Also, Link's advanced tech's aren't as important as most players make them out to be. They can help in certain situations, yes, but compared to say Fox in melee, they're almost completely useless. With Fox, unless you had a certain level of tech skill, you couldn't even be good with him at the competetive level. With Link, it's much more focused on the meta game and overall playstyle and mindgames. His advanced techniques can help in select situations, but are by no means necessary to his overall gameplay.
Quote for truth.
I've been playing a lot of Link's online and in some tourneys (yes, online maeks things weird, but bear with me), and they use ATs so much more than I do. Yet in Link dittos, I almost always win because I try to read the player a lot more and play to the person rather than the character so much. I think the only Link I've lost to was Legan, and that was because it was the first time I played online and I had so much trouble trying to spam up-B to even get back onto the ledge (I failed). I have actually not lost to a Link player when I play any of my other mains (Pit, DK), despite it being not too uneven matchups. Now I wish I could post some videos, but I just don't have any recording supplies, and my digicam is just too terrible for recording matches.
I still do think Link can be mid-tier, but that's because of his overall floatiness. In Melee, he was mid-tier for most of the tier life, and finally low-tier towards the end. Yet he had more mindgames with his recovery, and was mostly just as strong. Despite having abusive matchups against him (Falco, Sheik, the like), he did have some good combo-ability that kept him in the game for great players like Aniki. I don't think even such skilled players can do that with Link in Brawl because of the new engine.
Now in Brawl, Link can probably take off 2 stock and 50% off most of his matchups, but he'll get gheighed by the better recovery people. It is SO easy for people to quickly react and footstool Link. I don't care how much you want to say you can try to mindgame/trick/adjust with your recovery. Seriously, there is basically nothing you can do when you're trying to recover from the bottom, and his air dodge leaves him with few options when people start timing AGAINST your airdodge on your way back. Against Metaknight, you'll trick him 5 times, but the 6th time he'll know what to do and you're dead. And the rest of the time, he'll just keep poking you out. A lot of people say you can try to adjust in your recovery with DI, and you can make it a lot of the time. But trust me, if you play against somebody who has a LOT of experience against Link, you will get gimped or footstooled so often it is not funny. You know its really true, no matter how good you are, if your Link can get footstooled by a level 9 CPU.
We've recently seen Izaw's combo video. He shows some good ways to rack up damage with Link, but that all involve moves that are part of Link's kill list. Unused "kills" are good fresh, but its so often not really that its actually sad. Unfortunately, it seems that most of Izaw's opponents were kind of weaksauce, but the principles behind his combos are still good. But despite that, the only true Link favored maps would be like, Eldin Bridge or something, but that is banned because of the chaingrabbers (do not play Falco or DDD there if you can somehow counterpick that stage!).
THe thing about Link's ATs is that none of them help with preventing him from getting *****. He will do some more damage and whatnot, but no ATs related to recovery, and no ATs related to true mindgame spacing.