As I said in my previous entry, the Glitz Pit Discord Server (link at the bottom of this post) cast judgment on badges in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, bringing to light a tier list for more hardcore players. This time, we’re going to go over something many players also debate on — Partners and Special Moves/Star Powers in both TTYD and Paper Mario. However, we did things a little differently.

Instead of giving a tier, we basically just rated the order of each from best to worst. While there are certainly “breaks” within these lists where partners could be placed in the same tier, we felt that an ordered list would work better for Partners and Special Moves/Star Powers given the small amount of each compared to badges. Of course, like with badges, the overall opinion of the 30+ players who voted and discussed these are a little different from mine. I’ll be showing you each list with my own ranking next to it, and talk about some key differences. Remember, the Glitz Pit list is framed with a challenge runner in mind. Let’s start with TTYD!

There’s actually not much to say here — I voted with the majority. There was a lot of debate between Yoshi and Goombella, but in the end, Yoshi’s ability to hit everything for huge amounts of damage barely won out over Goombella’s superior single-target damage and versatility with Rally Wink. To me, Yoshi and Goombella could easily be seen as the best partner — it just depends on how you fight. I fight with partners, so Yoshi is better. Flurrie and Vivian were another hotly contested pair.

The glaring difference here is my opinion of Power Lift. I think Power Lift is great but unnecessary. A lot of the time, you can get an adequate boost in power with, say, Double Dipped Items or even just a single Power Punch. This is especially true for bosses where you’re planning to take damage to achieve Danger/Peril. The DEF boosts can get in the way, and while you can avoid those, it makes your ATK boosts worse since you’re wasting time waiting for the arrows to appear. It does pair well with P-Up, D-Down (and the partner variant), though. That was really the only difference. Supernova taking last might be a bit of a surprise, but Art Attacks just outperforms it at almost every step.

Alright, those are the rankings for TTYD. Let’s dive into 64!

The big difference is the 5-7 spots. To be honest, these were big toss-up votes for a lot of people. While Parakarry is solid damage all-around and useful early-game, I rarely use him because Sushie does basically the same things he does but better. Air Lift is nice, but… Water Block is much better, and Lakilester has an AoE version. Goombario is uncontested in single-target damage, but it’s barely needed and requires Ultra Rank. Lakilester has Cloud Nine, a move that’s better than all 3 Lucky Badges combined in terms of evasiveness and he’s got a full-screen clean-up move in Spiny Surge, but I’ll be honest — I don’t use him often.

The big difference is my Refresh > Star Storm and Time Out > Smooch. I think Star Storm is great, but when it comes to dealing damage Mario usually has it covered. Refresh is useful throughout the game and is a key component in more restrictive runs. As for Time Out > Smooch — while Time Out really isn’t that great to begin with, I think the healing provided by Smooch coupled with its cost just isn’t really worth it. More than Up & Away, but I’d rather inflict status. There was quite the debate over some of the middle locations — partly because, well…you don’t really need any besides the first 3; they just out-class the rest super hard. For me, I’d take status > 20 HP heal, especially when that’s readily available with items. Refresh at least is only 1 SP and can be used multiple times with lower HP amounts (which challenge runners tend to have rather than going for 25+).

And that’s it for TTYD/64 Partners and Special Moves/Star Powers! We’re now on 64 Badges, so expect another post in the future once that’s been completed. Do you agree or disagree with these lists? Let me know in the comments below, on Twitter, or on Facebook! And that post I mentioned in my badge tier list is coming! I swear!

Link to Glitz Pit Server: https://discord.gg/0yohFnSHDvBexU7i

Just Sayin’