Help with learning Laura

Street Fighter V Laura
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So after getting my feet wet with Cammy and playing SFV in general, I decided to pick up Laura for kicks. And once again I commenced the search through Google and assorted forums to learn from the best…and I still have questions. :slight_smile:

So here they are!

  1. What are some good BnBs for her? I’ve been using this guide (http://www.streetfightergod.com/laura-combos) which is good but it seems a little light on just plain ol’ good combos. You know, the kind where you walk into your opponent’s face and start some stuff.

  2. What are her best pokes? I’ve heard s. LK, s. HK and c.MK?

  3. Are there any advanced option selects or tricky stuff with her? There doesn’t seem to be, which is part of what drew to the character (besides the fact that she’s hot…^_^)

  4. Do you ever jump-in with Laura, or do you just play her ground game since it’s so good?

  5. In terms of oki, do you always end with a Thunder Clap, or do you mix-it up to keep the opponent guessing?

More to come!

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  1. Laura isn’t really about combos but rather about frame traps and mixups. She doesn’t have any medium hit confirm without CH, but thanks to the tremendous advantage on block of all her light/medium normals she will force the opponent to either press a button and get countered or to block and to take the throw. Your main goal will therefore be to find yourself in the face of the opponent with some frame advantage in order to keep him constantly guessing. That’s why L Bolt is so important - it’s +2 on hit (meaning your grabs after that will beat 3 framers) and safe on block.
    Last patch added a few more BnBs to her arsenal:
    cr. LK, cr. LP xx L Bolt
    cr. LP, cr. LP xx L Bolt
    st. MK, st. LP xx L Bolt
    st. LK, st. LK xx L/EX Bolt is also good because it reaches far and if people try to escape after blocking a st. LK they will get tagged instead.
    In the previous season ending with EX Bolt wasn’t advised unless you wanted raw damage, but now you get an advantage on wake-up each time you land it so it’s definitely worth.
    She gets much more off CH though - and scoring CHs with Laura is pretty easy.
    EDIT: for some reason I thought EX bolt worked if canceled out of cr. LP but it doesn’t.

  2. st. MK is by far her best grounded button, now even more because it’s faster and gives more advantage on hit. st. HK is good to control space in the mid range (and score CCs in the process). st. LK and cr. MP are pretty good counterpokes even if they have been nerfed last patch. And finally cr. MK is good to catch people walking backward.

  3. no OS, but she has quite a lot of tricky setups you can have fun with. The good thing about Laura is that you can play her very straightforward by sticking out buttons to get counter-hits, go in and start the blender or create tricky setups with your fireballs, buttons and V-Skill. Everything involving her powerful overhead becomes hard to land without setups the more you rank up anyway because people will be just block standing to punish you hard.
    I have to warn you though that she’s not an easy character to play - her slow walk speed and less than optimal buttons make her likely to be bullied by characters with good footsies. She requires both patience and opportunism to go in as soon as you can and suffocate (quite literally) your opponent.

  4. don’t really understand the question lol, you should jump as less as possible with every character. But if you can get a jump-in it’s all good for you, because even if they block they have to take your mixups.

  5. regular thunder clap is almost useless unless you want to create some space or bait jump-ins against sleeping opponents. EX thunder clap is mostly used in resets or as a mixup tool (since it’s +3 on block), so you should never take the raw KD after that.
    About her oki, she’s negative after dash post-command grab (but safe in EX/VT versions), -1 after back throw, 0 after forward throw and H Bolt and +1 after M/EX Bolt. You can therefore safely dash forward each time she’s 0 or +, but in the other cases you need to condition the opponent to not press buttons first by sticking out your CC buttons (st. HP/HK) and punishing them for mashing. Once they start fearing you you can do dumb things like command grab loops which will melt their stun bar pretty fast.

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Wow, this a super-quality, high level reply! I knew I was right to come here! It’s gonna take me a while to digest all this, but I thought I would post my thanks before anything else. Thanks a bunch!

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Thats our OceanMachine for you. Lol :wink: