M2K beat Reflex. Yes, it's great and all that Reflex took a game off of him, but then again, M2K also likes to sandbag. But that doesn't matter, regardless of how it happened, M2K won. It probably won't happen again (Reflex taking a game off M2K with PT).
What does "a lot more viable" mean? Like... viable enough to not come in last?
Practically all of the characters except for Zelda, Ike, Mario, Ness, Lucas, Yoshi, Jigglypuff, Samus, Link, Ganon, and CF are better than people give them credit for. People do take the list at face value to determine a characters viability whereas in fact, most of the cast is more balanced than thought especially considering most "good" characters are not ***** by more than one top tier.
There is probably four reasons for the idea that most of the characters are crap:
1. We NEVER take secondaries into account when talking about character viability. Which is an absurd mindset to have when only MK, Diddy, Wario, Snake, Pikachu, and Kirby are not disadvantaged with a 35:65 matchup or worse (when it comes to general forum concensus anyway).
2. This goes along with number 1 in that while most characters actually have the potential of viability, they get hard countered by at least one character.
3. I beleive that the people on SWF beleive that the decrease in viability is steady as you go down the tier list. Frankly though, the difference between the lower half of mid tier and low tier (and I am saying this with a beleif that Ike and Zelda are low tier while Sonic and PT are mid tier) is much greater than the differences between any other adjacent tier groupings (except for low and bottom imo).
4. Brawl does have the potential for major diversity, but not in a typical fashion of a competitive scene. For example, if the accepted top 11 characters below MK gained huge popularity equatible to Mk's own popularity, the lower tiers would benefit more as it would be conceivable that they (minus the 11 afromentioned characters in the first paragraph as well as potentially Bowser) could go through a tournament without running into their hard counters. Yes, the top tiers would still beat them noticably, but at that point, Peach or DK for example would not automatically be shut out in tournaments by the mandatory MK or DDD encounter.
This potential for diversity would lead me to beleive brawl has the potential for balance (without having to kill off all representation of a top character), but not under typical circumstances attributed to a competitive enviroment.
Simply put, I think the majority of the roster have the capabilities to be viable, because most of them are not outright stripped of options in most matchups as opposed to the bottom 11. The problems arise in large tournaments considering you are that much more likely to run into your one/two crap matchup(s) and that is why the whole balance issue is skewed so much. That and when we have a double standerd when a mid/low/occasionally high tier takes a top 8 placing alongside top tier characters as opposed to when MK/Snake takes a top 8 placing alongside someone noticably lower than them.
