I think you're all giving NRS too much credit. They don't look at balance in any way at game launch. Instead, they are a designer first and foremost. Their approach leads to unique gameplay and great visuals, which gets a lot of new players. New players don't care about balance. They care about lots of flashy things happening (hence high input leniency), fancy cinematics (super moves), and the unbalance just naturally comes. It's just pure luck on what is overpowered and what is underpowered.
The only serious playtests they do is in their internal play group. That group is great at catching bugs, but poor at catching competitive issues (balance, spectator issues, system-wide issues). And although those changes eventually come from that team, they don't make them until the damage is already done.
Unless they read feedback from actual competitive players, their changes, I feel, have a 50/50 chance of actually doing the intended impact (yes, 50%). That's why I started this thread. We need to give very direct feedback, and that requires a unified message.
What I'm getting is a better F3/B3 (faster and better block frames) would be a great help for his gameplay. DB3 also seems to be the avenue of choice for addressing his full screen issues. It looks like everyone is fine with wanting a trade and keeping poor damage, just as long as it actually hits and gives him a chance to dash up.
Things nobody wanted are: faster jump, better log (I'm surprised here), better anti-air (I think this is a problem for every character), and better wake-up.
Things people want because they think it's just wrong/dumb design: Command throw life gain needs to be higher, command throw re-stand just... sucks, some of his combos require absurdly tight windows.
. And I think he loses very hard against both zoning and rushdown. Problem is he doesn't dominate the space he's supposed to. I agree with the earlier post that his f/b 3 could be the solution. For the damage he gets off those, the Speed and block stun are ridiculously poor
