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How reliable are top players' tier lists right now?

Courageous Baka

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While I continue to wait for the day I can finally get my hands on Smash Ultimate, I've been trying to keep up with the competitive scene because I really want to finally be good at a Smash game. I've been looking at the tier lists from top players like Zero, ESAM, and Armada. but I've been wondering something lately. How reliable are the tier lists from top players right now for a game still fairly young with over 70 characters? I don't want to exactly say they're wrong because they definitely have MUCH more experience and knowledge than I do. (Repeat: I don't have the game and I've never been good at Smash.) I just believe that it would seem impossible to make an accurate tier list all by yourself. But what do you all think?
 
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Alus

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Laughably reliable honestly. Its like asking if a guess is a definite statement.

Thats not to say every guess isn't a definite wrong. But thats all tier lists are... Educated guesses.
 
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Swamp Sensei

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Tier lists are educated guesses based on theory and individual experience.

They're mostly just guidelines.
 

Sean²

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It's interesting to see what their opinions are, but I wouldn't take their word as law. A lot of them are done for twitch sub goals, and no one really ever puts a crazy amount of thought into anything except their top 10 and bottom 5. You'll see some really weird opinions from some, but most of them are very much the same for what they know. Players like Dabuz made a tier list that was basically an Olimar matchup chart. Mew2King made one where he actually thought out every tier, but was ridiculed for being so polarizing. Void's and Tweek's have all been the best IMO.

Ordered tier lists are archaic and not really meant for games with very large amount of characters, anyway.
 

Crystanium

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A year seems to be a good duration before a tier list is established. Remember that these pro players are offering their own opinion. There is no degree in tierology, and players may just base their tier list on how well they perform against each character. I'd much rather consider the opinion of a player who is familiar with his or her own character. For example, ESAM can say much about Pikachu, but I wouldn't ask him on his opinion regarding Samus because he doesn't really use her. Players like YB, Sitani, quiK, Waves would be preferred.

My problem with tier lists is this very thing. You have people who may not invest as much time into a character, but will speak as though they're an expert on said character. This can influence where that character may fall. I'd say your main focus shouldn't be on tier lists, but on match-ups for the character(s) you use. Tier lists don't tell you the whole story. Mario is high tier? Well, that doesn't mean a certain mid-tiered character can't kick his ass most of the time.
 
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LightKnight

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If I had to take a wild guess I'd say most of the tier lists are around 50% on the mark at best. Not enough of the characters have had enough time to be developed as it hasn't even been a year! Just look at melee and see how much that changed overtime even after the first tier list had been made! And that game didn't even receive patches!
Thats not to say that you can't learn good info from the lists but more often then not they represent the opinions, perceptions, meta, and recent tournament results of the time regardless of whether they're accurate or not.
The nice thing about Ultimate is all the characters are supposedly closer together in viability than past games and that allows much more room for you to pick the characters that you like most while focusing more on matchups and counterpicks as you improve your character/s and strategies.
 

OnyanRings

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What about Reddit's ? Looks pretty accurate to me but i'm not super into competitive eiher.
 
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Courageous Baka

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If I had to take a wild guess I'd say most of the tier lists are around 50% on the mark at best. Not enough of the characters have had enough time to be developed as it hasn't even been a year! Just look at melee and see how much that changed overtime even after the first tier list had been made! And that game didn't even receive patches!
Thats not to say that you can't learn good info from the lists but more often then not they represent the opinions, perceptions, meta, and recent tournament results of the time regardless of whether they're accurate or not.
The nice thing about Ultimate is all the characters are supposedly closer together in viability than past games and that allows much more room for you to pick the characters that you like most while focusing more on matchups and counterpicks as you improve your character/s and strategies.
How many characters should I try to get good with?

What about Reddit's ? Looks pretty accurate to me but i'm not super into competitive eiher.
Poor Little Mac.
Anyways, I think this list will probably be more reliable since it's made by multiple people. Still, I know now that I should try to make opinions mostly on my own rather than taking them from others.
 

Phoenix_is_OK

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What about Reddit's ? Looks pretty accurate to me but i'm not super into competitive eiher.
I mean, for the most part, its a solid list, but there are always individual characters in any/ every tier list that are questionable. I'd say Mii Brawler is being slept on and is definitely better than many characters above him, high tier is a bit meh in places (Chrom prolly shouldn't be that high being the biggest standout), and the bottom of top tier seems kinda wack, but it gets the general location of where characters, for the most part, should be. Honestly, I'd say less than 10 characters on this list are in stupid awful spots, and for that its a good list.

How many characters should I try to get good with?
This would depend on how much free time you have.
 
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LightKnight

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How many characters should I try to get good with?
Well, I'm no expert but I've seen some say as many as 3 and that seems like a pretty good number. It depends on a few different things though. Like Phoenix said, it depends on the amount of time you have. That would be the biggest factor but I'd also combine it with asking yourself how high of a level you want to compete at with your characters and the amount of time it'll take to bring however many characters you decide to compete with to that level. Do you want to be the best in your group of friends? Maybe be an online warrior who consistently tops the GSP rankings? Perhaps be able to win local tournament scenes? Or be in the highest echelon of competitors and beat the best of them in the world?! Knowing your goal and personal strengths/weaknesses should help you determine the number of characters you focus on.

Personally for me, I'm just trying to be a competent player who can consistently win against at least 50% or more of the people I meet online while also being able to win tournaments against my friends so I'm trying to get good with 3-5 characters as I also want a powerful Squad Strike team for that mode. Another reason I'm wanting to get good with that many fighters is I enjoy playing many different characters and my goal is not a high pressured one so I can afford to juggle that many even if it means taking away potential progress with specific characters like my main.

It is important though to have a solid understanding of your main like knowing all their combos, having practiced your strategies/movement/combos, and knowing your matchups. Knowing your matchups with the character/s you play will also help you determine not only how many characters you should learn but which ones specifically you should pick up to cover some of the rougher matchups of your other character/s.

One more important thing… What is the most fun way for you to play? This is a game after all and I think the reason most of us play this is to have fun! So make your choices involving this game on what you think would be the funnest/engaging path! Do you get bored with just playing one character and find you can succeed with multiple fighters? Do you love mastering your fighter, knowing all the ins and outs of what they can do? Or do you like playing fighters that you can do things with that nobody expects?
If you don't know yet then experiment!

Hope this helps :b:
 

Sean²

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What about Reddit's ? Looks pretty accurate to me but i'm not super into competitive eiher.
Looks like a tier list made by someone who watched every pro tier list video from month 2 and copied it, but just changed a few things around to make it look less obvious. Reddit hivemind is real, but those lists can be voted on by anyone with a google account. I'm sure most people are honest with their opinion, but I'm sure a lot vote from the heart, and a lot may make troll votes as well. So gauging the accuracy of this is about the same as any pro list. Maybe kinda sorta okay but you can't really put a lot of faith in it.
 

Terotrous

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I feel like it's worth noting that the tier lists are generally stabilizing, with most players showing a general consensus about which characters are good that changes little over time, which suggests to me that we're getting close to the right values. Obviously, someone could get some new tech or a big change in a patch that changes things up, but for the most part I think we generally know who the good and bad characters are now.
 

OnyanRings

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Looks like a tier list made by someone who watched every pro tier list video from month 2 and copied it, but just changed a few things around to make it look less obvious. Reddit hivemind is real, but those lists can be voted on by anyone with a google account. I'm sure most people are honest with their opinion, but I'm sure a lot vote from the heart, and a lot may make troll votes as well. So gauging the accuracy of this is about the same as any pro list. Maybe kinda sorta okay but you can't really put a lot of faith in it.
You'be correct it's a "a combination of 19 different pros' lists from the past 55 days"
 

Sean²

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Oh, I thought it was the one they all vote on every couple months. That makes sense then.
 

Lunardog15

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I would like to add that it mostly depends on skill and such
eg kirby low teir cause few people play him
 

Venclaire

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If you're going to look at tier lists atm, look at tier lists and look for the characters that are most commonly placed in each tiers. More specifically the ones in high/top tier and bottom/low tier, they'll typically be the most consistent.

For example, you'll notice on a lot of tier lists that a character like Ike is pretty consistently placed in high tier.

But the TL;DR for your question: Top player tier lists are not reliable at all atm, and you definitely can't just take one of their tier lists and use it as a guideline. You need a lot.
 

Sean²

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If you're going to look at tier lists atm, look at tier lists and look for the characters that are most commonly placed in each tiers. More specifically the ones in high/top tier and bottom/low tier, they'll typically be the most consistent.

For example, you'll notice on a lot of tier lists that a character like Ike is pretty consistently placed in high tier.

But the TL;DR for your question: Top player tier lists are not reliable at all atm, and you definitely can't just take one of their tier lists and use it as a guideline. You need a lot.
I'd say none at all, really. Shulk is always placed in top tier but doesn't have top tier results. Piranha Plant is almost always placed bottom 5, mostly bottom 3, but isn't deserving of it, really. Probably low tier, but not bottom 3. They kind of hivemind off each other as well. And any of them who throw out an off the wall opinion are ridiculed for it. Character popularity skews a lot of opinions, as well. e.g. Wolf going from mid tier to generally top 6 in about a month, Snake going from a simple high-tier gatekeeper to top 3 in just a few weeks. I'm not saying they're necessarily wrong in every sense, but using them, even a large combination of them, is still too hard of a read to find a definitive order.

I'd say you can generally tell what characters are really good, what characters are good but have obvious weaknesses, and which ones are bad, but that's about the extent of it.
 

Bobert

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Tier lists by top players are probably more accurate than one from your average Smash players. That reddit tier list tier posted here is a great example. Snake isn't even in top tier and is under Pkmn Trainer and Ike, Shulk as top tier because "muh theory" with Roy right behind him while above better characters, Marth 21 places away from Lucina, and Peach as #1 and Pichu as #2. But top players still make some questionable decisions too, especially about characters they dont know much about(Leffen thinking Snake is bottom tier and ZeRo thinking Shulk was high tier in smash 4). With that said, I still wouldn't ever take what they say as 100% fact.
 
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Courageous Baka

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A year seems to be a good duration before a tier list is established. Remember that these pro players are offering their own opinion. There is no degree in tierology, and players may just base their tier list on how well they perform against each character. I'd much rather consider the opinion of a player who is familiar with his or her own character. For example, ESAM can say much about Pikachu, but I wouldn't ask him on his opinion regarding Samus because he doesn't really use her. Players like YB, Sitani, quiK, Waves would be preferred.

My problem with tier lists is this very thing. You have people who may not invest as much time into a character, but will speak as though they're an expert on said character. This can influence where that character may fall. I'd say your main focus shouldn't be on tier lists, but on match-ups for the character(s) you use. Tier lists don't tell you the whole story. Mario is high tier? Well, that doesn't mean a certain mid-tiered character can't kick his *** most of the time.
I really needed that second paragraph. I'm looking to maining Pit when I finally get the game and I feel like I've become so obsessed with his viability at a top level, what top players think of him, and how infrequent he is in tournaments that I've to find being a spectator less enjoyable. I really should stop worrying about tier lists so much. At least for the level I'm at now. And I should probably stop limiting my options to one character out of "loyalty" and be willing to expand.
 
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Crystanium

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I really needed that second paragraph. I'm looking to maining Pit when I finally get the game and I feel like I've become so obsessed with his viability at a top level, what top players think of him, and how infrequent he is in tournaments that I've to find being a spectator less enjoyable. I really should stop worrying about tier lists so much. At least for the level I'm at now. And I should probably stop limiting my options to one character out of "loyalty" and be willing to expand.
Pit feels like a good character with some good options. Killing might still be a problem for him, but with his multi-jump and great recovery, you can feel confident going off-stage with f-air 2x or even d-air to spike your opponent.
 

AlMoStLeGeNdArY

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They're not really reliable. You should form your own opinions and thoughts on the game and use that to determine your own tier list.
 

VodkaHaze

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One issue that seems consistent throughout most of these tier lists is everyone has a general consensus on who is top tier and who is bottom tier, but you get ridiculous variation if you compare characters in the middle. Even though ZeRo hasn't uploaded his entire tier list yet, he put Ganondorf as the king of mid tier, yet Armada and ESAM have lower opinions of him.

Even then, there's still some variation on who is low tier. ESAM put King Dedede at #44 making him mid tier, whereas ZeRo put Dedede sixth from the bottom, making him low tier. So always take their opinions with a grain of salt, especially since with future patches, DLC characters and a still developing meta, these tier lists will often be inaccurate after a few months.
 

C3CC

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Looks like a tier list made by someone who watched every pro tier list video from month 2 and copied it, but just changed a few things around to make it look less obvious. Reddit hivemind is real, but those lists can be voted on by anyone with a google account. I'm sure most people are honest with their opinion, but I'm sure a lot vote from the heart, and a lot may make troll votes as well. So gauging the accuracy of this is about the same as any pro list. Maybe kinda sorta okay but you can't really put a lot of faith in it.
It's incredible to see how most of Smash 4's top tiers are now low. Personally, I'm mad Rosalina got nerfed so much.
 

Lacrimosa

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Watch out for misinformation and call these top-players olut when they are wrong with a character.
Generally, the higher you go in the tierlist, the more accurate it gets (uff, Shulk, though).
The more obscure a character is, the more cautious they are to rate them high. Classic examples include Pac-Man (before Tea's performances), Duck-Hunt, Luigi, G&W, Zelda.
Then you have the phenomenon that nerfs are getting overvalued: Mario and ZSS are the best examples here.

All in all: It should be two-sided: A pro-player can make their tier-list but the community is there to call them out for mistakes and tell them how to improve their list. The meta is still young (yes, even after 6-7 months) so there is still MU inexperience as well: I don't think ESAM has fought that many good Luigis or Zeldas (one set isn't really enough to get a grasp of the character), yet.
We have some tendencies but that's about it. In one year maybe...
 

42McCl0ud

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They may give you a good educated guess of the current state of the meta, but who cares when the game changes drastically with each update that happens about every month, this games updates so much that keeping up with all the tier lists is a waste of time until the game stops updating or you want to go into the comp scene.
 

BlackInk

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They may give you a good educated guess of the current state of the meta, but who cares when the game changes drastically with each update that happens about every month, this games updates so much that keeping up with all the tier lists is a waste of time until the game stops updating or you want to go into the comp scene.
All they have to do is slightly buff hit stun for one or two frames and instantly, everything changes.
 

VodkaHaze

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I think another issue that crops up is the size of Ultimate's roster. Now to be fair, I do think if a player lists a character at #30, and that character should be #31, it doesn't matter too much. However, trying to order over 70 characters (it should be 80 once DLC is done) is hard because you not only need to see the metagame behind every character as well as how well they do at tournaments, but you must make sure not to overestimate or underestimate how good they are.
 

BlackInk

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I think another issue that crops up is the size of Ultimate's roster. Now to be fair, I do think if a player lists a character at #30, and that character should be #31, it doesn't matter too much. However, trying to order over 70 characters (it should be 80 once DLC is done) is hard because you not only need to see the metagame behind every character as well as how well they do at tournaments, but you must make sure not to overestimate or underestimate how good they are.
But that does lower the chances of low tiers or mid tiers from appearing in higher level brackets. It makes it easier to uncover High tiers or Top tiers.
 

Up0n

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The only MU/tier list that matters IMO are ones that are strictly based off of tournament winnings. If you look at most of the majors now a days, there are few repeat characters. It's not like Smash4 doubles where majority of partners would run double cloud or Melee where there's such a small pool of characters that are "viable" that you always see the top 5 characters in top 16. In reality, and I'll quote ZeRo from one of his latest youtube videos, tier/MU charts are very insignificant for anything other than top top players.
 

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Top and low tiers tend to be pretty accurate, mid tiers are still harder to tell since many characters are competitively viable to some extent in this game
 

Wigglerman

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Mildly accurate but they can be subject to change every month or two for as long as patches keep happening. I use them as a general guideline to understand the meta and who is considered credible threats but everything could change overnight depending on tournament results or patches so...every list needs salt added and never be used as a 'bible' of truth.
 

Diddy Kong

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I really needed that second paragraph. I'm looking to maining Pit when I finally get the game and I feel like I've become so obsessed with his viability at a top level, what top players think of him, and how infrequent he is in tournaments that I've to find being a spectator less enjoyable. I really should stop worrying about tier lists so much. At least for the level I'm at now. And I should probably stop limiting my options to one character out of "loyalty" and be willing to expand.
I get your sentiment. I'm still a Diddy main, and seeing less Diddy's at a professional level has initially hurt my game play, because I couldn't really copy a certain play style as easily anymore as in Smash 4. It however, motivated me more to do my best later on, and became very creative with the character prior to his buffs. Just about now, the competitive scene has picked up on Diddy, shamefully long after I've stopped playing the game about 5 months back because of reasons.

Anyway, don't give up and learn your character. Ultimate has room for character specialism. At higher play, knowing the match up is vital. If Pit is able to surprise them and you are able to play Pit well, there should be no major problems.
 

Predatoria

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Take a look at this (top player tier lists)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...cz7Tza8MqyZU9gZVJIa25T2qo/edit#gid=1184642298
Versus this (tourney rep rankings)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AJs-mj5TTdkmkl7nhj4twJymVPTLTUdT0MBToL1cxDs/edit#gid=0

Here is a presentation of a comparison between character tournament representation and character tier ranking:
Ranks.png

Most characters will have tourney representation fairly close to their numerical tier orderings. Notice, for example, Lucina is the 6th most common character to see in a tournament, and she is also ranked 6th on the tier list. This represents a perfect agreement between top player tier list rankings and a player's actual representation in competitive play.

There are some characters with very large discrepancies, however.

Joker is 22nd in tourney rep, but ranked 2nd. This is likely because he's quite new, and hasn't had nearly as much time to establish more scoring on tourney rep yet.

Other characters, however, have been around since the game's release and still show tourney rep that's out of line with tier rankings. Pikachu is 24th in tourney rep, but ranked 4th on top player tier lists. Pichu is ranked 17th, but is actually way more common than Pikachu, ranking 7th.

Ken and Ryu are vastly under-represented for their tiers, and so is Marth. These characters are ranked solidly mid tier by professionals, yet have extremely low rep. Marth's case may be, to some extent, due to the abundance of swordfighters, and better options being often chosen over Marth, such as Lucina. The characters are so similar, Marth's playership may be so low due to Lucina overshadowing him.

I don't have a good hypothesis for Ken's low tourney rep relative to his placement. Nor for Ryu.

King Dedede is ranked low tier by professionals, coming in at 59th. He, however, is 31st in tourney representation. This is the fighter with the largest, positive discrepancy between their tier placement and their tourney representation. Donkey Kong is a close second, coming in at 63rd in tier placement, but 37th in tourney rep.

These two characters may merely be popular and fun choices, as I know a lot of people seem to enjoy playing these particular characters. Ganondorf is also a bit over-represented, coming in at 45 on tourney rep, yet 56 in tier.

Here's a better visual on tournament representation as a function of tier placement:
OutputImage.jpg


This is an exponential regression, mapping total tourney rep percentage as a function of tier.

I'm actually not totally sure an exponential regression best captures the trend in the data, as it seems many of the higher tier characters actually have representation above the fit, whereas the lower tier characters seem to all be along the curve quite tightly. A power regression may have been better (but that requires a MATLAB toolbox I don't have and I don't know how to compute it without it, which makes me sad).

Nonetheless, you can definitely see some of the characters I mentioned above are above the line. It could be suggested that these characters are either popular and overplayed, or are placed too low on the current tier list, as their actual tourney rep is a definite defiance of their placement on the tier list.

One piece of data I'd like access to, but don't currently have, is some way to obtain actual playership for each character. Then one could try and adjust this for character popularity. After all, simply playing online, I can give my own anecdotal 'evidence' to the popularity of ganon, dedede, falcon, dk, and ness being way more common to encounter than characters such as wii fit, ryu, ken, marth, diddy, and other characters that show up here as being under-represented for their respective tier placements.
 

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Diddy Kong

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Take a look at this (top player tier lists)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...cz7Tza8MqyZU9gZVJIa25T2qo/edit#gid=1184642298
Versus this (tourney rep rankings)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AJs-mj5TTdkmkl7nhj4twJymVPTLTUdT0MBToL1cxDs/edit#gid=0

Here is a presentation of a comparison between character tournament representation and character tier ranking:

Most characters will have tourney representation fairly close to their numerical tier orderings. Notice, for example, Lucina is the 6th most common character to see in a tournament, and she is also ranked 6th on the tier list. This represents a perfect agreement between top player tier list rankings and a player's actual representation in competitive play.

There are some characters with very large discrepancies, however.

Joker is 22nd in tourney rep, but ranked 2nd. This is likely because he's quite new, and hasn't had nearly as much time to establish more scoring on tourney rep yet.

Other characters, however, have been around since the game's release and still show tourney rep that's out of line with tier rankings. Pikachu is 24th in tourney rep, but ranked 4th on top player tier lists. Pichu is ranked 17th, but is actually way more common than Pikachu, ranking 7th.

Ken and Ryu are vastly under-represented for their tiers, and so is Marth. These characters are ranked solidly mid tier by professionals, yet have extremely low rep. Marth's case may be, to some extent, due to the abundance of swordfighters, and better options being often chosen over Marth, such as Lucina. The characters are so similar, Marth's playership may be so low due to Lucina overshadowing him.

I don't have a good hypothesis for Ken's low tourney rep relative to his placement. Nor for Ryu.

King Dedede is ranked low tier by professionals, coming in at 59th. He, however, is 31st in tourney representation. This is the fighter with the largest, positive discrepancy between their tier placement and their tourney representation. Donkey Kong is a close second, coming in at 63rd in tier placement, but 37th in tourney rep.

These two characters may merely be popular and fun choices, as I know a lot of people seem to enjoy playing these particular characters. Ganondorf is also a bit over-represented, coming in at 45 on tourney rep, yet 56 in tier.

Here's a better visual on tournament representation as a function of tier placement:

The two are very clearly correlated, without even bothering to do a linear regression.

Interpret the data as you will.
Well to defend this, there's certain characters that are simply more effective than common ones, yet the more common ones are simply more represented because playing them is easier, or the character is simply not their cup of tea.

To compare, Ice Climbers is a solid high tier in Melee, yet nobody really plays them. Jigglypuff is a Top Tier, but you don't see her as much as Fox, Falco, Marth, or even Sheik and Peach. Jiggz is basically only played by Mango...

Smash 4 had Diddy as a Top Tier but after Hoo Hah was nerfed, there where very few Diddy mains around. ZeRo just blew up everyone else with him mostly. Which is weird cause Smash 4 Sheik and Bayonetta where probably more technical, but they where everywhere.

Ultimate will have the same, maybe even moreso because certain Top Tiers are just awfully easy to pick up and play, for example Lucina and Wolf. The community is drawn to such characters currently.
 

Predatoria

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Well to defend this, there's certain characters that are simply more effective than common ones, yet the more common ones are simply more represented because playing them is easier, or the character is simply not their cup of tea.

To compare, Ice Climbers is a solid high tier in Melee, yet nobody really plays them. Jigglypuff is a Top Tier, but you don't see her as much as Fox, Falco, Marth, or even Sheik and Peach. Jiggz is basically only played by Mango...

Smash 4 had Diddy as a Top Tier but after Hoo Hah was nerfed, there where very few Diddy mains around. ZeRo just blew up everyone else with him mostly. Which is weird cause Smash 4 Sheik and Bayonetta where probably more technical, but they where everywhere.

Ultimate will have the same, maybe even moreso because certain Top Tiers are just awfully easy to pick up and play, for example Lucina and Wolf. The community is drawn to such characters currently.
I certainly think character simplicity can be part of that. I have anecdotally heard that Wolf is a relatively easy to pick up character. Same for Lucina. This may be why Wolf is over-represented, even for his relative tier placement.

I went ahead and made another graph that more easily displays a character's over or under-represented'ness.

You can see here that if we were to assume characters to follow an exponential distribution as a function of their tier orderings, Wolf is about twice as common as he should be (in the graph above, he's right at +100% representation over his baseline expected value). This means he's popular, assuming tier lists are true, and assuming the exponential distribution is a valid distribution to describe this.

What's interesting here is look at what characters show up in the data as being over-represented. They're all 'popular' characters. People like them. People want to play them.

All three Miis are less represented. People seem to generally not like the Miis as characters.

What I also find very interesting about the above graph is this. If I were to go back and observe the data I collected on relative character frequencies while playing online, it matches what characters are above the 0% mark, or, over-represented according to tier placements in tournaments. These characters above the red line get played. The ones below do not. This is true online as well, though I don't have any evidence currently to present to back up this statement. It's all anecdotal currently. I know I see loads of palutena, wolf, fox, pichu, ness, falcon, samus, ridley, dedede, ganon, and dk online.
Popularity.jpg
 
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Lacrimosa

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Why am I not surprised Zelda seeing 3rd in that graph.
It's like her legacy from earlier Smash gamees still haunts people's minds...


Perfectly valid mid-tier character.
 

Predatoria

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Why am I not surprised Zelda seeing 3rd in that graph.
It's like her legacy from earlier Smash gamees still haunts people's minds...


Perfectly valid mid-tier character.
I played doubles online for a while with a friend yesterday. We ran into a ton of Zeldas. In fact, over the past week I've seen a lot of Zelda. I'm not surprised by this result either. People like Zelda.
 

Lacrimosa

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I played doubles online for a while with a friend yesterday. We ran into a ton of Zeldas. In fact, over the past week I've seen a lot of Zelda. I'm not surprised by this result either. People like Zelda.
Oh, I wasn't referring to the Online graph but the graph in post #33. If I read it correctly, she's highly underrated in most tier-lists and the same goes for DK or Dr. Mario as well.
 

Diddy Kong

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I certainly think character simplicity can be part of that. I have anecdotally heard that Wolf is a relatively easy to pick up character. Same for Lucina. This may be why Wolf is over-represented, even for his relative tier placement.

I went ahead and made another graph that more easily displays a character's over or under-represented'ness.

You can see here that if we were to assume characters to follow an exponential distribution as a function of their tier orderings, Wolf is about twice as common as he should be (in the graph above, he's right at +100% representation over his baseline expected value). This means he's popular, assuming tier lists are true, and assuming the exponential distribution is a valid distribution to describe this.

What's interesting here is look at what characters show up in the data as being over-represented. They're all 'popular' characters. People like them. People want to play them.

All three Miis are less represented. People seem to generally not like the Miis as characters.

What I also find very interesting about the above graph is this. If I were to go back and observe the data I collected on relative character frequencies while playing online, it matches what characters are above the 0% mark, or, over-represented according to tier placements in tournaments. These characters above the red line get played. The ones below do not. This is true online as well, though I don't have any evidence currently to present to back up this statement. It's all anecdotal currently. I know I see loads of palutena, wolf, fox, pichu, ness, falcon, samus, ridley, dedede, ganon, and dk online.View attachment 240241
It's easy to prove my point because characters like Pokémon Trainer, Ryu, Ken, Joker Shulk, Marth, Pikachu and Diddy place so low. Despite most of us being aware what they are capable of, yet nobody really plays them because you have to commit yourself way more than with easier characters. And if you can get the same results with a character that's easier to play, I get the sentiment.

I think Marth and Lucina are a great proof of this honestly. Marth has the whole tipper mechanic working for him, but it's easier to make mistakes or non tipper hits. Lucina doesn't have all this, and is easy to pocket even.

DK, Ganondorf and Dedede probably enjoy popularity because heavier characters are overall way better now. DK is also tons of fun, and simple to learn. King Dedede is a troll to play as, Ganondorf is a thrill to play as.
 
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Top player tier lists will and never be accurate. Results, Theory, Rep, and Expereince all amount to nothing. Time will sway opinions. Different regions have different fighting styles, competition, and even theory native. Fighters will rise and fall (There are some that remain consistent but “mid-tier” and “high-tier” are always the ones that change to me). Heck the supposed “undisputed” best character in the game will fall. The punching bag will rise to be a boxer.

Take tier lists like Armada’s and M2K’s with large grains of salt. Obviously they haven’t got the opportunity to experience all the characters in the game.
 
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