her damage isn't great it's pretty good but it's far from the best. She gets like 200 off of a jab hit confirm when she does double tenko, a little less to keep the setup after. As for her ca you don't wanna jab confirm into it but yeah it's pretty good damage. I didn't say her damage was bad but it's certainly not Ryu level.
As for her mixups they're all unsafe and punished by the same basic method. Her mixups are minimal. Throw/shimmy/strike is the bare minimum that every character has. Her oh is low dmg and minus 4 on a 22 frame startup and all of her specials are unsafe except for orochi and ex tenko. Her block strings are all basic, if you block the first hit and know her frametraps you shouldn't be in too much danger when she's close. Other characters have stronger mixup and pressure options. what they don't have(except for chun) is her godlike neutral.
She's a great character but she's not God tier. She might not even be top 5. I'd put bison, Nash, chun, Ryu, sim, Necalli, and vega are at least the same level as her.
If you're losing to Karin it's because of one of two things. You either don't know the matchup or you got outplayed. She has literally no dirt.
Her meterless damage is pretty good, it might not be on Ryu's level but who cares? She gets very good damage.
WYM? She has a looot of ways of confirming into CA and all of them do great damage. Well, you keep bringing up her mix-ups being "unsafe"? If by unsafe you mean getting punished for guessing wrong, then that applies to literally every single character, all overheads are 20F or slower, but the fact that you have a pseudo-safe one is an option itself. Most of her specials being unsafe is not such a big deal since she has amazing normals and she can hit confirm it, there is literally no reason to even use an unsafe special on block.
Her frame traps are just like everyone else's, the only characters with more threatening frame traps are grapplers but they are all slow and most have a bad neutral game so they should be rewarded for breaking your defense.
I don't agree with having god tiers unless someone really dominates the rest of the cast, which is not the case in SFV. How is Bison better than Karin? Real talk... His AAs are worse than hers, he has good frame traps but he has like no way of opening you up unless it's off a close jump in because of his bad walkspeed, he doesn't have the standard walk up throw/strike/shimmy mindgame, his only way of connecting a throw is off a close jump in, on knockdown and if he dashes but dashing in is not a good idea against good players, specially with such an easily reactable dash like his. His damage is great but I don't see him in the top 5 honestly.
She has all the tools anyone could ask for:
*Good walkspeed
*Great mid range pokes
*Great footsie tools
*Hitconfirms
*3F jab
*Reversal
*Anti-fireball moves
*Damage
*light confirms (getting good damage off a light is something only a few characters have)
*Overhead
*Mix-ups
Her only "downside" as I mentioned before might be that she doesn't have the best AAs but even then she is not hopeless against jump ins at all, and when in doubt she can always use EX Ressenha so I don't see why she wouldn't be a top 5 contender at the veeeery least (IMO she is a guaranteed top 5 character)