Hang on a minute. What tournaments have you seen people lose to because of rage and only rage? Which players are you referring to and did they lose the championship? If you're going to make statements referencing your first-hand account, please provide evidence. Failure to provide an abundance of specific matches and players means you're making up scenarios and numbers to benefit your argument. Also, you're saying that rage only benefits the losing player? How about the winning player who's taken a stock or two and is at 100++%?? Isn't rage benefiting the winning player in that scenario, therefore affirming your statement that "the winning player deserves to win and the losing player deserves to lose"? Again, you're only focusing on one scenario in order to strengthen your argument which makes your point(s) flawed at the most fundamental level.
How exactly does the new ledge mechanic prevent punishing recoveries again? Please elaborate because I play smash 4 and I am still able to punish recoveries, granted it is not in the same fashion as melee, PM or brawl. Lastly, what is it that makes lucario noncompetitive by design again? What traits/skills are you referring to and how do they hinder his viability?
Expecting me to provide evidence of Rage being a deciding factor is a bit much. I'd rather stop before my walls of text become full on novels. However, the tournament I was primarily thinking of was KTAR, where M2K's Diddy made numerous comebacks because of Rage. Of course he didn't win by Rage alone, it's not like M2K is just some random mashing buttons. However, these players were generally outplaying him, and died to moves that wouldn't have killed otherwise. Saying that because I don't provide evidence, I absolutely must be making things up is flawed to say the least.
In the situation where the player is a stock or two up and at 100+%, odds are Rage is just going to mess with his combos more than do actual good. The increased knockback can help with maintaining stage position, but other than that it's not really doing much at low percents, and if the opponent is a full stock down ALSO at 100+%, then odds are the game isn't salvageable at that point anyway. It doesn't always benefit to losing player, but a majority of the time, it does, and it is very impactful.
As for the new ledge making punishing a huge portion of recoveries nearly impossible... that's just how it is. Sure, some are easy to deal with: Falcon, Duck Hunt, and in certain situations, characters like Rosalina, Diddy, Pit, etc. However, these are the minority, and in a lot of situations, their recoveries are still unreasonably safe. Having what was generally considered the best edgeguarding option across all Smash games - grabbing ledge - gone, make things even more difficult. Lastly, Getup options like Rolling and standard getup have many more invincibility frames than in the past, and it's very easy to get punished for mistiming a punish of your own. Basically, it's far too hard to punish your opponent for being in what should be a bad situation.
In regards to Lucario being an uncompetitive character by nature, it's pretty clear to see that Aura is just an atrocious mechanic, similar to Rage but much, much worse. The potential to kill characters at 50 when you're at kill percent and being effectively ungimpable (Lucario can make it back from the bottom corners of the blastzones without a jump on pretty much any stage at slightly over 40%) is incredibly silly, and essentially leads to a situation where you can make a comeback with one luck Bair/Force Palm/Smash when you've only landed a few stray hits the entire match leading up to that point. Basically, it makes it very easy to set up a situation where the better player doesn't win. I don't know where you got the idea that I implied these things hinder his viability. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I believe he very possibly a top 3, and certainly a top 5, character.
