Really? You really think so?
A friend of mine, MasterDave (Also known by Konata and Izumi) got terribly ***** by m2k in match one of his set vs him in a tourney (CoT3 in Philly, iirc), and in match 2 almost beat him using that tactic.
You're forgetting a few things:
- You can move horizontally in the water.
- Lag time once you land in it is set
- T. Link is going to have less lag time.
Thus, if you approach and miss, or hell, even hit him, he'll pop out, and just dair, wait, dair when you pop up, and again until you die.
The idea of the arrow is to build percentage or force an approach. There's not much you can do to a T.Link in the water.
The point is, our definition of stalling doesn't apply to the stage, because the opponent can still have a viable approach. So we shouldn't ban it for stalling purposes, the scenario you're describing is just camping using the stage.
That said, I didn't know that TL had less lag time (I knew the other two though). So, I'll agree, it gives him an advantage. It's not an impossible to overcome advantage, though. He is still stuck for a very good amount of time in the water unable to do anything except move sideways. He's very easy to hit in the water regardless of how fast he can get out. If you miss, then he has the same chance of hitting you as you did of hitting him.
Have you really had trouble hitting someone in the water? It's really easy, at least with the majority of Brawl's cast.
That strategy you listed is predictable, too. You know he's going to jump out of the water and either land back in the water or land on the boat. If he lands back in the water (what you're describing), he has a huge amount of lag (comparable to a whiffed DDD fsmash at the very least) which makes using the water highly punishable.
I mean, there are clear-cut reasons for why stages are banned. That this stage helps one character camp (I still don't think it does that much) doesn't fall under any of those reasons. It's not stalling because TL can be (easily) approached. It's not an instant kill by any means like DDD's chaingrab on walkoffs.
At the very least, this is just a counterpick which helps some characters more than others. Brawl has tons of others; don't you think Frigate offers characters like MK and GW huge advantages over like a DK?