I dont blame you!
Basically, in short, I was trying to say Wii Fit has been given a short hand on a LOT of things.
Mainly attack speed and (i think) damage output.
Example: Why must her downsmash do a measly 12% at its weakest? Why not 14 or 15? like most other characters?
Her moves have great deal of starting and endling lag. Why is she *cursed* with such properties on all of her moves, and not sheik or other players?
These are things I often think about .
Because good spacing, set-ups and - in the case of N-air, most notably - combos and mix-ups exist.
I understand your problems with WFT, most notably with frame data and power, but even looking at that, some of Wii Fit's moves are above average. Mostly in the air, sure, but that's what you should be focused on with Wii Fit anyway.
I just feel WFT suffers from high-complexity. There are no straight-forward answers in their moveset, so in twitch/reaction situations, against most characters, you suffer, so you have to play very conservatively to truly take advantage. -and I'm not saying "If you can't play Wii Fit Trainer, you're bad.", but I find that a lot of people who can't learn atleast one conservative playstyle tend to have less of an understanding about the game on a competitive level. I'd actually dare say Wii Fit might be top 3 most defensive playstyles in the game, there is no rush-in, there is no super-good reactionary move, just strategy and set-up, and that's a huge problem for a lot of people when it comes to wanting to pick WFT up. -some people just straight up don't like this playstyle either, and that's fine.
As for the D-smash example in particular, IIRC, it also semi-spikes, so you can get some good distance with it, even if the move itself is not naturally powerful. Plus, it has some hitbox shuffling properties I'm actually really fond of, so the power on it isn't too great an issue (Plus, deep breathing exists. Gotta make the most of that.).
I don't think their moves are
that slow, but rather their range
is lacking, and that makes it feel like your moves come out late when in truth, they usually just need to come out later. When range isn't a factor, they're actually pretty average. The endlag on the moves isn't the worst either outside of smashes and a couple of tilt attacks, and for a character with such a good projectile game, air game, and above average mobility, it kind of balances out since you won't be wildly throwing them out often anyway.
When you contrast WFT with - say, Link, for simplicity's sake - you notice that a lot of Link's moves can be used as a reactionary tool quite safely because of the range and disjoint they have, even if the speed is poor, where WFT's every move takes some level of thought because your body's range is so blatantly poor it doesn't make up for the average speed they have. What does make up for it though is that your moves generally put people in negative situations (In air, buried, etc.), are good when you
or your opponent is in trouble (When you're offstage, your opponent is above you, etc.), or at the least, reset to neutral (Things like F-tilt and Sun Salutation give you a lot of breathing space on hit.), and you really have to take that into account when you look at the moveset as a whole - you're there to punish, take advantage, and pressure hard, but failing that, there's no doubt your close range game is poor enough that you're quite likely to get beat out by everyone - you're gonna have to run most of the time.
That's my analysis on it anyway, I do consider myself a casual, so I could be wrong, but I dabble in enough data to know generally why WFT is hard to use and it basically comes down to the fact that your reaction options suck...