Well we are entirely limited to the perspective that Docs have out performed Marios in tournament scenes; of course it is theoretical. However, my main reasoning is that Mario is less developed than Doc (while having a largely similar toolset) and is less exploitable overall which gives him much more even match ups.
However, a lot of the stuff you are saying is largely false. To clarify, I said there were only a few things that are conclusively better on one character rather than the other; everything else amounts to only being relevant in certain match ups. For Doc, I would say that his ftilt and dsmash are outright better than Mario's while Mario's jabs, fsmash, up air, and recovery are better than Doc's. Everything else is either match up relevant or comes down to personal preference.
Some things you said which I disagree with:
Every attack from doc hits harder and he can land them more easily
While plenty of his attacks hit harder, I wouldn't say that Doc can land his more easily. His only attack that actually lends itself to that conclusion are pills, but even then, pills actually leading into his attacks are situational. Mario still has the better jab and, generally speaking, safer aerials and fsmash. Mario's uptilt is also more reliable in regards to setting up other attacks; more so than pills.
Doc's nair is better than Mario's
This isn't really true. Not only are both of their nairs just garbage for approaching (unless you managed to pull off a cross up on a character who doesn't have a good backwards hitting OoS option ...so like Marth, C. Falcon, and Ganon), but Doc's has worse L-cancelling lag, worse hitboxes on the strong part of his nair, and lacks the utility of a semi-strong punish in small window situations. Again, the nair might seem better because it allows you get some favorable trades in certain circumstances (though your opponent should easily be able to react to it) , but to say its "better" is not true; they both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Doc chaingrabs harder and guarantees more follow ups
This is definitely a big tell that you aren't actually a "pro Mario" because Mario is generally the better chaingrabber. This is a result of his throws being weaker which is more important for racking up percent (see: NTSC Sheik). The only situation where Mario might be a "worse" chaingrabber is against fast fallers since Doc's stronger throws make his uthrow and dthrow chaingrab easier at low percents. However, I would still consider Doc inferior in this area because his chaingrab will be easier to escape. Furthermore, Mario has more guaranteed damage and positional advantage from uptilts, uairs, and nairs, whereas Doc's best punishes (dsmash and fair), while reliable, are restricted to certain percents. Ultimately, I would say that their grab games are affected by match ups.
Mario has more room for error if he fails to be on point
This isn't necessarily true either. Again, Doc is a polarized character, so if he is in a situation which favors one of his respective strengths, of course he doesn't have to work as hard. However, if he is in a situation which favors one of his respective weaknesses, he is going to have to work a lot harder than Mario. This all just comes back to the idea that Mario, while never "easy" to use, is much harder to exploit than his clone.
Doc has a better ground game
This goes back to their individual attacks and certain situations. Not something which tips in either character's favor all of the time.
Doc has more tools to prevent being edgeguarded/the Marios recover like Marth
If we were actually talking pure quantity, Mario wholly has more tools to protect himself with on recovery. However, since you seem to be referring to pills as more than one "tool" I assume you meant to use it as a quality argument. Again, pills are only situationally better than fireballs. Both are excellent at attacking the ledge but they travel at different trajectories. Pills are more effective when using them to cover a steep angle whereas fireballs are better for attacking a lateral one. This makes them more effective against certain edgeguarding patterns (Fox and Falco might favor more vertical edge guarding whereas Falcon has more of a horizontal one). However, the thing about Pills is that they are only favorable when Doc is already in a somewhat good position (at least relatively speaking for a recovering player). Since Doc's mid to long range recovery is entirely dependent on securing the ledge, he becomes less effective at recovering the moment he isn't able to use pills from a high position
Mario, on the other hand, isn't necessarily bound to going to the ledge and can mobilize fireballs far more consistently since they don't require him to be up high. He also has more defensive options during recovery thanks to cape lift which allows him to reflect offstage attacks and projectiles without killing himself (something Doc/Marth/Falcon could never do) as well as methods to prevent himself from being auto-edgehogged if he goes low.
Also, the only thing about Mario's recovery that is similar to Marth's is the angle of their up-bs. other than that, I would say their options on recovery differ substantially.
I still disagree with you on this and everything that you have dubbed false from my argument, and this is not meant to be a hostile remark but I feel as though you are an intermediate-mid leveled player and have not utilized the tools the two Marios have with the same level of depth that I have been putting into them. As said earlier I consider myself stronger than rook, and only n0nes mario compares to me I feel, but opinions don't make the player obviously.
One thing you brought up however was that you believed that Mario could be potentially better in MUs where recovery would be better off being non-linear and I saw that you labeled Doc as a polarized character while saying Mario was more well-rounded. I understand where you are going with this, but I disagree with it. I believe that fundamental character traits can be mixed and matchup, some being polarized, others being balanced, and with values being sorted amongst the characters reasonably, it would be possible to have equally viable characters despite their polarized strengths and weaknesses, due to the nature of melee having every character being highly versatile, something that I believe to be unique to this game. I don't believe a character can be balanced around the top tier level and struggle in some MUs while destroy in others due solely to how the character's strengths are proportioned. Take Falcon for example. He has a great ground game mostly, and a less than stellar recovery, something you claim could be exploited in certain MUs. However, while he does relatively poorly against sheik, he goes even against marth, and both excel at gimping characters with bad recovery options. I don't see this as falcons recovery making him easy for gimp orientated characters but rather falcons punish and neutral game lacking. If either of those two were better he would probably go just as even as if you had buffed his recovery. I believe Doc's better ground game can keep him on the stage longer than mario to where it can make up for his weak recovery.
Its fair to say that much of doc's and mario's toolkits is highly subjective to player opinion, and both have their fair share of situational advantages, so when I analyzed the effectiveness I also calculated how many situations a mario bro player will have a use for that move, and how much benefit the player can reap from all total applications of each move. In the end, Doc came up ahead. When Im done explaining my reasoning for those general areas you had questioned, I'll provide a rather lengthy section giving a side by side comparison of ALL of their moves. Another useful tidbit to know is that mario has a total of three moves that are stronger than doc's; his u-air, hi f-tilt, and his b-air. However a pure knock back increase is not always the optimal solution, something you yourself disagree with and also seem to believe that I do. I will cover this later as well. One last thing is that I will not list any hitbox or frame differences unless they are significant, such as in the case of their capes and their dash attacks. The two have many slight differences but most are ignorable.
You may have noticed that I had said that doc had an easier time landing hits. I believe this to be true, not only following up with them, but connecting attacks in the first place. However i was disregarding his pills mostly, pills have become increasingly less useful as each year passes in the metagame, many top tiers can dispose of them easily, they're overly committal for doc since they're laggy and he can't react out of them well, and they give a very minute reward with a large risk. The same can be said about most projectiles in this game as well. Aside from that, doc has the superior jab, they're stronger and just as fast (the slowness only applies when following up jabs), so they have unproportionately high hitstun for their speed. Jab> into grab or d-smash which are great universal options, as bread and butter as d-throw tech-chasing is for marth. Sure he loses out on rapid jabs for mixups and general damages and utility as a get-off-me tool, but I feel the access to a reliable, powerful, quick, and safe d-smash or grab outweighs mario's jab's utility in shield mixups and an answer to pressure.
Docs grab is just as quick as well and provides much better options out of it despite doing the same damage since his u-throw and d-throw are higher, allowing more leniency against fighters of the appropriate damage and fall speed. Any good falcon main can tell you how much of a pain it is to combo spacies with no reliable vertical combo starter, relying on stomps, raptor boost, and platforms (assuming the spacie is above you) to get that vertical boost. Doc is lucky to have that kind of vertical set-up power in something as easy to land as a jab, not to mention that doc can get free kills with f-air off of either down or up throw on any character. I don't see a situation where I wouldn't want to have this throwing power, mario's are too low to follow up on. Also doc chain grabs spacies from earlier percentages and with more leniency. I'm fairly certain doc chain grabs pikachu harder for the same reasons. Plus by the time the opponent is hurt and the chain-grab is weakening, they'll be at a good enough percentage anyway and hight to where followups will be simple to execute and effective.
Docs u-air is better for utility since it has weaker vertical knock back and growth, so he can seamlessly connect a u-air or two into an up or down smash, or perhaps a u-tilt or an aerial like n-air or f-air at higher damages if the opponents DI is favorable. Marios will often send the opponent too high to properly set-up with an attack, and he retains the same crap jump height as doc and struggles to reach his foe, and additionally has a very slightly slower airspeed. U-air follow ups are the most arguable of all of their tools however, and what mario sacrifices he can make up with f-smash follow ups and u-tilt follow ups that lead to even more punishment. His f-air does set up for more hits, but mario does not have the best combos so the best he can muster usually is f-air>u-tilt>u-air, and f-air is hard enough to land as is. Docs f-air and u-tilt are not terrible either though, and have strong knock back for their speed which will almost surely knock the opponent off stage which isn't too terrible considering his status as a strong edgegaurder.
When I said that mario had more room for error, i was especially referring to his edgegaurding. Not only will doc be able to gimp and end stocks of offstage fighters in situations where mario will have to either keep fighting or go for a read, mario is also more reliant on these types of kills because he is weaker with less guaranteed kill options, and less kill options in general. And while on this subject, n-air is very good offstage and for edgegaurding much like how sheik uses hers, and docs lower trajectory and stronger knock back when it out longer, which is easier to do given docs speed, makes it much more rewarding. Unlike for mario, n-air is a very good option for doc, especially at low percents where some of his other quick attacks will not have enough knock back to avoid retaliation. He can follow up pills with it, punish rolls and spot dodges, and is generally a good trading tool when the opponent is at high percentage. The knock back it gives covers the extra 2 frames on land lag it provides and it has better growth from start to finish. Even at it's beginning its much better than marios n-air at it's latest hit, which decays rapidly. Mario should be using his hair to finish combos or not at all. Btw their regular land lag values are the same, only their aerials have lag differences, which is very minute when l-canceled. It hardly matters when your character can finish his u-airs and bars in a single short hop, even with fast falling.
Doc's ground game is better because of every reason I listed. While some are arguable for either side, others are straight victories for doc, and both have a heavy reliance on d-smash, usually through crouch canceling, which without marth would be near impossible to beat for the two.. Its in the nature of how they play, and while mario's is excellent, docs is near broken and has much more utility with it. Its the fox u-smash of d-smashes. I will give you recovery however. Its much longer and more reliable. But pills are far better than fireballs for recovery. Not only do they come from above, where retaliation is more committal, but they are closer to doc and also much stronger, giving him a bigger window to survive. Marios can haired through, or the opponent can shield, or ledge grab or anything. Its useful, but not stellar likes pills are. N0ne himself told me he felt fireballs were better for recovery but he was just being a hipster and doesn't have good enough opposition where he lives.
Ill provide a side by side move analysis later. Ive written too much already
I personally think that A Rookie ****s on n0ne. A Rookie has a way better recovery game and makes less mistakes. If you want to see a Mario that ****s on both A Rookie and n0ne, check out Boss in the Mario Video Archives (Mario Character Discussion). I also disagree with you about Doc having a better recovery game. His cape doesn't stall him in air as much as Mario's. I also think that Mario has a way better purpose to use the fireballs due to his commonly used fireball to fsmash combo.
A few things. 1. All pro marios like me and a rookie look up to and respect n0ne, he's a little bit of a vet but he's very smart and has great combos and movement; A rookie has is only a pro in the former. 2. All recovery tricks a rookie has he learned from green mario and n0ne, which probably took him something like 6 years or something evidently since he knows so much about old school marios. 3. n0ne was sandbagging in the video 1machgo posted against a much lower level foreign falcon who is still better than gravy. 4. Boss is a scrub, I'm sorry, but he's not the best mario player and you're making him as fraudulent as wizzrobe by claiming he could **** on even such a trash low level mario like rook. 5. Everyone knows that bit about the cape. We are discussing inception level mario bro recovery depth, not dr seuss. 6. nobody uses that combo and for that matter nobody uses fireballs. If you hurry Im pretty sure you could get a patent for both in your mario play.
