Super Smash Bros Ultimate Official Tier List
Aquilino Neadstine
This is the first tier list released by LumiRank.[1][2] Players were eligible to be a panelist if they were ranked in the Top 101 of six global rankings for the majority of 2022: UltRank 2022, OrionRank 2022, EchoRank 2022, ΩRank 2022, 1000Rank 2022, and RaccRank 2022. Out of 155 eligible players, 71 players participated as panelists, with panelists from every major Ultimate region around the world. Panelists were asked to rate characters from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Panelists were also asked to give an ordered list of their Top 5 characters, and after panelist responses were normalized, their Top 5 would be scored from as 10.X (from 10.5 to 10.1). Each character's highest and lowest 3 responses were then removed. To avoid higher or lower participation from different regions from biasing the list, responses were weighted by region according to each region's representation on OrionRank 2022. Finally, tiers were split up by K-means clustering. Interestingly, the numerical ordering has been inverted from the tier lists of previous games, as the best characters now have the highest numbers instead of the lowest numbers.
Pokmon Trainer was voted as the entire team instead of individually, as were Pyra and Mythra. Miis were ranked, unlike the last SSB4 tier list. Additionally, the following Echo Fighter pairs were voted together due to their lack of significant differences: Peach and Daisy, Simon and Richter, Samus and Dark Samus, and Pit and Dark Pit. Although Min Min and Palutena appeared to have the same score, they differed past the 3 decimal places shown.
Steve was ranked as the #1 character by 41 out of 71 panelists, with multiple other panelists ranking Sonic, Joker, Pyra and Mythra, or Fox as #1. Pyra and Mythra were ranked as the #2 character the most, and was the most agreed upon among panelists, having the lowest standard deviation. Ganondorf was given the lowest score by 54 out of 68 panelists, and Little Mac and Ganondorf had the largest gap between two consecutive characters on the tier list. Pyra and Mythra, Steve, Joker, Ryu, and Captain Falcon had the lowest standard deviations, while Pikachu, Mii Swordfighter, Piranha Plant, Luigi, and Lucario had the greatest standard deviations.
As listed in the header, this tier list was created in February 2023, over four years after the game launched. The reason for this delay are due to several factors. The first and main reason is that the COVID-19 pandemic shut down offline tournaments for a long time and forced players to play online, which significantly altered and skewed data, forcing tier list makers to consider the new outcomes that come with online play. The second reason is that an "official" tier list maker could not be decided on. Due to SmashBoards generally falling out of favor as the premier location for Smash discourse after the release of Ultimate, many alternatives were proposed. Several organizations suggested they be the organizer of the first tier list, while others suggested getting rid of the traditional panel ranking in favor of raw community statistics. Some even questioned if a tier list for Ultimate was feasible or even necessary given its large roster and it generally being regarded as well-balanced.
Data aggregation organization PG Stats was the first to announce they would be making a tier list, as they did with the official Melee tier list starting in 2021, and promised to present what they created at some point in late 2022 to early 2023. However, several controversies and a company-wide exodus from parent company Panda caused these plans to be canceled. LumiRank then stepped in a few months later and is now considered the official tier list maker for Ultimate going forward.
This is the second tier list released by LumiRank.[3] The methodology remained largely the same from the first. Any player ranked on the LumiRank Mid-Year 2023 or LumiRank 2023 was eligible to vote, and 63 players ultimately submitted a ballot, although two were tossed out due to scoring less than five characters, while one other was tossed for being a troll ballot. Not every character was scored by every panelist: only Bayonetta, Fox, Palutena, Peach/Daisy, Pyra/Mythra, R.O.B., Shulk, Steve, and Wolf were scored by every panelist, while Mii Swordfighter was scored by the fewest (55). A new tier was introduced (E tier). Despite that, the tiers themselves were not explicitly defined.
On the other hand, the biggest drops were from characters that either lost their best players to other characters (such as Byleth and Mega Man) or had noticeably worse performances in the current metagame (such as Bowser and Young Link). In the higher tiers, the most notable drops were Roy, who fell 11 spots due to the decline, retirement, or hiatus of his best players that year; Wolf, who fell 10 spots due to the character's weaknesses being more exploitable (such as his recovery) and growing opinions that the character was overrated despite his popularity; and Joker, who fell out of the top 3 due to MkLeo's decline and Zackray's greater focus on the Pits, with newer Joker players not being as strong as the two.
The change in a character's score generally correlated with the direction they moved. The exceptions to this were Jigglypuff, who fell a spot despite its score going up, as well as Pichu, Palutena, Mii Brawler, King Dedede, Bowser Jr., Ryu, Donkey Kong, and the Ice Climbers, who rose on the tier list despite their scores going down.
This table shows the ranks of each character through all of the tier lists, as well as a numbered description of their change in rank each time. "Change" lists how much a character's position changed between the two tier lists it is in between. "Highest" represents a character's highest position, "Lowest" represents their lowest position, and "Difference" lists the difference between the highest and lowest position. "Overall change" represents a character's change between the first tier list and the current tier list.
Among the Super Smash Bros. community, it is common for distinguished groups (such as the SmashBoards Back Room) to create tier lists, rankings of a character's potential in tournaments. The SmashBoards tier list is generally seen as the "official" tier list, though many other groups have created their own. The lower the number on the tier list, the greater the potential for that character to do well in tournaments.
The following is the fourth official Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U tier list produced by the Smash Back Room. It is current as of December 11th 2017. Customized characters and Mii Fighters are not included since there is no consistent depiction for a tier list to recognize. This tier list has undergone multiple revisions since the game's initial release due to several Patch Updates which buffed or nerfed some characters and abilities, as well as the addition of new DLC characters.
The following is the most recent Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tier list, created by LumiRank, and released on February 15th, 2024. Pokmon Trainer was voted as the entire team instead of individually, as were Pyra and Mythra. Miis were ranked, unlike the last 3DS/Wii U tier list. Additionally, the following Echo Fighter pairs were voted together due to their lack of significant differences: Peach and Daisy, Simon and Richter, Samus and Dark Samus, and Pit and Dark Pit. Tiers ranged from A to E, however the tiers were not explicitly defined.
The voting process for this tier list differs from those from previous games. Rather than taking an average of panelists' opinions of a character's overall ranking, panelists were asked to rate characters from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Panelists were also asked to give an ordered list of their Top 5 characters, and after panelist responses were normalized, their Top 5 would be scored from as 10.X (from 10.5 to 10.1). Each character's highest and lowest 3 responses were then removed.
Several prominent members of the community have performed exhaustive tests on the objective qualities of certain attacks, such as speed, hitbox, duration, priority, etc. Some characters are comparatively more favorably endowed with these qualities than others, providing some degree of evidence to base tier listings. Tournament results are used to reinforce the placements of certain characters on the tier list; for example the winners of Melee tournaments most commonly use Fox, Falco, Sheik, and Marth, and the winners of Brawl tournaments most commonly use Meta Knight, Ice Climbers, Olimar, and Diddy Kong.
Many different arguments supporting the belief that tiers do not exist have been presented by anti-tiers. One common argument is that the tier list causes players to only play top tier characters, and that since low tier characters are never used, their metagames will never evolve and the community will never know if they are really just as good as the other characters, creating an obstacle of sorts for players. However, even low tier characters have tournament representation and their dedicated mains. These players put in just as much effort, if not more, compared to top tier players, to develop their characters and improve their skill, so the metagames of these characters continue to evolve. These players additionally routinely lose to players of top and high tier characters and place lower than top and high tier mains. In addition, if a player of a low tier character does exceptionally well with their character (such as by placing high in a large tournament), the tier list can be changed to raise that character higher, reflecting that the character was better than originally thought.
Another common argument is that since the tier list constantly changes, it can never be accurate and therefore is nonexistent. In response, pro-tiers argue that the tier list reflects the metagame at a certain period of time, and if a new technique is discovered that elevates a certain character's position, since the technique was never used before, it was irrelevant to previous periods of time.
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