While I can understand that you don't want your main's best variation nerfed, it's hard to justify Cutthroat having safe 50/50s, a flash parry, double safe 50/50s for a bar, excellent corner damage and excellent footsie tools. As for EX-buff better being plus because you're spending a bar, let's not forget that EX-buff is a damage buff and thus already has its uses.
i personally think its what makes that variation cool, one many characters have safe 50's, and him having plus on his 50/50 is not as big a deal as many make it, you can respect the pressur like many on this game, when Liu kang did it i simplky respected and then took my turn, or when any character that has done anything remotely close to it you can simply armor through.(just to note yeah kano can break armor but he has to choose to do that before hand on a read and wont be able to do the double mixup that we can be paitent and armor) i generlally have no probs against kano. i know many on here don't like his pressure but some of us need to understand that is what makes CT fun for the kano players. I know i for one am sick of seeing a character finally becomming usefull and loads of people who are just frustrated with a matchup ruin a fun character.
just coming in from a different view point
if you look at TYM and step back you will notice the general thought process on this site is NERF NERF NERF instead of buff the under vars.
Sadly i havent seen a thread soley about buff X * Y characters its always nerf these 3-5 characters and they wonder why it never fixes anything. bring the others up and i bet you will find these characters will be easier to deal with. especially when you add 20 more characters with different toolsets into the mix