i played cyrax in mk9 until they nerfed the "command grab" to worse than it started. that coincided with although was not the only cause of me dropping that game
its sad, mk9 was similar to injustice, started off with people playing it like scrubby idiots, eventually mk9 developed a really solid spacing game in which jumps were not nearly as rewarding and it became about zoning fundamentals, reads, spacing and pressure, and also abusing top tiers to a degree. Kung lao is still overwhelming and cheap and s tier, despite combo, spin and low hat nerfs. Cyrax is beyond broken, arguably 2 or 3 due to his damage. Without his damage his footsie game is phenomonal and net is one of the best tools in the game, and bombs allow for a good okie game. too bad his damage ruined all of the interesting things about him. And smoke can no longer air-to-air jump kick for 50+% when he is supposed to be a runaway/footsie character who cannot be zoned.
all the infinite nerfs and the character nerfs like raiden nerfs made sense. And they did an even better job in injustice with it despite some of the games flaws. Raiden is a good character still he's just really difficult to play and requires patience, reactions, and superb fundamentals, he's not a brainless teleport rushdown character. He was intended to be an ultimate turtle/ mindgames / footsies character, which he was, but nobody ever untapped his potential because everybody dropped him before the game was fleshed out.
In hindsight, cyrax was flawed by nature do to his design and the inability to get rid of his damage potential without ruining his gameplan entirely due to his bombs being unblockable, people were upset by the stuff they patched early on but everything they patched for the most part made complete sense.
Cyrax's command grab now grants free pressure, which is amazing or you could setup a trap in which it is escapable but forces your opponent to guess. Its very cheap still considering his damage output. It would be a very interesting move if he was more normal in damage. In fact it would lend to guessing situations and all sorts of setups so you actually get rewarded for predicting your opponent and making good reads, rather than being a douche who gets too much damage off of guessing between command grabs and pressure which could lead to 100%. Free command grabs in a game like mk9 is tough enough, i think the idea of an escapable setup is much more interesting than a free 60% off a command grab like he used to have, probably more with new tech. In fact i think his command grab needs more pushback so its about bomb placement or spacing... oh well...
If you ask me patches make the game more interesting, getting rid of the super abusive shit that wins majors, rewards thoughtful players and the more refined aspects of fighting games. Plus change breeds technology. Fighting games are generally the worst competitive genre in my experience because of how much they are about abuse of character and matchup.