At high levels I don't think thats true. imo Olimar and Pikachu have made a strong case for having more tangible success than the three above them.
Pikachu hasnt had multiple champions at one time, however he has had very consistent success since Brawls release, with three different players (anther, ESAM, PikPik) having such success at the national level.
Consistency in "level of amazingness" isn't that important in a character's placement on the tier list, unless nothing has changed in their metagame. The tier list is supposed to be a representation of the CURRENT metagame. Thus, having multiple players being successful IS important. Anther wrecking people in '08 doesn't mean anything to a 2011 tier list.
Right now both Marth and Pikachu really only have one champion each. I'll grant that Pikachu's has performed better than Marth's at nationals, but they're both difficult to draw a specific line on due to only having one major player right now.
Olimars would include Rich, PS and Brood as having had success at US nationals (I dont include Dabuz since I dont know if he ever entered a national, though I doubt many would disagree he's on their level).
Although it's not huge gap, I do think there is a solid distinction between the success of olimar and pikachu vs Wario, Marth, and Ice Climbers.
Olimar is more reasonable to argue for here, I agree. PS is.... Pyronic Star? I haven't heard anything from him lately. Brood's also a rather isolated incident. If some of the European Marths came over and bodied some people, would we all **** our pants? Maybe, but that's not something we can stake a huge claim on.
Further issue lies in how you would have to re-arrange that tier. You'd have to make a case for them to pass ALL three of those characters, and I'd find that quite difficult to justify, personally.
I have two issue with how tournament success here is judged.
1. If we're going to base it off monetary success, percentage used needs to be taken into account. ex. In some make believe perfect gaming world, if you had two characters A and B played in equal amounts at the same level everywhere each winning 50% of all money; if we saw the amount of character A's doubled then we'd also see their winnings improve to 66% while character B falls to 33%. However you are equally likely to win money picking either character A or B. Taking that into account, the best stat to use to measure monetary success would be (% of each dollar won / % used).
2. I don't find monetary success to be helpful for much more then what it directly measures: the best characters to choose if you want to win money in some random region. To look beyond that into the quality of a characters based on tournament success, it's more or less essential to look into the quality of their victories. Otherwise based on (% of each dollar won / % used) you see Ice Climbers as third best character, and Falco/Marth as worse than DDD.
I agree with both of these issues with the ranking system, but that's not exactly something I have a lot of control over.
Regarding MUs, A tier + oli and pika all have pretty similar MU spreads. Can you elaborate a little more on what you mean on this point?
Sure thing. This is most easily displayed by simply looking at their match-ups, and how common those characters are.
[collapse=MK]
0:
1:
2:
3:
4:
[/collapse]
MK is extremely self explanatory. He goes even with 3 characters tops, is +1 with most of the other viable characters, and +2 or worse on everyone else. I personally don't see Pikachu being even with MK, either, but ESAM is the metagame, so it's all we have to work with. It's not like Snake or Falco, where we can point out the clear outliers (Ally and DEHF) through comparison to their contemporaries. No other Pikachu is on ESAM's levels, so it's difficult to argue.
[collapse=Snake]
-1:
0:
1:
2:
3:
[/collapse]
Snake is actually a really interesting case. On paper, his matchup spread is actually a bit worse than Marth's, but he sees much better results, justifying his spot.
His only Bad matchups are to MK (a difficulty virtually everyone faces), two uncommon characters (Olimar and Pikachu), Dedede and Marth. To my knowledge, many Snakes carry pocket MKs for Dedede if they don't like fighting the matchup, and MK also suppresses Marth and Dedede to some extent. (This is part of why I feel like Snake's placement is inflated by MK)
Other than that, his matchups are all in his favor or even.
At this point I realize we were addressing Wario, ICs, and Marth specifically, but this does help me to work out my thought process a little bit, so we'll just skip over Diddy and Falco...
[collapse=Wario]
-2:
-1:
0:
1:
2:
3:
[/collapse]
Wario faces a -2 from Marth and Peach. His disadvantage with them hurts him, but these aren't exactly match-ups you'll typically see in tournament play, largely because Wario is uncommon to begin with.
-1 with MK is typical, Dedede doesn't hurt him extremely and is often stage dependent, and after that he's looking at an even with Oli, +1 with Pika, and even or +1 with most viable characters.
[collapse=Marth]
-1:
0:
1:
2:
3:
[/collapse]
Marth suffers a little bit more than Wario due to his bad matchups (MK, Diddy, Dedede) being fairly common. However, many of his evens are rather uncommon. (Toon Link, Falco (seriously, who actually reps Falco at nationals besides DEHF?), ROB, DK, and Wolf) They provide him difficulty if he DOES face them, but it's fairly unlikely.
Marth is also +1 on Snake (common) and +1 on both candidates to rise above him (Oli and Pikachu).
[collapse=ICs]
-1:
0:
1:
2:
3:
4:
[/collapse]
ICs are another strange case like Snake. Their matchup spread is actually pretty bad for a high tier character, but they see good results in tournament. (IMO, this is largely due to the fact that they REVOLVE around infinites.
-1s with MK, Snake and Diddy hurt them. Their other -1's are uncommon. Even with Pikachu, +1 with Olimar.
[collapse=Olimar]
-2:
-1:
0:
1:
2:
3:
4:
[/collapse]
Olimar's spread isn't super amazing either. -2 with Falco is bad, though uncommon. However, -1 to Marth and ICs, whom he's trying to pass DOES hurt him. Even with Wario and Diddy.
[collapse=Pikachu]
-2:
-1:
0:
1:
2:
3:
4:
[/collapse]
A -2 to Olimar, -1's to Marth, Wario, and Diddy. Even with ICs and MK.
When all is said and done, I ask myself this question: Do Pikachu and Olimar perform better against those ABOVE the characters they're trying to rise above?
Olimar has his -2 to Falco, -1 with Marth and ICs, and even with Wario and Diddy. His performance against MK and Snake is similar to all of those characters, so I don't think that justifies any movement above them.
Pikachu is -2 to Olimar, whom he's competing against, -1 to Marth and Wario, who he's trying to pass, -1 with Diddy, even with MK and ICs, and has the niche hard counter on Falco.
When you look at the big picture, neither Pikachu nor Olimar do better than Wario, Marth or ICs when facing the top 4, and they also BOTH lose to Marth, and either lose or go even with Wario and ICs.
Tl; DR: At best, I think you could justify them passing ICs. Losing to Marth while not performing better against those above him doesn't justify passing him or Wario.
