Black Mage's kit is about balance and stage control. Having a move with a giant invisible grab box that only serves to annoy your opponent doesn't help with stage control or balance. It just adds a spammable move that reduces a sizable portion of the Black Mage playerbase to easily read spammers. Do any of you wonderful people really want to be associated with those players?
Having less spammy and overall bad players allows others to take a character seriously. People are more willing to research a character if the playerbase is mostly good, as that character will be considered more of a threat. People would look for weaknesses to exploit, and in return others would look for ways to get around these weaknesses and take full advantage of a character's strengths.
Even these small things would grow the metagame and help everyone get better in the end. It's the reason why I'm happy about Kirby's inhale and final cutter being nerfed in the Beta: because it will grow the playerbase's average skill level and possibly even the metagame as a whole. Yes, these spammy players will continue to play, but they'll pick up other characters, like Pit and Luffy. The characters luke Black Mage and Kirby, who were severely underestimated before, will finally be taken seriously, pulling in better players and making everything better as a whole.

Or maybe I'm just s*** out of my mouth. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Whomever told you BM was a bad character doesn't know what he/she is talking about. Meteors OP AF. Hard to SDI nair->Utilt.Ftilt is annoying. etc.etc.

I don't mind being called the spammy guy. I am, after all the spammy guy

A random conversation I had in mind:

: So... we get Top Tiers ( ) and give them very slight buffs

: Let's get Low Tiers ( ) and resprite and remake them for them to be less annoying, but generally more effective, even getting some inspiration from Tr4sh Sm4sh

: Let's get the High Tiers ( ) and nerf their annoying moves to make them more balanced

: Get two Fan Favorites ( ) and redesign them to be less spammy but be just as, if not more, effective/viable

: How about this Mid-Tier Guy ( )?

: Oh, I know! Let's straight up nerf his tools to be completely useless, not even redesign them, and not give buffs at all as compensation!

: Perfect! He'll be balanced now!

: Wait, don't you think that was too harsh?

: Nah...

: Wait, what if we make a new character have an Up-B that barely covers vertical distance, but its practically a Meat Grinder that deals a damage every frame, and has enough hitstun to trap the opponent!

: Perfect! Hey, what if we make SDI'ing harder?

: *sigh*

Basically, *bleep* Naruto

I'm glad these are educated opinions you have from your experience with playing Beta.

You really have no idea what you're talking about.

LOOOOOOL

I'm not really impressed over how they handled BM in BETA so far, but he doesn't look that horribly nerfed like Jan_Solo's implying here lol

Dunno what happened to Haste's range, but I'm sure it was given more knockback so it's a good tradeoff

Simply put, the move is generally better than it used to be, but you have to be more thoughtful about aiming it, since the grab only happens a distance away from Black Mage and doesn't hit up close, as well as the grab not being out for as long.

Hey, does anyone here know how to deal with a Black Mage who spams side special and down special?

My character doesn't really have a choice but to hit close... Any tips?

Don't try to directly challenge Black Mage. This is where people trip up. Get BM to commit to something and then punish it, don't just try to overwhelm his options. Haste beats essentially everything but running away. The upside for you is that it's horrifically unsafe on whiff. Get near Haste range, not too close but enough to threaten something, and if they're predictably or spammy they'll use Haste. By that point, you should be out of range. Then, when they do the super-long falling over animation, punish. Rinse and repeat.

For Meteor, you just have to be close enough to punish a big meteor. Don't bother challenging the hitbox unless you're sure it'll work. Rolls and powershields are your friend: to be honest, it's super easy to powershield them unless you're DK.

Of course, meteor isn't an option if you're not giving them any space, so that's what you should be doing. Force them to play defense by getting near their space, but as always be wary of Haste. Don't directly challenge BM's stuff, just evade it and punish the lag.

Dash, jump, air dodge. Works on any predictable, annoying BM

EDIT: Also try to bait the side-B, it is very punishable

he is a pain to play against online

I dropped this character...
Also nerf his Final Smash

I'm gonna miss his NES costume.