Stale-Move Negation
From SmashWiki, the Super Smash Bros. wiki
Stale-Move Negation refers to moves causing less damage as they are used repeatedly.
Masahiro Sakurai added stale-move negation to the Super Smash Bros. series in order to encourage players to try different attacks out and use characters to their fullest instead of using the same attack over and over again. When a character uses an attack too many times, the damage and knockback goes down until it becomes less than half its original power. This is something to remember in the Home-Run contest, as some combos will get weaker and weaker. Using different attacks will reset the damage of the spammed attack at about the same rate it was cut, while being KO'd resets all a character's moves (with the exception of SSB64 where the spammed attack(s) are still affected by stale-move negation).
In Super Smash Bros., stale-move negation affected both damage and knockback. Here, damage and knockback decrease to 75% of their original power and remain constant from that point on (given the attack power is 4% or higher). In Super Smash Bros. Melee, special attacks suffered both reduced damage and knockback, while all other moves only suffered reduced damage. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the effect affects both damage and knockback for all moves.
It's worth noting that the effect of Stale Move Negation is considerably stronger in Brawl than in Melee or in the original, a fact which a number of smashers have criticised.
In Super Smash Bros. Melee, there is an anti-bonus named "Stale Moves" and is worth -2000.
Testing to determine the stale-move negation effect in Brawl initially confused players, as the effect is not applied in Brawl's Training mode (the confusion stemming from the fact that is was applied in the training modes of SSB and SSBM). In fact it isn't applied in the Subspace Emissary, target test, Boss Battles, Multi-Man Modes, the Online Practice Stage and the Rest Station.
In Brawl, Stale-Move Negation is calculated with the aid of a queue of the last ten moves a character has connected with. When a move is used that's in the queue, its damage is decreased an amount based on both how often the move is in the queue and how recently the move has been used. If a move is used ten times in a row, it will have lost 55% of its power in total.
Moves that are counter-attacks or absorbers do not take the stale-move negation of the incoming attack into consideration.
[edit] Moves that Stale-Move Negation does not affect
For some reason, certain moves aren't affected by stale-move negation:
- All self-damage:
- A Judge number 1 always does 12% to Mr. Game and Watch (only in Brawl)
- A fully charged Flare Blade always does 10% to Roy
- A fully charged Eruption always does 10% to Ike
- A fully charged Jet Hammer always does 1% every second to King Dedede until you reach 150%
- Crashing into something while using Diddy Kong's Rocketbarrel Boost always does 5% to Diddy
- Donkey Kong's Cargo Throw always does 10% to him and his victim (only in Melee)
- Every electric attack does 1%-4% to Pichu
- Hoop damage
- Snake's Hand Grenade's explosion (always 12%-13%)
- Donkey Kong's Cargo Throw (always 6%) (only in Brawl)
- Donkey Kong's Forward Throw (always 8%) (only in Brawl)
- The Clawshot used in mid-air (always 4% first hit, 6% second hit if angled correctly)
- The Hookshot used in mid-air (always 4%)
- The Grapple Beam used in mid-air (always 4%, always 7% if tipped)
- Zero Suit Samus's Neutral Air. (always 10%)
- Luigi's Down Taunt (always 1%, in SSB and SSBM, always 2% in SSBB)
- Jigglypuff (SSBB)'s back air (always 10%)
In Brawl+ Stale Move Negation is non-existent. It was initially tried with lower levels than what is present in Brawl but in the end was removed completely. This meant that characters with limited kill options such as Sonic and Captain Olimar became better at landing KO's and that certain character's up-tilt moves, such as Kirby's (SSB) and Fox's (SSBM) could not be used repeatedly to rack up damage due to the decreasing knockback Stale-Move Negation causes.
