Stale Moves - Delulu

Summary¶

Each character has a queue of the last 9 moves that connected. The more times a move appears in the queue, and the more recently, the less damage it deals.
A move that isn’t in the queue at all is fresh and gets a 1.05× freshness bonus.
A fully staled move (all 9 slots) deals 0.4695× its base damage.
Hitting a shield stales the move (new in Ultimate). Shield hits count a bit less than real hits, at 0.85× the normal reduction for that slot. Perfect shields count too.
Whiffed moves don’t stale. Getting KO’d resets all your staleness.
Staleness has a much smaller effect on knockback than on damage, so KO moves stay viable even when stale.
Pummels and throws each take a queue slot (the grab itself likely doesn’t), so pummeling before a throw is the easiest way to refresh stale moves. 3 new entries take a fully staled move from 0.47× to 0.72× (see Refreshing stale moves).

How the queue works¶

At the start of a match every move is fresh. When a move connects with an opponent, with a shield, or with anything else that can take damage, it’s added to the front of that character’s 9-slot queue. Each new move pushes older entries back until they fall off the end, so using other moves “refreshes” a stale one.

Only connecting moves enter the queue. A move that misses, or hits nothing damageable, doesn’t stale.
Staleness applies to the whole move, not to individual hitboxes. Landing a sourspot stales the sweetspot too.
All versions of the same special move count as one move. For example, every charge level and both the ground and air versions of a chargeable special share one staleness value.
Counters and absorbers ignore the staleness of the attack they receive.
KO resets the queue for the player who was KO’d.

Damage calculation¶

A move’s reduction is the sum of the reductors for every queue slot it occupies:

Queue position	Reductor
`1`	`0.09`
`2`	`0.08545`
`3`	`0.07635`
`4`	`0.0679`
`5`	`0.05945`
`6`	`0.05035`
`7`	`0.04255`
`8`	`0.03345`
`9`	`0.025`
All 9 slots	`0.5305`

State	Damage multiplier
Fresh (not in the queue)	`1.05×`
Stale	`1 − sum of reductors for occupied slots`
Fully stale (all 9 slots)	`0.4695×`
Slot filled by a shield hit	That slot’s reductor × `0.85`

Worked example: a move sitting in positions 1, 2 and 6 gets 0.09 + 0.08545 + 0.05035 = 0.2258 reduction, so its next hit deals 77.42% of base damage.

The freshness bonus is usually too small to matter. The exception the wiki notes is a fresh move being hit back by a fresh counter.

Effect on knockback¶

Ultimate keeps Smash 4’s knockback handling. When staleness feeds into the knockback formula, only 30% of the staleness modifier (the reduction or the freshness bonus) is applied. So stale KO moves lose much less knockback than damage, and rage usually covers the rest. You generally don’t need to “save” a KO move the way Brawl players had to.

Derived: at full staleness, the damage value used for knockback is about 1 − 0.3 × 0.5305 ≈ 0.84×, while the damage actually dealt is 0.4695×.

What enters the queue¶

Anything that enters the queue both gets staled itself and pushes every other move one slot back, which refreshes them. Anything that doesn’t enter the queue always deals the same damage and can’t refresh anything.

Action	Enters queue?	Notes
Grab (the catch itself)	No (derived)	Deals no damage, and only moves that deal damage are queued. Not stated explicitly by a source.
Pummel	Yes, one entry per pummel	The main tool for refreshing stale moves. Each pummel adds one slot.
Throws	Yes, one entry per throw	Each direction is a separate move, so alternating throws avoids staling one throw.
Grab release	No	Never stales
Jab (hit 1 / 2 / 3)	Yes	Used as a refresh tool. Whether each jab hit counts as a separate entry is unverified.
Rapid jab (flurry attack) and its finisher	Yes	Unverified how the looping hits count (one entry, or one per hit). Lab it before relying on it.
Hitting a shield (including a perfect shield)	Yes, at `0.85×` that slot’s reductor	Ultimate only. Pressuring shields stales your moves.
Hitting a damageable object	Yes	Eg Wii Fit Trainer’s Header hitting her own soccer ball refreshes other moves without touching the opponent.
Whiffs	No	A move has to connect.
Taunts	No	Except Kazuya’s side taunt (Demon’s Wrath), which does stale.
Recoil damage	No	—
Items (thrown, shot, or character-generated like Link’s Remote Bomb)	No	Except swinging a battering item (Beam Sword, Home-Run Bat, etc.), which stales as its own action.

Refreshing stale moves¶

Each new queue entry pushes a stale move one slot further back. Derived from the reductor table, the damage multiplier after N other entries:

Other entries since	Fully staled move (was in all 9 slots)	Move used 3× in a row
`0`	`0.47×`	`0.75×`
`1`	`0.56×`	`0.77×`
`2`	`0.64×`	`0.80×`
`3`	`0.72×`	`0.82×`
`4`	`0.79×`	`0.85×`
`5`	`0.85×`	`0.87×`
`6`	`0.90×`	`0.90×`
`7`	`0.94×`	`0.94×`
`8`	`0.975×`	`0.975×`
`9`	`1.05×` (fresh)	`1.05×` (fresh)

Ways to add entries quickly:

Method	Entries	Trade-off
Pummel before throwing	`1` per pummel	Every extra pummel gives the opponent more time to mash out.
Vary your throws	`1` per throw	Avoids staling one throw. Doesn’t refresh as fast as pummels.
Jab (on hit or on shield)	`1`+ per jab string	Jab on shield counts, at `0.85×`, which only affects how stale jab itself gets.
Pummel → throw → jab	About `3`–`5`	A recommended routine from King K. Rool’s wiki page to “almost completely refresh” the queue between stocks.

A KO resets your whole queue, so refreshing matters most late in a stock, when your KO moves are stale.

Modes and training mode¶

Staling (and the freshness bonus) only applies in multiplayer matches and Home-Run Contest. In other single-player modes and the online practice stage, attacks deal base damage.
Training Mode has a Stale Moves toggle (next to the rage toggle). With the toggle off, moves still enter the queue but deal base damage.

Character-specific notes¶

Character	Queue behavior
Pokémon Trainer	Squirtle, Ivysaur and Charizard share one queue. Switching doesn’t reset it.
Pyra / Mythra	Share one queue.
Ice Climbers	Share one queue that both climbers affect (details below).
Little Mac	Affected by staling more than most characters, since his weak aerials leave little more than half his moveset in regular use. His pummel refreshes quickly: `1.0%`, hitbox frame `1`, interruptible frame `6`. His jab is 3 hits plus a rapid jab.

Ice Climbers detail: Popo updates the queue when his attack’s freeze frames end, and Nana reads it when her attack hits. If Nana connects during Popo’s freeze frames she uses the same staleness; if she connects after, her move is one level more stale. If Popo hits before Nana acts, Nana doesn’t read the queue at all, so her first jab deals base damage unless she hits alone.

Practical takeaways¶

These are interpretations of the mechanics above, not claims from the source.

Pressuring shields now costs you: every shielded hit stales that move, just slightly less than a real hit.
Mixing up your moves in neutral keeps KO options fresh and gets the 1.05× bonus. But since staleness barely affects knockback, keeping moves fresh matters more for damage than for KO percent.
Little Mac: late in a stock, pummel 2–3 times on every grab before throwing. Mac’s pummel is fast, and each one pushes staled KO moves (eg smash attacks) back a slot.
Labbing: turn Stale Moves off in Training Mode when measuring damage or KO percents, so results match frame data and aren’t skewed by what you hit earlier. Turn it on when testing real combo or KO scenarios.