Despite the changes to ethereal and making EX fade actually useful, the change still leaves the mechanic underwhelming and no more complicated to deal with than if it just wasn't there.
Because of her complete lack of safety and total meter dependency to even have any chance whatsoever of mounting any type of offense, which is still minus 23849239283492384298919412090193102391203 from everything, you MUST play her as a footsie and wiff punish character. Because of this, the extended range on B12 makes piercing the best variation.
Her mixup game is entirely meter dependent. We all know that. Without meter, block low, then stand up after the string, and she cannot hit you.
The original combo thread needs to be updated, but the small section highlighting her 50/50s is still pretty much the same. 21 (low 2nd hit) or 2 ex roll (OH 2nd hit) etc... same applies for every string she has that's cancellable before the low hit, all requiring meter, all ridiculously punishable.
This is what the change to ethereal does - The afore mentioned 50/50s can be done twice in the same block string for the cost of 2 meter bars. Do you want to risk all of those resources for a coinflip as to whether or not you you deal or eat 40%? probably not.
Ravenous has OK mixup enders, but one remains a blockable mid. I cannot for the life of me understand why people keep saying she has great mixups. No.... She has super punishable ones that require meter to even be considered a threat at all.
TK air sai needs to be more consistent in every variation. It just does.
So with the idea of needing to play her as a footsie character, which we should all have figured out a month ago... Piercing is the best because of the extended range of one string. It's great that NRS is trying to incorporate viable footsies into the meta, but they don't know how to do it.
A footsie type character trying to control space and play the wiff punish game needs to have faster normals. Her ranged normals are too slow. her pokes are either too slow or don't have enough range. The normals she has that are even fast enough to have any priority over anyone else's starters wiff unless you are at point blank range, besides b12.
She excels at controlling space from about mid screen because of B12 in piercing and because roll being 8 frames can allow her to control that space in front of her. But, it's -29. Her best and fastest space controlling tools are both blockable mids, and the best one she has is a special that gets her blown up if used incorrectly.
It's just a fact that there are other characters that not only have better footsie tools, such as fast pokes with better range, equally strong and safe advancing normals, but these characters also have SAFE mixups as followups to space control and landed pokes, with an easier time of setting them up with LESS meter dependency.
Mileena is basically a footsie only type of character. She should be better at it than she is if other characters can not only out footsie her but also have better tools in the other aspects of the meta.
Her AA is garbage. It's hard to break the MK9 habit of spacing correctly and punishing jump ins with a roll punish, but you have to. roll as an AA is WAY too inconsistent, and will get hit by characters with stupid air priority like scorpion, KJ, or Lao.
F1 and standing 3 give her a decently strong OKI game, but good luck getting into a situation where you can use it..
F3 being that slow is inconsistent with the other good characters in this game.
Again, with the idea of her being completely meter dependent to mount offense, how is she supposed to build it? Any character with a teleport blows her up on reaction for throwing sais. You can literally crouch block and just let her die.
So.... piercing.... I guess is what I'm saying.
