Ryu is guaranteed to nearly always be good. Unlike characters such as Sheik, Rosalina & Luma, or Diddy Kong he won't suffer from just one or two big nerfs to some moves. He is literally a brute mother****ing brawler. Do you think he'll suffer if he gets nerfed? He's literally just that good in the right hands and I'd say it's very comparable to Fox in Melee who had just an overwhelmingly technical moveset that despite a nerf in weight (key note: fastfalling is independent from weight), and his sinisteringly good Up Smash and yet he still maintains to be absolutely top of the PAL Tier list in Melee. Sakurai or his team isn't going to throw some dumb nerfs and even then he is a DLC Character so I doubt DLC characters would be target of early nerfs, and I'd say is absolutely just guaranteed to stay top 10 for the rest of the lifespan of Smash Bros Wii U. No one at this point has really called for Ryu nerfs to the magnitude of Diddy nerfs, although he is most likely guaranteed to get some damage nerfs, but it seems like Capcom characters may not be touched patch wise considering that Megaman hasn't gotten buffed or nerfed yet, but that's all speculation. Also with a comparison to Ness that was mostly during the days of edge-hogging, those days are long gone in Smash 4 so tether recovery characters and the pk kids won't have much trouble, but they are still gimpable, but not as easily as they were before.
Undoubtably he is the best DLC character right now, his flaws are mostly minor and over-come-able and not something that would hold him back like a good example would be Shulk's Frame Data is a major flaw, but his flaws are mostly linear recovery that is above average, but able to be mixed up really well. Next his attacks are one sided, doesn't really have attacks that hit that far in front and back of him, although he isn't helpless against people who roll behind him because he can still turn around down smash to ward them off, or grabbed, or just tatsumaki to retreating forcing the opponent into shield or to get hit, so there really isn't much problems there. Overall Ryu is a solid top 10 character; some are afraid to say it, but I'd say he is top 3. I don't think he's getting patched anytime soon because his potential is still being discovered and has a rapidly developing metagame and technical development that has grown more and more at a rate faster than any other character in smash history would ever dream to accomplish in half a year and that is easily because Ryu is the spotlight, and he was made to be a combo heavy technical character which is a major difference.
I'd say if you are looking for a tournament viable character then Ryu is absolutely able to deliver in that respect.
He's not a character you will magically learn in a month and his moveset can be overwhelming as soon as you obtain him, but once you start mixing those combos together and learning shield break, footstool, shaku hover, and nair combos then he becomes an absolute blast to play. The biggest thing holding him back in the current metagame is that he is very technical and just overwhelming, I played him a lot the first month he came out, but now that I realize how much of a great character he was and how I still didn't learn his moveset after 3 months of just dormancy I decided to start using him a lot again and wow he certainly has changed with people discovering how to use his nair, shaku hovering, and all of this insanely crazy stuff he still manages to be a new character even after 5 months.
