So, played as Rufus online last night.
I think the reason that he's probably in the top five for rarest online characters is pretty clear. Amazing offline character, but online? Profound sadness.
Here's why:
Rufus is a rushdown character who is unsafe sometimes, has relatively hard BNBs and a very good EX reversal. He has to be able to put you in a blockstring, play smart footsies and deal with certain difficult matchups (grapplers, Sagat).
Online play is riddled with people who start mashing and guessing as soon as they get put under any kind of pressure. This isn't raging, this is what I've seen over and over again in both this version and 2012. There only thing I can read is that they will do *something* at any given point, but beyond that it's like a massive cloud of WTF.
The difference between offline - where I get rewarded with pressure for good reads, can actually play a bait game, can go for tricky crossup setups and other difficult stuff - and online - where people will do ANYTHING to get out of pressure or any situation they are not totally comfortable with and blockstrings are blown up by lag - is night and day. It's not fun to play against and it's really unsatisfying (and bad meter management) to just blow up their mashed wakeup jabs and crappy reversals with EX Messiah.
I just don't see how you're supposed to play the character reliably in that kind of environment. I can beat good players, but the consistency just isn't there and I am totally stumped how to approach the environment with Rufus. Shit is frustrating.