She's pretty much the same, just don't try to shield pressure with land canceled nayru, but that wasn't that safe before either. I was a little salty about them nerfing her critical kicks but that was more on principle because it doesn't affect how she's played at all. Ftilt is a good fix cause before it lost it's utility at mid percents except as a gtfo move.
I feel that Zelda is a bad character with excellent moves, which makes her viable overall but kind of mid to low tier. I'm kinda glad that they nerfed the LC Nayru a little, cause it still functions but now it's less cheap. That move kinda does do everything for her. I think for the long run she could use some minor buffs, not to individual moves per se, but to the general abilities that individual moves like nayru's love and farore's wind try to counterbalance, such as her ground mobility, specifically, her dash dance. I'm not suggesting making her as fast as sonic or anything, but maybe improve her dash dance from awful to average. This would give her another approach option to mix up between LC nayru and FW air dodge for when your opponent has studied the MU as hard as you have and understands that both those moves have very reliable ways to deal with themt. It also fits with her theme of being a defensive character since it's more of an indirect approach. They could do this by lengthening and speeding up her initial dash slightly. This would have the added benefit of making up for the small hit she took to her already poor approach when they nerfed LC nayru, and would be less cheap than LC nayru was before.
Secondly, make her grab hitbox bigger. It's big for the average character, sure. but for it's weaknesses, it actually isn't that big. It's quite slow for a grab, especially her shield grab, which really hurts her OoS options, and it's slowness combined with her lack of mobility make attempting a grab particularly risky, especially against fast, mobile characters. And once you have them grabbed, her throw options aren't all that rewarding since the opponent can escape a followup with good DI AND her throws are super easy to DI even on reaction. The normal trade off with this type of thing seems to be A) throws are super rewarding, so let's B) make it harder to grab, but Zelda has both limitations. Other characters have greater rewards for grabbing with less limitations, look at Marth. His grabbox is ludicrous and the reward for grabbing someone is tremendous for fast fallers and floaties alike, but people for the most part accept this because of history and say that 'yes it's ridiculous, but he needs those grabs'. But Zelda also needs her grabs to get things started. It makes more sense for her to have a grabbox as big as Marth's than it does for Marth to have them, lol. I mean, she's a psychic character with magic sparkles illustrating her grabbox.
Anyways, I picked these two buffs because they make sense for Zelda to have, they improve Zelda but don't break her because she already has pretty strong weaknesses in opposition to these buffs (big grab=slow start up+easy to escape throw options; viable dash dance=slow start up moves with lengthy cool down), and they increase Zelda's ability to get things started, which I foresee as being a huge weakness when the metagame gets more developed and you won't be playing people who don't know the Zelda MU. When that inevitably happens, you'll need some better tools to make things happen yourself, rather than rely on your opponent to make a mistake. Look at Zhime vs M2K. Zhime knew the MU much, MUCH better than m2k, but he still lost because m2k takes full advantage of characters who have abilities that are just outright superior. If m2k can beat an excellent, knowledgeable Zelda who's playing their all, without even knowing the mu, then what does that forecast when top players get familiar with the zelda metagame?
So thoughts, guys? Am I wrong? Do you think Zelda is perfect how she is? What would change? Nerf or make better? And where in the tier list do you think she'll be 2 or 3 years down the road?