Arbiter's Self Detonating Grenade Unsafe When Used As An Anti-Air

I’m not an Arbiter user myself, but I play against a friend that uses him and we noticed that whenever he anti-aired me with this move, he would be about -4 or -5 because I would be able to punish him with Saberwulf’s crouching medium punch and a few other characters’ shadow moves and normals since it causes a soft knockdown and it staggers Arbiter himself now.My question for the developers is whether this was an intentional change or if this was something that may have possibly been overlooked. I agree with his changes on his reversals, but I don’t he should be unsafe for using a move as an anti-air properly.

It functions as intended. Seeing as how if you hit someone on the ground with it you both are staggered. The only difference here is the opponent is in the air. Nothing else changes.

I thought the grenade was supposed to recapture aerial opponents?

I don’t know if that’s correct because there’s a big difference in the scenario. Before the move would know both opponent down and the players would be back in neutral. Now the move leaves Arbiter punishable when used in a certain way because he gets staggered, but the opponent gets knocked down and can get up fast enough to hit him before the stagger ends. It just seems weird to me how a move that’s used defensively is punishable after hit. You would think because it hit the opponent it would go back into neutral state, not be unsafe. Being negative on hit is one thing, but vulnerable to attacks for landing any hit shouldn’t be a thing. Zangief in SF4 was punishable after landing a heavy Green Hand (Banishing Flat) for the longest and that made the move useless. If it is intentional, it will definitely stop players from even using it as an anti-air since they’ll get punished from people reacting to it fast enough.

The sacrifice grenade used to knock both opponents down unless arbiter had his shield on. Now it staggers both if grounded and soft knockdowns the opponent but still leaves arbiter staggered enough to be punished.