I definitely agree that Bane does perfectly fine against most characters, but (like a lot of mid-tier characters) his problem is with the top 7 or so. And that's really a failing on NRS's part for designing some very bad, unbalanced characters. I agree with Doombawkz that other than a few minor fixes (and my own personal pet peeve, dash-cancelling Raging Charge which even I admit is not needed) most of Bane's problems come from (mostly) other character's bullshit, silly mechanics issues, and a couple of moves that don't work like they are intended to (Ring Toss). That's it. I actually think that Bane is a model character in a lot of ways - a couple great things, a couple good things, and a couple bad things (another character I feel is a very good model is Zod, for the same reasons).
Personally, the last thing I want to see - literally the last thing - is for Bane to become a brain-dead flowchart character like Superman, where he has a couple of incredible sick things he can do and just mindlessly repeats them over and over and relies on his superior bullshit to win matches. And if I may be a huge fucking nerd for a minute, if you go by the comics Bane is not supposed to be some dumbshit thug grappler - he is supposed to be a super-intelligent guy, like Batman, who studies his opponent and then breaks them with his superior body AND mind. I feel like he's almost there - between the intelligence needed to manage Venom properly (and there's a fun element of risk taking to it as well), the variety of moves he has, and the amount of setups and things that are always being discovered here - I really like how he plays, he literally plays like nothing else in any fighting game with his combination of ease of execution, armored specials, strikes, throws, and setups. I just want to see him be able to succeed against certain opponents that do autodial easy stuff but I don't want Bane to get autodial easy stuff himself. That's my opinion, hope it at least makes sense.
