Bayonetta, Sheik, and Zero Suit Samus all have something in common: they’re not very good FPs. In the context of our amiibo tier list, these three fighters are very close to “bottom-of-the-barrel”, and unfortunately that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon. If you’d like to learn more about Zero Suit Samus’ metagame history before we continue, please refer to her corresponding wiki page. Otherwise, let’s jump right into today’s training!

Special thanks to forenmagra for contributing Zero Suit Samus’ training information!

Spirits

Do you intend to give your FP a Spirit team? If so, we’d recommend you do that before you start training. If your Zero Suit Samus amiibo is already Level 50, you’re welcome to give it a Spirit team anyway — you’ll just need to play some matches afterward to refresh its scrambled move priorities. For more information, check out our full Spirits guide. Now then, here are some Spirit builds that pair well with this fighter:

• Banned bonuses: As is the case with most FPs, Zero Suit Samus is strongest when equipped with Armor Knight plus Trade-Off Ability ↑. Super Armor and Great Autoheal could work too, but Armor Knight is going to be your best bet.
• Tournament-legal bonuses: Your options here include Physical Attack ↑, Foot Attack ↑, Air Defense ↑, and Critical-Health Stats ↑. Nothing too crazy, but take your pick of three and you should be all set. Don’t use Electric Attack ↑ or Energy-Shot Attack ↑, by the way; neither Spirit effect buffs enough moves to be worth the investment.
• Raid Boss bonuses: Going the Raid Boss route? No problem! In addition to each of the Support skills listed above, you can consider using Move Speed ↑ and Toss & Meteor somewhere on the FP’s Spirit team. Move Speed ↑ might seem redundant on a fighter as fast as Zero Suit Samus, but it makes her much more difficult for human players to contend with.

Stats are arguably the least important component of an FP’s Spirit build, so as long as yours has a spread at all, you’re good. That being said, the “best” setup is a balanced one (2100 / 2100), so shoot for those numbers if you like. Make sure the FP’s Spirit-type is Neutral before you start its training routine!

Competitive Training

Zero Suit Samus’ optimal playstyle involves lots of patience, lots of walking, and lots of perfect shielding. It’s best to teach your FP to stay on-stage at all times; this character’s recovery – despite including a tether and an up special – is a bit too unreliable to make that risk one worth taking. If these strategies sound bizarre to you, read our general guide for more information. Here’s what an optimal Zero Suit Samus FP’s moveset includes:

• Forward smash is one of this fighter’s essentials. It’s a pair of fuel-powered kicks that deals decent damage and knockback, though its strength is slightly decreased if the sweetspot (the fiery tip) does not connect. Use this at close range to rack on damage and KO!
• Plasma Whip – not to be confused with the attack from Season 3 of Cloud’s Forum Adventures – is a long-ranged damage-racker that can KO at high percentages. It’s got a tipper, too, and when spaced properly it can keep enemies from drawing near.
• You can also mix in some forward tilt and up tilt at close range, though the latter is generally more useful for intercepting landings. Up smash can be used for that purpose too, but less often than up tilt.
• A sprinkle of down smash, Boost Kick, and Paralyzer (from a distance) can be tossed in as well. Keep your usage of these moves low.

As you can see, Zero Suit Samus has a decent amount of options to make use of. Compared to her fellow Metroid representatives, she’s… well, she’s worse than Samus, Dark Samus, and Ridley, but she’s still worth training regardless of that! Stick to the moves listed above, and you’ll be ensuring that your FP starts out on the right foot.

Raid Boss Training

Zero Suit Samus is the perfect example of a great character with poor AI. One issue you might notice is that it often uses Boost Kick facing in the wrong direction, which can cause the FP to self-destruct anytime it’s off-stage and trying to recover. As always, you’ll want to do everything in your power to prevent her from edgeguarding opponents; her recovery is far too vulnerable and can get her killed at low percentages. Here’s a complete list of all the moves to focus on:

• In no special order, neutral attack, forward tilt, down tilt, up tilt and grabs are your neutral options. Zero Suit Samus’ down throw isn’t well-suited for combos, so you could opt to use an up throw to either start up air juggling or KO at later percentages.
• Up tilt, up smash, and up air all serve as solid anti-airs. Once you’re airborne, you can rotate neutral air, forward air, back air, and up air for aerial combat. In this case, you’ll want to give additional priority to back air as a kill move and to neutral air as a landing option.
• Add in a little bit of Plasma Whip, forward smash, and down smash, as well as some up smash as an out-of-shield option (in addition to its usage as an anti-air).

If you’re new to amiibo training and are just starting out with Zero Suit Samus, then you might be disappointed to know that FPs don’t learn combos. When the game’s developers designed each fighter’s AI, they hard-coded certain move strings into the CPU. This means that FPs can only use combos that were specifically put there by the programmers. While they can’t learn combos from you, they can learn which moves to use, and the more an FP uses a specific move the higher the chance that it utilizes the hard-coded combos associated with it.

Wrap-Up

Thanks so much for reading! The Zero Suit Samus FP is still lacking in tournament representation, so if you’re a fan of the character we encourage you to try your hand at training one. To those of you who are new, amiibo training can be a lot to take in at first, and if you need additional explanations you’re welcome to join our Discord community! We’ve also got a guide on how to enter tournaments, plus a Patreon and a donation box. Until next time — happy training!

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

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