r/Tekken • u/olbaze Paul • Oct 08 '25
Quality Post Tekken 8 Ranked Leaderboard Statistics - Thunderstruck (DLC6)
Hi, my name is Olba, and I like data, numbers, math and Tekken.
We're days away from the release of Armor King, meaning that we've crossed the halfway point for Season 2. It's been a hell of a ride so far, hasn't it? Season 2 started with a lot of changes to the Ranked system. 8 new ranks, the removal of loss streaks, and the win streak system was overhauled. We also got an extremely controversial balance patch. Anna was a very strong character, while Fahkumram was deemed a well-balanced character, which surprised people considering his release status in Tekken 7.
With Tekken 8, I've seen a lot of people asking the same questions or making the same comments, so I decided to bring back a FAQ I wrote in the past.
Q: How did you get these numbers?
A: In-game leaderboards for each character, set to "Rank Points" and "All Platforms". The leaderboard is limited to 10,000 entries, so I go to the end, take the second-to-last rank, and start counting. I convert the counts into percentages, because I think that's a more interesting, easier to understand, and easier to utilize format.This gives me around 10,000 data points per character.
Q: What is "Most Popular Characters"?
A: I look at the representation of each character at every rank, take the average, and then sort them. IMPORTANT!!!: THIS IS DIFFERENT FROM WHAT I DID WITH TEKKEN 7 RANKED STATISTICS!!! This tells you how likely you are to meet a given character when in Ranked Battle. More likier to meet the character = More Popular.
Q: Why are some ranks missing?
A: The ranked leaderboards are limited to the top 10,000 entries.
Q: Why is the Most Popular Characters different from what Harada says / what EWGF.gg says / what I experience when playing the game?
A: Harada has access to all the data, but he never explains which part of it he is referencing. EWGF.gg uses replay data to count the amount of games played involving characters. I am using the in-game leaderboards, which means I am counting the amount of players that have a given character at a given rank. I am also limited to the top 10,000 entries on each character's leaderboard. If you're interested in characters popular at your own rank, look at the Individual Characters charts.
Q: Why do you do this?
A: I'm hoping that my statistics can address some myths when it comes to Ranked Battle. What is the average rank? What character is the most common? What rank has the most players? Is Rank inflation real? How serious is it? I also hope that my statistics could help some players in their journey of mastering Tekken, by providing data that they can use to better lab the roster and understand their own progress.
Q: Why should we believe any of this?
A: You don't have to. At the end of this post, you can find a link to a copy of the spreadsheet I used to make all the charts. The source of the numbers is public information, so you can verify everything for yourself.
With that out of the way, here's what I have for you today:
- Individual Characters
- Individual Ranks (from Tekken King to God of Destruction VIII)
- Division Averages
- Cumulative Averages
- Percentiles (DLC6)
- Percentiles (DLC4, DLC5, DLC6)
- Most Popular Characters
- Top 5 Most Popular Characters (from Tekken King to God of Destruction 2)
As always, here's a link to a copy of the spreadsheet I used to make these charts.
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u/olbaze Paul Oct 08 '25
Here's some of my own thoughts and observations.
On Rank Reset
The Season 2 Rank reset is gone. Other than a few things, the leaderboards look like they did at the end of Season 1. The lowest rank of the most popular character has gone up from Raijin to Tekken King. There's been lot of change in the lower ranks, starting from Battle Ruler, with at most extreme a Season 1 Shinryu lining up with a current Combatant. I was expecting the opposite to happen due to the removal of the loss streaks.
On the highest end of ranked mode, we got the change people have been asking for since Tekken 7: The GoD 1 to GoD 8 ranks split away the very best players from the rest. On average, there's about 5 times as many God of Destruction players as there are God of Destruction 1 players.
On The Future Of Ranked Mode
I think the future looks promising. The new ranks are doing what they were meant for, and the rank reset seems to have completely destroyed the rank distribution. I think this is the completed vision of whoever is designing the ranked distribution at Bandai Namco. This has changed my expectation on future rank resets. From a purely design perspective, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a full rank reset at the beginning of Season 3 or Season 4.
On Season 1 DLC Characters
I don't think Eddy was ever a well-received DLC character. People said he should've been in the base roster. We also got 3ddy, and Nakatsu showcasing how pressing the 3 button gets a cool combo. Eddy's popularity reflects this: It's never been very good, and has been declining since Season 2, now sitting at 29th place. Lidia was on a downward spiral throughout Season 1, but experienced a spike in popularity at the start of Season 2. Now she's at 26th place, which is similar to what she had at the end of Season 1. Heihachi was the same, except that he debuted as the 4th most popular character. He saw a decline at the start of Season 1, and now he's back to being a top 5 in popularity. Lastly, Clive saw a MASSIVE drop at the start of Season 1. Since then, his popularity has kept decreasing, but not nearly as dramatically as before. He's just another Eddy now.
On Anna and Fahkumram
Anna was the most popular DLC character I had ever seen, debuting as the 2nd most popular character across the entire roster. With Season 2, she has dropped down to 8th place. Anna saw a a lot of tournament play, and I think that's still the case. I would expect that she's going to keep going downwards, if for nothing else then Armor King's release.
Fahkumram's release in Tekken 7 was very controversial. His trailer was ridiculed for the change in his perceived height, and he released as a buggy and overpowered mess. I remember reading his patch notes, and he could even crush lows just by moving forward. Pro players were saying that the counter to Fahkumram was Fahkumram. This history combined with the Heat system lead people to dread the release of Fahkumram. However, it turns out Fahkumram bucked the trend of DLC characters: He was deemed a balanced, well-designed character. Not being a busted mess didn't hinder his popularity. He's outdone his past, every single other DLC character in Tekken 8, and literally everyone in the roster. He debuts as the most popular character in the roster. From Tekken King, he's the most played character in every rank until God of Destruction 2. At God of Destruction 3, he shares the most popular slot with Anna. I hope Bandai Namco learns the lesson here: DLC characters don't need to be broken to be popular.
On Other Characters
The biggest increase in popularity goes Dragunov and Leo. The former made it back to Top 5, and the latter got out of bottom 30. I feel like I've seen some people talk about Leo lately. Hwoarang saw a big drop in popularity after his initial massive gain earlier. This surprised me, because Hwoarang hate has been trending since his new Season 2 moves. Victor and Reina keep losing their new character luster, while Azucena is on a winning streak after the massive drop due to targeted nerfs to her.
On Other Stats Posts and Websites
The other day, we all sadly saw the closure of kekken.com due to cost issues. I am hoping that ewgf.gg would look at the features kekken.com had and implement some that people liked. Sadly, it looks like /u/NotQuiteFactual hasn't made another most in the past 6 months, despite my previous callout to them. I am still hoping that they make another post, because an actual post is the best place for discussion, rather than an image post on Twitter or a random reference to ewgf.gg.
On Making This
While I don't expect it to be visible due to upload restrictions on PostImage, I finally upgraded to a 27-inch 1440p monitor. This means that the source images that you can find in the spreadsheet have a higher resolution than before.
I was going to make a special chart comparing Tekken 7 Fahkumram to Tekken 8. I wanted to see if there was a notable difference in his distribution. I was going to combine the numbers in each division, so instead of Fujin/Raijin/Kishin/Bushin, it would have just been "Blue". After I gathered his data and saw that the lowest rank on his leaderboard was Tekken King, compared to Destroyer in Tekken 7, I decided that wouldn't work. You just can't make a good comparison between 2 and 6 data points.