[Read back in the thread or these quotes would be absurd]
Wow looks like I enflamed some optimistic pssions.
The thing is guys. No one is being objective here. There's a lot of positive emotional responses and no real look at the negatives.
On combos: Being able to combo at a higher percent is not a particularly good thing unless the combo leads to a kill. The changes actually stopped that, thus a nerf.
Being able to do combos we could already do slightly easier isn't an improvement at the competitive level, everyone was already getting the combos we knew just fine.
We've lost kill confirm combos. Uair is nowhere near as good at killing anymore and can not kill from fair>uair or nair>uair at ground level unlike pre-patch. We've also lost dtilt>uair kills at the 90-100% range, it doesn't kill and stops comboing after this percent.
Unless you can show me a new combo that we've gained that couldn't be done before, I can't justify agreeing with anyone that the percent changes to nair and fair are somehow a buff.
On fair>DFS: It's still unsafe, in fact it's MORE unsafe now. It's viable when an opponent is being sloppy, but it was previously too. I was at the point where if I intended to perform it I could on command. Making it easier doesn't improve competitive viability unless the percent that we can perform it from as a kill combo is now lower. That's not the case. And even so trying it isn't a smart idea.
DFS defensively: Defensive use of DFS has taken a major hit due to the decreased on-shield safety. Many slower opponents can punish where they couldn't punish before.
Run speed: 2% isn't insignificant. A 2% reduction puts us 1.3 frames behind for every 1 second of running time. It's enough to make our juggle game fail against a bunch of the cast now who can breverse safely enough to pass uair>fair combos. This was such a good part of Corrin's game, I'd argue that before this change she was the best anti-air character in the cast, that now goes back to Cloud.
Pivot and kara fsmash now slide a noticeably lower distance.
Pivot grab has reduced versatility. Mixups against landing opponents that worked previously don't work against some air speed characters now.
Counter: Deserved a nerf. Glad it wasn't a hitbox change to be honest, but it needs to be on the long list of losses.
***
Please. By all means disagree with me guys. But don't just offer subjective points. Please offer something quantifiable to justify the optimism. I'm not seeing anything quantifiably positive. A lot of feelings without any concrete points.
Break it down into Gains vs Losses
And just to reiterate - Being able to do something slightly easier that most of us could already do anyway isn't actually a gain.
I really don't care how a character gains damage in Smash 4 when the difference that separates the top tier of the cast and the rest has ALWAYS been kill confirms. The characters that can confirm the kill to end a stock win tournaments, the characters that can do tonnes of damage but don't have confirms do not win tournaments. We just lost our confirms.
The saving grace in the kill confirm issue is that we've still got an absolutely excellent kill throw.