What I find interesting is that some people insist that recoil and smash are somehow completely separate concepts rather than two sides of the same coin - a forceful collision between two beyblades that is governed by Newton's 3rd Law.
There is always "recoil" in every collision that "smashes" out a beyblade, and the variables associated with how much are determined by:
1) At what position of the beyblade is the vector of the recoil force being applied, and
2) What is the momentum differential between the two beys.
For variable 1, if the attacking bey collides with another bey on a vector that passes through the center of gravity of both beys (a straight hit), then the recoil vector also passes through the attacker's center of gravity and we will see the attacker bounce back from the collision. If the attacker collides with the other bey on a vector that does not pass through the center of gravity of the other bey (a tangential hit) and it is the "arm" or "wing" of the attacker that hits the other bey, then the recoil vector is expressed by slowing down the rotational speed of the attacker.
For variable 2, it is much easier to understand. The larger your velocity vector in the direction of the collision and/or the heavier your bey is, the less it will move for any given collision.
This is why I am relatively unconcerned about the supposed recoil of an attacker as long as it has arms or wings. To me, recoil just means that the collision is a straight hit - sometimes you win those and sometimes you lose those, but to the extent that you can launch the bey with great speed you can control whether you win or lose a straight collision. And as long as the attacker has wings, you have a much better chance of avoiding recoil altogether by scoring a tangential hit.
VariAres and Blitz both have prominent arms/wings, and are both great attackers that perform better IRL than LLD does - which is why I feel that they deserve a spot in the top tier above LLD. To me Blitz is less consistent than VariAres, but others' results may vary (pun intended).