I really don't understand the complaints about ADHD's Villager. He didn't win the tournament; he was one of the players who tied for 5th. This was despite the fact that it was transparently obvious that no one had really labbed up how to force him off the ledge when he's doing that, a situation that gave him a massive advantage he would never have in the long term. Even still this killer strategy apparently is countered by a non-Pikachu player picking Pikachu and hitting the B button a lot. I have no doubt Jtails would have won with Diddy as well; winning with Pikachu was just a hilarious way to win against a total gimmick strategy.



What I was really paying attention to was what was truly successful in the tournament which wasn't the gimmick Villager strategy. I saw dabuz, one of the top players at the game, utilize every ounce of advantage he could from customs... and lose grand finals coming from winnner's side to a Diddy Kong main who was not using customs (not like Diddy really should). This same Diddy main won a tight set against 6WX's Sonic who was also getting a ton of mileage out of customs and dapuffster using a character who doesn't even exist in customs off as well so this wasn't just about the specific Diddy/Rosalina match-up. Let's be clear about this. Customs helped everyone else in the top 4 and didn't help the Diddy main who won the tournament. These were close games and Jtails is clearly a very skilled player; it's fine that he won the tournament since he very obviously earned the win through skillful play. However, it does raise the question. What does that say about how ridiculous Diddy is with customs off? How bad would this tournament have been if everyone else had been playing with nerfed versions of their characters (or in dapuffster's case playing without his main existing) while the tournament winner would have lost nothing? Can anyone say, with seriousness, that this tournament would have been a more exciting, more competitive event without customs given what we saw in the outcome?



I legitimately don't understand how anyone watching that stream and looking at how the tournament turned out could have walked away feeling anything but a renewed sense of confidence in customs. ADHD was clearly trying his hardest to prove customs are broken and failed, and at the top four level, customs in every single game did more to help the side that ended up losing than the side that ended up winning. If that's not a strong data point in favor of customs being balanced and even more balancing toward the game as a whole, I don't know what is.