As someone who has played the character since release, here are all of the things he lacks:
- A proper footsy tool
b1 all day baby
- Reliable armor outside of X-ray
exball armor tends to be reliable
although armor choke would be sick
- Reasonable ways to use meter outside of breakers and X-ray
agreed until towards the end of a match, where exknife can do work for you in the chip/mixup department
- Reliable and damaging AA combos
try to start using 4 for AA, it's surprisingly effective
the overhead is more than decent imo since you can jail into knife/choke and because it OTGs off of his air throw.
- A non-moronic input for straight ball that doesn't mess up inputs or make using only said armor that Kano has become overly tedious and difficult to time properly.
sounds like a personal issue. as someone who has also played the character since release, this is hardly a problem anymore.
- Standing resets
- Damage resets
depends on what you mean by "resets." people throw around the term on this site to refer to things that are actually combos, like cyrax/smoke shenanigans. a true "reset" occurs after guessing wrong after being put at disadvantage to eat MORE damage, like after freddy's exclaw, scorpion's vortex, quan chi trance mix-ups, etc., and i think kano has some truly sneaky shit in exknife. b11 exknife leaves the opponent staggered where you can go in for a throw/low/overhead/whatever and does great damage on its own, a sort of ghetto reset. he also has reset opportunities after his air throw/exairball with his b2 OTG.
His only good matchup is maybe Sheeva and even that's iffy in my eyes.
not sure if that was sarcasm but wtf is sheeva gonna do against kano
ball after you see her telestomp and she will _never_ hit you and ball also goes over unblockable foot. she has shitty options for punishing upball and a slow projectile that will easily get jump -> airball'd on reaction.
i think kano is a sorely misunderstood character. he has some very unique tools that make him stand out from the rest of the cast; airball is a SUPER good move when applied correctly with exairball being awesome for oki situations. upball is unsafe, but due to its tech crouching properties during recovery, it can be difficult to punish correctly by many characters whose fastest moves are all high.
his projectile starts up fast, travels fast, and has a very subtle start-up animation. kano players should be
throwing knives from less than half-screen because they are NOT easy to react to and should be used to encourage your opponent to start jumping on you from upball range.
he has a fullscreen armored punishing tool that will literally punish just about anything anyone in the game throws at you (lest you be kitana or kabal) and regular ball will evade: scorpion hellfire, smoke bomb, rain lightning, cyrax bombs, freddy fingers, jax groundpound, kung lao low hat, nightwolf lightning and exlightning, kabal buzzsaw, and sheeva telestomp and unblockable stomp. a good kano should be able to react to most of these moves and punish accordingly.
i know kano has a bad reputation since most people view him as a has-been zoner who got nerf'd to shit and abandoned but i think he has some very neat tools that work well if applied correctly. he may not WIN many match-ups (though i think he beats quan chi, reptile, sheeva, noob, cyrax, jade, sindel, baraka, shang, and stryker) but he can go even with most of the cast. as far as the "top whatever" characters go, he most struggles against kenshi, freddy, kitana, and kabal, but imo he can go even with cage, sonya, kung lao, and jax.
all this shit being said, kano is still not a very good character. his -only- reliable footsy tool is b1 and upball is not safe. big hitbox, low overall damage output, and mediocre projectile recovery really hurt him, but i don't think many people have played enough solid kanos to shit on him so hard.
tldr kano ain't so bad, he just needs a hug.
