The problem with all this talk of playing him like Kabal in MK9 is that, for one, you aren't going to be reliably mixing in back dashes to further punish what they do. That, and Kabal had his zoning. Then there is the prevalence of all the armor in the game.
To me, it's like Dualist's option aren't as good, you wait for a poke then they might as well just do a full string or 50/50. That's what happens when I play vs good players, but I like the idea of the variation, it's what attracted me to Liu when the trailer dropped.