At full screen it's one of the best zoning tools in the game. At the range you can duck them he has great normals and by godlike oki I mentioned comes from godlike special move - rising star. Outtake is VERY good at every range. Stop denying it already...
That isn't what you said: you stated that Johnny is "the best zoner in the game", which he definitely is not. His fireball is very good - which everyone has already acknowledged - from fullscreen, but as you said, that's
only at fullscreen. Once the opponent gets any closer than 3/4ths of the screen, that zoning tool loses all its potency.
Johnny does have good normals, but his best string F344 starts with a slow high, which can also be ducked by the entire cast. And if the JC player tries to play oki with that string and gets rolled, they're dead.
As for Rising Star, it does knock the opponent down for quite a long time, but in
this game, where the opponent has 6 defensive getup options for the aggressor to guess between, okizeme is damn-near non-existent in open space and only half-exists in the corner. So JC ain't getting no free oki in this game - not because he's Johnny Cage - but because most of the cast doesn't get free oki.
Unless...they have a 9-frame mid....
Nevertheless, I'm not saying that JC is anything less than the cream of the crop in this game, but people talk about him as if:
a.) he has no exploitable weaknesses and
b.) his strong tools cannot be counter-played in every match
Johnny's an honest character with two very good special moves that put him over the edge into Top-Tier Land. But that doesn't mean he deserves nerfs now.
