The following is an archived post from the Amiibo Dojo. It has been uploaded to the Exion Vault for referential purposes and retains its original publication date; some of the post’s links may not function currently or exist at all.
I’ve been receiving a lot of emails lately from you guys, and the #1 question is: “Why do you teach your amiibo defense?” I get this question a lot, actually. So much, in fact, that I decided to write up a full post about it. In today’s post, I’m going to be explaining why I think defense is the best way to train an amiibo.
Before we begin, I can’t talk about defense without talking about Amiibo Trainer. They were the first to introduce me to the concept of defense. This was back when I trained amiibo without equipment and to use as much aerials as possible – and this site helped me realize that all of that was dead wrong. We even have an article from them that talks about defensive practices you can use on your amiibo, which you can check out here (note: link defunct).
Now then, I’m going to talk about four main reasons why I believe defense is the most important aspect of training your amiibo. Let’s get started.
- Defense is the most consistent playstyle.
This is a big one. As a playstyle, defense is the one that will get you wins most consistently. Just by blocking, a defensively-trained amiibo puts itself in a position to punish an opponent. That’s huge, because it means that after shielding an attack, their foe is usually left vulnerable.
- You don’t need to be good at the game in order to teach defense.
This is a big one too. If you want to train an aggressive amiibo? You need to be good at its character and be able to land every move in their arsenal. And when training’s all said and done, it won’t even be that good afterwards. You don’t need to be good at the game in order to teach your amiibo defense. All you need to be able to do is press the shield button.
- With defense, any character can become a champion.
This is also a big one…you know what? Every reason here is a “big one”. I’ll stop saying that now. So basically, with defense, every amiibo character can become a champion. While aggressive amiibo need to be able to use all of their moves effectively. defensive amiibo only need to block and counterattack. This is important, because it allows amiibo like Pac-Man (who cannot use their Bonus Fruits or Hydrant effectively) to succeed when they would fail miserably when trained aggressively.
- Defense almost always beats aggressiveness.
Now, despite both Amiibo Trainer and me pushing defense as the most important part of training an amiibo, a lot of people still train their amiibo to be aggressive, which leads to their inevitable downfall. As a matter of fact, in a tournament I entered in January, just about all of my Ness’ opponents were aggressive in some way, shape, or form. Ness was able to block and dodge their attacks with impunity and then respond with a counterattack – this ultimately led to his victory.
