If you've read Part 1, there's no need for introduction - we can move straight to Ice's section and the rest of the kit, no real issues there. If you haven't read Part 1... GO DO THAT FIRST. It's really important and this part will kind of suck if you don't.
Anyways...
ICE
One down, two more to go.
Ice is the “power” element of the three. It trades a small amount of speed for the strongest attacks Anna has in her arsenal, allowing her to finish off her opponents earlier and with less hits. As a bonus, multiple moves also have a slight hitbox size increase (as anna coats her hands in a thick layer of ice while punching), also making attacks a little easier to land despite the lower speed. Due to the higher damage/knockback on all moves, Anna loses the combo potential that Fire grants her, and her kit therefore focuses on landing that initial hit in neutral, as moves rarely chain into one another but are individually much more rewarding to land. It’s a relatively basic tradeoff of being less scary at low percentages in exchange for being terrifying at kill% since nearly anything in your kit will finish the job once the opponent’s past ~110%.
Despite the standards being unchanged, Ice also lets you become capable of handling yourself while at range due to 2 specific Specials; while I again won’t spoil them until we get to that section, the element performs best around mid range due to the lower attack speed and that range overall being the best time to use your Specials. With Ice, your goal is to have just enough breathing room to be able to move around and avoid enemy attacks, yet still stay close enough to the opponent to easily and effectively punish any of their mistakes. Essentially, it’s a fun little mindgame that most heavyweight mains know well: you want to either pressure or bait the enemy into fucking up, and once that happens, it’s time to crack some skulls. And if you use your tools correctly, you might be able to cause those critical mistakes rather than only wait for them.
Probably your biggest issue while using this playstyle is the simplest; all that power behind your blows takes a toll on your attack speed, and you become a lot more vulnerable to enemy pressure when your weight and frame data mirror that of a heavyweight’s. And as mentioned before, you have practically zero high-damage combos nor kill confirms, so everything you do will have to be slowish hit by slowish hit, bringing all the usual issues of a slow kit into play. Think of your kit as a slightly less exaggerated Ganondorf’s; hit hard, scare your enemy into submission, but don’t forget to be careful and calculative about it. Charging in mindlessly won’t work here, go play Fire for that.
Notable Standards:
Something quick I’d like to go over is that while Anna’s moves are treated as ice-based by the game (the cases for all Fire and Electric moves are similar), I don’t want to make many of them freeze. Freezing is cool as a gimmick or method for easy damage, but actively works against the playstyle of a heavy hitter most of the time; while the opponent is frozen they take zero knockback and it’s often really difficult to time a hit perfectly for when they thaw out, so it’s not something you want 99% of the time, ESPECIALLY at higher percentages when you want a killing blow instead of more damage. So, freezing will only be possible on a couple of moves at most. F-Tilt is the most notable, since it’s a large cone of damage specifically designed to suck at killing… if you feel like getting a free hit in, try going for it at higher percentages.
As for grounded moves, Jab is one of your best friends. It’s a bit on the laggy side with the additional endlag, but it hits pretty hard and sends the opponent nearly straight sideways, so once you rack up the damage it’s not something people want to get hit by. D-Tilt is also potentially at it’s best in this element, as the lack of combo potential is no longer an issue and the long range/sudden presence of strength shine here. Unfortunately though, I think U-Tilt takes a hit – the higher knockback is nice and all, but it’s harder to land than the other grounded moves and the main reward for landing it is slightly moot here.
The Smash Attacks are mostly unremarkable (they hit a little harder now, yay), but I do want to mention Down Smash quickly, because it’s the only other move that freezes. And if you the primary upside of that move being the ability to cover the ledge… well, the timing may be a bit stricter due to the longer startup, but this move is EVIL. Try to avoid ruining friendships if you can, this thing can be worse than PK Freeze at times.
As for aerials, F-Air is still pretty important; it’s not nearly as combo-friendly as Fire’s version is, but it HURTS the sorry excuses for your opponent when they get hit by it and isn’t too laggy in compensation, so it’s great for landing/spacing/pressuring shields, all that good stuff. And it dunks aerial opponents, that’s another upside. U-Air being worse for combos makes it pretty difficult to use, since it falls into the K. Rool (owner of the second worst U-Air in the game) trap of being really strong but doing nothing else and on top of that being rather impractical due to the shit range. But B-Air, hoo boy, B-Air; fast, lands just fine, and contests with some F-Smashes when it comes to raw strength, that and the range isn’t too bad.
And a quick note on throws – F- and B-Throw are expectedly pretty good finishers, but I want to bring up the fact that D-Throw hits even harder than usual with Ice. Yes, it’s a leg move, but I picture Anna adding a heavy amount of ice to her weight, increasing the strength of the spine-shattering stomp by a significant amount. I said earlier it wouldn’t come close to the 20% monster that is K. Rool’s U-Throw… but this version does.
Specials time! Excited? I am.
Ice Specials:
Neutral Special: Icicle
Anna raises her hand and creates an icicle before continuously pouring more and more ice energy into it, causing it to grow steadily for as long as you hold the button. Once the button is released, Anna hurls the icicle forwards, with it travelling in an arc “realistically”. The properties of the projectile change depending on how long you hold the button before chucking it: the bigger the icicle, the harder it hits, but the slower it is and the less distance it goes. Without much charge, the icicle goes quite far without packing much power, but if you charge the move for a while the icicle hits as hard as a charged Smash Attack and goes practically nowhere due to it’s weight (I imagine it being like throwing a slightly thinner Ganondorf around at full charge). While you can’t store the charge, the move only takes around 3 seconds to fully charge, and the weaker versions have plenty of use.
This move has a couple of things to note. To help at least slightly balance this move, you can only have one icicle on-screen at a time – if you try to use the move again while one’s still out, you’ll only leave yourself vulnerable. Additionally, once it touches a non-player surface, it’ll get stuck in it and refuse to despanw for 2.5 seconds (exactly 150 frames), counting towards the cooldown. Blast zones also trigger the 2.5 second delay, but icicles can’t get stuck in blast zones, unfortunately. However, if the icicle hits a player, it shatters on , allowing you to throw another one immediately and rewarding you for your skill.
As a cool final thing that’s actually helpful, icicles have one more trick. After a certain point while charging (I’d say a little over 2 seconds), the icicle will brightly white flash for a moment. Once that happens, the thrown icicle will completely ignore reflectors of any kind, going straight through them and hitting the opponent anyways… the only exception being Isabelle and Villager, who can pocket the move just fine.
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This is the only projectile available to you in Ice mode (apart from D-Tilt, but who cares about that move), yet it’s one hell of a ranged move. Each level of charge matters and stands out from the others; the quick and small icicles are pretty good for poking people from far away, medium charges aren’t too slow but hurt the opponent quite badly, and the huge icicles hit like miniature trucks and are, well, huge. Getting used to estimating roughly where each icicle will go is an important skill while playing Anna, as it’ll come in handy very frequently.
While the bigger icicles are by far the least practical, they’re still hilarious and worth discussing further. While it’s difficult and risky, a cheeky player can theoretically chuck the icicle only a few frames after it flashes white, masking the fact that it’s unreflectable and potentially taking the stock off an unwary foe right there and then. It also functions as a makeshift Smash Attack you can start in the air as you approach, which is… dumb to say the least… oh, and Villager’s bowling ball and tree? Since they travel at an arc which shortens as they get bigger, high-charge icicles can be absolutely disgusting when used to edgeguard, as they’re huge and cover the ledge almost entirely if you know how to time them, not to mention the high kill power behind those hits.
Otherwise, I’ll leave the rest of the move up to your imagination. I’d say it’s a pretty versatile projectile, well worth mastering. If only it were actually in the game.
Side Special: Cold Shield
Unrelated, but part of me wishes Lunge (Fire’s Side Special, in case it’s been so long you’ve forgotten already) was an Ice move. It fits better there, yet I could have called it “Cold Shoulder”, which would have been possibly my best move name yet. Ah well, at least I have The Clap.
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Anna uses her icy power to create a circular shield in front of her, which stands perfectly straight up in front of her. This shield acts as a stationary hurtbox, taking damage and counting as a hit for single-hit projectiles, all without moving around from knockback. Instead, it has an internal stamina meter with 21 HP, allowing it to take up to 20% from opposing attacks (Anna cannot damage her own shield, only opponents can). However, it visually cracks as it takes damage, and once it takes at least 21% the shield shatters… and if Anna is too close to it when it happens (I’d say about 3/4s of a roll’s distance), it’ll automatically stun her for 2 seconds, even if she’s shielding or rolling, and give the move a cooldown, preventing another shield from appearing for the next 10 seconds. The shield also despawns after being out for 8 seconds, although this doesn’t trigger the stun nor the cooldown. Even making the shield in the first place is risky, as it doesn’t become active for at least half a second (leaving you wiiiide open) and also comes with some noticeable endlag.
However, there are multiple upsides to the shield. As it counts as a hurtbox, it also acts like an unmovable fighter – opponents are completely unable to move through it with normal means and must jump or dodge to get around it. The shield doesn’t push you back, though, so you are free to walk or run through it as you please, unhindered. Additionally, by pressing Side B close to the shield, Anna will kick it in the direction she’s facing, giving the shield a hitbox as it slides forward at a high speed (similar to Anna’s run). This will deal some solid damage and knockback, but comes with some drawbacks: the shield’s health will decrease significantly (only 10% will break it), if it’s reflected back at you you’re probably boned, and the kick has a hefty amount of endlag, meaning if it’s blocked or dodged you are super easy to punish. The shield travels about 1/2 of FD’s length maximum before it falls over and shatters, but if it isn’t broken manually the cooldown won’t activate. And if it goes offstage, it’ll just keep going straight forward like it’s still sliding on the ground.
If it is used in the air, the shield will appear and fall straight downwards at the same speed Anna falls (allowing a falling Anna to hide behind it the whole time), and once it lands it stands straight up and turns into the grounded version. It also doesn’t stun Anna if broken unless on the ground.
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The shield is… kind of ridiculous. In exchange for being risky to spawn in neutral, you get a nifty wall to hide behind, giving you some time to completely ignore any projectile as you charge an icicle or pick your nose, whatever you’d like really. And the combined abilities of being able to kick the shield away as well as run through it like it isn’t there allow you to take full advantage of any defensive situation – there’s nothing the opponent can do that you can’t deal with in some way, although it isn’t a perfect defense since you have to quickly assess the opponent’s action and either react or sometimes even predict the correct countermeasure.
The helpfulness of the shield decreases significantly if you’re not in the right spot while using it; too close and the opponent can just bash you in the head due to the lengthy startup, too far away and your icicles aren’t going to do much to an opponent who can jump and move around. The perfect spot to use it is in the aforementioned middle range that Ice conveniently excels in, since if the opponent’s in a corner it’ll be a lot harder for them to deal with the shield + you behind it, and if they aren’t it shouldn’t be too hard to use it to push them into the corner anyways.
Up Special: Emergency Platform
This move completely fails to work on the ground, I’m too lazy to come up with a grounded version and the blog’s long enough as is (at this point I’m counting over 9600 words).
While airborne, Anna tucks in her legs before shoving both hands downwards, creating a floating platform made entirely out of ice beneath her feet. This platform acts almost exactly like a Battlefield platform and is only a little bit smaller than one; Anna can stand on it and do whatever a grounded fighter can do (including jump off it), as well as hold down to fall through it (it’s semi-solid like most platforms, so you can also jump/move through it once airborne). No ledges on it.
This is obviously overpowered as is so there are numerous downsides. The platform can be broken in one of two ways: either dealing 10% to it (since it has 9 HP) or by waiting the 5 seconds it takes for it to despawn immediately, however Anna cannot harm it herself. Additionally, while it gives you back your jumps and airdodge, it does not replenish Ice’s Up B… you have to land on the stage proper for that to happen.
Amusingly, similar to Magicant’s clouds, Anna can be spiked through the platform as if she were airborne and inside/below the ice rather than above it.
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I’ve waited for YEARS to make a platform Up B (discounting that shit Mii blog), I’m really glad it’s so simple in execution today.
It seems broken at first, but being able to create your own platform isn’t THAT good on its own, even ignoring the non-mandatory downside of the platform being breakable. While three jumps and two airdodges aren’t anything to scoff at distance-wise, that’s not nearly as good as some other recoveries can be, plus you’re left vulnerable as you near the ledge since you don’t have any form of hitbox/armor/invincibility apart from the airdodge (you can still attack, yes, but you can’t exactly grab a ledge in the middle of an aerial).
However, something you can do with those 5 active seconds of platform is use your Down B… and switching to Fire will give you a full 2 jumps, Lunge, airdodge, AND both Flare Boost uses, which combined with the initial jump and airdodge made to use Ice will surely be plenty for getting you back to the ledge. The only downside with this plan is Emergency Platform’s overall fragile nature – Mode Shift takes time to activate, and if an opponent jumps offstage to get you, you’re almost certainly dead since you’re literally standing still for a moment near the blast zone, completely vulnerable.
This move isn’t entirely recovery-based, since you can use it anywhere onstage to gain some nice high ground to stand on… so if you’re a dick, icicle sniping is a thing that you can do against offstage opponents. That and you can theoretically go slightly offstage for some good old-fashioned overkill with a charged Smash Attack against the poor sap trying to recover. That’d make for a pretty sick Yeet Smash clip, eh?
Ice Wrap-up:
Playing with Ice is all about careful spacing and baiting the opponent into doing what you want them to do. Hide behind Side Special to get them to do something or give up stage control, use Neutral Special to poke or brutally murder them depending on where they are, and keep it all fresh with your variety of standards, all geared towards hitting hard and slowly making the opponent terrified of what you’ll pull out next. Ice is also a rather disrespectful playstyle given some of the highly impractical stuff you can go for (taunt to F-Smash while literally standing offstage, anyone?), so this would be a pretty nifty element to use if you like being stylish. The big issue you constantly have to play around is the fact that an enemy who stays close to you gains a very high chance of winning due to how vulnerable you can be, but as long as you can keep them at bay, you should be fine.
Pick Ice if your neutral game is as solid as the ground beneath you, and you like hitting hard and winning early. But it might not be for you if you can’t keep opponents away from you, and if you’re struggling in that regard, do I have an element for you…
ELECTRIC
Earlier, I called Ice the “power” element. While I could easily call Fire courageous, I could never even remotely compare anything Electric-related to wisdom, so that breaks the unintentional similarity.
Fire’s gimmick is high speed in exchange for low kill power, and Ice gets lower speed in exchange for high strength. Electric’s wonderful stat change is that it trades nothing for nothing and gets stuck with low damage… without the speed boost that Fire gets to make up for it. So, since it’s been like 2 hours since you’ve read the overall playstyle, you might have forgotten what Electric’s upside is.
That upside is range and long-lasting hitboxes. Ice gained a slight buff in hitbox size for some moves compared to Fire, but Electric moves at minimum gain slightly more range than that on all moves, plus EVEN MORE size on certain “big” moves which you’ll see later. Most moves also have additional active frames, and some even become multi-hits, all of this making Anna’s attacks easier to land than ever. Ease of use is Electric’s gimmick; you don’t have the quick moves Fire does but for melee hits your standards are really big, and since they last forever it’s really not difficult to land some moves. Your Specials embody this perfectly, since they’re either huge or just have some aspect that makes them difficult to avoid.
But since your moves are so easy to land, they’re very lackluster. Low damage is a solid problem by itself, but your moves also have an uncomfortable amount of base knockback, preventing a lot of potential combos and once again severely hindering your damage potential. And – get this – your moves also suck at killing! You still have Smash Attacks and one or two other moves that can dish out some knockback, but most of your practical moves won’t be doing you any favors, and you’ll be ending stocks far later than the other elements. This results in Anna being forced to land a lot of moves to get anything done, in neutral at that since combos are mostly off the table.
Again, I won’t spoil things, but Electric thankfully has one unique trick amongst the three playstyles: it’s the only one that can play ively and force the opponent to come to you, since there are some severe problems the enemy has to deal with if they don’t. As such, playing with Electric will lead to a lot of defensive, ranged gameplay where you try to annoy your opponent into mes and getting hit more times than they want to it. Sounds fun, right?
Notable Standards:
I’ve already said it, but all standards receive a boost in range. Exactly how much depends on the move, but it’s comparable to Olimar’s Yellow Pikmin being a bit bigger than the others.
Most of the advantages for each tilt can be summarized as “now they’re huge”. Jab isn’t slow yet it goes pretty far forward (it’s more like an F-Tilt than a Jab, going about as far as something like Mii Brawler’s F-Smash or Marth’s F-Smash) and has some decent reward since it combos at really low percentages. F-Tilt and U-Tilt become good entirely because they’re gigantic, with F-Tilt becoming more like Dedede’s F-Tilt on steroids (the electric maelstrom is slightly bigger and taller than even that). D-Tilt is… D-Tilt, let’s move on.
Smash Attacks are still the same except now they’re even bigger, and Down Smash becomes something disgusting. Before it was a little smaller than Bowser, but the Electric version is even bigger than him, and it’s a multi-hit, and it’s great for covering ledge. To keep Electric’s weakness of being garbo at killing however… Down Smash takes a bit of a nerf in this element and kills later. It shouldn’t be that bad given how hard you can cheese recovering foes, but still.
When it comes to aerials, F-Air is still great, except now it’s bigger than ever, oh and the other aerials are there too. Up Air would become a multi-hit and sort of follow in the same steps as Sheik/Joker’s, since if you get the timing right you can drag somebody down to do some more stuff with them (too bad your combo game doesn’t let you exploit this much). Surprisingly though, N-Air would probably become your best aerial; the range buff would make it really really big for a N-Air (probably the size of Bowser’s N-Air at least), and while it isn’t a multi-hit, it’s not too laggy and comes out relatively quickly. But the thing preventing it from being Cloud’s Smash 4 N-Air is that it’d be hilariously weak: practically never killing and dealing really low damage even by Electric’s standards. Still, huge N-Air, still probably really good regardless.
Finally, your grab game is simply alright, nothing really notable. HOWEVER… something that is really notable is that Anna’s grab is completely different with Electric: she extends a bright electric-yellow whip to snag somebody, similar to Zoot Suit’s except less lame. Pretty typical tether grab stuff, kind of a worse grab than everyone else’s by a little margin, but hey, you get a Z-Air and can tether grab… whoopee…
Anyways.
Electric Specials:
Neutral Special: Static Shock
By pressing B, Anna releases all of the stored-up electricity within her tech, discharging it as a spherical multi-hit long lasting burst around her. If you use the move without charging it, the move will be pitifully bad (so pitiful, nothing significant happens and Anna shrugs at the camera), yet using Neutral Special will not help you.
Instead, the attack gains charge via directional inputs from the control stick (or whatever stick/D-Pad you use to move around); for each direction inputted, a tiny amount of charge will be added. If you just play the game normally, you’ll most likely move the control stick around and charge it, but the charge would be really slow. Slow enough that one could compare it to Wario Waft. Instead, the ideal method to charge is to stand in place and rotate the control stick around as fast as possible… most of the time, doing this would just cause Anna to seemingly freak out as you force her to run around and crouch randomly, but the game actually has something around this: if you hold B while holding up your shield (the same thing you do to recharge ink as Inkling), you can mash the stick around to your heart’s content and Anna won’t budge an inch. Players who get really good at circle charging (my personal term for charging Electric Neutral B) are able to fully charge this move from scratch in a little under 7 seconds straight. A rough way to tell how much charge Anna has stored is to look at her particle effects: without charge there’s not much different about her, but as her power levels grow, the electric aura around her hands grows and becomes more intense, and at max charge it’s very obvious.
As for the move itself, the range of the move can vary wildly. Without charge Anna just shrugs like mentioned earlier, but as the amount of charge grows, the bigger the discharge sphere gets and the more damage/knockback it deals. Around 1/4 charge, the size is comparable to Ivysaur’s Up Smash around Anna, around 1/2 charge it grows to a little bigger than Bowser (like Down Smash, go figure), around 3/4 charge the diameter is about the width of two Bowsers standing close to each other… and at max charge, the full discharge’s diameter is roughly half the length of Battlefield’s main platform. In exchange, the move’s power is never very high (at most it deals about 20% and kills slightly below 190%) and as the charge grows the move’s startup gets longer, with the move coming out pretty quick at low charges but becoming about as slow as Dedede’s F-Smash at higher charges (basically 40ish frames or 2/3rds of a second).
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I’m not even going to try to mask where I got the inspiration for this (hence the picture), but at the same time I think I’ve done enough to make it unique in execution. I also think I’ve created an abomination of a move that should probably never be implemented into the game… but hey, it sounds fun.
Electric’s mentality is that everything should be easy to land but not that effective once you actually do, and this shows. At full charge, you literally cover half of Battlefield and it’s practically unavoidable if the opponent is offstage (the extremely low knockback should mitigate this and only guarantee death when the opponent is basically dead anyways), yet the move itself rarely finishes off the opponent and 20% really isn’t all that much. As such, this move isn’t something the opponent should be that scared of unless they’re so badly hurt, they’re somehow at kill% against you.
Instead, this move does one important thing: force the opponent to come to you. Sure, the move does very little even when fully charged, but that’s the thing. It’s basically free damage every time you get it, so while theoretically the opponent could let you get it, if they do there’s nothing stopping you from using the move before running away and standing still for 7 seconds to charge it back up. Therefore, to break the cycle, your enemies have to come to you. And that’s great; you want that, since it makes them more predictable and you can prepare more traps and tactics against them. It’s not something easy for the opponent to deal with, but it’s very easy success in a can for you.
Side Special: Zap
Anna clenches her fist, building up energy, before releasing a small ball of electricity (roughly the size of a Mario Fireball, doesn’t matter how exact). This elemental ball travels straight forward (isn’t affected by gravity) at an incredibly slow speed, something close to a slow character tiptoeing, but conversely stays active for a long period of time; it wouldn’t despawn until it travelled about 3/4s of Final Destination’s length, and that’d take about 10 seconds straight. While sending it straight forwards is the default option, by holding up or backwards you can instead send the ball about 30 degrees upwards.
In exchange, the move’s frame data is slow; the ball doesn’t come out any earlier than 22 frames and takes over a full second to let you act again (which can be a long time in this game). The hitbox is also incredibly weak, never killing until ludicrous percentages and dealing less than 4% at most… and unlike most electric moves the hitstun is incredibly low, so while it does make opponents flinch, it doesn’t hold them in place for nearly as long as most weak projectiles. Anna can only have 2 balls out at a time, attempting to spawn a third before one of the others despawns (either by hitting something or reaching the 10 second limit) causes the move to produce nothing.
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Again, stupidly easy to land, but not actually that helpful. I mean, it sort of is, but not always.
Zap’s purpose is mainly just to help create an annoying barrier between you and your opponent when they’re approaching; it’s most helpful when they come to you since they do take time to set up. However, they’re not good on their own, since the embarrassingly low damage doesn’t do much to shields and some characters wouldn’t mind simply getting hit by them since practically nothing happens. Instead, play close to them – get opponents to mess up, use them to keep enemies in shield ‘lest they get hit, and don’t be afraid to keep up the pressure if they’re coming up to you. You probably won’t be doing any extravagant combos with the balls due to the non-existent knockback, but flinching is flinching, and you might get some free hits or even a grab when otherwise you wouldn’t. That and it forces the opponent to play much safer, which means less options, which means an easier time predicting what they’ll do and punishing accordingly.
Yeah, these wouldn’t be fun to deal with if you’re playing against Anna, there’s no reason to hide that. However, a lot of things in this game that people complain about, and honestly I don’t think Zap would be that bad given that you can’t really approach with it and landing one does close to nothing. It’s just there to harass people at range and assist close-range encounters… isn’t that the point of a slow projectile?
Up Special: Lightning Leap
i suck at names, please forgive me
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Anna crouches down, bristling with electricity, before leaping straight upwards with a large sphere of energy around her (roughly Bowser-sized, like her other Down Smashes), discharging the sphere once she reaches her peak.
Hitbox-wise, this move is a pretty simple multi-hit into a finisher like a lot of other recoveries, with the Bowser-sized hitbox staying a consistent size until the end where it grows slightly bigger, but not by much. The final hit in particular is one of the few Electric moves that has a decent amount of power behind it; you won’t be competing with any Smash Attacks or even some other Up Specials, but if you catch somebody near the blast zone with it around 100% that’ll probably end their stock. And as a recovery, it’s… not that great, the distance is comparable to a high ground jump which isn’t bad, but the move only goes straight up – no angling.
To additionally compensate for the huge hitbox, this is the only Up Special that puts Anna into helpless fall after use; unlike certain other risky Up Bs you don’t lose too much air speed while falling, but the resulting horizontal recovery is comparable to Incineroar’s Cross Chop (so you’ll have to recover high if you can’t go directly under the ledge). On top of that, the move has a significant amount of startup lag. Not too much, only around 16 frames, but you’re completely vulnerable during this time and it hinders both combo and escape potential.
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This is probably the least interesting elemental Special out of the 9, which might be disappointing given that it’s the last one. But by itself it still has some stuff to discuss.
I know there’s a ton of downsides for a simple “big move that’s decent for killing” recovery, but it’s still pretty damn good if you use it right. Primarily, once the move starts it’d take a HUGE dist or a strong projectile to hit you out of it since the hitbox is big and would probably just break weaker projectiles before they reach you. And you can bring up some fond memories of Smash 4 Bayonetta while recovering: that hitbox will smack some people on the ledge if they’re too close, and the huge multi-hit will probably stage spike anyone foolish enough to contest you offstage, making the move hilariously safe if you can snap to the ledge.
However, you do need to keep in mind how risky and limited this move can be. It has a ton of landing lag so cheesing somebody as an anti-air with this is far from free, and the fact that it’s a bad horizontal recovery is something you need to constantly keep in mind if you’re offstage. So keep in mind that when you use this move offensively, the rewards might not be enough to offset the downsides.
That being said, it’s a huge move and would probably give some people the giggles for using it however, so it isn’t black and white.
Electric Wrap-up:
Electric is the (slightly annoying) zoner-like playstyle of the three, not being great for offense (or really in general) but making up for it with a potent ranged game and, well, plenty of range to easily abuse. You want opponents to come to you since approaching them yourself isn’t the best idea, and with Neutral Special being practically free damage once fully charged, the opponent has PLENTY of incentive to come to your side of the stage.
Jab, F-Tilt, N-Air, F-Air, and U-Air are your favorite standards in neutral, since they’re either your quickest/most practical moves in your arsenal or are just big enough to be relatively easy to land, especially against aggressive opponents pushing in. And Zap is something that you want out as often as possible; it makes approaching you much more difficult, and as a slight psychological bonus, the people you can frustrate with it are easier to deal with and far more predictable. Use all of those, they’re good.
Overall, try to play the waiting game. You’re never going to win in a match where you trade blows with the opponent, so don’t… make sure you win as many exchanges as possible, and outlast the opponent. Given your huge and easy-to-land hitboxes, it shouldn’t be that hard.
FINAL SMASH: Equipment Malfunction
Because Anna is a special snowflake and I say so, Anna’s “I’ve got the Final Smash” aura effect will also be accompanied by her backpack and gauntlets beginning to break, shooting off sparks in all directions and overall appearing rather unsafe to be around.
Upon activation, Anna grins with glee as she presses some buttons on her wrist, getting ready for a large and flashy super move… but before that happens, her equipment begins to go haywire, and Anna recoils as the elemental energy surges and overloads her setup. She then releases 3 huge bursts of energy (roughly 3/4s of FD’s length in sheer diameter), with each representing one element. As it’s a malfunction and not planned, the order in which the 3 explosions are released is randomized.
The full Final Smash in total would deal about 45% assuming it’s a 1v1 match, and begin to consistently kill around 70% (as in they start getting hit already at 70%).
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Not much to say here, it’d look pretty cool and I think it works well for representing what it’s like trying to mix 3 completely different elements together in one extremely powerful move.
If it’s too strong and people would complain about it, I’d balance it by forcing Anna to land an activation hitbox on at least one opponent before the malfunction (making the “intentional” attack seem more like one at close range; and if she whiffs, why would she activate her super move?), in exchange for buffing the damage and knockback. But although it is probably a little unbalanced, I don’t think it’s that bad.
Extra Stuff:
To top things off and give you something other than 15 billion walls of text for once, here’s a little cosmetics section, with nice brief point-form-like descriptions at most. Easy on the eyes, hopefully.
Entrance:
Anna runs in before skidding to a stop via her boots, with a cheeky grin on her face the whole time.
Idle Animations:
-Anna crosses her arms and taps her foot for a moment, giving the fourth wall an impatient frown.
-Anna’s eyes close slightly as she yawns, leaning back slightly and raising an arm to stretch.
Taunts:
Up Taunt: -Anna holds out an open palm slightly in front of her, creating something based off of the current element (a small fireball for Fire, an ice cube for Ice, and a small stationary lightning bolt for Electric) before dispersing it harmlessly.
Side Taunt: -Anna rests her finger on her chin as she gives the screen a wink and cheeky grin. Reminiscent of a certain merchant…
Down Taunt: -Anna bursts out chucking/giggling for a moment or two, before recomposing herself with a silencing hand over her mouth.
Victory Animations:
-Anna spins around before striking a pose, fist-pumping with a smile (nearly identical to Demian’s drawing)
-Anna performs some highly unnecessary theatrics with the element you won with, flailing about in some manner she deems “cool” before striking a pose (not sure what exactly, probably something generic), gauntlets active with the current element
-The camera cuts to Anna’s back as she’s fiddling with something unseen, before turning to the camera with a surprised look and giving it a cheerful wave.
Alternate Costumes:
To preface, each alt will only change Anna’s hair, coat, shirt, and pants colours, for simplicity’s sake. It’s pretty much just dying her hair and changing clothes, similar to Robin.
Default Colour: Brown hair, white coat (looks like a lab coat), pink shirt, dark blue pants. Anna’s regular choice of clothing, although in the source game the shirt changes and therefore doesn’t really matter.
Alt #2: Black hair/coat, white shirt, grey pants. Based off of Malcolm, a friend of Anna’s.
Alt #3: Dark brown hair, lighter brown coat, dark green shirt, blue pants. Based off of Happyslaps, the local douchebag in PliRe.
Alt #4: Brownish-red hair/coat/pants, turquoise shirt. Based off of Madame, an underground hideaway only ever seen in a large asbestos suit.
Alt #5: Blond hair tipped with red, black coat, red shirt, purple pants. Based off of Ash, one of Worlder Ash’s characters.
Alt #6: ??? (gotta come up with a new one if I ever come back to this)
Alt #7: Black hair, forest green coat, dark grey shirt, darker grey pants. Based off of Jet, one of ComicWaterz’s characters.
Alt #8: Purple hair/coat/pants, yellow shirt. Based off of Pentamark and the Player’s Essence, two unusual spirits with incredible power.
if you couldn’t tell, i’m not great at these unless other people explicitly tell me things
Farewell:
Holy shit, you made it this far… congrats, I guess.
Posting a moveset for an original character simply in concept feels weird, but the fact that the sheer amount of stuff I’ve packed into this makes my other movesets look like tweets AND this is possibly the work I’m most proud of… that makes it even weirder. Did any of you like this? Did any of you even tap on this, because why the hell would you?
Regardless of all that, I’ve spent enough time talking about Anna and her kit, so I’ll finish off the blog by talking about things outside of that. This is probably not my last blog, but at the same time, my motivation for any of these has barely changed. Sure the gap between this and Nightmare was shorter than my previous hiatus, but I don’t have nearly as many ideas as I used to. I’m not lying when I’ve had the idea to properly post this character since May at the latest, and the only other character I can think of for the next possible blog is only a remake of a past one (which I would fix up and create a lot of new content for… but still).
So yeah, you probably shouldn’t expect anything more from me for the next while, especially with university and a likely part-time job looming around the corner. However… I really want to thank all of you guys for reading my nonsense. This has been a hobby for two years now, and I wouldn’t have enjoyed Amino nearly as much as I have if you all hadn’t been so kind and ive towards me. Completely serious, I can’t thank you guys enough.
I wish you all a wonderful day. Or night, depending on where you live.
Comments (6)
Anna would be amazing and this Moveset is perfect for her :)
Hey Mom! Great post as always
Fantastic blog dae!
Thank you~