Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Trunks159]

I had a hard time watching this top 8, just like BOBC and parts of GOML and Smash Factor. Several top 8s this year have been so incredibly anti-hype -- the characters at the top of the meta are really draining for me as a spectator. I do appreciate camping and sometimes enjoy analyzing the elements of campy gameplay, but man! A bit more variety would be nice. Watching Sonic, Steve, and Game and Watch almost every top 8 is just... something.

Of course, we did also have several great GFs like Kazuya-Incineroar, and the Neo set with acola was great as well, so I guess I can't be too upset.

Plus, I do love to see Dabuz do well, since he's one of my favorite personalities in the community.

Roses in a bed of weeds, I suppose.

Everything until top 8 was great! Another great smash con event.

Yeah it's not a huge problem if you get one or two of the problem characters in a top 8 (Steve, sonic, gnw,olimar, etc) but when you get all of them and Dabuz of all people needs to be your savior, you've got a problem.

On another note I feel like sooo many people get Acola in that last stock last hit and they just choke.

Also Acola parried EVERYTHING.

 

[superjm]

One change I've been noticing in acola's play is how he utilizes diamond. Not his diamond tools mind you, just the diamond in general.

Usually you would see a Steve player, in optimal circumstances, mine enough to grab one diamond and then either 1) craft diamond if their percent is low enough, or 2) Hold it until they lose a stock and then craft diamond upon being respawned. Acola, however, much of the time opts not to use his first diamond right away, only crafting diamond in opportune situations when he already has or is close to mining a second diamond. Maybe it's not just him that's doing this, but this certainly appears to be more strategically sound over the course of a game, so long as you are confident in your use of inferior (or even no) tools.

 

[Rizen]

On another note I feel like sooo many people get Acola in that last stock last hit and they just choke.

A lot of that is the advantage of playing the best character in the game. Steve is overtuned. He gets massive damage, like 50%+, off of fast, safe moves like Utilt and jab. Then he has a frame 8 Usmash that kills at 110%, Minecart for a fast burst option and diamond tools all that kill way too early. And, unlike most sword characters, they gave him a great recovery upB. Steve is the ultimate comeback character.

 

[Trunks159]

A lot of that is the advantage of playing the best character in the game. Steve is overtuned. He gets massive damage, like 50%+, off of fast, safe moves like Utilt and jab. Then he has a frame 8 Usmash that kills at 110%, Minecart for a fast burst option and diamond tools all that kill way too early. And, unlike most sword characters, they gave him a great recovery upB. Steve is the ultimate comeback character.

Yeah it's weird because Steve can go for noncommittal kill options repeatedly and at some point most characters have to take a risk. If you're at last stock last hit vs diamond Steve you're at a surprisingly large disadvantage. Cloud at least can just bair repeatedly from a safe distance.

 

[Rizen]

It bugs me that Tweek and Ken went Diddy and Sonic against Miya's G&W when they both had a Sephiroth who had a better match up. People need to start counterpicking against characters like Kazuya and G&W. They have weak MUs, slightly, but no one ever CPs them.

 

[NairWizard]

Sephiroth vs. Game and Watch is horrendously painful for Sephiroth if the Game and Watch knows the MU. I know Miya lost to Sriks and Maister lost to Tweek that one time, but that MU feels so bad. I've played it to death on the Sephiroth side and I absolutely despise doing it. I'd rather play, like, almost any other sword character, including Roy.

 

[Idon]

Maister's last MU chart with GnW has Sonic slightly winning and Seph at even along with Diddy so take that as you will.

To begin with, perhaps the solution isn't always "simply switch to someone with a sword"

 

[Rizen]

Maister's last MU chart with GnW has Sonic slightly winning and Seph at even along with Diddy so take that as you will.

To begin with, perhaps the solution isn't always "simply switch to someone with a sword"

That's interesting because I remember Maister losing to Ned's Sephiroth. That was 2 years ago so I guess he revised the MU. God, has it been that long? TBH I thought that was more recent.

Both Tweek's Diddy and Ken's Sonic lost to Miya but Debuz's Rosa beat him twice. It's in part because Luma acts as a big disjoint. G&W is an extremely proficient defensive character. His Usmash destroys characters who like to jump on him and is basically unpunishable. And he has a f3 upB OoS. Big disjoints get around both these moves.

I've said this before, swords are extremely powerful in ultimate's meta. I'd go as far as to say they're the best archetype. There are a good chunk of the cast who have otherwise good neutrals and/or disadvantage states but disjoints destroy them. It's why characters like Aegis and Cloud are doing so well. I've said Corrin was a high tier for a long time. If you can control large amounts of space around your character it is a huge advantage in MUs. It should be noted that many sword characters are balanced by poor recoveries as a result.

 

[Cheryl~]

Imma be real, the problem with KEN and his character pool is that he doesn't tend to play matchups as proficiently as other representatives do. It's VERY clear when you compare how he plays matchups like Aegis and GnW with Sonic compared to Sonix who has labbed them to a tee thanks to his constant practice with Sparg0 and Maister. KEN is without a doubt very good still, but he really does feel like Sonix-lite where if he just played more like Sonix does he would likely be winning things more consistently. It isn't easy to do so but what Sonix does is straight up optimal and should be studied more by Sonics everywhere lol

 

[Frihetsanka]

Nairo and Tweek have G&W as even for Sephiroth, Ned as Disadvantage (presumably "Slight Disadvantage"). Some of Ned's comments on the MU: G&W is very small, which makes it hard to hit him. His up-B out of shield means you'll get punished if you ever nair his shield. You can't zone him with your aerials since his crouch is so good. You just don't get enough from your hits, G&W gets a lot from one nair at 0. Getting off ledge is "literally impossible". G&W is hard for Sephiroth to edgeguard (countering his up-B might be Sephiroth's best bet). Bucket makes it risky to use Sephiroth's projectiles. Ledgetrapping him is hard because of his neutral getup not having much of an animation. G&W neutral-B beats Octaslash and so does down-air.

Ned did say that the MU is kind of fine once you have wing, but overall he sounded really pessimistic about this MU.

Regarding "swords", Sephiroth isn't really a traditional sword character. He tends to swing in more of a straight line (which can be slightly adjusted by falling, especially fair) rather than a sweeping arc like other swords (up-air is but it's also super laggy and comes out frame 16).

Sephiroth strikes me as a character who isn't super good as a solo character (but probably still high tier rather than mid tier). Most of the more prominent Sephiroth players play other characters as well. Ned is probably the closest to a prominent Sephiroth solo main.

 

[Rizen]

I think Ned's being pessimistic about Sephiroth but I do agree he's high tier and not top tier. Based on the sets I've seen Maister lose like MKLeo's Ike/Byleth, Spargo's Cloud and Ned's Sephiroth, it looked like disjoints were the way to go vs G&W. Especially because his USmash and UpB, which I covered earlier. That doesn't mean Tweek or Ken's Sephiroth would have beaten Miya but after losing 2 games IMO they really should have given him a try. People need to be more open to character counterpicking and that goes for any character. I strongly believe having a few tournament ready characters to choose from is an advantage for any player.

 

[Hippieslayer]

I think Seph is still a swordie. His bair does swing in an arc. When Ken plays him he def is.

 

[NairWizard]

Stages just aren't big enough for what Sephiroth wants to do to Game and Watch. What's your mixup besides low b-air? You gonna reverse up-air? You're suddenly at ledge and you don't have a way to reclaim center stage because Game and Watch can up-air if you jump overhead. Everything Sephiroth does in this MU costs stage control.

Wing alleviates this problem but Game and Watch is often killing you off of a single advantage state so you don't get to play with Wing that much.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Results for Delfino Maza 2023 (A+ Tier event)

1. Sparg0
2. Glutonny
3. ShinyMark
4. Skyjay
5. Gackt
5. KEN
7. Sisqui
7. MkLeo
9. Maister
9. AlanDiss
9. Rox
9. Goblin
13. JaZaR
13. Many
13. AndresFn
13. MKBigBoss
17. Chag
17. DieG0D
17. Ferolyo
17. Javi
17. WaKa
17. CK
17. Genialo
25. Monte
25. Cloudy
25. T3 DOM
25. ΩRugal
25. Whisky
25. Liam
25. Suadero
25. Mustaine

Sparg0 bounces back like Smash Con never happened, beating Glutonny, ShinyMark, KEN, Sisqui and Goblin in the process to win his 5th major/supermajor of the year. ShinyMark and Glutonny also got some really good wins at this event, with ShinyMark getting wins on Gackt, Glutonny and Skyjay, while Glutonny got wins on Rox, Leo, KEN, Skyjay and ShinyMark. Cool that all of the top 6 other then Sparg0 were character specialists too.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

SchuStats did a Results Based Tier List, as well as a list on how much the best player carries their characters results

Spoiler: Big pictures

 

[The_Bookworm]

SchuStats did a Results Based Tier List, as well as a list on how much the best player carries their characters results

Spoiler: Big pictures

An important thing to note is that both lists are conducting data since the final balance patch of the game (December 2021), so nothing pre-quarantine is included, which makes sense imo since the meta back then is very much different than it is today.

The biggest surprise to me when it comes to the characters carried by their best player list is definitely Kazuya. For a character so often complained about and even banned in Texas, it is surprising to see that Riddles hold that much weight on Kazuya's overall results. I personally already knew that he is singlehandedly responsible for most of Kazuya's results (especially at high level), but I wasn't expecting it to be by such an enormous margin.

Ness is also a surprise to me, cause while Gackt is clearly the best Ness player right now, I wasn't expecting him to trail ahead over the other Ness players by that large of a margin.

Also, Mii Brawler continues to be the biggest tiering anomaly in the game; a character that has some players claiming is very good, even very strong, yet hasn't done much of anything outside of being a fringe secondary by a few players to back up these claims. It is such a bizarre character to rank cause of these reasons.

 

[NairWizard]

Some potential bias sources in the data:

1. Characters who are higher on the tier list naturally have a greater carried factor, because there are more "spots" to fall.
2. The wide spread of the data (2021-2023) makes things somewhat difficult as we are looking at different points in the meta simultaneously -- for example, with Luigi, Elegant got banned and Luugi results started to rise, but Waka is the best Luigi in results overall over the whole period.
3. "1" top-level main is an arbitrary cutoff. Some characters have 2 good mains, and their results would plummet if you cut 2 off instead of 1, etc.

 

[The_Bookworm]

1. Characters who are higher on the tier list naturally have a greater carried factor, because there are more "spots" to fall.

That is both kinda true but also not really true. Some of these higher tiered characters are legitimately very high in results because of a singular player, and would be much lower in the tier list if said player is removed. Light carrying Fox results and Glutonny carrying Wario results by such an enormous degree makes sense when you consider that the rest of these two character's playerbases collectively obtain much weaker results than Light and Glutonny alone.

Conversely, characters like Aegis, ROB, and Steve have very low carried factors despite being at the top of the list because they have such a large playerbase and have multiple players that does very well in tournaments.

As far as I can tell, while higher tiered characters have more room to drop, I don't think anyone in the list hits rock bottom, and the actual data numbers are fairly uniform across the list (about 80 characters in the roster; data number goes up to 80.20).

Something to note is that Steve would've likely had a noticeably higher carried factor for acola if the database was 2023 alone, but since it accounts for 2022 results, it factors in stuff like Jake's and Onin's prime time when they were destroying everyone in tournaments. Right now, acola is so much farther ahead of any other Steve player in the world, both in terms of raw placements and consistency.

 

[NairWizard]

That is both kinda true but also not really true.

Mm, disagree. It's just true, not kinda true.

While mid tiers like Bowser and Toon Link can technically fall just as hard as top tiers like Fox, it's not that simple. The lower end of results reflects such overall poor characters and results that any randomly decent player can come along and get better results pretty easily. A randomly good Bowser will carry Bowser above the likes of Ganon and Kirby almost no matter what, so Bowser is not falling 34 spots by removing a single player.

The data is inherently skewed to feature bigger gaps for better characters.

Or another way to think about it is that the unit measure of "spots" on a tier list is not consistent. Fox falling 34 spots != Bowser falling 34 spots. It's probably more like, Bowser falling 12-15 spots would be about equivalent to Fox falling 34 -- and he already falls 9, which is close to that.

That makes anomalies like Steve even more impressive.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Results for KOWLOON #7, B+ Tier event on UltRank/LumiRank despite its top heavy nature.

1. Miya
2. Kameme
3. Asimo
4. Hurt
5. Jogibu
5. Hero
7. Yaura
7. sssr
9. hiro
9. Nao
9. Gorioka
9. Umeki
13. Moneyright
13. Ryuoh
13. Suinoko
13. tama
17. Nyonoknb
17. Notton
17. Shissho
17. Chonren
17. Gintama
17. Hide
17. Ruketasu
17. Kusharu

Results for Shine 2023

1. Light
2. Zomba
3. Aaron
4. DM
5. Smokk
5. Anathema
7. Stocktaker69
7. Just Blue
9. Jakal
9. Capitancito
9. Antimony
9. John Numbers
13. Unleashed
13. Craftis
13. Ling
13. Sho
17. G-XTREME
17. Apple Reviewer
17. PkChris
17. Metamo
17. Tony Pajamas
17. Yoda Cage
17. Scot
17. Exciled

 

[NairWizard]

Who's the most underrated character in the cast?

 

[Rizen]

Most underrated character: Ike. People put him way down in low tier but he's easily high tier. Ike's really good; he just gets overshadowed by better sword characters so he doesn't get results. We need MKLeo to pick him up again and remind everybody how viable he is.


OT, Remember when I said Zomba's the best player in the USA? Light said "hold my beer" and beat Zomba in a nail-biting grand finals to win Shine 2023.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Most underrated character: Probably Corrin. I still hear people call her a mid tier from time to time. Reminds me of Smash 4 where people slept on her until Cosmos finished high school and was able to travel more. I hope Neo will be able to attend NA tournaments more often so he can show people what Corrin can do (people who watch Japanese tournaments might already know).

 

[Cheryl~]

I think a lot of the "old Smash 4 guard" characters that were seen as weak in the beginning of the game and then got to shine more throughout the later patches still continue to be underrated by the community. Characters like Cloud and Corrin have gotten their deserved respect as of recent, but I still see too many lists putting Diddy Kong outside of the top 15, and Bayo/Meta Knight are interesting anomalies in the current metagame that I believe will only continue to rise higher with time. Sheik is also pretty decent but ridiculously hard to function at 100% for a full bracket run.

EDIT: Rosalina too, kinda underrated. I consider her the worst of these characters but Dabuz has carried that character on his back and shown that her unique hitboxes and stage control may have a unique niche in the meta. She honestly seemed pretty decent vs. Steve in his sets with Acola, even if decent still meant fighting a losing matchup.

 

[NotLiquid]

Max Ketchum announced yesterday that Let's Make Big Moves 2024 and Luminosity Make Moves Miami will be banning Steve at those events. The ban wasn't made by the personal decision of TOs, rather they decided to make this a community-based decision by surveying attendees and non-attendees alike. What's interesting is that they found that a vast majority of people who wanted Steve banned at the event were people who actually planned to attend, whereas non-attendees were a bit more split.

They've stressed that this won't be indicative of their future stance on his legality in other EMG events like Get On My Level. Nonetheless it will be interesting to observe what ripple effect this will have.

 

[Rizen]

Max Ketchum announced yesterday that Let's Make Big Moves 2024 and Luminosity Make Moves Miami will be banning Steve at those events. The ban wasn't made by the personal decision of TOs, rather they decided to make this a community-based decision by surveying attendees and non-attendees alike. What's interesting is that they found that a vast majority of people who wanted Steve banned at the event were people who actually planned to attend, whereas non-attendees were a bit more split.

They've stressed that this won't be indicative of their future stance on his legality in other EMG events like Get On My Level. Nonetheless it will be interesting to observe what ripple effect this will have.

I feel like Steve doesn't hold back select characters the way King Dedede did in Brawl for example. Instead he simply beats everyone. But I don't think we'll see a sudden up-shoot of results from some obscure mid tier or anything like that.

One thing that's come to my mind along this line of logic is I think we'd see a surge of Corrin and Ike results if we banned Aegis, Cloud and Roy, who simply do what they do better. I definitely see overshadowing as an element in Ultimate's meta. I also feel like we could apply this logic to the Links and say they'd do better if Samus, ROB and Snake were banned.

PS
I'm not actually saying we should ban anybody.

 

[Sucumbio]

Welp just 2 events acola can't go for a check (unless he picks a strong secondary is just as cracked in which case Ha Ha!)

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Umebura SP 10 is on the same weekend as LMBM 2024 anyway, so acola wouldn't be going to that event no matter what.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Welp just 2 events acola can't go for a check (unless he picks a strong secondary is just as cracked in which case Ha Ha!)

I'd be less worried about acola and more worried about US players like Onin, Quandale Dinglelingleton, DDee, and Syrup. Rough that it's a 2024 event, might end up affecting their 2024 ranking since that's one major they're unlikely to do well at.

Long term I could see Steve banned tournaments not counting for Lumirank in order to make tournaments more fair. No decision has been made yet amongst the Lumirank staff but it does seem fairly likely that we might end up in a situation where tournaments that ban Steve or other characters won't be eligible for Lumirank. Which seems fair to me.

I think if we are going to ban Steve, it shouldn't just be some stray tournaments here and there, it should be a more unified effort. Though currently it's mostly some parts of the US and all of Australia that seem to want to ban Steve, most of Europe hasn't banned Steve, Mexico and Canada are moving to unban Steve in the regions that banned him (mostly), and Japan never banned him in the first place. Those US regions that are pushing for a Steve ban might be doing the scene a diservice, splitting the community and making their local and regional players less ready to deal with Steve. PMLG was the scapegoat, but so far it does not seem like PMLG is actually much of an issue, other than theoretically.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Top 64 for Tera
https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/1686y45

 

[Frihetsanka]

Sweden's best player making top 8 at a European supermajor was somewhat unexpected, but welcome. Twitter will likely downplay his skill and blame Steve, many people don't keep track of the Nordic countries (aside from maybe Lancelot), but there are some strong players here. It's a bit unfortunate that Regen 2023 banned Steve, we could've seen big chungus do well at that tournament too, potentially.

Yoshidora losing to Raflow was a bit unexpected, but Raflow is a very strong Palutena player, and then he had to fight Zomba, which is rough.

MazeBeans, the Scottish Steve, out at 97th. Seems like playing Steve is far from a guarantee for good placements. big chungus, 7th, MazeBeans, 97th.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Tera (1348 Entrants)

1st: Glutonny
2nd: Tweek
3rd: Sparg0
4th: Light
5th: Bloom4Eva
5th: Raflow
7th: big chungus
7th: Zomba
9th: AndresFn
9th: Sisqui
9th: BassMage
9th: Tarik
13th: Yoshidora
13th: Leon
13th: crêpe salée
13th: takera
17th: Mr.R
17th: Oryon
17th: Jogibu
17th: Space
17th: NaetorU
17th: Jaka
17th: Supahsemmie
17th: Ikan
25th: Mezcaul
25th: Eko
25th: Mukuro~
25th: Adrian
25th: Cosmos
25th: Neeroz
25th: Flow
25th: Astrat


In the end, the French Dimension is too powerful.

 

[NotLiquid]

big chungus doesn't get the chance to travel often since he's still a kid, but it's cool seeing him tear things up at a supermajor. He's been a local terror.

 

[NairWizard]

Gluto is almost certainly the best player in the world held back entirely by playing Wario. It’s so obvious that it strikes me how people are never talking about it.

 

[superjm]

Gluto is almost certainly the best player in the world held back entirely by playing Wario. It’s so obvious that it strikes me how people are never talking about it.

That's not how any of this works.

 

[L9999]

Gluto is almost certainly the best player in the world held back entirely by playing Wario. It’s so obvious that it strikes me how people are never talking about it.

How is Glutonny held back by Wario? If anything he has improved, recently he has been winning his bad character matchups and making deeper runs. If he were playing a trash tier like Richter, Isabelle, and what have you maybe there would a case to make, but Wario is Melee Puff 2.0, he can just win in a snap even if the matchup sucks, Gluto has been getting better at capitalizing the mental terror of Wario, he even broke KEN's spirit in the process.

 

[NairWizard]

That's not how any of this works.

What are you talking about? Of course it is. I’m not talking about results, I’m talking about skillset.

A top-level tourney skill set consists of many important factors, some of which are:
-stamina
-adaptation between sets
-adaptation mid-set
-matchup knowledge
-execution
-innovation
-ability to study sets
-consistency against lesser players

When I look at Gluto play he absolutely excels in every category.

His only roadblock is losing to very bad MUs for his character — Olimar, Sonic, Kazuya. We frequently watch him running into very lopsided matchups for Wario and still keeping it close but getting gated out of top 2-3 results by his character dedication.

Gluto adapts faster than almost anyone, or even literally everyone. Gluto has won the last 7 out of 8 sets against Tweek and the last 6 or 7 times against Leo, two players who consistently study the sets vs. Gluto and bring adaptation and new tactics each time.

if Gluto played a better character or committed seriously to a co-main he absolutely could pull top 1-2 consistency.

if you think that his faith in Wario and his mental block against committing to a serious secondary are knocks against his skill, that’s fair, but when I look at Gluto play top-level sets all I see is the potential.

for a while watching his sets against Bloom and Luugi I wasn’t sure, but I definitely see it once again these last few tournaments.

Wario is really not that great.

 

[superjm]

Players being held back by bad character choices is certainly a thing, but that's really only a legitimate concern for like, I dunno, Kirby and Villager mains and the like. Certainly not for Wario mains, whose character is solidly in the top 20-30% of the cast and has been for the game's entire competitive lifespan. Dealing with difficult top level matchups is not a thing exclusive to Wario, or even to solo main players in general. You might as well say Sisqui and Yaura are being held back by playing Samus because the Olimar matchup exists.

Even ignoring all that, saying that Gluto would be top 1 or 2 player if only he didn't play Wario (again, one of the better characters in this game, not some middling low tier) strikes me as hollow rhetoric that does little to augment the argument that Gluto is an excellent player and one of the best in the world (nobody needs to be convinced of this) and only succeeds in belittling the accomplishments of his peers. And frankly, if maining Wario truly is holding Gluto back from even greater accomplishments than what he's managed to do up to this point, then yes, it is an indictment of his overall skill level if he doesn't recognize this and pick a character that better allows him to win. The competition begins at the character select screen, after all.

 

[NairWizard]

Players being held back by bad character choices is certainly a thing, but that's really only a legitimate concern for like, I dunno, Kirby and Villager mains and the like. Certainly not for Wario mains, whose character is solidly in the top 20-30% of the cast and has been for the game's entire competitive lifespan.

Completely disagree, you can be held back by anywhere from a few to many spots of achievement regardless of whom you main. A common sentiment during early Ultimate was that Nairo was being held back by Palutena. Leo expressed this a few times, saying that he thought Nairo could be a contender for #1 if he mained someone better.

Every player is carried by their character, so it goes without saying that Gluto would do worse if he piloted a weaker character or didn't play Wario, but every player is held back by their character's limitations as well, and Wario's limitations I think are especially brutal.

Overall, I actually think Wario is pretty mediocre. His hard matchups include zoners/campers like Pacman, Olimar, Sonic, Steve, FGC/Kazuya, and ZSS, Pikachu, Cloud, Roy, Palutena, potentially Mario, and more besides. Wario's matchups look so... mid tier or below to me, holistically. He has strengths against sword characters, so you could convince me that he would have developed even matchups vs. Cloud and Lucina and winning matchups vs. Byleth and Corrin, and I'm certain that he obliterates large-bodied characters, but that is a still lot of losing matchups for an upper-tier character. It's like three entire archetypes that he struggles against.

d-tilt whiff punishes and full drift in nairs aren't as good as Gluto makes them seem; this character doesn't have the neutral tools for a favorable matchup spread against the good characters

You might as well say Sisqui and Yaura are being held back by playing Samus because the Olimar matchup exists.

Sure, that is just vacuously true, but Sisqui and Yaura also lose consistently to other players, so their results would improve slightly -- less worth noting. Yaura also does play Cloud.

And frankly, if maining Wario truly is holding Gluto back from even greater accomplishments than what he's managed to do up to this point, then yes, it is an indictment of his overall skill level if he doesn't recognize this and pick a character that better allows him to win. The competition begins at the character select screen, after all.

This is just another way of saying that acola and sparg0 have the best results -- which is obviously true; there's no point in discussing whether or not they're the best players by results because, yes, they are. No interesting discussion can be had with that as a starting point.

Every player who isn't #1 is held back by something -- some missing skill set or circumstance. Identifying that Gluto in particular is held back by Wario's losing matchups instead of some deficiency in his neutral or lack of polish in his combo game or lack of ability to adapt isn't hollow rhetoric, it's an observation of his unique position in the meta.

When top players play friendlies with Gluto, they frequently walk away with the impression that he's the best player at the venue; Gluto's h2hs vs. other top players are frequently in 2nd or 3rd place, probably behind only acola. Gluto has beaten two of the game's all-time greatest players in more than 5 sets in a row.

These are qualities that are worth observing and noting.

Also, as an aside, I hate the maxim "competition begins at the character select screen." True competition begins with passion, not a robotic decision to optimize win rate.

 

[Rizen]

The thing about naming top 5 players, is there are about ten of them. Acola and Spargo are ahead of the others but then there's a handful of talented players who are hard to order. Miya, Tweek, Light, Zomba, Gluttony, MKLeo, (edit Sonix) and probably a few others from Japan, who I'm having trouble thinking of. It's very easy to say any of them deserve to be in the top 5.