Dark Samus is – as you might have guessed – Samus’ Echo Fighter! They’re virtually identical, save for one key difference: Dark Samus is much cooler. Aside from different animations, victory screens, and a slight difference in posture, the two play exactly the same as each other. Keeping in line with this pattern, our Samus and Dark Samus guides are also the same as each other! We do have a wiki page available for Dark Samus if you’d like to give it a read before you continue. Otherwise, let’s jump right into today’s training!

Special thanks to LittleFang for contributing Dark Samus’ training information!

Spirits

If you’re looking to equip your Dark Samus amiibo with a Spirit team, you should do so as soon as possible — preferably, before you begin its training routine. When a Figure Player inherits a Spirit, its personality and move priorities are changed around — and the effect differs depending on the Spirit you give it. For more information, check out our full Spirits guide! In the meantime, here are some Dark Samus-specific builds you can try out:

• Banned bonuses: Dark Samus is a heavyweight fighter, so she pairs great with both Super Armor and Armor Knight. If you do decide to use Armor Knight, fill the empty slot with either Move Speed ↑ or Trade-Off Ability ↑.
• Tournament-legal bonuses: There are several other Spirit effects you could use instead of the ones above! These include Electric Attack ↑, Physical Attack ↑, Trade-Off Ability ↑, Move Speed ↑, and Air Defense ↑. Feel free to pick three of these to use on your FP’s Spirit team.
• Raid Boss bonuses: We’ll discuss this in a later section, but Dark Samus is a terrible Raid Boss, but if you’re determined to train a decent one, try giving it Great Autoheal. It’ll at least recover its health every few seconds, which will help increase its longevity. Alternatively, a setup including Move Speed ↑ and Physical Attack ↑ works too.

Dark Samus’ stats can be whatever you like, but if you’re looking for specific recommendations, try either a balanced spread (2100 / 2100) or an offensive one (2500 / 1700). As always, make sure the FP’s Spirit-type is Neutral (such that the icon displayed at the top-right corner of the amiibo menu is gray, and not red or blue or green) before you start training it.

Competitive Training

Training a competitive Dark Samus amiibo is fairly straightforward. She can make use of a decent portion of her moveset, and it’s enough to ensure a spot in our tier list’s middle rankings. Keep running, dashing, taunting, and charged smash attacks to a minimum. As we’ll reiterate in a moment, Dark Samus can afford to go off-stage and edgeguard — but only against other FPs. Here’s a full list of attacks you should use during training:

• Down tilt deals decent damage, and should be used against opponents at low percentages. Down smash and forward smash can be used after perfect shielding one of your FP’s attacks — down smash is especially strong in this case.
• Up tilt, despite its somewhat limited range, is your main anti-air. Use it against your FP as it tries to land! Up smash can be mixed in as well, albeit more rarely due to its unreliable hitbox placement.
• Land with down air and edgeguard with neutral air. Forward air is alright off-stage too, but neutral air should take priority here.

Dark Samus’ AI cannot properly use its neutral special, Charge Shot. It likes firing several uncharged shots in a row, which don’t deal much damage and can’t KO. Fortunately, there’s a way to help prevent your FP from doing this: shield all of its uncharged projectiles and punish it with down tilt at close range. You should also keep your own Charge Shot charged to some extent at all times.

Raid Boss Training

There’s no sugar-coating this: Dark Samus is a bad Raid Boss. The AI often charges its neutral special, but fails to fire it; furthermore, it uses its Missiles too close to opponents, meaning they’re often able to perfect shield and retaliate immediately afterward. This leaves Dark Samus with a glaring lack of options; her close-up moves are rather weak, her grab is slow, and she can’t even go off-stage without leaving herself vulnerable to edgeguarding. You’d be better off training any other character, but if you want to give it a shot anyway, here are the attacks you’ll need to focus on:

• In a way, grabs are Dark Samus’ only hope at performing decently. Her down throw can combo into a dash attack at low percentages, and into a neutral or back aerial at medium percentages. Use these combos against your FP; if you grab it at high percentages, fling it off-stage with a forward or back throw.
• Neutral attack, forward tilt, and a tiny bit of down tilt can be used at close range. Yes, you read that right — we’re suggesting jab. That’s how desperate Dark Samus is for close-up options.
• Up smash and up tilt are your anti-airs. Try your best not to use up smash against grounded opponents; its hitboxes rarely actually land against them.
• Dash attack, forward smash, and down smash should exclusively be used to punish your FP when it whiffs an attack or tries to land.
• Neutral air and down air can secure a safe landing, while forward air and back air are decent air-to-air combat tools that can rack up damage in a pinch (or, in the case of the latter, KO at high percentages).

Don’t go off-stage, and don’t use special moves (except for Screw Attack to recover). As mentioned before, Dark Samus’ AI really can’t do anything right against human players, so all you can really do is load it up with Spirits, teach it the moves listed above, and hope it does alright. If you’d like to learn about fighters that make for better Raid Bosses, check out our guide list — and click on anybody whose name is not Samus or Dark Samus.

Wrap-Up

Thanks so much for reading all the way to the end! Or for scrolling all the way to the end — either way’s fine. If you have any questions you’d like to get answered (or if you want to share your frustration at Dark Samus’ lack of viability as a Raid Boss), feel free to join our Discord community! We’ve also got a guide on entering tournaments, and this will actually tell you how to save a copy of your FP’s training data to send it off to an online competition. We’ve also got a Patreon and a donation box if you liked what you read today! Until next time — happy training!

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

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