by Doc – Owner, Founder, Grandpa Worked for NASA When They Went to the Moon So This is Kinda Funny
Amiibo training is an ever-evolving hobby, and the newest trick in amiibo training methods proves that quite well. It has long been established that walking is the best movement pattern for an amiibo because they keep many subroutines available to them, resulting in an unpredictable and effective amiibo.
However, applying a certain movement tech to your amiibo seems to have even more impactful results. By manipulating either frame-perfect turnarounds or using a Tilt Stick and C-Stick combination trick, you can cause your character to turn around repeatedly without dashing. On its own, this is just a visual trick used to style on opponents in Elite Smash. With amiibo, it presents a new way to teach the amiibo playstyle information.
To learn how to do the Moonwalk, please watch this short video:
The Effects of the Moonwalk Method in the Meta
Generally speaking, amiibo that haven’t been researched as heavily seem to benefit significantly from Moonwalk Method. Recently, Hictor the Dragon’s (who discovered the method) Banjo-Kazooie amiibo has been tearing up the Amiibots scene, achieving a ranking of 35 after only 15 matches, when most other Banjo amiibo couldn’t cut that kind of ranking in their dreams, and another Banjo amiibo is climbing to that ranking using Moonwalk. My own Bayonetta represented a breakthrough in the Bayonetta amiibo, so much so that Moonwalk Method is now generally considered optimal for the Bayonetta amiibo because it properly spaces the amiibo. Several other trainers in the Amiibo Patients Discord server have reported significantly higher tournament placements than normal due to their amiibo being trained with the Moonwalk Method, but only for characters that haven’t received as much attention.
Thus far, Moonwalk Method has been a useful gap-filler for under-researched amiibo. Amiibo that get a lot more “love” from trainers tend to have more research and effort put into their movement patterns, and as a result make better use of their moveset. Byleth is a great example of this: when Byleth was first announced, I theorized that Byleth would be at her best when staying at a distance and using Areadbhar to keep the opponent at bay. Over a year later, “optimal” Byleth is getting pretty closed to being reached, and that’s almost exactly how she plays because I’m really good at predicting this sort of thing. Her movement patterns were experimented with significantly, and she’s been very heavily refined as a result.
Bayonetta, however, had never had such effort put into her. A few previous Bayonetta trainers noticed that her Forward Smash was particularly useful, but couldn’t get her to space it properly, and gave up rather quickly on her. Enter Moonwalk Method. Using the Moonwalk Method, I was able to produce a Bayonetta that spaces its Forward Smash very well, and performs so highly that she may be lifted out of D tier in the next amiibo tier list.
Because of the gap-filling nature of Moonwalk Method, I surmise that (as you see in the above video) my instruction to try it on low tiers first was reasonable. It’s raised the skill floor for many neglected amiibo of all tiers, but since low tiers are trained far less than high tiers, it affects low tiers the most.
What Happens Under the Hood
The Moonwalk Method has a very uneven set of effects. Overall, the Moonwalk Method seems to produce amiibo that space themselves more properly, and are still heavily aggressive when opportunities present themselves. This means that the Moonwalk Method acts as a buffer against many of the common trainer errors that new trainers make. Moonwalking effectively raises the feint values of the amiibo by turning your back to them repeatedly during training. By raising the feint values, the amiibo is more likely to take advantage of opportunities to be aggressive. It’s basically a shortcut to training aggressive amiibo, and most trainer errors consist of having unaggressive amiibo, so newer trainers will have an easier time training good amiibo.
Have you tried the Moonwalk Method? What did you find?
Amiibo Doctor 