Black Mage (SSF2)

Black Mage is a newcomer starter character in Super Smash Flash 2. Black Mage is the initial bonus character to make an appearance in the game, as his appearance was not slated for the game's initial planification. His sprites are custom-made and based on his appearance in FINAL FANTASY. He primary utilizes devastating black magic to combat his opponents, but as an extra, he also utilizes Blue Magic, as seen in his "Goblin Punch" and "Chocobo Kick" attacks.

Black Mage is currently ranked 42nd of D- tier in the current tier list (placing him at the bottom of lower mid-tier), an improvement over 39th of F tier in the previous tier list, placing him at the second-bottom of the entire list, but a noticeable drop from 34th of B- tier. Black Mage is one of the best edgeguarders in the game due to the large variety of tools he can use to cover almost any attempt to guard break him. He has good range with several disjointed attacks, powerful combos. He also sports a solid aerial game, including an excellent damage-racking option in his neutral aerial, and a very strong grab and throw game; he also possesses a command grab with a large range that can strike most opponents below himself, and a variety of KO moves in his all smash attacks, all aerials, especially down aerial (during the meteor-smash activation), forward, up and back throws, as well as for his potentially strong special moves, Haste and Meteor. Black Mage possesses the unique ability to change the form of his smash attacks by fully charging them, effectively increasing their range, knockback and KO potential, and even turning two of them into projectiles. Lastly, he can utilize Stop to stop the opponent in place for a while, making them vulnerable to KO-confirms, and even reflect a projectile.

However, true to his nature as a squishy wizard, Black Mage is rather slacky and lightweight, giving him an awkwardly bad defensive game. This is further exacerbated by his low accelerated falling speed, which makes him particularly susceptible to early vertical KOs, and his recovery, which moves slowly and leaves him highly vulnerable to gimps, giving him overall fragile survivability. His mobility is average at best, while his strong tools are either really slow or lack range, forcing him to rely primarily on forward tilt, neutral aerial, forward aerial, back aerial, and uncharged Meteors for his somewhat-disappointing neutral game. His combos are unforgiving and many of his attacks require precise spacing to be the most effective, giving him a steeper learning curve than most characters at higher levels of play. Black Mage has a rather weak, while decent, neutral game; due to his over-reliance on forward aerial, forward tilt, forward smash, and back aerial. Similarly, most of his combo finishers and breakers are rather slow, and his combos, while dealing a lot of damage, are easy to drop, giving him a steeper learning-curve; due to a greater emphasis on precision and reading the opponent. Black Mage possesses only average mobility overall, allowing faster characters (such as, , , and ) to outpace him. Moreover, he has difficulty fighting against characters with greater reach than his or those possessing lots of disjointed hitboxes that outrange and outspace him, such as, and. Black Mage is also brought down by his situational recovery, which covers a long distance, but is very predictable and easy to gimp, as he is effectively vulnerable to attacks until he gets his teleport into place. He also possesses below-average accelerated falling speed; compunded with his below-average weight, which allows him to be KO'd vertically early.

Though his strengths are not to be underestimated, his learning-curve is steep and only players who have truly mastered the character have utility with him effectively. Black Mage's array of problems have only become increasingly more apparent as the meta has developed. He also has disadvantageous matchups against most of the higher-ranked characters, keeping him out of higher-tiers.

Attributes
Black Mage uses devastating black magic in his attacks. Black Mage is a middleweight character with below-average accelerated falling speed, who has good range in most of his attacks with many of them having disjointed range. He possesses various KO moves in his smash attack, dash attack (which grants him Super Armor), forward throw, up throw, back throw, all aerials, Meteor and Haste. His fully-charged smash attacks cover great distances, for instance, his down smash makes it difficult for opponents to land or can force them into the air or into shield, setting them up to be grabbed or walled out with forward aerials; his forward smash is a large projectile, and is great for creating difficulty for opponents to recover, as well as also being an outstanding KO move and combo tool; as for his up smash, it has great potential to KO opponents early off the ceiling of the stage and has impressive vertical range that can even strike opponents on the top-platforms of or Galaxy Tours. Black Mage possesses good priority and reach in his aerials, giving him a solid aerial game; with his neutral aerial being an outstanding combo starter, forward aerial being a good combo extender and approaching tool, back aerial being an excellent combo extender and KO move, up aerial being useful for juggles, and down aerial possessing great potential to KO opponents early, especially when sweetspotted.

Black Mage is one of the best edgeguarders in the game; and his guard is hard to break. Black Mage can utilize Stop to freeze and reflect projectiles giving him a way to nullify most characters with projectile-camping; it also paralyzes his opponents who come in contact leaving them vulnerable (depending on how long stop has been charged). Ironically, he himself also suffers from being easy to edgeguard, and being off-stage is a very disadvantageous position for Black Mage to be in especially against characters with great edge-games, such as.

Black Mage sports a fair grab and throw game; despite possessing the seventh shortest grab in the current demo, he possesses one of the fastest grabs in the game. His down throw can potentially chain into itself and set up tech-chases, a pair of KO throws in his forward throw and back throw, and his up throw being a good combo starter; he also possesses a command grab with a large range that can hit most opponents located below himself. He is also able to constantly chain-grab with his down throw at low percents and can allow him to rack up a lot of damage on his opponent. His up throw is capable of being a good combo starter. Black Mage possesses strong KO throws in his forward throw, back throw and up throw, and his forward throw can set up his excellent edge guarding ability. Lastly, down throw can poison the opponent, racking up extra damage onto the opponent, though it is not powerful enough to KO until at realistic precentages.

However, Black Mage is hampered by various notable flaws. Black Mage is tied with for being the fourteenth-lightest character in the game (worsened by the fact that Black Mage also possesses slow accelerated falling speed; and among the lowest jumps), which makes him more susceptible to getting KO'd off the top boundary than most of the cast, and also makes him suspectible to early KOs; incredibly hindering his survivability (especially off the stage). Black Mage's most primary flaw is his average mobility (ex. Black Mage possesses the 12th-slowest running speeds), which allows characters with better mobility to easily rush him down. (ex., , , and ). Even with possessing a pseudo-wavedash; due to Black Mage's high traction; it is very short and not very useful for mobility.

Black Mage's recovering move, Warp, is effectively situational. Although it gives him a long recovery and an impressive defense, it is easily predictable because the opponent knows where he is going to land; based on the green circle, and can punish him easily for recovering, because Black Mage is extremely vulnerable to any type of attacks that will easily hamper him before teleporting at a distance. Therefore, these type of paticular traits make his recovery one of the easiest to gimp.

He possesses problematic situations with dealing with the cast who can certainly camp him out. To accomplish this, Black Mage's neutral special, Stop, can only reflect a single projectile on a single side at a time; a prime example of this would be 's blaster; which is an incredibly fast attack, can be spammed, covers a good distance, and does not make the opponent flinch, so even when reflected, it will not deter from projectile-camping Black Mage. Combined with his poor mobility, this gives him less options on prevent-camping situations.

On top of his flaws, Black Mage possesses troublesome situations dealing with characters who posses better range and higher priority in their playstyle. While Black Mage possesses incredible range at the outside of his playstyle, his overall range on the inside is mostly lackluster. This is also accompained by the fact that several of his attacks, despite possessing lingering hitboxes (ex. down tilt and back aerial), possess underwhelming range. Because of this, Black Mage is kept at a distance by a handful of the cast. like and. His grab and throw game is overall abysmal beyond his throws; possessing the 7th-shortest grab, his pummel dealing among the smallest damage, most of his combo finishers and breakers after performing a throw are rather sluggish and simply predictable, and while his combos deal massive damage, they are easy to drop and DI. This gives him a steeper learning-curve; due to a greater emphasis on precision and reading the opponent.

Black Mage's defensive game is arguably one of the most punishable in the game. Despite possessing a relatively small size, he one of the easiest characters to shield-stab due to these properties: Black Mage's hat functions as a tall hurtbox, and his shield negligibly shrinks at a faster rate than the other cast. Combined with this, his rolls and sidesteps are situational; while his rolls gain among the longest distance, they gain among the shortest period of intangibiliy (as well as for fair amount of endlag). His sidestep possesses the same flaw as his rolls: the shortest period of intangibiliy and decent endlag. His air dodge also has decent endlag (combined with its low intangibility period), making him vulnerable to any type of attacks. As such, these traits make them often punishable if utilized sparingly.