Hey everyone.

It's your friendly neighbourhood Backroom member here, Strife (or should I say Tenebrae? Yeah, I probably should). I'm here to present to you the SSF2 Union Tier List.

This tier list is made by the Union, a spiritual successor to the Smash Flash Back Room, as the current Back Room is basically dead, unfortunately.

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Notable Placements and Explanations:
- Debuts at 35th. Writeup by Artmagic and Tenebrae:
Pichu debuts as a low tier because he has some really awful weaknesses, most notably his range, causing him to suffer in neutral vs sword and projectile characters. He is almost as light as Jigglypuff, and thus dies early but he's also not that hard to combo because he isn't a floaty character. His recovery is bad with Discharge because his mixup potential and vertical distance have been cut, which gives him bad 70-30 MUs vs higher tier characters, however, he has some good strengths. He has a good punish game with an up air that can combo to a lot of stuff at 0 to around 110% in medium weights, he has really good kill confirms with Discharge Up-B, he's a solid edge guarder and ledge trapper thanks to Discharge Neutral-B and F-Smash. He is one of the fastest characters in the game and has a good initial dash, giving him almost unparalleled mobility, and his aerial Discharge Neutral-B is a really good projectile due to it's low endlag and combo potential.

- 9th (A-) --> 27th (B-). Writeup by Artmagic and Tenebrae:
Fox was a Top 10 character in .3 but he fell down really hard because he got nerfed a lot from the removal of port, which made his recovery go from nearly impossible to exploit with port and exploitable without it to consistently really exploitable because trading just makes you safer after hitting it. Trades also made his neutral worse because he has weak moves at low % so he's often negative on trade. He lost his forward throw chain grab that made his low % throw game amazing, and the gravity changes made him kill later with his strongest moves.

- 20th (B-) --> 2nd (S). Writeup by Shyguyking:
Peach is one of the primary beneficiaries of the 1.1 patch. While losing the prevalent reverse turnip from her arsenal in neutral, she was compensated with various changes that overall made her a superior character from her previous iteration as well as a top tier in the current metagame. Her punish game is amongst the most fluid and consistent in the game, being able to take stocks off of only one or two neutral exchanges with ease; this is further complemented by her exceptional edgeguarding ability, as she can go as far as is necessary to finish off her opponent. Her recovery is one of, if not the greatest recovery in the game due to her having a float, a variable double jump, a side special which can be used multiple times, and a very safe up special. Her neutral may seem to be a little lackluster due to her relative low speed, but her reactionary playstyle gives her the ability to win neutral by frustrating her opponents with ranged turnips and punishing unsafe approaches. This in conjunction with her niche turnip options such as glide tossing and z dropping enhance her presence in neutral even further. Peach's access to a high damaging as well as shield breaking down smash can leave her opponents afraid of that move alone, further enforcing her threatening presence. While she does struggle to move horizontally and traverse platforms quickly, she makes up for this in her prevalent punish game at any percent. The fact that all of Peach's relevant moves confirm into grab at low percents as well as her dominating throw game give her a reliable way to set up 50%+ combos. Not only do said grabs confirm at low percent, but they also kill confirm at higher percents on all but the floatiest of characters. Her low knockback, high hitstun aerials in conjunction with the ability to vary heights and timings with her float give Peach the ability to effortlessly punish her opponents with high damage, potentially stock sealing combos.

- 39th (D) --> 16th (B). Writeup by Artmagic and Tenebrae :
Luigi is a mid tier character with some really strong strengths and really strong weaknesses. He has a really good combo game thanks to his grab game and his exceptional frame data. Thanks to the changes to projectile trading, his Fireballs are now a decent neutral tool. Unfortunately, lacklustre range that matched up with his slow ground speed and low air acceleration makes his matchups against projectile and sword characters troublesome, and his low falling speed leaves him susceptible to juggles, which combined with his exploitable recovery leaves him with a bad disadvantage state and some very troublesome matchups versus high tier characters.

- 22nd (B-) --> 4th (S). Writeup by Tenebrae and Shyguyking
With incredible approach options and defensive tools such as Nair, Dair and Jab and an exceptional toolkit that leads to easy kill confirms on a lot of characters, Zelda has unquestionably become one of the biggest benefactors of Patch 1.1's metagame with a varied toolkit that allows her to almost effortlessly play a variety of playstyles extremely well thanks to her exceptional zoning that does almost everything Zelda needs, grab combos that build damage exceptionally and lead to kill confirms, and safe moves with generous hitboxes that are strong on shields to the point of being able to effectively bypass them.

Reserving this post for any opinions and further amendments to writeups.

Explanation on Luffy, Black Mage, Sonic, Pikachu, G&W, Goku, and sandbag please.

My personal favorite BR moment while working on the list, lol

These are some pretty decent placements and i can understand the placement of the characters. Good job.

yeah i understood why pika is top 3 in the hard way

This tier list is suprisingly decent. Finally I can agree with Pac-Man's placement as a top of mid tier char. I def disagree with Luigi being that low as while I get that his general floaty nature alongside having sort of linear landing options and a below average recovery does give him a bad disadvantage which is sort of problematic and him not being a swordfighter is clearly a bit of an issue. But Luigi still can basically completely delete your stock in one Neutral-Aerial which compliments well with Up-Aerial, Up-Tilt, Down-Tilt, any Throw, Up-B most infamously, etc. Luigi literally has true 0 to death combos off of N-Air alone and he gets Up-Aerial to Up-B setups for free from 0-100 thanks to Up-Aerial's lack of lag and Up-B's surprisingly huge sweetspot which compliments the fact that Up-Aerial can be setup from literally almost any of Luigi's combo and neutral tools and it comes out frame 2 and covers landings well with no landing lag as well alongside having a decent hitbox. Luigi's advantage state is by far the best in the game because of this and contrary to popular belief, Luigi is actually not too slow on the ground as well as he's about as fast as Sora which is clearly fast enough for him to get things going. Luigi's "poor" air speed doesn't really affect him too much due to dash jumping being a thing in neutral alongside Luigi having Misfire to kind of compensate for a lack of horizontal air movment. Luigi despite having to depend on nair for landing can still clearly mixup his landings with down-b and even fire-balls and it actually can make Luigi a lot less linear than what most would assume. Luigi's neutral is what mostly seperates him from other polarizing characters as he actually can do a lot of things in neutral when compared to the likes of Bomberman. Luigi's access to shorthop fireballs allows for him to force approaches and cover his landings in neutral with moves like dash jump Neutral-Aerial which again gives Luigi the potential chance to literally kill the opponent at almost any percent for just landing Neutral-Aerial (Even at higher % Neutral-Aerial to just plain Up-B is true) and getting hit by fireballs can get true confirms off of Luigi Down-Air which again gives him the threat factor from 0 to literally any %. Luigi is great because he's consistently threatening at almost any time and while his disadvantage state and recovery and range are still not great, they aren't so bad that they completely override any of Luigi's true flaws. Place him in B+ AT THE VERY LEAST, i'd still place him A- tbh.

I don't know what makes Pika top 3 as I rarely hear people talk about how good Pika is since iDoge left for Smash Ultimate iirc but I'd like to hear an answer. Especially since a certain "someone" claimed he originally had Marthiritis and believed I placed pika too high before.

Pichu is too high to be honest. Like his advantage state/combo game is "good". But unlike other polarizing characters it still isn't great enough to redeem almost anything about this character. Pichu again is super light, damages himself, has no range, and can't recover with discharge which is supposed to be a defining aspect of Pichu. Pichu literally can't kill until he gets discharge in which he can only really kill off of Discharge Up-B at around 110. The issue is, Pichu doesn't really have the neutral to really set it up consistently (as Pichu is just crossup nair in neutral 90% of the time and he's way too vulnerable to shieldgrab) and Pichu basically dies when he's in discharge both offstage and through being hit by literally any move in the first place which is a biiiiiig problem when it comes to consistency which in fact matters. Pichu's own strengths outside of mobility (just play other rushdowns if you want a fast char anyways though) honestly gets outclassed by almost every single char that isn't bottom 5. With the exception of a few zoners (Mega Man, Pac-Man, Samus, etc.), almost everyone in not bottom 5-10 has a better advantage state than Pichu and most characters have significantly more consistent kill power. Pichu is too inconsistent to really work as a character and his strengths just don't really help his polarizing flaws at all.

Everything else are small nitpicks such as Ness and Mega Man being too high, Zero Suit being a little too low, Bowser being too low, Naruto being too low, and chars like Link being too low with Meta Knight and Falco needing to be at least S tier. Not a bad tier list though.

I can't understand 's place. I know lots of positive things but I think I need to find negative things to understand why is low.

I need an explanation regarding Sandbag's and Pikachu's place

Shyguyking answered why Pika is so good in a rambled mess on the union discord, here it is plus a bit more info afterwards.

Also Up-B shieldpokes when done diagonally most times.
His grab is bigger than his hurtbox
And Up-B -> Upsmash is a kill confirm whether or not they shield it

Neutral is very weak, atrocious disadvantage, pretty much no ground mobility, bad offstage and only really has an insane punish game.

In a meta of sword and projectiles, Sandbag struggles to get in. He probably should be higher honestly just cause grab > attack + disjointed grab = PROFIT.

Hi, it's me, the guy who calls Kirby bad, and I've been summoned because Kirby isn't bottom 5 kappa.

But no seriously, there are somethings I don't agree with the tier list (and not It's not about Kirby)

I feel Peach is a little too high. I don't think she's top 2 since she loses too many MUs to be a top 2 character (Sheik, Kirby, Zelda, probably Pika and Marth). I can see her at top 5 though.

I think Marth should be be top 5 at S tier. His Fair while landing lag got nerfed is still ridiculous due to its low end lag and his Dair is not only safe on shield but the spike has so much hitstun. Also he doesn't have any weaknesses besides his recovery being too linear and gets screwed by ledgehogging but other than that he's defiantly dominant enough to be top 5.

Fox should be B tier at least. Fox being below Bowser is just crazy as his neutral is still very solid and he still has most of the stuff he had from .3. I know his CG is gone but he doesn't need it to be good. Gravity changes do make him kill later but he still has great kill power and I'd argue the removal of port made him better since he was garbage when he didn't have port in .3. Fox may not be as good as in .3 but he definantly isn't bad enough to be at the bottom of mid tier.

Other than that there isn't anything big that i disagree with. Tier list is okay overall

I see that Kirby moved up from C-Tier this update.

This entire top tier is a big huh from me tbh, a lot of these characters weren't even buffed

correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t bandana dee buffed? Why did he fall even lower?