Smash Ultimate: Peach Guide

Super Smash Brothers Ultimate’s Peach has long been considered a top-tier competitive character. However, recent tier lists have seen her drop below the top rank (S-Tier) and into a pool of A+ Tier characters.

Is this correct, or should Peach still be considered amongst the competitive S-Tier characters?

Strengths

Peach’s (and her Echo character Daisy’s) greatest strength lies in her float ability, unique only to her. It grants Peach excessive mobility, allowing her to edge guard from various angles, poke the opponent’s shield, and retreat efficiently. It also provides Peach with excellent recovery, making her difficult to punish and, ultimately, difficult to eliminate.

Float makes Peach one of the best aerial attack characters in Smash Ultimate. She maintains distance in the air, using her turnips (Down B) to damage opponents from afar. When they get close, she can deliver obscene combos to decimate the opponent before again retreating to a safe distance. Should an opponent get the upper hand, she also has a counter in the form of Toad (Neutral B) to thwart an oncoming assault.

This ability makes her one of the more complex and frustrating characters to battle!

Weaknesses

Peach’s weaknesses correlate inversely to her strengths. She is a strong aerial character, indicating that she is vulnerable on the ground.

Her ground movement is particularly slow, ranking below the 50% percentile amongst characters. Moving vertically is not her strong suit either, and while her float ability grants distance, it also makes her susceptible to the opponent’s projectiles.

Mastering Peach also requires a high level of technical skill within Smash Ultimate. She is considered one of the most challenging characters to play, given that her competitive prowess stems from her combos. A competitive player would need to consistently land these combos to make her shine, thus making her a shaky pick for a tournament.

Competitive Outlook

Despite her weaknesses, Peach remains amongst the best characters in Smash Ultimate. Her removal as an S-Tier character is more likely due to her lack of tournament representation.

Peach’s last strong tournament finish came on March 13^th at Collision 2022, where she finished tied for 25^th in the hands of LingLing. He was the only player to main Peach in the Top 65, and she wasn’t represented as a secondary by any other player.

Peach did, however, finish tied for 9^th at Smash Ultimate’s top competition, the Smash Ultimate World Tour Championship, on December 19^th, 2021, piloted by MuteAce. MuteAce, considered the best Peach main globally, was again the only athlete to bring the character amongst the 33 competitors.

What hinders Peach, according to professionals, is her match-up against characters such as Pyra/Mythra, Mr. Game and Watch, Pac-Man, Zero Suit Samus, and Shulk, all of whom are considered S-Tier or A+ Tier. Particularly, Pyra/Mythra remains the issue, as the character was the ultimate winner of both competitions previously mentioned.

Still, these recent results from Peach demonstrate the strength of the character. Should competitors decide to invest the time necessary to master her abilities, we could very well see Peach rise again to join the S-Tier characters in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate.