Super Smash Bros. Melee remains one of the fighting game community's most popular games, despite the COVID-19 pandemic all but preventing competitive play for over a year. While tournaments aren't ready to start holding live events yet, Super Smash Bros. Melee players are anxious to get restarted. With that in mind, a new "official" Super Smash Bros. Melee tier list has been arranged using input from dozens of the world's best competitive players.
The tier list comes from PGstats, taking over for Smashboards which hasn't released a similar list since 2015. The tier list is made from a survey of 63 of the top 100 Super Smash Bros. Melee players from 2019, since 2020 went largely without competition. It also surveyed the legendary Melee player Armada, who retired from playing the game in 2018. As far as tier lists go, it's difficult to imagine a more official list than what PGstats has put together given the caliber of the players involved in making it.
S-Rank is the highest tier of the list, but only one character can be number one. That spot continues to be held by Fox, who hasn't relinquished it since he earned it in 2006. The only other character to hold that spot was Sheik, voted number one between 2002 and 2005. Rounding out the S-Rank tier is Marth, Jigglypuff, and Falco, with Falco notably dropping from the second position in 2015 to fourth now.
In A-Rank, Sheik, Captain Falcon, and Peach expand the list to seven. Sheik has dropped slightly, but both Peach and Captain Falcon have climbed. B-Rank has been split into + and -, with Ice Climbers, Pikachu, Yoshi, and Samus in B+ and Luigi and Doctor Mario in B-. C-Rank, also divided, has Ganondorf and Mario in C+ followed by Donkey Kong, Young Link, Link, and Game & Watchin C-. D-Rank leaves Mewtwo, Roy, Pichu, Ness, and Zelda, with Kirby and Bowers dropping to F-Rank.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the 2021 Super Smash Bros. Melee tier list is that not much has changed since 2015. No fighter in the tier list shifted more than two positions up or down, with Falco being the highest-ranked fighter to drop two spots and Jigglypuff being the highest-ranked fighter to climb two spots. Hungrybox's Jigglypuff play in recent years has clearly had an impact.
PGstats also put together a tier list for Super Smash Bros. Melee community members, released around the same time as the "official" list. It's remarkable that most of its rankings are similar to or identical to the list of professional players. In fact, no character is more than one spot out away from its ranking on the official list. With this in mind, perhaps Super Smash Bros. Melee is getting close to being solved.
Super Smash Bros. Melee is available now on GameCube.
Source: PGstats