I don't hate her. I hate her players that acted like she was bad before the patch when she was NEVER bad AT ALL... She was ok but she basically doesn't have a single weakness right now.
She wasn't good pre-patch -- not having a safe footsie string in a footsie based game isn't a recipe for success. The reasons people respect her now are:
1) She hits hard enough to not be able to shrug off the damage and
2) She has a footsie string you have to respect, rather than just blowing her up on block for more damage than she does to you.
3) She doesn't have to end every block string with a bar of meter, so she can actually build it
You should also consider that she was competiting against pre-patch Black Adam, pre-patch Aquaman, pre-patch Atrocitus, pre-patch Catwoman and others at that time. Eating 400-550 for canceling into breath on block (or just completing the string w/o meter and having it blocked) was a death sentence.
Of course, usually when competitive players say "bad" they mean "not upper-mid to top tier" rather than absolute worst in the game. But these changes inverted her glaring weaknesses and turned them into strengths.