Camelot is working on Melee-ifying YL's projectiles right now.
We've gotten a lot of the key Melee moves worked into him as well, and soon we'll do direct Melee hitbox ports.
As for why we did hybrids, in addition to what JCaesar said, we also use it as a way of fleshing out character's play style, broadening their options rather than just further buffing the same strengths which already may not work in a given matchup.
The top tiers all have tools to play a variety of different ways, adapting to various opposing characters and play styles. The lower tiers still have some room for interpretation, but there is much more of a 'right' way to play the character.
For example, Donkey Kong has a few great moves, and he has to use all of those moves to play in an effective way. By buffing nair a bit we've given him a lower priority, but higher reward approach compared to Bair. Similarly, we made his jab combo a bit more effective with earlier an earlier IASA frame, making it a shorter range option compared to D-tilt, but again, higher reward. Additionally, we might buff his grab range slightly.
In Melee, if a character could shut down DK's bair he really had to work hard to overcome the matchup, so we fleshed out his other options, giving him tools against matchups where bair alone can't do the job (but still left most of his weaknesses intact).
I speak of DK because he's more polished than Young Link right now, but the principle is similar -- we want to expand the character's options a bit, and using some of Toon Link's best moves seemed like a good way to accomplish that as well as cater to Young Link users.
We are still refining Y. Link, though, and we would certainly be interested in your feedback. We've streamlined the application review process and it shouldn't take long to get into the PMBR if you'd care to help us out.
