If that's what your experience tells you, then you are clearly not a big Smash player.  Not an insult, just the way it is.  Link is awful.  Kirby is mediocre.  Luigi is bad.  Just because you have a few friends who can win with them in small local tournaments does not mean they are any good.  If your friends tell you they're S tier fighters, than your friends are either misinformed or they're liars.

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=321738

This is an how good or bad each character is according to actual top players. 

While that list is generally accurate, i wouldn't complete agree with it. Link and Kirby, sure. Call them crap. Luigi in the right hands dominates. Insane recovery, very fast attacks and his Up-B used well makes for some very easy kills. Just need a good approach and defensive game due to his poor range. Tournament Luigi players are amazing to watch. 

I really think the comparisons just need to stop outside of threads made specifically for comparisons. I mean this on both fronts.

Agreed, sry wasn't trying to derail. For the rest of you, no I don't play smash too much, only when with that group of friends and I suck pretty bad at it so your probably right. My friends do do national tournaments tho so who knows.

Have only played with Nariko and Good Cole so far, really like their move sets. Working on my timing for air juggle combos and set ups. This is a little out of my element....yet some how easier to meld into (I am a Tekken fan through and through XD )

Spike is from Ape Escape lol

The tier list is generally a work in progress, but I agree on Luigi's placement, and if anything he should be a bit lower.  He has pitiful range, low speed, and his floatiness makes for pretty poor approach options.  Worse yet, his slidyness hurts his defense.  A lot of attacks that would be entirely unsafe against the rest of the cast are safe against Luigi unless he power shields.  Luigi's Up B is a good tool, but it only works if you make a truly excellent read or if you could jab combo into it, which Luigi can only do against a small portion of the cast, and only if he can actually get to close range.  Despite all of this, Luigi can compete against low tier characters and SOME mid tier characters.  He even has a few isolated good matchups in the higher tiers, but ultimately he's just not that good.

Tournament level Luigi players are really fun to watch and make the character look good, but that could be said about most characters.  Watch someone like Reflex play Pokemon Trainer, and you'll be convinced the character is better than he really is. :)

Because I'm tired of derailing the thread with all of this talk about Smash I'll just say this: You pretty much just said everything wrong with Luigi but also what a skilled player needs to do in order to work around his weaknesses. So yea, you agree with me that Luigi isn't a bad character but a weak one.

I get this, man. At my school, Smash was treated as a national sport (which is why I had to get some flack for playing PSAS there) until 1 campus had it's consoles stolen, and the other campus I go to had it's Wii just break down, and we've got tons of tourney/skilled players. There are characters in SSBB that are bad, but I just don't consider Luigi one of them. The game's just not balanced and it's pretty clear that a competitive fighter wasn't the developers goal. Actually, I remember reading on Neogaf that the Smash directore felt he made melee too competitve. It blew my mind reading that and knowing how bad Pichu was in that game. 

Anyway, I'm done. 

What exactly is the difference between a weak character and a bad one?  I'd say thats the same thing.  You can't really hope to work around Luigi's weaknesses in high level play.  He's viable in mid tier tourneys but not  real ones.

As for balance, I think Brawl would be reasonably balanced without MK.  If they added a few frames of lag to some of MK's moves, you'd have a game where about half the cast would be viable which wouldn't be too bad.

I wish Nintendo had a competent online service to patch things like that.  That's one point where PSASBR has an advantage.

I'm surprised it got several 9s, as the presentation is really lacking in the game. Those menus are just...wow, i'm surprised no one mentioned anything to them during the beta. Funnily enough they seem to be more aesthetically pleasing for the Vita version despite being similar in presentation.

I think the general thinking during the beta was that those were placeholders until the actual menus were finished.