This is the first time I've written a post on here, so be patient with me if something isn't right.

Hello! I am a big Rivals of Aether fan and have over 3k hours in the base game. I'm also in love with the grappler archetype, so seeing Zangief as a Workshop mod is thrilling to me. There aren't a lot of grapplers on the curated Workshop content, so Zangief is a breath of fresh air for me.

All that said, I'll now get to my suggestions:

Zangief's SPD has a really weird property to it that causes opponents to tech out of it--or, at least, it certainly looks like they're teching out of it. It causes the SPD to completely whiff the damage portion of the move. I've been able to recreate the "SPD whiff" by holding down after I land the neutral special hitgrab, but I'm still not even 100% sure that's the reason for it "whiffing" ("whiff" in quotes because you still grab them and perform the screw pile driver, but upon landing they just fall out and avoid the damage). If this is intended, I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to accomplish because people are supposed to fear the grappler's big command grab move; dealing no damage in some cases just hurts the feeling of respect that the grappler gets around that move, I feel.

Some of Zangief's aerials don't have enough hitpause on them, which in turn disallows something called "hitfalling" that's an intended design in the base game. With enough hitpause on an aerial, you can effectively buffer a fast fall on-hit and you'll drop to the ground even before you reach the apex of your jump arc. Without hitfalling, Zangief can't really extend punishes and chase like other characters can. Bumping up some of the hitpause on his aerials so that the hitfall technique is possible on them would help Zangief a lot, but not make him so overly strong that he becomes a problem.

In fact, I don't think Zangief would be a problem at all. He's got some great hitboxes that offer some fantastic pokes, and his damage output would be very much normalized and good if his SPD would be consistent with properly ending and dealing that damage, but I don't think he's got enough problematic mechanics/moves that totally break the bank. Again, this is coming from someone that actually plays Rivals of Aether to a competent enough level, but I'm all ears if I'm proven incorrect!

Zangief's super fun, though. Thank you very much for being the first creator of a grappler that I actually enjoy playing!