If you can wavedash that quickly and repeatedly and also not get hit out of that after doing it more than once, then you deserve to keep up with missiles.
Running can be shielded out of at any time [not continuously inducing 10 frames of lag + 4 or more frames of startup] and the missiles don't literally combo into anything [Samus can't get missile to fsmash, footstool, dsmash, or whatever for free every time a missile connects and she's close... but ZSS can]. Samus missiles are fine because they don't lock you in for any free followup. And also because you have to really good tech skill, with relatively big vulnerable motions, in order to keep up with it, instead of just hitting the dash and being able to shield at will.
You're misunderstanding what's so strong about Samus being able to keep up with her missiles. It's not because she can have the missiles on top of her. It's because she can have them in front of her, and force her opponent to make certain positional commitments. If not for her wavedashing speed, this would only be true directly in front of her, but because she can move so quickly, she can force decisions with missiles from anywhere in the stage.
Now here's the thing: if missiles were unclankable, she could do all of that, as well as just keep the Missile on top of her, and take a trade, probably even with a CC--a true CC--since Samus has one of the strongest CC games in Smash. She probably wouldn't even need a follow-up, though; Missiles do 10% and have good enough knockback to cause knockdown early, and set up for edgeguards later in the stock, and those are two very important parts of Samus's gameplan. The trading is entirely my point with ZSS. It's not the fact that Samus can keep up with Missiles, it's the fact that she can be safely challenged for doing so. All of the things you bring up that make keeping up with Missiles a bad idea do so
because of their clankability, not because wavedashing induces ten frames of lag.
Dash cancelling forces you to move forward? Oh no, that's so hard when you have a freaking laser in front of you - move forward one frame, waveland backwards and you're fine, or just DD out of it. That's really not much commitment either.
I've literally never heard of someone making the initial dash animation become uninterruptible with pivots or jumps, but that would literally only freeze you for the initial dash animation, which is STILL not very much commitment [even Marth's only lasts like 20 frames or something, which is also equivalent to about one wavedash and a SH aerial].
Actually, when the DC was first implemented in test builds, it wasn't possible to dash dance out of it. I know this because I played a number of test builds with Yeroc. This implementation was changed for reasons I never bothered to ask for elaboration on.
But it would be a pretty huge deal. It wouldn't just be locking you in an animation. It would be locking you in an animation that changes your positioning, which is literally the most important thing in the neutral game. Things that weren't effective where you were could possibly void all of your options. Your opponent may be able to use the opportunity to switch places on you while you're helpless to stop them. Being forced to move forward can cause major disruptions in your gameplan, especially for a character, like ZSS, who likes to keep her distance. The player would have to weigh that as a pretty big risk if they wanted the rewards the Paralyzer has to offer.
The land-cancelling option, on the other hand, forces ZSS to become airborne in order to use her projectiles - with a dash cancel, you can start the charge and be in a position to CC anything mid-charge if you choose to do so - this is NOT an option with a land-cancellable projectile if you want the land-cancel. CCing is ridiculously good, and ZSS's dash is ridiculously good - an autocancel is more balanced because you know she'll release it closish to the ground [not on the way up] (or else be vulnerable to someone ducking and punishing] and because she loses some options about when to release it, as opposed to being able to release it and dash at will with an extremely mobile character.
These are all fair points, but the point is that all of your problems with the follow-ups to a canceled paralyzer are still just as problematic, and definitely worse off compared to my suggestion. Besides, ZSS's CC game is mediocre for follow-ups and short-lived, at best, not to mention ZSS rarely moves forward into Paralyzer, and SH retreating Paralyzer has its own advantages over turnaround Paralyzer already (like being able to fire while moving), so ZSS uses that most of the time anyway.
Also, someone can feel free to correct me on this, but I was once told me the 3.02 dash cancel worked in either direction... is this true [I hadn't messed with it, and they told me this after I had 3.5, so I couldn't test myself]?
This is definitely untrue.
"Relatively bad landing lag on uair?" Relative to what, float-cancelling? Unless the 3.5 changelog is lying [and it might], it has 9 frames of L-cancelled landing lag [as of 3.02]. Falco's dair has 10 frames of l-cancelled landing lag. Uair's landing lag is low.
I was unaware that it had been lowered. Then again, You're also wrong about Falco's dair, and you appear to have missed the point.
First off, Falco's dair also has 9 frames of landing lag, but it also has one more frame of shield advantage because of its higher damage,
and it can't be CC'd. Not to mention, Falco has even faster aerials in Nair and Bair, the latter of which autocancels within a short hop with late fast fall, at 22 frames. To boot, Falco can cover any disadvantageous frames on block with a one-frame attack which has safe mix-ups. ZSS has to work with a frame two jab, which itself is only safe if the opponent guesses wrong. Moreover, ZSS's lower landing lag aerials (which are still a frame late compared to Falco's Nair, for instance) come out on frames 6 and 7, making them rather poor choices if you want to win in a priority race. The point of all this is that Falco has ample tools to stay in his opponent's face safely, and can usually disengage on his own terms. ZSS has to disengage preferably sooner rather than later, if she wants to keep her advantage, and even then she may have already lost it.
And that's okay! She's not a rush-down character. She's not supposed to be in her opponent's face. I'm not advocating for that, and I didn't even think it was a
problem that her Uair had ten frames of lag in 3.02.
The fact is, changing her grab, then changing Paralyzer to compensate made ZSS's B and Z buttons not work with her A button, because the changes had nothing to do with the playstyle her normals promoted. She makes no sense. Anyone who has played this character from the beginning can tell you that. They may not agree with me 100% on the details of why, but they will all tell you that they can feel it, before they've even started thinking about why, that she's a hot mess. The reason why is really rooted in this change.
OHCs? On-hit-cancels on Lucario weren't absurd XD. You try playing him vs Fox and you'll see he needs not only all those OHCs, but a serious neutral game buff. I don't think the character is viable right now vs someone who actually understands exactly how bad Lucario's neutral is, unless that person is literally a god at making every single aura charge [and I mean ALL of them] convert into enough damage to get another charge or two [and that's freaking difficult]. If there's another OHC you refer to, by all means tell me, but I can't think of any [except for Wolf's, and that's risky and DI-dependent so if that's absurd to you, I'll just shake my head and leave... and Sonic had one I think, but that relied on homing attack, which was rather laggy if it whiffed].
I agree he needs a neutral game buff, because right now OHC is a crutch. But I'm not saying it's overpowered. I'm saying it has literally nothing to do with playing Smash Brothers, makes for a damn unstable balance conundrum, and even instigates a number of the problems that lead to his terrible neutral game. If you want to PM me, I can go into why I think it's a stupid mechanic that has no place in the game, but suffice it to say Lucario, and PM in general, would be much, much better off if the mechanic were gone, or at least vestigial.
I don't think Dash cancel paralyzer is necessarily on-par with attacking out of teleport [that's just dumb], but saying JC magnet is dumb... Ness's magnet is like frame 8 and SDIable, and Lucas's is like frame 5 [and I think still SDIable, I haven't messed with it as much]. But dash cancel paralyzer gave an extremely fast character the ability to run in behind something that literally locked an opponent in place if it connected and otherwise forced them to predictably jump, get in shield, attempt a trade that often is high risk and low reward, or give up stage control, ALL without having much risk to the user - that's poor design in my opinion, and I don't think it should return. Yeah, teleport was better, but it was the same idea at the heart of it - they have to avoid it in a manner that's similar in that teleport also forced one to run away/through it [usually giving up stage control], get in shield and buffer roll, or attempt a usually risky trade - I don't think giving characters tools that effective is good design, unless we're going to implement them everywhere, and that frankly didn't happen in 3.02, and with the 3.5 design changes I really can't see it occurring.
Ness's JC Magnet isn't exactly imbalanced, but it does give him a very strong tool in a position where he doesn't really have any position having strong tools. Ness is... like Axl Low. He relies on a variety of rather risky, but long-ranged pokes to try to open up mix-up opportunities, and uses those opportunities to close in and do the heavy damage up close. He doesn't want to get on top of his opponent and pressure their block--that's supposed to be unsafe. He only wants to get up close when they're knocked down, or when they're trapped in PK Fire, or once he's landed a fair or dash attack. His magnet has nothing to do with all of that. Best case scenario, it makes his design messy and uncoordinated. At worst, he gains a very strong tool in the rushdown game, and can overwhelm his opponent from anywhere on the field. Thankfully for game balance, the former case came true, but that doesn't make sloppy design not sloppy.
I don't know how you can defend Lucas's Magnet, though. That was part of what made 2.6 Lucas such a monster. In the air, it was a multi-hitting, disjointed move that was impervious to most projectiles, which could be canceled with literally no lag, into a DJC aerial, and it sets up for combos. You can't honestly sit here telling me that DC Paralyzer is broken, and think that Lucas's JC Magnet is okay.
What I'm talking about here is the fact that while these (usually silly and sloppy, but sometimes highly destructive) options were either nerfed in ways that don't deal with their core problems, or just retained with no relevant changes whatsoever, DC Paralyzer was removed entirely, rather than reworked to deal with the very real imbalances it had. The argument is that it can't be balanced, but for me that just holds no water. There's no data, no evidence, not even a solid theory-based argument for why any of these suggestions aren't even worth considering. Would Paralyzer really be so problematic if it were clankable, and ZSS could only DC after a certain uncancelable window, and could only cancel the dash out of it with dash attack or her whip grab? I fully acknowledge that 3.02 DC Paralyzer was imbalanced. But you're being pretty obstinate in not even entertaining the suggestion that there's a middle ground where it could be balanced.
And one last comment [that will almost surely be unpopular] - another option is to buff all of ZSS's options except paralyzer, and just kind of ignore her neutral B. Someone probably will say "Why would you leave an almost unusable move on a character!?" And it's not that I WANT it, but let's be real - Falcon Punch is mostly unusable in high-level play [Mew2King vs Zero was so amazing precisely because Mew2King picked basically the worst landing option Falcon has, yet it worked...], but the character is still fine because his other stuff is pretty good good. Jigglypuff also has the mostly useless move sing [grab ledges backward?], so if ZSS could just become a character that's solid without paralyzer, then paralyzer could be left as a cute trick for edgeguarding [stun them offstage, footstool them or whatever] instead of trying to make paralyzer an approach tool or proper projectile.
Insofar as buffing ZSS's throws is concerned, this is actually what Shokio and Foo are talking about. But I'm not really talking about why the character is bad. I'm talking about how she was a really unique and interesting character based around a mid-range zoning game, and now she's a really bad Captain Falcon. We already have a Captain Falcon. Why can't we have a ZSS?
I realize that question is useless. The PMDT has already said they're not changing anything. But I'm kind of tired of people acting like this backlash is childish and/or uninformed.
Made In Heaven 
