Dark Pit (SSB4)

Dark Pit (, Black Pit) is a playable character in Super Smash Bros. 4. After initially being teased before release via 's reveal trailer, Dark Pit was officially revealed by the official Super Smash Bros. website on October 9th, 2014, alongside. He is a moveset of  and, like Dr. Mario and, Dark Pit was originally intended to be an alternate costume before being split off into his own character. In regard to Dark Pit, the reason for this was due to the oddity of him wielding the Three Sacred Treasures and the Electroshock Arm being already modeled. .

Just as in Kid Icarus: Uprising, Dark Pit shares the same voice actors with Pit, with Antony Del Rio voicing him in English and Minami Takayama in Japanese, albeit with completely different voice clips as well as the former still remaining uncredited with his role.

Dark Pit, alongside his base fighter Pit, is ranked 32nd out of 54 on the tier list, placing him in the D tier. The number of differences between the Pits is miniscule, yet somewhat noticeable: Dark Pit's forward tilt is weaker than Pit's, while his Silver Bow is significantly less maneuverable than Palutena Bow. Conversely, Silver Bow is stronger than Palutena Bow, while Dark Pit's Electroshock Arm is a more reliable KOing option compared to Pit's Upperdash Arm.

Outside of these differences, Dark Pit and Pit share the same primary strengths and weaknesses. Their damage racking and edgeguarding potentials are strong; they boast very good neutral games; their respective grant them disjointed ranges; and their recoveries are long-distanced. However, both Pits have unimpressive KO potentials, which forces them to be largely reliant on their forward smashes, forward throws, sweetspotted back aerials, Upperdash/Electroshock Arms and aggressive edge-guarding in order to score KOs.

Dark Pit's tournament representation was previously respectable, particularly due to having previously mained him, but after Nairo dropped him for, his representation has become noticeably worse than Pit's, who already held below-average representation.

Dark Pit must then be defeated on Reset Bomb Forest.
 * Play 50 VS Matches.
 * Complete with three different characters.

Dark Pit must then be defeated on Palutena's Temple.
 * Complete All-Star Mode on normal.
 * Play 40 VS Matches.

Attributes
Unlike most clones, who have multiple alterations to their physics or moves to differentiate themselves from the original (such as lacking 's tipper and  being a "slower, stronger "), Dark Pit is mainly the same as his base character, Pit. His mobility is completely identical, sharing the same walking speed, dashing speed, air speed, falling speed and three double jumps. Similarly, Dark Pit's standard attacks are all identical to Pit's, sharing the exact same frame data, damage and knockback, with only five attacks in his entire moveset having different attributes (two standard attacks, two special attacks, and his Final Smash). In essence, this makes Dark Pit quite literally a clone character, to the point where he can be considered a custom moveset counterpart of Pit with his own roster slot (even their taunts share the exact same length of time despite looking different). A Pit player will have no trouble playing Dark Pit because of their mirrored movesets, but the slight differences in their movesets can make Dark Pit a better or worse choice in a matchup.

The only alterations to his standard moves lie in his neutral infinite's finisher and forward tilt. The former is inferior to Pit's due to possessing a smaller hitbox and thus makes it easier to escape. Meanwhile, the latter has significantly lower base knockback, preventing Dark Pit's forward tilt from KOing easily, but allows it to lock floored opponents. As Dark Pit shares Pit's inferior KO potential, the lack of this additional KO move weakens Dark Pit's grounded KO ability, but also allows him to start combos at low percentages via locking.

The more significant differences lie in Dark Pit's special moves. The first is Dark Pit's Silver Bow: compared to Pit's Palutena's Bow, Silver Bow's arrows travel in an almost fixed straight trajectory and can be only shifted slightly up and down. Their limited movement grant them significantly less utility overall, especially in regards to "sniping" offstage opponents and gimping them. Instead, they possess slightly higher overall damage, increased knockback, and speed when uncharged, which make them more rewarding when used as a more conventional projectile. In essence, Dark Pit's arrows are inferior to Pit's if a player solely uses them to pester opponents, but allow him to tack on more damage on opponents who are in a disadvantageous state.

The second is his side special, Electroshock Arm. When compared, Electroshock Arm is significantly more powerful due to its higher damage, electric hitbox (which makes it safer on shield), and altered knockback scaling; when including its diagonal trajectory, it is easily capable of sending opponents offstage to edgeguard, and is a powerful tool for KOing, especially at the edges of a stage (where it can do so as early as 80%). Pit's Upperdash Arm is weaker due to its lower knockback growth and damage, KOing at around 150%. However, its vertical trajectory allows it to set up juggles and KO consistently anywhere on the stage; its angle also makes it capable of KOing moderately early on stages with low ceilings. Hence, Electroshock Arm finds much more utility as a surprise KOing and edgeguarding tool, while Upperdash Arm is mostly limited to sending opponents into the air until high percentages. This makes Upperdash Arm inferior to KOing compared to Electroshock Arm.

Dark Pit's custom moves are, like his overall moveset, mostly identical to Pit's. Guiding Bow functions much like Pit's Guiding Bow, albeit with less control and slightly more damage. Electrocut Arm functions similarly to a counterattack and boasts better KO potential, thanks to its higher damage output and knockback, with its KO ability being even stronger due to Electroshock Arm's higher overall power. However, it lacks any recovery potential because of it moving Dark Pit very slightly backward upon being used, and also forces him into his lengthy aerial ending lag animation while in midair. Breezy Flight makes Dark Pit more difficult to gimp at its start, but at the cost of weakening his long-distanced recovery. Lastly, Amplifying Orbitars are significantly stronger reflectors, making them a better choice against projectile-reliant characters. However, they lack pushboxes and have less durability.

All in all, in line with Dark Pit's Idol description in Uprising, the "flawed clone of Pit" is a more difficult character to use projectile-wise due to his stronger, inaccurate projectile, but brings a different finishing tool in the form of Electroshock Arm, which can grant him opportunities to net KOs in the form of hard punishes. Regardless, both Pit's differences are not all that significant, and it is up to the player to decide which Pit to use in combat since both are solid "all-rounders" with a more notable preference towards edgeguarding and recovery.

Differences from
Dark Pit is almost completely identical to Pit with minor differences. Dark Pit's Silver Bow fires stronger arrows than Pit's Palutena Bow, but cannot be maneuvered as much as Pit's. Electroshock Arm deals more damage than Pit's Upperdash Arm and launches opponents at a horizontal angle as opposed to a vertical angle. This property allows the move to KO opponents earlier than Pit's when they are closer to the blast line, but it will KO later than Pit's if they are further away from it. Dark Pit's neutral infinite has a smaller hitbox and his forward tilt has noticeably less knockback than Pit's. Dark Pit also has a different Final Smash called Dark Pit Staff. It functions identically to and 's Light Arrow, firing a straight shot that will play a zoom in animation whenever it hits an opponent.

Overall, these changes don't significantly change how Pit and Dark Pit play from each other, with the choice between the two coming down to personal preference. This is also reflected on how they were viewed competitively. The two were often right next to each other on tier lists, until the final tier list where they share the same spot due to the agreed consensus that they are essentially the same character.

Update history
Like Pit, Dark Pit received only a handful of buffs from game updates. However, his are actually much more beneficial in comparison to Pit's. The changes to shielding mechanics in 1.1.0 and 1.1.1 are slightly beneficial to him due to his multi-hit moves and his side special, Electroshock Arm, having better shield damaging capabilities. The base damage of Silver Bow was also increased (along with the projectile's speed) in 1.1.0, making Silver Bow slightly stronger than Palutena Bow. Update 1.1.3 buffed Electroshock Arm by increasing its damage output and base knockback, as well as altering its launching angle, all of which make it into a reliable KOing option while near the edge. Overall, Dark Pit is somewhat better than he was during the game's initial release.

 1.0.4

 1.0.6  1.1.0

 1.1.3

 1.1.4

Moveset
For a gallery of Dark Pit's hitboxes, see here.

Solo Events

 * Doppelgänger Duel: The player controls Dark Pit, and must defeat Pit in a 200 HP battle.
 * New Challengers 2: Dark Pit is one of the seven opponents fought in this event alongside, , , , , and.
 * The Break of Day: must defeat 3 Dark Pits with the Daybreak.

Co-op Events

 * An Offering of Coins: and Dark Pit must collect 1000G from shadow versions of themselves.
 * Final Battle Team-Up: Dark Pit appears as an opponent to be defeated.
 * Sky Pirates: and Dark Pit must defeat  and  before the yellow plane returns to the airfield.
 * The Ultimate Battle: Two players select a character and must defeat the entire roster.

Trivia

 * Dark Pit was originally supposed to be an alternate costume for Pit. However, Masahiro Sakurai decided to make the two separate characters due to feeling that Dark Pit using the Three Sacred Treasures to be unfitting.
 * Ironically, 's Final Smash in Ultimate was changed to the Lightning Chariot, which has been used by both Pit and Dark Pit, thus defeating the original purpose of separating the two characters.
 * Upon getting K.O.ed, Dark Pit may utter "It's not over...!" ("", It's not over yet....!), a reference to his line upon being defeated by Pit during his boss fight in Chapter 6 of Kid Icarus: Uprising.
 * Both Pit and Dark Pit, akin to the former in Brawl, have some of their moves not applying to their bow being split apart or put together. The moves that fit this are their down tilt, dash attack, up special, down taunts (despite both of them being different), rolls and sidestep (only if the latter two are done at the frame before their shielding animation properly occurs).
 * Dark Pit is the only full clone to not have a corresponding cloned Final Smash, though his Final Smash is a clone of and 's Light Arrow.
 * Dark Pit's crowd chant is a repeated chant of "Pittoo, Pittoo, Pittoo" or "Burapi! Burapi!", depending on the international or Japanese release. In either case, Dark Pit's chant is the only one not to contain the fighter's actual name. Both of the nicknames are given to him by Palutena in Kid Icarus: Uprising (again, depending on the international or Japanese version), and are often used by her and other characters, much to Dark Pit's chagrin.
 * On page 34 of the Prima Strategy Guide for Super Smash Bros. 4, Dark Pit's up special, Power of Flight, is instead called Pandora Wings. This is a reference to how Dark Pit got his infinite flight for the majority of Kid Icarus: Uprising.
 * However, after chapter 22, Dark Pit lost his infinite flight after Pandora used it to resurrect herself, resulting in Viridi granting him the ability. This is reflected in Smash 4, as Dark Pit's wings glow green when he uses Power of Flight.
 * Other than the DLC fighters, Dark Pit and are the only two newcomers not to appear in 's opening movie.
 * In, Dark Pit's bow will not stay in his free hand properly while using his pummel due to a modelling error/glitch.
 * Dark Pit is the only Smash 4 newcomer to not have a splash art.