1.
- Has a slightly losing matchup against Marth, but has a slight advantage vs Sheik, probably beats Falco, and really shuts down most other characters pretty hard. Although I feel Marth has a better matchup spread against the top tier, given how good Fox is against characters like Jigglypuff and Ice Climbers I feel his overall matchup spread earns him #1.
2.
- I feel Marth has at least a small advantage vs every character (except possibly Yoshi and/or Pikachu?) but that they are by a small enough margin that ultimately Fox edges him out overall due to dominating many matchups if he understands them. Marth has to work harder to have a winning matchup against characters like IC's/Jigglypuff/Sheik/Falcon/Link and even once he knows the matchups Fox wins them by more.
3.
- I think Sheik has very close matchups with Fox and Marth but narrowly loses both, by small enough margins that they aren't terrible. She solidly beats most mid tiers more easily than Marth, but like him often has to learn matchups (IC's and Puff are really knowledge-intensive matchups, and she gets chain thrown by a bunch of random characters which can make the matchups unforgiving). She probably has a small advantage against Falcon despite Falcon's easier execution and lower thought requirement, and although I think she is only marginally favored vs Falco I still think she beats him due to superior punish game, mobility, and generally being able to zone him out.
4.
- Probably narrowly loses to Fox/Sheik/Marth, due to crouch cancel shutting down a bunch of his aerials and their ability to get around his camping. Like Fox he really easily beats every character outside of the top tier (but even more easily) so in a typical tournament he'll run into a bunch of "free wins" like IC's/Doc/Samus/Ganon that other characters have to struggle more with. I think he beats Falco very badly due to his ability to neutralize Falco's top-platform game completely, largely ignore lasers, and kill off a single grab.
5.
- Has decent but slightly losing matchups against Fox and Sheik, but I think he gets dominated by Falcon and Marth because he is slow and they zone him out. Lasers are massively overrated because people aren't comfortable moving through them, and while I think playing vs Falco requires a ton of specific knowledge he actually isn't that overwhelming. Like Fox and Falcon he tends to have very easy matchups against the characters below him, but a few can be quite unforgiving (Samus/Jigglypuff/IC's).
6.
- She loses to Puff for sure, but she absolutely obliterates many matchups. She has many very strong execution tests that she can spam against the characters above her, so while I feel she has losing matchups against all of them they aren't too bad - in practice Peach can beat Fox/Marth/Falco/Falcon/Sheik sometimes at any level of play.
7.
- Puff does alright (slightly losing matchup) against all the characters above her except Peach, who she has an advantage against, and Fox, who ****bliterates her ****. I can't defend putting her higher than Peach when she has a terrible matchup against the best character in the game. I also think Puff's matchups against mid tier, like Marth's, are not all that dominant and often require specific knowledge.
8.
- I think there should be a tier break right before IC's- now we are getting into the characters who have multiple very bad matchups. IC's have a large disadvantage vs Fox/Falcon/Peach, and probably have a significant disadvantage at a high level of play in the matchup vs Marth/Falco/Puff as well (rest Nana). They do alright vs Sheik, but their position here on the tier list is mostly due to two things : their ability to repeatedly test execution (with a loss-of-stock penalty for failure) even in their worst matchups, and their ability to wall out / crouch-cancel wobble many characters below them.
9.
- Him and Samus compete for this spot, and honestly I'm pretty unsure which of them to put higher. Ultimately, I think Pikachu's spacies matchups are about as good as Samus' (but very different) and his Sheik/Marth/Peach/Puff matchups are better by enough that he should be placed higher. He has the jank factor going because he can 0-death characters better than him but I think he is worse than Samus against characters in mid tier.
10.
- Clearly a large step up from #11 in my opinion. Her zoning tools in general are really usable, her spacies matchups are serviceable, she seems to beat IC's, and she seems to me like she should be able to zone out and deal with the rest of mid tier. In most matchups she wins the punish game, her crouch cancel is awesome (super relevant against bad characters) and she just is better than ****lords like Dr. Mario.
11.
- He's just a bad top tier character with chain grabs on everyone. Very limited range, extreme difficulty dealing with low-lag large hitboxes like Sheik bairs, spacie bairs, and Marth fairs due to his short range / limited movespeed. He has a bad recovery too, although he's hard to combo and has a good punish game on most characters.
Below this point I can't bring myself to bother writing about anyone. Luigi and Yoshi and Ganondorf all suuuuuck
