No one is safe on the ledge. Its a commonly known fact that sticking yourself on the ledge for 'safety' is one of the silliest things you can do. Almost every character can just run off and B-air you straight into the stage for a stage spike. All of the default ledge options are punishable by a shield to a grab and then he's free to do as he likes. Ledge Hop aerial? Same thing.
The standard reappearance is near lagless and he can do anything out of it. He can also just opt to use the sword hit so what do people do in the mean time? If they're higher in damage, they have no choice but to try and bait him out. Meanwhile they're going to try to predict when he's going to reappear and what he's going to do when he does. If he opts for the sword slash, it opens on frame 1 of the reappearance meaning whatever defensive option is taken has to be taken BEFORE he reappears. Holding shield, mindlessly spot or roll dodging. No one wants the meta game to degrade to this.
The only projectile fast enough to hit Meta Knight before he can get into the cape off the bat is Robo Beam from R.O.B. and its not that hard to avoid that.
Standing on a different portion of the stage? Not a problem Meta Knight can just stay where he is perfectly impervious to harm and wait for you to come near him. This just gave him the best defensive and offensive option.
Stalling normally is usually only a soft ban. Your only hurting your reputation for doing it, as the stalls thus far in Brawl are punishable with proper characters. Pikachu can just send a roaming Thunderjolt under the stand to smack Sonic out of his Homing Stall and KO him at the same time if he's not near an edge. Kirby can just float under the stage and U-air stage spike him.
As of now, the competitive community as a majority believes it ban material. I will, however, steal my nephews game cube controller tomorrow and test it myself tomorrow. If I find that peoples tests aren't as concrete as they currently seem I 'might' lift the ban.
Its still highly unlikely that its only going to be partially banned. Its just too hard to police it without having people stalking Meta Knights with Stop Watches to time it every time its used. No tournament ever has that kind of man power, not to mention who the hell carries a stop watch anymore...
Its not like you need it anyway. Don't think I'm doing this against you either, your my partner in teams for gods sake. If it turns out to not be as broken as tests currently imply then I'm all for working out team strats with it :p
My Creations in Modnation Racers! Check zhem!
http://community.modnation.com/en-us/players/IvoYaridovich/creations
