Keep working on her then ! I can guarantee she's good. Don't believe that "Athena is bottom tier" BS ! If you ever have any questions just ask. I lurk this board quite often, so I'll answer any questions you may have.
Yeah don't worry about the tier subject. People arguing that Athena is low tier are not understanding this game and can't analyse why she isn't played (and the answer to this question is because her combos/confirms are really execution heavy)
Ok for the C whiff cancel into phenix arrow, it seems to be only working when she's at a low height in the air, hop seems to work at every height but you can't do that at the top of a normal jump.
The corner throw combo has this good point that there is no real timing issue, you can do dpC (DC) qcfB, then keep

held and mash

to have the command attack
The throw to HD combo is pretty hard but I found that I can manage to start it more often by holding

during the throw animation then doing

,

the quickest possible. Actually the failed attempts are resulting in punishable situations so I think I'm gonna train this very hard to have a low chance to miss.
I also think that without meter, the best you have to do during the throw is to let your opponent hit the ground for the 125 dmg which is pretty nice (but doesnt give meter to anyone), and to backdash -> phenix arrow 2 or 3 times to get some bar.
What do you guys think about this ?
I find there is not enough japanese Athenas on Gamespot etc. videos, pretty sad because they could teach us some setups. But I think Tikok's gameplan is close to what you have to do with the character, aka run away to fill your meter while your enemy thinks youre going to hadotrap him, then let him come and harass until you can do a throw combo.