – while I hadn’t trained one recently, I figured that he’d be reasonably high considering that he’s a bit heavier than average, has reasonably good KO power in his smash attacks and aerials, and has a nearly-ungimpable recovery so long as he doesn’t attack in the middle of it.

I was very disappointed upon actually training him. While I think there’s hope for Yoshi, it’s pretty clear that his current AI does him absolutely no favors. He’s prone to Down air spam regardless of how he’s trained, and his recovery AI issues are pretty crippling. The AI has a tendency to randomly double-jump on stage, leaving him very vulnerable.

Yoshi has a great moveset, one that would fit much better on a smarter amiibo. It’s a shame he’s so underperformed.

R.O.B. amiibo

ROB is such an under-represented amiibo that we’re not even able to get a training guide for it yet because there’s no experts. Every attempt at training a good ROB results in miserable failure, especially compared to his moveset. ROB is a middle-heavyweight, heavier than Yoshi, who has great KO moves both in the air and on the ground. His Arm Rotor Side special move is the spitting image of many high-level moves in the amiibo meta. It’s a multihit, damage-building KO move that can last for a long time, and be used to kill opponents by dragging them offstage for the kill.

He can’t use it very well.

His recovery is stellar, being able to recover from nearly anywhere in the blast zones thanks to having a large fuel supply to recover. The AI makes maximum use of its fuel by repeatedly spamming the B button when recovering, leading to an unusual visual effect.

He recovers so slowly that he’s easily gimpable by nearly anything.

His Neutral Special Robo Beam is perfect for sniping offstage opponents, and becomes a KO move for light opponents when he’s let it charge enough.

He doesn’t use it how you’d expect.

ROB is heavy and could easily kill opponents with Up air, Back air, Neutral air, or any of his smash attacks. Some of them are multihits, some of them are excellent vertical killers, and some of them are incredibly useful offstage.

But they’re so slow that they always get avoided.

This massive fuckup of ROB’s AI and moveset data has all combined to make ROB the worst amiibo in the game, as of February 2021. It appears, given the years of attempts made on him, that there’s just no hope for ROB as he is today.

Captain Falcon amiibo

If you were ignorant of amiibo AI and only knew that KO power typically made amiibo better, you’d assume that Captain Falcon would be more or less A tier. He’s definitely not Bowser-level, but the sheer number of killable moves that Captain Falcon has would put him pretty high up on a theoretical tier list, no? He’s got Knee, Falcon Punch, Falcon Kick, Down air, Back air, and Smash attacks. Those can all kill relatively well when used in appropriate situations (you wouldn’t use Back air onstage, for example). He’s not lacking for kill power.

Then, when you take the unique advantages that a move like Falcon Kick has over amiibo opponents – the inability to avoid it in many situations – you’d think that Captain Falcon should be a shining example of a high-tier amiibo. KO power that’s mostly unavoidable and with a kill move for every situation, why shouldn’t he be a high tier?

Currently on the amiibo tier list he’s in the top of B+ tier – and that’s not bad. He deserves that spot, given his results thus far. Trainers like fammydamammy have made significant progress with the amiibo, so it’s not as if he hasn’t come a long way already.

But I think there can be more. Captain Falcon’s got all the moves available for a dominating amiibo – so we should show the meta his moves.