vanilla subzero was top 3
no armour past his clone
MUCH better damage
b121 mixup gave a free throw because if you ate the 212 youd lose 55% life
insane corner pressure
and we also didnt have the dash nerf which means he got in on zoners much better than he does now.
ofcourse he is going to look good if you compare vanilla subzero to the rest of the nerfed cast. but if youre going to look at vanilla version you also better look at the vanilla version of characters such as kung lao, kabal, cyrax, smoke, raiden, ermac. Not too mention kenshi for dlc.
also in vanilla there would be no reason to go for b121mixup because you would just go for the raw guaranteed damage.
I would say he is top 10 but no way he is top 5 if you have
- vanilla kung lao: low hat( top 5 zoning in the game, with divekicks to get away, the hat had better recovery and on hit was like +20 which means hed could either get in or you had to block anoter projectile), spin pushback so a lot of charcters didnt get the best punishment, armor would literally last for 2 dashes if you whiffed the grab1 teleport, above 50% anywere on screen and he he a reset which was patched out before everyone knew about it, 70% corner combos with 1 bar.
- kabal: block infinite, even better gas blasts.
- cyrax: command throw reset and he might have had more.
- raiden: block infinite on non low htibox characters with 2vicinity blast, vicinity blast was like +10 or so on block, his 334/b1 strings were neutral on block, 8 frame superman, teleport with crazy recovery, better damage.
- smoke: even bigger damage even without reset, reset off of jumpkick air throw
- kenshi
imo kung lao, raiden and kabal were top 3 and way above subzero imo.