Mario Tennis Aces character reference
Mario Tennis Aces stopped receiving balance changes on 31 May 2019. This list uses per-character performance data published after that patch, rather than the launch-era rankings most tier lists still reproduce.
Every character carries a grade showing what its placement rests on. Most Aces tier lists online are undated and several are machine-generated. One popular list ranks both “Dry Bones” and “Hone Koopa”, which are the same character under two names.
Post-patch performance data and competitive results agree. The best-supported placements on this list.
Rests on the post-patch performance breakdown alone. No tournament record confirms or contradicts it.
Sources disagree, usually launch-era reputation against post-nerf measurement. Read the detail before relying on the tier.
The full roster in tier order. Select a character to jump to their row in the table below.
Sortable and filterable. Each row leads with the stat that defines the character. Open a row for summary, playstyle, strategy, weakness and patch record.
| Defining stat | Details |
|---|
Three systems account for most of the tier ordering above. Understanding them explains why reach-heavy defensive characters sit at the top.
Reach determines how often you can return a ball without moving, and returning without moving is what frees you to charge a shot. Four of the five S tier characters have long reach. Boo is the exception. His reach is among the shortest in the game, and he offsets it with the most extreme slice curve of any character. Reach is also the single stat separating Peach from the rest of the Technical class.
Trick Shots generate energy, Zone Speed consumes it, and Zone Shots spend it to threaten the opponent's racket. Blocking a Zone Shot without using Zone Speed also adds to your gauge. Long reach means you charge without spending. Short reach means you sprint, and sprinting costs energy you need elsewhere.
Returning a Zone Shot with correct timing costs no durability at all. A well-timed block is free, and it refills energy if you reached the ball without Zone Speed. Damage comes from returning with incorrect timing: roughly a third of the racket per mistimed hit, so three mistakes break it and the point is forfeited. The skill being tested is block timing, not endurance. This is also why Dry Bowser's trait matters, since he is the only character whose racket survives a failed block.
Tendencies over a long set rather than hard counters. Aces has no rock-paper-scissors between classes.
This list ranks singles. Bowser Jr. is reported as dominant in doubles as a rear-court player, where his reach covers the baseline and his weak control matters less. Diddy Kong, near the bottom in singles, is recommended as a front-court doubles specialist on the basis of the fastest dash speed in the game and a strong volley. For doubles, treat the lower half of this list as unranked.
Repeated nerfs indicate a character was dominant at the time. Highlighted entries are the patches that changed the tier ordering.
Source dates matter more than tier letters. Aces stopped receiving balance changes after Ver. 3.1.0 on 31 May 2019. Ver. 3.1.1, in December 2025, was a stability update with no character adjustments. Almost every English tier list online is undated and describes the launch environment. One widely-cited Japanese ranking naming Bowser Jr., Waluigi and Chain Chomp as the “big three” is dated 1 August 2018, four patches before the game finished changing.
Five errors were found in a fact-checking pass and are recorded here rather than quietly removed. None changed any character's tier.
Previously: “Even a correctly-timed block against a Zone Shot costs one to two hits of durability.”
This reversed the mechanic. A correctly-timed block costs no durability. Damage comes from returning with incorrect timing. Corrected in Core mechanics 03. Reported by a reader.
Previously: “Every character in S tier has long reach.”
Contradicted by this site's own Boo entry, which correctly records his reach as among the shortest in the game. Now stated as four of five, with Boo as the named exception.
Previously: Pauline described as having “the fastest feet in the game”.
This conflicted with two other first-place speed claims on the same page. Sources disagree on Pauline's top speed, so the claim was dropped in favour of her sourced traits: speed maintained through acceleration, and Special Shot resistance.
Previously: Toadette's slice volley called the “fastest in the game”.
The source describes it as top-tier, which is a bracket rather than a rank. Softened to “among the fastest”.
Previously: Rosalina called “the slowest character in the game”.
That ranking came from a movement table covering only the 16 launch characters, so it cannot support a claim about all 30. Softened to “one of the slowest”.
The character emblems on this page are original, a monogrammed tennis-ball crest coloured by character class. No official Nintendo artwork is reproduced. Super Mario Wiki's policy states that images hosted there “remain the property of their original creators”, fall outside their Creative Commons licence, and are used under fair use only. Reuse elsewhere requires permission from the rights holder.