I'm not super optimistic the new variation will supplant Risen Emperor as the go to competitive variation but I do think it has some value. With enough changes it may even be on par with Risen Emperor but there's a lot of work they'd have to do for that to happen.
Spear charge is really bad. It's so inferior to shoulder charge you'd think you'd spend a slot to change spear charge into shoulder charge.
- Spear charge's hit box is weirdly bad and whiffs on a lot of things shoulder charge doesn't. Namely JI3 or anything that has a lot of gravity. I can confidently say I haven't seen an example of where the spear charge would land something the shoulder charge wouldn't but there's plenty of examples of the inverse. My guess is that spear charge is probably a tad better in the neutral because the spear may have a little more range but that doesn't offset it's other hit box problems.
- If you amp a shoulder and it gets blocked or whiffs you don't lose a bar but doing the same with a spear charge does burn a bar.
- Spear charge also sets up way, way worse than shoulder charge. On hit, spear charge is very tight to run up and do a S4 to continue the combo and this results in less damage potential or versatility than what shoulder charge sets up. Off of shoulder charge you have so many more options and a much larger margin for error when it lands regardless of gravity.
- They're both death on block so that's a push. If spear charge was maybe safe on amp block that'd at least give it some leg up on shoulder charge. This is virtually negated by anyone who is good at hit confirming though.
- It admittedly does have great corner carry.
Skewered is great on its own and is way better than scrum grab but isn't something Shao is in dire need of.
- Shao's S1 is one of the best anti air items in the game and leads to huge damage. Skewered may fill a gap for being able to anti air some jump ins that may be a little wonky to S1 and on its own is a good combo extender when you burn a meter but I'm not sure that's enough to really move the needle.
- With skewered you're forced to side switch and having an option to change the side you want to put them on would help a lot.
- Amplified it does extend combos well but not really a whole lot better than does an amplified shoulder charge
- Also if it's hit box was a little more forgiving on airborne characters a little bit more in front of you so that we could use it in place of annihilation to end combos on airborne enemies that'd be helpful
If spear charge does become superior to shoulder charge and we get skewered then that may be a formidable load out but even then we're missing out on the dark priest + annihilation krushing blow. This isn't supposed to condemn the variation as doomed just that it depends heavily on what changes are made to the abilities in their current form.