Article Written by Samuel "Dabuz" Buzby

You talk to anyone about competitive Smash Ultimate in 2025 and at some point the conversation is going to devolve into every party saying something along the lines of: “This meta stinks, it used to be so much better in early Ultimate.” “The meta” generally refers to the characters that are successful in tournaments. Ultimate is almost 7 years old, we’ve had numerous balance patches and DLC characters added up until Sora’s release in October of 2021. Since then, we’ve had almost 4 years where the game has stayed the same, but despite that, there is no arguing that the way the game is played feels completely different. Now before moving on, dear reader, I want you to ask yourself: what changed? What characters are no longer good, what characters rose up from being unremarkable? What do you find fun to watch? What if I told you that things haven’t changed dramatically in all that time? You would laugh that off. We weren’t seeing Sonic, G&W, & Steve in the top 8 of most major tournaments early on, and nowadays the early meta threats such as Palutena, Olimar, Wolf aren’t likely to win. In fact, those 3 characters I listed are perceived as “bad” characters by some players. In reality, calling them bad is a signifier that their player base is not performing as well as they used to. Those 3 characters are commonly played and in reality are still quite “good” for whatever that might mean. When early Ultimate is discussed, we romanticize the game. It was fast, aggressive, “fundamental” characters were top tier, “neutral” was played, “gimmicks” and “degenerate” play wasn’t the meta. These placement percentage images were made by the team at PGStats based on ranked tournaments leading up to the COVID pandemic. This isn’t something subjective such as a tier list, it’s an attempt to be an unbiased data driven method to showcase which characters are popping up mostly frequently at the highest end of brackets. While there are quite a few characters who are seen as “cool” taking top spots in events, we see a lot of characters viewed as “lame” also doing well. Snake & Olimar were seen as the #1 threats to civilized Smash, these characters were commonly described as boring and degenerate when they were regularly making top cut at tournaments. I want to talk about 2 events: Pound 2019 and EVO 2019.

These results tables were taken from Smashwiki.

I remember at the time Pound 2019 was being called the most boring major in Ultimate’s history, It had 3 Snakes, 2 Olimars, a Pac Man, and a Megaman with Myran vs. Ally, Olimar vs. Snake grand finals. The “consensus” was that these characters would kill competitive Ultimate due to being boring to play against and watch. A few months later we had EVO 2019, considered one of the most hype events of Ultimate’s history ever, it had 2 Snakes, 2 Olimars, a Megaman, and a Duck Hunt in the top 16. Some “cool” characters such as Mario, Lucina, Wolf, & ZSS are in the top 16 of both events. The difference is that the grand finals featured fan favorite characters; MKLeo piloting Joker and Tweek piloting Pokemon Trainer. My conclusion when looking at these side by side is the way we remember events is HEAVILY biased by what we see winning and not what’s actually happening. Now let’s look at what characters were performing well in ranked events during 2023 and 2024.

Shoutout to Eazyfreezie for making these visualizations.

There are some obvious changes in the meta. DLC characters from fighter’s pass 2 are highly represented with Steve, Kazuya, Min Min, and Pyra/ Mythra topping all these charts through uniquely powerful kits. However, if we dive a little deeper, many characters who were performing well in early Ultimate are still putting up strong results. Palutena, ROB, Peach, Roy, Joker, Greninja, Olimar, & Fox are just some of the characters found in or near the top spots of both lists. The characters around them have definitely shifted, Cloud, Sonic, Luigi, Falco and & G&W rose from the upper middle of the pack to nearing the top. Everyone listed there except for Mr. G&W has received buffs during Ultimate’s balance patch cycle. Let’s look at the top 16 of two massive tournaments in 2025; Genesis X2 & Kagaribi 13. The results definitely indicate a shift in the top level meta with the prevalence of DLC pack 2 characters standing out.  Sonic, G&W, and Luigi also show up here as release roster characters who have gotten better over time. However we still have early meta characters such as Peach, Wario, Snake, Rob, Olimar & Roy getting strong placements. These cherry picked events aren’t everything, Ultimate has had THOUSANDS of ranked tournaments since it’s release, but the results tell a story. Characters that are viewed as less enjoyable by spectators have taken a bigger prominence in the Meta, but it’s largely overstated due to the fact that it’s the result of strong individual players consistently making it far in bracket. If you look farther down the results in the top cut of brackets you will see the players performing well with Joker, Roy, Wolf, Palutena, etc. As a player I can also tell you that people who play Ultimate still view the game highly because “fun” characters are still popular. So what’s the point?  Our perception of Ultimate’s meta is heavily biased by who we see winning and what commonly appears on stream. All we would need for a shift in Ultimate’s perspective would be for the players using “hype” characters to make it a bit farther in bracket. Tier lists aren’t set in stone, even in a game approaching its 7th year the player base is adapting. In spite of this, there's still plenty of "hype" left in Ultimate, hidden by the facade of biased perspectives, and exacerbated by the age of the game." We’ll leave it at that for now... but stay tuned for Part 2 of Dabuz Deliberations.

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Follow Dabuz for more content. Cover image by Volamel. Editing by Drexxin.