My take on Kitana...
Kitana - a surprisingly uncommon character considering her popularity, I believe that Kitana has some of the best zoning and runaway in the game, particularly when paired with Kung Lao. She can easily win zoning wars with EX d,b+3, which allows follow ups on trades, and her fatal blow, which hits from very far away. Kitana's offense, on the other hand, is limited and gimmicky. She has gaps in key strings (i.e., b+2,4 and 2,4), no frame advantage on any normal attacks or strings, and no overheads. While she can arguably win every match up by zoning and playing footsies (as b+2 and 2 have slightly disjointed hitboxes, I think) she may struggle against characters with excellent anti-zoning tools such as Mileena, Omni-Man, and Raiden. For this reason, I believe that she is high mid tier rather than top tier.
I have to edit my take on Sindel because of the newly discovered vortex, which makes her better than I initially thought. Top 2 is highly debatable, but she has to be top 10 at worst.
Li Mei is another character whose zoning and overall tool set is worth commenting on. Check out RIF Scorpion's performance at Blink Respawn. He placed third exclusively using Li Mei/Scorpion. I like the damage output a lot.