Liz is a very interesting character. Although having to focus between her HUD and the actual fight can be a bit difficult to play as her. Maybe some kind of mini bar below Liz or an indicator on her might help let the player know when she's ready to attack with the rhythm timing?

Okay so, on the changes to how Liz's Rhythm works. Since it now only activates when you attack rather than it being active always, makes it so her multi hits cannot use the mechanic. Also with the changes on the Rhythm Bar's look and placement, you also to pay attention under Liz at all times, it's pretty distracting.

Basically the Rhythm gimmick was make a little more useless, and looks less aesthetically pleasing overall that it was previously.

I have to agree with Kykio, I don't think this Rhythm change was the right direction. I feel like it made Liz lose a bit of depth as a fighter. A big part of the fun in my time with playing Liz was fishing for the just right time to go for a hit, or to time her neutral special for optimal timing, which really made her stick out as a fighter to me. With now the mechanic works now though, it kinda feels like it's just a bonus for keeping a combo going, and it feels like a shame to have such a fantastic gimmick lost from a character that's otherwise one of my absolute favorites to play.

In terms of timing readability, I agree again that below the fighter is not the way to go. It's very distracting to try to read a constantly moving UI piece, and makes her spatially feel strange because of it's position. If I could suggest an alternative to this, maybe in addition to the old HUD which works just fine, add a more subtle element that comes from the fighter?

One way to do this would be a visual indicator that shows up as soon as the timing is ready. Since the character has a time motif, maybe this could come in the form of a clock-themed effect that pops out of her? If there was something like this you could use that would fit your character, I think that'd help alleviate the people who want the closer indicator.

I played around with the concept a bit and put this in the update gml underneath the "if HITD = 1" as an example:

if GAUGE_NAME_CURRENT == 24{
spawn_hit_fx( x, y, large_clock_hfx );
}

I hope I don't sound too harsh or anything, I just really clicked with this character and I'm really hoping you can find a way for her to be the best she can be. If this direction is your definitive vision for the character though, I definitely don't mean to stop you or anything, I know I got a lot of dumb suggestions from other people trying to play designer on my own character, aha. She's still one of my absolute favorite fighters regardless!