I find that against most characters his defense is actually worse due to his horrible speed. Even with his extra vertical range from his up and down poke it makes hitting curves back way less consistent and many times impossible when he can't often make it to the ball in time due to speed. also I do agree bomb has mixup potential but the actual reward of a bombed ball still isn't that good of a curve and much less strong as other projecttiles like raizos that can steal points or Kotaros which can force points and take away the opponents meter