Clayman : Rain is top 1 swag.
In the tier list match up, he is near Ermac (Rain has a lot of 5-5). Some people like big D and Tom brady can bring midtier char to top 16 tournaments. They deserve more gratitude than people using KL and kabal for sure.
Rain damages are great. He can make 50% meterless very easily and can still use 1 meter to make you not break dat shit. His Armor is better than shaokhan's armor itself and can land a ~40% combo. His footsy, pressure and wake up are decent. He has weakness (zoning) and I like that fact. Every char should have one Achila weakness.
When people playing Rain (we're just a few) will start using ex-RHcharge to make any special armored (including H2O boost, at least for the biggest part of the animation) his metagame will finally evolve.
We are hype about Rain because we love him, we proud of him. Of course Clayman, Rain is not S tier, A tier, or top midtier, but he isn't that bad at all (not as bad as Scorpion). In my opinion, Rain is like Quanchi : God tier with meter, shit tier without.
You remind me Arcadians :
Btw, jr also said one day that Sheeva wasn't low tier so be carefull to what you can hear.