That's... Incorrect, sorry. Not to be mean, I'm generally interested in your posts, but this is something that should be clarified.
Neutral is
all about threat, and how you're conditioned to react against those threats. Fox isn't terrifying in neutral (especially at high percents) because he doesn't have the same threat against shield as someone like Ness, thus should you decide to commit to something in neutral you know shield might be one of those options in order to bait out a Usmash and punish.
I need to be careful about shielding against Luigi in neutral because commiting to that action of shielding has the inherent risk of 30% and being in disadvantage state trying to land near him.
And yes, my neutral has DEFINITELY changed vs competent Bowser mains since his Hoo-hah, because I need to play in a certain way in neutral to avoid dying at 70% when previous I would have been fine with taking the damage and resetting to the ledge ---> finding ways to land from there in a worst case scenario VS the reward of punishing one of Bowser's many other options while approaching.
I might be defining myself incorrectly but what I'm trying to say is threat has everything to do with neutral because neutral includes a whole set of weighing up options and possible scenarios to decide what you will do: "If I do this, they could do that... But are they likely to? And does it mean much for me if they do? So then should I do that option, or should I do this one with its various consequence trees?"
I've gotta disagree with your disagreement! If (pre-nerf) Sheik only got maybe 10% damage and inconsequential stage position as a reward for landing an attack/grab, would she still have an amazing neutral? Yes, because it's about how consistently she can win neutral, not the reward.
Kirby has great reward off of attacks/grabs, why is his neutral considered bottom tier?
If you had no qualms getting hit by old Bowser, that simply means
you were OK with playing suboptimally before. As much as I like 3 stock, that's also one of the arguments used in favor of 3 stock: "You can make riskier plays" basically translates to "you can play suboptimally and are more likely to get away with it."
I agree that reward plays some part of neutral, but it's more of a mental aspect, rather than the on-paper/theoretical aspect. If Character A only got a 1% damage reward for winning neutral, and Character B gets a 999% damage reward for winning neutral, but Character A has such an overwhelming neutral that they're expected to win it 99 times out of 100, then no amount of reward changes the fact that Char A has a better neutral. You would definitely be terrified of Character B, but you can't realistically say they have a "good neutral."
tl;dr fully charged Flare Bade vs Sheik Fair
This. A character's neutral, advantage, and disadvantage states do not operate in seperate vacuums. Captain Falcon is arguably a top-tier if you look at his neutral and/or his advantage, but when you throw his horrible disadvantage into the mix, "nah, bruh, maybe next game."
On paper,
's neutral is pretty average. But when you're sitting at 80% facing the threat of up tilt -> Shoryuken, Ryu often has the luxury of controlling neutral and conditioning you to fight defensively.
One of the biggest aspects of his neutral was that it led into one of the best punishes and a powerful advantage state. People played defensively as a result, which gave him free stage control. People are now going to play more aggressively and less cautiously because they know they can take the hits now.
I guess it depends on context. If you're looking at a character as a whole, yes you should take everything into account, but when you're saying "how is his neutral?" as a standalone, it makes sense to just look specifically at that, yknow what I mean?
Also, MK got guaranteed 0-deaths at ludicrously low percents from relatively safe sub-10 frame moves, there's no way people are still complaining about losing this, are they? :[
MK's neutral is still good, when you consider he has top tier run speed, good walk speed, and good spacing with very fast sword attacks, plus 5 jumps if you ever needed to threaten somebody from the air for some reason.
