Oh for noob, just dash block crouch your way in. I learned that matchup pretty well and have it swayed to win majority of the time. Once your in range of the upknee, try to see if you can confirm one and let go of block to not be caught in the block stun, and F+3,2 him in the gut to victory.
Yep, I know. I just hate making a hasty move by doing EX Dash Kick only to have it blocked and punished with full combo and left fullscreen again.
Okay so here are the characters that have 40%+ meterless midscreen combos, that I know of anyway. Apologies if this is incorrect.
Cyber SZ
Cyrax
Ermac
Freddy
Kratos
Sheeva
Skarlet
Sonya
Sub (arguably due to reset)
Many others have combos in the high 30s. I don't see why Kitana seems to get singled out. I've only ever come across 2 players even able to do the combo, whilst many characters have easymode high damage combos.
Sonya has a 51% and no-one complains about her, probably because no-one can actually do it.
Cyber Sub is only good at offense and not defense. He cannot zone and can't get 30% combos off of an AA attack. He also has shitty pokes and no partially unbreakable combos.
Cyrax is broken and doesn't count. Let's say he does count. (I'm not going to include resets because resets are bullshit and they are breaking the game right now.) Cyrax gets 55% for a bar of meter and around 35% for a meterless combo. He also doesn't any air to air attacks that will lead to 30% damage combos. Cyrax also has sub-par wakeup.
Ermac has trouble on people who get close to him and he has almost no up close game.
Freddy is broken and is being fixed; he is also a DLC character who recently came out so we may not know if he NEEDS that kind of damage.
Kratos is tourney banned and is irrelevent to high level play.
Sheeva has several huge disadvantages and she NEEDS that high damage. Cmon man: slow speed, difficulty getting in, highly punishable special moves and the list goes on. If it weren't for Sheeva's damage output, she'd be in the gutter.
Skarlet is also being fixed and depending on what is being fixed, she might end up needing that high damage.
Sonya may have that high damage but she is almost pure offense, has no zoning, and has a lot of trouble getting in on a lot of the more defensive characters.
As I said before, I won't be counting resets as combos because they aren't true combos and Sub's reset is being taken out anyways. Sub's highest BnB meterless midscreen combo is around 33%.
Kitana on the other hand has pretty good up close offense, 45% meterless midscreen combos, 30% combos off of an anti-air or air to air fan, good zoning, good wakeup, and a fast low poke. She's also been out since the start of the game so we know her capabilities and right now, they are too high. Facts are just facts man.