History ScrappyWeapon / MegaMan

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan5'' is generally seen as one of the lowest points for weapons in the classic series. Not helping the problem is that the game's version of the charged Mega Buster is generally seen as one of its strongest incarnations, with great damage, a fast charge, a big hitbox, and piercing properties, all of which make it infinitely preferable for dealing with most threats. The only weapon to escape it is the Gyro Attack, which deals similar damage to a charge shot to standard enemies, but is spammable and can change its trajectory with the right input.

** The game lacks weaknesses for normal enemies, meaning that all but two of its weapons deal the same damage or less compared to the charged Mega Buster. This makes them largely identical outside of boss battles, stage gimmicks, and their hitboxes. Of the group, the ones to draw the shortest straw seem to be the Ice Wave (a ground-crawling weapon in a game where that only has two practical uses:, against the Robot Master it's effective against, Tengu Man, who is constantly flying, and to freeze lava in Sword Man's stage) and the Water Balloon (completely unremarkable hitbox and doesn't interact with any stage gimmicks; it's effective against Wily's first form but the Flash Bomb actually outperforms it).

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'''s Skull Barrier is generally seen as the one real dud among its weapon roster. While it does let you move with it, unlike the Leaf Shield, and has a lot of uses, it takes a massive hit in durability due to breaking after taking any damage at all, and it also can't be used as a projectile. Its very poor offensive capabilities also, similarly, make it difficult to use in its designated boss battle.

** The Metal Blade. Unlike most other examples on this page, it's disliked for being too much of a GameBreaker, sucking the fun and challenge out. Most enemies and even a good portion of the bosses can be easily killed with it.

** The Crystal Eye fires off a large crystal ball that, when it strikes a wall, shatters into three tiny balls that bounce around to cause damage. But the large ball does damage on par with an uncharged buster shot, and the small balls do the same damage. Filling the screen with tiny projectiles ricocheting all over the place sounds useful (the same idea was executed much better with ''Mega Man 11'''s Bounce Ball), but the Crystal Eye [[OneBulletAtATime doesn't let you fire a second shot]] or switch weapons while any of the projectiles are onscreen, so most of the time you just have two tiny balls bouncing far away from your target while you frantically wait for them to vanish.

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'''s Skull Barrier is generally seen as the one real dud among its weapon roster. While it does let you move with it, unlike the Leaf Shield, has a lot of uses, and can block projectiles, it takes a massive hit in durability due to breaking after taking any damage at all, and it also can't be used as a projectile. Its very poor offensive capabilities also, similarly, make it difficult to use in its designated boss battle.
* ''VideoGame/MegaMan5'':
** The Power Stone creates a trio of boulders that circles outward from Mega Man's position. Unfortunately, they are notoriously hard to aim correctly and move very slowly, to boot. Worst of all, once you fired one, you couldn't fire another until either the first one had run its course or you pause the game to despawn it. It says something when it's generally less of a hassle to kill Charge Man (who is weak to the Power Stone) with the Mega Buster.

** Spark Shock creates a cloud of electricity that freezes whichever enemy it hits, but it deals no damage to anything besides certain bosses, and the player can't have more than two clouds active nor switch to another weapon until its effect wears off, and touching a frozen enemy still damages Mega Man. Because of this, the freezing merely briefly turns an enemy into a static damaging obstacle that you can't get rid of, and chances are that if you could get around them in that form, you could probably just jump over them without the Spark Shock. It does have twenty-eight uses, but when you're as ineffective as this, twenty-eight times zero is still zero. Nico [[https://youtu.be/ODDViuDmVDM considered it]] the worst weapon in the entire series. Notably, ''VideoGame/MegaManIII'' for the Game Boy fixed the weapon entirely by simply letting it function like ''VideoGame/MegaMan1'''s Ice Slasher (that is, you can freeze any number of enemies at once and switch to damaging weapons to finish them off).

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'''s Skull Barrier is generally seen as the one real dud among its weapon roster. While it does fix the drainage problem from Leaf Shield and can block projectiles, it takes a massive hit in durability due to breaking after taking any damage at all, and it also can't be used as a projectile. Its very poor offensive capabilities also, similarly, make it difficult to use in its designated boss battle.

** The Time Stopper grants an awesome ability in stopping time, but it's overbalanced to the point of uselessness. Once the Time Stopper gets triggered, it can't be turned off, and it just keeps draining until you lose the whole charge, making it effectively a one-shot weapon. Worse, you also have no means of attack while the Stopper is active and you can't switch weapons, so if you run into an enemy you can't jump over, that's an entire charge wasted. There is one part in the game where it's useful (it stops the lasers in Quick Man's stage), but doing so means you also can't use the Time Stopper against the one enemy in the game who's weak to it. It doesn't look good when one of the few genuine uses for it is essentially an exploit (it interrupts the arrival animation of the Frienders in Wood Man's stage, letting you bypass them). Pretty much no matter what, you have a weapon you'll fire off at most twice in your entire playthrough. Notably, the Flash Stopper in ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'' is often seen as a "fixed" version--it doesn't drain in one go, and you can use the Buster while it's active (though you can't charge it).

** The Time Stopper grants an awesome ability in stopping time, but it's overbalanced to the point of uselessness. Once the Time Stopper gets triggered, it can't be turned off, and it just keeps draining until you lose the whole charge, making it effectively a one-shot weapon. Worse, you also have no means of attack while the Stopper is active and you can't switch weapons, so if you run into an enemy you can't jump over, that's an entire charge wasted. There is one part in the game where it's useful (it stops the lasers in Quick Man's stage), but doing so means you also can't use the Time Stopper against the one enemy in the game who's weak to it. Pretty much no matter what, you have a weapon you'll fire off at most twice in your entire playthrough. Notably, the Flash Stopper in ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'' is often seen as a "fixed" version--it doesn't drain in one go, and you can use the Buster while it's active (though you can't charge it).

** The Top Spin, whose only notable use is [[spoiler:destroying bosses that lack MercyInvincibility, including the final, in one hit]]. Not only does it require Mega Man to touch opponents while using it in a game where CollisionDamage is the norm, and not only can it only be used while jumping, but its damage mechanics are bugged; due to the fact that it counts striking an enemy in MercyInvincibility to be a hit, it can drain in a single second while doing only a single hit of damage. On top of that, it's the weakness of both Shadow Man and Doc Heat Man; the former who is seen as one of the most frustrating fights in the classic series, and both are very susceptible to the above draining problem. It can see greater effect [[DifficultButAwesome if you know how to use it]] (like in a Boss Weapons Only run), but it's so buggy and clumsy that most don't bother.

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan1''

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan2''
** The Bubble Lead gets a lot of this, with its effectiveness against the final boss being one of the more infamous gags in the series. It bounces off the majority of enemies, especially ones you'd want to use it on, and does less damage than any other "ground-bound" weapon in the series. Even against Wily, it tends to be a chore to use, as its attack pattern makes it terrible at handling a flying opponent. Admittedly, it does have another use in detecting the occasional fake floors.
** The Atomic Fire is an incredibly powerful weapon that can destroy most non-boss enemies in one hit and would be very useful if a fully charged blast from the Atomic Fire didn't take up an obscene amount of weapon energy (you only get a maximum of two fully charged shots from a full energy bar). This makes the weapon completely useless in the Wily stages, where your weapon energy doesn't carry over between stages. On top of this, the charge is slow and it's usually much better to defeat enemies with multiple shots of a weaker weapon. Its only real uses are to defeat Wood Man and the first form of the Wily Machine (two fully charged hits in both cases).
** The Crash Bomber does nowhere near as much damage as you'd expect a weapon with its name to do. Directly hitting an enemy does almost nothing, while missing them and waiting for the explosion has the same problem as the Hyper Bomb. It's also pretty slow, and a glutton for energy (seven shots and you're out), which makes using it in boss fights a major pain: most infamously, the Boobeam Trap, which requires ''exactly'' seven shots to defeat (fire even one shot that you didn't need to and the fight is unwinnable). Pretty much the only thing it's useful against is walls. The Chain Blast in ''11'' is seen as a general improvement for sticking to enemies and detonating on command.

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan3''
** The Top Spin, whose only notable use is [[spoiler:destroying the final boss in one hit]]. Not only does it require Mega Man to touch opponents while using it in a game where CollisionDamage is the norm, and not only can it only be used while jumping, but its damage mechanics are bugged; due to the fact that it counts striking an enemy in MercyInvincibility to be a hit, it can drain in a single second while doing only a single hit of damage. On top of that, it's the weakness of Shadow Man, who is ''also'' seen as one of the buggiest and most frustrating fights in the classic series and whose fight is very susceptible to the above draining problem. It can see greater effect [[DifficultButAwesome if you know how to use it]] (like in a Boss Weapons Only run), but it's so buggy and clumsy that most don't bother.
** Spark Shock creates a cloud of electricity that freezes whichever enemy it hits, but it deals no damage to anything besides certain bosses, and the player can't have more than two clouds active nor switch to another weapon until its effect wears off, and touching a frozen enemy still damages Mega Man. Because of this, the freezing merely briefly turns an enemy into a static damaging obstacle that you can't get rid of, and chances are that if you could get around them in that form, you could probably just jump over them without the Spark Shock. It does have twenty-eight uses, but when you're as ineffective as this, twenty-eight times zero is still zero. Nico [[https://youtu.be/ODDViuDmVDM considered it]] the worst weapon in the entire series. Notably, the Gameboy version fixed the weapon entirely by simply letting it function like ''VideoGame/MegaMan1'''s Ice Slasher (that is, you can freeze any number of enemies at once and switch to damaging weapons to finish them off).
* ''VideoGame/MegaMan5''
** The Power Stone may well be the worst special weapon ever created in any game. It creates a trio of boulders that circles outward from Mega Man's position. Unfortunately, they are notoriously hard to aim correctly and move very slowly, to boot. Worst of all, once you fired one, you couldn't fire another until the first one had run its course. It says something when it's generally less of a hassle to kill Charge Man (who is weak to the Power Stone) with the Mega Buster.
** Charge Man's own weapon, the Charge Kick, has its own problems. It makes Mega Man's slide invincible and allows it to do damage, but it has the same problem as the Top Spin of being an attack that requires you to hit opponents with your own body in a game where you take damage when touching enemies normally. Most of the time, you'll undershoot your target and come to a stop either right before them or inside of them. On top of that, Wave Man (the boss who's weak to it) is also probably the worst boss to be weak to it, as he loves calling up water walls that block your slide. These flaws were eventually ironed out with the Pile Driver in ''VideoGame/MegaMan11'', another charging melee attack, only this time you can use it in the air as a makeshift air dash, and hitting an opponent without killing them throws Mega Man backwards to mitigate the risk of CollisionDamage.
** Really, all of the weapons in ''Mega Man 5'' could qualify for one simple reason: the charged Mega Buster is ''obscenely'' powerful in this game. So much so that it one shots many enemies that special weapons would need two or three hits to kill. What's worse, the only weapon that has any real utility is the Gyro Attack due to its ability to reliably hit enemies that aren't directly horizontal to you.
* The Deep Digger in ''VideoGame/MegaManV'' is just like the Super Arm without the slightest change, and Creator/TheQuarterGuy refers to it as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQZ7NQDDFcA the bottom of the barrel]].

** Scorch Wheel gets a lot of grief, due to how slowly it comes out and the awkward angle it fires at. The Noise Crush much better fills the role of a large-hitbox powerhouse, and the Junk Shield is much better for warding off enemies. And on top of that, every boss who's weak to it has at least one other weakness, usually one that's easier to use against them. It does have the ability to burn certain objects in certain stages, but that's about all it can do.
** The Wild Coil is the obligatory "ineffective against anything not the final boss" weapon, and dang if it doesn't show. It creates two springs on either side, which proceed to bounce around, hopefully damaging enemies. Most of the time, they just bounce into a BottomlessPit, and when they don't, it's usually to hit an enemy at such close range that the Slash Claw would hit them. The weapon's damage is also quite low, and using it requires Mega Man to stand still for about half a second.
* ''VideoGame/MegaMan8''
** The game lacks weaknesses for normal enemies, meaning that all but two of its weapons deal the same damage or less compared to the charged Mega Buster. This makes them largely identical outside of boss battles, stage gimmicks, and their hitboxes. Of the group, the ones to draw the shortest straw seem to be the Ice Wave (a ground-crawling weapon in a game where that's very rarely useful, and where the Robot Master it's effective against is constantly flying; the only other use for it is to freeze lava) and the Water Balloon (completely unremarkable hitbox and doesn't interact with any stage gimmicks; it's effective against Wily's first form but the Flash Bomb actually outperforms it).
** The Mega Ball is a special weapon separate from the Robot Master weapons, and is given to you in the tutorial. Unfortunately, its specialty does not reflect into its viability. The ball is horrendously hard and slow to aim, especially since you have to drop it and then move into it to kick it in a direction that may not even possibly hit anyone. Its power does not make up for it in the slightest, as even unloading all 20 balls onto a Robot Master doesn't even kill them. Any of them. None of them are even weak to the ball anyway, so it's just better to use the Mega Buster anyway. There's a good reason that the boss who can only be damaged by the Mega Ball is ThatOneBoss. [=Gamechamp3000=] of WebVideo/VGMyths fame did a SelfImposedChallenge where they ''only'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xurNjWulIo0 used the Mega Ball]] (Except on bosses immune to it), and it should say something that they couldn't even beat the first few bosses without a rare RNG roll.
* ''VideoGame/MegaMan10'' has Thunder Wool, which conjures up a cloud in front of you that floats up for a few seconds, then drops a lightning bolt. It's nigh impossible to aim, and blows through all its ammo in 6 shots. Even worse, the cloud can be destroyed if an enemy or projectile collides with it. This means you can't reliably use it at close range, since that guarantees that it'll disappear before it can fire off a bolt, thus wasting a ton of your ammo. Thankfully, it at least works on Pump Man, since his habit of standing still and moving to predictable locations means you can drop clouds on him fairly reliably.
* Shield weapons in general have a pretty scattershot history. You lose the Leaf Shield in ''VideoGame/MegaMan2'' as soon as you moved, making it only useful in the section in the fourth Wily stage with platforms and Tellies (and beating Air Man, of course). Most other shield weapons (the Skull Barrier, Star Crash, and Plant Barrier) ''did'' allow you to move, but were ineffective due to vanishing as soon as they took a hit or, in worse cases, being ineffective altogether. That said, most of the shield weapons after the incredibly tough Junk Shield in ''7'' managed to pull their weight, especially ''9'''s Jewel Satellite.

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'' lacks weaknesses for normal enemies, meaning that all but two of its weapons deal the same damage or less compared to the charged Mega Buster. This makes them largely identical outside of boss battles, stage gimmicks, and their hitboxes. Of the group, the ones to draw the shortest straw seem to be the Ice Wave (a ground-crawling weapon in a game where that's very rarely useful, and where the Robot Master it's effective against is constantly flying; the only other use for it is to freeze lava) and the Water Balloon (completely unremarkable hitbox and doesn't interact with any stage gimmicks; it's effective against Wily's first form but the Flash Bomb actually outperforms it).

** The Bubble Lead gets a lot of this, with its effectiveness against the final boss being one of the more infamous gags in the series. It bounces off the majority of enemies, especially ones you'd want to use it on, and does less damage than any other "ground-bound" weapon in the series. Admittedly, it does have another use in detecting the occasional fake floors.

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan7'''s Scorch Wheel gets a lot of grief, due to how slowly it comes out and the awkward angle it fires at. The Noise Crush much better fills the role of a large-hitbox powerhouse, and the Junk Shield is much better for warding off enemies. And on top of that, every boss who's weak to it has at least one other weakness, usually one that's easier to use against them. It does have the ability to burn certain objects in certain stages, but that's about all it can do.

** Really, all of the weapons in Mega Man 5 could qualify for one simple reason: the charged Mega Buster is ''obscenely'' powerful in this game. So much so that it one shots many enemies that special weapons would need two or three hits to kill. What's worse, the only weapon that has any real utility is the Gyro Attack due to its ability to reliably hit enemies that aren't directly horizontal to you.

* Really, all of the weapons in Mega Man 5 could qualify for one simple reason: the charged Mega Buster is ''obscenely'' powerful in this game. So much so that it one shots many enemies that special weapons would need two or three hits to kill. What's worse, the only weapon that has any real utility is the Gyro Attack due to its ability to reliably hit enemies that aren't directly horizontal to you.

** Guts Man's own Super Arm picked up blocks and tossed them around, but most levels had only a few blocks to toss. Most notably, the refight against Cut Man has no blocks whatsoever in his arena, meaning you can't use his weakness against him.

** The Time Stopper grants an awesome ability in stopping time, but it's overbalanced to the point of uselessness. Once the Time Stopper gets triggered, it can't be turned off, and it just keeps draining until you lose the whole charge, making it effectively a one-shot weapon. Worse, you also have no means of attack while the Stopper is active and you can't switch weapons, so if you run into an enemy you can't jump over, that's an entire charge wasted. There is one part in the game where it's useful (it stops the lasers in Quick Man's stage), but doing so means you also can't use the Time Stopper against the one enemy in the game who's weak to it. Pretty much no matter what, you have a weapon you'll fire off at most twice in yoir entire playthrough. Notably, the Flash Stopper in ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'' is often seen as a "fixed" version--it doesn't drain in one go, and you can use the Buster while it's active (though you can't charge it).

* ''VideoGame/MegaManX5'': W-Shredder (Spiral Pegasus's attack for Zero), for not only having low utility, but to an extent outright crippling Zero by making a far stronger attack "technique" (alternately hit dash and Attack rapidly to hit obnoxiously fast) unusable, since it is executed the same way. It's so bad, if you can get away with it you should just skip Pegasus entirely and launch the Shuttle without beating him if you're using Zero. This also means losing the Wing Spiral for X (Dynamo's weakness), by the way.

** Spark Shock creates a cloud of electricity that freezes whichever enemy it hits, but it deals no damage to anything besides certain bosses, and the player can't have more than two clouds active nor switch to another weapon until its effect wears off, and touching a frozen enemy still damages Mega Man. Because of this, the freezing merely briefly turns an enemy into a static damaging obstacle that you can't get rid of, and chances are that if you could get around them in that form, you could probably just jump over them without the Spark Shock. It does have twenty-eight uses, but when you're as ineffective as this, twenty-eight times zero is still zero. Nico [[https://youtu.be/ODDViuDmVDM considered it]] the worst weapon in the entire series. Notably, the Gameboy version fixed the weapon entirely by simply letting it function like ''MMI'''s Ice Slasher (that is, you can freeze any number of enemies at once and switch to damaging weapons to finish them off).

** Spark Shock also sees very limited use (in the NES version, that is; it works exactly like Ice Slasher would in the Game Boy version), as - besides almost no normal enemies being damaged by it - while it freezes whichever enemy it hits, the player can neither fire another one nor switch to another weapon until its effect wears off on the afflicted enemy, and touching a frozen enemy still damages Mega Man.

* The original ''VideoGame/MegaMan1'' has the Hyper Bomb, which, while powerful, is far too slow to be of any use (it doesn't explode until roughly three seconds after you threw it) against anything other than the mostly immobile Guts Man. Guts Man's own Super Arm picked up blocks and tossed them around, but most levels had only a few blocks to toss. Most notably, the refight against Cut Man has no blocks whatsoever in his arena, meaning you can't use his weakness against him. The Deep Digger in ''VideoGame/MegaManV'' is just like the Super Arm without the slightest change, and Creator/TheQuarterGuy refers to it as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQZ7NQDDFcA the bottom of the barrel]].
* The Bubble Lead in ''VideoGame/MegaMan2'' also gets a lot of this, with its effectiveness against the final boss being one of the more infamous gags in the series. It bounces off the majority of enemies, especially ones you'd want to use it on, and does less damage than any other "ground-bound" weapon in the series. Admittedly, it does have another use in detecting the occasional fake floors.
** The Atomic Fire in ''2'' is an incredibly powerful weapon that can destroy most non-boss enemies in one hit and would be very useful if a fully charged blast from the Atomic Fire didn't take up an obscene amount of weapon energy (you only get a maximum of two fully charged shots from a full energy bar). This makes the weapon completely useless in the Wily stages, where your weapon energy doesn't carry over between stages. On top of this, the charge is slow and it's usually much better to defeat enemies with multiple shots of a weaker weapon. Its only real uses are to defeat Wood Man and the first form of the Wily Machine (two fully charged hits in both cases).
** The Crash Bomber of ''2'' does nowhere near as much damage as you'd expect a weapon with its name to do. Directly hitting an enemy does almost nothing, while missing them and waiting for the explosion has the same problem as the Hyper Bomb. It's also pretty slow, and a glutton for energy (seven shots and you're out), which makes using it in boss fights a major pain: most infamously, the Boobeam Trap, which requires ''exactly'' seven shots to defeat (fire even one shot that you didn't need to and the fight is unwinnable). Pretty much the only thing it's useful against is walls. The Chain Blast in ''11'' is seen as a general improvement for sticking to enemies and detonating on command.
* The Top Spin from ''VideoGame/MegaMan3'', whose only notable use is [[spoiler:destroying the final boss in one hit]]. Not only does it require Mega Man to touch opponents while using it in a game where CollisionDamage is the norm, and not only can it only be used while jumping, but its damage mechanics are bugged; due to the fact that it counts striking an enemy in MercyInvincibility to be a hit, it can drain in a single second while doing only a single hit of damage. On top of that, it's the weakness of Shadow Man, who is ''also'' seen as one of the buggiest and most frustrating fights in the classic series and whose fight is very susceptible to the above draining problem. It can see greater effect [[DifficultButAwesome if you know how to use it]] (like in a Boss Weapons Only run), but it's so buggy and clumsy that most don't bother.

* The Power Stone from ''VideoGame/MegaMan5'' may well be the worst special weapon ever created in any game. It creates a trio of boulders that circles outward from Mega Man's position. Unfortunately, they are notoriously hard to aim correctly and move very slowly, to boot. Worst of all, once you fired one, you couldn't fire another until the first one had run its course. It says something when it's generally less of a hassle to kill Charge Man (who is weak to the Power Stone) with the Mega Buster.
* Charge Man's own weapon, the Charge Kick, has its own problems. It makes Mega Man's slide invincible and allows it to do damage, but it has the same problem as the Top Spin of being an attack that requires you to hit opponents with your own body in a game where you take damage when touching enemies normally. Most of the time, you'll undershoot your target and come to a stop either right before them or inside of them. On top of that, Wave Man (the boss who's weak to it) is also probably the worst boss to be weak to it, as he loves calling up water walls that block your slide. These flaws were eventually ironed out with the Pile Driver in ''VideoGame/MegaMan11'', another charging melee attack, only this time you can use it in the air as a makeshift air dash, and hitting an opponent without killing them throws Mega Man backwards to mitigate the risk of CollisionDamage.
* ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'' lacks weaknesses for normal enemies, meaning that all but two of its weapons deal the same damage or less compared to the charged Mega Buster. This makes them largely identical outside of boss battles, stage gimmicks, and their hitboxes. Of the group, the two ones to draw the shortest straw seem to be the Ice Wave (a ground-crawling weapon in a game where that's very rarely useful, and where the Robot Master it's effective against is constantly flying; you'll only use it to freeze lava) and the Water Balloon (completely unremarkable hitbox and doesn't interact with any stage gimmicks; it's effective against Wily's first form but the Flash Bomb actually outperforms it).

* Shield weapons in general have a pretty scattershot history. You lost the Leaf Shield in ''VideoGame/MegaMan2'' as soon as you moved, making it only useful in the section in the fourth Wily stage with platforms and Tellies (and beating Air Man, of course). Most other shield weapons (the Skull Barrier, Star Crash, and Plant Barrier) ''did'' allow you to move, but were ineffective due to vanishing as soon as they took a hit or, in worse cases, being ineffective altogether. That said, most of the shield weapons after the incredibly tough Junk Shield in ''7'' managed to pull their weight, especially ''9'''s Jewel Satellite.

* The Rolling Shield in ''VideoGame/MegaManX1'' is the worst boss weapon in the game. The boss who is meant to be vulnerable to it, Launch Octopus, is more vulnerable to the Boomerang Cutter, which severs his tentacles, reducing his firepower and preventing him from [[ThatOneAttack drawing you in]]; the Rolling Shield has no special effect on the boss, and though it does more damage than the Cutter, it's too cumbersome to be used effectively. Surprisingly enough, though, the Rolling Shield works well on Sigma's OneWingedAngel form and, when its full charge is used, for farming health and weapon energy (especially before Sigma).
* While the charged versions vary on effectiveness, there are two stand-outs that make this list: Shotgun Ice and Fire Wave. Shotgun Ice just creates a rolling platform that seems to only exist so the player can get to the Heart Tank in Boomer Kuwanger's stage. Fire Wave, which due to the way the normal weapon works, requires you to burn ammo just to charge the damn thing[[note]]although you can get around this if you know the trick of charging up your X-Buster then toggling to the Fire Wave before releasing the charged attack[[/note]], can disrupt you if you're trying to use the normal fire in long bursts, and the payoff - a ground-hugging fire projectile — isn't particularly impressive enough to make up for it.

* ''VideoGame/MegaManX6'': The Guard Shell barely defends from a specific sort of shots. Also, it is supposed to be Infinity Mijinion's weakness, but it barely does any damage to him and forces the player to rely on the boss doing specific moves to even work at all. Because of this, many consider the Yammark Option to be a better "weakness" to Mijinion than the actual weakness. However, it has a decent charged version and it [[GoodBadBugs somehow empowers Zero]].

* ''VideoGame/MegaManZero 4'' has this in the form of the Ex Skill Tractor Shot, obtained from Mino Magnus. While ammunition is not a problem, the real problem comes in finding a proper use for this Ex Skill, because it can only charge by absorbing (specific) shots, while charging you cannot use any other weapon and has mediocre melee range while charging. And you can only have one Buster Ex Skill equipped at a time, with all other being more effective at picking off enemies from distance, and the stolen weapons or Saber causing more damage per second than this one would. Its only real use is against Randam Bandam (the boss of the third to last stage), who has an attack where it disappears and shoots at you from every single one of the panels in the background. By holding out the Tractor Shot you can absorb every shot, then send them back at it to chunk about an entire bar of life from it in one hit. Nice, but doesn't really compensate for being so useless as a Thunder attack, though.

* The Rolling Shield in ''VideoGame/MegaManX1'' is the worst boss weapon in the game. The boss who is meant to be vulnerable to it, Launch Octopus, is more vulnerable to the Boomerang Cutter, which severs his tentacles, reducing his firepower and preventing him from [[ThatOneAttack drawing you in]]; the Rolling Shield has no special effect on the boss and isn't effective at doing damage. Surprisingly enough, though, the Rolling Shield works well on Sigma's OneWingedAngel form and, when its full charge is used, for farming health and weapon energy (especially before Sigma).

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'' lacks weaknesses for normal enemies, meaning that all but two of its weapons deal the same damage or less compared to the Mega Buster. This makes them largely identical outside of boss battles, stage gimmicks, and their hitboxes. Of the group, the two ones to draw the shortest straw seem to be the Ice Wave (a ground-crawling weapon in a game where that's very rarely useful, and where the Robot Master it's effective against is constantly flying; you'll only use it to freeze lava) and the Water Balloon (completely unremarkable hitbox and doesn't interact with any stage gimmicks; it's effective against Wily's first form but the Flash Bomb actually outperforms it).
* ''VideoGame/MegaMan10'' has Thunder Wool, which is nigh impossible to aim, and blows through all its ammo in 6 shots. Even worse, the cloud can be destroyed if an enemy or projectile collides with it. This means you can't reliably use it at close range, since that guarantees that it'll disappear before it can fire off a bolt, thus wasting a ton of your ammo. To quote one Gamefaqs poster, "Anything the Thunder Wool does, another weapon does better and for less ammo cost."