That was sarcasm. I do not really believe Fox to be "the best"
Thank you for that link. It was a really good, if somewhat condescending, read.
However, I do have my issues with it...
The main recurring argument here is that difference creates imbalance. While there is some truth to this, particularly in traditional fighting games, I would argue the opposite. Difference supports balance! My evidence? This treatise puts forth that the tier lists will be constantly shifting, and in some cases such as Ice Climbers, those changes can be radical. Ice Climbers has always had that potential. The potential to contend with high-tier characters, despite being previously written off as not viable. In his own argument, the author reveals the futility of the tier-list.
Ice Climbers are different. The player has two bodies, and unorthodox moves that take advantage of that fact. The potential lied in using them correctly.
Kirby is different. He's light, very floaty, and his main attribute is just imitating the other characters. The potential lies in using this correctly.
You say a decent player wouldn't get caught by Kirby... I say a decent Kirby would be able to catch them anyway.
The point I'm trying to make here is that the incredible variety, while I concede is impossible to intentionally balance, will ultimately balance itself. The fluidity of the tiers is the strongest evidence opposing them. If proper tiers existed, a tier-list would be more or less stable. Minor rearrangements are to be expected in anything of the sort, but the major upsets that appear in Smash should not happen.
I believe that any move can be made to work. You just need to work out how best to get around the frame data and unleash its true power. Timing and positioning are paramount here, but it can be done. There is no move that just flat out does not work.
I'm with the other people on this board, you have no idea how high level play works. Ice Climbers are a unique case, everybody knew that they had potential but nobody wanted to overcome their harsh learning curve of controlling two characters at once until ChuDat decided to give it a shot.
By contrast, most other low tiers have people that are dedicated to using them and trying to advance their metagame and all of them have stayed right where they are because outside of few niche uses, it's been shown that the characters have flaws that are too significant for them to be viable in high level play.
Let's look at Fox and his major weaknesses: he's combo food for Marth, has a fairly predictable recovery, and dies off the side very quickly.
Now let's look at Bowser and his major weaknesses: he's combo food for
every other character in the game, he's slow as hell, all of his attacks besides up-b have significant start-up lag, all of his attacks including up-b have significant end-lag, his attacks are extremely telegraphed and thus are easily avoided, if you do somehow get hit by his attacks they're extremely easy to DI, he can't combo worth a damn, he's very easy to shield poke, he has no neutral game to speak of, he has a terrible SHFFL, he has a terrible wavedash, and he's extremely reliant on hard reads to kill anything or even get hits in the first place.
Your point about tier lists changing was addressed in the link I sent you. Tier lists are never set in stone but rather are a reflection of the state of the metagame at a
specific point in time. In case you don't know, the metagame consists of all the strategies that make up high level play. If there is a specific tactic that no one knows about but causes a radical shift in the state of the metagame when someone finally discovers it then the next tier list will be altered to reflect that change. Before you argue that the low tier characters have some sort of hidden tech that can propel them up the tier list, Melee has been played competitively for almost 15 years now, if there was something good about the low tiers that could redeem them, it would've been found by now.
You keep talking about frame data as if it's irrelevant. On the lowest level of play, maybe you could make this argument. At the highest level of play however, things are happening so fast that it becomes relevant. Let's say you have Fox's shine, active hitbox on frame one, can be jump canceled into whatever you want on frame 4. Now let's say you have Bowser's fsmash, hits like a truck but isn't active until frame 29, almost half of a second and can't be interrupted until frame 66 while the entire animation is 69 frames. If both players throw these moves out at the same time, Fox's shine wins because its hitbox is active while Bowser is still in start-up lag, Fox could also jump cancel the shine with a wavedash into another shine if he misses because Bowser's fsmash takes that long to come out.
I notice that you've begun making the argument that you can just jump to avoid the shine when you see Fox crouch. It's not anywhere near that simple. Unless you have superhuman reflexes, you'll never even see Fox crouch before the shine comes out, it's that fast.
Also, please don't tell people "You need to use the move right". There are several moves, most notably the majority of Bowser's moveset, that will NEVER land outside of an extremely hard read. Characters that are completely reliant on hard reads don't do well at the highest level and for good reason: a competent player will be playing in a way that guarantees that under most circumstances they'll be as unpredictable as possible.
Finally, please stop with the nonsense about Kirby. No decent player ever gets caught by his inhale, why? Because of the significant start up lag that the move has meaning you can see it coming from a mile away along with poor range. Even if for some ungodly reason you get hit by it, very few characters give Kirby an ability that he can actually use. Kirby gets no use from Fox's blaster because Fox can not only outcamp Kirby with his own blaster, even if Kirby gets Fox to approach he has no way to reliably punish said approach. Falco's blaster admittedly is somewhat useful to Kirby and Falco is one of the few top tiers that Kirby
might be able to inhale because of his slow speed if said Falco isn't spamming lasers like he should be. Sheik's needles aren't useful to Kirby because they don't have nearly enough range to do half the things Sheik can do with her's. Marth's shield breaker on Kirby has no range, like none, making it nearly useless for pretty much the only thing Marth uses shield breaker for outside of mixups, edgeguarding. Jigglypuff's rollout is useless on Jigglypuff and is just as useless on Kirby. Peach's Toad is an extremely situational "get off me" attack because it doesn't give followups and as such Kirby gets very little use out of this. Falcon Punch? Flashy and disrespectful but completely useless otherwise. Kirby
might get some use out of Ice Blocks but that's only 2 out of 8 of the top tiers that Kirby can steal a somewhat meaningful move from. Additionally, Kirby is supposed to be an aerial fighter but has one of the worst air speeds in the game.
