Frozen

Female Robin frozen in SSB4

Frozen is a status condition in the Super Smash Bros. series that is inflicted by attacks with the freezing effect. It debuted in Super Smash Bros. Melee and has appeared in every subsequent game. Frozen fighters as encased in ice.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Support Spirit skill Ice-Floor Immunity prevents the equipped fighter from being frozen.

Overview

Any fighter hit by a freezing attack with enough knockback will be frozen. Examples of attacks with the freezing effect are the Ice Climbers' Ice Shot, Lucas's PK Freeze, and the Freezie item. Additionally, the Spirit Battle condition "The floor is frozen" creates a hazard that inflicts freezing damage to players who stand on it (but not puppet fighters), freezing them, unless they have the Support Spirit skill Ice-Floor Immunity.

A frozen fighter is unable to take any actions until the status wears off. Frozen characters cannot be affected by other status effects (such as being asleep, buried, or stunned), take quartered knockback, and cannot be grabbed. The ice also halves the damage of all incoming attacks while altering the shape of the character's hurtbox. Frozen characters sink in water.

The amount of time a character remains frozen is dependent on how much knockback the freezing attack did; if the knockback is too weak, the character will not be frozen at all, making it difficult to freeze giant or metal opponents. The frozen duration can be decreased by button mashing. Excluding Ultimate, if a frozen character is hit by a flame attack, they are immediately thawed and take minimal knockback.

Freezing attacks typically send a character upwards, while also seeming to drastically decrease their vertical endurance, making it difficult to push a frozen character off an edge, so most freeze-based KOs occur off the top blast line. This is solely due to the angle of the attack and is not a property of the freezing effect or the frozen condition.

Duration

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In Ultimate

In Ultimate, the formula for freeze duration in frames is 5d +0.5p rounded down, where d is the damage dealt by the move, and p is the target's percent after the damage from the move is added. This is unaffected by the 1v1 multiplier. Hero's Kacrackle Slash will also double the freeze duration. Mashing will reduce the time frozen by 4 frames for every frame an input is detected. Since only damage affects this, factors such as weight are irrelevant.

Fighters will take 0.5× damage and 0.25× knockback while frozen, making even some of the most powerful moves in the game fail to KO. However, due to opponents being effectively immobile, it is an excellent way to build damage or set the opponent up. In addition, opponents hit by non-freezing attacks while frozen will also have the duration extended by 4 frames, forcing another input to be used for them to leave the frozen state.

Appearance

The Ice Climbers being frozen in Brawl

In Melee and Brawl, if a frozen character is Screen KO'd or Star KO'd, they remain in their ice block for the duration of the KO; in SSB4 and Ultimate opponents will thaw immediately before crossing the upper blast line. In Brawl, despite remaining frozen, the sound of ice shattering can be heard when a frozen character is Star KO'd.

In Super Smash Bros. 4 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, if a frozen character goes past the blast line, there is a chance that instead of using their KO voice clip, they will instead use their damage voice clips, use both of them simultaneously, or say nothing at all. The same thing happens when crossing a blast line with extreme knockback, such as getting hit by a Green Shell at 999% or getting blasted by a Bob-omb near the blast line in Sudden Death.

Trivia

• In Super Smash Bros. Melee, if players are KO'd in Stamina Mode by freezing, they will remain frozen for the rest of the match.