Stale-move negation

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Stale-move negation (ワンパターン相殺, One-pattern offsetting), known as Repetition Effect in Super Smash Bros. 4 and Stale Moves in Ultimate, is a gameplay element in all games in the Super Smash Bros. series. It refers to how moves cause less damage and knockback as they are used multiple times in a row. The strength of a move increases back to its regular power as other moves are used. Starting in Melee, being KO'd resets the staleness of all of that player's moves. Moves not yet affected by stale-move negation are referred to as fresh.




Calculation in Smash 64[edit]




Stale Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Fresh
0.75x 0.82x 0.89x 0.96x 1.0x


General calculation from Melee onward[edit]



In addition to this, starting in Brawl, a move that does not appear in the queue at all gains a freshness bonus, dealing a slight bit of extra damage. As a result, attacks effectively never deal exactly their base damage - they will either be fresh and gain a bonus, or stale and take a penalty.

The following table lists how much a move becomes weakened for each position it appears in the queue.

Queue position 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Fresh
Reduction factor (Brawl) 0.1 0.09 0.08 0.07 0.06 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.02 1.05
Reduction factor (SSB4) 0.08 0.07594 0.06782 0.06028 0.05274 0.04462 0.03766 0.02954 0.022 1.05
Reduction factor (Ultimate) 0.09 0.08545 0.07635 0.0679 0.05945 0.05035 0.04255 0.03345 0.025 1.05

For example, say a move is in positions 1, 2, and 6 in the queue - it has been used two times in a row, and another time as the sixth-most recent move. In Melee, this corresponds to reductors of 0.09, 0.08, and 0.04, for a total reduction of 0.21. Therefore, if the move is used once more (and hits) without anything changing, it will deal 0.79x damage.

Using a mid-match character change (e.g. Transform or Pokémon Change) will reset the queue, except in "Ultimate", since all three of Pokémon Trainer's Pokémon share the same staleness queue.

Specifics in Melee[edit]





Specifics in Brawl[edit]





Specifics in SSB4[edit]

The freshness bonus from Brawl is retained, and damage calculation is altered to the point where a fully staled move will deal 0.5294x of its original damage, being higher than in Brawl but lower than in Melee. In addition, the knockback formula reduces the sum of reduction factors and freshness bonus to 0.3x of its calculated value when taking in the damage dealt, meaning that staleness is 70% less of a factor on knockback dealt. As a result, the damage dealt by KO moves will easily override the knockback loss to staleness outside of extreme cases, especially when taking the rage effect into consideration, and like in Melee, players do not need to actively concern themselves with preserving the usage of KO moves. This change also prevents the exploitation of staleness to chain a single low-knockback move well beyond normal.

In addition, staling one item will not affect another of the same item, and only the item that was actually used. This includes character-produced items such as Link's Bombs and Mega Man's Metal Blade, and as such single use items are essentially immune to staling, and since the usage of them will still enter the queue if they hit, characters that can produce items can effectively refresh their queue without having to stale other moves, when they hit another character or damageable stage element with their item.


Specifics in Ultimate[edit]

In Ultimate, moves now stale when they hit a shield; in previous games the queue remained unchanged upon hitting a shield. Moves that stale on shield have the reductor in their queue position reduced to 0.85x, meaning that hitting shields is 15% less punishing on a move's final damage reduction for that spot in the queue.[1]

In addition, the Ice Climbers behave differently in that Nana now affects the shared queue. Popo updates the queue when the freeze frames from his attack expire, while Nana reads the queue when her attack hits. As a result, if Nana hits during Popo's freeze frames, she will share the same staleness level; if she hits after the freeze frames are over, her move will be one level more stale. Oddly, Nana does not read the queue at all if Popo hits before she acts, which means her first neutral attack will always deal base damage unless she hits alone. This oddity does not occur for item swings.

Items went under another adjustment in Ultimate. Items no longer enter the stale-move negation queue, making items unable to stale their damage or refresh other moves. The exception to this rule is attacking with battering items like Beam Sword or Home-Run Bat, which do still count as "attacks" that are added to the stale queue as their own unique action. However, throwing a battering item does not affect the queue like any other item.

Otherwise, the staleness system is generally unchanged from SSB4, though slightly stronger reductors have increased maximum staleness to 0.4695x. In addition, there is now an option in Training Mode to toggle stale moves (as well as rage) on and off, as opposed to previous games, where no such option was present. Moves will enter the queue even if the option is disabled, but will still deal their base damage in this case.









Moves that stale-move negation does not affect[edit]



Recoil damage is not subject to staleness.


External links[edit]

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