Excluding Maister's results, G&W would have mid tier results at best. Regional results and the rare times Zackray has used him as a secondary have added very few points. Nowhere near top tier results. You could argue a lot of characters get results on a regional level, like K.Rool in Australia. G&W's jump in results mirrors Maister's. Maister has carried the character up several places.
I'm pretty sure Tea was ranked a top 10 player but can't look that up.
No ****, if you exclude some results you would make any character look bad, it is all hypothetical and a fallacy. But lets play along this "logic." MK Leo has won multiple majors with
, he has shown that Joker has a lot of dumb buttons in his toolkit. If we removed MK Leo from the equation would Joker drop? Of course, because Joker players are not as skilled as Leo, but we have more than enough proof that Joker's toolkit has desirable traits for competitive play. Lets not give browny points to the other Joker players for participation, they are insects compared to Leo.
In real life it happened to
, his peak results are not as good as when Ally was around. Ally understood the character so much that he threw away matches with nobody noticing. Yet Snake was and is still considered to be up there despite not as many peak results as majors as he used to.
Now lets use your favorite character to hold this absurd narrative,
. If you payed attention, he was getting called out for his flaws very early in the meta. MK Leo and many top players were already catching on Ike's trash disadvantage state and very limiting amount of tools in neutral, even if Leo won majors. Other players got good and were already giving Leo trouble. Those flaws are why Leo dropped the character.
on the other hand was called garbage during the Ike meta, then Maister got gud and started topping events. Between his rise and the present players have had all the time in the world to look for weaknesses in his gameplan, and even with the adaptations GnW continues to top. If a character can be resilient to so much adaptation it can mean a few things, one is being good.
"But mah results, and Pac-Man."
He has a frame 3 Up B that denies pressure. You know how many characters struggle with
floating near them? Mr Game and Watch doesn't give a single ****. Very few characters can genuinely bait or punish GnW for Up B OoS.
Bucket alone demands you to play differently against Mr Game and Watch, even he doesn't use it often it is a looming threat that interferes projectile spacing and approaching.
have to think more than usual because GnW can use some of their best tools against them, and these are good characters.
Uair is a great juggling tool very few characters can respond to and not be punished for it.
shine'd it! If it didn't hit GnW tho he will get hit again and we are back to square 1. If you don't escape Uair right you get Nair'd, and we are back to Uair or another Nair. In every Maister match and even Regi match the opponent takes a lot of damage then moment they get Dthrown or sent upwards.
DSmash is dumb because it has very little endlag. Yes, it is a read, but if he does it there is little to no punishment. If you attempt to punish it you might get hit and say goodbye to your stock.
"But he has the spacing down but I don't"
Have you have ever thought Maister has the spacing down because he actually knows his character inside out and is like, good at the game? Yeah, foreign concept. Allow me to take your wall of text and hit "replace text at some parts."
"
has great rewards for making reads, and Hungrybox is one of the best at reads. Rest doesn't have good hitbox for a KO move, and can be punished if it doesn't star KO. But Hungrybox has the spacing down. I've watched him and it's like he knows what the opponent will do. He makes Jigglypuff's flaws seem less prevalent in ways no other player has. On paper, Jigglypuff should lose to most big hitboxes, like she has in every game.
There's a reason why no one else has had anywhere near Hungrybox's level of success. Why you very rarely seem him in results besides Jigglypuff. If you look at top tiers; they're everywhere. Every tournament I've seen, the top 32s are littered with Fox, Marth, Falco.. it's no secret who the top tiers are. Jigglypuff does not give any player the tools a top tier does. You have to be really good to make him work. I've tried picking her up. He rewards making good calls but he doesn't have the easiest tools to do it. It is very hard to play around swords with much better hitboxes. Her advantage state isn't free like some characters. She's a very position based attacker. She lacks the freedom of big sweeping hitboxes."
Why is Jiggs then considered to be top tier even though only Hungrybox has major success with her? Entirely toolkit and traits. There is more than enough proof that Jiggs has the capacity to top 4 and win majors. Jiggs MUs has been explored again and again for more than 10 years over and over. You think, if Jiggs is so good why does nobody else picks her up? So many players pick
because they can cheese wins with wobbling yet don't pick Jiggs who is better than ICs. Jiggs require a special talent to play her, she is unlike anything else in Melee. Hungrybox taps into the full potential of Jigglypuff, because he understands the character to an extreme degree and he has the talent to perform it. Getting Rest on rolls is not a piece of cake, Hungrybox makes it look easy, as if he were blindfolded. And he does it to top players, not scrubs at locals.
There is no written law a top tier needs to have lots of representation. It is the case most of the time but it is not a law.
