The Beginner’s Guide to Training the Incineroar amiibo in Smash Ultimate

By Spike, Regular Contributor

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Hello, as usual, readers! I’m Spike, a trainer in the amiibo competitive scene with over 30 wins at the time of writing, and one of the writers here at Amiibo Doctor. I’m here today to teach you how to train the Incineroar amiibo.

As far as credentials go, I am the guy who trained Endeavor. If you aren’t aware, Endeavor is an Incineroar amiibo that sat in the top three slots of the worldwide competitive amiibo ranking (which contains thousands of amiibo) for several months. He was kept out of the top spot only by Super NES, widely regarded as the best Ness of all time, and Kit Flair, a fellow Incineroar that may have been the winningest Incineroar of all time.

Endeavor was pretty unique among Incineroar amiibo. He was the first Incineroar to really be trained for the Incineroar meta, in which Incineroar and its counters were pretty much the entire meta. Incineroar, Ridley, Mii Gunner, Ness, and the occasional King K Rool wound up being the entire meta, and most of the Incineroars were simple- spam side special, down smash at ledge. Good game.

Yup, Incineroar is so strong the majority of them used only two or three moves and still did well. He’s been banned from the majority of tournaments, and he dominates the tournaments he’s allowed in, as a YouTuber or two found out the hard way.

Anyways, I’m rambling. Point is, Endeavor was good. Really good. He wasn’t only good, he was something other than side special and Down Smash spam, which had the effect of evening out some of his matchups. Counters such as Ridley and Mii Gunner went from unfavorable to even, and due to that, Endeavor has a couple wins and more than enough Top 3’s to bury a sovereign nation- and today, I’m going to teach you how to train your own bracket demon.

So, fair warning- this method evens out matchups. That includes matchups that are autowins with the just side special/down smash method. It also makes the mirror a bad matchup, probably somewhere around 45-55 in the other Incineroar’s favor, so if that’s a worry to you (and, to be fair, Incineroar gets sent to most tournaments he’s allowed in in large numbers), just follow the “Easy Incineroar” section below. If you want to make a demon like I did, skip to “AI Flaws” and below.

Easy Incineroar

While on stage, use Incineroar’s side special, Alolan Whip. Spam it. This really should be the only move you use with this method, because amiibo can’t “see” Alolan Whip or other command grabs perfectly, making it easy to hit repeatedly with it. When the opponent is off stage, use forward smash at ledge.

Yeah, that’s it.

However, there’s a lot more that can be done with Incineroar, and it makes him even more terrifying. I mean, Mii Gunner can spam missiles and keep Incineroar from even touching her- but my method makes Mii Gunner an even matchup. So yeah… Incineroar is like eighteen levels of terrifying in the amiibo meta.

AI Issues

• None of these matter when training a competitive Incineroar
• Incineroar uses down special wrong, often mistiming it or using it when an opponent wouldn’t hit. This leaves him vulnerable.
• Off stage, Incineroar will go out and if he gets hit, well… his recovery sucks. If he gets poked with a feather while off stage, he’s probably dead.

Overall Playstyle

My method deviates from the “traditional” Incineroar method by having more options than just ground game. Some trainers would disagree with that, but where is their top 3 ranked amiibo for months on end, hmm? Though Incineroar will still frequently use side special onstage, he has aerial options and will use a range of options to kill. The biggest innovation with Endeavor was the addition of up air chains, which allowed him to deal with Ridley much more easily. Ridley was one of the most popular Incineroar counters during the Incineroar meta, so making the matchup even or possibly Incineroar favored was a big deal.

How To Train the Incineroar Amiibo

As always, only mirror match when learning’s on, or stuff can get weird fast. As far as Spirits go, most competitive amiibo tournaments are vanilla (no Spirits), but if you want to add Spirits, do it before you start training. When you add Spirits, the amiibo basically gets randomized- there’s a value to each move that determines how often they use it, and adding Spirits changes the values.

As with most amiibo, Incineroar’s optimal stats are 2100/2100. In competitive amiibo tournaments with Spirits, the “Big Five” (Armor Knight, Autoheal, Great Autoheal, Super Armor, and Slow Super Armor) are usually banned on account of being completely overpowered, but if they aren’t (or you’re training this amiibo as a raid boss), Armor Knight with Speed Up is the best spread for Incineroar. If the Big Five are banned, use some mixture of Physical Attack Up, Trade-Off Ability, and Side Special Up. You could try something like Floaty Jumps to negate his terrible recovery, but really, he’s a bruiser. Lean on that a bit.

Onstage, you should be looking to use Alolan Whip 80-90% of the time. Yes, I know the big deal with my method is more than Alolan Whip, but Alolan Whip is still the best move in competitive amiibo. One of my first articles, entitled “More Than Side B: Why You Trained Incineroar Wrong”, puts it this way- “The move deals decent damage if perfectly timed, the recoil is negated with good timing, and the knockback can be incredible, with the move even killing at higher percentages. In amiibo, Incineroar always times the move perfectly. In addition, other amiibo have issues getting out of the way, leading to Incineroar racking up the damage to the point of KO very early. As icing on the cake, Incineroar can be taught to use down smash at the edge, so recovering amiibo can take more damage- or be KO’ed- just trying to recover.”

So, as far as other onstage options go, forward throw… just kind of exists. I don’t like it. It’s clunky, it’s relatively weak, and it requires Incineroar getting close enough to actually grab the opponent. That’s not great.

Endeavor also uses down smash at ledge, like most well-trained Incineroars, because it’s a big hitbox that sticks for a bit and hits like a truck… a truck bellyflopping out of the sky after a high speed collision with a cement mixer on the freeway.

No, I didn’t write this article solely to trigger old PTSD, why do you ask?

So, you stick with Alolan Whip most of the time, but you need to kill. Alolan Whip kills relatively early, but why not kill even earlier?

Forward smash and forward tilt are both strong. When training your amiibo, use them at high percentages to kill. If training on Battlefield, also mix in up smash. Up smash makes Battlefield, usually a bad stage for Incineroar, a better option by leaps and bounds, as well as other platform stages in noncompetitive rulesets. It also kills fairly early, and, most importantly, even when it doesn’t kill it gets the opponent airborne. This is a big deal, because…

Up air chains are amazing. Beat them into your Incineroar whenever they’re above you. I credit up air chains with most of Endeavor’s success.

Flay me alive for mentioning a move that’s also in the AI flaws section, but… Incineroar’s down special is kind of awesome when it lands. In the hours I trained Endeavor, I used it something like half a dozen times at most.

Hey, he uses it correctly every hundred matches or so. If you want to try playing with that level of nitroglycerin, I’m not stopping you.

Lastly, and most weirdly- if you’re in the air, land with down air instead of neutral air. It’s a bit more difficult for amiibo to respond to, and that makes the Mii Gunner matchup way better once Incineroar stops running into missiles.

In Conclusion

Incineroar is a popular, usually banned, probably-the-best amiibo. There’s more to him than “ha just side b hahahaha”, so give this style a shot.

Until next time, best wishes and good luck

-Spike