Here goes me posting again, hopefully not to be ignored this time.
I use Zelda/Sheik so I thought id give some feed back.
I personally use Farore's wind a lot with wind canceling(which can now spike and thats awesome)
And I often use it from above, It's hard for most of people to predict exactly where she lands
and if they do get ht by it its a sure set up for a combo
I also think her jab is fine with the flower effect and it doesn't need to be an amazing move it doesn't "suck" I never really used it unless it was an accident but it knocks the enemy away so that's one thing about it.
The F tilt is better for the Peach match up as it gives her something to cut through Peach's approach when shes floating near the ground and it helps her as you put it "poke" through defenses somewhat, though having it combo into Usmash will take some getting used to.
As for her grab game it seems the back throw always has a diagonally upward angle behind Zelda.
In vBrawl it would sometimes send characters straight back which was a little more useful for killing IMO and with her Dsmash I know the angle was changed so it couldn't be teched but that RARELY ever happened, It was really useful when it semi spiked for match ups like Olimar and Falco.
I like the change to F Smash, its frustrating knowing that a move should kill and it randomly doesn't and U tilt seems more reliable and there are more opportunities to use it.
I think when that Bandit guy meant we never use Farore's wind meant because it didn't really have many uses in vBrawl I think he needs to learn to adjust Bbrawl and see that some attacks can now be used in different ways, If hes got a problem with that he can stick to vBrawl :/.
Then again I supposed I don't play like most Zelda users so I wouldn't fit into that "We" category.
One of her main problems in my opinion is how incredible easy it is to edge hog, though now that Farore's wind spikes people will likely think twice before jumping on the edge.
The biggest issue with it is how long she is unable to move after finishing in the air.
Wolf also shares this problem, when recovering from if she doesn't sweet spot the edge(which is already difficult to do) she just falls to her death due to her inability to move.
As for Sheik I didn't really think she needed many changes but I think she may be a little worse off with out her tilt lock.
It can hardly even combo 3 times and it used to be a major help on match ups against heavy weights.
Oh and about Zelda's grab, I never really thought it was "horrible" maybe because I don't use any other characters than Zelda/Sheik but it works for me.
It is sorta slow but it has decent range and her throws do nice damage.
I appreciate the non helplessness after using Din's aerial.
I use it when returning to the stage from above to attack and sometimes KO characters such as MK or ZSS when they jump up to attack with an aerial.
It gets really predictable and most opponents just start to shield and wait to edge hog or punish her as she falls back down.
Thanks to the new mechanic she has more options after using it.
I'd like to say no one was ever ignored; it's just a lot of work actually typing out responses to everyone (we like to try, but we don't have infinite time for smashboards). We do actually read and consider everything seriously; even if it doesn't get a specific response, input is always appreciated and welcome and never ignored.
Anyway, either two people responded similarly to Farore's Wind or I did respond to you like this earlier. I alluded to such trickery though must say people discussing it in this topic is all I've ever heard of it actually working. It's interesting to see Zelda's options being explored like that no doubt; I'm just saying how we originally designed it (if it's legitimately good to use a lot, it's better than we thought it was when we released... that's not necessarily a bad thing). Hearing alternate perspectives on things like this is always fun; we look forward to seeing development on the part of that tactic.
Zelda's bthrow has an unchanged angle and is simply a more powerful launch force in the same direction (due to how gravity works in the physics engine, this will result in it looking just barely higher but not enough to matter much). What you're experiencing is probably people just DIing it better than they used to; the final angle can vary wildly with DI.
Here's the thing with dsmash and teching. It probably didn't happen much in standard Brawl, but with it more powerful, it was happening a lot in our testing. By this I mean people were learning their Zelda matchups and starting to tech it 90%+ of the time it would be possible to tech it, making it useless as a kill move (worse than it was in standard Brawl really because they bothered to learn the tech window). Of course, it was only "worse" because people felt more threatened by Zelda so they learned more stuff to exploit against her so reverting wasn't exactly a fix; the only way we could make her better for real and not better in the sense that she wasn't dangerous enough to learn all the exploits against her was to raise the angle a bit. It should still be low enough to be quite handy against the likes of Olimar and Falco even if not the semispiking fun it used to be (which, if they bothered to learn the tech, would have only really been applicable near edges anyway).
Yeah, Zelda's grab is almost as laggy as a tether grab, but it has the range of a normal grab. It's the worst of both worlds.
Sheik's ftilt lock was just broken in some matchups. Fox vs Sheik was stupidly in Sheik's favor just from her spamming ftilt; that's not good.
Yeah, the utilt angle was improved a bit; it's good to see that coming in handy.
In general, we're optimistic about Zelda & Sheik. I could say more, but this reply has sat half-completed on my computer for two days so I should just post it.
Well, regular Brawl runs fine, but when I try to launch BB, I choose "Launch Game" then it says that there's no disc, then I try again, and this time it starts to load, but then it says "disc read error".
This is sounding like a hardware problem to me (which we can't do anything about). For sanity's sake though, what version is the system menu on your Wii?