Played some KL matches with Outtake.
Very weird but, everyone's just crouch blocking the zoning from 3/4 screen, coming close.
They're doing it better than the pro player streams we've been seeing, that just walk face first into forceballs.
Maybe people in KL are used to spamming and defensive annoying play and they're just better, but out of my 10 matches 9 of them were extremely patient and just dashed in nullifying the low forceball in max 2 dashes.
So then, once they make that one dash and forceballs start whiffing, you're just left with raw strings, and poke rising shoulder.
You can d4 check their advance, 124, backdash, repeat. But that's what you could do in the other variations as well.
The only thing you have left is d1 shoulder. It catches people, yes, and if they block it they are left in perfect d4 range so they have to start guessing again.
And here lies my personal problem.
I've always had the belief that a top tier character was the one that required the less ammount of guesses, or let's say reads to not offend the elitists, to win.
In other words, the less correct reads from you, or mistakes from the opponent, it takes to win, the better the character.
If they have to do 2 mistakes to lose, and you can freely do 5-6 because their character can't cash out, then your character is better than theirs.
With outtake, it takes a LOT. You're always in the neutral, you always have to make the read. d4? throw another forceball? wait for a s1 anti air? Dash in throw?
If you do a correct heavy read with f3 or b3, you can't cash out more than 26%.
On the other hand, there are characters (Geras) that when you blink, WHAMO 40%. Man does literally over 35% from his 6 frame u2 wakeup. He still has three very usable 35% KBs and a full screen fatal blow. How many mistakes are you allowed to do against this? Certainly less than they're allowed vs your Outtake.
So this is why it's hard for me to see this character top 5.
Sure, if you're from SKYNET and you literally guess right every single time and have the reaction time of a nanomachine infested cyborg, then obviously you'd win with Outtake. But my question here is this. If your reads are so godlike, you can win flawless with a char that requires 7,8 reads.....imagine how horribly more you'd win with one that requires 2.
In case of Sonic, i'm pretty sure people be shittin bricks during their tournament matches with him and will do a SHITTON of mistakes against Outtake, which sincerely is what allowed him to win with prepatch Cold in inj2 so much.
I'm really really not sold on the god tierness of this new variation at all.