If you have not read the breakdowns of previous seasons, please be sure to check out the rest of the series:
Similar to the last breakdown, we will be using the same established rules set for the previous season. The WWR uses the same tiering system as PGRU, so we will be utilizing the tiers already established to break down results. C-Tier tournaments, the lowest ranked tournament, 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.
The image above showcases each character’s “placement percentage.” A placement percentage signifies a percentage out of all counted tournament results for the WWRv7 season in which a character successfully placed, based on the rules laid down earlier. As you can see, of the 80 characters in the game through WWRv7, 38 accounted for at least 1.0% of results, which is slightly less than half of the roster.
ROB tops the roster for the second season in a row, with 5.99% of the total results. This is the highest percentage of results achieved by any character since the release of Smash Ultimate. ROB had a total of 94 results, with 71 as a main character, and 23 as a secondary or pocket. Smash Ultimate had 1 new addition to its roster this season. Pyra & Mythra released in the middle of March and had the biggest impact on the meta than any other character during their debut season. They almost cracked the top 10 for the season, but landed just short at number 11, with a total of 2.74% of results.
Here we see the biggest changes between the second and third online seasons. One of the most important changes we see is how many results were gathered in each tier. We had fewer tournaments and results to count than the previous season, with every tournament tier decreasing in total results. B-Tiers and C-Tiers are where the majority of results are coming from.
In terms of characters, we see that few characters had higher raises in rank percentage, and a majority of characters actually decreased in both. For the biggest increases in rank, Sephiroth tops the chart after he only had half a month of results for WWRv6. Steve also takes a top position, as he only had three months of results to work with in WWRv6 as well. Mii Gunner and Hero had harsh drops from WWRv5 to WWRv6, but had notable resurgences this season. Lastly, some characters that have not seen much results since Ultimate’s release see some significant increases this season, such as Mii Brawler, Kirby, Ridley, and Incineroar.
While Sephiroth had the higher increase in rank, Steve had the highest increase in percentage of results. Min Min, the other DLC character that was released during WWRv6, also saw a large increase in results, landing herself right behind her DLC brethren for the top three increases in percentage. Mr. Game & Watch and ROB were the two top 10 characters from WWRv6 that saw significant increase in percentages, with Mr. Game & Watch being the only character from last season’s top 10 to have any positive change in rank.
As for losses in rank, Sheik drops the hardest due thanks to her most dedicated specialist, naitosharp, very rarely utilizing her in tournaments. Lucas and Young Link fall below the 1% threshold that they achieved last season, while Pichu, Corrin, Peach, and Ganondorf fall into obscurity, all below 0.3%.
Young Link had the harshest drop off this season, going from 2.14% to 0.77%, which is below what would be considered relevant to the meta. While still maintaining the second and third rank respectively, Palutena and Cloud saw a drop in percentage overall from the previous season where they were a bit more dominant. Zero Suit Samus, who was top 10 last season, dropped enough to fall out of top 15. Characters who have done notably well in past online seasons, such as Pokemon Trainer, Joker, and Donkey Kong, have also seen decreases across the board.
This chart showcases the top 10 of WWRv6’s and WWRv7’s placement percentages throughout their respective seasons.. The previous article already dissected WWRv6’s top 10 characters in that season, so I will be mainly focusing on WWRv7’s results.. The biggest thing to take away from WWRv6 was that ROB, Palutena, and Cloud were the top 3 characters in results every month, dominating the meta. Notably, the biggest change in WWRv7 meta is ROB’s dominance over every character comparatively. In fact, ROB is the first character in all of Ultimate’s lifespan to reach over 8% of a single month’s results. It was not until the very end of WWRv7’s season that ROB was dethroned from the top spot, falling below Palutena and Cloud.
For the two DLC characters that joined the top 10 this season, Steve and Min Min, we see two very different paths of results. Min Min did not see a large amount of placements until January 2021, where she exploded onto the online scene. The fiery start was soon extinguished, as she fell all the way to 0% in March, but she then shot back up to almost 4% in April. Min Min was incredibly inconsistent but overall still had strong showings. On the other hand, Steve was pretty consistently a top 5 character by the middle of the season and maintained respective percentages each month, but never really had a large spike of results.
As stated earlier, 38 characters were able to reach up to 1.0% for their season placement percentage, which is less than half of the roster. That being said, this is still better than the season prior. While ROB had an incredibly high percentage, the top 5 still make up 20% together, as Palutena, Cloud and Sonic all had lower percentages than the previous seasons. The total roster percentages for each 20% tile are relatively similar to WWRv6’s percentages, except for “Very Little Meta Relevancy”, where WWRv7’s is 3% larger. While ROB had a truly high percentage, not many characters achieved higher percentages, leading to the overall balance when looking at the meta relevancy chart to remain mostly the same.
Here we see a breakdown of the results in each tier, including which characters have the highest amount of results, and their peak performances in each tier. Each tier had a variety of different peaks, where not even a single character won a tournament in all four tiers. Cloud, Pyra & Mythra, and Young Link were the only three characters to win tournaments in even three out of the four tiers. Young Link’s appearance in this list is truly interesting as the character did not achieve a placement percentage over 1.0%.
Last season, the top three characters took the top three spots in S-Tiers, A-Tiers and C-Tiers. Not so much this time around. In fact, the only tier that the top three dominated was B-Tier. ROB did take the top percentage of every tier though, including by a sizable margin in B- and C- Tiers.
Due to the small number of S-Tiers, some characters outside of the top 10 were able to sneak in. Yoshi cracked the top 5 for S-Tiers, while Ness and Pac-Man just took the last two spots. At A-Tiers, Min Min excelled over some of the other characters, while Ness is the only non-top 10 character to make an appearance in the A-Tier top 10. At B-Tiers, we see the top 5 slots taken up by the top 5, while Pyra & Mythra had some great success in this tier. Ness and Luigi also showcased solid results on the lower end. Lastly at C-Tiers, we see Sonic and Ike cracking the top 3 for results, while Luigi also was able to gain enough results to place 7th in the tier.
This chart showcases the correlation between a character's placement percentage and the amount of players who have contributed to that character's results. A majority of the top 20 are outliers from the trendline. In fact very few characters are actually relatively close to it.
The cyan 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.
As just mentioned, there are a lot of characters who have higher percentages that stem far from the line, with a slight majority higher than lower the trendline. Very few characters had drastic increases in player base size, but we still see a solid handful of characters that stem far above it. Steve, Min Min, Wolf, Pyra & Mythra, and Samus all stem quite above the line, having quite large player bases accumulating the characters' results. Steve in particular is close to ROB in terms of player base size, even though ROB has a significantly higher placement percentage.
Below the line, we see Sonic, Ike, Ness, Luigi, and Zero Suit Samus all having smaller player bases than what would be expected from their results. Steve almost triples the amount of Sonic players who achieved results, despite them only being one rank apart in percentage. We see similar trends with Wolf and Ike, and Ness with Pyra & Mythra. Ness and Sonic were also 2 characters who were a part of the top 10 biggest decreases in player representation.
There you have it, folks. WWRv7 may have concluded Smash Ultimate’s online competitive meta. Next time we will cover the period of offline tournaments that occur prior to when the next PGR season starts to look at the new offline meta before competition resumes.
