I think a lot of the current design aspects of Zelda are being blown out of proportion at the moment. I mean, this is literally all I've been reading for the past hour, so I'm really intrigued by the discussion as it's posing some new options for me to consider. I can't speak very well from a Zelda position, considering I main Ness and put the most work into him on a daily. But from what I've been reading, a lot of this confusion has been from a lack of intuitive creativity. I feel like you could be potentially limiting your options, Nyle, or simply defeating yourself in the mind.
Knowledge is power in the very aspect of it, so taking all from what you can learn from this may help you approach this character in a better manner than before. That's not to exclude that there are some obviously mixed feelings about this character, but there are plenty of other characters in this game that suffer from hitbox/aesthetics disproportion. I'll take some time out of the day to say, playing Zelda as Ness can be awfully terrifying if you've never played against a formidable Zelda before.
I used to watch Zhime's Zelda videos back in the day to prep me for a wifi tournament in which I was told he would be competing in. I made it to Winners Finals (don't ask me how, this was probably the most cleanest I'd have ever played in my life and will probably never reach a prime this high in the near future, at least w/o practice) in which I had to play him. This was actually the first time ever that I played the guy. Even though I watched some of his videos, that didn't help me for **** in the first game. I got 3 stocked and it made Mofat feel like the MU was highly in Zelda's favor because he began questioning his audience, not even sure on how to commentate the match.
I figure you would probably call me insane if I were to tell you that I don't think this MU is so parallel. From a distance or even a glance, someone could declare that Ness would indeed lose this inevitably. However, I thought against this idea. I was a very stubborn person about my main 2 years ago and while I'm more realistic about how well I can perform when using Ness, I've never let someone tell me that I can't win a MU. I mean, this is potentially the most balanced Smash ever put together. The second game was the cleanest I played the MU. Keeping in mind, in 2.1, Ness didn't have access to the airdash/wavebounce magnet, so I personally thought the MU was more INTENSE. Aside from suffering from his typical 'recovery is flawed' johns, of course.
I learned on the first stock that as stated earlier, if you hold magnet out as you're approaching a din from any angle, it will absorb. You can't absorb the explosion, so if you wanted to attempt to absorb the dins, you had to be extremely accurate with your position of the magnet and the position of the dins. The thing that really opened my mind about her din meta, is that if you're not conscious about the amount of seconds the dins have on the timer, this could easily mess up your precision in trying to eliminate them from the field. That also comes down to one of two things: You have to decide it upon yourself whether or not you believe it's worth the time to remove them from play.
Mind me when saying that Ness' neutral game is considerably under average of even most characters. He can combat dins by canceling them with any of the moves mentioned in WhiteLightnin's post earlier, however his poor zoning game will be of a great hindrance to him. Simply, how to deal with dins is personally the most important part of this MU in my honest opinion. Everything else is either an add-on of some kind, or just legitimately eye candy (like the sparkles on her moves, lmao). It won't matter in the end what type of follow-ups you get, if you even get them in the first place; if you don't know what to do against dins, you're going to look about as free as the pacific ocean.
You can usually decipher when you want to remove them from play based on given standpoints and scenarios. I'll paint an image:
Since this match happened on Final Destination, this is the map I'll use in the example. Contrary to belief, counter-picking him to FD was probably a negative on my part. At the time I felt the most comfortable playing on that stage.
So let's say you somehow found yourself near the ledge. In Smash, it's typically never a good idea to find yourself near the ledge in any given scenario unless the opponent is offstage and you're rearing yourself to deal with that appropriately. Zhime's din play is unique as they come. He constantly forces you to think about how you're going to combat the mystery of his character while dealing with the insane defense play. In my mind deeply, I didn't really care all too much about how he executed his dins. My main goal was that I wasn't going to get baited into a grab and thrown into a din in the far 45 degree angle of the stage as it detonates. I say I did an overall neat job with that because it never happened. However, when looking back, there were some things I could have did better or rather open myself to using.
Zhime notably liked surrounding me with dins. He noticed that I liked trying to take time out of my day to absorb them. I was open to other options at the time, but ignored them in an attempt to get some cover and get my percentage lower to 0%. So theoretically speaking, I believe that you may either absorb them to achieve this or cancel the dins to catch some breathing air.
But then let's say Zelda is on the other side of the map. Both characters honestly don't have much of an incentive to approach one another, however Ness will have more of an urge to approach Zelda due to overall neutral game and Ness' poor zoning kit. Although, there's no real law that says Ness HAS to approach Zelda. I personally find reading Zelda's teleport game isn't all that much trouble since I dabbled a bit of Mewtwo in Melee enough to know most angles a player would approach a recovery or approach scenario. Baiting teleport can work out for the Ness player, but you have to understand the properties of teleport to really utilize the option of baiting her. She has overall two mixups at that point: Her teleport without the cancel via airdodge, and her teleport with the cancel via airdodge.
So we have three dins around a Ness at the ledge, right side of Final Destination. You look pretty isolated from the other side of the map as opposed to Zelda's position. Let's say that these dins were placed... like one in front of you just around your main torso. You're like at the distance to knock it out with a bat or a perfectly spaced f-tilt. Then you have another din behind you at a near-to 45 degree angle from the first din, right above your head more than slightly behind you. Then you have another din at a near to spaced 45 degree angle right in front of you, but above and slightly to left of the din at your torso. There are a number of things you could do, but they could all be invalidated by her teleport/din reset-counter game.
Luckily in 3.0 or well, onward from 2.1, Ness can use airdash/wavebounce magnet variations to further increase his accuracy in absorbing the dins. Canceling dins to force her to throw more seem to be pretty viable in the MU as well, as it would force her to get more on the field. You'll more than likely have to worry about her teleport cancels in this scenario, but approaching the dins like this have proven to work well.
In 2.1, only the main kit aside from magnet basics applied. I lost my first stock as a result of magnet absorb inaccuracy. That was personally my fault, so I learned from that rather quickly. I noticed on a lot of throws or solid hits that sent Zhime flying offstage, he would love jump to gain some height away from Ness in an attempt to make it back towards the stage. I realized that because Zelda is a floaty character, this resulted in potentially his BIGGEST weakness in the MU. While he can slow his descent with dins or maybe bait my rising aerials with a Naryu, I figured hitting him with a PK Flash was potentially the safest counter to this method. I'm actually quite notorious for juggling poor SDI and anti-airing those who attempt to approach from a specific angle. The latter is of a gut feeling, thankfully.
Prior to this match, I had absolutely no idea what the heck a love jump was, even though I dabbled a few years of competitive smash with Brawl before switching to PM. A lot of my punishes were based on instinct, because I wasn't exactly sure how the match would progress so I made sure to try a lot of things that I felt were appropriate. I managed to hit him with the move and later in the match started adjusting to his keen style of Zelda. I don't typically remember every vivid detail of this match, seeing how 2.1 came out like 2 years ago. However, I can tell you my PK Flash sniping on his love jump was rather consistent. Am I saying this should be the ultimate option to combat the scenario? No, I was a very inexperienced player and especially an inexperienced player now, but more experienced than when the matches came and finished.
I did get 3-0'd. It was morally depressing, but I took the loss as an overall lesson to the MU. I think that if with the factors listed here that Ness can do to combat dins and some of Zelda's recent enhancements/nerfs, there is more but a glimmer of hope of what you may possibly believe actually exists here.
In regards to toxic elements, I don't believe PK Fire is as toxic as certain other factors that characters may use in this game. This is not to say it's completely fine to belittle every single toxic element in this game and say 'hey it's completely fine to have a so and so move and such and such'. I think a main source of this belief is due to the guilt of using a move that's auto-pressure, but in compensation, is a depressing attempt to make up for a character's weaknesses. I enjoyed reading your thread of plausible tweaks to the character and would personally enjoy seeing most of them, if not all, in use. But as this game is progressing, it's becoming quite apparent that the move itself is being pieced apart by a forming counter-meta. I feel that some of this should honestly just settle for a while to see what may happen since this isn't just a bunch of new people coming into the spectrum. Most people who play PM have some sort of Smash background already, so honestly seeing how the certain factors develop would be a pretty safe field in terms of what changes could be made if there were any to propose in sake of bettering a character.
Well, I made a post earlier in this topic on some directions they could move towards. I'll repost it below.
The one addendum to the above changes I would make, is that if Zelda's fair/Bair are to retain a "critical" hitbox hit, it should be CLOSE to her not far from her. She should have to put herself at risk and actually "plan" in order to hit with it, like a roy or an Ike fsmash. But keeping people at a distance and getting a strong fair versus a super strong ultra fair does not showcase any sort of intelligent planning--It just proves you can space well. It doesn't fit into the typical game balance mechanics of having comparable risk and reward, especially when the payoff is so severe.
Also, people need to STOP defending lightening kicks on the basis that it has a small hitbox. If a hitbox is far from your body and you have air maneuverability, it doesn't really matter how big or small it is. All it means is that the "circle" hitbox is small, but if that circle is on a long *** stick (her leg), then it says very little in how hard it is to place in neutral.
Like someone else said: it's not like marth players have a hard time landing tippered fsmashes, just because the hitbox is "theoretically small".
That's actually a contradiction. Why should she put herself in such a risk? You like, completely left Marth out of the equation. Does he not get a reward for a perfectly spaced fsmash tipper? I mean, I see you point really, but you should try and iron it out before saying something like this.
Sadly I hear whiny Johners are winning and she is getting über-nerfed. DO NOT LET WHINY ******* win. If you give them this victory they will just go after another, completely balenced character, with people who have spent 100sof hours developing the metagame! 
