"I want to know, if these idealistic and starry-eyed operators had witnessed those kind and gentle people die one by one, would they still do things the same way, with the same old song and dance? Hey, I'm not trying to look down on anyone. I'm just reminding you, don't just go twisting that person's ideas into some simple-minded mockery."
W
[
Music] [
2]
W is an early antagonist in Arknights, a tower defense gacha game people basically only care about for story or, uh, "plot" I guess even though the game isn't nearly as fanservice heavy as a lot of its competition. A woman who doesn't remember so much as her birthday or birth name, fairly little is known about her early history, mostly just that she's been involved in the Kazdel civil war for a very long time. Taking up the name W after taking the weapons of a previous mercenary who went by that name, She's known for being a very ruthless and sadistic demolitions expert.
W tends not to get along well with her comrades, whether she's on the antagonists side, or teaming up with the Doctor(the player character of the game) later on, as basically nobody likes the fact that she's kind of a wildcard and doesn't come across as having much of a moral compass at all. Despite that, as you might've guessed from teaming up with the Doctor, she's not strictly villainous, her motivation actually being, from what we have of it, a loyalty to the former Sarkaz Queen Theresa. Theresa was a gentle soul who was trying to stop her brother in the civil war, but ultimately got killed in operation the Doctor was supposedly heavily involved in before his amnesia. After it? W displays a surprising willingness to work with the guy, although she makes it very clear that as soon as he gets his memories back, they're going to have several problems. Between that and a couple moments of kindness to both Amiya, the Doctor's surrogate "daughter" of sorts, and a couple sick children she finds out in the ruins of a city, W ends up coming across as more ruthlessly pragmatic than a psychopath without a care for anyone's safety including her own. That's not to say she's pleasant to work with though, and how noble her true intentions are still hasn't been entirely revealed yet.
In gameplay, W is a very strong Sniper who clears out enemies with large amounts of AoE damage. She deals extra damage to stunned targets, throws out grenades and landmines to intercept foes approaching(and also stunning them), and her main skill is the D12, a time bomb mine she attaches to several nearby enemies at once. Overlapping D12 blasts combine their damage, which makes her exceptionally good at clearing out a bunch of enemies at once. Of course, she's limited to only be accessible via the stupid gambling mechanics for a short time because gacha is terrible, so a lot of players will end up doing without her.
[My intent is to include more quotes, but I haven't picked them all out ATM, so the presentation's a bit incomplete.]
Statistics
W is ultimately pretty unremarkable in stature, being 165cm (5'5") in height, which we'll translate to about a pixel taller than Marth's height, basically the same size as him for all intents and purposes. A nimble fighter, W has one of the faster ground speeds in the game, a tiny bit below Charizard and Ridley but a bit better than Banjo Kazooie at 2.19, 12th place. Her air speed, by comparison, is not as good but still reasonably fast at 1.11, tying Fox, but her aerial control is a little slippery. Her fall speed is actually kind of ridiculous though, at 2.02 its the second fastest in the game after Fox... and she has a better fastfall than him. Her fall speed increase is a whopping 80%, so she fastfalls at 3.64. This is a bit of a blessing and a curse, but the extra fast fastfall is mostly just a blessing, for what its worth.
See, W is not just saddled with Fox's high fall speed, she has the same horrible weight as him of 77 on a larger character model. Sure, her jumps are pretty good, particularly her first jump, but the fall speed combined with an average at best recovery move makes her prone to dying alarmingly early in a lot of matchups. Its the price she pays for her good movement, sadly. Hey, if it helps, W has not just a very low to the ground crawl, but one that moves a bit faster than the usual crawl, so she has a bit of extra ability to sneak in under attacks.
Specials
"Mercenaries are efficient instruments of war; like fast food, ready to eat and easily disposable."
Neutral Special - D12
Taking out a bomb which looks like a small black slab with a few buttons on it, W tosses it forward in a low arc. This arc can be angled up and down with a decent amount of precision based on how hard you tilt the control stick in those directions during the start up of the toss. By default the bomb will fly forward 1.2 battlefield platforms, but angled a bit further up it can be thrown as far forward as 1.6 battlefield platforms, though the minimum and maximum height tosses will only send it forward less than half a battlefield platform, the maximum height toss sending it up 2 Ganondorf heights into the air before falling to the ground as a bit of a lingering threat while the downward version just basically smacks it straight into the ground in front of her. This move comes out on Frame 18, but the ending lag is actually quite low so the prospect of throwing out a large number of mines is possible, you just need to keep the foe out of your face while doing it.
The bombs do not explode on contact, they're time bombs that tick down over 6 seconds, a visible countdown appearing over the bomb once it lands as a floating red number that ticks down over time. Once the timer ticks down all the way, the bomb will explode in a Bowser-sized blast that deals... 7% and pretty low upwards knockback that's not going to kill anytime soon. Mind you, that's a big blast radius and on an attack that's not really that hard to throw out, but given the countdown is telegraphed and the start lag is a bit high, you might be expecting a bit more from it. Well the fun part of this attack is the bombs do stick to basically anything except for W herself, and they don't damage her when they explode. Opponents, minions, walls, platforms, stage hazards, even solid projectiles if you're feeling adventurous in a team battle. Toss a bomb out, let Link's arrows fly through it and stick the opponent with an additional problem to worry about, potentially! If a bomb latched onto an explosive, the other explosive will set it off in a chain reaction, ignoring its usual 6 second countdown.
Probably the most important thing a bomb can stick to is the opponent, where it will latch onto them as a time bomb that once its on, the opponent can't get off. They can, however, dodge or shield to prevent the damage from happening, and only one D12 can stick to an opponent at a time. This is, however, quite potent for forcing the opponent to dodge or shield on a particular window, which means W can capitalize on the opponent's brief vulnerability during that time.
If W tosses out more than one bomb in the 6 second countdown, the other bombs she tosses out in that timeframe will all have the same countdown, exploding all at the same time at the end. This on paper means if W throws out a bunch of bombs, the opponent is only going to have to worry about one timing window for all of them going off, making it less overwhelming to dodge/shield all the explosions going off at once. That said, there is a perk to D12 that should be kept in mind. If its hitbox overlaps with another explosive hitbox, the area of overlap actually becomes deadlier, increasing in damage by 5% for each overlapping D12 explosion with the original, while also bolstering the knockback. 2 overlapping D12 explosions will kill at around 170%, 3 will kill at 130%, 4 will kill at 100%, 5 will kill at 75%, and while its probably impractical to ever manage more than that due to requiring 6+ different explosions to overlap at the same point and basically having W commit most of her time during that countdown to placing bombs in one centralized location, it will start killing stupid early at that point. If for some ungodly reason the blast overlaps with an explosion that only deals 1-2%, it will just deal its default damage rather than a reduced amount. If an opponent is hit by 4 or more blasts overlapping with this, W will let out a sadistic laugh as the opponent is presumably blasted to pieces, enjoying the end result of her handiwork.
There's an additional benefit here I figure I should mention, that being a passive mechanic of W's,
Insult to Injury. If W hits an opponent with an attack that deals 10% or more(base damage, not factoring in buffs or stale moves) while the opponent is in hitstun, the damage will be multiplied by 1.2x on top of its base value, and in the case of some moves in W's set, you'll get a bonus effect for triggering it too. This is not one of them, you just get a damage multiplier, but that will boost the KO potential of this move all the further, and it basically means comboing into the delayed explosion is an even better and more encouraged option than usual. Especially considering W doesn't take damage from her own explosives, so its not like you're risking your own hide to do so. The benefits of this kinda go both ways too, W can potentially lay out bombs covering a huge swath of the stage and let the hitstun of the delayed blast combo right into one of her stronger moves to get
Insult to Injury bonuses. This move offers some pretty incredible stage control, setups, and situationally even kill potential, but keep in mind the lack of an immediate hitbox, high start lag, and predictable activation window make it so W can't just win a match by carelessly throwing around D12s.
Down Special - Jack in the Box
Taking out another bomb, this one a small blinking red mine, W buries it in the ground a bit like Snake's Brawl Down Smash, albeit with a fair bit less lag as she swiftly kicks up some dirt with her boot and slams the mine into it. This move can be charged to increase its power at set intervals, after 15 frames of charge W will take out a second mine and put it in alongside the first one to produce a bigger blast, and after 60 frames of charge, she'll instead decide to take out an alarmingly large, glowing yellow mine and put it in the ground with a sadistic giggle. The mines linger in the stage 8 seconds, which is a certainly a while, but the area you step on to trigger them is actually rather tiny, making it rather precise for the opponent to trigger them. So while 8 seconds is an eternity in Smash time, its perfectly possible for the opponent to weave around Jack in the Box for that long. She can have up to 3 of these out on stage though, which, combined with Neutral Special, leaves W with some hilariously expansive if somewhat flawed trapping capabilities.
The strength of the blast is determined by what stage of charge W had before planting the mine. If it was an uncharged mine, the explosion is quite tiny and only deals 5% and small diagonal knockback that will just pop the opponent a bit up and forward. If its the double mine, this will instead deal 10% and stronger diagonal knockback that will KO at 200%, with an explosion about half the size of Kirby. If its the yellow, glowing mine, the blast will deal 16% and diagonal knockback that KOs at 120% while producing a Wario-sized blast, which is actually pretty scary of a trap all on its own. W cannot trigger her own mines, unlike Snake, and will not be hit by their blast, but they are set off by other explosive hitboxes. Standing near a yellow Jack in the Box mine when a bunch of nearby D12 mines go off is kind of a death sentence once you consider how those hitboxes will stack their damage, and on a more casually threatening note, it means a foe with a D12 mine stuck to them will get KOed quite a bit earlier by any Jack in the Box mines they stumble into.
W's
Insult to Injury mechanic has a special effect on this attack, changing the on-hit effect. Instead of dealing damage, it'll deal a stun, along the lines of what W's explosives actually do in Arknights. The strength of the stun depends on the strength of the mine. The minimum strength mine is too weak to trigger the effect, but the double mine will put the foe in 30 frames of stun, and the yellow mine will put them in 50, nearly a full second! During the whole duration of this stun, mind you, they are vulnerable to
Insult to Injury effects, so you can get some additional scary benefits out of this with whatever free hit you get. The stun will not trigger in place of knockback if the foe is over 130%/80% depending on which variant of the mine was used, but given it'll either send the foe flying or outright kill them at those percents, you probably won't find yourself complaining too much.
The fact that this is an explosive allows it to stack up its power with the D12 mines, as was previously mentioned, but also set them off outside their usual timing window, a trait that's a bit hard to find in W's moveset. Mixing together D12 mines and Jack in the Box mines in your trapping setups can mean slipping up on even a minimum charge Jack in the Box mine can set off a bunch of explosions around the foe to deal some actually impressive damage and knockback, making them scarier depending on how W has littered the stage around them. The different trigger conditions means the foe has to keep in mind both the countdown and not stepping on the explosives, and avoiding two conditions at once can be quite the challenge with W breathing down the foe's neck with her own attacks, not to mention that putting out minimum charge explosives is actually pretty fast for W and she can have enough on them on the stage that regardless of their small coverage, they're a surprisingly big nuisance. And of course, a bunch of D12 bombs centered around a yellow jack in the box mine is just a hideously powerful KO move, if you have 3 that overlap with its explosion you'll kill at 50%. That's a lot to spend on a temporary setup that only has such obscene kill power over a small space, but if W knocks the foe into that mine, Master Hand's going to have his work cut out for him cleaning up the stage after that.
Side Special - King of Hearts
With a focused, serious look on her face, W takes out her grenade launcher, lining up a shot and firing over a starting lag of 54 frames. Firing off the grenade with about 0.3 battlefield platforms with of kickback, which won't send her over the ledge if she's standing at one, the grenade goes rocketing forward 2.5 battlefield platforms in a slight arc before it collides with the ground(or going forward another 0.5 battlefield platforms if it goes into the air off stage, descending about Wario's height further in the process). This grenade explodes in a Wario-sized blast deals 20% and horizontal and slightly upwards knockback that KOs at 90%, making this a devastating long range KO move. The projectile also travels really fast, about 0.85x the speed of Fox's laser. That said, with lag like that, at face value, this is really only usable on foes off the ledge, and even then its a bit limited since you can't angle it or anything. That said, if you're the kinda guy who likes cheesing offstage opponents with Ridley's fireball stream, this is considerably more devastating than that move when it does work out.
This is the third move in W's trifecta of explosive specials, meaning it can set off chain reactions with your D12 explosives, and stack power with them. Its probably not what you'd want as far as moves that set off her explosions all in one go due to being so impractically laggy and with the grenade landing so far away, and you do have a final alternative in one of W's smashes, but the huge range and power this move has provides its share of perks. You could, say, fire this at the foe, and if they dodge, a chain of D12 mines set off by the explosion will come hit them out of their dodge, serving as a consolation prize and maybe letting you close in for a combo, as the end lag on this move isn't too bad as W quickly puts her grenade launcher away. And this move deals 1.25x shield damage, which is already pretty nice on its own merits, but gets better when you factor in that if the D12 damage increase is applied to this move, the shield damage multiplier is applied to that too, letting this move potentially power up enough to one shot shields outright. The blast also lingers a little bit, not long enough to fully beat dodges but definitely make the timing window a little trickier. All this factored together means that even if this move comes out very slow, launching this with other explosives absolutely demands respect because of the potentially horrific kill power and its respectable anti-defense properties.
There's also a part of W's
Insult to Injury mechanic I haven't mentioned until now, and that's that every time you successfully pull it off, a red slash appears on W's icon. For each red slash you get from this, maxing out at 5, this move gets faster as W looks more and more manic using this move, giggling to herself if she gets 2-4 stacks and laughing loudly and maniacally at 5. The start lag decreases to 45 frames with 1 stack, 35 frames with 2, 28 frames with 3, 21 frames with 4, and
11 frames with 5. Yeah, if you land
Insult to Injury 5 times, an attack that hits across the entire stage and gets tons of benefits for being an explosive becomes non-reactable, which is
absolutely terrifying and will put the fear of god into any opponent. The good news for the foe is once W uses this move, she loses all stacks of
Insult to Injury she built up whether or not she hits with this, and she also loses them on death, so you get one chance to pull this off. And its more than a bit risky to build up to a super fast version of this move when W's so light and vulnerable to combos/early off stage death due to her fall speed, so while the reward is insane, you are going to have to earn it.
Landing this move's own
Insult to Injury bonus is really difficult when its so laggy, at least unless you've shaved its lag down considerably. That said, it actually gets a
bigger bonus from
Insult to Injury than usual, upping the move's damage to 30% and letting it kill at 50%. Due to the move's range you could use some of the faster versions of it to follow up a launcher potentially, but without the ability to aim it its very situational you'll pull it off, but sometimes it can be pulled off in combination with lingering D12 explosives too. The easiest way to do it is to chain it off an
Insult to Injury mine that you knocked the foe into, which certainly requires some precision but is devastating when you pull it off. Of course, if you have the 5 stack version of this move ready, you can just straight up try to combo into it, that's a thing you can do and its disgusting.
Up Special - Ambush
Bracing herself for a split second, W leaps upward at a 70 degree angle, traveling nearly 1.7x as far as Ganondorf's Up Special. Not only does this go much further than said move, you can also angle it further forward to have this move fling W forward at a 45 degree angle and come down closer toward the ground at the end, or at a 20 degree angle of initial velocity that actually leaves her below her initial height by the end of the attack. That last one isn't the best for recoveries other than strictly horizontal ones, but its actually a fantastic on-stage option for reasons we'll get into, and it does at least give W some pretty impressive recovery distance. During the later half of the leap W wildly lashes her tail about to attempt to grab onto an opponent, stabbing into them and coiling around them to put them in a grab hitbox like Ganondorf's Up Special if it hits them. Unlike said move, it actually has a good bit of range beyond W's body... but it only activates in the second half of her leap, so the first half of her jump is left without any sort of hitbox, and being a grab hitbox its not the best for defensive purposes even when it does come out.
When W latches onto the foe, she'll drag them along for the rest of her flight path before flinging them off her tail for knockback at a similar angle to her flight path(about 10 degrees lower than it as her leap levels off in angle at the end) that KOs at 170% and 12%. If W is using the low angle version and she manages to crash into a main platform with this, she'll slam the foe into the ground before releasing them, bumping the damage to 16% and the knockback to KOing at 130% at a low horizontal angle. This is good as is, but when you factor in that W can follow up with King of Hearts to intercept the foe's recovery that low horizontal angle becomes particularly scary, nevermind that it really messes with bad recoveries like the Belmonts and Mac. If W collides with the side of the stage like this, she'll stagespike the foe off the side with the same knockback, which is actually a pretty devastating quality for this move to have against foes who don't have particularly good recoveries(and at high percents, even those that do). Once W releases the foe, her Up Special is refreshed, comparably to Ganondorf and Falcon's Up Specials.
W's recovery is definitely a mixed bag, as it has good distance and is reasonably versatile, but its easy to interrupt at all phases, which is pretty bad for her with her low weight and high fall speed. Its particularly easy to interrupt in the first half of the leap, and the second half is only protected by a grab hitbox, albeit one with some decent reach. With that said, its a bit of a scary recovery to intercept, because if the foe whiffs on the interception attempt W could easily slam them into the side of the stage and stagespike them, coming at the foe from an angle they didn't expect by suddenly fastfalling and going at a higher angle than it looked like she'd recover from. Her ability to suddenly fastfall and then go at a different angle can also mess up some attempts to ledgeguard or 2-frame W, though this is a mindgame that will only come up sometimes and if the foe predicts it they won't have too much trouble gimping W.
The low angle version has a pretty important side benefit of being a way to grab and drag the foe into your bomb setups, potentially even smacking the foe right into a mine if you position particularly well. Given when the grab hitbox comes out its not like you have Ridley's Side Special for dragging people around, but its still a significant boon when W can put the foe right in line for a blast that deals another 20%+ and has impressive KO potential right out of the Up Special's grab. The low angle horizontal knockback of a hit against a foe that gets knocked into the ground is also pretty handy for flinging the foe into setups across the stage at low-mid percents, potentially reversing a ledgeguard situation pretty hard by putting the foe in the midst of a minefield. If the foe ends up offstage, hey, that's a free chance to get a good bomb setup on the ledge to make recovering awful, or to go for Side Special.
Getting
Insult to Injury on this move is tricky as you'd probably expect, activating if W hits the grab hitbox while the foe is already in hitstun. Yeah, the move comes out fast and W also travels fast, but the fact that it has a blindspot for the first half of its range means if you combo into it, it will be out of moves with higher knockback at very specific percents or off an explosive. If W does land it, not only will she get the damage buff, after the foe takes their knockback W will toss a throwing knife after the foe with almost no lag as the
Insult to Injury bonus! This knife deals a bit higher hitstun than usual and 5% and is aimed at the foe's exact angle of knockback, likely to hit them at the end of it until the attack is nearing KO percents. The extra hitstun the foe takes at the end of their knockback lets W close in on the foe much more easily, going for an aerial pursuit, a second Up Special(at very specific percents you can true combo two
Insult to Injury Up Specials together, which will probably leave the foe quite far offstage and give 2 stacks of it for King of Hearts), a better bomb setup than usual, or just a higher chance of blasting the foe to smithereens with Side Special, particularly a well prepared one. Suffice to say, W has a huge advantage off an
Insult to Injury Up Special, especially a horizontally angled one, and the prospect of getting comboed into this is one of the things foes have to fear the most if they get hit by a weaker explosive.
Aerials
"A mercenary's leadership focuses on practicality. Don't expect me to babysit others."
Neutral Aerial - Tail Spin
W curls up a bit and spins her tail around her in a clockwise circle, an excitable grin on her face as she spins through the air. This is a fast move on both ends that covers all around W's body while decreasing the size of her hurtbox momentarily, dealing 8% on W's body and the tail and 11% at the tail tip, which has an exaggerated black and red glow to it during this move to indicate the sweetspot. Regardless of which part of the move you hit with, the foe is dealt diagonally upwards knockback, fairly weak knockback that can maybe chain into another hit at very low percents but mostly just gets the foe out of your face. The tip's knockback is a fair bit more potent, KOing at 180% at the center stage and more reasonable percentages like 130% at the ledge. This is an all around solid melee option that mostly just suffers from having mediocre combo ability, though the sourspot can at least confirm into Fair or another Nair off W's second jump, and 45 degree Up Special at higher percents.
The sweetspot of this move has a pretty potent
Insult to Injury effect, in that it causes W's tail to impale into the opponent as she spins, before flinging them off it with her momentum in the direction she's spinning. This effectively gives this move customizable knockback depending on what angle you hit it from, albeit with the caveat the opponent both had to already be in some kind of hitstun, and W has to sweespot it, so this isn't trivial to pull off despite this move being so fast. Comboing into this move out of another Nair or Uair(W's easiest aerial to combo into this), it will mostly end up incidental if you get the exact angle you want from it, but if the foe is in a longer or more telegraphed period of stun, say a D12 mine going off next to them or attached to their body, taking the
Insult to Injury effect of a landmine, or dealing with the aftereffects of Fair, you get a shot to pick out what direction they end up flying in. How good the end result of that is depends on how good your bomb setups are, though this move is pretty potent even without that.
Specifically, downward angles out of this move are kind of a godsend. Spiking the opponent into the ground at any angle will often leave them in enough hitstun for W to follow up with attacks that would normally be a bit too laggy or weirdly angled to combo into, which is fantastic for getting off additional
Insult to Injury bonuses. When we get to it, Dair is one of the better things to do with this, as it could even lead back into Nair again at a different angle for a string of 3 bouts of
Insult to Injury. Of course, the potency of spiking them into the ground with this is magnified when the ground is littered with mines to get an even higher level of hitstun and damage out of this, provided you can hit them directly into one of said mines. Putting them on platforms will also increase the number of angles this move can get some deadly combos out of.
Forward Aerial - Pincushion
W stabs forward with her tail furiously three times in an animation that mirrors Ridley's FAir pretty directly, before whipping out her combat knife and darting forward slightly to shiv the opponent with it. The way this move's hitboxes work is actually fairly complex, so we'll break it down step by step. The body of W's tail deals 3 hits of 2%, the brief multihit letting her drag foes a little bit for positioning purposes, and each hit deals a flinch. The last hit with the knife deals 10% and knockback that KOs at the ledge about 5% earlier than Nair's sweetspot does. The problem with this move is that the first 3 tail stabs do not true combo into the shiv, W taking just a tad too long on the final stab so the opponent gets a chance to weave around it, although the margin is very slim. You can easily end up getting punished for this maneuver if you completely fail to use this move's hitboxes properly, but fortunately W's extreme fast fall does give her an emergency escape plan if she goes for a Fair and fails to sweetspot any of the hits.
Each of the tail stabs has a small sweetspot, indicated the same way they are in Nair with the slight red and black glow. These deal 3% per hit, and the first 2 don't otherwise function differently than if you hit the sourspot, but rather have an effect on the third hit and fourth hits of the move. Each sweetspot you land buffs the hitstun of the 3rd hit and the knockback of the fourth. This is, suffice to say, exceptionally difficult. Its one thing to land a small sweetspot on one hit(something you'll actually pull off incidentally reasonably often), its another to land the small sweetspot on all three hits in succession, and even two is a real challenge. With that said, the rewards are pretty insane for an aerial that comes out on Frame 7.
If you land one sweetspot, you guarantee a combo into the stab with the hitstun, which now kills at about 110% at the ledge, which is pretty strong for an aerial and also gets you a guarunteed
Insult to Injury self-contained in one move, which is pretty nice for speeding up Side Special without any fancy combos or bomb setups. If you land two sweetspots, the hitstun will be quite high, enough that if you cancel out of the last hit by landing you can go into a Nair to position the foe to your liking, or go into quite a number of W's ground moves. The knockback now kills at 80% at the ledge, which is extremely strong and a worthy reward for pulling this off. If you get all three sweetspots, the third hit will deal a ton of hitstun that will confirm into a huge chunk of W's set if you cancel the lag on landing, situationally even the mighty King of Hearts if you've made it fast enough which is unbelievably devastating for a casual combo out of an aerial. You won't even need max stacks King of Hearts to do it, unlike most of your other combos into that move. If you're not comboing some ridiculous move out of this though, Fair's final hit will do just fine, because it now kills at 75%... at center stage. That said you'd need an unbelievably good read on the opponent's positioning to pull this hit off, since again you have to land three precise sweetspots off one attack, which is incredibly difficult.
The obvious flaw with this move is despite coming out quickly enough and having low-ish end lag, its extremely unsafe. If you don't confirm any sweetspots the opponent might be able to punish you for whiffing the final hit, or if you whiff the third hit in general as that's where the attack's critical hitstun lies. And it might not be a traditionally laggy attack, but the duration is awfully high, so whiffing it entirely can sometimes risk a heavy punish, making this much riskier to throw out than most aerials. It can, at least, catch dodges with the final knife hit, and while you won't get all the
Insult to Injury or heightened knockback benefits you'll at least get a decent spacer. And if you can accept the risk factor, this is a fast move that deals 19% and gets you a free stack of
Insult to Injury by itself if you sweetspot just one hit, which isn't that hard to do.
Landing a triple sweetspot is really hard, we've established that, but W can make things easier on herself with her Jack in the Box mines and D12 bombs. An opponent hit by either of those will set up this attack to land 2-3 sweetspots more easily as a hitbox with lag completely disjointed from W's. which is certainly one of the scarier combo results you can get, though the foe should have enough control over their movement after the first hit that you can only really guarantee the one and very rarely two sweetspots with very good aim. That said, D12s and Jack in the Boxes will also create a situation where the opponent may be forced between a rock and a hard place, as particularly in the case of the latter they'll have to weave to try and avoid them while W is throwing out Fairs, making their movements more predictable and potentially leaving them with no choice but to either take multiple sweetspots or a powerful explosion. This is a little situational when the mines are groundbound, so its not something you can just assume you'll be able to take advantage of when you're throwing out Fairs all the time, but W can drop quite a number of explosives on the stage so its potentially more omnipresent than you might think if she's got a good setup going.
Up Aerial - Cut and Boot
In a swift motion, W swings her tail over her head to slice opponents as she flips over, her legs following the motion in a flipkick. This is a two-hit move, her tail dealing 4% and brief hitstun and basically no knockback, while her legs deal 6% and light upwards knockback that won't scale to kill until ridiculous percentages. This move's high speed is its main selling point, coming out very fast, but the double hit means its decent at catching dodges, and it combos into Nair up until mid percentages. Considering Nair has a pretty potent effect if you hit with the sweetspot and its a very fast move comboing into an
Insult to Injury option, this is a very respectable move that can punish foes trying to go over W very easily. Given her fall speed, in particular her fast fall, W is better at sneaking under opponents to make use of this move than anyone else in Ultimate's cast, so her having such a potent Uair is a pretty solid addition to her air game. There is one area where her fall speed works against her, and that's that you don't really want to cancel out of the Uair by landing in the middle of the second hit. Given the hits come out in quick succession this is mostly just something you worry about if you badly time it out of a shorthop, but it won't give you nearly the frame advantage you'd hope for out of this move if you just land the one hit as her landing lag is a bit longer than the usual end lag.
Obviously this is a very simple move, but it does play well with W's other tools. Obviously if you land the right part of the hitbox at the right percent, you can actually go into a spiking Nair with this, which is a scary offstage kill tool if a somewhat situational one. It can also, of course, spike them into a minefield, which is the second thing that benefits from this attack. W's mines are, for the most part, entirely groundbound except for the brief period D12s are flying through the air to latch on as time bombs or explode at the end of the countdown. Opponents are going to want to take to the air to get around them, and while W's Uair won't usually send them back to earth(the Nair spike combos are not particularly reliable even if they are potent when you pull them off), W can potentially chain quite a bit of damage juggling or comboing foes with this, and its raw speed combined with the potential for it to chain into something fearsome on occasion with Nair makes it quite threatening to opponents trying to go over W's setups. If you hit with this at the right angle at mid-high percents, sometimes you can even chain this into Nair's sweetspot and then go for a 50/50 Up Special, which can put the foe very close to death afterwards, and even combo this move itself into Up Special at around 150% for a late kill confirm.
Down Aerial - Tail Hook
Briefly pulling her tail back, W stabs it down forcefully, dealing 13% and a fairly strong spike that kills foes from a groundbounce at about 170%. This attack has noticeably extended hitlag on hitting a foe, comparable to something like Zelda's Fair sweetspot. While a decently high range spike with solid power, this move comes out on Frame 16, so its slow enough to be reactable, and the hitbox is slender enough opponents can easily weave around it. That said, when you can litter the stage with landmines that are extra dangerous if you knock the foe into them, this move has a fair bit of extra utility compared to what spikes are capable of for most other characters, and its a pretty scary threat to opponents at the ledge with its range, especially in conjunction with W's other stage control elements. The end lag on this is actually fairly low, conditionally allowing W to fastfall and Nair the opponent for a true combo even if she didn't spike them into a mine, which can be useful as the Nair angle you get from falling on the foe is pretty much strictly horizontal and can shove them along the stage into a field of D12s or Jack in the Box mines.
Given the start lag, this is a bit of a hard attack to get
Insult to Injury off with. D12s and Jack in the Box explosives are the easiest way to pull it off, but sometimes an
Insult to Injury Nair or just your Fair will set this up as well. That said, if you do manage to land it, W will get an interesting benefit, she'll be able to swing off the foe in any direction during the hitlag by tapping that direction, flying forward between 0.6-1.6 battlefield platforms depending on how hard you tilted the direction. There are two ways to make use of this, and the easier one is to give W some extra space. Fling off far away from the foe who is taking their own knockback in the moment and just start throwing out a bunch of mines between you and them. W's setup is pretty temporary, so sometimes you'll just want to be able to convert off this to get back to it faster at exactly the part of the stage you want it to be on, taking over the middle of the stage, a platform, or ledges depending on what's most useful to you once the opponent's recovered from the knockback.
Of course, you can also go on the aggressive, as the low end lag of this move(which actually gets cut a little more if you land the
Insult to Injury variant as a bonus) plus the ability to come at the foe from any direction afterwards lets you convert off it in many ways you couldn't before. Rather than having one specific Nair sweetspot angle you can pull off, the ability to direct where W's positioned after this move means you can combo this into a huge variety of Nair angles on the opponent, possibly letting you continue the chain into yet another
Insult to Injury hit from another move for a total of 3, piling on heavy damage and immensely cutting the lag of Side Special's next shot. You can also convert this into various ground moves, such as FTilt, UTilt, and even occasionally Up Smash and Forward Smash, by flinging W into the ground after spiking the foe down there. Depending on how fast Side Special is, it can serve as a 50/50 with the forward facing options against a grounded opponent, or this can serve as a way to kill the opponent by comboing into it if you have 5
Insult to Injury stacks. You can also leap back in at an opponent who got groundbounced at certain percents for an Insult to Injury Up Special, which is another frighteningly powerful option.
Back Aerial - Into the Ground
Taking her combat knife out, W swings it in an arc behind her from top to bottom, in a fairly quick aerial that deals 8% and diagonally upwards knockback that KOs at 245%. This is a rather quick and spammable aerial, linking into itself at very low percents, although by virtue of its direction it doesn't combo into all that much. That said, it does serve a practical purpose of forcing off opponents who crossed up behind W, and while the knockback does have an upward component you can still use this to pressure opponents towards mines behind W, as the upward component is only at a 30 degree angle and the knockback is low enough at low percentages that a couple hits of this can just "push" the opponent across the stage where you want them to be. If you're worried about this tactic being too predictable, feel free to mix in Nairs, although those won't do the work of pushing the opponent where you want to do without a combo, but if you're willing to sacrifice the whole "pressure them into your setup" gameplan or have stuff threatening foes on both sides on the ground, its a perfectly viable way to mix the opponent up a bit.
The fun thing about this attack is what happens if you land during it, this turns into a more potent move, as W will plunge the knife into the ground at the end, stabbing into a grounded for a much higher 13% and knockback that KOs at 145% at the same angle as the regular version, which is fairly scary at the ledge for how fast this comes out. The cost is, of course, W takes higher ending lag as she needs to yank her knife out of the ground, making this very punishable. This is where W's high fall speed comes in and makes this move more threatening, especially with her fast fall. At super low percents you can chain the weaker version into the stronger one near the ground for a fast
Insult to Injury proc, though that quickly stops being an option once you get past 15% or so. That said, using your fast fall speed to be opportunistic can let W suddenly punish a foe who thought crossing her up would be low risk because her Down Smash doesn't hit both sides, or because all or most of her mine coverage is in front of her. The high end lag makes it pretty bad if you whiff this, so you're going to want to be an opportunist with it, but the fact that a decent aerial KO move comes baked into an otherwise fast option is pretty helpful for W.
If you land the
Insult to Injury variant of this move, the key thing that changes is the knockback goes from a 35 degree angle to an 8 degree one. That combined with the damage increase is a combination of things W really likes, putting opponents very close to the ground for all kinds of mine shenanigans and in line for a Side Special offstage. The other nice thing is that compared to some of the more niche options, you have a wider arrange of angles and percentages where landing this out of Nair and especially Dair is possible, there's a wide range of angles and locations this combos out of an Insult to Injury Dair in particular.
Smashes
"Did you see that guy's face just now? That absolute despair when he realized he was going to get blown apart and couldn't do a thing about it, have you ever seen anything funnier?"
Forward Smash - Brutal Stab
Rearing her tail back, W stabs her tail forward, it actually having a bit of exaggerated length during this move as her longest reaching tail attack. There's also a noticeable red and black glow to W's tail during this move, emphasizing the power of the strike. This has 17 frames of start up and deals 15%-21%, with low angle knockback that kills at 130%-90%. This is a decent KO move, with its good reach and not particularly hefty start lag for a smash, but it will KO a bit later than W usually wants too, though it will certainly suffice at a ledge. If you're looking to punish a dodge of a D12 explosion, this is one of your best tools to do so, as it has a bit of extra reach your attacks don't usually get and isn't super laggy like Down Smash or Side Special so you don't need a hell of a read to pull it off.
17 frames of start lag is a lot to get an
Insult to Injury hit with, to the point you're basically going to be relying on hitting a foe into a mine to pull it off, or another trick that we'll bring up in Down Tilt. If W does get it off though, her tail will impale through the foe and hook into them, taking W along for the ride as they take their knockback, and leaving her at the end with a pretty sizeable frame advantage over the foe, enough to go into Nair or Fair as a combo out of this. If the foe would go off the blast zone from this, W will let go briefly before they do, preventing this move from being a suicide as her recovery will be enough to get her back to the ledge pretty safely at the point she lets go. This is pretty scary because W will be easily able to get into Nair's sweetspot range, and at the angle she'll hit the foe? That's a spike. That 130% KO percent is suddenly looking to come a lot earlier, especially if you pull this off near a ledge, although Nair's spiking properties aren't super powerful and many foes will be able to recover just fine from this until percentages where you could start killing with
Insult to Injury Side Special, at least. As for Little Mac mains, all I can say is W is kind of a sadist and you guys brought this on yourselves.
For the record, the
Insult to Injury bonus of this is still really good on foes who don't end up knocked off stage with this, because Nair spiking the foe into the stage basically guarunteed out of this is an easy way to smack them down into mines or subsequent combos, you can pull off some pretty scary strings with this if you get some good reads off the first Nair spike even without a mine where at that point you might very well max out your Insult to Injury stacks in one string.
Going into Fair with this is also scary, because you'll get at least one sweetspot off pretty much guaranteed, and while that doesn't necessarily kill as early as a spike it still supplements this move's already high knockback to KO quite early. However, if you did end up offstage with a foe after using this move, you could always succeed at double or triple sweetspotting Fair if you read the foe well, which is why going for this as a hail mary will let you sometimes just kill at absolutely hilarious percentages like 20%-30%... but you won't have any mines to help you. You just have to land an already hard technique to pull off, and then read the opponent well enough to land multiple sweetspots. At the very least you get a consolation prize of putting the foe far off stage if you only land one, but W will need to go recover at that point unless she wants to play REALLY risky with the prospect of recovering. Fair can also produce even more devastating strings than Nair if you go for it above the stage, as while its not guarunteed the higher stun could go into a SECOND Forward Smash if you pull off the triple sweetspot, which is absolutely disgusting. If you've got a mine placed where the foe will have some issues DIing, that prospect is worth going for, but if you're not confident in your ability to outread the opponent, Fair with just one sweetspot is usually less potent than Nair.
As far as "follow the opponent's knockback with your own movement" options go, this does have some overlap with Dair on paper, but where Dair can go into a pretty wide variety of options, none of them are as immediately terrifying as what Forward Smash does to an opponent. It also doesn't have any easy setups while Dair can be used out of
Insult to Injury Nair, to use this you better react fast to a foe getting smacked into a mine or there isn't really much of a chance to pull it off. Given the upwards knockback of D12s and Jack in the Boxes, its pretty hard to even combo this off those normally as this attack only hits straight forward, but on stages with platforms its not impossible to pull that off, which is probably the scariest thing about fighting W on a platform heavy stage, even if she does have to spread her mines thinner.
Up Smash - Gouge
Taking out her combat knife and bracing her tail, W stabs both of them above herself in an X-shape, in an attack that comes out on Frame 13. The majority of this hitbox deals 14%-19% and diagonally upwards knockback that KOs at 130%-95%, but there's a sweetspot where her blade and tail will intersect through the foe at the same time that deals a much more frightening 18%-25% and upwards knockback that KOs at 80%-45%. This move's range is a bit lackluster for a Smash as W can't really extend her knife or tail all that far with this motion, and the sweetspot is pretty specific, but despite that the power and speed of this move makes it a solid anti-air option against opponents trying to get over W's minefield. If you want something a bit less specific to hit with and more combo oriented, Up Aerial is pretty easy to mix in, but the threat of a 13 frame move that kills at 80% certainly gives the foe more reason to approach you through your minefield. For that matter, if they do keep taking aerial approaches to you, it will make them a fair bit more predictable and as such lead into quite a few more instances of W managing to sweetspot this move for early kills. The end lag is also not too bad, whiffing this will get you punished for sure but its not necessarily a death sentence.
The sweetspot has an added perk that makes it even more frightening, because its not just for killing. It also creates a visible blood spray when it hits the opponent, and leaves them with a large wound on their body that bleeds(bleeding oil/appropriately colored essence on characters who don't have normal blood). This deals the foe 1% per second for 5 seconds, meaning in practice the sweetspot will deal 23%-30% to opponents in total over time. That said, every time you hit the foe for more than 5%, the duration of the bleed is increased by a second, so combo strings can actually buff the damage this deals in total a bit further. But if you want to really get mileage out of this, you have to land
Insult to Injury hits on the opponent, because every time you land one, the damage per second this deals increases by 1%. A couple
Insult to Injury hits getting weaved in on a bleeding opponent suddenly means they're taking an extra 30% or so off this sweetspot, often meaning one sweetspot of this move will do like half the work to get the opponent to kill percents by itself, with whatever combos you pulled off doing the other half of the work. That means even when you have the foe as low as 0%-10%, opponents absolutely do not want to get hit by the sweetspot of this move, making it all that much scarier for the foe to commit entirely to aerial approaches. Of course, you do have to pull off some clever combos to get a ton of damage out of this, but that's what the bizarre but versatile combo potential of your Nair/Fair/Dair, as well as your mines, are for. If you do somehow hit the sweetspot again while the duration of the bleed is ticking down, it adds 3 seconds to its duration rather than 1.
This move does benefit from
Insult to Injury, but to be honest with its lackluster reach, high enough start lag to make comboing into it a bit tricky, and angle specifically above W to prevent it from comboing off a Jack in the Box stun or Fair, you won't really see this move used with the
Insult to Injury mechanic often. If you do, it will probably be off a D12 blast at specific percentages, but that means hitting a time bomb explosion without the foe being in the midst of dodging something else while W's nearby. That's not particularly easy, the reason that countdown is usually as dangerous as it is is because W is doing something herself simultaneously, but if you manage to get inside the foe's head enough you could ever pull it off. Given that's tricky to start with and you need some pretty specific percents to combo the sweetspot, it has a pretty sizeable
Insult to Injury bonus when you do manage it, buffing the damage per second to 2% at base and the base duration to 8 seconds, meaning it tacks on 16% before even factoring in any further Insult to Injury hits to boost the damage or subsequent comboing to boost the duration further.
Down Smash - Queen of Hearts
Pointing her cannon at the ground in front of her, W fires it at the ground to produce a sizeable explosion, comparable in animation to Snake's Forward Smash. The firey explosion comes out on Frame 36, and unlike Side Special you cannot make this move faster, but it does have some pretty impressive range as the blast is a bit larger than the blast from Snake's FSmash, in exchange for higher end lag. This move deals 22%-30% and diagonal knockback that kills at 75%-40%, making it a very formidable KO move. On top of that, the blast actually lingers for quite a few frames, long enough that its very difficult to dodge, especially with staled dodges. Shields will take slightly increased shield damage from this, but more importantly, this move deals an obscene amount of shield push, shoving the foe back a full 1.4 battlefield platforms, and this will trip any Jack in the Box mines they go sliding over. This means that while this move is quite laggy, its good against both defensive options, making pulling it off with a hard read all that much easier, especially if the foe is trying to avoid the explosion window of D12 time bombs.
If you want to set off W's explosives manually, this is your move. Its not a trap like a Jack in the Box mine or projectile that will only set them off halfway across the stage like King of Hearts, so while the opponent will definitely see it coming, this is the easiest way to blow up your setup outside the set explosion window. It even has a nice perk when you blow everything up with this: any explosions triggered by the Down Smash will also linger for much longer than usual while keeping their same power, meaning that while a long chain of D12s across the stage hit by this move can create a very big line of hitboxes opponents can't just dodge the normal way. This is fairly scary especially with a few stacked up in one place to make shielding lead to a shield break, but keep in mind you are sacrificing any explosives that touch this hitbox or any connected hitboxes when you activate this, so you are paying with a big chunk of or your whole setup if this doesn't work out or only has a small payoff.
That said, it is worth mentioning that on top of being able to set off chains of hard to dodge explosions across the stage, the stacking damage/knockback properties of D12s are horrifying in the context of this move. If you get a good read on the foe and blast them with this while a D12 is stuck to them, it'll kill at closer to 55% uncharged, noticeably stronger than Ganondorf's FSmash on a move that you can't dodge or shield nearly as effectively as you could that one. A couple D12s on the ground around you and the foe will push the KO percentages to outright ludicrously early levels, adding another reason the foe needs to be terrified wandering your minefields. That said, this is all just assuming the foe doesn't hit you out of the horribly punishable start lag or just run or jump out of the way of the hitbox, which is pretty easy to do when the move is this telegraphed.
As a general rule, if you're going for an
Insult to Injury Down Smash on the opponent, you'd probably be better off with Side Special. Its faster if you've built up to it to make combos easier and is actually even more powerful when you pull it off. Not to say this won't just kill the foe anyway sometimes so it can occasionally be worth going for if you had zero stacks before hitting a foe into a yellow mine, but for the most part, you have a directly better choice than going for the
Insult to Injury version of this move, as the basic damage buff is too small to compete.
Standards
"Save the Infected? Almost all the Sarkaz in Kazdel are infected, and you haven't even seen the kinds of oppression and conflict that go on there... So, how far do you plan to go with your 'salvation?'"
Jab - Reel
Twisting her waist forward to get a bit more reach, W stabs her tail out briefly in front of her. W yanks then it right back in toward her, pulling an opponent up right into her face from a short distance in front of her. This is the opening hit of Jab and has a bit higher than average reach for W's tail attacks, which already have decent range, and the hit deals 2% and yanks the opponent right in front of W. If you end the attack here, W has enough end lag to leave her at only frame neutral with the foe, so this won't really combo into anything unless you follow up to the next hits. However, if you've got mines out, you can use this attack to yank an opponent in W's melee range over a mine right next to her. This sounds like a bit of a niche context, but W places mines pretty quickly, going over her head can be difficult due to her strong anti-air, and this attack comes out on Frame 3 with above average range. Fishing to nab foes with this when there's a mine in the appropriate location is a lot easier to pull off than it sounds, and it sets foes up for a well-positioned Nair to do flashy aerial combos to build up
Insult to Injury stacks, since you'll be at a sizeable enough frame advantage to get choice of your positioning. With better mines out, you can go for Dair or a wider variety of Nair ranges, and if you've built up your
Insult to Injury stacks you can even go for the Side Special. So while the range this can set the opponent up with is small, the fact that it can lead into kills at 50% with a Side Special stacked up properly or all manner of dangerous combos(particularly the monstrous FSmash), it makes the simple prospect of W standing next to one of her mines a scary one for opponents to deal with.
After the tail stab, W can go into a rapid flurry of knife stabs, which rack up hits of 1% fairly quickly. Due to the short length of the knife and W not putting her back into the stabs as much as Captain Falcon does his rapid jab, the range on this is a bit underwhelming. That means foes can escape from it reasonably fast, but the damage racking here is a decent consolation prize if you don't have a mine around, and it does have a backup purpose with D12s in the picture. You don't have to pull the foe into a Jack in the Box mine, you can just hold them in place just long enough for a D12 explosion and then capitalize off that, or possibly even use it to kill if you've stacked up a few in place. This isn't an overly impressive way to stall for time, mind you, but given how the first hit is pretty easy to fish for and the opponent will probably be worried about a lot of other things W could be doing in the last second leading up to a D12 blast, this can be an acceptable way to secure the hit.
The last hit is unfortunately pretty underwhelming as W kicks the opponent in the stomach to send them away, dealing 5% and knockback at a 35 degree angle that scales really slowly but won't leave the opponent close enough to combo into much of anything. Its not even really at a good angle to lead into Up Special and it puts the foe too high to knock them into mines, but to be honest it doesn't need to be any more than a spacer and neutral reseter. You get your fair share of damage even without any explosives to pay off for an attack that comes out this quick, and if you do use one properly to reap additional payoff this move starts to become downright unfair for its lag. As an aside, how good this move is with a mine between you and the foe can definitely force the foe issue on the foe's DI in certain cases, which makes the Fair's triple sweetspot all that much more feasible. Just keep in mind that the scenarios you need for this to really pay off are a bit precise, and its otherwise mostly just an unexciting reset tool.
Forward Tilt - Slice
With a quick flick of her arm, W slashes her knife out in front of her in a swift strike that deals 7% and weak diagonally upwards knockback that will only scale to kill at around 300%. This is fast to start and fast to end, with not particularly impressive range to it, but its still a good combo starter. You can actually angle this move to have W slash downwards toward the ground or at an upwards angle, which alters the knockback angle by 15 degrees upward or downward from its 40 degree base angle. While these have less horizontal reach, the variety in angles is nice if you're trying to combo this into Nair's sweetspot, which is possible out of this move. It can also go into Fair regardless of angle, Uair if angled up, and at high percents you can go into an Up Special out of the low angled version of this which is a pretty scary finisher to have off FTilt. Sure, it won't combo into Insult to Injury stuff directly, but having 3 angle options means you can get it so Nair will combo into a more impressive third hit at less specific ranges than you'd otherwise need to worry about for setting it up, although it still requires a good knowledge of what W can combo into at what percent with this move and Nair. Essentially, the range is a little weak, but otherwise this is a good combo starter.
There's a tricky property to this move, indicated by the blade having a red glint to it before and during the slice. This slash actually has reflecting properties, sending opponent's projectiles back at them, or at a higher or lower angle based on how you angled the slash. W can kinda struggle to get a projectile using opponent to approach, given her own projectile is either incredibly laggy, or only not going to be for one use. This, at the very least, can keep them from camping you out and ignoring your setup. If they choose just not to approach you but don't throw projectiles into the mix, that's fine, then it just means you approach them while setting up or make a setup and then do your best to fling the foe right into it, via Bair/Nair/Up Special or just juggling them towards it with Uair and forcing them to go in a particular direction by manuevering Fair's sweetspots in the other one.
W can't really reflect her Side Special shot except in pretty bizarre circumstances that are not possible with just her own moveset, so that's not a piece of utility you need to worry about with this move. What you can reflect, however, is a thrown D12, it will bounce back up into the air off the knife at an angle depending on how you tilted it. By default it will just repeat the basic throwing arc the D12 mine is sent in, but angled up it will travel in a higher, shorter arc that will only go forward 0.75 battlefield platforms, taking longer to go up and down due to the high arc, and angled down it will go in a lower arc that takes less time to complete and sends it forward 1.75 battlefield platforms. This lets W keep a D12 mine flying through the air to leave the threat it bumping into the opponent and sticking to them as a time bomb and amplifier to W's explosive hitboxes in play, and lets W "juggle" it across the stage as something to avoid mixed in with W's other attacks. The fact that FTilt is quick means that while this isn't really something you want to be focused on when the opponent is meleeing you, using this to carry a mine across the stage isn't actually all that impractical, giving the foe a second threat to worry about while W is approaching them.
Down Tilt - Boot
From her incredibly low to the ground crouch, W spins her body around a low spinning kick, having slightly above average lag for a Down Tilt(coming out on Frame 9) and dealing 7% on W's leg and 9% on her foot. The knockback here comes at a very low angle on the leg, only about 10 degrees above the ground, and it scales until it can kill at about 250%. While this isn't particularly impressive knockback on its own, the extremely low angle makes this move good at setting up low angled Up Specials at mid-high percents, and it also puts opponent's precariously close to nearby grounded mines. This means the opponent is going to have to position themselves carefully at the end of their knockback if they don't want to trip the mine when they land and end up in a much bigger disadvantage state, or just dead if you have a good D12 setup. That means that while this move won't combo into much directly, dashing in right afterwards when the opponent has to position more predictably can lead to W pulling off some of her more precise stunts, and a sped up Side Special and Up Special provide other things for the foe to fear aside from W just dashing in.
W's foot is a sweetspot that is guarunteed to trip the foe, which leaves them with a faint red aura while tripped. This aura is an indicator of a funny aspect of W's proning moves(of which she has one more, which we'll get to), the opponent takes
Insult to Injury bonuses at any point they are hit out of prone. Not only that, the aura will last on them during any of their out of prone options and for 5 frames afterward, meaning if W reads whatever way the opponent chooses to get out of prone and punishes accordingly, she gets
Insult to Injury bonuses for properly tech chasing. This is really nice, especially when you factor in that mines can be used to block off certain tech paths for the opponent, leaving W at an even bigger advantage in the tech chase than she normally would be with higher rewards for winning it. Down Tilt isn't a source of true combos like Forward Tilt, but its payout can be just as rewarding, if not moreso, with good reads and mine placement. I mean, think about what happens if you read the opponent correctly and get off Forward Smash, that's a huge threat to any prone foe especially when FSmash has some wide area coverage.
Since the kick is so low to the ground, this move can shield poke, which is a handy option if the opponent is shielding a D12 activation in particular. Shields are the better way to avoid a D12 explosion generally speaking, given W can easily layer her hits to punish dodges, but this gives you the ability to convert into an advantage if the foe goes for a shield as well and you read that right. Just one thing to keep in mind with this move is that the end lag is enough that you will get punished if you whiff it, and W can't really take a lot of punishment with her low weight and high fall speed.
Up Tilt - Sky Knife
W sweeps her knife over her head in an arc, but at the very end of the sweep twists the knife down so its pointed at the ground. This is the third in W's trifecta of anti-air options, and its probably the least impressive at a glance. Its not as fast as Uair and lacks the punch of Up Smash, though it still comes out pretty quickly on Frame 7. The knife's damage and knockback depends on where you hit with it. At the back of the arc, it hits foes straight up for 7% and weak upwards knockback that sets up Uair, a second UTilt at low percentages, or Bair. The middle hit works kinda like a worse version of FTilt for combos, sending the foe up and forward so it can combo into Nair and Fair, but due to the higher base knockback it will work for less time than those moves. It does deal 9% and if the match has gone horribly, horribly wrong, it can kill at 200%.
The real prize is the downward twist at the end, a small sweetspot that deals 11% and diagonally
downward knockback. This will spike opponents out of the air and send them sliding right into mines a short distance in front of you, which is the reason why this move is still a scary part of W's anti-air game. You can nail the foe right out of an aerial approach into your minefield if they're trying to go over you, and while its precise and not as practical for sliding foes into mines as DTilt and Jab, it makes up for it with the fact that its actually kinda scary at or near the ledge. Diagonally downward knockback is not something the opponent wants to deal with offstage, suffice to say. At low percents, it also goes right into FTilt, which is on the longer end of combo strings W can pull off normally.
Oh yeah, and if you get
Insult to Injury on the sweetspot, the damage and knockback gets buffed more than normal. It will now deal 16% and diagonally downward knockback that will send foes off the blast zone at 120%, but considering the angle if they don't lose a lot of that knockback from getting smacked into the stage, that's going to kill quite a bit earlier than that, which is very scary off a Frame 7 move. The tiny, specific hitbox is not something W can combo into casually, especially given its relatively high above the ground, but it is quite possibly off a D12 explosion or a Jack in the Box mine and occasionally off Nair or Dair's own
Insult to Injury variants. Speaking of those, you can use this to slide opponents into minefields like halfway across the stage and then blast them with Side Special, so getting
Insult to Injury on this sweetspot is
very potent, suffice to say.
Dash Attack - Lunge
Leaping forward with grin on her face and her knife out, W looks like if she's going to be inspecting anything, its going to be the opponent's organs. This comes out a bit on the slower side compared to her tilts on Frame 12, and if W hits the foe she'll plunge her knife into them and kick off them, sending the foe behind her with 11% and horizontal knockback that's actually pretty weak, not killing until 280%. That said, the keyword here is horizontal knockback. If you leap over a mine and send the foe back into it, you're getting your reward even if the knockback on this isn't all that great. That said, its a bit of a low to the ground lunge, one the opponent can easily hop over, but if they do that W could instead intercept with a Fair. This is particularly nice if the foe is dancing just out of range of Jabbing them into mine, letting you shove the cowardly foe right into it.
As for what it'll do if you don't have setups, well its sadly not the most rewarding attack in that case, but you can link into Bair at low percents, and given Insult to Injury Bair that means you could get a foe to a further back set of mines at lower percents. Also one thing that's nice about this move is its not particularly punishable if the foe shields it, as W will just bounce off their shield and with good DI she'll probably be out of range of the foe's next hit as this has low lag for W and decent shield stun on the opponent. Relatedly, you can use this to dart off an opponent even without setups to start laying down mines on both sides of them, as W will have enough time to lay down a mine after this move.
Sadly, there isn't some big
Insult to Injury benefit on this move, just boosting the damage and giving you a stack for Side Special. The minor knockback buff this will provide can make it better for putting the foe into range of a mine in corner cases, though, and sometimes if you dropped a foe on a faraway mine and don't have anything better to capitalize on their stun with, you take the Side Special stacks where you can get them.
Grab Game
"Step right up, plenty of surprises for everyone!"
Grab
W's actual grab is a bit underwhelming as she reaches out with one hand, not really leaning into it much and as such having a very short grab game, though its at least a pretty fast grab. Once she grabs them, W holds a knife to the opponent and points her pointy tail at them menacingly as she keeps them close in her grip. There is one catch to this grab though, despite not dealing 10%, or even dealing damage at all, landing grab on a foe in hitstun will trigger
Insult to Injury, though you won't get the stack of it until you actually use a throw. W's throws are much scarier when their
Insult to Injury effects are active, but its definitely a challenge to combo into with the short range of the grab. Hitting 2/3 Fair sweetspots will do the trick, some Nair angles will work, obviously an
Insult to Injury mine will do the job. The good news is that W's vanilla throws are still okay and in some cases even pretty good, even if they're not as powerful as her
Insult to Injury throws, so the backup plan of "just grab a foe trying to shield a D12 or fish for grabs against opponents who get too close" will net you some decent results too.
If W grabs a foe over a Jack in the Box mine, which is a pretty big corner case due to the short range of grab, the mine will blow up on the foe but not knock the foe out of W's grab. It will, however, cause the grab to change to its
Insult to Injury version if it wasn't already.
Pummel
W drags her tail across the opponent's flesh, dealing them 3% in a significantly slower than average pummel. The overall damage rate of this isn't bad though because of the high damage per pummel, but its not as good at refreshing your more spammed stale moves as a faster one.
Insult to Injury does not change the pummel in any way.
Down Throw - Execution
W slams the foe into the ground and stabs her knife into them, dealing the foe 10% and weak knockback that bounces the foe off the ground. The light diagonally mostly upward knockback off the ground is great at lower percents for comboing into the usual subjects of FTilt, Nair, and Fair, comboing into Uair once the percentages get a little higher while losing the ability to go into FTilt. Essentially, the basic version of this throw is your combo throw, and while it won't do any Insult to Injury combos barring a well placed Nair sweetspot, its still a good way to get your advantage state started, move opponents towards a minefield, and when the Nair does line up getting a free
Insult to Injury confirm off a throw is quite nice.
The
Insult to Injury variant of this is not a pure combo throw, but its arguably a lot scarier. W will dig her blade right into the opponent's throat(or at least try, not everyone has one of those), before ripping her blade through it with a spray of blood/oil/essense that deals the foe 14% and sends them dropping into untechable prone. This has the same prone effect as Down Tilt, so any reads on the opponent's prone from here will trigger
Insult to Injury, so while its got less immediate reward than the regular Down Throw, the ceiling for potential is much higher because of the bonus effects you can get off tech chasing the opponent. This is the scarier throw to actually use in your minefield as the basic version will just send the foe flying above it, barring some really good Fair reads, as it puts you at a huge advantage over the foe in terms of getting up from prone without taking an
Insult to Injury hit.
This is extra good because this gives you not just the benefits of Down Tilt's proning, but also of Up Smash's wound effect, as indicated by the blood spraying from the foe. This deals them the same damage for the same duration as Up Smash's sweetspot, 1% for 5 seconds, and adds 3 seconds of duration if the foe was already under this effect. But see, if you get an
Insult to Injury read off this with say, Nair/Dair/Down Smash/Forward Smash/Dash Attack, the foe is already taking increased damage from the bleed immediately, and a good punish on the foe's getup attempt can easily lead into getting something like 30%+ off this status effect plus multiple stacks of
Insult to Injury, which is just brutal for a throw. Of course, this all means you have to read the foe well or have mines set up to block off enough escape paths that it doesn't matter, but at worst you prone the foe and deal them 19%(and likely more as confirming a regular hit or two in the following 5 seconds isn't hard), which is a solid reward in and of itself.
Back Throw - Impaler
W harshly stabs her tail into the foe, leaving them impaled behind her for a moment before she grips her knife in both hands and slams it into the opponent, dealing 4% with the tail stab followed by 7% and knockback that will kill at the ledge at 135%. A good option for reversing the foe behind you into a minefield at lower percents or at the far edge of the stage, as a kill throw goes, its okay. W's got kill options at 50% that are completely feasible if you're playing her well, so if you're falling back on this move its a little disappointing, but it can make use of the heavy damage you can get out of her bleed effect. For that matter, the knockback is pretty low angle, so it does set up Side Special against off stage opponents fairly well, and also works a bit better as a KO move against foes with poor horizontal recoveries and puts the opponent closer down to the minefield.
If you got off an
Insult to Injury grab, W will hold the opponent on her tail a bit longer as a brief red and black glow appears on her knife as she braces it, before immediately appearing right behind the opponent with several red slashes going through their body, in the style of those "delayed slash" anime swordsman moves. The foe takes 4% from the initial stab and then 14% and is sent flying by slashes, taking knockback at the same angle as the regular version but buffed to kill at 110%. At center stage. This is a hilariously powerful kill throw and lets W space foes into a far back mine field even at low percents, but because you have to pull off a pretty situational combo into it, you can't just lure the foe to a ledge and assume its going to work out when you try to back throw them off it. Instead, its a powerful kill confirm if you can combo the foe into the close range and grounded grab, with probably the best setup for it being your Fair.
Up Throw - Combo Stab
W stabs the opponent once with her knife, once with her tail, and then a third time with her knife in an upwards motion that sends the foe flying up above her, before throwing her knife up after them. Each hit of this move deals 3%, with the third hit doing rather high base but minimally scaling upwards knockbackthat will put the foe out of range of W's ability to combo, but the fourth knife flying up to hit them is guaranteed to connect and bumps the foe a little higher into the air with the extra 3%. This deals a total of 12%, the highest of W's throws by a small margin, and while it leaves the foe well out of reach for her to combo into(they're not really at a good angle for Up Special, either due to being directly above her), this does give W a pretty big frame advantage over the opponent. Use this frame advantage to reset the battlefield to your advantage, as you won't get a chance to place more than one mine but at least have enough time to place it strategically so that the foe's fall will be made much more annoying once W takes to the air to use aerials on them afterwards. Consider it something of a free setup to having a mine that opponents will struggle to maneuver around.
If W has landed this move out of an
Insult to Injury grab, she'll pull her arm back for the knife stab to emphasize it more, stab the tail so hard it goes through the foe, and practically jump off the ground with her final knife stab, increasing the damage on each hit to 5%, before throwing two knives up at the foe which will hit them at the peak of the now even higher base knockback, which also has a scaling component now to kill at about 135%. Back Throw is the better kill throw, for sure, but this can kill pretty early on platforms, and it has some benefits Back Throw doesn't. For one, the two knives hitting the foe will put W at a huge frame advantage, enough that comboing into
Insult to Injury Up Special is actually perfectly possible until it hits the foe too far around 45%. The second knife also stuns the foe in the air for a bit long, and combined with the high amount of distance this gets you, you can set up more, and better mines for when the opponent comes back down to you than the regular variation. Oh, and because the knives deal 4% each, this is 23% out of a throw, which is a lot of raw damage, so the fact that the side effects are a bit less potent than W's other throws is fine if you just want the guarunteed high damage to help her go into her safer kill moves later on.
Forward Throw - Micro D12/Macro D12
Gleefully spinning the foe around, having a bit more fun with this animation than she probably should be, W slaps a little explosive on the foe's body before tossing them away for 6%, at a similarly inconvenient angle and quantity of knockback to Jab's final hit. This means the immediate payoff of this throw is not great, but at the very least it will get the foe of your face and closer to mine setups in front of you. An unexciting spacer throw on its own merits, but you're not really going to be using it for that alone most of the time.
What makes this move exciting is the little explosive on the opponent, which triggers at the end of an opponent's knockback from an attack that deals more than a half battlefield platform worth of it. The explosive will then detonate at that point, dealing the foe an additional 5% and medium forward knockback that barely scales. This not only puts the foe at greater frame disadvantage, allowing for the occasional oddball combo, it can also buff up horizontal knockback of attacks to confirm a kill that otherwise would not happen. But that's not the best part here. The best part is that the knockback angle of this is customizable, you can choose during the start lag if you want the explosive to blast the foe up, down, or backwards in addition to forward. Slinging the foe back towards you or spiking them into the stage are particularly potent options, and and up can situationally set up combos into UTilt/USmash sweetspots, moves that would normally be very hard to combo into, although the best way to trigger said sweetspots is to send the foe up and then back down again. It makes really precise things like Fair's triple sweetspot or getting the right positioning to start a strong Nair to Dair to Nair chain much easier too, with the more finite control over the foe's final positioning and greater frame advantage.
This is an absurdly good way to set up
Insult to Injury, but the mine will just fall off harmlessly after 3.3 seconds, so the window to make use of it is honestly quite small. You can get a lot of payoff out of this attack, its arguably the scariest thing you can do to punish an opponent shielding an explosive because of all the situational combos and crazy
Insult to Injury setups it creates, even making the obscenely powerful USmash sweetspot a possibility. But if you don't capitalize in time, and you don't have much time, this move's payoff is way worse than going for a throw with more guarunteed results. Also while the micro mine is too small to hit your other explosives not on the foe, it can trigger a D12 attached to the opponent, and situationally that can make for some very potent early kills in its own right. If the foe already has the Micro D12 attached when you use this throw, W will throw them without attaching anything to them.
The
Insult to Injury variant of this throw lacks the regular version's versatility, as W will instead stick a regular D12 to the opponent as opposed to the weaker but more versatile micro D12. That said, she'll be seen fishing around on her belt during the throw's starting animation, and will throw out another 3 D12s on top of the one stuck to the opponent, scattered over a battlefield platform sized area in front of her. If the foe already has a D12 attached to them when you use this throw, then she'll instead add the one she would've slapped on the foe to the ones she threw out, giving you 4 D12s scattered on the stage for your trouble. While yes, this doesn't open up the wild combo possibilities of the non-
Insult to Injury version, what it does give you is good flash setup, immediately putting a time bomb on the foe they have to worry about while simultaneously setting up the stage for you. That's a lot of pressure and setup out of one throw, and if this is used close to the detonation point of your D12's the opponent is going to be absolutely frantic to not take a metric ton of damage and knockback when W closes in on them right afterwards.
Final Smash
" For now, just remember this name: Theresa. Yes, Theresa."
W's eyes flash violently red as her knife glows, sliding forward nearly two battlefield platforms in a massive slash, that sends everyone it hits flying off to a cinematic finish! Dealing an initial hit of 10%, the foes land on a war-torn battlefield, barbed wire and trenches abounding with the remains of buildings stuck to the ground. And then beneath them, a blast is set off, collapsing the ground below the foe as W is seen staring down at them, a look of either maniacal glee or utter hatred on her face. The latter is either reserved for particularly unpleasant villains like Kamoshida or Okumura, or, on the off chance someone makes a set for them, the Arknights Doctor. Then, she leaps down as a red slash covers the screen, followed by the sounds of further detonations, and the foe is launched for 35% and knockback that KOs at 80%. A pretty potent final smash, all things considered, it doesn't KO super early but it does pile on heavy damage and the fact that W covers so much space using it means its not hard to land either.
