A character like Ayane has pretty much been deemed as top or high tier since DOA2U, I believe. I don't play her because she's top or high tier though. I play and main the character because I'm generally fond of the character and her tools. Her play design is a fit for me and I've learned how to utilize a lot of what she has, even moreso creatively. I'm the only player you'll probably ever see that uses her 6P3 as movement at range because her options there are insane and very intimidating.
The only way I see Ayane being a bit of a lower tier character (possibly mid tier if it were the case) would be tone down or nerf her tools. That alone would affect her match ups and make them harder or actually pretty bad. But that won't happen because it's already pretty tough to play Ayane at high level anyway. High level players don't play her at high level because they don't want to risk having to put in more effort than they would with said main character. Or they don't fully understand how to make the best use of her tools, outside of a few more obvious things.
This is why I have the upmost respect for a player like Xian because he's a character specialist with Gen. Gen is pretty difficult to play well at high level in SSF4, but he has great execution and character knowledge of Gen and his match ups. That is what I am going to prove I am as well, a true character specialist.
In DOA5 Vanilla, players would agree that Ayane was in top 5, which is true. But no one could actually explain why, except for myself. She isn't winning any majors because no one wanted to put time into her to do it or felt she couldn't because 66KK4 wasn't +7 anymore (which was silly anyway). And I didn't have a lot of free time to practice and play Vanilla.
Lots of players only see the obvious and the usual with this character, no one or not many have actually took the character in the lab and truly broke her down (even in 5U) and made comparisons of her tools to other characters.
But I've been playing Ayane long before I even knew what the hell a tier list was, and what frame data and all of this other technical stuff was. Like Awesmic would say, "I never drop Christie". "I never drop Ayane".
I have a pretty solid Genfu in my pocket if need be, but my Ayane is leagues ahead of him and I would prefer to play my best in a tournament setting (especially in a major) than my pocket character.
But yeah, my point, I don't let tier list affect my decision(s) in my character choice. I would always play Ayane. In SSF4, Cammy is my favorite but I am deciding to pick up Yang in AE in preparation for USF4. She is better than Yang in a lot of ways, but I want to play Yang. Blazblue I played Tsubaki in CS1, a game she was considered low tier in, and stuck with her in CS2 where she was claimed to be one of the most balanced characters.
Characters I choose to play just happen to be good or very good before I even realize it. Except for Tsubaki in CS1, lol.