I play against a good DF Liu Kang on the regular and I play against a good A-list on occasion. Being an A-list main myself it was kinda annoying to be exposed to the same shit I apply on other people but I definitely struggle more against Liu Kang. What bothers me about Liu is not the loopable pressure - it's more the fact that he gets in too easily with the flying kick.
And yes A-List is a strong variation no doubt about it - but the cancels are litteraly all he has. Take that away from him and we're better off playing Jax or some shit. I always complain about Johnny's shitty air normals aside from his jumpkick but really, jumping with Johnny just means getting punished or you will whiff your jip (ji2 has it's uses but yeah). If Johnny gets in with a f3 he can do a f2 or attempt some 11 stagger or the dirty 1 stagger into f2 or just do the full 113 and cancel it to make it safe (on block). You have to guess two things and then it's your turn - Forceballs dont guarantee anything, they're useful if people wanna press buttons after wards and in my experience people tend to just backdash.
We have our good d4 thankfully, but it doesn't lead to 30 % damage. I even heard KP on stream (it was some event, cant remember which one though) saying he's just gonna eat d4's for days because Johnny has to do a lot of those to even out what he could have gotten from his overhead starter.
People tend to blame their lack of experience on the character. I mean, I always get fucked up by Quan Chi because I have 0 experience against him, so when I meet somebody who been maining that char since day 1 im gonna get rekt, and that's my own fault. We see alot of people on the forum just spreading misinformation about Johnny and demanding nerfs even when they havent spend 5 minutes in the lab with him. People claim forceballs are jailing and all kinds of bullshit that just makes me wanna facepalm.
