I registered so that I can at least respond to this, particularly the frustration the TC has about Evasion+.
Yes indeed Evasion+ is the most broken thing in Kid Icarus Uprising. I have a 7000 word blog post about weapon modifiers in general here:
https://warriorsuprising.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/weapon-modifier-banning/
Even with that in mind, Evasion+ STILL stands out. Why? Because it causes many, MANY auto-loss scenarios from the character select screen and simultaneously adds boring gameplay just to try to fight back against it. It wasn't even fun when I beat a Japanese team of Evasion+ abusers when using a Skyscraper Club. It's disgusting anybody can consider it worth allowing to be legal even if we were to believe weapon modifiers are balanced, and the math alone should tell you that they aren't. I would only even consider Evasion+'s effect balanced on a power with significant enough shape problems to make it feasible to do Grid Reading on it without ridiculous effort, not a weapon modifier at all, let alone a 30 Value one for the +4 level. (+2 is enough for the brokenness.)
Getting past the weapon modifiers, however, KIU does in fact have some ugly, UGLY core mechanic problems. Play it and either Hyrule Warriors or the original SSB back to back and see which one has the better core mechanics. KIU has a painful, PAINFUL reliance on the power system to try to hold it together, but it doesn't do it a lot of good if matches just drag out so badly, which is way too likely to happen in a 100V 1V1. Even worse, projectile spam and unconditional flinching do not mix well.
(that's an SSB4 video)
The only reason I can even try to handle Sheik's needles in that video is because the full volley deals only 6% each time it's used and Sheik is far from able to spam them in comparison to KIU's projectiles. Even with that I wouldn't exactly complain if a future patch provided further weight gap widening than what we got.
So here are my suggestions for the core mechanics:
- More melee attack moves for all weapon types, just so people don't use the Melee Combo all the time and call that melee (and since this is the company that made SSB, this isn't beyond their capabilities)
- Prevent general neutral rapid fire from causing flinching.
- Nerf the damage values in general and let law of diminishing do its thing, which is basically what Smash 4 did to useful effect.
- Increased chargeup time for general charged shots. They still charge up too fast for their general damage outputs.
- UI telling us how many shots are available in a clip and how much chargeup we have. Battalion Wars had this and it was made by a 3rd party company.
- Armor piercing values based on weapon type and attack type, with the riskier ones getting the better values. These values would ignore up to a certain amount of defense gained from each defense boost. Also have the armor piercing treat the invincibility from Brief Invincibility and Trade-Off as a defense boost that would otherwise be strong enough to naturally nullify damage if the armor piercing value isn't high enough. (There, no more Trade-Off pulling invincibility h4x against clubs)
- Accuracy values for certain attacks that work on dodging invincibility if no more than a given number of invincibility frames are left (standard club shots would probably pierce 16 frames this way)
- Fix the Shot Cancellation, especially for standard clubs. 50 base damage is not hard to manage.
- Hyperarmor frames for club dash shots lasting from input to right after the shot is already released and providing its hurtbox to get in the way.
- Significant mercy defense to further punish spam, ala what Kirby Triple Deluxe did.
- Capture locations that provide more reason to control given locations than simply controlling space.
As for powers:
- Generally nerf the higher levels or buff the lower levels to where the lower levels are generally more cost-effective. Energy Charge is actually fine in this regard but other powers aren't.
- Recharge rates should NOT be based on weapon Value at all. Powers should recharge at rates absolutely individual of Value.
- Also provide recharge ability without having to die, preferably with the above capture locations suggestion.
- Have each power that costs at least 5 spaces provide a boost for each and every power the player has, but for each missing space on the player's grid, 2 powers worth of these boosts would get nullified.
- Casting powers' tanooki invincibility should be nerfed to 50 frames to prevent arbitrary Black Hole protection. 80 frames is ridiculous.
- Energy Charge should reduce the user's mobility considerably to prevent the user from escaping easily with it. It has no Counter Play otherwise.
- Reflect Barrier should cost a full line at ALL levels. It suffocates melee clubs as it is. It's not ridiculous to overcome, but it can cause OTT punishment for triggering Counter.
- Warp should have only 1L charges and a full line U shape costing 8+2L spaces. Leveled Super Speed should have the same U shape requiring 4+2L spaces as well to make the two powers contradict each other at a level sum exceeding 4.
- Make Angelic Missile cost a full line but have an L-shape so that it still can cost 10 spaces at L1. Buff its damage output to reward its more legitimate uses in return.
There are more suggestions I have than this, but I'm not for adding more yet. And weapon modifiers, I'm not sure where to start because the whole thing is a God awful mess. I do agree with Artisan's first and third suggestions in general though. Players shouldn't absolutely need to deal with that &%$*%&#$*&^#*$%$ fusion system to get what they could want (obviously within reason but still).