People over exaggerate the power of flip jump; yes it's really good that a character essentially has two jump air dodges in their arsenal for escaping disadvantage compared to most characters' one but that's all it is, for every flip jump away, jump air dodge input correctly would've also worked. At lower levels of play the single inputness of down-b vs buffering jump and timing air dodge baffles people and hence they go OMG BROKEN.
Meanwhile it has the huge draw back of the auto footstool, which people who actually know how to play against zero suit will accept that while it's good and has to be respected, the counter play and resulting reward is significantly more than the base options.
Zero suit isn't particularly great, she has all these 'broken' tools (I will admit they essentially are, but the drawbacks and purposeful dysfunctionality forced into her kit are very noticeable) but when you compare to the consistency of the 'smash definition of a top tier' which we definitely have a few (Cloud, Bayo, Diddy; maybe shek/sonic too), she doesn't match up.
However, every time there's a dip in success for players like Nairo, the naysayers come along to exaggerate things (like her actually losing to actually bad character like Pikachu, lol)
And when those players bounce back the naysayers shut up for a while, although we then have to deal with the "zero suit is super frikken broken" idiots for a while too.
can't win, can we?
Either way, forced dysfunction in her kit means that as time goes on and people get better at the match up, the less she's able to overcome things because players will abuse those things.
But, she's an option rich character (mostly unique options to just her, but when compared to the simplicity of Cloud*/Bayo's strengths in their options, HA HAH), and there's a lot still to be worked and improved on.
* Isn't it great that cloud can bair otg and hit most of the cast on the ground? Yeah he's just that silly. Meanwhile ZSS bair can only hit the tops of shields of the tallest chars. This is dysfunctionality in a kit, and Cloud frankly doesn't have any that matter.. it keeps me up at night pondering whether its accidental these things happen to characters like ZSS, or that in the beauty of sakurai's mind he intended these shortfalls and balanced their strengths to compensate really well, just that he didn't put the same amount of effort into the designing and tuning of DLC [z-axis jank shouldn't exist like it does for cloud/bayo and i'm adamant if Sakurai was actually fully involved in development he wouldn't let those slip]
Her meteoric rise so to speak came after the shield mechanics patch, nair went from really poor on block, a move designed to be a punish and not a neutral-state one (hello, that's back air; hey zero suits, use back air more) and people didn't know how to deal with it despite it being a really simple, ultimately power shield fodder/only something bad players cannot deal with (with enough time/experience in the mu, struggling with it at first is more than fine).
But at the same time she lost all the shield safety of paralyzer and down smash; tools which we look at now as the stuff we need but is now 5-10 frames lees safe on block as they used to be [and people pretend/think down smash is safe on block and complain about it too, but no -17 or worse isn't very cash money).
Complaining and Nairo/Aba escapades resulted in her having her dysfunction enhanced by grab reward being significantly less than it was before (you could live to a 1 whiff vs 1 real grab before, now you rarely can afford more than 1 whiff per stock while still needing several successful grabs to keep people on their toes) and they made it a lot harder for her to grab landings too (now jumping against her brainlessly is generally free). Nair range nerf meant she suddenly required perfect spacing to deal with the sudden over saturation of competent sword characters (thank god for back air though!).
Anyway, this train of thought is somewhat all over the shop, is she good, is she bad?
She's insanely difficult, but she still can achieve great things, losing so many frames of safety and leeway on her tools is pretty devastating but in theory you can still do all the same stuff as before.
Cloud MU suddenly looks horrendous because Cloud's figured out up air does everything a neutral air, up air and forward air [+ an air dodge, :joy:] would do for most other characters, and it's blatantly obnoxious which overtly hurts human height characters to the point that Cloud shouldn't be losing to any of them (part of why I don't think sheik beats cloud anymore).
But, Zero Suits haven't adjusted to play around this yet, and I doubt many other characters have either.
Let's not forget that cloud nairing OtG is also insanely dumb and does everything most characters 5 aerials can do in combination.
Out of top/high tiers, she's mostly running even with everyone except Diddy, and Sheik/Cloud can snowball against her and look disgusting but the reverse is also feasible. She's one tier down from the simpletons, but can still achieve more than everyone else near her otherwise (at least IMO, for the time being, meta development is always a thang).
As my old mentor would put it if he was Jerry Seinfeld, Zero Suit has win conditions coming out of every orifice, and Cloud is the only other character in the cast who can argue similarity to that. The combination of mobility, frame data and hitbox sizes allows her to set pace in many match ups still, and if not right now, there's leeway for that more in the future, even against the likes of Diddy.
