Ok, so I finally played some Minus with some guys I know last night. I can confirm my original fears... the gravity change feels very poorly implemented and I think it should be reverted with potentially a few exceptions.
Notable problems:
- Pikachu cannot SH AC dair
- Snake cannot FH nair and get all 4 hitboxes out (this was hugely disappointing for the Snake main of the group), and his nair leaves him prone to SDs offstage moreso than before (also a huge annoyance/risk if you ever try to do jab out of shield or shieldgrab, it seemed he'd just SD, much in the way that Brawl Ike's nair would kill him.)
- Falco feels much more awkward to use onstage and off
- Link's recovery was not exactly amazing to begin with and it's now worse. It also doesn't help him onstage
- Not a problem with how the character feels, but Meta Knight's dair seems to be utterly broken... myself and another player who used him were killing people at percents only my Falco can seem to kill at, and MK takes people offstage SIGNIFICANTLY easier at low percents than Falco does. Dair also combos into fsmash onstage at various percents.
Characters that felt ok:
- Lucario feels fine (at this point he might be perfect as is, without aura... with aura he'd be a monster still...)
- I didn't try him myself, but there seemed to be no complaints with Pichu (although Pichu has been so bad so long I understand why)
- Samus felt better (although I have my issues with some changes) [this is probably due to her now falling slower anyway].
- Captain Falcon felt alright, although SH dairs didn't seem nearly as good (I preferred when you could fastfall them), and Falcon Kick.
- Wolf was a little weird but his new up+B momentum is amazing
I personally think nearly all the characters should have their gravity reverted... comboing people is still very free and it's not like people falling a little slower would make characters combo significantly worse [on the contrary, people falling slower would make Falcon dthrow work better]. I will probably offer more specific feedback later on a variety of characters, but I'll suffice to say that although Samus is headed in the right direction, the game feels frankly like it's taken 1 step forward with some of the balance changes (some of them are still very questionable though... Lucario can grab cancel down+b for maximum safety on shield, but Falcon can't JC Falcon Kick, and Falco can't cancel reflector? Really?), but then 2 steps back with an idea that might have been passable in theory but seems to fail miserably in execution [the gravity changes].
?) but once I get my SD set up for some smashstack netplay, I'll see if it's DIable or preventable.
