MKLeo reveals top Smash Ultimate fighters with 9.0.2 tier list

Super Smash Bros Ultimate pro Leonardo ‘MkLeo’ López Pérez revealed his new tier list for patch 9.0.2 and what fighters he thinks are the best to play.

MKLeo is considered to be the best Smash pro in the world today, having won EVO 2019 and numerous other big events during the game’s lifespan. Now, with the dust settled on the latest balance patch, the T1 star put together his new tier list – and there are some interesting character placements that could catch your eye. First and foremost, the Smash prodigy decided not to rank any of the Miis, Lucario, Mewtwo, Lucas or Ryu, simply because he just can’t be sure how good they are. That said, the rest of Smash Ultimate’s insanely stacked roster was completely thought out and placed onto different rungs on the list.

Kicking things off with low tier, MKLeo believes they’re fighters who can be “annoying” if you don’t know how to play against them. While he thinks most characters can get results, they lose 90% of the matchups in the game.

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“They have many flaws, they can be punished in a lot of different ways,” Pérez explained. His low tiers consist of some obvious choices such as Little Mac, Ganondorf, Duck Hunt, and Dr Mario. Mid-tier, on the other hand, has fighters that MKLeo considers to be “good,” but that have too much counterplay.

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To demonstrate this, the Smash star took Banjo and explained why, while he can be annoying to fight with his campy style, a rushdown character can dominate him. Donkey Kong’s issue is he gets combo’d very easily, Zelda’s moves are too hard to connect, and Pichu deals too much self-damage. Perhaps the most interesting mid-tier is Rosalina, who is the main for fellow pro Samuel ‘Dabuz’ Buzby.

“She’s a little bit overrated,” Leo stressed as she loses out to fighters above her on the list.

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High-tier was the only section that wasn’t ordered, but according to Leo, these fighters need “something else” to be top tiers. “These are the characters I consider to be super strong, but man, Nintendo gave them everything except for one thing,” he said, and proceeded to use Marth as an example.

For the Fire Emblem fighter, Marth simply lacks the consistency to get the kills when he needs. Out of all the high-tiers, Final Fantasy 7’s Cloud seemed to be the one who MKLeo was almost tempted to put in top-tier.

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“Every time I see Spargo play, I see that character in the right hands, he can do everything,” he praised. “I consider Cloud to be really good because he doesn’t have to worry about using Limit at a certain point because he knows the Limit is going to disappear.” Some other notable top-tiers include Link, Hero, Ken, Bowser, Terry, Yoshi and the two newest fighters in Min-Min and Steve.

Finally, with top tiers,  MKLeo says Pikachu is the best fighter in the game, thanks to his insane recovery, edge guarding, grab combos, you name it. “He’s broken,” Leo stated. Next, Leo put his own main in Joker as the second-best in the game, but noted that Arsene wasn’t a “cheat code” like Tyler ‘Tyler1’ Steinkamp claimed. For Leo, Joker wins the majority of the matchups in the game and Arsene makes opponents play differently to get the win.

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Rounding out the top tiers, there is Peach, Palutena, Wario, Zero Suit Samus, Wolf, Mr Game and Watch, Lucina, Roy, Mario, Pokemon Trainer, ROB, Snake, Fox and Sonic. It will be interesting to see how future patches and a potential return to offline events shake up the meta going forward, but for the time being, if you’re planning on competing in online matches, your best bet could be to learn one of MKLeo’s top tiers.