Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Version 6.0.0 (November) Fighter Usage Stats!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - 6.1.0 might change everything, so I gotta specify.

They announced a version 6.1.0 of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to deploy shortly after this article will publish, and that might affect the balance patches for characters. It isn't completely correct to deem this the November usage stats (especially so early in the month), though these do derive from the results of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open November 2019, which had the grand prize of going to the Genesis 7 tournament in January.

While I'm not going to Genesis 7, I'm very happy with my own performance. I finally got in the top 32 within my region—a solid 31st place. My diagram in the Online Open August 2019 article isn't FAKE NEWS anymore. The ladder only being three hours instead of four helped a lot, as did the revised stage list. (I still want Fountain of Dreams or Dream Land, though.) You can read about my journey in the comments section in the article hyperlinked in the previous paragraph. A whole lot of Bowser play. I lost immediately in the bracket round to a Mario player, however. Curse that plumber.

The actual winners were King Chris (who moved to somewhere else in Canada since he won the September 2019 tournament, apparently?), Wisdom (Duck Hunt from Missouri), Annoying Orange (aka Frawg) (Bayonetta from Nevada), and John Numbers (Wii Fit Trainer from New York, and the legendary Nintendo competition protagonist).

Anyway, once again (see September 2019's here and August 2019's here) I aggregated the ladder rounds across all regions of North America for this tournament. This time, there were 6,788 registrants and 3,225 players who played at least one match, for an average 47.51% participation rate. That's significantly less than the participation rate in August and September, and if you want a marketing lesson, it's because the automated/manual reminder e-mails telling people they have 24 hours until the tournament starts never went off/were never written. This caused about an ~8% drop in participation rate (again, defined as the number of people who play out of the number of people who registered—not the raw number of people playing) because people forgot they signed up for the tournament, and splitting the regions up over two days (though a given player will only play during one day) may have also confused people about when they had to play. This time, there were 36,824 games played. Despite the drop in the %, it's a raw number improvement from September, but still not as good as August's numbers.

Here are the relative placements, name, total games played, the percentage of all games played, and their change in placement compared to September 2019. A positive number means that character went up in usage compared to other characters, while negative means they fell off relative to other characters. I've colour-coded some of the notable changes, based on trends and the 6.0.0 patch buffs:

1. Joker    4259    5.78%    0
2. Terry    3464    4.70%    N/A
3. Bowser    2960    4.02%    -1
4. Banjo & Kazooie    2621    3.56%    12
5. Link    2382    3.23%    1
6. Ganondorf    2011    2.73%    -1
7. Ness    2010    2.73%    0
8. Mario    1967    2.67%    2
9. Cloud    1820    2.47%    -1
10. Inkling    1806    2.45%    -6
11. Hero    1653    2.24%    -8
12. Donkey Kong    1620    2.20%    12
13. Kirby    1580    2.15%    17
14. King K. Rool    1526    2.07%    18
15. Pikachu    1435    1.95%    27
16. Pokémon Trainer    1344    1.82%    -5
17. Little Mac    1340    1.82%    4
18. Yoshi    1333    1.81%    -6
19. Piranha Plant    1332    1.81%    4
20. Palutena    1311    1.78%    -5
21. Samus    1300    1.77%    -12
22. Ridley    1283    1.74%    -4
23. Zelda    1262    1.71%    -3
24. R.O.B.    1244    1.69%    1
25. Captain Falcon    1242    1.69%    -11
26. Lucas    1219    1.66%    -13
27. Wolf    1180    1.60%    1
28. King Dedede    1116    1.52%    -11
29. Young Link    1114    1.51%    5
30. Lucina    1102    1.50%    3
31. Sonic    1029    1.40%    4
32. Roy    998    1.36%    -1
33. Snake    967    1.31%    -14
34. Luigi    931    1.26%    3
35. Ike    842    1.14%    -8
36. Toon Link    770    1.05%    3
37. Mr. Game & Watch    721    0.98%    -8
38. Marth    681    0.92%    28
39. Chrom    639    0.87%    -13
40. Zero Suit Samus    611    0.83%    0
41. Jigglypuff    589    0.80%    5
42. Dark Samus    583    0.79%    11
43. Falco    573    0.78%    -2
44. Wii Fit Trainer    543    0.74%    6
45. Shulk    540    0.73%    -1
46. Incineroar    521    0.71%    -3
47. Bayonetta    508    0.69%    -25
48. Corrin    501    0.68%    3
49. Robin    481    0.65%    19
50. Fox    465    0.63%    9
51. Mewtwo    463    0.63%    1
52. Dark Pit    462    0.63%    5
53. Ken    450    0.61%    -5
54. Mega Man    448    0.61%    -16
55. Bowser Jr.    439    0.60%    -19
56. Mii Gunner    416    0.56%    -9
57. PAC-MAN    411    0.56%    -1
58. Greninja    393    0.53%    -9
59. Richter    377    0.51%    5
60. Villager    369    0.50%    1
61. Peach    356    0.48%    4
62. Mii Swordfighter    340    0.46%    -2
63. Lucario    316    0.43%    -5
64. Isabelle    297    0.40%    -10
65. Mii Brawler    289    0.39%    4
66. Pichu    287    0.39%    -4
67. Daisy    285    0.39%    5
68. Dr. Mario    253    0.34%    -5
69. Pit    211    0.29%    1
70. Meta Knight    180    0.24%    5
71. Rosalina & Luma    165    0.22%    -16
72. Simon    153    0.21%    -1
73. Sheik    152    0.21%    5
74. Diddy Kong    150    0.20%    -1
75. Wario    147    0.20%    -8
76. Ryu    140    0.19%    0
77. Duck Hunt    134    0.18%    -32
78. Olimar    119    0.16%    -1
79. Ice Climbers    117    0.16%    -5  

First, I'd like to welcome the Ice Climbers to the dead last position. Olimar really didn't want to get that again.

Second, it was a notable theme in the September stats that those numbers were corrupted by the temporary unavailability within the Battlefy platform for players to select Banjo & Kazooie until halfway through the latter round. I had a hypothesis that people were selecting Duck Hunt and Bayonetta as substitutes to explain their rises in September. Now that Banjo & Kazooie are fully available, that explains their respective collapses, despite two of the ultimate tournament winners being Bayonetta and Duck Hunt mains! (Wisdom is definitely taking advantage of no one having Duck Hunt match-up knowledge.)

By the way, Terry was available as an option from the very start of the tournament, and boy did many, many people want to use him. I admit that I was wrong when I live-reacted during Terry's stream and said, “Well, no one's gonna use Terry his skill floor is already too high.” ...Though did Terry lose more than 50% of his matches. Add this to me being wrong when I said that Nintendo would release Terry after this tournament happened. Whatever. I'm sure he'll see a decrease by next tournament.

By comparison, for three tournaments in a row now, Joker is still the most used, most popular character. Being the best character in the game has that kind of power. Joker's grip is slipping a bit, though. He wasn't the number one most-used character in two regions this time, and was merely tied (with Lord Bowser) for the most-used in Region 7. To think if I used Bowser in one extra match, Joker would've fallen to second place there. Bowser was outright the most-used character in Region 8, however, where Joker was only the fourth-most used! (Also behind Terry and Ganondorf.)

I wonder if Piranha Plant would have a higher usage rate if it was part of the Fighters Pass and not a post-launch freebie. But you look at how much Hero's appeal wore off... well, he's still used way more than average.

Mii Gunner fell (but not as much as I would've liked) because most people got over the Sans Mii costume meme crap, which absolutely supports me citing Sans/Undertale as an example of a meme without staying power back in 2015. Bowser Jr. totally undid his gains from August to September, and... that's a shame. I don't have an explanation, other than that I myself didn't use... myself as much in this tournament versus September. Maybe it's the whole being bottom-tier factor.

Donkey Kong, Kirby, King K. Rool, Jigglypuff, Robin, and Incineroar all got buffs from the 6.0.0 balance patch. All of those characters except Jigglypuff (minor increase) and Incineroar (a minor decrease) moved up substantially compared to that pre-buff tournament. People pay attention to buffs. They want to try the buffed characters out. Maybe they watched some awesome combo video on YouTube or Twitter right before the tournament started and decided to change mains and test it out. ...Not sure why Jigglypuff wasn't a bigger beneficiary of that, though.

If you want to optimise your match-up knowledge against the most commonly-picked characters, you should still try to train against Joker. Lord Bowser, Ganondorf, Link, and Ness have all been very consistently picked as well. If you need Bowser practice, I'm around.



Ludwig isn't sure about some of the other shifts, like why Pikachu or Marth decided to skyrocket in usage. Fortunately, he doesn't have to provide insights to every mystery in order for this article to add value to your Super Smash Bros. Ultimate experience. He doesn't know when the next tournament will be, only that there will be a next tournament. You may view the spreadsheet that made these stats, which also splits by region, here.


The next tournament took place the first weekend of February. 
Here are the next set of usage stats, from that February weekend.