I am still constantly editing my list, but I'll go through my outliers.
I have Yoshi set as 14. Yoshi is a pretty good character. I just don't feel that he is very great. I think it will be perfectly possible to get top 8 at nationals with Yoshi and he is definitely viable IMO, but it will take a lot of work.
He has decent kill power and speed. Most of his attacks are generally good. However, Yoshi generally has trouble vs. good ground games and pressure (especially offstage). With all of the global techniques improving players' ground movement, Yoshi doesn't have an awesome throw for his grab like Lucas (who I have below Yoshi). I also feel that Yoshi has an overly high reliance on things like air dodging. To my knowledge, jab into usmash is not overly guaranteed and I am not well versed on many others outside of perhaps egg throw confirms. Yoshi needs to rely on his good movement and generally nice attacks. One of the worst rolls in the game minor affects him. Underwhelming dash into shield frames of 14 also hurts his ground movement.
I have DK set as 15. Generally, DK has good frame data for his weight class and size. His overall movement speed is great, too. Optimized cargo combos keep coming. He has a string breaker frame 3 upB that can potentially deal a lot of damage. His dash into shield, however, is very poor, so he must be careful when dashing. His fair also creates a giant gap in his spacing diagonally below him. Fortunately, he can somewhat use his nair. He also lacks disjoints and finds himself leaving his hurtbox out a lot.
DK's attacks generally flow well with his grab. Tilts have intangibility frames. Dtilt can trip into grab. His buffed dash attack can also lead into tilts or grabs. Jab1 can lead into grab or a sweetspot utilt. He has quick and powerful (but less powerful than his weight class) aerials with low FAF. Neutral B can help alleviate his fair weakness by allowing him to switch the way he is facing during juggles and offstage.
Cargo helps with both damage racking and positioning. The window for the cargo kill confirm is limited, but its range is potentially ludicrous, especially with rage.
I'd put DK (and Bowser) much higher if I wasn't worried about consistency issues with some problem MUs that may appear for him.
I have him at 8 currently. He's been moving around the 8-9 area, but I have trouble keeping him higher (was actually going to ask about him).
His biggest problem of course is that he is hurt for spacing, but Roy still has to space. It makes little sense for Roy to go into his sweetspot range when applying pressure or spacing, but rather bait and punish. Roy's spaced aerials were actually hurt on shield with the recent shield changes.
Roy's aerials are decent to mediocre. 10 and 8 frame startup on his fair and bair are a little high. He can't autocancel any aerial on a shorthop, making him susceptible to ducking, shields, or whiff punishing.
Roy lacks killing aerials, which also hurts him. He can kill with the likes of his 19 landing lag, 30 BKB 100KBG 12 damage (mediocre) bair near the edge, but that's it. Fortunately, his uair is pretty great and combos into quite a few things, but he needs more good options to mix up. Fair's low FAF can also be used for air to air combos. Overall, Roy's landing lag on aerials are pretty good outside of bair and dair, helping him combo with landing aerials, too. Dair is just asking for an SD/gimp, especially if you miss.
The way his aerials work makes Roy not want to jump too often (except for the predictable nairs), but Roy's dash frame data is not good outside of extended dash dancing. He has the worst dash->shield in the game at 16 frames (which also hurts Marth & co. on my list as well). He doesn't want to just dash attack, so he is mostly forced to look for nairs or grabs, or focus more on walking. However, he doesn't even get much grab reward. His grab reward can be decent to even quite good with mixups/character dependent, but Roy has to properly respond to the opponent, and that 16 frame dash->shield hurts him immensely.
Roy's ground moves are overall well above average. It helps that his speed is great with both walking and dashing, but his dash->shield being so weak hurts with being able to use his ground moves when he wants. His ground moves seem great for spacing, but you have to be around half of the max distance to get the sweetspot. Fortunately, getting the sweetspot isn't as much of an issue as it is with aerials since you can control how you are moving towards your opponent.
Roy has problems killing in general. You need a nice landing aerial, optimized fair combo, ftilt or dash attack near the ledge, or a close ranged smash attack. Against an opponent that properly utilizes defense, it's going to be pretty difficult to get those well. It doesn't help that most of those are quite unsafe, too.
Roy's combo physics are bad. He is a relatively large human that falls very fast with a below average weight. This makes him susceptible to pretty nasty death combos. Roy's anti-juggle/string isn't so bad, though. His nair comes out on frame 5 and hits below him well.
Roy's counter is surprisingly poor. It has low base damage, but scales very well with damage. It also has a tinier window than most other counters. Counters have a practical use for edgeguards, but many of them lack damage. Roy will not have a strong counter for that. Roy's not going to be using counter much in neutral, either.
Finally, Roy's recovery is poor. Fortunately, Roy can swat opponents with his low FAF fair, but he just falls so fast and his recovery moves quite slow. Some characters easily beat it, others can spike. Sometimes, Roy is just too far to recover at all.
Those are the reasons why I have trouble placing Roy very high. It's not all too terrible, either. The disjoint, overall speed, and power on some of his ground attacks are enough by himself to keep up with the likes of Little Mac in my eyes.
I have her at 10. She's still mediocre IMO, but she has quite a few decent properties surrounding her.
Let's start off with the bad. Her grab is poor and her grab reward doesn't make up for it. The opponent needs poor DI in order to link into uair, or it may be character dependent. Her aerials are a little laggy or have above average landing lag. Uair is the only exception. Fair's landing lag is so poor that it creates a gap in her defense when people are pressuring her. She has trouble landing due to the above average landing lag, fair's blindspot, and her floatiness. A lot of characters can exploit that if Samus makes even a tiny mistake.
Her projectiles are pretty laggy for how much reward she gets. Only charge shot may be somewhat worth it, but Samus would generally find some difficulty charging it. Bombs are difficult to set up to hit the opponent.
Her smash attacks are somewhat unwieldy as well. It's difficult for her to blow someone up above her like a simple Mario Usmash would for instance. She can be whiff punished for quite a few of her attacks, too.
Overall, she has many situational attacks, thus she requires a ton of situational knowledge.
Now for the good:
Her mix of tether + projectiles helps form some sort of spacing game. Tether is + on shield drop which helps.
Her dash game is fairly good. While her running speed is mediocre, she has a great initial dash. She is tied for the 2nd best dash->shield frame data in the game. Her dash attack is quite fast and acts as a combo starter to my knowledge. Even though there are allegedly some hitbox problems with it, it doesn't make the move bad.
The shield patch helped her, since her projectiles dealt good amounts of damage. Her jab1 is very good and the shield patch even helped jab2 from being too terrible. Her spacing tilts have good range and damage. She has one of the fastest fsmashes in the game as well. A lot of her moves like bair hit like a truck, which helps.
Her specials have some interesting uses. UpB OoS is great for her, disrupting quite a few strings and helps in combos. Charging her shot helps urge opponents to approach. She can choose between 2 missile types. Bomb can help alter Samus' momentum and mixup during juggles.
Her combo game when it gets started can be pretty intimidating. They are a little higher risk for her compared to other combo starters on other characters IMO, but she is rewarded when she can land them.
Whatever Samus has, it isn't going to be incredibly easy to perform a lot of it, but she does have the tools and properties to perform decently IMO, even though I still put her on the bottom half of the cast. Different Samus players have occasionally performed well at large tournaments ever since the Wii U version came out with Chozox, Afro, Depth, and now Johnny Westside. (hopefully got those names right).
