High Tier Scrappy / Super Smash Bros.

Brawl Meta Knight: so broken, he needed an entire tier to himself.

"Come back when you start getting banned in tournaments."

— Meta Knight, One More Brawl Taunts

Being as it is, the fandom of Super Smash Bros. tends to come down hard on characters considered to be horribly overpowered.

NOTE: Much of this mainly applies to the competitive community, as most casual players find them fun to use regardless.

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Series-Wide

• Mario was initially seen as either a perfectly average fighter the first two games or a disappointing downgrade in Brawl. However, when Smash 4 released, his abilities improved, which in turn made his perception worse:
  • In Smash 4, Mario would be rebalanced with some additional buffs. His combo game is one of the best, with more reliable combo starters, an overall fast moveset that makes him hard to punish, and safe, powerful smash attacks. Mario was supposedly designed to be beginner-friendly, but making him easier to use went a little too well. Mario has the lowest learning curve of any character, providing very high reward for very little effort. Not helping is the fact that he was barely touched in most balance patches, which has led some players to believe that Mario was made, and left as, one of the best characters in the game out of favoritism. However, with the advent of other newcomers and top Mario players declining, Mario is once again viewed as one of the more favorable top tiers at top-level play.
  • Mario's transition into Ultimate brought a healthy mix of buffs and nerfs, leaving his core playstyle intact. As a result, Mario's traits remain as consistent as before, and he still has a good deal of top players using him to great success. Thus, Mario's perception is once again that of a top-tier character with a low learning curve that still provides an incredible reward with low risk. That said, while he's still a character many loathe to fight against, Mario hasn't received nearly as much hate as in Smash 4 from the crowd, mainly for being slightly less dominant and for having a less repetitive playstyle that became more than just spamming his up tilt (which had received a notable nerf in range in front of Mario, missing some small or crouching characters on the ground). He was in 21th place in the first tier list, in the A+ tier and barely missing the top tier alongside his buddy Yoshi, and then dropped one spot in the second tier list, falling in the A tier and getting overtaken by Wario. As a result, he's considered slightly worse than in the previous game, but he remains a solid high-tier.
• Fox McCloud is one of the most consistent high-tiers throughout the series. As an aggressive rushdown character with the speed and specials to do it well despite his low weight, he's probably the most iconic Glass Cannon, and has regularly been among each game's high-tiers or top-tiers.
  • In 64, many of the elements that would define his future in the series comes into place: a strong combo game that include touches-of-death, and his Reflector (better known as "shine" due to being rarely used as a reflector) as a 1-frame attack. One thing this version had that later versions would not is that his blaster could interrupt opponent's movements, making it the best projectile in the game. Fox's one glaring weakness is that his recovery is easy to exploit, due to its lengthy and vulnerable startup animation.
  • In Melee, Fox is considered the game's best character by a long shot (with only fellow rep Falco and Marth close behind). He has incredible speed, excellent combo capability, and good KO power. His "shine" became even better, as it had invincibility on startup, could be cancelled with a jump, and gimped recoveries all by itself. He also single-handedly invalidated many stages for competitive play, as large and/or moving stages gave Fox the ability to camp with his Blaster. However, Fox is also beloved by Melee's competitive community, as he is perhaps the epitome of Difficult, but Awesome due to the technical skill required to handle his demanding inputs. Fox's extreme falling speed and light weight make him vulnerable to combos himself, meaning matches with Fox will feature long combos and quick deaths both ways. As a result, Fox is played by at least one-third of the competitive playerbase. Fox is more of a high-tier Base-Breaking Character than a full-on scrappy — some players consider the focus on Fox to be detrimental, while others consider it acceptable since Fox's place at the top doesn't mean he's unbeatable. Still, his notoriety and his centralization of the metagame, more so than the other top tiers, is such that it spawned the "No Items, Fox Only, Final Destination" meme, and contributes to his hatred to a disturbing degree in the other Smash games.
  • Fox's worst appearance was Brawl, where he was hammered with expected nerfs, such as his blaster losing range and the startup of his shine slowed down, while the engine changes did him few favors. However, he still had many of his previous strengths, and he has few especially bad matchups, including him to be among the few characters to have a manageable matchup against Meta Knight. Some suspect that Fox may have continued to rise in the Brawl tier rankings had the competitive Brawl scene not died out in 2014.
  • With 3DS/Wii U, despite a few more nerfs from Brawl, such as his Reflector having its startup doubled to 6 frames and losing its versatility and his finishers were worsened, becoming slower and weaker, Fox is back as a top tier with very good mobility and offensive capabilities, and the removal of the changes from Brawl's engine benefitted him greatly, including the removal of chaingrabbing, which alongside the lack of true combos was the reason why he fell in that game. After launch, some players discovered Fox had a "jab infinite" that allowed him to loop most characters in a repeated combo via a jab lock. This caused a massive amount of Fox players to rush into the competitive scene and quickly claim results, with some abusing the infinite combo as their gameplan. Fox ultimately became disliked thanks to how it was used above all of his other options, leading to repetitive play. When the infinite combo was patched out due to the first two hits of his jab receiving higher knockback and ending lag, those reliant on it either dropped Fox or performed noticeably worse. However, the players that stayed with him kept doing well, and also helped to show how exciting Fox can be in higher play just like in Melee.
  • His Ultimate appearance would at first be a mixed bag. Fox is now the fifth lightest character in the game (only beaten out by Jigglypuff, Pichu, Squirtle, and Mr. Game and Watch), his already extreme gravity has been drastically increased, matching his Melee gravity, and his Fox Illusion side special and dash attack no longer go through shielding opponents. However, he received sizeable buffs from the engine changes, with his speed, power and combo abilities shining in the metagame. Further buffs to his shine and air-moves made him more consistent, but the verdict was that Fox was thought to be the #2 "Space Animal" behind Wolf, only to shoot up all the way to 5th on the first official tier list (while his rival Wolf would be ranked 11th), putting the Star Fox leader back into the S-tier much like in Melee. Fox is still a top-tier character that manages to subvert his scrappydom a little bit thanks to his aggressive rushdown style that he has been synonymous for in numerous titles, though his representation fell off rather early, in 2019, with a good amount of his strongest players starting to relegate him to a secondary or then drop him in favour of other characters like Palutena, his players had very inconsistent results as his vulnerable recovery and terrible endurance became apparent and his representation is lower than other top tiers, especially online, having one of the worst representations of any top tier character here, which led some people in the community to think that he's overrated and should be lower. In the second tier list, he fell three spots, in 8th place.
• Pikachu is a consistent high-tier or top-tier character throughout the franchise, and a pioneer of the Fragile Speedster playstyle. It has a solid air game, great mobility, an insane combo and edgeguarding game, and is frustratingly hard to hit due to its aforesaid speed, its small size, and of how it pancakes during animations, especially during landing lag. It's always been well-regarded by the competitive community for being Difficult, but Awesome; however, some players resent the fact that Pikachu has always been able to curb-stomp the majority of the cast.
  • In 64, Pikachu is the best character by a wide margin. Along with its trademark strengths, it possesses weirdly disjointed hitboxes and a really good recovery in a game where the rest of the cast have mediocre recoveries by comparison due to Quick Attack's sheer versatility. At first, this resulted in Pikachu being "soft banned" in the competitive community (as in, there's an understanding to not use Pikachu even though it's not explicitly against the rules). Though as Smash 64 tournaments have gotten larger and more serious, the soft ban has fallen out of favor and Pikachu's usage is a lot higher in tournaments. As a nod to its high-tier scrappy status, Pikachu is negatively referred to as "the Rat". Its lightweight body and fast fall speed makes it easy for a character like Fox or Captain Falcon to send it flying, but this isn't enough to knock Pikachu off the top spot.
  • In Melee, Pikachu would fall in tier lists, receiving nerfs to its bizarre hitboxes, losing its fast air mobility, worse combos due to the much lower hitstun and other negative changes, and a much worse damage output, to the point that it was considered unviable and a low tier for years. It would later see a major rise on the tier list after some notable successes in competitive play, mostly from Axe using Pikachu to dominate Fox in a one-minute 4-stock in EVO 2014's Top-8. Due to its improved results, Pikachu sits comfortably in the top 10 characters in the game.
  • Brawl gave Pikachu some notable buffs, along with benefiting significantly from Brawl's system changes, allowing it to rise back into the top tiers. Its endurance here is surprisingly good due to having great momentum canceling, it's difficult to combo Pikachu, Thunder is faster and Quick Attack has received a new technique that allows it to cancel it. Its most notorious moves are its down-throw chain-grab that can zero-to-death characters who fall quickly along with a decent forward throw chain-grab that allows for combos and tech-chases, and a jab-lock that let it easily punish people. Pikachu was also said to be Meta Knight's only even matchup (with fellow rep Lucario, Fox and Wolf also in the discussion), though it's highly disputed.
  • Pikachu once again retained its high tier status in Smash 4 despite being nerfed overall, mostly directly. Its case is even stronger when custom moves are allowed; while one of its biggest flaws is its lack of KO power, its "Heavy Skull Bash" custom side special is widely viewed as one of the most overpowered custom moves in the game, and Heavy Skull Bash is frequently used as an argument against legalizing custom moves. Even without the custom moves, Pikachu is widely seen as one of the better characters in the game, even if it's not the best. This is especially seen in the first tier list, where it was ranked 5th, but dropped due to its low representation, inconsistent results in tournaments and poor matchups against characters like Mario and Ness and then the DLC fighters being ranked 15th in the final tier list.
  • In Ultimate, while it was initially overshadowed by Pichu, Pikachu still found his way to being a major competitive threat, especially after Pichu got nerfed in update 3.1.0, which dumped the poor cute little mouse into the mid-tiers, and the buffs that it received in 11.0.0 (which also reversed a few nerfs) weren't enough to compensate, as Pichu had lost a very notable amount of playerbase by then. This is thanks to Pikachu's consistent strengths and hard-to-exploit weaknesses outside of his bad range, as even though he was already a solid high tier as usual, he was heavily buffed in the transition, while nerfs to things like his up throw to Thunder combos were too minor to compensate. The moveset changes given to Pikachu only allowed his strengths to be further utilized, with his neutral air being one of the best combo tools in the game, more cancels and combos across the board, a dash attack that now KOs at high percentages and is safe on shield, aerials that are even faster and spammable with their really low ending lag combined with the fact that now all of them can autocancel in a short hop due to a better autocancel window on back aerial. This, combined with how he squishes himself like a pancake during animations such as his landing animations, which makes it difficult or even impossible to punish him in spite of the relatively high landing lag of his aerial, a Thunder Jolt that camps and pressures even more, a faster Skull Bash that is almost un-punishable on shield and a versatile kit that allows it to play rushdown or keepaway safely, with one of the best edgeguarding game in the cast, zero-to-death combos and a great neutral game, made him one of the most notorious characters in the game. Despite lacking the more consistent KO potential Pichu had, Pikachu's better range, higher weight and greater risk-reward factor soon allowed it to be seen in the same light as Pichu did before 3.1.0. Pikachu's incredible strengths have led many competitive players to believe that Pikachu is one of the best characters (if not the best), but this sentiment has mostly fell out of favor once characters like Joker, the Aegis Duo and Steve spawned onto the scene, as Pikachu's tournament results have remained unimpressive and with less representation compared to other top tier characters even after over four years into the game's life, though there are some who still insist Pikachu is one of the best characters and blame its results on Pikachu's players. Nonetheless, Pikachu ended up in the top tier in the game's first tier list, even if it didn't end up top 3 as many were predicting, sitting at a comfortable 13th place, one spot below Diddy Kong and one spot above Pac-Man. In the second tier list, he fell four spaces, and the changes to the tier list now leaves him 17th in the A+ tier, both because of the inconsistent results and lower representation compared to other top tiers, and because of the conflicting opinion across regions: while he was considered a top 5 character in Latin America and a top 10 character in the USA and in Canada, he wasn't even in the top 25 according to Japan.
• Sheik has been considered a top-tier character in a couple of games due to her great combo potential, mobility and edgeguarding.
  • Sheik was once the most disliked top tier in Melee. She has many of the fastest attacks in the game, amazing combo capabilities, the game's most effective chain throw, one of the best projectiles in Needle Storm, and a ridiculously fast yet powerful forward air that slaps opponents downward, making her fantastic at edgeguarding. Her forward air and sweetspotted up-smash can kill just as effectively as stronger characters with more moves. Sheik is also considered less technical than other characters, in a game whose competitive playerbase prides itself on the game's technical difficulty. It was at its worst in early Melee, where Sheik was considered the best character for the first five years (and to such a degree there was once serious contemplation about banning her). As the greater potential of Fox and Falco were discovered, reactions towards Sheik became less vitriolic, and the metagame has advanced towards other characters earning even better results than her (a solo Sheik player didn't win a major in Melee until 2023, well over 20 years after the game's release, making her the tenth character to reach that goal after Yoshi, who is considered noticeably worse than her), though she's still a bit disliked.
  • Her Smash 4 appearance grew into this over time, even after some nerfs in updates. Sheik was the best character in the game bar none, with or without custom moves. Sheik's normals had a combination of speed and range that were very hard to punish, and the knockback allowed her to effortlessly combo in her attacks, one of them being a forward aerial with an extremely lenient autocancel window at frame 11. Needle Storm is one the best projectiles in the game because of the needles' effective zoning, encouraging an extremely camp-heavy playstyle. Her Vanish also made her very hard to edgeguard, and her Bouncing Fish made it easy to KO other characters and to recover back onto the stage with. Although she still had a steep learning curve, Sheik excels in every aspect when mastered, and Sheik was argued to have no truly disadvantageous matchups. Sheik was a very common sight at the top of tournaments, with some Grand Finals being Sheik dittos. This caused Complacent Gaming Syndrome to occur in an immense fashion, which only fueled the anger towards seeing Sheik. Combine all these aspects and it is easy to see why Sheik was a disliked top tier character, similarly to Brawl Meta Knight and pre-patch Diddy. Her hatred nosedived after being nerfed in update 1.1.5, putting some more well-needed risk to her reward, like reducing her weight and the combo potential of her throws, and ultimately causing many competitive players to believe she is no longer the face of the meta.
• The Ice Climbers have long been notorious for infinite combos abusing their dual nature.
  • In Melee, while considered borderline high-tiers, they're hated for Wobbling, a technique named after pro Smash player Wobbles, who used it frequently. Wobbling exploits the IC's "2-in-1" mechanic to jab grabbed opponents in such a way that the opponent is kept stuck in the grab indefinitely until the IC's player decides to release them. Wobbling means any grab from the ICs can equal death if it's pulled off successfully. Players despise Wobbling so much it was initially banned in many tournaments, before it was relegalized after EVO 2013 had it legal. The vitriol against the ICs died down for a bit after top Ice Climber players failed to consistently beat the best players even with Wobbling relegalized, and many players ended up considering Wobbling balanced by the ICs having too hard of a time landing a grab to start a Wobble in the first place. In addition, Wobbling can be prevented by killing the computer-controlled partner due to their awful AI, so Wobbling was dismissed as a serious Game-Breaker. However, after a wave of Ice Climber players emerging throughout the later 2010s that started upsetting well-liked top players at many significant tournaments after extensive usage of Wobbling, the fervor against Wobbling was reignited, with several top players pushing for a ban, eventually culminating in a Wobbling ban being standardized by 2020.
  • In Brawl, the Ice Climbers could infinitely chain grab the entire cast but themselves. The result was a grab that equaled instant death, and with Brawl’s slower gameplay, significant buffs in the ICs' projectiles, the partner's AI being significantly better, and the ability to control both Popo and Nana at the same time, it became much easier to get a grab. Their infinite chain grabs do require precise timing to pull off, but it was little comfort when the best players could do it with ease. This resulted in boring games for viewers, as they boiled down to watching their opponent camp the ICs until they net a chain grab. They never did come close to exceeding Meta Knight, and they did have a few losing matchups, but became even more hated by the end of the game due to being much less flashy and rather degenerate due to their combos. This was especially made worse because of Brawl's slower and floatier physics, lack of combos even more focus on chain-grabs than Melee, and more focus on camping. However, despite their divisive status, some players weren't happy that they were cut from 3DS/Wii U.
  • Ultimate brought the Ice Climbers back, but made it so the AI partner can't move during a grab and gave them the worst grab range in the game, putting an end to grab-to-death shenanigans. Despite their immense nerfs, there have been some notable competitive techs found, such as some zero-to-death combos and good edgeguarding game. The jury's still out as to where they fall in the meta, though (they would ultimately get dumped into the low end of the mid-tiers on the first official tier list). On one hand, they have one-hit-kill combos on ALL of the cast, good frame data, and some surprisingly powerful attacks. On the other hand, they have glaring weakness such as their vulnerability to zoning, lackluster range despite having disjointed range due to their hammer, slow mobility, especially for Popo, who is the main character among the two, a poor neutral game, a REALLY high execution barrier, the partner AI once again being subpar, if not useless, and the built-in flaw of being in a huge amount of trouble if the AI partner gets taken out, including a significantly worse ability to take stocks without Nana.
• Another highly consistent example in the series is the most recognizable face of Fire Emblem, Marth. A notable case of Difficult, but Awesome due to his reliance on precise spacing, he has long been a terror in competitive play.
  • With his breakout appearance in Melee, Marth is a top-tier with many advantages and overplay, but is generally liked. A skilled Marth can easily space opponents out despite mediocre knockback, as his attacks cover a large area. However, opponents can take advantage of his lack of lingering hitboxes to sneak in, meaning Marth players have to time and space their moves precisely. Among the biggest complaints are Marth's grab that reaches a foot in front of where his hand actually touches (for example, it can grab Yoshi, though it's actually because he has a huge hurbox on his nose, while Yoshi's grab ends up in the Z-axis without compensating) and the sheer strength of his finishers if perfectly spaced, especially his easy-to-land down-air, which leads to Marth taking stocks at early percents over minimal mistakes and the notorious easy-to-land Ken-combo (non-sweetspotted forward-air into sweet spotted down-air). Marth's large grab range and versatile up throw helps him easily set up combos against fast-fallers, such as Fox and Falco.
  • In Brawl, Marth made the smoothest transition out of any of the previous game's top tiers. While his grab and sword ranges were reduced, he still retained most of his previous strengths, such as his powerful spacing with his strong tipper sweetspots. His grab game, despite the range nerf, is still powerful due to the game's altered grab release mechanics giving him a variety of powerful follow-up options (especially on the Mother Duo, as Ness and Lucas get stuck in their grab release animations for 10 additional frames compared to the rest of the cast). The end result was Marth being solidly among the game's top tiers, with only two slightly disadvantageous matchups (against Meta Knight and King Dedede).
  • Smash 4 would initially give Marth his worst tier ranking to date. He got heavy nerfs that put him among the game's low tiers, such as his sword's range becoming less stellar due to other characters receiving better hitbox treatment, his aerial game becoming more manageable due to slower aerials across the board, and harder-to-sweetspot hitboxes. However, Marth would slowly get further buffs, especially in patch 1.1.4, which caused a surge of new Marth mains to appear, showing off the new tools and adjustments he was given. This would see Marth return to the top tiers as Marth's tournament success continued to climb.
  • Ultimate saw Marth fall again (though not as severely as Smash 4 initially), as he has many problems that keep him from seeing widespread usage. Ultimate's faster engine and pace ^note (which adds a bit of humorous Irony as Marth was a top-tier in the faster-paced Melee) give Marth incredible difficulty at landing his tippers, and some attacks even received worse hitbox placements. Also, while potent kill moves, they can screw up combos if they land at the wrong time, usually sending the opponent too far away for follow ups. This requires Marth players to thoroughly optimize his combos. Much to the dismay of the Hero-King's fans, his Echo Fighter Lucina has taken Marth's spot amongst the high tiers; in exchange for a harder time scoring kills, Lucina has more consistent and reliable combos and doesn't have to rely on precise spacing (outside of requiring a tipper to land her down-air meteor smash which she copies from Marth); her comparative ease of use has ensured that Marth hasn't seen as much play by comparison, this is reflected in the first official tier list, which placed the Hero-King in the 50s, making him the worst ranking of the 4 Echoes, he would keep his position on the second tier list, but now has to compete with his descendant Chrom (who has dropped significantly on the second tier list) for the position of the worst of the 4 Echoes.
• As a result of being a Moveset Clone of Fox, Falco has become a notorious case throughout the games.
  • In Melee, Falco amassed quite a competitive fanbase, with many players being drawn to his potential for flashy combos. Some consider him to be better than Fox in terms of power, due to his Blaster causing hitstun (whereas Fox's doesn't, though this was a holdover from 64 Fox whose Blaster had hitstun), easier shine combos (though his sent opponents upward rather than gimping like Fox's), and brutal finishers, particularly his extremely fast yet powerful down aerial. However, these traits also cause him to be loathed in some circles, particularly with the rise of Melee netplay. On the other hand, there are players who still love the character and cheer him on at the highest levels, particularly in the modern metagame where everyone now knows how to abuse his weaknesses to the fullest. Unlike Fox, Falco is seen as the underdog in certain matchups, causing the bird to get a lot more appreciation.
  • In Brawl, he was significantly differentiated from Fox. He had some obnoxiously strong attributes, such as his lagless Blaster that could be fired twice in a short hop to control space and snuff approaches to a ridiculous degree and a notoriously fast down aerial, while also having an easy chain throw that worked on nearly every character. He additionally had Falco Phantasm to quickly and safely get to the other side of the stage while hitting you and continuing to Blaster camp away. Falco's hatedom was mainly held back by other characters being even better with even more aggravating playstyles, as well as Falco having some pretty significant weaknesses, such as difficulty KOing, a poor punish game, an awful recovery move, and Falco being heavily vulnerable to chain throws himself.
• Mr. Game and Watch is usually considered a very niche character whose competitive viability is near nonexistent, but in two of his four outings, he proves himself to be frustratingly dangerous.
  • In Smash 4, he became universally despised in doubles matches. Two words: Oil Panic. It now can absorb explosions and the amount of units filled in the tank is now proportional to the absorbed projectile's damage. The end result was a Game-Breaker in Doubles that, in tandem with partners that could feed Game & Watch the projectiles necessary to fill the bucket, could break shields instantly and KO opponents at 0%. As a result, Game & Watch was either soft-banned or outright banned in Doubles and left to become one of the most infuriating characters in the competitive meta. Fortunately, Oil Panic's power in Doubles has since been significantly reduced, which has ultimately removed him from the Scrappy status in Doubles. The same can't be said about his run in Singles, however, as despite the buffs to Oil Panic, Mr. Game & Watch was nerfed overall from Brawl, with said nerfs being significant.
  • Mr. Game & Watch had seen a bumpy run in the previous games, but in Ultimate became a top tier on his own merits with his small hurtbox, insane damage capabilities with an extremely powerful juggling tool in his altered and spammable up air that is the quintessential juggling move that costantly keeps the opponent in the air and powerful smash attacks that are very hard to punish and have great utility (most infamously his spammable down smash, with one of the strongest buries in the game). All four of them have such a generous amount of low ending lag (up aerial lasts for incredibly long and Mr. Game & Watch can act immediately after the hitboxes cease), up smash has invincibility frames when the move is active, his forward aerial now uses a bomb that leaves the opponent stuck in their shield, causing them to be left wide open because the bomb explosion is safe on shield, his neutral aerial covers the space around him and deals high damage, his jab is strong and deals incredibly high damage even for rapid jab standards, his neutral special Chef is a fearsome edgeguarding option that deals significant damage with the food projectiles, down tilt has both fast start-up and now is the strongest in the game, possessing an extremely powerful semi-spike that is only offset by the move's poor range and high ending lag, and several attacks that have become stronger than before, including the afromentioned down tilt, which is only compensated by the fact that his range is noticeably worse now, and forward tilt, which now has so many active frames that it's a scary 2-framing option. However, the most hated part about him is his up-special, Fire. Not only does it come out lightning-fast, but it also now possesses a frame 3 hitbox, provides invincibility during ascent, functions as a combo starter, and Mr. Game & Watch is still capable of using his aerials once the parachute deploys, giving him the best out-of-shield option in the cast, if not the entire game. He's also difficult to punish not just because of the low lag in his attacks, but also because of his style of animation, as he's deliberately animated with choppy animations and minimal frames, making it difficult to see what he's doing combined with how small he is. Another thing that is annoying with him is the RNG: his side special is Judge, which has a generous hitbox size, can KO at absurdly low percents if he gets a 9, and he can combo into it with moves like his jab and up tilt. While he does have some weaknesses like terrible endurance, poor defensive options and a lackluster neutral game, the two-dimensional terror is not a character to be slept on in bracket and is considered very frustrating and oppressive to fight against, which is reflected by his tier placement as he's ranked 18th, one spot below Palutena and one spot above Shulk. He's only the second lowest-ranked top tier character in the first tier list and near the bottom of the S- tier, but his oppressive options with notoriously low ending lag make him one of the most notorious and hated characters by the community for how difficult it is to catch him and punish him and for how he can safely throw out said moves and get away with it, causing him to become the third best character behind Sonic and Steve on the second tier list due a massive tournament presence that has him winning major tournaments. Like with Snake, his rise was also because just like with Sonic and Steve, the metagame shifting to campy playstyles benefitted him. His best player, Miya, is considered one of the Four Horsemen, a group of four players that are dominating the metagame in a similiar way to the Five Gods of Melee.
• Meta Knight is one of the largest High Tier Scrappies in the Smash series, and perhaps one of the biggest examples in all of gaming next to Smash 4 Bayonetta and Cloud and Ultimate Steve.
  • In Brawl, Meta Knight was the best character, full stop. He excelled at everything: he had a host of far-reaching and effective-yet-safe moves that could be spammed with impunity, all but one of his sword-based moves had transcendent priority (meaning they could not clash with other hitboxes, letting him hit through other characters' moves with ease due to his usually superior reach), several strong KO moves that could be safely spammed (most notoriously his down smash), all of his special moves were good for recovery, and the ability to exploit quirks in the game's code made him untouchable. He had no real consequential flaws other than his really light weight; but with how hard it was to hit him at all and his godly recovery that was nigh-impossible to edgeguard, that wasn't much of a flaw as he would still outlast most characters. The result was a character that hard-countered the majority of the cast and won every matchup, and was so good that he was in a "god-tier" above everyone else, the SS tier. Not only that, but as the metagame went on, several characters like Luigi, Pit and R.O.B significantly fell off over the course of the eight tier lists because they fared terribly against him due to having poor range, low attack speed, vulnerability to edgeguarding or lacking a good out-of-shield game, the latter of which had become much more important in Brawl because of its shift to a defensive style where few attacks were safe on shield. Meta Knight had rather low technical demands and was one of the easiest characters to pick up in Brawl, leading to droves of players to main him or use him as a pocket secondary. Meta Knight absolutely dominated tournaments — when the monetary winnings were counted up for tournaments one year, Meta Knight players won over half of the money, and not even Snake was this successful, even though he also had a very large playerbase. Eventually, people got so sick of Meta Knight that Unity Ruleset Committee decided to ban him. The ban didn't stick, as too many high-profile players using Meta Knight were opposed to the ban, and thus many high-profile tournament organizers ignored it. Meta Knight and the failure to ban him is one of most-cited reasons for Brawl's competitive scene declining post-2012 and died completely in 2014.
  • For Smash 4, Meta Knight expectedly got some heavy nerfs, causing his playerbase from Brawl to abandon him. At first, many treated Meta Knight as a low-tier character since he had to play aggressively and thus take more risks and his KO potential has become worse. However, after an update increased the accuracy on his sword attacks, many found a character with highly potent KO combos, above-average speed, and top-tier edgeguarding. His low-tier status disappeared when people discovered the "ladder combo" from his Brawl appearance, the Rufio, was not nerfed. Complacent Gaming Syndrome promptly kicked in; while the metagame didn't completely circulate around this one combo, it was still very powerful. It was not until patch 1.1.5 where this was addressed, making it much more risky to use overall; however, they gave a new toy for Meta Knight to play with in a radically-improved forward air. While players who were over-reliant on his ladder combo dropped him, other players fleshed him out and stated that it wasn't that much of an nerf. Meta Knight remains a high-tier that, while still much more balanced compared to Brawl, is an explosive character that can hand down a lot of trouble.
  • Ultimate once again rained nerfs upon Meta Knight, giving his dash attack higher power and ending lag, and his up air another angle nerf, thus making the ladder combo more situational. Combined with buffs to other characters' mobility, Meta Knight's viability has taken a hit despite some notorious buffs to his tools. While Meta Knight isn't considered to be as much of a high-tier character as in previous games, his core playstyle remains as dangerous as ever.
• Zero Suit Samus is another consistently strong character, who also gets hate for being stronger than the normal Samus, a fact which completely throws Metroid canon out the window.
  • She was among Brawl’s most popular high tiers among the competitive community for being one of the game's flashiest characters. Metroid fans tended to dislike ZSS in general for being Fanservice in its home series, and were especially irate when they found out ZSS was one of the game's best characters, while regular Samus was a perpetual low-tier character rarely seen in tournaments.
  • This carried over into Smash 4, where ZSS became increasingly disliked as her success and prominence grew within the metagame. Widely considered the second-best character in the game, "Zamus" had numerous tools that made her highly dominant. She has extremely fast moves that allow her to dictate the flow of the match, her mobility was among the best in the game and her combo game was lethal. Boost Kick, Zamus' up special, had a large amount of knockback that could KO opponents off the top at low percentages, and even lower with rage and platforms in play. Flip Jump, her down special, not only gives a character that has a tether-recovery another means of recovery, but also has a command kick that, when spaced right, can meteor smash opponents for an early KO. Her down smash also causes paralysis, especially when charged. All this resulted in a character that can claim stocks at a moment's notice and could survive with relative ease, leaving many to complain how broken her moves were. However, Zamus' learning curve is very high, she has some difficult matchups, and knowledge of her moves are needed to fully use her. Despite this, Zamus' dislike had spread and grown beyond the dispute of her usage over her Power Suited version, due to MANY players using her to great success, and earning her the derogatory nickname "Zero Skill Spamus". However, this came full-circle when patches nerfed her hard. Aside from a weight nerf, her Boost Kick and its setups would now KO much later and many of her attacks that could set up to the Flip Jump kick-meteor smash were nowhere near as effective.
  • As for Ultimate, ZSS was originally believed severely nerfed from Smash 4, if not to the cruel extent that Sheik and Bayonetta were. However, after months of metagame development, she's considered a top-tier once again with many of her past strengths remaining. While her up air, down throw, down smash and Boost Kick were nerfed, almost all of her attributes have been buffed in utility and consistency, resulting in a less polarized character that can still overwhelm players. Game updates have given ZSS a few nerfs that have made her playstyle slightly less effective, but while they have pushed her out of being one of the best characters in the game, she still resides comfortably in the high tier. For the first time in the series, however, regular Samus (and her Evil Counterpart Dark Samus) ended up one tier spot higher than her Zero Suited counterpart on the first Ultimate tier list after Samus received several buffs to her KO power and received much better representation, ending the Gameplay and Story Segregation part of her contentious nature for now, the gap between the two would widen further on the second tier list with ZZS dropping down slightly while her armored counterpart would rise up 10 slots. She is still considered a high tier, but she dropped four positions, going from 26th place in the A+ tier to 30th place in the A- tier.
• Solid Snake is the first third-party addition to Smash, and infamous for being an overbearing zoning character.
  • Snake was the game's biggest Lightning Bruiser in Brawl, with ridiculously fast and powerful attacks that had absurdly disjointed hitboxes, on top of some of the best projectiles in the game. His C4 and claymore mines allow for oppressive stage control that forced the opponent to be careful. Snake's dash attack is also the best in the game, as it's fast, powerful, and very safe. His survivability was among the best in the game due to being the third-heaviest character, having a relatively fast falling speed, as well as a long-distanced recovery that could also be extended by blowing himself up with his grenades or C4. In the first year of Brawl, it wasn't uncommon to see over half of a tournament's top-8 using Snake if it wasn't with Meta Knight. As the years went on, players learned to exploit some of Snake's potent disadvantages, while the potential of a few other characters were discovered, Snake ended up losing his demi-god status and dropped in the tier list, though he was still considered a top-tier character.
  • After skipping out on Smash 4, Snake's return in Ultimate saw him quickly reclaim his top tier status. While his more outrageous tools from Brawl were nerfed, Snake still retains many of the key attributes that made him so dominant in Brawl, such as his high power, his stage control thanks to his explosives, a surprisingly good recovery and great endurance. What makes him hated in competitive play is the sheer extremities of his entire kit, causing many players to call him one of the best characters in the game. Snake's Nikita Missile is infamous as one of the best projectiles in the game, having been buffed immensely from Brawl with a much faster, much stronger, and more controllable missile that can invalidate characters that are too slow to weave around it. His up tilt, while not having the over-the-top disjointed hitbox from Brawl, is still just as dangerous thanks to how hard it hits. His aerials deal extreme damage, have surprisingly quick startup apart from forward aerial, their hitboxes are absurdly disjointed, and down aerial is the fastest in the series despite its damage output, coming out on frame 3, while also giving him a vertical boost to the point that he can autocancel it in a short hop. The changes to the engine also greatly benefit Snake, as in addition to his painfully sluggish mobility from Brawl being vastly improved, Snake's Grenades become active instantly, can interrupt combos, do decent damage even when stale, and have a massive blast radius, while his up smash uses a mortar with an explosive projectile with only Palutena's up smash having more vertical reach than it, so he can catch you from anywhere in the air. Unlike a few other top-tier characters, Snake hasn't received any meaningful nerfs in update patches outside of reducing the shield damage of his grenades, his explosives are still very oppressive, and if you are not using Ness or Lucas to absorb the explosions with PSI Magnet or Mr. Game & Watch with Oil Panic, expect him to blow you up over and over again. His attacks have a lot of ending lag, his landing lag on average is one of the worst of the cast alongside Sonic, his mobility is lackluster and his disadvantage state is really bad, sometimes forcing him to take damage from his own projectiles to get out of jams and generally making easy to punish if he messes up, but his strengths outweigh those flaws. In the end, all of these traits in a singular package has once again created a character that players casual and competitive alike dread to fight, which is reflected by his tier placement of being ranked 15th. He is now considered to be one of the best characters, if not the best behind Steve, Sonic and Game & Watch as of the second tier list as he has only since risen, now ranked 4th both due to a strong tournament presence and because he contributed alongside them to favour a campy metagame.
• Diddy Kong has been a long-time offender of this trope, with his infuriating Banana Peels, fast moves with surprisingly good range due to how stretchy his limbs are animated, and annoying chimpanzee screeches getting on many a player's nerves.
  • In Brawl, while the hatred towards him never approached the levels of many other characters, players discovered and showcased just how strong his Banana Peels were, giving him a defensive gameplan as well as stage control that completely changed how players had to play the game. By the end of Brawl, he was considered the fourth-best character, and while he didn't get as much a hatedom as the three characters ranked higher than him, many players wouldn't root for Diddy when he was fighting anyone else but them.
  • Diddy managed to emerge as one of the best fighters in Smash 4 while also being one of the least technical, giving him a rather low learning curve. He had a highly quick and effective combo throws that could easily lead to a chain of aerials at low damages, while leading to unavoidable KO follow-ups at high damages. This is on top of his moveset containing fast and hard-hitting moves with surprisingly good reach, some of the best grabs in the game, and his up-air being an incredibly fast move that could hit far below Diddy and above him at the same time. While it was debatable if Diddy was actually the best character, Complacent Gaming Syndrome set in hard as competitive players swarmed to Diddy in droves, and tournaments ended up featuring many Diddy dittos. Diddy would go from 9th place in the first tier list to 1st in the second one, overthrowing Sheik, and he would become widely despised by both the competitive and casual community — aside from his utter dominance of the metagame, his boring, repetitive playstyle, low learning curve and schreechy sound effects made him a despised character by players of all sorts. Fortunately, nerfs in patches caused some people to abandon him; you'd better believe people were happy about that.That being said, he would still remain a highly valuable character in tournaments even after the nerfs though luckily he was less dominant as he was prior. He's now in second place, tied with Cloud.
  • In Ultimate, Diddy was initially on the opposite side of the spectrum, with many of his strong tools from Smash 4 being nerfed, most notably his up special, which severely hampered his vertical recovery distance and made him pathetically easy to spike, especially with how the charged version was reduced to, while his most pivotal moves in neutral and some of his combo starters had more ending lag or worse range, with up aerial in particular having its animation sped up without changing its hitboxes, creating a blindspot right in front of him. As such, many early tier lists had Diddy Kong as a mid or even low-tier character. However, patch 3.1.0 would grant him a plethora of helpful buffs, like in his low KO potential, pushing him back into the high-tiers, which is reflected by his tier placement being ranked 12th on the first official tier list. The most dedicated Diddy players will still be a competitive threat, with a lot of Diddy mains saying that he beats the majority of the top and high-tiers, making him a good anti-meta pick. This was also confirmed in the second tier list, as he remained in the S- tier, but rose three spots up to 9th place. As a result, he's only considered slightly worse than SSB 4.
• Sonic the Hedgehog is an odd example. His introduction left several fans pleased — who didn't want to see Mario and Sonic duking it out? — but the Blue Blur has become well-known for (ironically) having a very slow playstyle. Even though he started out mediocre, he still has a strong negative stigma across all installments he appears.
  • When he came in for Brawl, Sonic had incredible mobility, including the fastest run speed (to no one's shock). Sonic's Spin Dash and Spin Charge give him great approaches, and his recovery was also really good. Combine that with effective throws, and Sonic has a moveset designed for a Victory by Endurance through Death of a Thousand Cuts. However, Sonic had several issues, mainly because he was added very late in the game. His moveset was uninspired and struggled to stand out, his hitboxes are overall poor, especially since multihits weren't that reliable back then because of SDI, and his poor range and lack of reliable KO and edgeguarding options makes it really hard for him to close out a stock. His lack of a true projectile outside of the spring that Sonic leaves behind after Spring Jump also makes him reliant on hit-and-run tactics. These issues ultimately near-cripple Sonic's moveset, to the point he had to adapt a very patient playstyle. He was the victim of many derogatory jokes for Brawl, often labeled as a boring character who could only stall to win matches. Sonic would later rise to be a stable mid-tier character in the late parts of the game's lifespan, but it was never enough to erase the negative opinion players had of him.
  • His appearance in 3DS/Wii U is even more disliked. Although his damage output was reduced and his mobility is a little less extreme compared to the rest of the cast, his moveset was overall improved in terms of utility, and Sonic is no longer a slouch on offense. His relatively unchanged mobility is still superior to everyone else's, which allows him to rushdown if the opportunity arises and, much like in Brawl, allows him to literally run circles around much of the cast when he has the lead. Because of his extreme ground speed, tournament matches often showed Sonic players stalling until they let time run out and win by stock lead when they get the advantage in stock and percentage, especially by spamming Spin Dash and Spin Charge, which slows down the pacing of the match and leads to a lot of occasions where his opponents are forced to chase him down and play by his rules, ultimately losing because of the inability to keep up with his speed and the common strategy to camp when he has the advantage until time runs out. The result is a top tier that's incredibly frustrating for many players to fight and watch, and who routinely places well in tournaments, being in 7th place out of 55 characters in the tier list, tied with Fox.
    • One notable instance on which Sonic averted this was in The Big House 6. Seven Sonic mains^note 6WX, Craftis, Manny, Seagull Joe, SuperGirlKels, True Blue and komorikiri (while Wrath also entered the tournament, he reportedly didn't participate in the pact) entered the tournament, each holding possession of a Chaos Emerald, making a pact where each time a Sonic main was eliminated from bracket, they would pass on their Chaos Emerald to a Sonic main still in bracket. This didn't go unnoticed within the community, who praised the heartwarming pact the players made. The player who ended up with all seven Chaos Emeralds was komorikiri, who would proceed to finish the tournament with a very respectable third-place finish, much to the community's delight.
  • Ultimate handed Sonic some well-placed nerfs; not only was he made much lighter, but his up aerial has received changes to its first hit that worsen its ability to connect into the second hit, as its knockback was reduced to the point that it fails to follow Sonic's momentum when he jumps, Spring Jump has lost most of its intangibility and gives him 10 frames of landing lag, up throw has more ending lag, making the spring-assisted follow-ups less reliable, and Spin Dash and Spin Charge were significantly toned down: Spin Dash can no longer be shield canceled (though the dreaded Spin-shot technique still exists though far harder to pull off due to the nerf), both Spin Dash and Spin Charge stop the when hit shields unable to cross-up shielding opponents unless they are fully charged and the charge cannot be held indefinitedly, as Sonic will now release the charge after two seconds for Spin Dash and three seconds for Spin Charge. Despite this, Sonic still received some buffs to compensate, namely an improvement to his already outstanding mobility, a heavily buffed Homing Attack that can be used as a recovery and combo options and with stronger KO potential at full charge as well as to throw off attempts to block/dodge it, and a more serviceable standard moveset. An example is his forward smash, whose animation has been altered, making the blue hedgehog's arm really stretchy and increased its range, making the hitbox more disjointed. This move wins against most hitboxes and cancels them, even projectiles, and this happens because Sonic doesn't have hurtboxes that cover his hands, only on his wrists. As a result, despite an initial mediocre perception, his nerfs were not enough to stop the Blue Blur, who has once again ascended to the high tiers, still being able to make use of a defensive playstyle on slower characters and win by time-outs by actively running away, but now having more impressive offensive tools that let him shift to an offensive approach if the opponent can catch up to him by some miracle. Among his best moves, his up aerial is hard to deal with even with the first hit not connecting to the second one as well, as it's fast, has good power, and like in the previous games, a mistake in its code also makes its autocancel window overly generous, as it should autocancel at frame 27, but the coding error causes it to autocancel at frame 16, immediately after the hitboxes cease (this was also the case with Cloud's up aerial in "Smash 4", though Ultimate corrected this). Additionally, due to the closure of events as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, tournaments were forced to be run online, which also altered the metagame for this period. Even small amounts of lag can result in punishment options being not nearly as consistent. Guess who benefits from having an outstanding mobility? Yup. Just like R.O.B, who already had safe tilts and aerials on shield, Sonic also greatly benefited from the online metagame because of the input lag, becoming even harder to punish, and it was hard enough to catch up with him offline, but in online tournaments, he can exploit this to his advantage, which makes catching him and punishing him pretty much impossible. In the meantime, some of the notorious attributes of Spin Dash and Spin Charge were still present, like Spin Dash still having its 5 intangibility frames immediately after the charge is released and even ignoring Banjo & Kazooie's Wonderwing, which has invincibility, this meaning that it was still overly risky to try and stop Sonic from using it, and even then, both of them received some buffs: Spin Charge's hits are now much harder to escape due to alterations to their angle and knockback, and while Spin Dash's charge can only be held for two seconds at most, he can now bypass it by starting the move on the ground, jump-cancel it, which now allows him to keep its charge and then release it in the air, as the code doesn't consider the charge released until he lands and comes back to the ground, and Spin Dash itself is still safe on shield even though now it has to be charged to perform cross-ups. As a result, they were both still often used to camp opponents with Sonic's burst movement and unmatched speed and thus win via time-outs, especially when used in the air. Since Sonic's speed has received the universal increase like everyone else, this also benefits him more because his difference in speed is even higher and turned into another frustrating factor that he can exploit by forcing his opponents to play cat and mouse with him and lose at his own game until time runs out, as these attributes, in spite of the nerfs to Spin Dash and Spin Charge, still give him complete control over the stage, one of the best neutral games of the cast and burst options that are very difficult to react to, with Spin Dash and Spin Charge being easily confused due to being overly similar outside of the former hitting only once and the latter hitting multiple times, lacking intangibility on start-up and Sonic not being able to jump-cancel it. Even worse, updates buffed him instead of nerfing him: Spin Charge and Spin Dash no longer cause Sonic to lose his double jump when used on platforms and landing on the ground, correcting a bug, up tilt and dash attack have less lag and became even safer and his up smash is faster and received more intangibility on Sonic's body as he jumps. The frustration towards Sonic and ridicule of him would become even worse than in 3DS/Wii U, and due to how his strategies in competitive play often consisted in spamming Spin Dash and Spin Charge (especially the former) and actively running away from opponents once he gets the lead, slowing down the pacing of matches to a crawl and making them boring to watch like in the previous game, he became so hated that many wanted him and only him banned from online tournaments because the input lag would give him an unfair advantage, while others even put up cash bounties to eliminate Sonic players from brackets. Despite the solid nerfs, he ended up still being one of the best characters in the game, being 4th out of 82, only below Steve, Pyra/Mythra and Joker on the first official tier list due to Spin Dash and Spin Charge still being incredibly strong and having very few losing matchups, combined with a strong playerbase and strong results from the likes of Sonix, KEN, and Taikei, with the former dominating the metagame and becoming one of the Four Horsemen, and his attributes made him one of the more notorious top tiers in Ultimate. He would eventually supplant the Ageis and Joker (due to them having major weaknesses that caused them to fall, such as Pyra's poor frame data and slow moves and a horrid recovery for both of them) as the 2nd best character come the second tier list as the Blue Blue is now ranked 2nd because it turned out that his mobility made him the best counter for Steve due to his unmatched speed and Ultimate's metagame shifting to a campier playstyle that benefits him, with many believing he can take Steve's top spot.
• Olimar is considered a high-tier scrappy due to his Pikmin mechanic encouraging a campy, defensive playstyle.
  • In Brawl, Olimar was an agonizingly difficult character to approach, could outcamp every character in the game, had a broken grab that could shield grab nearly everything, and powerful-yet-quick moves to force enemies back out when they finally got in. While he had a poor aerial game with a godawful recovery in Pikmin Chain (which is made even worse depending on the number of Pikmin Olimar had on hand), he could use his Pikmin Order for instant Super Armor to snuff attempts to exploit them. By the end of Brawl’s lifespan, Olimar was considered the third-best character in the game under Meta Knight and the Ice Climbers; for some players, Olimar was even worse.
  • In Smash 4, Olimar saw prominent nerfs that resulted in his tier placement dropping quite a bit. The most notable of these nerfs was to the amount of Pikmin that he could pull out being reduced from six to three. Additionally, all types of Pikmin had their HP reduced across the board with the exception of White Pikmin, and drastically weakening Olimar’s camping ability. Furthermore, most of his moves saw nerfs to their frame data as well, the most notable one being his up smash gaining over twenty frames of endlag. However, Olimar did receive quite a few buffs, with Winged Pikmin functioning as a vastly superior recovery compared to Pikmin Chain and significantly improving his survivability (though now Olimar has to sacrifice his Pikmin for the Winged Pikmin to be truly good as the extra Pikmin worsens the recovery attempt). Though Olimar was far less dominant in Smash 4 compared to Brawl, he was still considered a high-tier character by the end of the game’s competitive lifespan and had multiple professionals representing him in tournaments.
  • Olimar once again rose to greatness in the early Ultimate competitive scene. His Ultimate incarnation has often been cited as his best yet thanks to his admirable juggling game, ability to spam Pikmin Order even faster and abuse its super armor more often, and his incredible zoning abilities with his even quicker and much deadlier Pikmin smash attacks. To make matters worse, all his throws and his aerials except for neutral aerial, became way stronger and more damaging, especially when using the right Pikmin. Many detractors often bemoaned the character, perceiving his play style as grating to watch. Olimar was nerfed significantly over the course of patches, increasing his hurtboxes, weakening his pressure and safety, and weakening his recovery on repeated usage. While this removed Olimar from the "best character" talks, the captain is still a very frightening high-tier character that lurks in the meta and draws the ire out of players and spectators alike. In the first tier list, he was a high tier in the A- tier, at 28th place, but then dropped five spots into the B+ tier.
• Cloud Strife has always been problematic since his debut thanks to his very low-learning curve and Lightning Bruiser design, which allows him to be played effectively at all levels of skill.
  • In 3DS/Wii U, he blossomed into Scrappydom just days after his release. Cloud is relatively fast, decently heavy, and has some of the most powerful and safe attacks in the game, especially thanks to the range he had on his attacks with the Buster Sword. At full Limit charge, his already fast mobility is increased further until he uses a special move and his special attacks become Limit Break variants that can KO opponents earlier while retaining their safety. Limit Charge also becomes Finishing Touch, a move that can net Cloud KOs at moderately low percents. While Cloud's uncharged recovery is his greatest weakness, it isn't nearly as exploitable as Little Mac's thanks to Cloud's vastly superior aerial game. For example, his up aerial has pretty good power, is fast, has a lot of range even in front of him and a coding error causes it to autocancel as soon as the hitboxes stop becoming active. Cloud is one of the hardest characters to counterpick, since his kit overshadowed his recovery issues and terrible throws and renders any counterplay designed against him moot. Couple that with the fact that Cloud is one of the most popular video game heroes ever, and you get one of the most severe cases of Complacent Gaming Syndrome that Smash has ever seen. And if that wasn't enough, Cloud is also one of the few characters to be considered a High-Tier Scrappy not only in Singles, but in Doubles as well; thanks to "throw enemy into Limit Break specials or Finishing Touch" combos, the meta was stagnated with Character X/Cloud dittos, to the point that he had to be banned from doubles in 2018 because he was even more dominant in doubles than Meta Knight in singles. Towards the end of the game's competitive lifespan, Cloud was widely considered the second best character in the game, only behind Bayonetta.
  • In Ultimate, Cloud ended up getting nerfed, as expected; the biggest change is that Limit Break can only be held for 15 seconds, if he gets hit while charging the Limit Gauge, it gets partially depleted, and he now takes 6 frames to cancel the charge instead of canceling it instantly. As a result of his nerfs, he has more defined weaknesses in one of the worst grab games of the cast, limited or ineffective options against shields, especially with how Cross Slash is now slowed down if it hits a shield due to the changes to hitlag, lackluster and linear approach options and an exploitable recovery. However, Cloud still lurks in higher end of the tier list due to his power and low-learning curve making him more of a Skill Gate Character. The engine changes also greatly benefitted Cloud, as while his air game was worsened (especially his notorious up air which was given reduced power, a less generous autocancel window and higher start up, making it much harder for it to hit grounded opponents), the universal reduction of landing lag mitigated this. Just like before, Cloud is heavily used during in online play thanks to his powerful punish game and strong neutral. Cloud was still considered highly of in spite the nerfs, and this improved further after he gained a few buffs in 7.0.0, notably to his recovery sweetspotting the ledge quicker, thus making him harder to edgeguard, his up-smash being a better kill option that can be done out of Shield due to its faster frame data, and Finishing Touch now combo'ing into more set ups such as up air or up tilt. As of now, Cloud is generally considered the 10th best character in the game and ranked at the to S- tier on the first official tier list and then fell three spots in 13th place, now in the A- tier, so he's only considered slightly worse than in Smash 4.

Super Smash Bros.

• Kirby is notorious in Smash 64 for his very fast and massively disjointed up tilt that shuts down most approaches, while easily comboing into itself and other moves. Not only that, he also has nasty range on several of his kick-based moves, and has one of the best horizontal air speeds in the game. Kirby is additionally perceived to be one of the game's "easiest" characters to play, which makes some players dislike him and those who play him even more.
• Captain Falcon's flashy playstyle has earned him a large amount of success ever since the original game, with only a brief time as a bottom-tier character in Brawl. However, even though he is generally beloved now, players dislike going against him in the original game. As the fastest runner in 64, Falcon can easily get in and abuse his excellent aerials, most notoriously his up air, which can lead into his notorious "Stairway to Heaven", the original ladder combo. His combo game is deadly enough that he's actually Pikachu's worst matchup, as he can regularly KO it before it even gets the chance to recover. However, much like Fox, his recovery is also quite exploitable, and he particularly struggles to approach Kirby. Even so, Falcon lurks beneath Pikachu and Kirby in the original game's tier list, with only Kirby giving Falcon any real trouble.

Super Smash Bros. Melee

• Jigglypuff became the competitive community's most detested character with the advent of pro Puff player Hungrybox emerging to dominate Melee tournaments. In short, Jigglypuff is the antithesis of what players like about Melee — extremely floaty, relying on walling opponents out and camping rather than on aggressive offense, an amazing recovery that is difficult to edgeguard, making little use of the game's advanced techniques, having Rest to get a near-instant One-Hit KO on just about anyone, and being an overall less technical character than anyone else. The outrage over Puff would cool down over a few years in the early-mid 2010s as Hungrybox started winning a lot fewer tournaments, while there remained barely any top level Jigglypuff players outside of him, none of which were threats to ever win a major. It however flared back up in the later 2010s when Hungrybox started dominating tournaments again (including winning EVO), and he became the game's #1 ranked player for a few years. Other top players like Leffen stoked the flames by calling for ruleset changes to nerf Puff, like a limit to air time or even ledge-camping only on Jigglypuff. This culminated in an incident where one particularly disgruntled person threw a crab at Hungrybox after he won Pound 2019. After that, competitive Melee players realized how far things had gone and largely backed off of both Hungrybox and Puff (at least in public), though it hasn't stopped some players from keeping the anti-Puff fires burning because of Puff's floaty and defensive style of play.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

• Lucario became a highly exciting high tier fighter (despite being on the lower end of the high tier list). This is due to a powerful combination of being a heavy mid-weight with floaty mechanics (which the floaty defensive style of Brawl perfectly compliments him) granting him incredible survivability, by far the best traction of the entire cast making it very rare for him to trip himself up in the game's notorious tripping mechanic, boasting some of the best aerial attacks that can easily chain into each other (next to the notorious Meta Knight) along with a down-air that can make Lucario stall himself in the air, much like Fox's Reflector ^note (allowing him to keep himself from self-destructing and to edge-guard risky opponents who attempt to edge-guard Lucario himself), boasting a decently good neutral jab that can be jab-cancelled into anything and can be even linked into a powerful chain grab game via his notorious up throw that can effect literally everyone on the entire cast (including Meta Knight) which he can use said jab-cancel to link into any of his grounded tilts, Smash attacks, or his Side B Force Palm special (which can be chained into itself to deadly effect) or his powerful aerials and rack up insane amounts of damage very quickly, giving the Aura martial artist one of the best combo games in the highly anti-combo based Brawl next to Meta Knight and a few others. But what sent Lucario into the high tier scrappydom was his powerful Aura mechanic, which heavily buffs all of Lucario's aura based attacks the more damage he takes and the more stocks he loses in a match, turning almost all of his attacks that uses Aura into deadly KO's, especially his powerful up air, down air, back air, his Smash Attacks and his Force Palm into a near One-Hit Kill if Lucario catches them into a combo leading into it and turning his powerful Double-Team counterattack into a deadly One-Hit Kill finisher or combo starter. Giving Lucario literal Ganondorf levels of power the more he's on the losing end, on top of an insane combo game to go with it (making him as close of Ryu as one could get), to the point he's actually one of Meta Knight's very few even matchups (with only fellow rep Pikachu, Fox and Wolf coming close) that's not an outright curbstomp. The only reasons Lucario didn't get sent even higher into the top tiers was due to a multitude of factors that works against him: 1. He's moderately slow moving on the ground ^note (making it very hard for Lucario to actually get in close to deal damage, especially on larger stages and against faster characters who are higher tiered than him, such as Pikachu, forcing foes to approach him). 2. His poor neutral game ^note (despite boasting powerful jab-cancels, up throw chain-grab and decent Smash attacks, all have some slow start-up making it easy to interrupt with characters who have faster attacking speed, he also had a notoriously unimpressive dash attack that had poor range for a dash attack and sent opponents flying backwards when connecting rather than forwards, making follow-ups outside of a lucky back air all but impossible to pull off, he also lacks a proper meteor smash outside of his Final Smash's initial take off. And last but not least, he needs his high Aura to actually score K.O's, which he can't do at all with low Aura without aggressive edge-guarding, and Force Palm despite it's powerful chain-grabbing ability to rack up damage at low Aura is really easy to escape from at lower percentages). 3. His mediocre recovery ^note (for starters, Extreme Speed goes a decent distance (which is made better if Lucario hits a wall to cling on to extend his recovery as he has the best wall jumping capabilities in the game), but deals no damage if it passes through anyone and isn't affected by the Aura boost, making it pathetically easy to spike Lucario off stage during the recovery), and 4. Brawl's death in the fighting game scene in 2014.
• Toon Link, while generally considered one of Brawl's most boring high tiers, wasn't hated to a significant degree by the competitive community. However, people who dislike Wind Waker and its Link (especially with the direction the series took in the early-to-mid 2000's, resulting in Wind Waker only receiving a better reception from the Western audience in the 2010's, when Brawl was already released by then) were shocked to find out that Toon Link was high-tier while regular Link was bottom-tier, causing some of them to refuse to believe it and jump on the anti-tier bandwagon (similar to the Samus-Zero Suit Samus tier controversy). In short: Toon Link was The Scrappy for those people anyway, but the fact that he's a high-tier character and Adult Link is not made it even worse. The reason for the discrepancy is that Toon Link is shorter and harder to hit, much faster than Link, his moves were faster and harder to punish and he had a better recovery; two of Adult Link's weakest traits throughout the Smash series (especially in 64 and in this game).

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/3DS

• Luigi was initially one of the game's most well-liked top/high tiers, when he unexpectedly emerged as a really potent threat after the first balance patch. It especially helped that his most high-profiled players tended to be flashy, and Luigi was a potential counter to Diddy Kong. However, after Diddy's nerf, Luigi mostly took up the mantle of "high tier character with easy throw combos", leading to many of the fair-weather players that abandoned Diddy post-nerf moving on to Luigi. With the influx of Luigi players abusing his throw combos, Luigi picked up the ire of players and became as complained about as the aforementioned top-tiers. Unlike pre-patch Diddy, the rest of Luigi's moveset outside his throw combos and his aerials isn't very good, and he has poor mobility, especially in the air, that can be easily exploited. When the first tier list was released, he was 16th, though he was considered a high-mid tier due to how the tier list was portrayed. Because of all the complaints, Luigi was noticeably nerfed. In patch 1.1.0, down tilt was turned in one of his worst moves because its vertical angle was turned into the Sakurai angle, removing its combo potential, and while he had received a few buffs earlier, the nerfs in patch 1.1.1 outweigh them, as his down throw received altered knockback that forced his playerbase to adapt to its changes, as it removed some combos and reduced the effectiveness of the remaining ones and the altered shield mechanics with the increased shieldstun worsened his out-of-shield game because of him having the worst traction of the cast, making it harder for him to punish out-of-shield. Alongside some solidly losing matchups being introduced, this led to his playerbase under-performing at national tournaments despite being a dominant force at local and regional tournaments, and several of his players dropped him after the down throw nerf, giving the worst fall between tier lists in the game tied with Wario, dropping down thirteen spots down to 29th place, in the middle. After a while, however, he recovered after his metagame was developed by his best players and new combos were discovered, getting better results in national tournaments and respectable results even in majors, and in the fourth and final tier list, he was tied with Link for the best rise compared to the previous tier list, rising eight spots at 18th place, just a small drop from the first one and becoming a solid high tier, showing that the nerfs to his down throw weren't as bad as people thought, as it still kept its combo potential, which was even better at low and mid percents due to the altered knockback. While he was mostly nerfed directly due to lower KO power outside of back aerial and a reduced distance on his recovery, he was one of the most improved veterans in the transition alongside his brother Mario, as the removal of mechanics from Brawl allow him to use his powerful combos and amazing aerial game to the fullest.
• In custom moves-legal tournaments, Villager becomes one of the most hated characters. Villager gets access to Timber Counter, which in its sapling stage trips opponents who move into its vicinity while lasting a long time and having no way for the opponent to get rid of it. Extreme Balloon Trip makes Villager's recovery more difficult to edgeguard (as the Balloons explode when contacted with). The biggest sticking point though, as these two moves can be combined together to give Villager the ability to safely plank. While Villager remains safe on the ledge, he can chip away at the opponent with his slingshot and Lloid Rockets, pocketing any projectiles the opponent throws out at him, and the opponent is disrupted farther by the exploding balloons. The result is Villager being able to time out opponents with appalling ease once he has the damage lead. While shockingly effective against players unfamiliar with it, this tactic has many counters and work-arounds by players who are familiar with it. As such, no Villager ever won a major custom-legal tournament. This fact, does little to placate players who despise custom Villager, and is one of the biggest reasons that many players turned against legalizing custom moves alongside the Mii's customs moves and some of Palutena's, which were also considered broken. Villager was also considered annoying without custom moves due to their powerful zoning and camping abilities, which are strengthened by their slingshot-using forward and back aerial, and even though they dropped over time due their low speed, results not as good as other top tiers and their best player retiring from competitive play reducing their representation, they would remain a fearsome high tier.
• Rosalina and Luma had always been considered difficult to deal with due to their Puppet Fighter mechanic, while also being widely considered to be one of the most "boring" characters to watch. This dislike for the character escalated when players started to realize how powerful Luma really was in the hands of a skilled player, having attacks with immense knockback. However, Rosalina and Luma actually have little success in the tourney scene compared to other top tiers, as her worst matchups are not only with characters that are highly prominent in competitive play, but to characters with mobility quick enough to break their zone and overwhelm Rosalina. Despite these points and the frequent nerfs to Luma's HP, Rosalina and Luma still remain disliked for their highly defensive play and potentially potent offense thanks to Luma, and they're ranked 5th in the tier list.
• The Smash 4 appearance of Bayonetta is the most hated fighter across all of Smash alongside Cloud and surpassing the hatred of Brawl Meta Knight. She and Cloud helped create a "pay to win" stigma upon DLC characters, with Cloud starting the trend and Bayonetta codifying it. Her damage output per combo and punish were regarded as the best in the game by miles, giving her the much deserved nickname Queen of Combos (to compliment Ryu's King of Combos). She could tack on massive amounts of damage per punish, even creating conditional "touches of death" for a single mistake on the opponent's part. And with a combination of range and priority, Bayonetta could catch mistakes easily. Her recovery is nigh-untouchable, and challenging it even allowed Bayonetta to edgeguard or combo back in return. Witch Time is the best "Counter-Attack" in the game, able to slow down opponents for a free smash attack, stifling a recovery, or an easy edgeguard. She also has the best dodges in the game thanks to Bat Within, which allows Bayonetta to take zero knockback and only half-damage. While her weaknesses are enough to allow punishes, they're nothing compared to her benefits, stirring up a massive controversy as to whether or not Bayonetta should even be legal. Update 1.1.6 was dedicated to mostly nerfing just Bayonetta. But even with these nerfs, Bayonetta's punish game remained intact. The Bayonetta hatred reared its ugly head during the grand finals of EVO 2018 one year and a half later, where a Bayonetta ditto between CaptainZack and Lima led to much of the audience walking out after they didn't take the match seriously and they spent almost two minutes in charging Bullet Climax until they were finally told to just get on with the match, with CaptainZack even saying he received death threats and was accused of "ruining the game".

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

This game's overall meta took its time to form, due to the number of characters, roster, and balance only finalizing in December 2021 with the final DLC batch. But there are a few characters that people have been keeping their eye on. Once the meta stabilized, these and more characters proved strong enough to earn infamy in the competitive scene, some more than others because of the lack of counterplay and encouraging a campy playstyle to avoid their pitfalls.

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• After a tumultuous roller coaster of tier placements in the previous games, Ultimate has Ness appear in indisputably his best incarnation yet, as he received a large amount of buffs. His PK Fire got a huge buff which allows him to not only rack up insane damage very quickly, but also eviscerate his prey's stamina (and PK Fire was already hated enough as it was, especially in casual play). His new up aerial is more versatile, as it has less ending lag and much better combo potential. His yo-yo smash attacks had their charging hitboxes restored, and can now even be used off the edge, meaning that he can two-frame opponents^note which means to hit them during the two frames they are vulnerable during their ledge-grabbing animation with around a four second window as opposed to the eponymous two frames. Also, he majorly benefits from having the best directional air dodge in the game alongside Lucas, vastly improving his recovery. His PK Thunder has become even more annoying, as the changes to air dodges make it even harder to avoid, and it's a risk for some characters to even try challenging his recovery, since they risk getting hit by his rocket and dying at ridiculously low percentages. Last but not least, his PSI Magnet was given a hitbox that guarantees follow-ups, further boosting his combo game. Competitively, his worst matchups continue to be against characters who outrange him, such as most of the Sword characters, or who beat his aerials with their own and edgeguard him. Ness still has his weaknesses, but due to his already established infamy, Ness is a widely hated character to fight regardless of whether his skill level means he's either the most dangerous or the most preyed on fighter in the ring. This is shown in his tier placement as he's ranked 40th on the first official tier list, putting him as the second highest ranked mid-tier behind Captain Falcon, though people think that he should be higher. However, in the second tier list, he dropped seven spots in the B- tier at 47th place, and his competitive perception is mixed: while he's considered a high tier in America, not so much in Japan.
• Peach had a strong game out of the gate, and has only gone higher. While she was always placed generally high on previous games, her buffs have seen the princess get called a "monster". Her aerial attacks combined with her exclusive ability to float make her reign supreme in the air, along with amazing edgeguarding techniques, buffs to her turnip throws, and counters with Toad that make it extremely daunting to recover against her. Her combo ability is some of the game's best, improved thanks to her new faster down tilt, buffs to her turnips and mechanics that she can exploit while keeping her very safe down aerial, and she's got several kill moves that she can exploit. Also, using float breaks one of Ultimate's new mechanics, the short hop multiplier, which reduces the damage output of your aerials by a 15% reduction in damage percentage if you perform them out of a short hop, as Peach can ignore this rule and bypass it by doing a full hop and floating close to the ground, and combined with her powerful aerials, she dominates in the air as a result. Peach getting upsets in early Ultimate tournaments over the topmost players only further increased her reputation. She received some noticeable nerfs, like removing most of the KO potential in her back throw, reducing the KO power in her forward aerial, more ending lag on Peach Bomber when it connects, reducing its safety on shield, and giving her slightly more ending lag when using turnips, but that didn't stop her. However, unlike much of the prior high-tier scrappy contenders, Peach also doubles as a very high-skill based character by the community, since the amount of precise inputs and timings needed to push Peach to her "monster" limits makes her one of the most technical characters. This is reflected in Peach's tier placement as she's ranked 9th place, putting her in the S tier, one spot above Cloud and below Roy. She then fell to the S- tier, but rose two spots in 7th place.
  • By virtue of being her Echo Fighter, this also applies to Daisy. That being said, Peach is much more infamous for this trope than Daisy; before update 3.0.0, players discovered that Daisy's turnips deal more base knockback with less scaling, hampering both her low-percent combo game and high-percent kill power in comparison to Peach, as well as having altered animations on her idle and running animations that make her hurtbox slightly wider in comparison. However, the difference between Peach and Daisy's turnips was removed in the aforementioned update 3.0.0, putting Daisy on more equal ground with her base fighter. She's also ranked in 9th on the first official tier list, alongside her base fighter.
• Pichu got major buffs in Ultimate which turned it from a Fragile Speedster Joke Character into a nightmarish Glass Cannon. Its weaknesses remain mostly intact, but its attacks do far more damage, and the rage mechanic boosts its killing power every time it hurts itself. People began to hate Pichu for being fast, mobile, hard-to-hit, and an all-or-nothing playstyle that can either dominate a stock or get KOed from one mistake. The release of the 3.1.0 update nerfed Pichu significantly by increasing its hurtbox size, weakening its forward tilt, and greatly augmenting the self-damage it takes. Ever since that patch, Pichu has fallen from top-tier and been supplanted by Pikachu; however, update 11.0.0 undid some of the nerfs to its recoil damage, and Agility now deals even less recoil damage than in the base game, and made its neutral air safer by giving it intangibility on its ears. Overall, the greater rewards and ease of KOing opponents Pichu made it a high-tier threat in the meta, though it ultimately is ranked as a mid-tier due to its major weaknesses from Melee carrying over, being its lack of range and endurance, and after 3.1.0, many of Pichu's best players either dropped it or relegated to a secondary, with the buffs to 11.0.0 not doing enough to restore its representation.
• Roy has been quite disappointing in Melee and 3DS/Wii U, but his Ultimate appearance ended the "low tier" view of him. Since launch, Roy was noted to have received excellent buffs, with the fourth forward hit of Double-Edge Dance receiving increased range and greatly increased power now capable of KOing the opponent earlier than some charged Smash Attacks, Double-Edge Dance in general has been generally sped up like Dancing Blade, but without reducing the swings' damage output like it and his Flare Blade capable of turning around to hit unsuspecting opponents with a lethal blow. He also benefitted heavily from the game's universal changes; the significantly increased shieldstun, faster mobility, and lower landing lag make it a real hassle to get him off. Roy's fast frame data and very good mobility now properly compensate for his shorter effective range and mesh much better with his aggressive close-combat fighting style, allowing him to rack damage fast, keep his aggression and advantage going, and KO at rather low percentages with the significant improvements to his KO potential, especially since his aerial game has improved significantly due to all his aerials becoming stronger and down aerial receiving an increase in range. Initially, Roy's viability compared to Chrom was a topic of debate, with some players claiming Roy is better due to his more explosive damage, while others said that Chrom was more consistent in damage; over time, Roy gained a more positive reception thanks to having that increased-damage potential and a more flexible and better recovery in disadvantage compared to Chrom, as his Blazer has more horizontal distance than Chrom's Soaring Slash and can be angled to reach farther horizontal distances. In the end, Roy is now the best he has ever been, so his future has shined unlike in the previous titles. And this is shown in the first official tier list, ranking him at 8th, putting the Boy as an S-tier, one spot behind Kazuya but one spot above both Princess Peach and Daisy. The second official list would see him drop out of the S tier and into the A tier, primarily because his main weaknesses from Melee and 3DS/Wii U are still apparent, and due to a slight lack of tournament representation. He dropped eleven positions, but he's still considered a fearsome high tier.
  • His echo fighter, Chrom was thought to be one of the best swordfighters in the game at launch (sharing many of the same non-tippered gimmicks as his daughter Lucina), though as the meta evolved, this notion was given to his original base fighter in Roy. His recovery is highly exploitable (and is in the running for the absolute worst recovery move in Ultimate up there with Little Mac's and Incineroar's), but this is mitigated when said recovery move lets him take his opponent with him for even trying to edgeguard him. He can even combo his aerial attacks into this move to suicide kill his opponent at basically any percent; this is nicknamed the "Chrombo". He fell off a few months after releasing due to the 2.0.0 patch making his suicide kill weaker and harder to pull off, and players being more able to exploit his recovery (especially with characters who pack powerful counterattacks that can shut his recovery down). However, even without his Death or Glory strategy, he can still do his combos and rack up severe damage (though he also has a far weaker version of Roy's Double-Edge Dance); this along with his sheer pressure makes him one of the most oppressive characters in the game, being pretty difficult to shoo him off. Initially, Chrom's viability compared to Roy was a topic of debate, with some players claiming Chrom was better due to his overall safer attacks (which again he shares with his daughter Lucina as they don't rely on landing tippers), his consistency over Roy's raw damage capabilities, and his easier learning curve, which reminded many of the old Marth vs Roy debates back in Melee. Ultimately Chrom was ranked 43rd on the first official tier list, putting him as a mid-tier simply because of his highly exploitable recovery. He would drop even further on the list with the second tier list, putting him alongside Marth as one of the worst of the 4 Echoes, with many projecting him to fall further.
• After a very lackluster 3DS/Wii U, Wario would rise to this position in Ultimate. His dash attack is an incredibly fast and powerful kill move with a lot of range, and his combo game was buffed into something truly frightening. He also has surprisingly disjointed attacks, as like with Sonic, he has no hurtboxes on his hands, which makes it difficult to stop him when he attacks with attacks that use his hands. But what separates Wario from the rest of the pack is his ludicrous comeback factor. Wario's Waft now has a multitude of kill confirms while still retaining its massive power and still keeping him relatively easy to play as. As a result, Wario can quickly and unexpectedly bring stock leads down to an even game with a single combo that can be learned within two minutes of training mode. Combined with other factors such as his superb air mobility, a long-distanced and unpredictable recovery, and even a command grab that now heals, Wario is a force to be reckoned with in the competitive scene. However, update 11.0.0 finally nerfed him by slowing down the half-charged and fully charged versions of his Waft, and reducing the active frames of his up tilt; he still retains his scary combo game, but the notable slowdown of his Waft has resulted in a noticeable weakening of his comeback factor, which has knocked him down a few pegs, though he was confirmed to still be a high tier, as he's ranked 24th on the first official tier list, ranking him three spots below his good rival Mario. On the second official tier list, he rose four spots at 20th place, and while they both fell from the A+ tier to the A tier, Wario is now two spots above him.
• R.O.B. quickly rose to prominence for Ultimate after a solid Brawl and a mediocre 3DS/Wii U. R.O.B. got a few buffs that strengthened him significantly, with one of the more useful zoning kits in the game courtesy of his Robo Beam and Gyro, and has set-ups into some of his moves thanks to the latter move's property of being an item. His combo ability from 3DS/Wii U remains not only relatively intact, but arguably improved, like keeping his extremely fast down tilt which also havs surprisingly long range. And that's without mentioning his Arm Rotor; it was given better hitboxes and better linking angles so that every hit now connects into its final hit. With its multiple hits to check spot-dodges and quick-shields as well as it's multi-side coverage to deal with rolls and cross-ups, Arm Rotor is now a deadly finisher that beats all defensive options, and even moreso offstage. His aerials also all autocancel in a short hop, as some aerials like back aerial and down aerial, which wouldn't reach that autocancel window normally, significantly slow down his vertical momentum, and his moves and projectiles make him great at all 3 ranges (close range, mid-range and long range), something that almost every character lacks. To make an example, his fellow top tier Joker has a powerful close-ranged combat and solid options to pressure from afar, but as his range is short without Arsène due to his knife, he struggles at mid-range with characters that outrange him or rely on projectiles. Even his Robo Beam is surprisingly safe, especially because it's much stronger at close range, while Gyro gives him a nasty pressure option with great versatility. Lastly, R.O.B. is heavy and has a great recovery compared to others in his weight class like Simon. Clashing all of this, and the changes to the game's engine, has allowed R.O.B. to break out of his Stone Wall status and has turned him into more of a Mighty Glacier. Like with Sonic, the pandemic benefited him even more with the switch to online tournaments, as lag online doesn't apply in the same way as offline, and made his tilts and aerials even safer than before. He does have his weaknesses, though, such as a susceptibility to combos, juggling and general pressure due to his slow moveset, high weight, and large size, and his up-close game having generally short range. Nevertheless, R.O.B. has amassed quite strong results compared to his other two appearances which is reflected by his tier placement ranking him 6th, putting him in S tier, one spot below Fox and one spot above Kazuya. He would keep his current placing on the second tier list, though Fox and Kazuya would fall down with the Ageis Duo and Peach and her echo Daisy taking their spots.
• Wolf returned to Ultimate with a mixed reaction. While people loved his return to Smash, it was as one of the best characters in the game. Wolf is much heavier than Fox, more neutral-based, and the result of both buffs to his kit and Ultimate's engine changes have granted him a monstrous combo game. All of his grounded and aerial normals are either meaty, disjointed, fast, or a combination of the three. His most glaring weakness — his short and linear recovery — is mitigated by the high priority and large size of the hitboxes of his recovery moves, making it a challenge to intercept him offstage without possibly getting spiked and dying instead. Many players have notably picked up Wolf, leading him to draw parallels to Smash 4 Cloud. Updates would hand Wolf some pretty decent nerfs to the power of his notoriously strong semi-spiking down smash, leading him to fall off in some people's eyes. But as time has passed in the meta, Wolf's positives still blossomed, making Wolf a solid top-10 character in the meta, which is reflected in his tier placement being 11th (a significant improvement from his mid-high tier pacing in Brawl), putting him one spot above Diddy Kong and one spot below Cloud. He would eventually drop ten places in the second official tier list as his exploitable recovery became problematic, but at 21th place in the A tier, he's still considered a high tier.
• Palutena is one of the most notorious buffs in Ultimate. The transition between games turned Palutena's moveset up several notches: her entire moveset was made significantly less laggy and more cohesive, and her grounded moveset is now serviceable due to her tilts gaining more utility and a use for each situation. Almost all of her specials were buffed (most notably, her down special Counter-Attack was combined with her old side special Reflect Barrier in a singular special move, thus giving her one of her old custom moves, an upgraded version of Explosive Flame. Her aerial game is also still excellent, even more so due to the universally reduced landing lag on aerial moves. Her neutral air is easily among the best neutral aerials in the game, so it's a guarantee any competent Palutena player will be using it a lot. These buffs, along with the lack of an impact her few nerfs had on her, caused her to rise from darkness and back into the light, winning her many more players at all levels of play and seemingly rescuing her from the Scrappy heap... though given her simple playstyle compared to other characters (usually spamming neutral aerial and relying on down throw to start combos), she also became a commonly played character competitively as well as unpopular due to how she spams her neutral aerial and down throw and other things, like her disjointed forward aerial and the surprisingly large hitboxes on her shield-based attacks, dash attack and back aerial, which also have invincibility frames. Updates eventually caught up to Palutena, such as a slightly worse down throw, a few nerfs to her neutral aerial with less range on the final hit on aerial opponents and a much worse grab range and her playerbase dwindled a bit. The people that stayed with her would find out she is still solid, though. It's still difficult to define whether her reign of top tier terror has finally ended or not (she was ultimately confirmed to be a top tier on the first official tier list where she's ranked 17th, though on the lower side of the top tier), though finding a person that genuinely likes Palutena is like finding a needle in a haystack. On the second tier list, she rose one spot, though now in the A tier instead of the S- tier.
• PAC-MAN in his previous appearance, like Roy and Palutena, had been quite disappointing. However, his Ultimate appearance fixed most of his biggest problems, such as his mediocre moves receiving increases in either power or utility, like the increased combo potential in his extremely fast forward aerial, faster smash attacks and a stronger forward smash, though the most significant buff Pac-Man received was making his grab a single continuous grabbox for as long as the Galaga tractor beam is out (making it finally feel faster and removing its glaring blindspots). Overall, Pac-Man's moveset is now much more fitting for Ultimate's fast-paced nature, granting him good options up close in addition to his already-bountiful tools for zoning and controlling the stage. All of the changes make Pac-Man a much more formidable fighter, finally giving him the vast reward that is typical for a character of his technical caliber. This is reflected in his tier placement, as he's ranked 14th on the first tier list, putting him one spot below Pikachu and one spot above Snake, an extreme improvement that makes him the most improved veteran in the transition, with Roy on the same level. In the second tier list, he dropped nine spots, from the S- tier to the A tier, at 23th place, but his variety of tools, stage control and long-reaching recovery make him a fearsome character in the right hands.
• While Lucina was seen as contentious in Smash 4, this was nothing compared to her transition into Ultimate. She retains many of Marth's dangerous moves (with her being the beginner-friendly version of the Hero King who lacks tippers), with quick recovery that's very hard to intercept in Dolphin Slash, and the very potent Shield Breaker, which is much more dangerous than in previous games due to how dodging is risky in this game. Complacent Gaming Syndrome is a huge part of why she is so widely disliked; thanks to her Boring, but Practical playstyle, any competent player can theoretically adapt to her despite being so effective at what she does. So, if you've seen one Lucina in bracket, you've seen them all. She's merely a high-tier instead of a top-tier, which is similiar to her spot at the end of the previous game's competitive scene lifespan, but like Mario and Yoshi, she's close to be on that placing. She dropped 6 spots as of the second tier list, at 28th place and at the bottom of the A- tier, but she remains a high tier not to be underestimated.
• Shulk has been significantly buffed compared to the previous game. Some of his moves have been sped up, his aerials now have proper autocancel windows, especially his back aerial, which now autocancels in a full hop, and his approach has improved a bit thanks to the improvements to his dash attacks. The best buffs, however, are from his signature Monado Arts, which are now easier to activate and they now act similiarly to the old Hyper Monardo Arts custom special, with more drastic effects but also a shorter duration. Monado Arts alters his stats and gives him all the options for each situation, still with some nerfs. Jump makes him jump much higher but makes him fall faster and decreases his defense, causing him to take more damage Speed makes him much faster but reduces his jump and significantly reduces his damage output, Shield makes him significantly heavier but makes him much slower and reduces both his damage and knockback, Buster increases hit damage output, decreases the knockback of his attacks to make them combo better and gives them much higher hitstun but reduces his defense and worsens his KO potential and Smash gives him significantly more KO power, but at the cost of his damage output taking a huge hit and making him a lot lighter. His Monado gives him one of the best ranges of the cast, and with the proper Art equipped, he is incredibly hard to stop him. With Jump, he can recover easily, Speed makes him extremely fast, Buster has devastating combos and attacks that are safe on shield, Smash allows him to KO at absurdly low percents and Shield increases his endurance to the point that he can survive at ludicrous percents, even over 200%, and Shulk also has access to a slew of advanced techniques. Of course, Shulk has weaknesses, such as a slow moveset, the need to use the right Art for every situation without wasting it, a bad out-of-shield game, bad approach options and a poor recovery without Jump. His weight was also decreased, though the changes to Shield make up for it. Overall, Shulk possesses all the tools to deal with the rest of the cast, but he isn't as controversial as other top tiers because while he has everything he needs against anyone outside of ways to deal with projectiles, an oppressive range and his Monado Arts can give him control of the match, he's one of the hardest characters to master and doesn't have as much representation as other top tiers due to his several advanced techniques and how he needs to use the right option for every situation without getting punished due to their drawbacks and for having some exploitable weaknesses, like severely strict autocancel windows on his aerials, an exploitable recovery, a poor out-of-shield game, slow frame data and unsafe moves on shield without Buster. This is also reflected in his tier placement, as he's ranked 19th out of 82 characters, and while he is a top tier, being in the S- tier, he's only the lowest-ranked top tier in the game. However, he would drop out of the S- tier by the second tier list and fell six spots into the A- tier, mainly due to a lack of representation at tournaments, though he is still a high tier character people need to watch out for.
• Min Min possesses great edgeguarding capabilities and a nearly un-matched range, as she can bully the majority of characters off stage very easily (and easily destroys characters who are extremely slow moving, such as Incineroar whom she was designed to hard-counter). She also has a great punish game with her up-throw and Dragon Laser, she can move and jump while using her neutral and side specials, as they can be used in the same when as her forward tilt, forward aerial, back aerial and forward smash, except that they are mapped on her secondary ARM. As a result, Min Min can use both ARMS separately, so you may spot-dodge her forward-smash successfully or roll behind her during it, only to be punished by the second attack during the dodge's cooldown, meaning that she beats all defensive options. Her moves also have anti-rebounding priority, meaning that when they clash with other attacks, the animation will continue as nothing happened, meaning that the second hit will punish you regardless of what you do, especially since her ARMS are disjointed non-projectiles, meaning that you can't reflect them. Despite her alleged weakness being approaches from the air, her up-smash is one of the best anti-airs in the game due to its high kill power and absurd vertical range, as well as it coming out on frame 8, which is faster than some tilts. It even has the ability to reflect projectiles, depriving her of another possible weakness in the form of other zoners. Min Min's general moves also have fast startup for their long range, unlike characters with similar amounts of range, and this, combined with her absurd up smash reflector, her ability to use both arms in a short amount of time and her excellent range means that managing to get close to her is a chore. She does have her weaknesses, like slow mobility, reliance on precision due to having hitboxes only on her fists, the afromentioned moves that can be used with both ARMS get easily staled, lack of safe moves on shield, committal options that have high ending lag, a bad disadvantage state due to a lack of quick moves to get out of combos and a tether recovery that is risky, as it won't work if she's too far from the ledge but she will be vulnerable to gimps and meteor smash if she's too close, but with her supreme edgeguarding game, amazing range and the ability to use both her ARMS at the same time, she has a great neutral game and her stage control is powerful, even after she received a few nerfs, like a slightly slower and weaker up smash and worse shield damage to her forward tilt and forward smash. She's become the most hated character in Japan in a similar vein to Smash 4 Bayonetta in the west, which is saying something considering the country is well-known for their character diversity and adaptability. Many in Japan believe that Min Min may be a contender for a top 10 character due to how she gatekeeps a large chunk of characters who aren't agile enough to evade her arms and her Dragon Lasers, forcing them to camp against her just to get her away from them so that she won't hit, and her attributes led many to consider her one of the more frustrating characters to fight against. Even overseas, some top players believe Min Min resides in top 15, and it's generally agreed that she's in the upper echelons which was confirmed with the first tier placement ranking her as 16th in the S- tier. She would eventually rise to A+ on the second tier list, now in 12th place.
• Steve amassed an enormous number of opinions until he became known as a high tier. Steve plays faithful to his home game Minecraft: mine for resources, then manage them by crafting weapons, walls, and traps. However, it's this faithfulness which has made him despised and notorious among the competitive community. Steve possesses strengths that no other character in the roster has by creating walls, allowing him to easily gimp recoveries and use smash attacks on airborne opponents. Steve's frame data is also great while also having with some disjoints that feel too large for attacks like up tilt and up aerial, which have generous hitboxes and are even faster than Brawl Meta Knight's infamous up aerial, and he can make it even faster with Gold swords, axes and pickaxes, or heavily increase the power of his attacks with other materials, especially Diamond weapons, with stronger variants lacking a slower version of the moves like with Olimar's Red and Purple Pikmins. Also, when he loses a stock, he doesn't lose materials, but he actually gains iron and redstone afterwards. Adding to this is a nasty combo game with a ton of options — combined with his ability to create terrain with his blocks, this can allow Steve to achieve touches of death from a single interaction with a lot less skill needed than with someone like Kazuya. Not only that, but his moves, other than being incredibly fast, are often too similar, meaning that you may expect a forward tilt only to get KO'd by a forward aerial, and his jab, forward tilt and neutral aerial having zero difference, meaning that jab and forward tilt combo into each other. Adding to this is a down air anvil projectile that deals massive damage and knockback and allows Steve to jump off of it just 5 frames after the hitbox comes out, a tether grab, a powerful explosive in his TNT (which he can actually detonate while on top of without taking damage if he buffers an air-dodge correctly, allowing him to cover possibly every single get-up option on ledge with one move), and his Minecart, a fairly fast command grab that's also a projectile. Finally, Steve has a fantastic offstage game and recovery, courtesy of his Minecart and gliding mechanic in his Elytra that is similar to the glide that Meta Knight, Charizard and Pit had in Brawl. Steve's side special also gives generous intangibility frames before he jumps in, and when the minecart touches an opponent, they get stuck in here for over a second and they lose a stock after falling off-stage. It even serves as a shield against projectiles. The blocks are even worse, as while Steve can only create eight blocks at a time before one vanishes, he can create them all over the place in the air, and if someone is launched against the block, they will often act as if they get stage spiked instead of getting knocked away in the opposite direction (this is especially common when used in tandem with back throw), resulting in apparent meteor smash that cause frustration, while his mining mechanic means that his gameplan in competitive play consists of just running from the opponent while holding B until he finds the best material, and then spamming his attacks after the Iron, Gold or Diamond weapon is completed. In a cruel oxymoron, Steve's highly campy gameplan forces the opponent to approach, which is a dangerous decision considering his aforementioned abundance of strengths. Steve does have a fair share of weaknesses, such as awful mobility, lackluster disadvantage state, the fact that all of his aforementioned strengths rely on him having the resources and tools (which have durability and can break), and the fact his overabundance of options requires ingenuity to work at the topmost level; however, considering he can build walls around himself, that's no problem. Many Steve mains have gotten hate due to his campy playstyle and for a Newbie Boom from Minecraft fans coming to Smash, since Minecraft is the best-selling game ever and its player-base has almost no equals, and Steve had excellent representation not just because of his strength as a character, but also because of his fanbase in his home game. Eventually the hate has gotten outright to the point where some top players have had discussion on banning the character like with Meta Knight in Brawl and Bayonetta in Smash 4, notably due to acola, Yonni, Onin, Jake and DDee's successes at big Smash majors since February 2022, and in this time period, several players that were pretty much unknown before he was released and before they switched characters suddenly rose out of nowhere. For example, Super Smash Con 2022, in the summer of 2022, had a whooping nine Steve players in the top 64, and even the other most used characters had four players at most, and Onin even beat the man who is considered the best player in the world, dominating him 3-0, during that same tournament. The breaking point came early in 2023, when a technique dubbed "Phantom MLG" was discovered to break Steve out of hitstun if he attempts to create a block within the end lag of an aerial, potentially allowing Steve to punish opponents for the crime of managing to land a hit. This finally provoked some tournaments in specific regions to outright ban him for a while, as the alternative was scrutinizing every second of Steve's gameplay in order to make sure no one uses it. Someone even proposed to use the Custom Balance feature, but that wasn't considered a good idea. In the first tier list for Ultimate, Steve cinched first place due to his plethora of frustrating mechanics, only sharing the S+ tier with Pyra/Mythra and Joker, the second official tier list still has Steve ranked first but his two biggest rivals have dropped off due to exploitable weaknesses (Pyra being slower, and having high start-up in all of her attacks and the switching mechanic forcing players to stick with Mythra along with having the worst recoveries in the game for both of them and Joker's base recovery being poor without his Persona) with Sonic, Mr. Game & Watch and Snake taking their place as Steve's new rivals, with Sonic being seen as just as broken as Steve. Among the Four Horsemen of Ultimate, Steve has two players, one maining him and another one using him as a secondary, and it was clear that he was slowly starting to dominate the metagame.
• Pyra and Mythra benefit from the same streamlined transformation mechanic as Pokémon Trainer and may be as well considered the DLC version of Zelda and Sheik before SSB 4, as they use this transformation mechanic to arguably even deadlier effect. While optimal play requires extensive use and knowledge of both sisters, Mythra is considered the better one out of the two and where most of the pair's strengths lie. Mythra has excellent mobility; she packs the fastest initial dash in the game, and her frame data is absurdly good, to the point that punishing her and shielding against her without getting punished is nearly impossible because her moves are so fast that they are pratically spammable. She has excellent aerials that can be cancelled to near spammable levels. Lightning Buster's hitbox is huge and has good kill setups, negating her supposed weakness of lackluster KO power. Her hurtbox "pancakes" in many animations, making her hard to hit even though she is quite tall. Compared to other similiar characters like Sheik herself or Fox, she's also noticeably heavier, being a middleweight, so it takes more time than usual to KO her compared to them. Finally, her gimmick, Foresight, significantly slows the enemy down at the beginning of a defensive option, being pretty much Bayonetta's Bat Within with an addition of Witch Time, the move which plagued the competitive scene of the previous game; this allows for potentially devastating punishes and works against just about anything with a hitbox. The swap mechanic with Pyra also allows Mythra to make up for her lack of KO power, allowing the Aegis sisters to be very adaptable. Although Pyra is generally more niche than Mythra (such as having a worse disadvantage state, bad mobility and laggy attacks), she still benefits from powerful disjointed moves with great range that kill at absurdly low percents. Both of them have a lot of range in general, but this is especially noticeable with Pyra, who also has surprisingly safe moves on shields in forward tilt and dash attack. Finally, Pyra and Mythra's moves are very straightforward, allowing them to forego the Difficult, but Awesome aspect of a transforming character that's prevalent with the Trainer. Combined with their immense popularity, this has given the duo a humongous player base, with some players using them as a pocket character to cover bad matchups. They are ranked in second place on the first tier list for Ultimate and are only narrowly beaten out by Steve (above), resulting in the sisters drawing significant ire in competitive play for their great kit and sheer ubiquity. They would ultimately lose their 2nd place ranking on the second official tier to Sonic (though still S rank as they are ranked three spots below their former placing), primarily because of the switching mechanic and Pyra being highly exploitable for being slower and a poorer recovery forcing many to switch to Mythra, which hurts the Aegis Sisters gameplay. Both of them also suffer from poor recovery options in general.
• Kazuya Mishima has garnered a similarly distasteful opinion as other high-tier DLC characters. Whereas his fighting game brethren (Ryu, Ken and Terry whom are all high-tiers, though Terry would eventually rise as the second best Fighting Game Character while Ryu and Ken would fall into the mid tiers as of the second tier list) are sufficiently sturdy, Kazuya breaks the mold by being a super heavyweight with armor similiar to Bowser, making him immune to very low knockback values, and generous intangibility frames on many of his attacks. Kazuya's moveset is the largest in the franchise; not only does he have a move for every situation, a huge portion of his moveset deals over 15% damage if not over 20% per move, even having an input 10-hit combo on his jab that deals 38% damage when rapid jabs usually deal about 15% at most unless the portion before the finisher doesn't deal terrible damage. Most if not all of his non-aerial moves also possess some degree of KO potential, and many of them render parts of his body invincible, as said before, and combined with his damage output, using moves with armor doesn't work against him, while if you try to counter by attacking him when he attacks, you'll likely lose the struggle because of how his body is intangible, getting punished for being too aggressive. One of those moves includes an absurdly powerful reflector, putting his opponents at risk of early KOs if they try to keep him at bay with projectiles. Due to his origins as a fighting game character, Kazuya also possesses the same inherent combo ability his peers have, but beefier thanks to his obscene damage output and wide variety of options that often lack. This is all without mentioning the pièce de résistance of his kit, the infamous Electric Wind God Fist, which stuns opponents long enough to follow up with almost any move in his kit, comes out extremely fast, is very safe, and is even slightly easier to pull off than in his home series, still necessitating very tight timing but no longer requiring a just-frame input. What makes this even worse is that you never know when Kazuya is going to use his input-based attacks, meaning that you may try to force him to chase you down, since he's slow, especially in the air, and has a 7-frame jumpsquat instead of 3-frame like the rest of the cast, giving him a poor approach, and fast characters are not easy for him to face because of this combined with the precision he needs to pull off these input attacks and that he can't afford to be impatient or rush during the neutral game, but even then, he has a projectile in Devil Blaster, which is very laggy, but it hits from very far away, and if you're too close when he uses Devil Fist, you get set in a crumble state and are a sitting duck as if you're paralyzed, while his input-based attacks tend to be slow, but this flaw is not enough to compensate for their power, utility and weirdly generous intangibility on his body, and since you never know when to expect the input-attacks, he can easily take you off-guard and punish you for not expecting it. And he has several combos like this, even zero-to-deaths. All of this, combined with his endurance, makes Kazuya a terror to face. Kazuya does have his weaknesses in that his moveset and mobility are rather sluggish, he's very vulnerable to combos, he transitions poorly from the ground to the air because he doesn't have the 3-frame jumpsquats like everyone else have, has a linear recovery and his extensive moveset amounts to Difficult, but Awesome being taken to its logical extreme, as he has an extraordinarily high skill floor and is legendarily unforgiving to anyone who has not extensively practiced him and frustrating to deal with in match-ups. Kazuya is not as seen in tournaments as other top tiers but given his aforementioned traits and his endless potential once mastered, which is shown by his current tier placement ranking him at 7th, not everyone is a fan of fighting The Iron Fist of Darkness, and some even considered banning him in the same level as Steve, though not as much: in early 2022, a similar sudden rise of Kazuya players and results from them, and because of the abundance of moves and their strengths, many in the community criticized how this forces his opponents in a campy play-style that makes the matches boring and that his moveset's generous intangibility, abundance of combos that cause extremely high damage if not KO from zero-to-deaths and lack of counterplays outside of trying to avoid getting hit from him at all. However, while some think that Kazuya should be banned, others don't think so, as he has less representation than other characters with a similar reception and because he has very noticeable flaws in his exploitable recovery, poor approach and bad disadvantage state, though both he and Steve were banned in the Texas region the following year. The attempts to ban him received mixed reactions however, as Kazuya was one of the hardest characters to use and master. Later, the banning discussion would finally be brought to an end as of the second tier list release dumping the Iron Fist of Darkness four places lower, in the A+ tier, putting him out of the S tier ranking due to his afromentioned weaknesses, and due to the fact that his three best players don't solo main him, but co-main him with Terry, Greninja or PAC-MAN to cover his weaknesses, while also having the tendency to be inconsistent.

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