Hi everyone, it's your friendly neighbourhood backroom member Strife. Today, I'm bringing you this pet project the Back Room's been working on for a good few months, the first official SSF2 Beta tier list:



Special thanks to the people who gave us tier lists and made this project happen:

• Strife ( , )
• Drarky ( , )
• FutureMac ( , )
• Skylar ( , )
• Jammy ( )
• Bowler ( )
• Gax ( , )
• Miracle--7 ( , )
• TheCodeSamurai ( , )
• Dark Ermac ( )
• Corvid ( , )
• TLord ( , )
• Firewater ( , )
• Pawn ( , )
• RiVer ( , )
• Flavien ( , )
• TSON ( , )
• Chaos0 ( , )
• Suli Hyuga (contributed significantly, but did not submit a tier list - , )
• Oreocackester (contributed significantly, but did not submit a tier list - )

To be clear:

This is a representation of the current metagame. Obviously no one truly know which characters are best in any truly meaningful way this early in, but the hope is that at least for posterity's sake and for people getting into the game that it answers the fundamental question "how do current top players see the current meta".

^ v. important to note

and why?
marth needs to be a bit higher

About Goku:

Goku has one of the most insane kits in Beta. He has ki blasts, which are an amazing neutral tool in almost every matchup, have real punish options in the air, and control space effectively, all while being near-unpunishable. His dsmash is of particular note as being amazing, but he has plenty of other moves with quick, powerful range. He has a recovery that makes him surprisingly resilient considering his fallspeed/weight combo, and his up-B is an amazing movement tool that can be used onstage as well. I haven't even mentioned that bthrow chaingrabs on all of the cast, or that he has Kaio-Ken to get free kills and trade stocks at higher percents.

Marth is good, but he has some weaknesses. He is tall, which makes his life harder against a lot of characters who punish him very effectively. He doesn't have a projectile and struggles against characters that do, without a reflector to deal with them. He has an amazing dash to deal with this, but it's not the be-all end-all of dealing with zoning. His punish game is not the best compared to hard-hitters such as DK, so he has the potential to get out-punished in a lot of MUs. He's not terrible, but he's not amazing either. Particular MU's that he struggles with are Bowser, DK (DK is more contentious, but Bowser is rough), and Samus.

I'm sorry (not so sorry) to say, but this tier list is f***ing garbage.
Goku at 1st (higher than Fox) with all the problems he has. KK got nerfed to hell and his poor range got rekt. F-Air sour spot is weaker and hey, he got a chaingrab, but that's the only new thing he has. He lost his Up-B and Kamehameha can't be reversed in the ground.
MK high as heck with all the nerfs he got. His Smash Attacks are almost useless, while dash attack, overall speed and jump height is significantly worse.
Lloyd got nerfed to heck; Sonic Thrust can't be used in the air and still doesn't kill. Tempest sucks as recovery, leaves him helpless and when it connects, doesn't land most of the hits.
I'm looking at Ichigo and all he has is spam. Spam can be countered with skill an-- Do I need to say more?
Pit is the same as Ichigo.
Link got nerfed to hell, can't spam anymore, speed sucks, recovery too, bombs can now be dropped by getting hit for some reason. Easily low tier.
Why is Mario higher than Luigi?
Why is Puff so low? She got a lot of options to Rest, which kills from 20% to 40%. Jab to Rest. All aerials to rest. Some throws to Rest. Umm... Guys?
Why is PAC-MAN so low? He's got nice techs and projectiles and is very balanced.
Luffy could be higher.
Why did Sonic get even lower? He got a lot of buffs, a meteor smash, a KO throw, more range and an angle-able recovery.
Why is Chibi lower than before? Do I need to say anything? May I call Skylar?
WHY IS SANDBAG SO LOW? THAT'S PLAIN WRONG! HE HAS A LOT OF GOOD MATCHUPS, SOME VERY NICE COMBOS AND IS THE FASTEST CHAR ON GROUN-- I could continue about Sandbag specifically for the rest of the day, but I don't have the time.
BM should be lower.
Why is Naruto bottom three?
Kirby placement is all wrong.

Conclusion: Delet this while it's still time

Marths Mu with DK is somewhat stagnant to 9b with all the funny business removed and hes on the plus side with bowser when it comes to mu knowledge

Why is higher than ?

That's all I'm asking.

And I'm not even gonna mention for our own sanity.

this tier list is pretty weird ngl, and are too high and is too low, but thats just my opinion

Aight, smear aside, lemme tell you this straight.

- Literally got straight buffs, still has an amazing recovery with float and teleport, can trigger Kaioken off his side-b which is actually stupid lol, he has a chaingrab and any nerfs that he did get have meant absolute piss all because he's mostly just received straight buffs in the transition from 9b to Beta
- You're really overlooking the good stuff here. 0-death Rufio combos are possible with the new shuttle loop, his recovery pretty much got straight buffed with the teleport, he has a throw that sets up into his DSmash free and he's received lots of other buffs that offset the minimal nerfs he received.
- Sonic Thrust is kinda situational and Tempest shouldn't be your main recovery option now that Rising Falcon exists and restores your jump. Lloyd has a pretty good combo game, can still kill pretty well and still has a really good neutral. The nerfs reworked him, but he's still a really damn good character.
- Ichigo got a massive speed buff, which makes his only flaw his slightly poor recovery and slow kill moves. He's now genuinely a really scary character to deal with as so many of his quick moves have massive range and good combo ability. Ichigo can't be rushed down as easily anymore.
- Arrows give him a super threatening offstage and neutral game. His combo ability is good and he kills a lot earlier than he probably should because lol up air. You should be very afraid when fighting against Pit because he's a damn good character.
- Luigi's traction and slow speed make his neutral a lot worse than Mario's, and whilst his close range punish game is incredible, Mario just finds most foes a lot easier to deal with in terms of actually getting in, because the dash speed buff, whereas Luigi has to really take risks to approach sometimes.
- She's got good setups yes, however, in a metagame where swordsmen and characters with long range and good kill power reign, Puff really fails. She dies super early and some of the higher tier matchups are just super rough.
- A character who relies heavily on gimmicks. This means that as soon as you know how to counterplay his gimmicks, the matchup instantly goes into your favour. Pacman is only really doing so well because he has a dedicated top player (Kyoz) maining him.
- Nope, he's fine where he is. You can be throwing out constant hitboxes against this character and be completely safe for him because he has to overcommit hard whenever he takes an action.
- Range issues, something that's very prominent in this meta, his combo game took a hit because he's too fast for his own good, and there were some startup and endlag increases on moves that should have been key parts of his kit, leave Sonic to just be an underwhelming character.
- Chibi got 9b Sora'd hard. He has a great neutral because of the projectile changes, but Chibis best kill moves were nerfed to have literally no power to them so he either has to land a cheeky dair or land a smart smash attack in order to kill, which can be really difficult.
- The unconventional nature and general slow speed the character possesses leaves the character to have a horrendous neutral with an exceptional punish game. Sandbag relies on characters getting close so he can heftily punish them, but only a couple of charaecters actually need to get close to do damage and the rest of the cast can just play out of Sandbag's effective range. Also, his recovery leaves him at a disadvantage if he's forced to up-b as he's in hitstun so could accidentally seal his own fate by being edgeguarded after the explosion, or from the fact he'll die if he uses his Up-B past a certain %.
- Still is maintaining a presence thanks to Corvid and Drarky, unexplored character who still has some fairly good tools in his kit, despite some large nerfs.
- Not really hugely compensated for the nerfs he received and got completely left behind by the rest of the cast in terms of power. He sucks now because the nerf to his zoning is compensated by the buff too everyone else's projectiles and the need to really have good range or speed to make up for it in this meta

ok ngl I haven't followed beta's meta at all but what in the world does mega man have that makes him 4th in the game lolol

-4/10. Too many tier categories.
-Also Isaac shouldn't be A tier. The only reason he isn't C+/B is because of Vine Usmash and Funnel on heavies/midweights
-I also strongly disagree with the Bandana Dee placement. Bottom tier if you ask me. Bad combos, bad KO power, easy to be killed and recovery is not great.
-Kinda think BBM should be a tier higher, but w/e

So glad others can see that Ichigo is fundamentally Marth 2.0.

[b] I know both these two are used less than Sheik, but I would've thought for Mario, at least, his stupid high damage and ability to easily keep his move fresh with fireballs would put him higher. Fundamentally, him and Sheik are two different style of well-rounded characters with their strengths and weakness arranged differently. I mean on paper, at the least, Mario has better, harsher combo punishes. Has a better neutral in approaching and keeping himself safe + lower short-hop. More recover options. Better zoning, frame-traps and baits because Fireball-Cancel and the speed at which he can do them. And just higher damage and more solid kill moves overall. He really only loses to her in range, but on paper, at the least, he seems to do better than her at nearly everything like he does over Luigi.

I can understand why people think Zelda isn't top-5, but also kind of don't understand. Outside of the huge lightning-kick hitboxes and her teleport having ending lag, the most potent things about Zelda are still there. Can still 0-to-Death fairly easily off stray hits. Her grab is still pretty big. Can still just chain-throw/frame-trap even floaties (for some reason...). And she has some new frame-traps that just lend dumb kill-setups.

Also, I believe she can jab-dash some character across entire stage like a waveshine, but haven't gotten a definitive result on that. I hope there can be some more testing from just my own.

Here are my Current Issues:

should be tied with tbh, since they both have similar goals and their strengths and flaws over eachother are overall balanced. does have better mobility for covering space but has a better OoS game making him better defensively. has deadlier kill setups but has a better grab game. is more reliant on stages while isn't. I'd put them in the same spot tbh.

is top 10 at best. Yea his crash bombs are pretty good and he has amazing stage controls with a great projectile game. But Mega-Man is slow... like REALLY slow meaning that he gets chased a lot and he struggles a lot against rushdowns and against a lot of characters below him and a couple of characters above him. also gets comboed rather hard and he lacks a lot of good close range options along with being WAY too reliant on grabs for kills which even with crash bomb, it still is predictable due to mega man's slow movement and poor grab range. I'd place him around #11 or #10 tbh.

is a little too high tbh. may have great mobility, but his frame data and recovery is certainly lacking. And a lackluster recovery pretty much hurts some of his consistency and its not like his neutral is that amazing. And Frame Data issues often makes him open to punishes and he does get comboed quite a bit in general. I'd say top 15 or top 20.

is a little too high. She does have the overpowered Neutral-B and Forward-Aerial. But that is about it, she dies early on top, has a pretty poor OoS game, and she doesn't really have a good neutral to get the charge shot setups she needs.

is a little too high. He depends a lot on going in the air for mobility which can make his approach game predictable along with Wario having short range and a not very good neutral either. And his kill-power isn't really stellar outside of waft setups or raw smash attacks, or an up-air 50/50 which has quite a bit of a timing window.

needs to be at least bottom 10 or near bottom 5. Even Kyoz admits how sucky actually is and how he basically wins with him due to him being a godly player in general (Which he is). gets easily counterplayed in top level play which makes anyone knowing the matchup just be able to completely obliterate in general. also pretty much has poor killpower outside of back-throw (risky), raw smash attacks, key (Takes too much time), and hydrant (Can be easily used against him which can cost him a stock). also has a gimpable recovery, rather lackluster normals outside of neutral-air and maybe down-tilt, no disjoints on his non-projectile moves, and a poor matchup spread where he only wins against like 3-5 characters and the rest is either an even MU or a really bad matchup. And he has a ridiculous amount of 70-30 and 75-25 matchups in general especially the top tiers. Without fruit catching, he'll just be a slightly better Smash 4 Pac-Man with significantly worse matchups.

and needs to switch tbh. has pretty poor frame data that can be easily punished (Even when you see RiVer's Isaac, he still gets punished like a lot). also has a linear and predictable recovery that lacks a hitbox and struggles at close range. feels more suited for those situations and he has less erratic matchups and he is just a little less punishable.

needs to be higher. has an amazing neutral and really safe frame data along with being able to rack up damage quickly. Her kill power is a bit inconsistent at times but her pros very much outweigh her cons making her a solid top 10 character.

is too low (Not worse than Black Mage LOL). may be light with a lack of KO options. But still has a decent neutral with good mobility and he can retreat a lot with his useful aerials like Forward-Air. also pretty much has disjoints and he is good at pressuring and spacing out his opponents in general while also possessing a useful projectile and amazing priority. His great disjoints and good mobility and short hurtbox makes him hard to hit which very much compensates for him being light and AT LEAST bandana dee has an okayish kill throw. Side-B's ability to stun also makes him force out approaches quite well and it allows for to go for a lot more setups in general. Definently better than Bottom 10 imo.

I'd probably have over but I can definently see the reasoning behind being number 1. But simply has superior results from Hanaj, Gax, Vash, and more which is undisputably better than Goku's results. This may be due to being easier to managed at top level play so I'd probably say for now that is number 1.

needs to be higher. has disjoints, amazing tech chase options, great mobility, long lasting hitboxes, good frame data, a great recovery that trades well, a deadly edge guarding game, of course 9, he has an amazing ability to catch landings, and his great air decelleration makes his empty hop ability AMAZING as he can use it in neutral efficiently. Definently a Solid Top 15 Candidate or close to Top 15.

MM's hella good

almost impossible to edgeguard unless he's 100%+ due to upB heavy armour.
great projectiles and fast disjointed normals means he's great in neutral.
tons of early kill setups with anything -> sideB detonation.
water wave thing still does s*** tons of damage when combo'd with another move, even after nerfs.