Zoidberg747
My blades will find your heart
Note: I am talking purely about Outlaw. I do not know much about the other variations but they arent the best ones so I dont consider them when determining viability.These are pretty generous (some kinda egregious) statements. The non-ducking startup is waaay more of a factor than you say, and if you are armoring a projectile during the non-ducking phase, the zoning opponent often has time to block the slide. Slide also loses its armor towards the end of the slide.
3,2 is a horrible zoning tool, and is only used in outlaw because thats all he has besides grenade. Seriously, any idiot can see the 3 coming out at full screen and block/punish accordingly. This isn't such a big issue for marksman and gunslinger, and in a lot of match ups grenade is just fine for outlaw, but don't pretend that 3,2 is anything other than something to throw in maybe once a match.
1/d1 are also really not very good AA's, and more often than not rely on your opponent messing up spacing their jump in the first place, and in that case you could probably just have walked backwards/run forwards then trip guard, which any character can do so you can't really chalk that up as something beneficial for EB.
Not saying he isn't top ten, I think he's right within the cutoff, but you are pegging a lot of things up as positives when they are really either mediocre or worse than others in the cast.
I'll concede I didnt realize he was high for that long during armored slide. I could see how that could be an issue in certain MUs.
Go watch REO play Erron Black and youll see how 3,2 is used. Im not saying its good but if it forces them to block then that interrupts their zoning which is the point. Plus it trades a lot of the time and from what I saw traded favorably. It isnt a good string per se, but it does have one good use, counter-zoning.
Again, go watch SonicFox or REO play EB. They AA with 1/d1 a lot. Yes the opponent can start to JIK if they are smart but that forces them to at least think instead of jump in punching like crazy. The way AAs in this game work you wont be able to AA 100% of the time, but you at least have the tools to do it more often than not(if your spacing is good, that is). Its difficult for sure but is possible at the highest level of play. Im not saying his AA is better than most of the cast at all, in fact he is where most of the cast are: they don't have good AA moves so are forced to use spacing/trip guarding and 1/d1.
I wasn't saying those things were positives necessarily. I was pointing out that there are ways to get around the issues he said EB had, although in some cases it takes more work than some of the cast.