On this post i will explain why some of the variations i mentioned are easy, normal, hard or very hard.
I will start with Ninjutsu Scorpion
Having easy combos, easy damage, and restand to prevent wakeups, makes Ninjutsu very easy to begin with, specially when the character has priority normals preventing trades and covering lots of space.
However at the highest level when you face people that have a good defense, is where Ninjutsu needs to excel and poke people out, walk in and out and react to recovery frames as fast as he can to punish those little openings, the characters balances his ranges and priority normals from being punishable at them on block.
Ninjutsu falls on the principle that when one players has no openings due constant defense, the only time you will breach that guard is when they let their own guard down in order to attack, that's your window, in order to do that, imaculated spacing and precise reads are required.
Hat Trick Kung Lao
Having slow walkspeeds, negative pokes and strings, lots of highs, makes really dificult to play footsies, so he has to take lots of risks like being at minus most of the time if that is your style of play with hat traps pressure or dive kicks, not an easy character to pick from the get go, requires very good reactions, very good reads, and very good anticipations mostly.
His execution isn't cheap either, specially now, that in order to play at the highest level and eradicate the meter dependence to do serious damage, avoid breaks, and get more loopable pressure and setups, you need to learn his high execution level meterless combos that goes from 30 to 32 out of a 8f punishment and 35% to 40% meterless in the corner with the right punishes
Hat Trick falls on the category that in order to excel at anything else with the character, you need to learn fundamentals, piece of advice before choosing the variation? Pick Scorpion.
Drunken Master Bo' Rai Cho
This character is far more complicated than hat trick, while there isn't much to worry about his stamina, he has to manage not only his meter, but he needs to manage the drunk timing, having only two options of keeping the drunkeness going forces the character to either drop damage to drink or jump to escape the time out. This is primary over everything else, including execution which isn't that hard at all, but isn't that easy either moderate would be the right term here
He gets stronger as he drinks since he gets more tools to use such has the torpedo and the meditate which are very powerfull on the right hands, the biggest problem is how to maintain the drunk state.
Since Bo' is a very complex character, is advisable to learn how to play without being drunk first, then once you get REALLY familiar with his tools, its time to start drinking, however there is a new challenge, you need to learn how to count to 10 with each drink taking your focus off the matches sometimes.
Dragon Naginata Tanya
While the character doesn't have anything too revealing and such, it has a very simple concept of play, you dictate the match with your ranges, walkspeed and good strings, great footsie tools, good anti-airs, being mobility the strongest point of the variation, everytime an window oportunity appears DN Tanya needs to make it count.
With that in mind, bear that in order to land her best combos, her execution out of pogo hits are extremely thigh, but are a necessary evil since it allows her to reach full potential off her best damage.
Tanya also in this variation can soft the recovery frames of teleport by landing into the pogo stance, which opens opportunities for a new world in the air to explore as long as the pogo player knows what he is doing without opening itself too much.
wanna do dualist but he is just too hard, don't even know where to start, he is probably the hardest variation to use in full during a match right now, along with high tech jacqui.
when you're not doing "cardio with your GF" that is.
