This is mostly about Royal Storm but if someone wants to talk about the other variations be my guest, I think Assassin is viable and Mournful is probably viable but difficult to use/no one uses it. I guess all the Jade mourners will have to mourn without actually playing the replacement Jade.

Hello sirs just writing this up because why not. I'm around 120-10 with Kitana online at present, note this doesn't mean I'm good because basically everyone has a 90% win rate; but I've gathered some general knowledge from the experience. Kitana is a zoner plain and simple, she doesn't really have much of a pressure game because she has only one terrible overhead that you pretty much shouldn't use; however if you can bait the opponent into doing something then you can fan lift them and land a 23-30% punish whenever you feel like it.

At the start of the match I almost always just do a fan-nado, it beats almost everything on the ground and if the opponent gets a jump in massive combo you probably weren't going to win anyway. If the opponent gets a couple of free hits who cares. If the opponent blocks and you expect them to block on the next round then just walk/dash up and throw them, simple enough. If the fan-nado lands (which it will 90-95% of the time) you get 20-25% (off of punch fan/kick butt bump or double kick fan, depending on how close the opponent is you can add in a neutral jump punch to improve the spacing an add some damage) damage and either a knockdown or a shitload of space to start zoning with.

When you're zoning you want to figure out what the opponent is doing about it, the worst thing that can happen is they just hold down and don't block/do nothing; this is Kitana's hard counter due to not having overheads/her jump ins sucking for whatever reason. However if you just keep tossing fans for a bit and then eventually dash forward twice, then fan-nado usually the opponent will have done something/is still not blocking and get hit by it. If not you can start forcing him to block at that distance and keep getting chip, if they don't block then you fan-nado and get all that free damage again. The match at the end of this video is the best example of this that I have, though I didn't play particularly well in it:

If the opponent jumps at a close distance then you can murder him with your amazing air to air kick and combo off of that. I'm not good enough to do this consistently (or online is too laggy, either one) yet but essentially Kitana's air-to-air game is fucking incredible, if you jump and kick/fan into kick butt bump you get tons of damage and a full screen to throw more fans at the other guy; if you jump and fan you can generally get 2 fan hits for 11% or 3 for 16% at any distance. I'm pretty sure it's possible to hit with 4 fans depending on the situation. This means that although Kitana's dreaded hard counter of holding down exists if you can read the opponent essentially it doesn't matter, you'll have excellent space control and free infinite meter from the fan tossing.

If the opponent has a teleport/something similar and is willing to use it then just vary up your fan timing in preparation of blocking whatever, the main exception is Kung Lao's telegrab but that comes out so slowly that it will only rarely be an issue. After you block punish with 1/1/1 into Fan, jump punch or kick/fan, and then do whatever you want off of that; I like to keep it simple personally. Kitana's combo game is basically she has 1 fan lift, 1 air fan hit, and 1 neutral juggle punch and you can build all sorts of crazy shit off of any of that (though of course good luck landing anything that isn't basic with the lag online). If the combo is initiated (or the first part of the combo string ended) with an air fan hit you get an additional air fan hit to work with. There may be situations where you get 3 fan juggles in one combo, I'm not sure exactly what dictates this. I think Kitana's best starter is forward 1, 1, 2, fan and then do whatever you want, but there's so many thing that it loses to if your timing isn't perfect and 1, 1, 1, fan seems to come out more often in the lag.

If the opponent wants to try to beat you in the zoning game then use your reflect ("Bounce Back") to gain a life lead, though presumably you'll already have it from the start of the game. Certain zoners are a little bit better than Kitana but they're fairly uncommon and you can still beat with reflect. Kenshi is probably the most annoying to deal with but if you're having trouble in this regard just mix it up and get in as if the opponent was ducking and follow that train of thought; works well enough. If the opponent is jumping at good times then either vary up your fireball timing (can be difficult to do), or mix in air fans when you expect the opponent to jump, the ideal air fan is a back jump and then toss the fan right before you land; nothing the opponent can do about it aside from duck.

As far as meter goes you'll always have a lot of it, I don't really like the meter burn fan personally, the meter burn "DP" is okay but that move kind of sucks in general, really the only thing I've found that was good is the meter burn fan-nado; however if you control spacing correctly you don't need it and the weird extra pop up that it does is really annoying. That said her X-Ray is pretty good and raw X-Rays are just good in these games in general, go bait the opponent to do something and use it if you like or what have you; if you insist on not doing it raw you can easily land it during a fan lift.

Aside: If for whatever reason you notice the opponent is blocking and standing you can actually do back, 1, 4, fan-nado to beat it and get all sorts of fancy damage from that. But you only get to pretend like you have a good rush-down game every once in a while.

I'm forgetting some stuff at this point but you get the idea.

The best swag way to kill the opponent is Kitana's Butt Bump Brutality (Back That Up), to land it you have to reflect one projectile at the opponent (that hits) and hit them with an aerial butt bump while they are standing; obviously only do this if you have a massive life lead or are positive that you won't lose the next round. Kitana's ass is so powerful it blows up the opponent's torso/head on contact; pretty cool stuff.

Here's a few example videos for what I was talking about re: teleport characters, though depending on lag and the character it gets more difficult to punish effectively. I also have confirmation that the 4 hit fan combo is possible, does 21% damage but good luck actually pulling it off; somehow I got it in an actual match (3 green bars!) despite trying to do it in training for a half hour and failing. Apparently listening to the Hotline Miami 2 soundtrack while playing makes you better at the game.