I did customs only, played nothing but Scorpion.
I found out pretty quickly that I'd be epically cucking myself if I didn't have misery blade equipped because of Scorpion's shitty frame data. It was actually a really fun ability, using the mixups, canceling out of it and going back into it, or canceling and going into a throw. It wasn't busted, it just gave Scorpion the ability to do something other than a) yolo tele or b) sit still and hope your opponent fucks up so you can punish with tele or whiff punish with B14 or something or C) literally nothing but footsies all game. I used demon dash as the third slot, it complimented scorpion's whiff punishing abilities and was great for catching jumps or some decent damage as an ender.
The more I think about my time with Scorpion and his "custom" variations, I feel that there really was no other way to equip him than with misery blade and demon dash. It kinda just gave the illusion of choice, because this was the best, easiest, and imo the funnest way to play Scorpion. Who would give up misery for a shitty NJP or demon dash for a shitty unsafe chain flip.
That being said, I didn't touch Jade, Kabal, Baraka, or Skarlet so I don't know if they had a loadout like Scorpion that is without question the best (and only) way to use them, or if they had several great loadouts. For Scorpion's sake, I hope his preset variations are completely different when the game drops, or they make his chain specials not suck, or give him literally one string that is safe, or add misery blade to one of his preset variations. Cause if Scorpion is expected to be used as is without access to misery blade, the guy isn't gonna have a good time at all in this game (for the Lin Kuei indeed
). Although it is just the beta, so if custom variations really are dead, hopefully they make the presets not suck so hard and at least use up all three slots lmao. That goes for everyone, not just Scorpion.