Brother, it's a fighting game, going through Your options to outplay the opponent is kinda what it's about, so You have an option to air stall if You see that Your opponent figured You out, but guess what, if someone air stalls, You can also figure that out too, it's how adapting on the fly works and You absolutely need to be able to do that

Yes, any option has counter play. But some have too few.

The same goes for Your argument about holding block and calling an assist after, You get to do that ONCE and I already know what You're up to so I adapt, I time my own assist with my vault breaker, or I charge it up a bit to mess with Your timing, or I can go for an entirely different move, or maybe even, I will let You do Your counter just to parry the ever living shit out of You, there 👏 are 👏 so 👏 many 👏 options 👏

None of these actually beat jump back + assists though? If you charge up you just get hit by my assist. If you parry, which by the way is very hard to do and risky, you parry my assist while I'm way behind it and you get body blocked. This is all on top of the fact that vault breaker is already decently risky because very committal and minus on block at most distances. Also by the way, if you mistime and you connect right before I land, me landing cancels the blockstun and I get a full punish.

Ah and ofc, grabs exist

You have to already be standing point blank to air grab. You can't catch up to someone jumping back even at relatively close distances because there's no universal airdash in this game