Is it just me, or is Rangiku worse after awakening?

[Cracked Cup]

I feel like I would rather keep her fireball than have the cloud. It sounds really nice on paper, but people can just teleport out of it, or easily sidestep away. I haven't tested to see if it gives you a lot more frame advantage up close on block to make it easier to go for throw mixups or something, but I like the utility and general pressure/annoyance the fireball provides. You can even followup Quick attacks with it on hit or block. It combos into it on hit. As far as I can tell, you're a little negative compared to the opponent so I wouldn't go for it often, but you could try to weave it in sometimes as a reset to go for a grab or something .On block if they try to retaliate (thinking you're going to grab instead) it actually hits them out of their Quick attack counter. On block it pushblocks people too far away to hit you unless you do it point blank, though I imagine it is character dependent.

Meanwhile her haineko still leaves your neutral Flash string unsafe on block. Your special flash attack is still unsafe on block as well. Both of these are assuming the opponent is standing in the haineko area. You would hope the attacks would come out a little after you swung so that it would create a sort of frametrap like scenario, but that doesn't seem to be the case? If I for example do a Quick attack. Stop. Do another Quick attack that is blocked. Stop. Then go for a grab. If they do a quick attack. We trade and nothing happens. If I do this exact same scenario while they are standing in the haineko field, the exact same thing happens. I guess they really want you to blow super meter to create the big field and just chip away folks guard meter, but grabs are so broken in this game that I'm not sure the guard meter is something people need to worry about.

Ideally we could have access to both...