LogFAQs > #912600391

Underleveled posted...

haloiscoolisbak posted...

Man I don't know why I went with Squall over Zelda.

Because until this year Squall has consistently been stronger than Zelda. Pre-contest we had no reason to believe that Zelda would win her division, let alone make a guy who was in the running for "strongest non-N9er" look like he didn't even belong in the contest. As the first two rounds played out Zelda > Squall looked pretty obvious, but still the absolute stomping she gave him came completely out of left field.

In retrospect, I actually think Squall had already weakened somewhat in 2013, and no one realized it because of the circumstances behind his matches.

Starting with his Round 1 match, Rayman was pretty much right on the fodder line back then if you consider Squall to still have been a near-elite, which seems suspiciously high for a character who had previously lost to Vyse in 2007. That's doubly the case when you consider that Commander Video was also in that match sucking up about seven percentage points, a majority of which likely would have gone to Rayman. I also highly doubt Rayman Origins was that big of a difference-maker for him, though it probably did at least boost him a bit.

In Round 2, Squall only did a few percentage points better against MissingNo. than Tidus had the previous round, which I think most people blamed on the joke being non-transitive and MissingNo. thus improving from Round 1. Furthermore, Squall fared better against Amaterasu than Luigi had back in 2010, even though she consistently improves every contest - which could be taken as validation for Squall's near-elite status at the time.

Given how lackluster Squall is now, and considering how similar characters such as Cloud and Vincent looked quite bad in 2013, I think it's just as likely that MissingNo. was largely transitive, as jokes without notable rallies generally appeared to be then. As for Amaterasu, I believe that she was Last Place Factor'd due to that bruising Squintendo, Bracket vs. Joke battle that took place between Squall and MissingNo.

Finally, in Round 3, Squall finished substantially behind Vivi, and got roughly 60-40d by Red in the process. All it would take for that to not be a near elite-level result by Squall is Vivi being roughly equivalent to where he looked this year, or perhaps even a bit stronger. Maybe that's a reach due to him dispatching Mario in those circumstances, but it's nonetheless possible. It's also worth noting that, given what we've seen of Red this year and back in 2010, Red would have needed a Fraudtwo-level boost in order to comfortably dispatch Squall and Vivi the way he did, assuming the former was still a near elite.

All that is why I think that Squall could have already seen much of his shocking decline from 2010 to 2013.