Most people lose to Zelda because they don't know how to play her.
Srsly look at my icon.
Zelda has no safe approach options what so ever, like Xonar said, she has pretty much no good options against a mostly full shield.
You guys might think you have it bad with a 16 frame grab, but at least you have a really fast run speed and a 2 frame(?) jab.
Zelda has nothing.
Her best only approaches are:
Falling n air
Running up smash
Dash attack
Falling Nayru's Love
and none of these are good.
N air, Nayru's and dash attack, you can shield all of these and punish accordingly, even if it's just with a jab or a tilt (with Nayru's it has 30 frames of end lag so even ZSS can punish this with a grab).
Up smash is a little more dangerous because it can shield poke and it has nice knockback, to avoid this just space yourself basically.
Play smart and watch your shield, Zelda is far too slow to constantly apply shield pressure unless you keep running into her attacks.
Her grab AND run speed are too slow for her to punish a lot of things, so with ZSS's air/ground speed you shouldn't find yourself being punished unless you make large mistakes or do something super laggy like F smash.
Like Xonar also said, she has arguable the worst air game out of the entire roster.
Zelda HATES being in the air above her opponents.
Her only thing she has to defend herself against aerial opponents below her is
This hitbox last one frame btw
Then the late hitbox does like 4 damage and has very poor knockback.
ZSS needs to take advantage of this and play aggresivly when Zelda is airborn.
When Zelda's offstage things get even worse, you should always try to force her to recover with Farore's Wind, this is a terrible recovery because it's extremly laggy, especially at the end of the move.
If you ever have Zelda in a position where she needs to use Farore's to recover, she will most likely go for the ledge, because doing it on stage is pretty much a free punish.
If you just hop onto the ledge with your tether, she's forced to land onstage.
With Farore's start up/ending lag, you're likely to have enough time to hop back on stage and punish.
An example of how punishable her recovery is if you simply ledge hog.
http://youtu.be/5HJOg-nlRM4?t=1m32s
Pikachu has enough time to hop on the ledge, get up from the ledge and then punish because Zelda's still stuck in endlag.
ZSS's D smash is an AMAZING move to punish Zelda's recovery with.
Things to watch out for in this MU
Smash Attacks and Sweet Spotted LKs
ZSS is very light, she lives like slightly longer than Zelda with DI IIRC, so Zelda can kill her with a sweet spotted LK at like 95 and fresh smash attacks at around 100ish.
Though truthfully
F smash is should almost never kill anyone because you can SDI out of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4nuoFfza2w
Just mash up on the control and c stick to get out.
She can sometimes follow up with a dash attack or a grab, but those don't make up for a failed smash attack.
Up smash is a little more dangerous because ZSS isn't one of the characters that can escape it, but as I said earlier it's super unsafe on shield so it's risky for Zelda to use it without an opening.
A lot of Zelda's rely on running up smash and hoping that the opponent lets go of the shield button early so they still get hit, just hold down until the move is over and punish.
D tilt
D tilt should only lock you 2 or 3 times unless you're caught in a slope, just SDI away from her to get out.
It can pop characters up sometimes and it's one of Zelda's best kill set ups, to avoid this at higher percents, just space well.
D tilt has great frame data but it has short range, and it only hits low so it's fairly easy to avoid if you play safe.
Sweet spotted Lightning Kicks
ZSS is kinda tall so it's a little easier to hit her with these but the opportunity doesn't come up too much unless you leave yourself open.
CPs/Bans
Zelda doesn't really have any good CPs that are legal tbh...
She has some stages that she sucks less on, but nothing really works in her favor for her (other than the ones that apply to pretty much everyone like RC against IC's).
I would maybe ban
BF if you plan to play defensively or whatever stage you don't like playing on.
On the other hand she has a handful of legal stages that make recovering harder for her.
Delfino, Brinstar, Halberd, Pokeman Stadium, etc all have a base that make sweet spotting the ledge super difficult and risky.
If she miss spaces sweet spotting the ledge she goes through it and dies so she will almost always have to teleport on stage.
Brinstar is probably her worst stage, it force aerial gameplay which Zelda doesn't want and it gives her damage which Zelda can't afford to take and on top of that it's harder for her to recover there.
Basically you just need to space yourself against Zelda.
I don't know too much about her, as the only ZSS I remember playing in tournament was Legans, but I don't think ZSS is a rush down character so it wouldn't be super smart to play her like one in this MU.
Her spacing and speed is good enough to make things very difficult for Zelda.
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