Wolf, Joker emerge atop the pack in Season 2

By Mathew "EazyFreezie" Aliotta | 04/14/21

If you have not read the breakdown of Smash Ultimate’s first competitive season, you can do so here.

Similar to the last breakdown, we will be using the same established rules set for the previous season. Our results come from PGRU v2, so we will be utilizing the tiers already established to break down results. C-Tier tournaments, the lowest ranked tournaments, will be represented through the top 8 placements. Next up the scale would be B-Tiers, where we will take the top 16, and then for A-Tiers, we will take the top 32. Finally for S-Tiers, the tournaments with the highest accolades and tournament entrants, we will be taking the results of the top 64. 

A player must win a single game with a character for the result to count. If a player pulls out a character in a set but does not win a single game with that character, then the character is not counted. Also consider that character data is dependent on data recording from tournament and event runners and may be incomplete. Let's take a look at the results.

click to expand this and all other images in this post. to see full size images, I recommend opening the image in a new tab

The image above showcases a characters’ “placement percentage.” A placement percentage signifies a percentage out of all counted tournament results for the PGRU v2 season based on the rules laid down earlier. Of the 75 characters in the game through PGRU v2, 40 accounted for at least 1.0% of results. When compared to PGRU v1’s 30 out of 72 characters, this is a significant increase, suggesting there was a broader base of competitively successful characters in Season 2.

Wolf ended up being the most prominent character in the metagame with a total of 5.14% of results and a sum of 97 total placements (73 as a main, 24 as a secondary). Wolf was third in the previous season, and had a 0.26% increase in placement percentage. Last season, Palutena was the most prominent character and dropped to third, with a 0.88% decrease.

Here we see the biggest changes between v1 and v2. One of the most important changes we see is how many results were gathered in each tier. We had more tournaments and results to count than the previous season, but we also see A-Tiers and B-Tiers gain much more prominence in our countings. C-Tiers were less common in PGRU v2, and ended up having the smallest impact on results. S-Tiers and A-Tiers carried a majority of the results gathered. 

In terms of characters, Joker, Diddy Kong, and Ken had the overall biggest improvement. . Diddy Kong and Ken may have seen more play due to the various buffs they received, making them more appealing. Joker on the other hand had a massive explosion of results after PGRU v1 ended, potentially influenced from MkLeo’s success with the character.

The biggest overall losses go to Pichu and Ike. Pichu has hit the hardest due to being nerfed back in June, and Ike did not see much play at all this season. He had barely any results from his biggest contributors last season, Marss and Ryuga, and seemed to have dropped off in popularity all together. 

One very interesting thing to note here is the characters showcased losing the largest percentages. Off the 10 characters to suffer the biggest drops, 9 were previously in the top 11. This means that the top placement percentage holders of last season were actually hit the hardest in overall results, even if their ranking may not showcase it.

This chart showcases the top 10 of PGRU v1 and PGRU v2’s placement percentages throughout both seasons. We can see that the 5 characters that fell out of the top 10 (Inkling, Pichu, Fox, Olimar, and Mega Man) had an overall decline in results. Pichu and Mega Man had the hardest declines of them all. Pichu suffered from many players dropping the character after nerfs in July, causing a very sharp decline in results for 2 months. Pichu did not even reach above 0.5% during this time. Pichu did experience a resurgence in the Fall, but was never able to achieve the same percentages as in PGRU v1. Mega Man is another character that failed to achieve over 1%, and almost fell out of the top 20. 

The 5 new characters that joined the top 10 (Joker, Pokemon Trainer, Mario, ROB, and Zero Suit Samus) also have a few interesting trends to look at. Pokemon Trainer and Zero Suit Samus had relatively good results across most months, but also had one month where they had a large spike compared to rest. ROB never dropped in percentage in all of season 2, and kept increasing every month, even if the increase was small. Finally, Joker had multiple large spikes in results, showcasing similar patterns to the top 3 in the previous season. 

Finally, out of the 5 characters who were top 10 for both seasons (Palutena, Snake, Wolf, Peach, and Lucina), we see that their overall results are much more tame compared to last season. Palutena and Wolf are the only two that have severe spikes in certain months, while Snake, Peach, and Lucina are much more consistent on a month to month basis compared to PGRU v1.

As stated earlier, 40 characters were able to reach up to 1.0% for their season placement percentage. That means that the results were not as condensed in the upper echelons, correct? Well, yes and no. Earlier we looked at the biggest changes from PGRU v1 to v2, and saw that a lot of the top tiers from last season dropped the most percentage. But, the top 5 still make up 20% of all results, even if they all have significantly less percentage than last season's top 5. 

High Meta Relevancy and Notable Meta Relevancy have pretty similar roster percentages as well compared to last season. The most notable change is in the “Some Meta Relevancy” section, with it’s 7% roster percentage increase from PGRU v1. Unlike last season though, there are 3 characters that achieved no results in the entire season (Corrin, Ganondorf, and Mewtwo). 

In fact, outside of Wii Fit Trainer, the rest of the characters did not reach 0.75%, with a majority being under 0.5%. We are seeing the lower echelon of characters drop off more, and gaining less relevance than the last season. We are starting to see a larger gulf form between  characters that can be deemed viable and those who cannot (outside of Terry, who had only 1 month to gain any results).

As showcased earlier when we were comparing PGRU v2 to v1, each tier’s amount of results for this season are much closer in numbers. We see here that Wolf and Joker were the most dominant in results for all 4 tiers. Interestingly enough, Joker is the only character that has received 1st in all 3 tiers (won by MkLeo, Aaron, and Stroder).

Wolf, on the other hand has only taken first at a B Tier. Some characters had little spikes in certain tiers. Pokemon Trainer was especially strong in S Tiers. Olimar was surprisingly prominent in S Tiers as well, even after suffering from nerfs. Zero Suit Samus excelled in A Tiers, mainly due to her prominence in Japan’s meta. Inkling also showcased a lot of success in A Tiers, even though Inkling as a character has dropped off a bit. Greninja also showcased success in C Tiers, similar to Roy in PGRU v1. Greninja has a solid presence in Europe, which has a healthy amount of C Tiers. Roy also sneaks his head into the top 10 for C Tiers. 

This chart showcases the correlation between a character's placement percentage, and the amount of players who have contributed to that character's results. Due to there being more characters reaching above 1.0%, the bottom of the chart is not as nearly clustered as PGRU v1’s version. 

The red diagonal line showcases the scattered plots average linear growth. Characters above the line are characters who had a diverse range of players bring in results, while characters under the line had fewer players than average who gathered a majority of the results for said character. 

The three most notable characters who trend above the line are Wolf, Diddy Kong, and Yoshi. These characters have a large player base pulling results, but may not have any prominent players that consistently place or carry the character. On the other side, Olimar, Rosalina, and Peach are much lower than the expected standard. These characters may not have as large of a player base that places, and most likely have a select few players who contribute a large portion of the characters’ results.

Lastly, we have a combination of all results from PGRU v1 and v2. Wolf takes the overall highest spot over Palutena. Joker, even though missing 2.5 months of results, takes a top 5 spot as well. Lastly, even though Pichu had a hard drop off in the summer, it still takes a top 15 spot due to its prominence in season 1. 

There you have it, folks. PGRU Fall 2019 closed out Smash Ultimate’s first competitive year, showcasing the shift the meta took since its inception. While there is no real third PGR season to analyze, I will be going over the online metagame next time, looking at the difference between the offline and online meta.

Mathew "EazyFreezie" Aliotta has been involved in Super Smash Bros statistics since the release of Super Smash Bros for Wii U. His most notable work is his co-ran algorithm based ranking, OrionRank. Follow him on Twitter at @EazyFreezie 

Do you have a data/analytics-driven Smash Ultimate or Melee idea you'd like to turn into an article, or possibly a video for the PGstats YouTube? Pitch your idea with a 1-2 paragraph description of your idea to jack@panda.gg.