There's a reason why you see a lot of players pick Metal Mario/B-Dasher/Red Monster/Flower Glider online, and that's because it is overall the most versatile and quick kart combination in Mario Kart 7. It's not the ¤best¤ in every track, but it's in general the strongest combo if you're playing a mystery track that's about to pop up in a Wifi race.
Its benefits include:
- Heavy kart, usually doesn't get knocked around.
- Fast speed stat, usually quicker than anyone else.
- Offroad so adept that you can drift inside Off-Road (this will be important later)
- Insane glider control. (This is the baseline for glider abuse in Mario Kart 7.) Its obvious downfalls include:
- Bad handling. (This is moot. Once you get used to it, and know the drift mechanic, having more handling is pointless)
- Bad acceleration, and I really mean it. It takes a year for it to get to top speed (This probably won't matter much in a speed-run too much, you'll probably be far ahead of the competition. More explained later.)
This applies well to an All-cup run, because you have to play every single track in the game at least once in a row, and you can't exactly pinpoint a combo for playing all courses in a row, so unless you have a specific choice for each track, you'll probably have to suck it up and B-Dash it. Even then, this is an RTA, so you'll have to outweigh having to pick kart pieces with the added benefit of picking said kart pieces. But, when it comes to single sets of cups in Grand Prix, instead of a full run, the kart choice may matter a whole lot more.
Now, here's why it makes this combination so powerful.
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Off-road In Mario Kart 7, if your off-road stat is high enough (At least 5 bars) you can drift through most off-road patches. (Off-road that the combo cannot tank through is the Snow in Rosalina's Ice World, for example, or the mud before the first Dino Dino shortcut.) This is useful in some cases, where you can take some intended mushroom shortcuts shroomless. The first glide ramp in Kalimari Desert, for example, is an absolute textbook case, where you can boost into the off-road, and drift through it, and release a blue miniturbo to instantly accelerate after you're through the off-road. This is the prime reason why the Off-road stat is important, to carry a boost you wouldn't otherwise be able to. Another good example is the ramp in the grass in Rock rock Mountain; You can take your glider all the way to the ramp in 150cc, and drift through the grass, and release a mini turbo on the ramp to kick yourself off it and over some grass, which is faster than just going around normally.
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Fast speed stat. This is pretty easy to follow through. Your speed stat is simply the kart set's base top speed. This means that (when not boosting) you'll go a lot faster than someone who has a low speed stat. Try comparing kart combos in Luigi Raceway, and you'll get the idea pretty quickly.
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Heavy kart: While this is mostly useful only in Wifi matches, it'll also prevent CPU opponents from kicking you around a lot, which is always a welcome bonus I guess.
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Insane glider control. Here's where it all breaks down from here. The flower glider has the best glide maneuverability stat in the game. Normally, the game tries its best to push you into the middle of the glide path, but when you force your kart to glide left or right, you can only push so hard until the game's push back matches with your own control over the glider. In addition, when you use a mushroom, not only are you given more speed for a while (about twice as long as a mushroom, but half as beneficial, it evens out to a mushroom in the long run) but it also gives you about double the glider control you would normally have. This literal double in glider control means that the more powerful the glider is in control, the more control a mushroom will give you when you use it. The flower glider literally contributes to the most unintended shortcuts in the game (And you thought it was the actual kart all along!) A good example of this is the shroomless Rainbow Road turning skip found after the first glide pad after the ringed planet, by using the boost star's mushroom boost power in a careful manner.
It does come with its downsides, though, with poor acceleration and poor handling.
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Handling: This doesn't really matter, except for the tower in Airship Fortress, but it's just one place, it doesn't have enough to outweigh the combo, and there are ways to get around it with the low-handling combo efficiently.
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Acceleration: This is obvious. It can be a big pain to get accelerating again, but you can help alleviate the problem by performing a short miniturbo, as boosts in this game immediately boost your speed. I've tested this in time trial, and found performing a short miniturbo from a standing start to be more effective at accelerating than simply letting your kart get up to speed.
There are other very versatile combos out there (Metal Mario/Slick/Bee/Flower) that I've seen (and used) online before. No combo out there is perfect. In fact, Wario's Shipyard is really terrible for the classic B-Dasher Monster Heavy Flower combo, because it has considerably low water speed. Water speed is an invisible stat, I'm afraid. (Glider control is another hidden stat, but it's important to us, hence why it's mentioned in this post)
In short, it depends on what you want to do. I know the classic combo gets boring now and then, but at least Mario Kart 7's pieces are dynamic enough that world records are set by a variety of pieces. That's something Mario Kart 8 can't provide.
By the way, a tidbit: It doesn't have to be Metal Mario. You can replace him with any other heavyweight of choice. Rosalina is my pick. And, as long as you have enough off-road stat, you can pick a mediumweight, or a lightweight, as well. Though, be aware that picking a mediumweight or lightweight character will deteriorate your speed stat, since weight class determines some of it.
The base combo is MM/B-Dasher/Monster/Heavy glider There are slight changes you may want to make for some cups.
Shell: Use Paraglider, unless you use RNG shrooms on rMG
Banana: Use slick wheels (No off road except rMC2). Flower glider only if going for the pasta strat.
Lightning: Use paraglider for DDJ
