by Doc – Owner, Founder, B Tier Amiibo Trainer But U Tier In Your Heart
Doc Note: Typical Smash tier lists use an S+ or SS Tier to denote a placement higher than S. The amiibo meta opted for U Tier, to denote Universal Ban.
Two Saturdays ago I posted a video reviewing the latest amiibo tier list, giving my unfiltered thoughts. Of particular note in this tier list was the placement of Min Min in U Tier. That’s never been seen before, and probably won’t be again.
I later learned that this was just an organization of raw data, and hadn’t been properly organized according to a final tier list per the usual mathematical standards. In other words, it wasn’t the real thing, and Min Min probably won’t be U Tier in the final, official amiibo tier list for November 2022. Fair enough.
This did tickle my postulator quite a bit, though: what did it mean for the amiibo meta for Min Min to be in U Tier? That’s a placement that has always been Incineroar’s, and Incineroar’s alone. But is she on the same level as Incineroar? Does she deserve it?
Historically, only Incineroar has ever been potent enough to qualify for the Universal Ban tier. That’s because of his Alolan Whip, which, as we’ve covered many times, is an effectively unavoidable move by opponent amiibo. Optimally-trained Incineroars typically carry about a 99% win rate against non-Incineroar opponents, which is obviously astronomical compared even to the S Tiers. In sum, Incineroar wins because amiibo AI simply can’t handle him when he’s trained properly, and he’s easy to train properly.
Min Min isn’t that case at all. I won’t rehash the video for you, but Min Min is obviously not deserving of U Tier – she may not be deserving even of the #1 spot on S Tier, depending on your point of view. She was only placed in U Tier on the preliminary tier list because it was unanimous that she was S Tier, which automatically made her a U Tier amiibo under the tier list rules, at least until further refinement could occur.
So if being unanimously S Tier doesn’t make Min Min a U Tier amiibo, what would qualify an amiibo for U Tier?
Broken Among the Broken
Our only precedent for a U Tier amiibo is Incineroar, for the reasons I stated above. Even against the S Tier cast, Incineroar has an overall dominant matchup: in other words, he’s a broken amiibo among broken amiibo. Fair enough.
But if a second broken-among-broken amiibo showed up, would we put them in U Tier as well? Let’s say that Kazuya, who is inevitably going to be the best legal amiibo in the game until the end of time, is up for tier list discussion. Kazuya amiibo can…
- EWGF like nobody’s business
- Connect together all sorts of combos
- Initiate 0-death combos and execute them to the end (unless the amiibo escapes)
- Get a free KO after hitting 100%
…and many more things. He’s an absolute nightmare for anyone who likes the top of the amiibo meta the way it is. There’s a small number of opponents that can give him a hard time, but it’s guaranteed that Kazuya is going to be an S Tier amiibo. He’ll be broken.
He may even, after a lot of optimization and serious effort (and probably figuring out how to reliably activate the 0-death routine), reach something approximating 99% win rate. And then Kazuya would be U Tier. But only once he’s wiping the floor with darn near everyone should an amiibo be considered U Tier – because if you’re not wiping the floor with your S Tier opponents, you’re not broken enough to be U Tier.
Amiibo Doctor 