Stale-Move Negation

From SmashWiki, the Super Smash Bros. wiki

Stale-Move Negation refers to moves causing less damage as they are used repeatedly.

Masahiro Sakurai added stale-move negation to the Super Smash Bros. series in order to encourage players to try different attacks out and use characters to their fullest instead of using the same attack over and over again. When a character uses an attack too many times, the damage and knockback goes down until it becomes less than half its original power. This is something to remember in the Home-Run contest, as some combos will get weaker and weaker. Using different attacks will reset the damage of the spammed attack at about the same rate it was cut, while being KO'd resets all a character's moves.

In Super Smash Bros., stale-move negation affected both damage and knockback. Here, damage and knockback decrease to 75% of their original power and remain constant from that point on (given the attack power is 4% or higher). In Super Smash Bros. Melee, special attacks suffered both reduced damage and knockback, while all other moves only suffered reduced damage. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the effect affects both damage and knockback for all moves.

The strength of stale-move negation has increased throughout the series, making the effect much more punishing in Brawl compared to the previous two games.

There are a pair of anti-bonuses for excessively using moves repeatedly. In Super Smash Bros., the bonus is called "Cheap Shot" and deducts 99 points. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, the bonus is "Stale Moves" and is worth -2000.

Testing to determine the stale-move negation effect in Brawl initially confused players, as the effect is not applied in Brawl's training mode (the confusion stemming from the fact that is was applied in the training modes of SSB and SSBM).

Moves that are counterattacks or absorbers do not take the stale-move negation of the incoming attack into consideration.

For some reason, certain moves aren't affected by stale-move negation:

• All self-damage:
  • A Judge number 1 always does 12% to Mr. Game and Watch (only in Brawl)
  • A fully charged Flare Blade always does 10% to Roy
  • A fully charged Eruption always does 10% to Ike
  • Crashing into something while using Diddy Kong's Rocketbarrel Boost always does 5% to Diddy

• Snake's Hand Grenade's explosion (always 12%-13%)
• The Grapple Beam or Hookshot and Clawshot used in mid-air (always 4%)
• Luigi's down Taunt (always 1%, in SSB and SSBM, always 2% in SSBB)
• All Final Smashes