Piranha Plant (SSBU)


 * Piranha Plant Pipes Up!

Piranha Plant (, Packun Flower) is a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Revealed alongside and  on November 1st, 2018, it is the first DLC character in Ultimate, and was made available for purchase on February 1st, 2019. However, it was made available at no cost as early as January 29th, 2019 for players who purchased the digital version of Ultimate or registered their physical version with My Nintendo by January 31st, 2019. Piranha Plant is not part of either Fighters Pass, making it the only DLC character with this distinction. Piranha Plant is classified as Fighter #70.

Piranha Plant is ranked 77th out of 82 on the current tier list, placing it in the D+ tier. Piranha Plant's most noteworthy attribute is its trapping potential. Ptooie is considered one of the strongest and most versatile projectiles in the game, being able to dish out a lot of damage, cover aerial approaches, be used as a ledgetrapping tool, and even be employed as a defensive deterrent in the event of the opponent interrupting it in close-quarters engagements. Poison Breath can be utilized to pile on immense damage if Piranha Plant manages to lock in the opponent into its area of effect, or to deny the enemy of approach routes that can circumvent damage. Piranha Plant bolsters these strengths with its possession of very fast frame data on the ground, with moves such as its neutral attack, and forward tilt being able to be employed as effective damage dealing pokes. Its fast frame data extends to its grab and up smash, benefitting its KO power, as its up throw also serves as a KO throw. These traits round out to make Piranha Plant a highly defensive powerhouse that can respond to several approaches with effective keep away and anti-air options. It is also classified as a heavyweight, offering it a strong level of endurance, which is also complemented by a long-distanced recovery in the form of Piranhacopter.

Piranha Plant is almost completely undone however by its lack of mobility. Lacking in range across all of its close-quarters attacks to offset its poor grounded and aerial movement, Piranha Plant struggles immensely in mounting an offensive neutral, and its advantage state is highly reliant on circumstantially effective attacks to keep the opponent at bay. Long-Stem Strike grants Piranha Plant more range but its high startup, finicky control and vulnerable hurtbox during its extension phase makes it an inconvenient attack to use in many situations. This is exacerbated by Piranha Plant's moveset lacking in the way of notable synergy; while many of its attacks have decent utility, it has very little in the way of optimal combos or routes to pursue the opponent. Many of its moves and aerials pose high amounts of ending lag, while some such as neutral aerial and up aerial are plagued by awkward hitbox placements. Finally, Piranha Plant's reliance on Ptooie serves as a double-edged sword; as the main cornerstone of its game plan, it is completely invalidated by characters with reflectors, making several matchups highly problematic for the character.

Since its release, Piranha Plant has seen low tournament representation, and is considered a fairly weak character in competitive play. It has however seen some success, with players like and   having attained a number of notable placements in major competitive events, leading some to believe the character is undervalued.

Attributes
Piranha Plant is a heavyweight fighter with below-average mobility and effective anti-air tools. Compared to other heavyweights, it fits in the mold of an archetypal heavyweight: while its dashing speed is average and its gravity is very high, it has a slow walking speed, air acceleration, and air speed, and a fast falling speed.

One of Piranha Plant's most effective strengths is its diverse special moves. Its neutral special, Ptooie, is a unique projectile that can be tossed in either direction or held in the air as a good anti-air option, and a good trading tool due to its power and transcendent priority. Poison Breath is a slow-moving projectile that does not make opponents flinch, but deals massive damage, especially when fully charged; opponents must be very wary of it, making it a good area-denial tool. Its up special, Piranhacopter, has hitboxes beside itself and travels a great distance, pairing well with Piranha Plant's heavy weight and fast falling speed to give it excellent survivability. Its down special, Long-Stem Strike, grants super armor during its pot phase and tremendous range when fully charged, at the cost of extending its hurtbox significantly.

Piranha Plant's ground game is overall rather versatile; its tilts are good for starting juggles or combos, as well as spacing and KOing. Up tilt can lead into various aerial attacks, and a forward smash at low percents; forward tilt behaves similarly to 's in that it is a natural combo consisting of two hits, of which the second hit can KO at very high percentages; and down tilt is a versatile combo starter, being capable of leading into moves such as forward tilt or forward aerial at low to mid percentages, and into aerials afterward. Its smash attacks are generally slow but powerful, such as its forward smash, which is somewhat slow in terms of startup and ending lag, but can KO opponents near the ledge as early as 60% if sweetspotted.

Its aerials are overall well-rounded, making its air game overall decent despite its rather sluggish mobility and moves with relatively high landing lag. Neutral aerial is a multi-hit move that functions much like and 's neutral aerials, being a capable combo move with the ability to drag opponents down for combos and potentially makes it a gimping tool due to this trait. Forward aerial is good for edgeguarding thanks to its wide range, whereas back aerial is a slow but very powerful move that KOs at 80% near the ledge. Up aerial is one of its best comboing and juggling tools, thanks to its speed and wide range and can autocancel in short hop. Lastly, down aerial is a long-ranged and decently strong meteor smash with very fast startup.

Another strength Piranha Plant possesses is a decent grab game; while its grab range is short, its grabs' frame data is among the fastest in the game, and its throws have their own unique perks; forward throw is a useful throw for positioning and edgeguarding, back and up throws have KO potential at high percentages, and down throw is a viable combo starter at low to high percentages.

Piranha Plant does, however, have some noteworthy flaws. Its overall mobility is lackluster, having an average initial dash speed and dash speed, but poor air acceleration and slow airspeed. This gives it difficulties keeping up with faster characters such as or, especially in the air, which makes it rather easy to zone out. Piranha Plant's heavyweight and tall hurtbox makes it vulnerable to combos, particularly from those with strong combo games such as or, and has trouble landing from juggles due to its lack of fast enough tools to escape from them. Finally, Piranha Plant's approach options are rather predictable, with its overall frame data being generally slow. This is no exception to its KOing options either, and most of Piranha Plant's KO moves are either short-ranged or laggy.

Another problem Piranha Plant has is that its two projectiles, which are a crucial part of its toolkit, are notably vulnerable to reflectors due to the slow startup of Ptooie and the fact that Poison Breath can be reflected at any point during its duration, which forces it to use its projectiles more shrewdly when facing opponents with reflectors.

Overall, Piranha Plant is a unique heavyweight fighter that utilizes various projectiles and attacks to effectively zone and KO opponents, but must be careful when throwing out normal attacks to avoid being punished due to the end lag that many of them have, thus making it a patient fighter when it comes to approaching. Although Piranha Plant had amassed great popularity as a character itself at its early stages, its representation has been below-average in tournaments due to its weaknesses and general unpopularity in competitive play. This has led to most professionals considering Piranha Plant as a mid tier character. In recent times, however, players have achieved stronger impacts compared to releases such as placing 2nd at. Other smashers such as and  have also done work at regional and national-level tournaments. This makes its viability debatable.

Update history
Piranha Plant was significantly buffed in game updates. Patch 3.0.0 increased its edge attack and Ptooie hitbox size, the latter of which makes Ptooie a lot easier to hit with overall as a trading tool and conventional projectile. 3.1.0 gave further small improvements towards its jab, allowing it to function a lot more consistently, with neutral attack 3 now out-ranging neutral attack 2.

The first significant set of buffs came in 4.0.0, which provided drastic improvements for Piranha Plant's advantage state and slight improvements to its neutral. Up tilt's decreased lag allowed it to become safe on hit, as well as being much safer on shield and a better combo tool. Dash attack's angle change allows Piranha Plant to set up edgeguards and ledgetraps easier, as well as occasionally KO opponents with bad DI, and Poison Breath's decreased startup and endlag allow Piranha Plant to set up its ledgetrapping faster, and use it more safely in neutral. Finally, Long-Stem Strike's significantly increased shield damage and decreased endlag made it a far more potent pressure tool, being able to cause shieldbreaks much more frequently, working well in tandem with Ptooie's already high shield damage.

8.0.0 gave by far the biggest changes towards Piranha Plant, giving good improvements to its neutral, advantage, and disadvantage states. Up tilt's increased speed makes it a far safer anti-air to use, combined with a more suitable angle for KOing and especially comboing, ultimately making for a much more deadly anti-air. Down smash's decreased startup made it Piranha Plant's fastest smash attack, and one of its fastest kill options overall, giving Piranha Plant a good close-range KO option. Forward aerial's speed was significantly increased, which gave Piranha Plant a new, decent out-of-shield option, tied with its grab for its fastest, whilst hitting smaller opponents much more effectively due to the increased speed. It also makes it better as an edgeguard tool, as it is now tied with up aerial for its fastest aerial, useful when combined with its decent hitbox, also making the move more versatile in spacing scenarios in neutral as well. Back aerial got increased knockback scaling, allowing it to KO around 6% earlier at the ledge, however, Piranha Plant's biggest change by far in 8.0.0 was towards up aerial. Now being disjointed, better for damage racking and KOing whilst maintaining its great combo ability at low percents, it serves as a very quick, yet deadly aerial at any percent. It can even KO opponents off the ground at similar percents to up tilt's sweetspot, and the intangibility makes it a decent ledge drop double jump aerial for beating out numerous moves safely, and even KOing opponents for it.

After an absence of changes, Piranha Plant received a small number of useful buffs via update 13.0.1. Forward tilt's second hit gained more knockback, granting it better KO ability & stage control by the edge. Long-Stem Strike hitbox & armor comes out slightly faster, improving its safety. Most notably, down tilt gained an extra active frame and had its ending lag reduced. Improving its use in neutral and combo ability, to the point where it can combo into back aerial as a kill-confirm around the ledge.

Overall, Piranha Plant fares much better than it did at the launch of Ultimate, thanks to its buffs granting a better neutral game, along with stronger and more consistent KO options.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moveset
For a gallery of Piranha Plant's hitboxes, see here.

On-screen appearance

 * Rises straight up out of its pot/pipe, making a Warp Pipe noise as it does so.

Taunts

 * Up taunt: Rises up out of its pot/pipe, using the same animation and sound effects as its entrance animation. Some of Piranha Plant's teeth deform to make the taunt look better from afar. This is most noticeable when zooming on Piranha Plant while pausing.
 * Side taunt: Bites the air around it multiple times, similar to one of and 's taunts.
 * Down taunt: Spins around and strikes a pose with a grin.

Idle poses

 * Quickly bites the air twice.
 * Dozes off for a second, it then wakes up and rotates its head 360°.

Crowd cheer
 

Victory poses

 * Left: Bites the air around it three times, before smiling.
 * Up: runs towards Piranha Plant's pot/pipe and jumps over it, only for Piranha Plant to pop out and bite Mario, sending him flying, before smiling, a reference to its reveal trailer.
 * Right: Hangs down from the ceiling and poses.

Tier placement and history
Despite having received noticeable attention due to its unexpected inclusion, Piranha Plant's representation has been low at tournaments. This is due to its noticeable susceptibility to combos as well as sub-par mobility and approach options. In spite of its versatile projectile and recovery, many professionals consider Piranha Plant to be a low-mid tier character.

Piranha Plant's representation improved around the summer of 2019 thanks to dedicated mains such as, , and placing well at national tournaments. Brood in particular has brought forth more discussion over the character's true viability as a result of placing 2nd at. In addition, put out a video of where he reconsiders Piranha Plant's standing, believing that it is now a mid-tier character. In the current meta, Piranha Plant's representation is still low, and even with previous updates giving numerous buffs, its combo potential is still relatively poor compared to the rest of the cast. As of now, Piranha Plant's ranks 77th on the first and current tier list.

Most historically significant players
See also: Category:Piranha Plant players (SSBU)


 * - One of the best Piranha Plant players in the world and was the best Piranha Plant player in the early metagame. Placed 2nd at, 25th at , 33rd at , 49th at , while defeating , , and . Currently ranked 20th on the Japan Player Rankings.
 * - One of the best Piranha Plant players in the United States. Placed 13th at, 25th at , and 33rd at with wins over players such as , , and . Currently ranked 8th on the Central Florida Ultimate Power Rankings.
 * - The best Piranha Plant player in Europe. Placed 7th at, 13th at , 17th at , and 49th at with wins over players like , , and . Currently ranked 49th on the European Smash Rankings.
 * - The best Piranha Plant player in the United States. Placed 1st at, 9th at , 13th at , 33rd at , and 49th at with wins over , , and . Currently ranked  4th on the Minnesota Ultimate Power Rankings.
 * - One of the best Piranha Plant players in Japan. Placed 17th at and 33rd at, with wins over  and . Online, placed 1st at Maesuma 35, 2nd at Tamisuma SP 61, and 3rd at Tamisuma SP 175. Previously ranked 6th on the 6th Smashmate ranking and 13th on the 4th SP ranking.

: New Bloom
All of Piranha Plant's opponents are the base roster newcomers in the game. With the exception of the first match, each battle features one unique newcomer and one Echo Fighter, with the matches being placed in the order of the former's reveal. The stage and music choices reference each of the character reveal trailers. The boss, Rathalos, fits with the theme as it is new to the series.

Credits roll after completing Classic Mode. Completing it as Piranha Plant has  accompany the credits. As a downloadable character, Piranha Plant uses the same character unlock tree as.

Role in World of Light
Due to its status as downloadable content, Piranha Plant does not have a legitimate role in World of Light. Instead, it is unlocked for use in the mode after freeing 10 fighters from Galeem's control. There is no fighter battle required to unlock this character. If loading an existing save file that meets this condition prior to downloading Piranha Plant, it is immediately unlocked.

Spirit
Piranha Plant's fighter spirit can be obtained by completing. It is also available periodically for purchase in the shop for 300 Gold, but only after Piranha Plant has been downloaded. Unlocking Piranha Plant in World of Light allows the player to preview the spirit below in the Spirit List under the name "???". As a fighter spirit, it cannot be used in Spirit Battles and is purely aesthetic. Its fighter spirit has an alternate version that replaces it with its artwork in Ultimate.

Trivia

 * Piranha Plant is the only DLC fighter in Ultimate:
 * To not have an internal codename, instead being referred to in the game files as its Japanese name "packun". This may be due to it being developed and revealed pre-release, thus avoiding the need to conceal its identity to eventual dataminers.
 * Who is not part of a Fighters Pass.
 * Whose Final Smash:
 * is not cinematic at all.
 * will still play out in full even if no one is caught in the initial hit.
 * To have a fighter showcase video on the official website, likely due to being revealed before release.
 * To have received a unique Palutena's Guidance conversation in the game it was DLC in; other Ultimate downloadable fighters use a generic conversation that was previously used by the Smash 4 DLC characters.
 * Who shares a victory theme with another fighter ( and ).
 * Most of these distinctions have led players to speculate that Piranha Plant may have originally been planned to be a part of Ultimate's base roster, but was held back either due to time constraints or to have a bonus character for those who purchased the game early.
 * Piranha Plant's official artwork has a UV mapping error near the base of its pot, where the texture appears to squish vertically.
 * On the character selection screen, Piranha Plant's icon in the Japanese version shows its name within only one row, while in the English version it is shown with two rows. This trait is shared with, , , , , , the s, and.
 * Piranha Plant’s image in the character selection screen is lower than the English version of the icon.
 * Piranha Plant is one of only two fighters to have a victory pose that features another playable fighter (in this case, Mario). The other is, whose victory pose features.
 * Piranha Plant is the second DLC fighter to be free for a limited time after launch, the first being in Super Smash Bros. 4.
 * Both characters were the first to be released as DLC in their respective games.
 * Piranha Plant is the only unique newcomer in Ultimate that does not have an animated reveal trailer.
 * The splash art for Piranha Plant was the first one that used a font other than DF Gothic Japanese, which has been used in nearly every other character reveal splash art since Super Smash Bros. 4. The substitute font is named Source Sans Pro.
 * The second splash art that used a different font was 's, which uses the same font from Tekken 7's battle loading screen.
 * Piranha Plant's "eye glint" effect for pre-match splash screens and its HUD icon for Final Smashes is applied differently from other fighters, as it has no eyes; the twinkle effect is applied to one of its teeth instead.
 * Datamining Piranha Plant's character data reveals some interesting information:
 * Some of 's motion files can be found in Piranha Plant's character data, indicating that some of Piranha Plant's animations are taken from him.
 * Files indicate that Piranha Plant was programmed with three jumps, including animations; however, it was removed before release, with the day one patch streamlining its jumps to two.
 * If Piranha Plant gets grabbed by a grab that uses a unique animation on capturing characters ('s grab, 's Flame Choke, etc.) while using either its forward smash or Poison Breath, it will remain in that form until it gets released.
 * Piranha Plant is the only fighter who was not added to the panoramic artwork until after being made available in-game.
 * Although was not added to the banner after he was announced, he was added immediately after the first gameplay footage of him was shown, which was a day before his actual release.
 * In Spanish, French, German, and Italian, the name tag and voice clip from the announcer on the victory screen is slightly different from the one used on the character select screen, instead featuring a noticeable translation of "the" (la Planta Piraña, la Fleur Piranha /Plante Piranha, die Piranha-Pflanze, la Pianta Piranha). Piranha Plant shares this trait with Wii Fit Trainer, Pokémon Trainer, , , the , the Mii Fighters, , Zombie, and Enderman.
 * Piranha Plant's description on the North American amiibo website is based on its trophy description from Brawl.
 * In the victory animation featuring Mario, the game's "whoosh" sound effect when receiving knockback can be heard when he flies away.
 * Piranha Plant is one of three characters never to appear in any Spirit Battles, the others being and.
 * The base of Piranha Plant's pot has a chipped part on the bottom. This trait is shared with its artwork from .