In which favor do you think is the MU vs Viola? Imo its a very tough char to beat but there is a lot QQing in the viola SA because of his range. It seems legit that spacing chars give her a hard time but i cant say that beating viola has ever been easy for me (and i train a lot with a viola main) because of her pressure game and enormous potential on combos.
What's the consensus here, is it in Siegs or Violas favor?
It depends on the quality of the Viola player and whether the pressure they are using is legitimate or not. Alot of her strings end in high ball recalls which you can TC or manually crouch and mix-up with throws or WR B.
HOWEVER, Viola has 2 literal bullshit set-ups
1) SET ORB 44aBE : This involves her performing her usual 44A with the ball spinning in 3 circles, which if they connect she can 6B+K cancel for a ridiculous damage combo. Now the problem with this move is that there is zero risk to throwing it out. You can sidestep the first orb hit after she goes through the motions with her hands, if she does this you are totally safe, but so is she. You cannot whiff punish her and she can take the opportunity to start a 3B/Throw mix-up. JGing the ball is not particularly meaningful because she can come at you anyway and the ball will hit. I haven't done enough testing to see if you have any options that can retaliate inbetween ball hits.
The only really viable strategy against this move is GIing the orb, since she's committed to this you can 100% know when to GI. Seems silly that the only option involves burning meter.
2) SET ORB 6B+K: This moves involves Viola waving her hand, allowing her enough time to do an attack like her 3A or 6B, the ball returning as a special mid and giving her variable frame advantage depending on the previous move. I believe that her doing 6B+K, 6B (orb recall block) gives about +9 giving her free mix-ups. After blocking 6B you can step the orb to the left, however if they replace 6B with 3A you will not be able to step (though I believe they get less advantage in that situation. She can vary the beginnings and instead of setting you up with a mid she can do a low-poke or a throw. If you guess wrong on the throw she will get some throw damage, the orb will interrupt the throw and she gets another throw or 3B mix-up.
Basically this move is the devil because there is zero risk to throwing it out there and just forces free mix-ups. Again you can GI the orb since you know when it is coming, but forcing Sieg to burn meter seems really lame to deal with her set-ups. Especially since his damage is largely meter dependent. For this match-up I would try to make friends with 1B as it is Sieg's best meterless option post-GI, problem is the Attack Throw is range dependent but that shouldn't be a problem if you are GIing viola.
So general strategy? Do what Viola players hate and space them. It's also nonsense that Viola is now one of the highest damage characters in the game with minimal effort / meter expenditure. Namco balancing at work. Every other set-up viola has usually involves a high ball recall and can be avoided accordingly. I think Namco flopped huge when they made such a safe character with 2 almost riskless set-ups but that's just me. She's beatable, it's just a pain and requires a very different mentality since she is basically an easy mode force 50/50 character at heart. It's also difficult to meaningfully punish her so the best advice I can give is don't let her play her game and control space. And be wary of her excellent ring out range on combos with alternate ender.
Trying to make a MU ratio is deceptively difficult here since it is entirely dependent on how retarded the Viola player is. If the Viola player is abusing bullshit duckable set-ups the MU is in SIeg's favour, but literally abusing 6B+K makes it easy mode for Viola since SIeg will run out of meter to step safe ball set-ups.
