Destinizish
Now Sleep Forever
Prep IS good now, but at the cost of his kit in other places. I've gone into explicit details as to why I think he's weak in the current game amd no one is listening. For the record, I do very well with Raph (currently no. 5 Raph on steam), I'm quite in tune with him.
No offense, but being high on ranked doesn't really say much. I'm a trash tier Talim and was sitting at like #3 for a good while. A lot of people get away with a lot of dumb stuff online, and it's really not representative of actual offline play. Just being half-decent at the game will net you huge win streaks. High rank right now is more a sign of dedication to a character and time played in ranked than it is skill level. Especially at this point in the game's life where there's so many newcomers to the game.
I'm looking at this from a view of having competed before, and knowing what traditionally makes a good Calibur character. If Raph turned out actually horrible I would be extremely surprised. Good, fast verts, an extremely fast standing punish that knocks down and has fairly decent damage for its speed, a decent pressure tool, good movement, a great 2A and his step killers are decent (shame that 6AA doesn't jail, though).
I read your posts, and I think you're ignoring any good aspects of a character, and chalking up one-time things as representative of the character at all times. I don't even know what horizontal you got stepped out of except like prep A or AA? Which aren't moves you'd use to kill step anyway. Then you go saying SCIV Raph was more powerful than this iteration which is just markedly untrue. SCIV raph was extremely bad, and all his stance options were stuffable. Sounds more like you were playing SCIV Online, where lag was so bad that anyone with a pressure tool or a solid low was good considering you couldn't punish or block properly.
____
That said, I don't think anyone knows where raph stands because I don't think any single person has a strong grasp on the full cast yet.
Raph definitely has to make reads still, but he's not the only character who's in that spot. And he has good block punishment now, and that's really awesome.