Tier list

In gaming, a tier list is a list that ranks items, such as playable characters in a game based on their strengths and weaknesses relative to each other, as well as their potential in a competitive setting assuming an even playing field like players of equal skill. An advantage a tier list has over a standard numerical list is that anything within the same tier is considered roughly equal in terms of whatever metrics are being considered, making the differences between characters much less granular and removing the need to compare characters based on incomparable aspects. Tier lists are most commonly made for fighting games that are played at a high competitive level, though games with large character pools, such as the Pokémon series or games that have various items that alter player statistics, can also have their own tier lists.

A large number of different tier lists exist for the Super Smash Bros. series, but the most widely accepted tier lists have generally been produced by the Smash Back Room on Smashboards. Exceptions, however, do exist, with the first widely accepted tier list for Smash 64 being created by users on GameFAQs, and the most recent Smash 64 and Melee tier lists being created by input from fan votes.

How tier lists are calculated

A character's standing on the tier list is based on a variety of factors:

The current collective metagame

The metagame's current state involves what tactics, characters, stages, and other factors make up the most common "decisions" made in tournament play; in other words, how the game is generally being played (fast, slow, powerful, combos, etc). In the tier lists, these decisions help to rank characters, based on how useful they may be in tournament matches shaped around these decisions. Metagames based on either the players' collective actions or a tournament organizer's rulesets can result in characters being ranked higher or lower on the tier list.

An example of the collective playerbase's metagame affecting the tier lists can be seen in Brawl's tier list and its evolution over the years; on the first tier list, R.O.B. was considered among Brawl's best fighters, ranking sixth, owing to his long, safe recovery, powerful projectile game, and a number of excellent edgeguarding options. As Brawl's metagame began to advance, however, Meta Knight's incredible potential led to him becoming the most used character in the game's tournament scene by a large margin, with a notable part of each character's metagames involving how well they could handle the near-ubiquitous character. R.O.B. was later noted for having a very unfavourable matchup against Meta Knight, due to being too slow to allow his projectile game to be used effectively, as well as Meta Knight having an extremely long, safe recovery that is notoriously difficult to intercept. R.O.B. now ranks as 18th on the tier list, with his lowest position being 20th out of a pool of 38 to 39 characters. The increasing prominence of Meta Knight in Brawl tournaments also affected numerous other characters beyond R.O.B., such as Pit and Mr. Game & Watch, both of whom also struggle in the Meta Knight matchup and fell in the tier lists owing to this issue.

For rulesets determining a character's viability, custom movesets in Smash 4 have demonstrated this in the game's tier list. With custom moves enabled, several characters gained powerful benefits, with Mii Brawler and Palutena especially benefiting due to their ordinarily lackluster movesets; some smashers even thought Mii Brawler was a top-tiered character with custom movesets enabled, as some custom moves allowed the Mii Brawler's approach and combo games to become much safer and stronger compared to its regular moveset. The ban on custom movesets starting after EVO 2015, however, has prevented the full potential of either character from being explored in Smash 4 tournaments. Both characters have thus far ranked poorly in Smash 4's tier lists, with Mii Brawler notably ranking 56th out of a pool of 58 characters in the game's third tier list.

The character's individual metagame

The metagame of individual characters is determined by how the players of a specific character use the character within the tournament setting, often in response to the general metagame. In general, characters with "deeper" metagames, or, more options in the game's overall meta, rank higher than characters with "shallow" metagames, or, fewer options in the game's overall meta. Individual character metagames can also be simply interpreted as the perceived qualities of a fighter. (good mobility, good range, good at combos, etc) While a fighter may have impressive traits, these traits might not matter as much as others due to factors that don't mesh well with each other. This is why powerful but slow characters are typically lower tiered, while weaker but faster characters with quick attacks are normally higher tier.

In Melee's early history as a competitive fighter, numerous debates stemmed from the viabilities of Marth and his clone, Roy; opponents of the tier list generally used Roy as an example of how tiers were irrelevant, claiming that Roy's prowess in competitive Melee was equal to that of Marth. Ultimately, Marth has since been accepted as the far superior fighter, primarily due to the differing metagame statuses of both characters. Marth boasts considerable creativity in how he can combo, inflict damage, KO, and edgeguard opponents, owing to a safe approach from the distant sweet spot on Falchion, his down aerial spike, and a number of powerful finishers that can KO even if they are non-tippered; Roy, however, struggles to perform as well as Marth in these regards, as he has few viable finishers outside of his forward smash, the placement of the Sword of Seals's sweetspot prevents him from comboing or approaching as safely as Marth, and his off-stage game is considered among the worst in Melee due to his weak aerials and high falling speed. Melee's tier list has historically recognised these differences, with Marth frequently ranking as one of Melee's most potent fighters, while Roy has failed to rise out of the low tiers.

Outside of an individual character's inherent characteristics, responses to a character's metagame can lead to differing tier list placings. In Smash 64's first tier list, Ness was considered the third-best character in the game, due to his powerful double jump cancel combo potential; later analysis, however, found that despite the potentially high power of his DJC combos, his short range prevented him from easily taking advantage of this. Later tier lists thus ranked Ness considerably lower, with the current Smash 64 tier list ranking him as tenth in a pool of twelve characters, owing to his low range, difficulty in winning the neutral game and poor recovery. Conversely, Jigglypuff in Melee initially started off as a mid-tiered character in the metagame, as it had some powerful attacks, but a slow, unwieldy ground game. Top professional player Mango, however, demonstrated that Jigglypuff's air game was among the most powerful in Melee, and he also demonstrated that Jigglypuff had surprisingly powerful combo and pressure games, beyond what most smashers had previously seen or expected. Mango and later Jigglypuff main Hungrybox began to take top placings at tournaments with Jigglypuff, with the duo collectively demonstrating how deep Jigglypuff's own metagame was, resulting in it jumping to the top tiers in Melee, including a third-place finish on the tenth tier list and a return to this position in the modern metagame on the current tier list.

The character's matchup spread

A character's matchup spread analyses how well they can perform against other characters in the game. In general, higher-tiered characters have more matchups that are in their favour compared to lower-tiered characters, with matchups against higher-tiered characters having more weight behind them than matchups with lower-tiered characters. In Brawl, for instance, King Dedede has among the best matchup spread against characters that are lower than him on the current tier list (12th), and this matchup spread is actually among the best in the game in this regard; however, he is also countered by many characters that are higher-tiered than him, leading to a less than stellar placement on the tier list despite his many favourable matchups. As a consequence, King Dedede is not considered a viable main in the current Brawl metagame, due to his poor matchups against Meta Knight and the Ice Climbers, the top two characters on the tier list.

A matchup against a single character is generally not enough to significantly change a character's tier standing. In Brawl, for example, Toon Link, who ranks 13th, boasts a slightly favorable matchup against the Ice Climbers, who rank 2nd, owing to his ability to potentially avoid the duo's powerful chain grabs as a result of his various projectiles and disjointed hitboxes; despite this, Toon Link ranks 13th out of a pool of 38 characters on the tier list, due to having an unfavourable matchup against most higher-ranked characters than him. Conversely, in Melee, Peach possesses an incredibly unfavorable matchup against Jigglypuff, owing to Peach's extreme disadvantage in the combo game and inability to effectively fight from behind, due to Jigglypuff's ability to disengage from interactions with no risk. Unlike Brawl Toon Link, this matchup has had noticeable consequences on Peach's viability; due to Jigglypuff's growing presence in the metagame, she has declined slightly, and is seen as a shaky choice for a solo main. However, this is still not enough to single-handedly make Peach unviable overall, as she is still ranked 7th on the current tier list in the high tier.

The character's tournament results

In general, higher tournament results for characters yield higher tier placings, as winning major tournaments implies that a character has more tools to compete, and thus, a deeper metagame. The top characters in all five tier lists have all maintained large playerbases and excellent results in tournaments, while characters directly below them also generally perform well or have large playerbases. Top-tiered characters are also most often used by the game's top players; the top players on the SSBMRank, SSBBRank, Panda Global Rankings, LumiRank, and other power rankings are most often seen using top-tiered and high-tiered characters. Characters towards the bottom of the tier list, however, generally have smaller playerbases and poorer results, with some low-tiered characters being completely lacking in consistent, top-level representation in tournaments; Kirby, for instance, has historically and currently had very few notable players that exclusively main it, and has very rarely achieved top 32 placings in majors.

Smash Bros. characters are often placed into different groups of "viability", which rates their potential and empirical ability to perform in tournaments. At the top of this grouping are characters considered to be able to consistently win major tournaments. In Melee, this list generally includes four characters: Fox, Jigglypuff, Marth, and Falco, all of whom have been able to consistently able to win large tournaments against a variety of opponents. Below these four are the characters who are considered to have the potential to win a major, but have one or more especially problematic matchups which makes this much more difficult. This grouping includes Sheik, Captain Falcon, Peach, Ice Climbers, Pikachu, Yoshi, and Samus (the lower end of this list is subject to significant debate). It is acknowledged that a player winning a major with one of these characters is usually the result of a favorable bracket or a player using counterpick characters against their most troublesome matchups. For example, although Peach saw large amounts of tournament success under Armada, he switched to his secondary characters when facing Hungrybox's Jigglypuff, against whom he was unable to take a single game off of as Peach. Most of solo Peach's tournament victories have come when Armada avoided Hungrybox in the bracket. Sheik, despite being considered top tier for much of the game's competitive lifespan, had never won a major tournament as a solo main until GENESIS 9 in 2023, as Sheik players, such as Mew2King and Plup, have always switched to counterpick characters against certain matchups and players, such as Jigglypuff. Conversely, although Pikachu has won a major earlier (when Axe placed first at Smash Summit 8), Pikachu still remains lower-tiered than Sheik, as Pikachu's matchup spread against the other top tiers is considered worse than Sheik's. Top-level Sheik players have retained more consistent top 8 placings in majors, while Pikachu has a smaller playerbase and Axe's results have been less consistent.

Furthermore, an increase in results for a character can lead to a higher tier standing, as improvements to results can be attributed to metagame changes either in the entirety of the metagame or for an individual character. Characters such as Pikachu and Yoshi in Melee or Ike and Sonic in Brawl saw improvements in tier standing due to players discovering new techniques or applications for the character, yielding deeper individual metagames that could stand up in the general metagame; Ike players such as San, for instance, demonstrated that the character had a surprisingly powerful aerial game, alongside an extremely powerful and flexible jab that demonstrated Ike's neutral game was not as slow or unsafe as previously thought.

Conversely, a drop in notable tournament results can result in a character falling on the tier list. For example, in Melee, Shroomed was widely considered a top ten player in the world from 2011 to 2013 while using Dr. Mario, who was seen as a borderline viable character, ranked 9th on the tier list during that time. However, starting in 2014, Shroomed dropped Dr. Mario in favor of Sheik, which has left Dr. Mario with a major lack of tournament results since. No other Dr. Mario player has been able to achieve remotely similar results compared to Shroomed; the next best representative in modern Melee has been Franz, who has only been ranked at the lower end or in the middle of the Top 100. As a result, Dr. Mario has since fallen on the tier list, and most top players consider him to be lower-ranked than Yoshi (even lower than his 11th ranking on the 2015 Smash Back Room tier list). However, it is unclear whether Dr. Mario is truly less tournament viable than characters like Yoshi and Pikachu, or if there are just not enough tournament results and metagame presence to generate a meaningful comparison between these characters.

That said, tournament results do not necessarily equate to higher or lower tier standings, nor do larger playerbases yield higher tier standings. In Melee, Yoshi has attained a large amount success at large tournaments, having appeared in the top 32 of several major international tournaments; the character's success, however, has primarily been buoyed by aMSa, and as such, Yoshi only ranks 10th in a pool of 26 characters despite aMsa's incredible performance. Similarly, in Brawl, Salem's surprise victory with Zero Suit Samus at Apex 2013 did not move her into the top tiers. While Salem used Zero Suit Samus's Power Suit Pieces to a level that was never seen before, his victory has been attributed to a lack of matchup experience from his opponents, rather than Zero Suit Samus being one of the best characters in the game. This was supported by the fact that Salem was unable to match his breakout performance in subsequent tournaments, failing to place in the top eight of any other Brawl major before the release of Smash 4. As such, Zero Suit Samus remained a high-tier character following Salem's victory, since she was still considered less competitively viable than the characters above her.

It should be noted that tournament results are not necessarily the same as tournament representation or popularity. While a general rule of thumb is that high tier characters will be more common in tournaments due to players naturally wanting as many advantages as possible, exceptions to this have existed throughout the competitive history of the Smash series. Some characters that are otherwise considered low-tier may have a single powerful tool that gives them good matchups and thus are not an uncommon sight in tournaments, such as Donkey Kong in Smash 64 or King K. Rool in Ultimate. Other characters have been considered high-tier, but have a steep learning curve, leading to low tournament representation relative to their tier list position, such as Pikachu in every game except Smash 64.

Super Smash Bros. tier list

The following is the Super Smash Bros. tier list produced by the Smash 64 community. The numbers below the characters are their average ranking during the voting for the tier list. It was last updated on May 12th, 2015.

Super Smash Bros. Tier List #4
S		A			B		C
1	2	3	4	5	6-7		8	9	10	11	12
1.10	2.18	3.42	3.75	4.85	6.46	6.49	9.28	9.49	10.02	10.33	11.67

Super Smash Bros. Melee tier list

The following is the thirteenth Super Smash Bros. Melee tier list. It represents the average of 64 top players' personal tier lists, compiled by Ryobeat and PracticalTAS. It is the first aggregate player-compiled tier list not to be produced by Smashboards, instead being produced by PG Stats. It was published on March 29th, 2021.

Super Smash Bros. Melee Tier List #13
S				A			B+				B-
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
1.68	2.36	3.18	3.56	4.66	5.82	6.84	8.74	9.62	9.69	10.11	12.23	12.61
C+		C-				D					F
14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26
14.83	15.53	16.42	17.31	17.66	17.95	20.22	21.63	22.07	22.78	23.49	24.26	25.74

Super Smash Bros. Brawl tier list

The following is the eighth Super Smash Bros. Brawl tier list produced by the Smash Back Room. Zelda and Sheik were voted both as individuals, with a third option representing them as a single character. Zero Suit Samus is separated from Samus due to their primary method of transformation being banned Final Smashes, while Pokémon Trainer was voted as just the team due to his stamina mechanic. It was last updated on April 25th, 2013.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl Tier List #8
		SS		S	A+		A-
		1		2	3	4	5	6	7
		1.000		2.344	3.375	3.750	5.813	5.844	6.375
B			C+			C				C-
8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19
8.000	8.656	9.844	11.656	12.531	13.094	14.438	15.219	15.844	16.563	18.031	18.500
		D
		20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27
		20.750	21.281	21.844	22.625	-	24.063	24.406	25.938
E				F
28	29	30		31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38
27.688	27.781	28.094		30.344	31.406	31.938	33.219	34.000	34.813	35.375	36.844

Super Smash Bros. 4 tier list

The following is the fourth Super Smash Bros. 4 tier list produced by the Smash Back Room. It was last updated on December 11th, 2017, and reflects version 1.1.7 of the game. Pit and Dark Pit were voted on as the same character, while Mii Fighters were excluded entirely. Character customization was not taken into account due to their collective ban since EVO 2015. Characters who differed by less than 0.1 in average score were considered to be tied in placement. The tiers in this list were split into groups: Top (S,A); High (B,C); Middle (D, E); Low (F, G).

Super Smash Bros. 4 Tier List #4 [1.1.7]
		S				A
		1	2-3			4	5	6	7-8		9	10	11-12
		1.19	2.49	2.51		4.68	5.99	6.46	6.56	6.60	9.81	10.38	11.54	11.61
B								C
13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28-29
13.29	14.39	17.37	17.97	18.41	19.07	19.25	20.14	20.68	20.82	23.31	23.73	24.85	24.96	25.89	28.62	28.64
D										E
30	31	32		33	34	35	36-37			38	39	40	41	42	43	44
31.59	32.11	32.27		32.96	33.21	34.59	35.11	35.13		37.95	38.58	39.12	39.66	41.95	43.43	43.96
		F						G				Unranked
		45	46	47	48	49	50	51	52-53		54	—
		45.43	45.65	47.01	47.64	48.86	49.32	49.59	51.21	51.22	53.47	—

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tier list

The following is the most recent Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tier list, created by LumiRank, and released on February 15th, 2024. Pokémon 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. 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.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Tier List #2 [13.0.1]
					S+		S				S-
					1	2	3	4	5	6	7		8	9	10
					10.474	10.315	9.784	9.698	9.631	9.620	9.040		9.019	8.870	8.827
A+				A										A-
11	12	13	14	15		16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
8.638	8.565	8.537	8.496	8.262		8.143	8.123	8.078	8.077	8.031	7.856	7.844	7.815	7.608	7.558	7.458	7.382	7.366	7.324	7.302
B+									B-
31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40	41		42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49	50
7.115	6.981	6.973	6.890	6.871	6.807	6.722	6.694	6.593	6.441	6.396		6.371	6.364	6.348	6.319	6.249	6.174	6.163	5.923	5.792
			C+										C-
			51	52	53	54	55	56	57	58	59	60	61	62	63	64	65
			5.505	5.450	5.280	5.222	5.199	5.143	5.058	5.041	5.003	4.992	4.773	4.674	4.553	4.521	4.489
	D+				D-											E+			E-
	66	67	68	69	70	71	72	73	74		75	76	77	78		79	80	81	82
	4.354	4.206	4.149	4.120	3.857	3.829	3.776	3.745	3.656		3.633	3.514	3.402	3.394		3.009	2.877	2.275	1.467

Existence of tiers

Some players in fighting games are of the opinion that all the characters in the series are equal and have the same amount of potential. These players believe that the inherent strengths and weaknesses of characters balance them out, and thus a tier list means nothing. However, the consensus of competitive players and knowledgeable spectators is that tiers do exist: not only can character imbalance be deliberately introduced by buffing and/or nerfing certain traits (most notably with Little Mac and his intentionally deficient aerial combat), but active efforts to ensure roster balance are unlikely to succeed in their entirety, because the differing properties of each character produce a large number of variables that cannot be constantly monitored and modified on the spot for the purpose of perfect balance. In addition, developers cannot fully predict how their game will be played, and often have their own ideas about balance that may differ from how the community perceives it, particularly as series creator Masahiro Sakurai did not intend for the Smash games to be played solely at high competitive levels under tournament rulesets, which are what tiers are based off of. Thus, they are unlikely to foresee every strategy that will be employed at a top level, nor can deliberate efforts after a game releases (i.e. updates to Smash 4 and Ultimate) offer perfect balance at a professional level.

In the early years of the tournament scene, tier lists were frequently criticized for quickly becoming outdated, necessitating either a new list or on-the-spot judgements about character viability. Tier lists additionally were criticized for being self-fulfilling, as their listings frequently impelled players to pick up or drop specific characters. These arguments would often be used by players to argue that tiers do not exist because tier lists can never perfectly reflect them. Proponents of the tier list argued that, while a tier list can influence the metagame, their intention is to report on what the best and worst results have shown, and that tournament results changing due to players selecting characters based on a tier list is more of a representation of an evolving metagame rather than the tier list directly controlling it. Tier lists represent only a snapshot of the tournament scene at the time of its creation, and with a constantly evolving metagame, particularly one influenced by balance patches, they can quickly become outdated. By its nature, a tier list inherently contains some form of bias, whether it be from including flawed or incomplete data or its creators overvaluing and undervaluing specific statistics. Thus, while a tier list can fail to report on what community statistics prove, it does not necessarily disregard the idea of competitive imbalance altogether. Furthermore, while the most public and well-known tier lists are intended for professional play, they are not the only ones, as even casual settings can produce inequality between characters, since the existence of features such as items and stage hazards skew balance in a different direction that is largely divorced from tournament play. Zelda in Ultimate, for instance, is a character that becomes significantly more viable in casual play due to her Final Smash, widely seen as one of the best in the game, compared to a tournament setting in which she is seen as one of the game's weakest characters.

Power rankings have suggested that the best Smash players generally use high-tiered characters, with only a handful of outliers; even then, for example, Plup, who mained Samus, eventually switched to a higher-tiered character in Sheik, and was ranked higher than in the previous rankings, while Axe, despite continuing to use his lower-tiered main Pikachu, has picked up one or several top tier secondary characters. In Melee, Armada, despite being considered the best player in the world for much of Melee's history, had to pick up a stronger character in Fox in order to overcome his Peach's matchup issues against other top players like Hungrybox and Leffen. For Brawl, Vinnie switched from Mr. Game & Watch to the Ice Climbers and immediately saw better results, eventually being ranked 9th in the 2014 SSBBRank, and a large amount of the players on said power rankings have a secondary or pocket Meta Knight if they do not main him. Despite being touted as the best Bowser Jr. player in the world, Tweek dropped him in favor of Cloud, who he perceived to be a better choice in becoming the best Smash 4 player, and following the switch, he would become one of the best Smash 4 players in the world, eventually being considered the second best on the fifth PGR. There was also a noticeable trend of players picking up Bayonetta and performing far better than they ever did with their prior main, up to the top level at majors, with some of the most standout examples being Salem, Captain Zack, Mistake, and Lima. Generally, after patch 1.1.5, a multitude of both Cloud and Bayonetta mains emerged.

It is important to note that every smasher mentioned above has put in a greater or equal amount of effort into their lower-tiered characters compared to top players who main higher-tiered characters, and has single-handedly pushed their characters' metagames to around the same level. However, barring a breakthrough in new tech that is useful and reliable (as seen with aMSa's Yoshi and Axe's Pikachu in Melee), or balance updates that positively affect a character's viability (such as Mewtwo in Smash 4 since version 1.1.3), lower-tiered characters by themselves generally do not have the toolset to survive in the long run against other top players who use higher-tiered characters; occasionally, such as with Ness in Smash 64, there is even a chance that a character can drop significantly in the tier list as a result of being much less effective than initially perceived. Thus, there is an inclination to simply use better characters. Tier lists are deliberately ever changing to reflect individual character performances in tournament, and as a result, only a few characters will ever see significant shifts in placement, while the remaining characters will rarely shift from their general current position.