MQ Badge Tiers

In general, these badges are ranked in order in each tier, so the first badge listed will be worse than the second, second will be worse than the third, etc.
Any badge name that begins with a * is a badge that I have not used much during my playthrough so far, so take ratings for these badges with a huge grain of salt since they're just based on gut feeling, seeing/hearing others' strategies, and number crunching.


						X TIER: Badges that cannot be realistically compared to other badges

- Slow Go
- HP Plus
- FP Plus
- I Spy
- Speedy Spin
- Attack FX A
- Attack FX B
- Attack FX C
- Attack FX D
- Attack FX E
- Attack FX F


						F TIER: Badges that are actively bad, and/or never useful

- *Double Pain
Does this one really need a * at the start? Obviously I can tell it's bad without having used it. I mean, it's intentionally the worst badge in the game. Maybe it should be in X tier?

- Gambler's S.
I have written so many paragraphs about this badge. You can't get it until you get the Super Hammer, so it's a 3 FP attack that deals 1 damage 75% of the time, and 9 damage 25% of the time. With the Ultra Hammer, it deals 1 damage 66% of the time, and 11 damage 33% of the time. This means on average, it will deal 3 damage with the Super Hammer, and 4.333 damage with the Ultra Hammer. This is not only less than half the damage that Power Smash will deal (for 3 times the cost), but is less damage than a regular hammer attack will deal! Considering how un-versatile hammer attacks are in general when compared to jump attacks, I have not been able to think of any viable use case for this badge. It is genuinely the worst non-Double Pain badge in the game.

- Chill Out
Honestly, this badge isn't inherently bad, so I don't know for sure if it's fair to rank it so low. But because you get Dizzy Attack immediately into chapter 1, and Dizzy Attack is better than Chill Out in almost every conceivable way (other than costing 2 BP instead of 1), it means there's never really a use case for this badge. Once Dizzy Attack is nerfed, I imagine this will shoot up to medium or medium-high tier.

- *Berserker
By design, you can't win every fight in MQ with the same strategy. So when you completely remove all of Mario's options (no items, no star powers, no badge actions), it's understandable that you're at a huge disadvantage in fights. The +2 attack is nowhere near enough to make up for this badge's downsides. And that's a good thing! This badges *SHOULD* stay in the lowest tier as a gimmick/challenge badge akin to Double Pain.


						E TIER: Badges that are virtually (but not inherently) completely irrelevant

- Refund
By the time you get this badge, you already have access to the Silver Card, so if you wanted you could have infinite coins at any time. If you weren't willing to gamble for money, this might be useful just because of how cheap BP-wise it is and how early you get it. But even then, after chapter 1, you can always buy Volt Shrooms, cook them, and sell them for a 5 coin profit. So earning money is just a measure of tedium at worst, and not really something to stress over micromanaging with badges. Badges that only earn coins are functionally superfluous.

- Money Money
This is a very late-game badge (chapter 5 at best and realistically chapter 6/7). It also costs 192 coins to get, so if you're going to buy it, you clearly don't really need money in the first place. I use it a bit when in the upper floors of the pit since there's nothing else I'd really need to spend the 2 BP on, but even so it's hardly 'useful'.

- *Pay-Off
I've heard good things about this badge, honestly. Considering how badly Mario *WILL* get beaten up in every MQ fight, this can seriously boost your coin count if you're not willing to gamble in the play room or spend time selling Hot Shrooms. But even so, money is functionally not an issue in this game, making this badge questionably useful at best (And it would be a bad thing balance-wise if money *WAS* a constant issue).

- Medicine Man
I've used this in a few battles for my strategies to get into (and stay in) Peril for a short time, but you don't get it until midway through chapter 4. This late in the game, you already have a ton of healing resources: If your max HP is 30, for example, you can just use a Life Shroom and Dried Shroom to make a Shroom Steak and use that to heal 30 HP. By the endgame, you can make Jelly Ultras conveniently and quickly. Overall, Medicine Man will never really be useful to squeeze that little bit extra out of a healing item, since you could have just brought a better healing item into the battle in the first place. This badge can only really be useful to manipulate your HP into short-term Peril, or if you're also using HP Plus badges and need to heal more than 50 at a time.

- *Runaway Pay
This could be useful for farming Star Points, I suppose? But even then, I don't know how relevant that would be. In most battles, you should know fairly early on if you can take out the enemies or not with your current setup, so there's not going to be a ton of cases where you kill a few enemies and then need to run away from the remaining ones. And, assuming you stay close to the level curve for wherever you are in the game, at best this will get you an extra 4 or so Star Points from a battle you run away from.

- Truth Stomp
I really wanted to put this up into D tier at least, since it's the only way for Mario to damage Boos or Dark Boos on turn one. If this move did two bounces instead of one, I think it would probably be upper D or lower C tier for me, since it would let you kill a Boo in one turn with Ultra Boots and two ATK+ boosts. But as it is now, there's almost no reason to ever use it, since you could just wait the one turn the enemies are invisible and use a charge move instead for functionally the same result.

- Gambler's Jump
This suffers from the same drawbacks of Gambler's S., but has three benefits going for it:
  1) Jumps are more versatile than hammer attacks, since you can flip a shelled enemy with them.
  2) You get it before you get the Super Boots, so a low damage hit isn't that painful. In fact, you get it in chapter 1, which is also conveniently filled with shelled enemies.
  3) Jumps hit twice, so in the worst case scenario you'll still do 2 damage (whereas Gambler's S. does only 1)
In chapter 1, this move is the only way for Mario to kill a White Ninjakoopa or Koopa Troopa in one action, at a ~30.5% chance of doing so. Of course, as soon as you get the Super Boots, this move becomes unusable trash since it will do 4 (then 5) damage on average, putting it on par with (or worse than, for Ultra Boots) a normal jump attack.

- *Peekaboo
Sure, seeing an enemy's current HP is amazingly useful, but if you already know all of the enemies' stats, you can just save the 1 BP and keep track of their HP. And if you don't already know all of the enemies' stats, you have Goombario's Tattle, which you should be using anyway to learn their weaknesses and gimmicks. It's better to save the BP for something more useful.


						D TIER: Badges that have niche use cases in the endgame, but are generally overshadowed by other badges

- *Lucky Day
I hate this badge, so much. I hate luck badges in general. But looking at things statistically, maybe this badge is good? I mean, the average endgame attack does around 8 damage or so, plus often invokes a status or debuff. This badge has a 10% chance to dodge any given attack, so that's functionally saving you 0.8 HP per attack (Let's say 0.6 HP, assuming you block and have a Damage Dodge equipped). If three enemies attack in a turn, that's 1.8 HP saved. That's statistically a better value than Crazy Heart, and for only 4 BP instead of 5, *plus* avoiding the side effects of attacks like statuses and debuffs. By all means, it feels like I should rate this badge in C or B tier, but I just can't. Maybe I'm wrong (mathematically I almost surely am, unless I'm missing something), but I cannot say in good conscience that I'd ever advise someone to equip this badge as part of a strategy or general loadout.

- *Pretty Lucky
Everything I said about Lucky Day applies here as well, but since it has a 30% chance of proccing, so on average it will save you 1.8 damage *per attack*. 6 BP is a much steeper turnoff than Lucky Day's 4, but since it is 3 times as useful for only 1.5 times the BP cost, it's far better numbers-wise.

- Spin Smash
I'm honestly pleasantly surprised to see how few late game enemies are immune to Spin Smash. Honestly, maybe if I used this badge much more, I'd be willing to rank it higher, but my use with it so far hasn't impressed me. Dealing 1 damage to all ground level enemies is a nice bonus for only 1 BP and 1 FP, but overall I'd probably rather use a quake attack whenever I can afford it. Even so, being able to remove a segment from Pokey enemies makes this badge fairly useful in chapter 2 when you first get it, and might convince me to try it out more in the endgame.

- *Happy Heart
I have heard good things about this badge, but I can't say I really like it in general. This is a badge that gets better and better the longer a fight goes on. Because the stats of all enemies have been boosted so much in MQ, *in general* the longer a fight goes on, the more damage Mario will take, so it's hard to stall out a fight without a badge loadout designed for turtling. This badge is mostly only really useful in fights that are inherently long, such as boss fights. Overall, there are probably better ways to heal than relying on the low payout of Happy Heart in most fights.

- Spike Shield
Lots of enemies are spiky, but by the endgame, all spiky enemies have high defense. So in general, you're much better off using Quake Hammer or Hammer Throw against them than a jump attack. It has some niche use in flipping Koopatrols or Spike Tops, or in combination with other badges like D-Down Jump, but in general, this is a badge that the player would have loved and used a ton two chapters before they actually get access to it.

- Last Stand
Maybe this will buy you an extra turn or two (except against bosses, because of their anti-Danger mechanics and anti-dodge mechanics), but in general, low HP is not sustainable in MQ. Thanks to MQ's increased damage output and the (totally justified and a good design choice) nerf of this badge, overall this probably isn't worth considering as more than protection against one or two attacks at best.

- Power Rush
For the same reasons as Last Stand, you shouldn't expect to be able to stay in Danger for more than a turn or two, unless you're strictly set up to do so (high defense and recovery badges, Repel Gel and Outta Sight, etc.) Having a bonus two ATK is great, but in general battles, you ideally *NEVER* want this badge to proc.

- Mega Rush
Being in Peril in this game is not easy or good. This badge only really shines as part of a strategy and combo where you manipulate your HP to get into Peril on the very last turn of a tough battle, or else use Outta Sight and Repel Gel to stay safely in Peril across multiple turns. I rank it slightly higher than Power Rush because, if your strategy involves manipulating your HP to a specific low value in the first place, you might as well get +4 damage compared to +2.

- *Close Call
I know that this badge was a godsend in vanilla, and maybe I am ranking it too low in this list. But, unless your strategy is hand-crafted to take advantage of it, being in Danger is strictly a bad thing in MQ. And if your strategy *IS* hand-crafted to be in (and stay in) Danger, you shouldn't be relying on random luck to dodge an attack. I'm torn between whether I'm ranking this badge too low or too high.

- Multi-Smash
This attack is really expensive, and Hammer Charge only affects the first hit out of the three with this badge. Against an enemy with no defense and without any ATK+, this badge does 3 less damage than Mega Smash (at only -1 FP cost), and that number only gets worse as enemies gain defense. I would only ever use this against an enemy with low/no defense when I had two or three ATK+, and even then I'd be skeptical of using it just because of how many bugs it has.

- D-Down Jump
Because each bounce of D-Down Jump is at -1 damage, it alone is never useful on an enemy with less than 2 defense. On an enemy with 2-4 defense, it alone is never more useful than Power Jump (which costs half the FP). This badge is only useful if you use other badges or moves to increase Mario's attack, and even then only if the enemy has 3 or more defense (4 or more if you only have one ATK+). In the endgame, a fair number of enemies fit this description, but most of them are more vulnerable to quake attacks anyway. D-Down Jump has niche use, and I think is perfectly fair where it in in the greater scheme of balance.

- Sleep Stomp
Only a few enemies are *really* weak to sleep in the endgame, but your only options for sleep are this move, Sleepy Sheep, and Lullaby. In general, I'd rather use Lullaby since it hits multiple enemies, and only really consider this badge for a battle containing exactly one Rogue Star.

- Quake Hammer
A bit expensive to just do 2 piercing damage to all grounded enemies, but with only a single ATK+, it can kill Bristles in one turn, or Dark Bristles in two turns. Being able to do reasonable damage to all grounded enemies (when combined with ATK+ badges) makes this a fairly viable strat in some fights.

- Dizzy Stomp
This badge isn't really that much cheaper than Dizzy Dance (-1 BP, -2 FP), and it only hits one enemy. The only real upside to it over Dizzy Dance is that it hits the enemy twice, but in general I'd rather use Dizzy Shell in most cases, and only use this in fights with only one flying enemy.

- Dizzy Dance
Dizzy is a good status, and even though you have Kooper's Dizzy Shell attack to handle that, the enemies that are weakest to Dizzy fly where he can't reach them. While Dizzy Dance is great for formations with multiple flying enemies, it's a very expensive move and not very useful outside of those niche formations.

- *HP Drain
On its own, this badge will let you recover 2 HP per turn, which is good. But because Mario will be doing two less damage that way, enemies might survive longer and get more attacks off on him, making it questionable how useful that HP recovery is overall. This badge is probably more useful when combined with a multi-hit attack like Multibounce, Quake Hammer, or Power Bounce, or when mixed with a bunch of defense and recovery badges for full turtling.

- Smash Charge
While it's significantly cheaper than Jump Charge, it's much harder to put out a viable strategy with charging your hammer, since it will only ever boost the damage of one hit. I can only see use cases for this when mixed with Quake Hammer, or else bosses that have multiple phases based on their HP.

- S. Smash Charge
Everything said about Smash Charge applies to this badge as well. Though it costs 6 FP to get up to a charge of +6 (as opposed to Smash Charge, which only costs 3 FP to do that), it only takes a turn to do so. I'd gladly spend 3 FP to get an extra turn with Mario.

- Ice Power
It's kind of a tossup for me to decide between this badge and Fire Shield: Both allow Mario to jump on fiery enemies (which are only the Lava Bubble type enemies and Pyro Guys, unless I'm mistaken). Since Pyro Guys are always grounded, Mario can already take them out with a Power Smash, so he doesn't need this badge against them. Against Embers, Mario can kill them in two jump attacks with this badge, or three jump attacks otherwise, so it's definitely useful. But against endgame bubble-type enemies, Mario will need at least two ATK+ in addition to this badge to kill them in two turns. Overall though, either this badge or Fire Shield are all but required in those fights, or else Mario and his partners will waste a ton of FP to kill them.

- Fire Shield
Everything I said about why Ice Power is so good applies to Fire Shield too, though Fire Shield costs 1 BP less. With Fire Shield, you'll never kill endgame bubbles in two of Mario's attacks (and need two ATK+ to do so to Embers). But every time Mario attacks one of these enemies, another one (or two) joins the battle. And since they have an attack that hits three times, Fire Shield will protect Mario from, say 9 points of damage that he would have taken had he equipped Ice Power instead.

- *Power Bounce
Maybe I'm underrating this, but I don't really see this badge as overly good in MQ? If you charge up to +9 attack (say two turns of Charge, one of Super Charge, one All or Nothing, and one Turbo Charge from Watt), you'll do 35 damage to a regular enemy or 28 damage to a boss. And though those numbers sound high, you're spending 3 turns charging to get these results, which means you're only doing 8.75 damage per turn (7 to a boss). And if you already have All or Nothing and Turbo Charge in play, you'd do 10 damage a turn with normal jumps. This seems only useful against Huff N. Puff or when combined with Peril strats, which are risky plays in MQ.


						C TIER: Viable regular use cases

- Multibounce
Being able to hit all enemies is often a very good action (why not damage multiple enemies if one jump is enough to kill one of them?), and this pairs incredibly well with HP Drain, especially since it's so cheap. Overall though, unless you've got multiple airborne enemies in the battle, you'd probably rather use a quake attack.

- Power Quake
Increasing the FP cost by one to increase the damage by 1 times the number of grounded enemies. It should be clear what makes this badge better than Quake Hammer, and in general I tend to have it equipped for any fights that will have multiple grounded enemies.

- Shrink Smash
The FP and BP costs on this badge are low enough to justify having it at the ready, especially since so many enemies are vulnerable to Shrink, but the poor range of a hammer attack makes this a tough sell over Shrink Stomp.

- Heart	Finder
You want to limit how long battles go on as much as possible in MQ, since the longer a battle goes, the more Mario's resources will suffer (unless you're using stall strats to heal up everything). Since this badge guarantees an extra 1-3 HP after every battle, it lets you conserve your resources and heal up after fast battles, and is more effective on average than Happy Heart on any battle less than 5 turns.

- *Happy Heart
While I'm not a big fan of Happy Heart, Happy Flower is much more impressive to me. FP is a much more precious resource than HP, so a cheap badge that can recover even 1 or 2 FP per battle can be a viable option.

- Flower Finder
Just like with Heart Finder, this badge is better than Happy Flower on any battle that lasts less than 5 turns, which hopefully is just most non-stalling, non-boss battles.

- Zap Tap
This badge is in a weird position. It's all but required in chapter 4. It helps handle multi-hit attacks like Bloobers, Frost Piranhas, and Goomba King EX. It completely wrecks Fuzzies, Swoopulas, and Remedy Guys (Though those should be fixed in the future). But other than that, it's a very *VERY* mediocre badge at best. Outside of these situations (and letting you jump on electrified enemies I guess?) it's just expensive and nearly worthless.

- Jump Charge
Even if it's more expensive than Smash Charge, it's essentially twice the charge. Maybe I'm ranking this and S. Jump Charge too high (it's not like I have them equipped all the time, or even most of the time), but when dealing with airborne enemies with high defense, invisible enemies, or enemies that heal, this is a definitely valuable badge.

- S. Jump Charge
Spending 10 total FP to charge up to +6 in two turns, whereas Jump Charge takes 9 total FP to do the same in three turns. 1 turn is worth well more than 1 FP.

- Group Focus
Generally, partners have better things to do with their turn than Focus, but Mario often has even better things to do with his turn that the partners! If someone has to Focus, it might as well be them (unless Deep Focus is equipped). Plus, it's great for really lame strategies that involve repeatedly using Focus and running away from battle.

- Deep Focus
Just like Group Focus, this badge is based on the premise that SP is one of the most important resources to Mario. With three of these equipped, Mario recovers 1.25 SP every time he uses Focus, meaning he can recover his entire SP within six turns if need be. This can be exactly the badge that saves Mario in combat.


						B TIER: Explicitly good badges

- Mega Quake
5 FP can be a hard sell, but doing 4 piercing damage to all grounded enemies is great. Especially when you combine it with ATK+ badges and moves.

- *Stop Smash
Even though so many enemies are weak to Stop compared to other statuses, the fact that this badge uses the hammer's range and is expensive FP-wise makes me balk a bit at using it. Maybe if I used it more, I might move it up a tier?

- Power Smash
This badge is unbelievably cheap for the benefit it gives: Only 1 BP and 2 FP to do 9 damage with the hammer. This is an incredible bargain that I regularly have equipped unless BP is at a premium.

- Shrink Stomp
So many enemies are vulnerable to Shrink that this is a status that can see regular use to save you a lot of HP.

- Power Jump
It's nice to do 8 damage in a jump attack, but what really makes this badge shine is that it only hits the enemy once, so you don't need to waste turns charging your attack before attacking a well-defended airborne enemy.

- D-Down Pound
Ground-level endgame enemies seem to rarely have 0 defense, and though 1 or 2 are common, it seems like 3 or 4 is the standard amount. And considering that some have 5, 6, 8, 18... An attack that ignores all of that is incredible.

- Hammer Throw
This badge is useful for almost the entire game, especially if you've got Flower Saver or Flower Fanatic equipped. Being able to hit any target with a hammer attack is really nice against high-defense enemies that jumps are ineffective on, and doing an extra damage is a lot of icing on the cake.

- *Mega HP Drain
If you're going to do turtle strats, you want to commit to them 100%, and this badge really lets you do it. Since a single jump attack will let you heal 4 HP per turn with this badge, it seems well worth the BP cost so long as your partners can deal some significant damage and you've got a bunch of defense badges on.

- Dodge Master
Maybe I'm overrating this? But if nothing else, it makes it easier to use Dizzy Shell or Power Shock, to break free from Tuff Puffs, to block attacks with random or awkward timings, and to run away from risky battles. Considering how cheap it is, I have it equipped 90% of the time.

- P-Down, D-Up

- P-Up, D-Down

- Mega Smash

- Feeling Fine

- Flower Saver

- Defense Plus

- *Crazy Heart


						A TIER: Amazing badges that I would probably not be astonished to see nerfed in some way in the future

- Dizzy Attack
This is just straight up broken. I know it's getting nerfed, as it should be. I don't think I need to even justify this placement.

- Double Dip

- Quake Combo

- Mega Jump

- Flower Fanatic

- Quick Change

- All or Nothing

- Damage Dodge

- Power Plus