I think people veered off topic and don't really realize what this topic is about: They nerfed Peach from Melee and Melee Peach wasn't capable of winning national tournaments anyway (unless ofcourse some Ice Climber player beat all the best Foxes/Marths and the brackets aligned perfectly for you >_>). So if you're not interested in winning national tournaments, play someone retardedly good.
Peach is still fun to play and whatnot in Brawl, but again... read my post.
QFT... or something.
i try and look at it from the creaters stand-point; They made her to be played a certain way. If i had to describe her gameplay wise id say shes ment to be a resorceful damage dealer. Its easy to rack-up damage with her, and she really has a bit of everything else, regardless of how situational they may be. Her B moves are more very useful, not game-breaking but still very handy indeed when used with proper "foresight".
Melee Peach was good at racking up damage. Brawl Peach? Not so much. Her moves had little hitstun to start with. Now, they have even less hitstun because of the new No Hitstun-system. Her 2nd Jump has been übernerfed so you won't be comboing off of
any aerial now, except Dair at really low percentages (but it's a multi-hit so people could actually tap DI out of it into an aerial if they're really good).
And, pretty much all of her moves (except for a few) have been nerfed
damage-wise. So... we have moves that don't inflict much damage and bad comboability. She's not really that good at racking up damage, that's what I'm saying here. There are a lot of people way better than her at it.
Shes not made to get kills in normal combat. Peach is made to kill during the enemy recovery and in that aspect she is top notch. I would say that with the exception of jigglypuffs WOP, peach is the best "off map" killer in the game with her float, F-air and N-air moves. Most characters have great recoveries, but few have recoveries good enough to alow them to air dodge your attacks AND still make it back to the map. I use peach exclusively and i would say that about 90% of my kills with her are in this manner.
Everyone has recoveries good enough to airdodge and make it back safely. It's called
DI. You DI whatever Peach used to knock you off the stage and recover high. What's Peach going to do when they airdodge the aerial? Peach doesn't have any Semi-Spikes to forces them to recover at least nominally low.
Also, even if they recover quasi-low, everyone's got buffed Up Bs now. So airdodging into Up B would still work. Not to mention 2nd jumping and whatever other tricks people have. Peach was pretty bad at off-stage KOs unless she was high up or floating in Melee (because her aerials all lasted/lagged too long). In Brawl, her 2nd jump screws it up for her.
So if she's floating towards someone, they can just do below her with a fastfall/airdodge and she won't be able to drop the float with an aerial lest she have a death wish (or she's quite high up). She's good at off-the-stage KO's. But she's not
that good anymore because of the nerfed 2nd jump and new game mechanics.
Her only real weaknesses i see for her are all verticle. Weather your opponet is below you or above you, her verticle game is crap compaired to her horizontal game. Because of this i just try and stick to my moves that send people flying horizontaly and dont use u-air, f-tilt, or u-smash any more than need be.
Seeing as how almost all of her vertical knockback moves require quite a lot of damage to KO (except for the still-nominally slow Fsmash), vertical moves are quite good if you can sweetspot them.
Knock them off the map then get the kill. Its how she was made to be played.
The problem is that you have to knock them off it to begin with. For which you need to first rack up damage...
The Dair works wonders for opponents below you, as long as they don't have godly priority Uairs (Lucario). For those above, her Utilt (or Usmash if you can manage to get it) will do the trick, if you think the risk of pursuit is worth it, you can use Uair, but that can be out-prioritized very often..
Dair doesn't combo though because it launches now and her 2nd jump is utter crap. And the damage ain't that great unless all hits connect (say hello to Tap DI).
Some of us really hate change, huh?
The one's who are complaining about Peach being a useless ***** is stupid. I'm not a Peach fan or anything, but obviously the developers of this game wanted the players to try a new fighting style for each character. Most of you complainers keep referring back to Peach's combos in Melee. That's not a bad thing, but this game has changed peeps. Instead of using her old style, why don't you try to create new combos?
When some new and improved combos are created in the future for Peach, some of the haters here will be coming back to Peach, but Peach doesn't need them.
Just because you
want her to be good doesn't mean she will be. People won't figure out any godly combos and strategies with her if no such combos or strategies exist. At the moment, Peach isn't looking that good. It
might change. It might also
not.