Today we’re talking about the Genetic Pokémon, Mewtwo, whose appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is kind of strange. In the Pokémon series, Mewtwo weighs 269.0 lbs. In Smash Bros., Mewtwo is really light and easy to knock away. Despite being the only playable Legendary Pokémon in this game, Mewtwo is neither high-tier nor highly-represented. If you want to learn more about its metagame history, feel free to check out its corresponding wiki page. Otherwise, let’s jump right into today’s training!

Special thanks to Mythricity for contributing Mewtwo’s training information!

Spirits

Mewtwo is marginally stronger in the Spirits metagame, as it benefits from many potential bonus effects! Most of our tournaments are vanilla, though – which means no Spirits, stats, or effects – so if you don’t want to give your FP a Spirit team, that’s fine too. In that case, feel free to skip ahead to the next section to start training. In the meantime, here are some specific setups you could use on Mewtwo:

• Banned bonuses: Light and tall means Mewtwo’s best Spirit effect is Armor Knight. Its 1.8x defense boost is too good to pass up and helps Mewtwo take less damage and suffer less knockback. It does come with a movement speed penalty, but said penalty can be nullified if you occupy the third bonus slot with Move Speed ↑ or Trade-Off Ability ↑.
• Tournament-legal bonuses: Your other options include Physical Attack ↑, Air Defense ↑, Trade-Off Ability ↑, Critical-Health Stats ↑, Critical Healing & Metal, and Fire & Explosion Attack ↑. Wait, what? That’s right — Fire & Explosion Attack ↑ actually increases the power of Mewtwo’s darkness-imbued attacks.
• Raid Boss bonuses: All of the Spirit effects listed above work great on Raid Bosses. Plus, you can never go wrong with a setup like Physical Attack ↑, Move Speed ↑, and Landing Lag ↓. You could also use bonuses like Instadrop and Impact Run if you want your FP to be fun to watch!

Regarding stat distributions, you can either keep Mewtwo’s spread balanced (2100 / 2100) or lean into more defense (1500 / 2700) to give it more cushioning against powerful attacks. Regardless of the build you decide to give to your FP, make sure its Spirit-type is Neutral. For more information on why that is, check out our full Spirits guide!

Competitive Training

When training Mewtwo, never run, taunt, or use charged smash attacks. If you’ve never raised a competitive FP before and are just hearing this for the first time, you might be confused — and rightfully so! In that case, our general guide will explain everything you need to know. Back to Mewtwo, then — its recovery is decent, so it can afford to go off-stage and edgeguard its opponents. Here are all the moves you’ll want to teach to your FP:

• Down tilt can combo into forward air, and this is a solid damage-racker at low percentages. It can also lead into up tilt, but you’ll want to focus on forward air as your go-to down tilt follow-up.
• Forward smash is Mewtwo’s most reliable grounded kill move, and should be used at close range regardless of how much damage your FP has taken. More infrequently, you can use a forward tilt in this instance as well. Even more infrequently, you can use Disable — remember, competitive FPs are trained to walk and stay grounded, so Disable actually has a decent chance of connecting. When your FP is stunned, follow up with an uncharged forward smash.
• Forward air and down air should be used off-stage. It might be tough to hit your FP as it recovers (since Mewtwo completely disappears for a moment when using its up special), but keep at it and you’ll eventually get the hang of it. Neutral air can be used to secure a safe landing.
• Mewtwo’s grab game is excellent! At low percentages, use down throw to combo into forward air. You can use either an up throw or back throw at higher percentages — whichever will KO sooner. Make sure you use lots of grabs during your training sessions!
• Use up smash and up air to catch your FP’s landings. Up smash, in particular, is quite strong — plus, it looks really cool.

Never use Confusion, Shadow Ball, or Teleport. In the case of the latter, you should only be using it to recover: don’t use it to navigate the stage and confuse your opponent, as Mewtwo’s AI sometimes teleports directly off the ledge and to its death. Regarding Shadow Ball, the FP will unfortunately always use it to an extent, specifically after perfect shielding an attack. To help prevent this, try teaching your FP to use forward smash after a parry instead.

Raid Boss Training

We’re going to be mirror matching your Mewtwo amiibo all the way to Level 50! If you notice it acting strange or doing something you don’t like, don’t worry about it — you can iron out the FP’s flaws after its level maxes out. Mewtwo’s up special, Teleport, renders it completely intangible for a moment, so you’d think this means off-stage play is a go against human opponents. And to an extent, it is; however, Mewtwo’s AI often waits until it’s close to the bottom blast zone and then uses Teleport, so a human opponent could potentially wait for that moment and close in to KO with a meteor smash. Overall, edgeguarding is risky, so whether or not you want to take that risk is up to you. Here’s a list that includes every move worth focusing on:

• Down tilt combos into a forward air or up tilt, and should be used often against your FP when it hasn’t taken much damage. Forward tilt, up tilt, and neutral attack are also solid choices, and should all be rotated at close range.
• Mewtwo’s grabs are important! At low percentages, use a down throw to combo into a forward air or up tilt. At high percentages, use an up throw or back throw instead.
• Forward air and back air are good for spacing, both on-stage and off. If you do decide to edgeguard off-stage, forward air works great for that purpose! Neutral air can be used to land, and up air, up tilt, and up smash can all be used for juggling.
• More rarely, you can use forward smash to KO. Just keep its start-up lag in mind, and only use the attack when you’re sure it will connect.

So to review, you can use jab, grabs, forward tilt, up tilt, down tilt, forward air, back air, neutral air, up air, up smash, and forward smash. The section above looks short, but that’s actually a lot of moves! Unfortunately, you will want to avoid using special moves; Mewtwo’s AI likes charging Shadow Ball out of a parry (yuck), Confusion is hard-coded, it occasionally self-destructs while using grounded Teleports, and Disable will almost never connect against a human player.

Wrap-Up

Thanks so much for reading! If there’s anything you need help with after your training is complete, you’re welcome to join our Discord community and ask a question anytime. You can leave a comment below instead if you like! And if you’re interested in learning how to enter one of our online tournaments, check out our guide on entering tournaments. Finally, if you like what you read today, we’ve also got a Patreon and a donation box to help keep the site running! Until next time — happy training!

If you would like to read more amiibo training guides, please follow this link.

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