I think it's obvious who I'd like to see rise:
.
This character is insane. Have you seen Taiheita? In his last two big tournaments, he placed 17th and 5th, only ever losing to ZeRo, Nairo, and Dabuz, while 2-0'ing tons of players including Marss and Abadango (he even 2-stocked Abadango).
The only problems with Lucas's theory right now are his mediocre neutral and somewhat gimpable recovery, though both of these are still better than Ness's: Lucas's sweetspot F-air, Z-air, and PK Fire are better than Ness's tools in the neutral, and Lucas has greater air speed, a tether recovery, and more distance with an up-B that's much harder for most characters to intercept.
His combo game might even be better than Ness's, with a N-air that acts similar to Ness's F-air but with even more followup potential at higher percents. (Also, people overexaggerate how much you can SDI it, but not one top player he faced was able to consistently SDI out of it, so...) His tether grab is usually harder to land than Ness's normal grab, but there are setups to it, such as N-air, Z-air, and D-tilt, which can even combo into each other into a grab. He also gets more reward from his grab than Ness does: All of his throws except D-throw can kill reliably (and D-throw can Hoo Hah to kill even earlier off the top than U-throw), which makes his kill game off grabs more versatile than Ness's single amazing kill throw.
His D-throw deserves a paragraph of its own. At low percents it can combo into a footstool or a N-air into footstool, which can set up an extensive jab lock combo that works at least once on every character. At low-mid percents, it can combo into a N-air into any other aerial; at mid-high percents it combos into B-air, which can kill early near the edge, or F-air; and at kill percents it can true combo into U-air. It has such low end lag that it can even true combo into U-smash at low percents! (Not that it's practical, but just to demonstrate its insanely low end lag.)
He also kills more consistently than Ness, with the aforementioned Hoo Hah and kill throws, as well as solid setups into sweetspot F-air, B-air, U-tilt, F-tilt, and F-smash. Speaking of F-smash, it's surprisingly powerful for how quick it comes out, often killing at 80% near the ledge without rage. His D-smash can also 2-frame pretty easily and kill quite early, not to mention that he can jab lock with the tip of D-tilt at the kill percent for any of these options. Sure, Ness can kill earlier, but not as reliably as Lucas can.
At this point in the meta game I would agree with Feelicks in that Lucas is better than Ness, at least a lower high tier. FOW has become quite inconsistent with his results, which seem to keep dropping, whereas Taiheita and the several others who play Lucas just seem to do better and better every tournament. I'm excited for the future of Lucas our bucas!
