I’ll try to keep this brief because this is the Nova thread, but here’s the long and short of it:
1 Any Frank team is entirely about momentum, especially when he’s in second position. If you get the first hit and power him up, it can be hard to overcome. However, if you kill the leveler and have Frank out in 1, the team usually falls apart.
2 Even when you get Frank leveled, you sacrificed a hit confirm that in most situations could have killed. Furthermore, most Frank setups that get him to 4/5 leave him with little to no meter, meaning some of his high level utility (Funny Face Crusher and a frame 1-25 invincible hyper) aren’t available until you get combo’d or land yet another hit confirm.
3 By the time Frank is out and leveled the opponent usually has 2 bars +. If they get a hit confirm, most characters can (and will) use meter until Frank dies.
4 Level 4 Frank Gives him ToD combos, some nice chip, and ridiculous air-to air disjointed hitboxes. No question. But it still doesn’t change the fact that he has slow normals (he can only footsie in terms of longer range punishes/counterpokes, anything else with range will always startup faster), 1 low, and limited mixup besides trying to catch them with barrel roll (which can be jabbed out of).
5 Frank’s weaknesses don’t go away even when leveled. His mobility is still lackluster and he loses to halfway decent zoning. The reason Air chainsaws are so good is because the Zeros/Magnetos/Weskers/Dooms/Whatevers often aren’t smart enough to say “hey, I can’t win the air war against level 4 Frank, time to switch gears” and still charge in with their Air Hs like idiots.
Trust me, I’ve spent a lot of time working on Frank. I enjoy the character, and would love to find a way to make him something better than my casual team with Nova. But as good as level 4 is it’s not enough to overcome the sacrifice of leveling him and the risk you incur by having him on your team. So please don’t tell me I’ve never seen a good Frank and don’t know his potential. If you want to counterpoint me on it fine, but let’s take it somewhere else.