Etalus First Impressions- Pleasantly Surprised!

Given the general trend of how characters are designed in this game I expected Etalus to be fairly gimmicky, I expected to have to memorize like giant disjointed backwards grabs or an oppressive low effort flowchart. Instead what I see is a character with an excellent effort to reward ratio, I see a character that has to work, a character I rarely find being annoyed at. The things Etalus lands on me feels earned, they feel worked for! In terms of combo game and neutral he has to work harder than Ranno and Clairen, that's for sure. His moves are very intuitive to avoid and counter play, they just make more sense than so much of the cast.

Make no mistake though, having to work hard does NOT mean he's bad. What Etalus lacks in auto play he gains back in his technical potential. It's strange to say a heavy is one of the hardest working characters in the game but here we are.

Maybe busted things will get discovered that makes me change my tune but so far I think the whole cast would benefit from leaning more towards his effort to reward ratio.
I'm very excited to see what people discover! I think he has cracked potential