Sephiroth's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate reveal trailer was enough for fans to realize that the character would be very powerful. His reach is insane and he's capable of dealing heavy damage from a distance. At the same time, his special attacks provide unique options by applying pressure to enemies or protecting himself. His strongest move is easily the Gigaflare, however, which can be used as a great ledge trap or shield break punish. Typically, this move deals an impressive 47% damage, but one Smash YouTuber has taken things to the next level with the perfect setup.
It should be said ahead of time that it would realistically impossible to get this perfect set up in an actual match. The number of variables required to skyrocket Sephiroth's damage this high are simply too many and there's no way a real player or even a computer controlled combatant would ever let it happen. All of these tests were done in the training mode where players can spawn whatever items they want and set specific conditions. The YouTuber in question is Nintendo Unity, and they put out a number of similar videos testing the limits of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and its characters.
The Full Set-up
Those wanting to see the set-up in action should watch Nintendo Unity's video above. It explain in great detail every step of the process that gets Sephiroth from 47% damage to over 59,000% damage, and even shows where the damage is at after the many different damage boosts he's given. For a complete breakdown of all the benefits, read on below. All total, Sephiroth gets increased damage from 18 different sources. These all stack with each other in order to produce the truly destructive effect that lives up to Sephiroth's true power as a villain in the Final Fantasy series.
Sephiroth's Damage Boosts and His Optimal Opponent
The first thing Sephiroth can do to boost his own damage is enter his winged state. After taking enough damage, Sephiroth sprouts a dark, feathered wing that provides him a number of buffs. Among these is a 1.3 times boost to damage, bringing Gigaflare to 61.1%. Another important part of this set-up is using the move against Shulk. The Xenoblade hero's Monado arts give him a good power boost, but the Buster Monado increases the damage he receives by another 1.3 times. Already Sephiroth's damage is enough to kill Shulk at 0%, but it gets even crazier from here.
Damage Boosting Game Settings
After finding the perfect match-up for Sephiroth, there are also a number of game settings that have the potential to increase his damage even further. For example, setting stale moves to on makes moves decrease in power if they are used too much, but actually increases a move's power the first time it is used. This makes the first Gigaflare 1.05 times stronger. There's also a built-in multiplier that increases the damage of all moves when in a one-on-one battle by 1.2 times. Players don't need to do anything to activate this as it will happen automatically so long as there's only two fighters on the stage.
Finally, in the settings menu players can apply custom balancing to specific characters, providing them a damage buff or nerf. Setting Sephiroth to level three gives him yet another 1.3 times increase to his damage, bringing the numbers even higher than before. There's no need to set Shulk's custom balance any weaker as it only affects the character's damage output, meaning lowering it won't increase the damage Sephiroth deals to him. That said, there is another way that players can make Shulk take even more damage from Sephiroth's nuclear attack.
Spirit Set-up
Spirits play a key role in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's story, but they also allow for players to break the game in fun ways. The best Spirit set-up for Sephiroth uses Hades as the primary Spirit, as his Trade-off Attacks ability increases Sephiroth's damage by 1.23 times. It also has a high base attack stat, and this can be increased even more with the Demon Style that boosts attack by another 1.2 times. For the other spirits, players should equip Sephiroth with both Giant Killer and Metal Killer, each granting 1.4 times damage if the opponent has those statuses. Thanks to training mode, it will be easy to make sure that Shulk is both giant and metal.
Shulk's Spirit set-up is important too. In order to maximize damage, a level one Papercraft Mario Spirit is the best option. This spirit has a low attack power and is at a disadvantage to Hades. Furthermore, it also has weakness to fire, making it suffer even more against Sephiroth's Gigaflare. Finally, the Demon Style will also work here because it lowers the defense of the Spirit alongside boosting the attack. All of this comes together to provide a type bonus of 1.3 times damage, a decrease to Shulk's defense of 0.8 times, fire weakness that increases damage by 1.2 times, and more damage because of the difference in Spirit power levels.
Items and Stage
The last step to bringing Sephiroth's damage to ridiculous heights is picking the right stage and using the right items. The Dark Emperor on the Find Mii stage will occasionally give characters a massive 1.78 times increase to damage. There's also an assist trophy called Vince that makes its target take three times damage for its duration. Finally, reflected attacks deal increased damage as well, so if both Shulk and Sephiroth equip Franklin Badges, the Gigaflare can be reflected back and forth between the two several times for another 1.3 times increase to damage. Players also need to make sure to give Shulk the metal and giant statuses.
The result looks ridiculous thanks to Vince from the Art Academy series painting a giant cat over Shulk, and it's almost unbelievable. Sephiroth is able to output an incomprehensible 59,275.6% damage from a single Gigaflare. Needless to say, Shulk is sent flying off the screen at incredible speeds despite his giant and metal status. According to Nintendo Unity, this damage can increase even further if players use the homerun bat to reflect the attack instead of Franklin Badges, and using the Inkling's ink attack could also increase the numbers. By Nintendo Unity's calculations, this would take the damage well into six figures, making Sephiroth the character with the highest potential damage output in a single hit in all of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is available now on Switch.