What Spirits Should I put on my amiibo?

Here’s the five toughest spirits to beat on amiibo, and then some highly valuable information for new amiibo trainers looking to create the most optimal amiibo:

1. Armor Knight – only obtainable from the Halberd support spirit
2. Super Armor – only obtainable from the Gold Mario support spirit
3. Slow Super Armor – obtainable from a handful of spirits
4. Great Autoheal – only obtainable from Celebi support spirit
5. Autoheal – obtainable from a handful of spirits

1. Armor Knight is basically a heavy-ifier effect for your amiibo that provides a damage boost. With Armor Knight, you’ll take less knockback and damage, and deal more damage.
2. Super Armor is similar to Armor Knight, but you take even less knockback. However, you have no damage boost.
3. Slow Super Armor is Super Armor… but your amiibo moves slower. Betcha didn’t see that coming.
4. Great Autoheal heals your amiibo at a rate of 5% every 3 seconds.
5. Autoheal heals your amiibo at a rate of 2% every 3 seconds.

You should also reference our Spirits tier list to see what will be most beneficial for your amiibo.

You’ll find that those five spirits are usually banned in amiibo tournaments, and for good reason – they’re insanely broken, and all of them must be banned. If one of them isn’t banned, then that one quickly becomes the most viable option for competitors. An amiibo with a Big Five spirit almost always beats an amiibo without one. Nintendo really loves competitive amiibo.

So What Else Can I Put On?

Instadrop is a fan favorite, and it’s almost as good as the Big Five. While Instadrop is only the optimal loadout for a few amiibo (Luigi, Jigglypuff, Falco stand out) it’s a frighteningly good option when it’s a good option. Most amiibo can use the Instadrop attack into a frame-perfect followup, which is the reason that Jigglypuff is bottom tier on the vanilla amiibo tier list but is generally considered to be much higher on a spirits tier list. Instadrop alone is most of the reason for variance between the vanilla metagame and spirits metagame.

The other generally useful non-Big Five effect is Trade-Off Ability. TOA is pretty straightforward – you start with 30% damage and you’re faster, stronger and harder to knock back. If an amiibo isn’t running Instadrop in a tournament, it’s probably running TOA.

If you plan on having very short matches with one stock or low stamina, then Giant is a decent option. It only lasts for 8 seconds, so don’t expect that it’ll make a major difference in the match.

Critical Super Giant makes for an interesting raid boss, if you’re into that sort of thing. I recommend using it on stock instead of stamina, as it’ll make the battle into a two-stage fight that gets significantly harder in the second stage. It’s the most interesting Critical-Health effect of the bunch.