I don’t have a ton of experience with this game yet, so gonna be a lot of “I feel” statements.
Anyway, F12 is definitely his best string imo. Sub doesn’t seem like as much of a mix or offensive character as he does a defensive one. Like for the most part you’ll be zoning opponents I feel as oppose to rushing them down and making them guess a lot with his low and overhead mix (which his low/OH mix isn’t that great imo). Even when you get them into the corner, I feel like the best option is to zone them out with klone and his klone projectile. I definitely also feel like he’s gonna struggle vs characters with a teleport. All that said, his Klone is super good as I said for zoning. It’s also good for mobility in a way.
But again, this is all based on limited experience. So take what I said with a grain of salt
I think you can play him either way and it depends on the cameo. He gets 30% (with my shitty un-optimal combos) meterless off his 50/50 with Sonya, so when you want to take a risk it’s not a bad payout. I definitely don’t think you should rely on the 50/50 completely though. When the game comes out fully im sure there will be a cameo even better than Sonya for him to get meterless damage off the 50/50, and I think we will be picking cameos like this vs characters that we can’t zone (hypothetically Scorpion or Smoke) so may as well just go for damage and take them to the corner off a mixup ASAP
I agree that the ice klone is very good and I’m sure there will be some absolutely disgusting shit he can do in the corner with it once we get the full game. He has excellent corner carry too.
Another thing that makes the ice klone and to a degree the ice ball better in this game is his jump 12 string and B2, since he now has a very easy path to convert off a frozen airborne opponent, or someone in a weird position. I couldn’t tell you how many times in MKX I’d have an opponent frozen just off the ground and have to do a gimped combo, or they were really low and I’d have to do a shitty combo because they were frozen in any way other than upright.
Think Mileena ball roll or a similar move, we don’t even have to think about it, B2 into launch, we get the full combo because we froze her, and her being in a stupid position doesn’t cheat us out of damage. Got someone with the air klone? Jump in 12 and do your full combo and take them to the corner. I think it makes any of his freezes way more threatening because he can get a real combo off a freeze of any kind which wasn’t always the case for him.