Black Mage (Super Smash Flash 2)

Black Mage is a playable newcomer starter character in Super Smash Flash 2. Black Mage is the first surprise character to appear in SSF2, 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 mainly uses devastating black magic to combat his opponents, but as an extra, he also uses Blue Magic, as seen in his "Goblin Punch" and "Chocobo Kick" attacks.

Black Mage is ranked 32nd on the tier list. Black Mage is one of the best edge guarders in the game due to the large variety of tools he can use to cover almost any attempt to guard break him, to the point where he has the potential to take off an opponent's stock every time he knocks them offstage. He has a solid aerial game, with his neutral aerial being an outstanding combo starter, forward aerial being a good combo extender and approach tool, back aerial being an excellent combo extender and kill move, up aerial being useful for juggles, and down aerial having great potential to kill opponents early especially when sweetspotted. He also has a very strong grab game, with a down throw that can potentially chain into itself and set up tech chases, two kill throws in his forward and back throw, and his up throw being a good combo starter; he also possesses a command grab with a large reach that can hit most downed opponents, and a variety of KO moves, including his forward and up smashes, Meteor, dash attack, and back throw. Black Mage has the unique ability to change the form of his smash attacks by fully charging them; his down smash at full charge 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 making it difficult for opponents to recover, as well as also being an outstanding kill 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 hit opponents on the top platforms of Battlefield or Galaxy Tours. Overall, Black Mage has a solid combo game and a lot of kill potential, as well as being very effective at edgeguarding and walling opponents out.

However, Black Mage has a rather weak neutral game due to his average movement speed and over-reliance on forward air, forward tilt, forward smash, and back aerial. Similarly, most of his finishers are rather slow and his combos are easy to drop, giving him a steeper learning curve due to a greater emphasis on precision and reading the opponent. Black Mage has only average mobility overall, allowing faster characters such as and  to completely outpace him. Similarly, he has difficulty fighting against characters with greater reach than his or those possessing lots of disjointed hitboxes, such as and. Black Mage is also brought down by his recovery, which covers a long distance, but is very predictable and easy to gimp, as he effectively turns into a sitting duck until he gets his teleport into place. He also has below average accelerated falling speed, which allows him to be KO'ed vertically early.

His strengths are definitely not to be underestimated, but as mentioned before his learning curve is steep and only players who have truly mastered the character can use 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 medium weight character with below average accelerated falling speed, who has good reach in most of his attacks with many of them having disjointed range. He has KO moves in his forward and up smash, dash attack (which grants him Super Armor), forward throw, back throw, back air, down air, and Haste. When fully charged, his smash attacks cover great distances, especially both his down and forward smashes. Black Mage has good priority and reach in his aerials giving him a solid aerial game.

Black Mage is one of the best edge guarders in the game and his guard is hard to break. Black Mage can use Stop to freeze and reflect projectiles giving him a way to nullify most characters projectile camping; it also paralyzes his opponents who come in contact leaving them open(depending on how long stop has been charged).

Black Mage has a good grab game, despite possessing the seventh shortest grab in the current demo. He is able to 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 can be a good combo starter. His forward and back throw can kill at high percentages and his forward throw can set up his excellent edge guarding ability.

However, Black Mage suffers from average mobility which allows characters with better mobility to rush him down. (ex. and ). Even with having a pseudo wavedash; due to Black Mage's high traction it is very short and not very useful for mobility.

Warp, although giving him a long recovery, 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.

He has problems dealing with characters who can really camp him out and Stop can only reflect one projectile on one side at a time. A prime example of this would be Fox's Blaster; Fox's Blaster is fast, can be spammed, covers a good distance and does not make the opponent flinch so even when reflected it will not deter Fox from projectile camping Black Mage. Also combined with his poor mobility gives him less options on how to prevent camping.

Black Mage does have an outstanding edgeguarding game but he himself also suffers from being easy to edgeguard, and being offstage is a very disadvantageous position for Black Mage to be in especially against characters with great edge games such as Lloyd.

Black Mage also has low accelerated falling speed, which makes him more susceptible to getting KO'd off the top boundary than most characters. He also has problems dealing with characters who posses better range and high priority attacks.

Taunts

 * Standard: Spins and raises a hand into the air while some fanfare from the FINAL FANTASY victory theme plays.
 * Side: Does a similar pose like when he casts Stop, then raises his arms victoriously.
 * Down: Plays the FINAL FANTASY theme on a lute. If under the effect of a Metal Box, however, a metal remix of the FINAL FANTASY victory theme plays.

On-screen appearance
Gets chosen from a list of FINAL FANTASY classes and jumps onto the arena. Based on the character creation screen from the original FINAL FANTASY.

Victory fanfare
A remix of the victory theme from the FINAL FANTASY series.

Victory poses

 * Jumps onto his floating scepter and folds his arms while a large red, yellow, green, or blue crystal orbits around him; the color varies depending on which player slot the Black Mage was in.

Lose pose
Claps to winner.

Changes from v0.9a
Black Mage has received a mix of buffs and nerfs. Black Mage benefits from the lower hitstun due to being less susceptible to combos while being able to combo like last demo. Black Mage is seen as a more effective character.

Notable players

 * Drarky
 * Corvid

Tier placement history
Initially, Black Mage was considered to be the best character in the game upon his introduction in demo v0.7, due to his disproportionately strong attacks and high kill power. However, in the weeks that followed, he was severely nerfed, causing him to fall to the bottom of the tier list. In demo v0.9a, he finally crawled out of the low tiers due to a number of buffs he received. In demo v0.9b, he was initially seen as a very strong character, placing 8th overall. However, as the meta progressed, his flaws became increasingly more visible, causing him to fall six places, from the top to the bottom of A Tier.

In Super Smash Flash 2 Beta, Black Mage has fallen from his place as a mid-tier character from 0.9b, now ranking 31st on the tier list out of 39, placing him in the middle of C+ tier just above Sonic and Bandana Dee. At Super Smash Con 2017, a new patch was introduced that added Pichu to the roster of playable characters, and may also have contained changes to Black Mage.

Trivia

 * From demo v0.7a to v0.8b, Black Mage's portrait was an edited artwork from his apearance in FINAL FANTASY I & II: Dawn of Souls. It is so far the only artwork to be specifically edited for the game before the inclusion of pixel arts.
 * Black Mage is the only character whose fully charged smash attacks are different from his non-charged smash attacks.
 * Black Mage is the only character whose down throw induces poisoning on opponents. He is one of 2 characters so far to induce said status (the other being, if she pulls an Oddish from her down special).
 * Black Mage could be unlocked in demo v0.7 by playing 10 battles on Brawl mode, then beating him in a duel on Chaos Shrine. Doing this also unlocked the latter stage.
 * In 0.7 however, there was also a glitch that could be performed to unlock him earlier, which was done by setting the computer in the player 3 slot to Lloyd and the player playing as Kirby; going to the Tower of Salvation stage, the player must use Inhale on Lloyd and then spit him out, which resulted in Lloyd being trapped in the Star form. The player then must self-destruct until they ran out of stocks, and then would be able to fight and unlock Black Mage.
 * Black Mage, along with, , and  are the only characters so far who wear their default costumes in team battle when they are on the blue team.
 * Black Mage and Mega Man are the only characters so far whose normal attacks act as projectiles. In Black Mage's case, his fully charged forward smash.