Swevester
Smash Apprentice
Link is mostly designed to fight like he does in Zelda: wait for the opening, use your equipment and nail that weak spot. However, you bring up a point I forgot to tackle...non-tipped Forward Smash does not have set knockback, and therefore is actually possible (and imo easy) to escape. Perhaps it should have set knockback on the non-tipper hitboxes? I mean of course you can still DI out of it, like his B-Air or any attack that functions similarly (like Cross Slash) but now it can ACTUALLY be worth going for.I think Link suffers from weird quirks in his character. Take forward smash. You can shield the second hit sometimes. I think the lag on his moves is much more detrimental to his play style, making him an unintentional "high risk, moderate reward" character. The most damaging quality Link has is his projectile lag, and a lack of combos. It seems as if they had his projectiles simply to pay homage to his original games.
Link, in my opinion, is just a bad character. Except for up smash. Besides its terrible lag, its priority and anti-air qualities overweigh its weaknesses.
On a separate topic and for the purpose to not double-post, let's talk about Lucas. I main Lucas/Ness. Both are phenomenal characters. However, I feel like Lucas definitely needs a buff on his PK Fire. I think it has too much lag. I find it much less safe than Ness's variant. Perhaps we could nerf the power from his forward throw to balance? I don't know.
On your topic, I feel more like PK Fire is fine. Lucas's moves are not bad, it's mostly a good bit of his physics that hinder him. Pretty slow, kind of floaty, not very heavy...etc.