Mortal kombat trilogy johnny cage
He probably shouldn't have had an air throw at least, that would really seperate him and Scorpion. He's fast, has a teleport, air throw, launcher combo, and containment. Human Smoke is terribly unbalanced in this case. For some, if you took any one thing away from them, it would drop them considerably. Things like teleports, air throws, launcher combos, containment moves, they all help characters out. Jax and Johnny Cage have the simple advantage of higher damage, uppercuts do 24% instead of 21%, roundhouses do I think 21% instead of 17%, and they do higher chip damage off regular hits. Cyrax's net is great if you can time people's attacks to trade a hit for the net everytime. Mileena's roll for instance is amazingly useful, the damage protection sucks, but regardless, there is a delay to it that can throw people off, and you can set up so nifty combos with it, roll, run in, HP, roll, run in HK, etc. And a lot of those characters even have something about them that can be abused successfully, but you really have to know what you are doing. Then there's characters like Mileena, Shang Tsung, Cyrax, Sheeva, Johnny Cage, MK1 Raiden, MK1 Kano, MK2 Jax.
After that list it gets really fuzzy as to who is defintely better than who, both Subs, MK3 Kung Lao, MK 2 Raiden, Reptile, Sindel, Stryker, Scorpion, Kitana, Jade, Liu Kang, Sektor, Sonya, they all have specific things about them that are useable and abuseable, but it's good that characters are so neck and neck, which is why the game is so much more balanced than people think.
Rain is up there, but the list I made wasn't really going in a specific order, a lot of those characters are in mini groups, the top tier, and the not quite top tier, but still contenders. DreemerNJ's MK2 Raiden can stand up to my sadistic MK2 Kung Lao. If Raiden did MK2 damage like MK2 Kung Lao, MK2 Jax, Johnny Cage, and Baraka, he would be up there, but he's really not any threat to any of those characters unless in really skilled hands.