Piercing covers every match better than tempest. Orbit hat is shitty in neutral, people can just attack it the same way people attack the ice clone, but even easier.
His nerfs didn't really mean anything other than he lost his d4, the real issues are the same ones he's had forever.
Ex spin is a good punisher, but how many people are gonna purposefully do -7 moves knowing this? Otherwise it's just a 'LETS HOPE THIS HITS LOLOL' type of move (except as an anti air, which it isn't even the best anti air in the game).
Give Lao a 6f stand jab, and make f2 a true mid and a quicker low poke then we'd be talking. But otherwise he just doesn't play mkx well.
Any character with a 6f poke can literally just block and mash it all match because he doesn't have anyway to make a gap smaller than 7f in his 'offense'. Not without making himself +7 which gives him a d4/f2 check but that's pretty meh.
The numbers literally don't lie, he can be plus but he's still negative against a majority of the cast.
As it stands the only characters I think are worse than Lao are:
Raiden
Triborg
Kenshi (maybe not)
POSSIBLY Goro
BRC
So I'd put him in the bottom 10, a combination of nerfs over time, generally meh normals across all variations and a vast amount of buffs across the board for other characters have just wrecked him.
Kung Lao has medicore neutral game, bad up close game, he had forever bad up close game, medicore offense and good deffense, but its not enough for wining and making top 8 on big tournaments and even 6 fr s1, f2 true mid and 7 fr d1 wouldnt do shit for buzz saw and hat trick and its boring only using f2, d1 and s1 everytime because everything else cool normals and some cool strings still stays too slow or too negative or too slow and negative.
Kung Lao is the one of those type of characters who should have fast normals for good neutral game and good up close game, and use all his normals and some strings in fight, thats would make him just strong and more fun , not broken, OP and unfair imo.
This buffs would make Kung Lao in general and all 3 variations viable on high level and more fun;
6 fr s1 = for good up close game
8 fr 11 = for good up close game
8 fr b1 true mid -4 on block = for good up close game
13 fr b3 = for better neutral game
12 fr f3 +10 on hit -5 on block = just for fun and for better neutral game
f34 +2 on block = just for fun
11 fr f4 -6 on block = just for fun
f1 overhead = just for fun
regular orb hat -6 on block
ex spin in buzz saw and hat trick +5% damage
and hat trick needs some buffs on special moves
And then we d be talking.
