So with Bayo still being talked about a little bit (with that tweet from Salem recently posted) and with her being a big focus just a few days ago (or at least what seemed like it), something came to mind while I was at work that pertains to her and really any good character in any future Smash game.
With talk regarding Bayo both pre-patch and post-patch, anytime the idea of banning her comes up, there's always the mention of her not being fully figured out and her not taking up the vast majority of top 8s and her not being so oppressive that the other top tiers and even high tiers like Tink don't stand a chance. But another thing that's mentioned a lot is 'she's not Brawl MK'. That statement got me wondering, what if Bayo is 'broken'? What if she is ban worthy? What if she isn't in her current state but she WAS pre-patch? To answer those few questions of my own real quick, I currently don't think she's ban worthy but she could be down the line. Broken is eh to me. She's dumb, I'll say that much. Dumb that she has so many good tools all at once with such few drawbacks but then, welcome to literally every top tier. As for pre-patch, it honestly doesn't matter now since that character no longer exists.
But I have a point to make with this. What if Bayo is or could be deemed broken/unfair/ban worthy etc BUT not as much as Brawl MK? What if being broken/ban worthy isn't some black and white thing where being those words is Brawl MK or worse and not being those is everything else? Look at the controversy with the banning of Duck Hunt and Lylat (which as we know got unbanned shortly after to the pleasure and displeasure of many). When stages get banned, we don't immediately say 'it's as bad as Temple' nor do we allow all stages because they aren't as bad as Temple.
Brawl MK had numerous jumps, high movement speed, quick, disjointed., transcendent attacks, 4 specials for recovering, a glide as well, a move that ate shields for breakfast, couldn't be challenged by many attacks and could be safe too, was small and light (avoided many chain grabs), had true combos in a game largely without them and could stall on stage while invincible or the ledge where many characters simply couldn't hit him. That's a lot of powerful stuff for one character to have. Is the Smash community for every game after Brawl going to look at THAT as the minimum for what's banworthy? Heck, the ban on MK was late in Brawl's lifespan and short lived too. By the time it happened, most top players were using him.
I can see this comparison happening in the next Smash game. And the next. And so on. People have already mentioned that Bayo isn't playing by the same rules as the rest of the cast and many deem her the best character in the game and she seems to have little to no bad mu's. As for her not being figured out, there's a lot of dedicated Bayo mains and she's a good character that will pop up frequently in tournaments and people go to these for money. For some, it's how they make any sort of income. And this particular patch of Bayo has been around for over a year. With all that in mind, have people seriously not 'figured out' the character yet? I'm not saying it isn't possible. Fox wasn't always #1 in Melee, Snake held #2 in Brawl for a long time, it took ICies a while to become so good that they too got their own tier in Brawl etc. It's really a genuine question of 'can you defend Bayo by saying she's not yet figured out?'
TL;DR Is it fair to compare Bayo or any other character in any future Smash game to Brawl's MK in terms of being banworthy/unfair/broken? Does a character have to be as broken as Brawl MK to be banworthy or can there be lesser amounts of brokenness in banworthy characters?
