Somersault kick is not a reliable anti air, it comes out way too slow, unless you’re just sitting buffering it gets beat out, but the dmg off of it is awesome. Hugo isn’t that simple, once he gets in on jump pressure it can become very ambiguous very fast. Sure we all would like to sit around for a lariat, but you can’t simply compress that much up into that. Abel and kuma I don’t have a problem with, but I really don’t consider them as “grapellers” they have links and strong combo’s. Marduk, safe pressure being cr.mp x3 then it’s a 50/50 for the both of you. Well on the internet, the 99% combo accuracy on that goes right out the window, plus his farthest reaching moves have armor or are impossible to react to. On Geif, any jump in is bad, auto-correct lariat is stupid and keeps me from jumping in most of the time. Sure you can try to footsy, but damn it’s hard going in on him, as it is for most. But the problem lies in Lei’s inability to do any safe pressure other than cr.mp, and like I said before even that leaves you in an unadvantageous position. Of course a lot of this is just me not knowing the match ups well enough. Thanks for the help though.
Don’t play Law so thanks for clearing that up.
Overall I agree with you.
Crane style has nice pokes, making it a smart choice for grapplers but you lose your stances on block so that sucks.
Lei’s Neutral Game is Ass, all he has is baiting stuff with stance changes.
Even with meter all his added options are unsafe.
I guess the best solution would simply be to have a partner that beats grapplers.
Or IS a grappler. I had a few matches last night with Geif opening. It worked quite well. Walk forward, Lariat jump ins, buffer st.mp from st.lk and hit confirm to Lei tag in. Worked almost TOO well.
I honestly feel like Dudley is a better partner than Law. The mp.fury fist to super tag n is great, but Dudley overall presents better strengths. Dudley has a better walk speed, better overhead, and fullscreen machinegun blow>tag in with stances on block is too good. Dudley also has a much better anti air with jet upper/st.mk rather than Law’s…nothing. With Dudley a simple tag into Lei will finish with 500+ damage for only 2 bars and will build half a bar back anyway. Dudley also presents better tools to stay close to the target with cancelling normals to lk.duck, with Law your pressure ends up pushing them back with you having to work harder to stay in, or risk unsafe pressure with target combos to move forward.
Partners I tried that worked well and deserve more research:
Kazuya
Cody
Julia
Lars
Chun-Li
Geif
Rufus
I personally play Lei/Law, but when I play partners I play Lei and my buddy plays Dudley. Things I’ve noticed, Dudley has really stubby normals leading him to be out spaced/footsied and also making it hard to punish some things. He really has to get in close to apply that pressure which can be hard for him. Isn’t his duck only upper body invulnerable? His lp/mp machine gun blow being safe is awesome, but for me the added bonus for Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan on one team is too good for me to pass up hahaha.
I’m going with Dudley, I feel like dudley should be on point though, maybe because he’s for me to use than lei atm.
A lot of players seem to be using him as an anchor, it makes sense to me. A guy called Syougani paired him with yoshimitsu on point. Kind of makes sense because of that windmill tag in.
“Rise from your grave…” /patch bump
Well, I like the new patch so much that I finally downloaded the DLC characters and enjoying the game once again. Anyways, anybody have any luck with Sakura Point/Lei Anchor? It just seems like she has the good foot speed, a fireball (ghetto, but a fireball), awesome pre-exchange damage, and SFIV users tend to get into a blocking mindset against her.
I’m still getting used to all the new stuff, but for one bar you’re looking at just under 500dmg off her EASY bnb… I’m talking cr.HPxxHK Tatsu. I tried it with all the s.HP links but the scaling really didn’t make the drops worth it imo (it was around 10-20dmg when all was said and done).
Jump In, HPxxHK Tatsu->Exchange Lei->Qcf+HP, Qcf+MP, cr.HP, srk+HK~Hk was over 450dmg, and give you time and space to enter a stance.
If you wanna style with two bars, make the tatsu EX, and when Lei’s running in do his HK srk with no follow up, and Sakura will still have time to knock them into the air for a basic jump attack, land, cr.hpxxsrk again.
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I played Cody in SFIV too, but I don’t like him with Lei. He’s not the worst choice, but Cody just pairs much better with my King. Sak/Lei and Cody/King made this game fun again ^^0
I was a Cody main in AE as well, I can’t stand him in this game for some reason, my other Main Abel is good in this game, but I don’t like how he feels at all compared to AE anywho! Back on topic…
Lei Partners I’m looking at I’m new to the character so this is going to be a process, My main right now is Steve, but I don’t neccessarily want to run Lei Steve(My mind can’t handle all the stance changes between the two lol) Partners I generally have Put on point with Steve are Jin(My original main since the beggining), Sagat, Yoshimitsu & I also have pocket Hei, Kaz, and Lars. I will experiment and try to get Steve/Lei to work, but issue I’ve heard is that Lei is very difficult to use Point but my point Steve is very weak at the moment. So this will be fun experiment time, will also be trying other characters, but I’d like to hear opinions of characters listed as partners for lei.
In my opinion, you need a point character that has strong footsies and anti air/s. A good reversal helps as well, but Law makes for a great point to Lei and he doesn’t need any of that, and I still believe he or Chun are the best point characters for Lei. (team China ftw)
Based on that, Jin, Yoshimitsu, Kaz and Lars would be my picks out of the characters you mentioned. All have great ways to get Lei in by tagging in on hit or block. Jin and Lars stand out more as characters that work with Lei’s strengths and cover Lei’s weaknesses.
Thanks for the input, I actually quite liked Lei/Yoshi…but the footspeed on that team is sooooo bad lol
Thing is, that walk speed on Yoshi isn’t TOO bad all things considered.
-windmill makes them come to you, tag and it’s safe.
-if they’re throwing fireballs you can poison breath, to neutralise them or windmill to pull them in, trade with the fireball and get a combo, potentially INTO Lei, making him start on their knockdown.
If you like the team, it can work. I don’t think Yoshi is a back pick for Lei, but I do think there are stronger choices.
Hmmm I like that thanks I’m going to try Steve on point with Lei for time being, I know thats pretty bad wake up defense but I feel pretty comfortable using Steve on point, I like the combo synergy between the two, I’ll def give Yoshi/Lei a real shot too
I main Lars/Asuka and can see Lei being a good replacement for Asuka in my team. Lars has decent normals to get in and then you can switch in Lei to keep up the pressure, which is what I typically do with Asuka.
But right now I wanna kill two birds with one stone and have a team of two characters I wanna explore and you wouldn’t believe who Lei’s partner is in my team…
That girl is POISONNNNNNNNNN.
Nice how is that working out for you?
Edit: Im pretty sure I’ve seen Ryan Hunter running Lars/Lei you should check that out.
She’s not too bad but I don’t find myself loving Poison, or at least in this team. So instead I subbed her out and gave Elena a shot and from me fudging around in the lab, the team works quite well actually. Elena is great to use as a point and let her normals allow you to get in and switch to Lei after to keep up the pressure with his stances. Don’t get me wrong, Lei has some nice normals throughout his stances but trying to switch out in the open is a really free opportunity for your opponent. It’s also worth noting that both do 620 and 640 off of a team super, which I like having consistency in that area so that I don’t feel the need to only use it with one character.
Does HK Lynx Tail give enough free time to get into any stance you want and still oki/roll throw punish? Specifically Tiger and Crane.
If one plans to specialize in Lei, is it indispensible giving him a multihitting partner, or can you still use the vast majority of his tech with any old point character? My best points such as Bryan and Lars don’t have those great TC moves to pass to him. If those are considered illadvised, how do Ken, Dudley, and Cody stack up? They all have tc multihits, but they aren’t any law punches or sword whirlwinds.