Also the reason I put King where she is because she has great control of the screen at any position. Her zoning is problematic but that's just part of her package. She has great hitconfirms, easy and decently damaging drive cancels, high priority on tornado kick vs just about anything in the air and it can be made relatively safe with proper spacing. Getting in on King is almost as hard as getting in on Ash and when I do get in I have to constantly be afraid of ex trap shot and the easy drive cancel shenanigans that follow. Her normals are also very good.
I'm not going to knock on her, but I played her since arcade so I'll just note a few things:
- Her drive cancels are relatively weak. Midscreen drive cancels don't lead to much damage on their own without spending some super meter. Even her her Trap Shot > Tornado Kick HD loop does subpar damage thanks to damage scaling due to the number of hits.
- Tornado Kick (all versions) is a terrible anti-air. Even if you bait a jump by throwing Venom Strikes, even an EX Tornado Kick will get beaten by a lot of jump-ins. It's best left to combos, using the D version to poke in neutral, or punishing roll attempts while zoning.
- King and Ash have very different zoning games. King can zone from more positions due to having aerial projectiles. Not only that, but Ash has an actual anti-air. Ash can make better use of projectile recovery if an opponent jumps at him, he can just Nivose. Not only does King have more recovery time on her projectiles than Ash, she has to spend meter for an EX Trap Shot if she wants to guarantee that anti-air.
- EX Trap shot is a lot of hits, which means it scales terribly. Like I mentioned earlier, King's drive cancels midscreen aren't much to worry about. EX Trap Shot also doesn't really push back on block, so it's baitable on her wakeup or in other situations. Getting King to burn meter also cuts down her options, so she has to be very efficient throughout the rounds, even if she's anchoring.
I still play King on my main team, so don't take it as me saying she's a bad character; she definitely isn't. Her console changes weren't very dramatic, to be honest, so I'm still not quite understanding how she suddenly shot up from mid-low in arcade to high in console.