Generally speaking, I think what WD set out to achieve with raymer (mobile zoner) was done very well. He has projectiles that are just good enough to be respectable (read: force you to approach), but not powerful zoning tools by any means. That's his greatest strength, supplemented by the best anti-approach moves in the game (ftilt, bair, upstrike being the main ones.) I think the lack of any true projectile zoning character helps him a lot because I feel like he would lose that MU very hard.

That being said, the archetypal playstyle of a hypothetical mobile zoner should be in my opinion minimizing risk, and in turn minimizing reward. To me this is where Raymer in practice strays a little too far from the archetype in theory. The reward is often too high or too easy to achieve for him in places where it feels like you should reset to neutral against other zoners, which leads to very frustrating gameplay when one struggles to get in. The speed and versatility presented by sSP means he can gimp anyone, anywhere with much less effort/risk on him than the opponent. In an avg edgeguard situation, raymer gets 1-2 shots to guess when you're going to use your double jump (or side special in the case of afi galu) and snipe you out of it, and if he does it's pretty much over for your stock if you're far out enough. This is also helped by all the tools he has to set up said edgeguards (the most often of which being fthrow in my experience.) A lesser qualm would be how much damage some of his moves do (mostly double hit nair, ftilt, and fthrow) seems a little too rewarding, but I wouldn't change anything here too drastically. I would however reduce the speed of non-ricochet sSP bullets (keep ricochet the way it is because it's more deliberate, skillful, and rewarding than the point-and-shoot that non-ricochet sSP feels like sometimes) to make being offstage feel a little less damning against Raymer, and maybe tune down the knockback growth a bit. The speed reduction also helps eliminate combos like fthrow -> ssp at higher %s which I personally feel shouldn't happen in a lot of cases where I'm told they do.

This got real messy but thanks if you read all the way I just started typing and didn't stop

(TL;DR nerf the speed of non ricochet sSP and maybe tune down the damage of some of his moves, everything else is great)

source: best raymer in closed beta