Zelda has an incredible MU spread and for a very long time was under the radar when it came to characters that counter top tiers. Her combos, knockback, hitboxes and flexibility in playstyle make her one of the best characters in the game. Not to mention her recovery.

at 4th? Wait, what made he rise up that much?

Kaioken

Has one of the best MU spreads, strong neutral, good projectile and range, insane punish game, and great recovery with his options that allow him to mixup and be less predictable.

I'm curious, what is your opinion on the Zelda-Lloyd matchup? I would think that that alone would bar her matchup spread ever being described as "incredible."

"Current Meta Tier-List," is how I see this, and it's mostly 100% correct.

Although, who dafuq is the mass of players using Zelda and doing well with her?

This list isn't purely based off of results. MU Spreads and movesets were considered aswell. However, we have seen players in the past perform well with Zelda.

zelda's only real 'problems' are the sword characters in neutral, I kinda think that characters such as lloyd and marth can beat her in the neutral game (although not that hard lol).
the thing is, her punish game more than makes up for that difference.

zelda can easily combo to 40/50% and be close to killing with bair (at the very least sets up an edgeguard).
bad or no DI on a bair at ~35% is gonna be an edgeguard or death, especially as lloyd and marth both have poor recovery (bad range and linearity respectively).

pretty much anything leads into kicks/uair too (uair also kills hella early).
weak hit kicks, nair, dthrow, utilt, dash attack etc. basically she combos you to 50% and then a single hit means you're probably gonna die.

she is harder to combo herself by the sword characters, and has a much better recovery, meaning they can't kill her until much later on as they mostly rely on edgeguards to kill (outside of random tippers/usmash).

the contention point is that swordies win neutral, and even this is wobbly.
zelda kicks have such long range and such low startup/endlag that it becomes hard to punish her for throwing them out, even though the swords can just 'cut through' - it's easy to land after the kick and just dash back/shield/spotdodge(/UTILT ) before an opponent can punish.

this goes for zelda's matchups against basically any character. she might not dominate the neutral game, but her punish game/inability to be punished as hard means she wins anyway.

zelda utilt is also really dumb

Could anyone explain Peach's placement? I'm fine with where she is but I'm interested in what you guys have thought through and decided to place her there.

I think it could be the best one in the game

DK Uptilt?

I've been kinda absent from the community this year so I don't know what people have found, but how come marth is so low

I mean, Zelda is great and all, but how do you get in against swordsmen? This is one of the most swordsman-heavy metas in Smash to date, so that's gotta hurt your ability to place high on the tier list.