NothingPersonal
Are you not entertained!?
First of all I think variations is a good thing when done right. It gives a lot of character to a character. I've seen some posts around here that variations have no archetypes though, just special moves thrown around, I do believe some do have archetypes and some, with tweaking, would become archetypes. I'll post a quick analisys of the Emperor's variations. You say your take on it, on your main or in general.
1. Risen Emperor - annihilation, up hammer and shadow priest buff. Intended to make the variation pressure oriented for big damage. I think it's done right, priest complements throws and annihilation for big damage, except up hammer is useless and should be reworked. It should either have no gap and remain -1, have a gap but be plus on block, or, the change I would like to see, make an amplified version where you can cancel the hammer before it comes back down and remain somewhat plus, but the hammer doesn't come back.
2. True Kahn - straight hammer, ground shatter and humiliates. The most unclear variation. It'd work, but both humiliates and ground shatter are trash. They need serious reworking. I'd make ground shatter low-overhead on amplification (it's low-low now), or remove the gaps and make it safe (there is an around 20 frame gap between the regular and amplified version, and is -18 in both forms, wth?). Humiliates should be at least as shadow priest on start-up (66, now they're 93). Also shoulder charge in this variation is an impediment, since the variation isn't supposed to be damage based, but more zoning/one hit variation with a restand in ground shatter. Shoulder charge needs to do more damage and send them fullscreen in this variation when amplified, but no combo extention, or the amplified version should always end in the splat version, even better.
3. Realm Destroyer (should also be renamed to Realm Conqueror, because Shao doesn't destroy Realms, he conquers them) - ranged variation. This one I was most interested in before third variations dropped, and got really dissapointed. Spear charge should've been the way it was before the patch, except safe on block (around -10 with pushblock) and seeking hammer should have had more advantage on hit to let you combo only from a d1 midscreen when hit close, thus you can't conbo into spear charge for bigger damage. The hammer may be changed in the future, but the spear charge most likely not, since NRS would have to revert the initial changes, thus accepting they did wrong. But I really hope they do make this change and make this variation unique.
So my point really is to make the variations as different as possible from eachother, not just adding moves with different visuals but with same properties.
Overall i think NRS did what they could to give a good experience in different variations, but can do way much better.
Also please don't discuss the base character here.
1. Risen Emperor - annihilation, up hammer and shadow priest buff. Intended to make the variation pressure oriented for big damage. I think it's done right, priest complements throws and annihilation for big damage, except up hammer is useless and should be reworked. It should either have no gap and remain -1, have a gap but be plus on block, or, the change I would like to see, make an amplified version where you can cancel the hammer before it comes back down and remain somewhat plus, but the hammer doesn't come back.
2. True Kahn - straight hammer, ground shatter and humiliates. The most unclear variation. It'd work, but both humiliates and ground shatter are trash. They need serious reworking. I'd make ground shatter low-overhead on amplification (it's low-low now), or remove the gaps and make it safe (there is an around 20 frame gap between the regular and amplified version, and is -18 in both forms, wth?). Humiliates should be at least as shadow priest on start-up (66, now they're 93). Also shoulder charge in this variation is an impediment, since the variation isn't supposed to be damage based, but more zoning/one hit variation with a restand in ground shatter. Shoulder charge needs to do more damage and send them fullscreen in this variation when amplified, but no combo extention, or the amplified version should always end in the splat version, even better.
3. Realm Destroyer (should also be renamed to Realm Conqueror, because Shao doesn't destroy Realms, he conquers them) - ranged variation. This one I was most interested in before third variations dropped, and got really dissapointed. Spear charge should've been the way it was before the patch, except safe on block (around -10 with pushblock) and seeking hammer should have had more advantage on hit to let you combo only from a d1 midscreen when hit close, thus you can't conbo into spear charge for bigger damage. The hammer may be changed in the future, but the spear charge most likely not, since NRS would have to revert the initial changes, thus accepting they did wrong. But I really hope they do make this change and make this variation unique.
So my point really is to make the variations as different as possible from eachother, not just adding moves with different visuals but with same properties.
Overall i think NRS did what they could to give a good experience in different variations, but can do way much better.
Also please don't discuss the base character here.