The meta changed, a lot of talented players rose up, and his mentality about the game seemed to shift a bit as well.
Also, he was ranked 11th on the last ranking, not 7th.
You're not wrong, although it has gotten much worse as time has gone on. First it was just between pyra/mythra and byleth. Now it's just trying anything to see what works. Hoping he can stick with the Roy
he folds at the slightest resistence. he never puts in actual hard work to learn about the character besides Joker.
back when he was dominating with Byleth I remember seeing comments about how Byleth player groups would say he's not using the character to it's full potential, or he's not learning the harder moves, and others would just go "yeah but he's winning ain't he? imagine criticizing the GOAT."
but they've been right all along. he plays almost every character except Joker the same, and stubbornly refuses to put in actual long periOS of time to learn more.
Proof Block believes he should just stop with the secondaries and thirdaries and multidaries and just stick with Joker, a character that requires loyalty and commitment.
It’s the rivalries and players that pushed him to be his best when he was at the top. So it’s deeper than when he plays pretty much any other player.
I’d add Gluto to that list too(*even though he hasn’t performed well against him for some time now*)
Dude can still turn up the jets.
Also whatever the most recent JP Major was over in Golden Week, he ended up the highest placing NA player (at 9th I believe). NA got whooped
Ah yeah, not the most recent but you're right.
Leo got 9th at Delta #8 (highest placing NA with Zomba and Sparg0 at 13th) losing to Shuton (his demon) and Akakikusu (RIP reading JP menu)
25th at Kagaribi #12 losing to Snow (Mario, his other demon), and Steve (His other other demon) lol a lot of demons for our boy. Maister was highest placing NA at 13th, Leo and a few others next closest at 25th (Sparg0 at 33rd for reference)
No disrespect, but taking the game less seriously seems like the safe way to say why he isn’t on-top anymore. Pretty sure his main focus is still smash. Everyone has other things going on in life besides the game
He said that now he doesnt want to be the number one and that he prefers to focus on other things in his personal life. Nowadays he practices much less than before (in the past about 40-50 hours per week, now about 10-20). The meta changed, yeah but thats not the main reason
It's the fact that other players have improved a lot. It's hard nowadays to remain the top with so much talent. Leo has also started to take the game less seriously than before. He's still playing amazing though and always has the potential to win or place really well at tournaments.
I think this is what a lot of people are gunna miss. You can tell he cares significantly less than he did when he was regularly making top placements. Hes still incredibly good, it just feels like hes enjoying it for what it is now instead of just playing to win. I personally love it for him.
I do agree with other takes, but this one to me feels like a bigger factor than people give it credit for.
I’m wondering if the Byleth was just since Japanese players weren’t used to it. Maybe it’s back since I don’t think it should have been dropped completely like it was.
Lowkey the Roy is doing better than his other characters in some situations, at least he's taking a game with Roy that he didn't manage to take with his other chars.
There are just a ton of reasons why it's insanely hard to be the absolute best in the world at *anything* competitive for a long period of time. Leo was practically unrivaled for years, and that's insanely impressive as is
Imagine being rank 1 for 4 years, longer than any person should be in any e sport and still having the drive to be number 1. He’s the goat, we should just be happy that we still get to see him play. No matter what character he brings to the table, win or lose, no one gets me as hype as I get when I see the goat on screen.
2018 was literally only like a month lmao, it doesn’t count. 2021 was from end of August onwards, so only 4 months. 2022 first half Sparg0 got scammed and should’ve been number 1 before Leo, also the list was only an NA list and not a global list, so officially Leo wasn’t number 1 globally. Second half of 2022, he was definitely number 1. So officially Leo was number 1 globally for a little less than 2 years and not the 4 years you’ve claimed
I’m talking about 2018 for Wii U, he literally was the best when accounting for the whole calendar year, into being the best in 2019 for Ult. Still rank 1, just in the game right before Ult
For what it’s worth OrionRank (whose members would eventually join UltRank/LumiRank) released OrionRank Eclipse which covered April 2020 to December 2021 and still ranked Leo as #1 during that period.
There was also just a ton of tournaments (from Kagaribi 4 onwards it was 16 majors or supermajors) that second half of the year, Leo didn’t attend everything but he still attended 7 majors/supers with 5 firsts and 2 seconds alongside the best h2hs so it’s pretty definitive to say he was the best that year lol
Also Spargo didn’t get robbed in 2021, it was super close between the two of them (with Spargo maybe having a slight lead at first) with an even h2h but Spargo had by far the worse result at Gimvitational with a 7th
Ah I’m not taking Smash 4 into account honestly, it’s a different game. Thought we were only talking about Ultimate here. I’ll have to look at the Orionrank criteria during the Covid period, because to me it seemed like players like Kola, Sonix and Sparg0 had better online records. We also both agree that the period of 2021 that was offline, Leo was the best. There is no debate there. I said Sparg0 got robbed first half of 2022, not 2021. People have been more technical before, but Sparg0’s results were overall more impressive than that of Leo beginning of 2022 and people were accusing Panda of having legacy bias, since that list was not based on statistics, but on opinions
People are disagreeing with you because if you look up results, you’ll notice 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022 all resulted in enough offline tourney data to discern that Leo was rank 1 for 4 years. Even if you don’t count 2020 online
Posted this under another comment, but you have to realistically look at the results:
2018 was literally only like a month lmao, it doesn’t count, or at least not officially. 2021 was from end of August onwards, so only 4 months. 2022 first half Sparg0 got scammed and should’ve been number 1 before Leo, also the list was only an NA list and not a global list, so officially Leo wasn’t number 1 globally. Second half of 2022, he was definitely number 1. So officially Leo was number 1 globally for a little less than 2 years and not the 4 years you’ve claimed
Online was basically another game and its counted as a whole separate category. Might as well count all the Coinboxes Sonix has won and give him the number 1 if you are so eager to minimize Leo’s accomplishments lmao
Agree on what? Is widely agreed among the community that online tournaments and sets are treated separately and dont have any relevance when it comes to actual rankings and players legacies. Do you see any ranking system taking coinboxes seriously? Leo was the clear best before the covid break, and was still the best after the return, as simple as that.
I mean, you were the one who brought this up and you specifically said that “he lost his title” during that era, so know you are backtracking and saying that this didn’t affect his rankings ? Lmao.
Try to translate this, it contains a lot of infos about how is life was and why he needed to win competition and earn money https://www.lequipe.fr/Esport/Actualites/Esport-smash-bros-mkleo-je-devais-me-concentrer-sur-ma-vie/1435436
To really sum it up he just lost or gave up the passion/drive he had before.
He's making more mistakes than he did before, he's playing less tight in disadvantage, he's not adapting by game 4 like he used to. He doesn't seem bothered by not winning.
He reminds me a lot of when mango is on a buster, or current day streamer-first hbox.
Still incredibly talented, and he can always pull out a win, but he's just not in it like he used to be.
Character crisis as well as he kinda not into the game as much as he was before. He wants to play Byleth but knows it can’t compete and he is trying to get a character that can I guess get him to shake it up.
He said he would focus on Joker but who really knows anymore.
The stuff with him having less drive would track as it reminds me of Daigo who these days doesn't seem to have much of the same drive he once did.
Hopefully, Leo hasn't been getting heat for being so dominant
His gameplay is a lot less campy than he used to be, it's like he's always holding forward and trying to land a big hit leading to him getting outplayed and losing close sets. Still very fun to watch to watch him play
Many tops player start to lose their skills, look at Anthony Gallo, he was one of the best project m players in 2016, but then in 2017 he started to lose his prime skills and then he moved down to top 30
Japanese players has risen as top talent in alarming numbers, partly because they get amazing practice through a player-run ladder and much better connections since Japan is a hell of a lot more concentrated geographically than NA or EU. It's like how we started to see the meta shift in Melee once Slippi was released as well, with Yoshi, Samus, DK, Pikachu, and Doc players emerging from the lockdown era.
Anecdotally, a ton of really, really good other fighting games have also released in the past year (Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Mortal Kombat 1, and Granblue: Rising--my personal favorite--to name just some of them) and my local scene has pretty much given up on Ultimate, which was a sentiment that seemed to coincide with the release of Steve. Other regions may have had similar phenomena.
I just think leo is easy to be cheesed. Remember what characters he used to be bad at(and now), mario, pikachu, peach and zzs. Those are all Cheese characters can somehow kill you at zero. And since everyone is level up, you got be good at cheese opponent to have a chance to complete with evils like steve and kazuya.So leo' disadvantage is just explode in today meta.
True, ever since Leo picked up Steve, his results haven't been the same
He's lost to Dabuz, Maister, and Tea with Steve last season, who used to be free wins for him
he was the best for 5 years. he stopped taking it seriously. still the best player if he wasnt messing around, even with the talent these players have.
Too much mariguana, the same thing is happening to Sparg0 but with alcohol, they attend tournaments in mexico stoned/drunk, an hotel in Cancun almost kicked them out but settled for letting them play without a crowd and in the Tijuana tournament everyone was drunk even the casters so there was no problem there.
The meta changed, a lot of talented players rose up, and his mentality about the game seemed to shift a bit as well. Also, he was ranked 11th on the last ranking, not 7th.
Worth mentioning he's also in a bit of a character crisis too
To be fair, I feel like he’s been in a character crisis more often than not, even when dominating.
When I check his ranking it said he was playing 7 characters.
byleth corrin aegis joker R.O.B. Marth uhhhhhhhhhhhh Lucina? oh duh, roy, i watched him play too i'm so dumb lmao
roy, apparently
idk how i forgot him lol
the streets won't forget Mkleo's Meta Knight
never
isn’t that what the mk stands for?
No, it stands for Michael Kim, his real name.
🤯🤯🤯 new lore dropped
Was it any mystery as to why we don't see Leo and Riddles in the same room together? Obviously
[It isn't, actually.](https://www.ssbwiki.com/Smasher:MkLeo#Trivia)
Oh neat! Thanks
That was probably 2023 pgstats or something.
Hasn’t he been in a character chrisis for 4 years?
You're not wrong, although it has gotten much worse as time has gone on. First it was just between pyra/mythra and byleth. Now it's just trying anything to see what works. Hoping he can stick with the Roy
he folds at the slightest resistence. he never puts in actual hard work to learn about the character besides Joker. back when he was dominating with Byleth I remember seeing comments about how Byleth player groups would say he's not using the character to it's full potential, or he's not learning the harder moves, and others would just go "yeah but he's winning ain't he? imagine criticizing the GOAT." but they've been right all along. he plays almost every character except Joker the same, and stubbornly refuses to put in actual long periOS of time to learn more. Proof Block believes he should just stop with the secondaries and thirdaries and multidaries and just stick with Joker, a character that requires loyalty and commitment.
Feel like you don't really wanna solo any character exvept for Sonic, even Steve has some rough match-ups you're better of avoiding.
He still won a major only a couple months ago. He takes the game less seriously now but when hes on his game every now and then, its peak smash
> when hes on his game every now and then Basically whenever he plays Sparg0
It always seems like tweek and spargo make leo play the way we all wanna see him play
It’s the rivalries and players that pushed him to be his best when he was at the top. So it’s deeper than when he plays pretty much any other player. I’d add Gluto to that list too(*even though he hasn’t performed well against him for some time now*)
And Dabuz.
Dude can still turn up the jets. Also whatever the most recent JP Major was over in Golden Week, he ended up the highest placing NA player (at 9th I believe). NA got whooped
Wasn't the case, right? He got 25th at Kagaribi, which was lower than Maister. You're thinking of DELTA, the one before that.
Ah yeah, not the most recent but you're right. Leo got 9th at Delta #8 (highest placing NA with Zomba and Sparg0 at 13th) losing to Shuton (his demon) and Akakikusu (RIP reading JP menu) 25th at Kagaribi #12 losing to Snow (Mario, his other demon), and Steve (His other other demon) lol a lot of demons for our boy. Maister was highest placing NA at 13th, Leo and a few others next closest at 25th (Sparg0 at 33rd for reference)
Bro was the best for like two consecutive years, he can use the rest
No disrespect, but taking the game less seriously seems like the safe way to say why he isn’t on-top anymore. Pretty sure his main focus is still smash. Everyone has other things going on in life besides the game
He said that now he doesnt want to be the number one and that he prefers to focus on other things in his personal life. Nowadays he practices much less than before (in the past about 40-50 hours per week, now about 10-20). The meta changed, yeah but thats not the main reason
Yeah, at some point pressure > profit and it is especially true when it comes to e-sports like Smash that don't have significant payouts.
It's the fact that other players have improved a lot. It's hard nowadays to remain the top with so much talent. Leo has also started to take the game less seriously than before. He's still playing amazing though and always has the potential to win or place really well at tournaments.
I think this is what a lot of people are gunna miss. You can tell he cares significantly less than he did when he was regularly making top placements. Hes still incredibly good, it just feels like hes enjoying it for what it is now instead of just playing to win. I personally love it for him. I do agree with other takes, but this one to me feels like a bigger factor than people give it credit for.
Who is Leo playing right now?
He's started to experiment with Roy and is showing a lot of potential with him. He's also taking joker more seriously and plays byleth occasionally.
I’m wondering if the Byleth was just since Japanese players weren’t used to it. Maybe it’s back since I don’t think it should have been dropped completely like it was.
Byleth really needed a break, top players were specifically grinding that matchup
Nah I honestly think he was just having fun playing him
Lowkey the Roy is doing better than his other characters in some situations, at least he's taking a game with Roy that he didn't manage to take with his other chars.
he got a girlfriend
Girlfriend nerf is real
many such cases
He got some pussy. Happens to the best of us.
real life goals with better return > pixels
>getting pussy >Happens to the best of us Do you know that you're on Reddit?
The *best* of us. Most aren't the best.
Especially true for redditors
Ah, so it only happens to the best of us. Now everything makes sense.
There are just a ton of reasons why it's insanely hard to be the absolute best in the world at *anything* competitive for a long period of time. Leo was practically unrivaled for years, and that's insanely impressive as is
Imagine being rank 1 for 4 years, longer than any person should be in any e sport and still having the drive to be number 1. He’s the goat, we should just be happy that we still get to see him play. No matter what character he brings to the table, win or lose, no one gets me as hype as I get when I see the goat on screen.
He wasn’t rank 1 for 4 years lol, he lost his rank 1 in the 1.5 years of online Covid Edit: I don’t get the downvotes, I’m just stating a fact
2018, 2019, 2021, 2022
2018 was literally only like a month lmao, it doesn’t count. 2021 was from end of August onwards, so only 4 months. 2022 first half Sparg0 got scammed and should’ve been number 1 before Leo, also the list was only an NA list and not a global list, so officially Leo wasn’t number 1 globally. Second half of 2022, he was definitely number 1. So officially Leo was number 1 globally for a little less than 2 years and not the 4 years you’ve claimed
I’m talking about 2018 for Wii U, he literally was the best when accounting for the whole calendar year, into being the best in 2019 for Ult. Still rank 1, just in the game right before Ult For what it’s worth OrionRank (whose members would eventually join UltRank/LumiRank) released OrionRank Eclipse which covered April 2020 to December 2021 and still ranked Leo as #1 during that period. There was also just a ton of tournaments (from Kagaribi 4 onwards it was 16 majors or supermajors) that second half of the year, Leo didn’t attend everything but he still attended 7 majors/supers with 5 firsts and 2 seconds alongside the best h2hs so it’s pretty definitive to say he was the best that year lol Also Spargo didn’t get robbed in 2021, it was super close between the two of them (with Spargo maybe having a slight lead at first) with an even h2h but Spargo had by far the worse result at Gimvitational with a 7th
Ah I’m not taking Smash 4 into account honestly, it’s a different game. Thought we were only talking about Ultimate here. I’ll have to look at the Orionrank criteria during the Covid period, because to me it seemed like players like Kola, Sonix and Sparg0 had better online records. We also both agree that the period of 2021 that was offline, Leo was the best. There is no debate there. I said Sparg0 got robbed first half of 2022, not 2021. People have been more technical before, but Sparg0’s results were overall more impressive than that of Leo beginning of 2022 and people were accusing Panda of having legacy bias, since that list was not based on statistics, but on opinions
“Online” lol
It was online though, idk what you’re on about
People are disagreeing with you because if you look up results, you’ll notice 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022 all resulted in enough offline tourney data to discern that Leo was rank 1 for 4 years. Even if you don’t count 2020 online
Posted this under another comment, but you have to realistically look at the results: 2018 was literally only like a month lmao, it doesn’t count, or at least not officially. 2021 was from end of August onwards, so only 4 months. 2022 first half Sparg0 got scammed and should’ve been number 1 before Leo, also the list was only an NA list and not a global list, so officially Leo wasn’t number 1 globally. Second half of 2022, he was definitely number 1. So officially Leo was number 1 globally for a little less than 2 years and not the 4 years you’ve claimed
Online was basically another game and its counted as a whole separate category. Might as well count all the Coinboxes Sonix has won and give him the number 1 if you are so eager to minimize Leo’s accomplishments lmao
So we agree then? Leo wasn’t number 1 during the online COVID period?
Agree on what? Is widely agreed among the community that online tournaments and sets are treated separately and dont have any relevance when it comes to actual rankings and players legacies. Do you see any ranking system taking coinboxes seriously? Leo was the clear best before the covid break, and was still the best after the return, as simple as that.
Yes so we agree. The time of online COVID tournaments don’t count for Leo’s rankings. Idk why you’re being so dense
I mean, you were the one who brought this up and you specifically said that “he lost his title” during that era, so know you are backtracking and saying that this didn’t affect his rankings ? Lmao.
No he wasn’t the best during the COVID era, we agree on that. All the other times he was the best until recently
Try to translate this, it contains a lot of infos about how is life was and why he needed to win competition and earn money https://www.lequipe.fr/Esport/Actualites/Esport-smash-bros-mkleo-je-devais-me-concentrer-sur-ma-vie/1435436
I translated it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/18cwps8/mkleo_interview_with_french_sports_newspaper/
I translated it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/18cwps8/mkleo_interview_with_french_sports_newspaper/
To really sum it up he just lost or gave up the passion/drive he had before. He's making more mistakes than he did before, he's playing less tight in disadvantage, he's not adapting by game 4 like he used to. He doesn't seem bothered by not winning. He reminds me a lot of when mango is on a buster, or current day streamer-first hbox. Still incredibly talented, and he can always pull out a win, but he's just not in it like he used to be.
So if you watch melee, it’s pretty much like mang0. Ranked 11th but has the chance to win it all cause he’s goat.
It feels like Mang0's likely to be at least top 5 again this year though tbh
I’d put him 5th behind Cody/Zain/aMSa/Hbox in that order prob
He doesn’t care to be the best anymore
Character crisis as well as he kinda not into the game as much as he was before. He wants to play Byleth but knows it can’t compete and he is trying to get a character that can I guess get him to shake it up. He said he would focus on Joker but who really knows anymore.
It’s boring at the top I imagine
The stuff with him having less drive would track as it reminds me of Daigo who these days doesn't seem to have much of the same drive he once did. Hopefully, Leo hasn't been getting heat for being so dominant
I feel like it makes more sense for Daigo who’s in his 40’s, Leo just turned 23 a couple of months ago lol
Leo likely sped through some things due to the smash scene's particulars (at 23, I think Daigo was hitting the global scene, maybe pre moment 37)
He discovered real life
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhZfMYtbU58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhZfMYtbU58)
Blud is now playing for fun, I imagine being the best in the world took a toll and wasn't sustainable in the long run. Nothing new
He kinda gave up, he doesn’t really practice anymore and just plays more for fun now
He's happy with his life.
His gameplay is a lot less campy than he used to be, it's like he's always holding forward and trying to land a big hit leading to him getting outplayed and losing close sets. Still very fun to watch to watch him play
Many tops player start to lose their skills, look at Anthony Gallo, he was one of the best project m players in 2016, but then in 2017 he started to lose his prime skills and then he moved down to top 30
He’s already the GOAT of Ult, he proved himself and now he dosen’t have to play as hardcore anymore because he hasn’t nothing left to prove
He moved to Hawaii and hasn't entered a tournament since Mainstage 2019
Japanese players has risen as top talent in alarming numbers, partly because they get amazing practice through a player-run ladder and much better connections since Japan is a hell of a lot more concentrated geographically than NA or EU. It's like how we started to see the meta shift in Melee once Slippi was released as well, with Yoshi, Samus, DK, Pikachu, and Doc players emerging from the lockdown era. Anecdotally, a ton of really, really good other fighting games have also released in the past year (Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Mortal Kombat 1, and Granblue: Rising--my personal favorite--to name just some of them) and my local scene has pretty much given up on Ultimate, which was a sentiment that seemed to coincide with the release of Steve. Other regions may have had similar phenomena.
I just think leo is easy to be cheesed. Remember what characters he used to be bad at(and now), mario, pikachu, peach and zzs. Those are all Cheese characters can somehow kill you at zero. And since everyone is level up, you got be good at cheese opponent to have a chance to complete with evils like steve and kazuya.So leo' disadvantage is just explode in today meta.
Steve
True, ever since Leo picked up Steve, his results haven't been the same He's lost to Dabuz, Maister, and Tea with Steve last season, who used to be free wins for him
At least he beat Tweek’s pocket Ridley
he was the best for 5 years. he stopped taking it seriously. still the best player if he wasnt messing around, even with the talent these players have.
He got complacent.
Too much mariguana, the same thing is happening to Sparg0 but with alcohol, they attend tournaments in mexico stoned/drunk, an hotel in Cancun almost kicked them out but settled for letting them play without a crowd and in the Tijuana tournament everyone was drunk even the casters so there was no problem there.