his mobility, insane j1, 50/50s and gimmicks allowed him to start an offense just fine, witch was always followed by a good 40 to 45 percent of life bar gone and hard knockdown.
besides, sub zero's b2 is braindead and they decided that it didn't need a nerf for some reason.
he was fine.
First of all, Grandmaster has all of those things. And the problem was that Cryo was just plain worse at all of them.
40%+ for 1 bar might sound good on paper, but if you had to get that damage from mids and highs that had median frames of anywhere between -3 to -9 on block, you would be calling bullshit on people telling you can open people up with such normals.
And about that overhead, it's still -13 on block with no clone to shield it in Cryo. On top of that, getting optimal damage from it midscreen is now extremely finicky due to variable hit reactions on crouching opponents (y'know, the entire reason you would want to check someone with an overhead in the first place?) between different characters making it impractical, if not outright impossible, to follow up with F42 Grab.
For the record, I'm not trying to downplay, and take this all from me as someone who isn't even a Sub main, I think Cryo is a very good variation now, but when it was failing to do its job, that being to provide alternative offense to Grandmaster without relying on the presence of clone, to say "it was already fine" is just flat out logistically wrong.