Its too match up dependent to throw out a ex low hat as a mind game. If you play a character that needs to keep away from Kung Lao then what is the use for it? In the Kabal match up, Kabal can keep away from KL all he wants. The only time he needs to get close to KL is to get a life lead. Throw a hat mid screen and that wont hit any kabal player. In the corner it can be useful but like I said, its match up dependent. Its not the same as an ice clone because you need meter for it. If I'm stuck in the corner against it, I'll just armor through it if I don't want to wait for you to do something. The problem with the ice clone is once you armor, jump, or anything to get out of the corner, you have to worry about another one coming out. If you want to blow 2 bars to throw out another ex low hat then go for it. You lost your breaker there.
i have no reason to throw out a second hat like that lol, if you don't respect my options to where i could throw out hat, then im gonna spin you. lol. And kung lao builds meter like a fiend, so meter won't really matter that much to me unless i was playing against cyrax.
Against a character like Kabal, the use of grind hat would become more specific than say it would against mileena, for example one mind game i play against Kabals is that after landing a 24 1+3 (2) sometimes i can throw a low hat, however if they do a wake up dash i'll end up eating a full combo. However if i do grindhat and hold it there, their invincibility will wear off by the time they reach it and it will hit them which allows me a way in. If they block cancel the dash i can still hold it and then carefully move in. The only way they could get past it would be if they do a techroll wake up dash, but they'd have to guess that i'd even do a hat in the first place.
Trust me its not a useless move, the best way to play kung lao is to use all of his tools and grindhat happens to be quite a good one.
i would show you the stuff you can do with it, but i don't have a way to record anything atm