Sorry for the troubles and random question but....
If you had anything to say to those who think Zelda is poorly designed and/or her only saving grace is UpB, what would it be?
I'd like to copy and paste it whenever someone makes a post about her that seems rather......ignorant I guess?
I mean, at her heart, Zelda is poorly designed. I'll agree on that front because of one thing: She was designed as half a character back in melee. She was the killing counterpart to the Zelda/Sheik combo. What ruined everything in melee was the fact that Sheik was perfectly fine with killing and also better at combos (Like she was designed to be), faster, etc. When it came to brawl, they ruined Sheik by basically taking combos out of the equation altogether and the idea of playing "Sheilda" was made truer to its design since, if you check most brawl tier lists, they'll have "Sheilda" listed above solo Sheik and solo Zelda. When it came to designing her as her own character while also staying true to her character design from previous installments, the dev team didn't do a great job because she kept more of her killer attributes and didn't get enough in return to make her fit her new archetype of glass cannon rather than "kill half."
That said, anyone that thinks Zelda's only tool is FW knows nothing about Zelda. She did get stuff in the split from Sheik albeit not enough. She's got true combos like dtilt>jab>DA, dtilt>Lkick, dtilt>nair, nair>nair on a lot of characters, nair>Lkick on some characters, and many more. Those combos, btw, do a ton of damage. 23% from dtilt>jab>DA. She's got disjoints in fsmash (which is fairly safe on shield if spaced properly), jab, ftilt, nair. She's got kill confirms like landing nair, dtilt which can lead to Lkicks, and unteched dair. She's got phantom as a spacing tool as long as it's used correctly (fade-away phantom, wavebounce phantom, b-reverse phantom). Her offstage game is impeccable. She'll pressure you while you're offstage with din's and phantom then go off for nairs and dairs to try and gimp or meteor smash you. Then, she'll get back to the stage almost no matter how deep she goes. She isn't even combo'd as easily as a lot of other characters because she's light and has Nayru's Love. Having frame 5 intangibility is a better option than a lot of characters have for getting out of combos. Plus, while she is juggled easily, she still has some interesting options for landing like airdodge>Nayru's Love that can often trick opponents into thinking they can punish her landing and she can b-reverse Nayru's Love as well as phantom. She can also wavebounce phantom for added efficacy. Given all that and the fact that you can die at 70% against her, there's no reason to claim that she only has one option.
