Calling him S-level is simply wrong, his offensive stance no longer works properly against half the heroes, so he can't be considered S-level at all..
Link where he shows you that the offensive position no longer works properly:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitive...is_yet_credit/
The reason why there are people who define him as S level is because there are players who after a huge effort have learned to use this hero at his best, also exploiting his tech bugs to win.
Example: Like "King Aramusha" on Youtube, this player used Aramusha in duels (and I'm talking about Aramusha before he received his rework + buff, so when Aramusha was weak) and despite having a weak hero, he always won, the fact that he always won doesn't mean that Aramusha is a strong hero, but it means that the player has worked hard to learn how to use it properly in duels.
Small general description of his problems:
First of all I would like to talk about his unbearable running speed, it's the worst feeling to see a fully armed player like the Lawbringer being able to run as fast as a class of assassins (Go check his Sprint Speed is the same as Berserker 7m/s), but Highlander who is dressed in a skirt and a few pieces of skin can't even move as fast as the Kensei.
Highlander really suffer not being able to escape from ganks or even just running to assist my teammates because when I arrive either the battle is over or they are already all dead.
Another thing I've noticed, most of the times I'm about to kill an assassin hero with Highlander, in Domain or Breach game mode, my enemy runs away for the map knowing that I'll never reach him.
His defensive stance has nothing special about it to make it defensive other than crushing counters. He has 1000ms opener heavies with 700ms-800ms hyper armor activation. The feint windows on his attacks are not believable at all and his opener heavies are useless. His backstep lights are frustrating to go against. His zone attack seems to have a broken hitbox as the attack has gone through minions in dominion as well as it consumes a large amount of stamina while being 700ms. He only gets a light on guard break which makes his gb punishes weak unless theres a wall nearby. His hyper armor on defensive stance makes you want to trade with attacks to get into offensive stance yet his low health pool says otherwise in this regard.
His offensive stance is plagued with horrible bugs that make it inconsistent if you dont know about them. If you do know about them then you can use them to recreate scenarios that break his stance causing him to be able to do things he wasnt intended to do. A simple undodgeable or quick light shuts down all offensive pressure from him due to the nature of dodging is his only defense in this stance. His damage is lower than before but because of the nature of how his dodging and lack of true pressure unless the opponent is out of stamina, this makes his "offensive stance" really a dodge turtle whiff punishing stance that can punish a missed light or heavy for 30 dmg which is pretty unhealthy if im honest.
His kick grab 50/50 can be rolled away from with no way for highlander to catch a roll. There's a dodge timing that you can actually use right now that covers both kick and grab feint options. Someone can dodge a kick and then roll from the grab when they see it and beat all options highlander may have. All dodge attacks counter kick to grab besides valk, pk, and zhanhu. They dodge when they see kick and there's nothing that can be done and you eat the attack. Couple all of this with the fact that highlander uses up to 2/3rds of his stamina trying to do one kick grab mix up, and highlander does more staring and turtling than actual pressure and offense.
He gets hit out of offensive stance in ganks by teammates limiting his ganking potential. He feeds a lot of revenge in ganks and he has one of the lowest if not the lowest movement speed in the game limiting his chase and movement potential in 4s. His feats arent bad. He has fury and fire flask. Spear storm is a tactical nuke and kinda on par with old catapult.
Highlander right now is a mess. He stomps lower skilled players so a chunk of the community think hes over powered. Others are fine so they think he is fine. In reality he cant hang with most of the cast of characters.
He has more negative match ups then neutral and positive ones put together.The situation has worsened with the new reworkings of the characters in the test camps as at this point all heroes will be able to counter Highlander. He needs help.