I trade with HP Bolt all the time. Depends on the character and the move they throw out in the air as well as the height but I’d say 70% of my HP bolts result in trades. It’s definitely not a reliable AA, st.MP is way better unless they’re on top of you.
70% of your HP bolt result in trades?
I had the same issue in the beginning with HP bolt trading. I almost never used it as an anti-air until I realized I wasn’t reacting to jump ins early enough.
If you are trading that much your reactions to jumps are very late indeed.
HP bolt is not meant to be performed late as the opponent jumps towards you, it’s supposed to be done as early as possible. Like I said before I rarely trade when I do this move. The only characters that gets away with jumps vs my Laura would be Cammy (divekick) and Chun Li( IAL).
If anyone here wants to challenge my Laura, I guarantee that you will re-assess HP bolt’s effectiveness as an anti air.
One last point: When you feel like you can’t react to a jump-in in time, an air to air is the way to go with Laura.
I only use H Bolt as a read, in the corner or if I bait someone into jumping with a fireball. For the rest st. MP is just more reliable - it is faster, has a ton of active frames (which means that it will hit even if you press it too early), almost never trades, doesn’t have a horrible recovery on whiff, hits both on the ground and in the air and lets you continue pressure better than a knockdown.
The fact as you say that H Bolt should be done early proves that it’s a bad AA in most cases. In a game where many top characters have 3f invincible reversals or 3-4f light AA buttons having to rely on a 7f special with no invincibility that whiffs on grounded opponents and doesn’t have the widest hitbox ever means condemning yourself to not being able to react to many situations.
Medium command grabs are useless for everyone, not just for laura
I don’t get your logic: Because it’s best done early it’s a bad anti air? How this make it bad?
Guile’s crouching HP is best done early or it will trade. Does this make it a bad anti air?
"means condemning yourself to not being able to react to many situations"
Speak for yourself my friend.
I’d like to watch a match with your Laura vs Ken or Necalli to see how well you do with anti air MP in those matches. You’ll get run over for sure.
Guile’s cr. HP trades a LOT, it’s just an emergency AA for when you don’t have enough charge to do a FK or when the opponent is too far in for a st. MK.
I don’t think there’s any reason to explain why an AA with slow startup and no invincibility is not very good. If those things didn’t matter then Bison and Karin mains would have nothing to complain about.
Besides, your entire post is telling that H Bolt is only good as a read, which is why you have to do it early. But there are many cases where you can’t AA on a read, and that’s when AA normals step in.
I anti-air very well with st. MP needed and it never trades. Bringing up Ken and Necalli is just dumb because they have moves specifically conceived to beat AA normals. I could easily reply “try to use H Bolt against Cammy’s divekicks or Ibuki’s air kunais”.
Also if you wanna make the discussion personal you can just fuck off. You’re literally the only one here thinking that H Bolt is a flawless AA. If you think you’re onto something just bring your ass to EVO and show us.
Personally, I like the angle and the width of hp bolt. It does trade a lot though, and that sucks for a move designed only for anti airing
No it’s not dumb to bring up Necalli or Ken. Not when Laura has a great tool in the form of HP Bolt to deal with jump happy Kens and Necallis. You can’t get away with regular anti-airs too often in those two matchups, that’s for sure.
And this is why people call for buffs before they learn match-ups or use a character’s tools properly. Ken jumping in with any air tatsu is a free anti air with HP bolt for Laura every time. It’s HP bolt that saves Laura’s ass in those matches.
You can’t read and interpret what was written too well apparently. I distinctly said that the reason HP trades is because of players slow reactions. And where did I say HP bolt is a flawless anti-air?
Actually Evo doesn’t prove shit. It proves who is better at the FT2 match format, which is necessary because of the sheer volume of competitors and time constraints. League style matches ( FT7)in the vein of Topanga are the real deal.
^^^^^You called her hp bolt “god-like,” that pretty much means “flawless”.
Im gonna be honest here if a Ken is using air tastus willy-nilly than yes HP Bolt is great. However, a good player wont do BS like that. They save it for when she charges her fb since its so slow and for corner carry. Ken has 30 other ways to give Laura hell, tastus are just a small portion of it.
Yeah, catching random Tatsu jump-ins is probably the best situation to use HP Bolt but for every other jump-in st.MP just works better in my experience. I even stopped Cammy’s CA with it once by accident.
And I don’t know about my reaction times. I certainly have a harder time AAing in this game compared to SFIV (where I was really consistent with it) but I also don’t play characters with good and fast AA moves so I can’t really compare the situation. HP Bolt simply has not the properties of a good AA move, no matter how your personal experience is.
Are you really supposing that nobody here knows the MUs or learned to use her tools even if we’ve all been playing Laura since release and someone even since beta? You brought up two specific examples where H Bolt is good to justify the claim that it’s good in every situation. So I ask you: can you show me your matches where you beat AA Cammy’s divekick or Ibuki’s air kunais with H Bolt without trading? Because if you can’t it means I can literally do the same statement for st. MP.
So basically to avoid trading with H Bolt you have to pump Red Bull into your veins or have been gifted with “god-like” reactions. Meanwhile, every Ryu, Necalli or Alex player can simply press st. LP at any moment, swat you out of the air and put you into an immediate 50/50, or can do a special move that has enough invincibility to go through your air move. Don’t you really realise how special the requirements for consistently landing H Bolt are vs other AA normals?
I also echo that she needs links. Its stupid we can get like a maximum of like 4 and thats if either a CH or a heavy jumpin. That makes no sense.
cr. LK hit confirms. The dream.
This omg lol.
Also, i get a lot of counter hits with 5mk. please make it +3 on hit so when it counter hits we can can link 2mp. That would be great. Can they change the the advantage on hit without it affecting the frames on block?
Yes they can. Would be nice to have.
In regards to HP bolt discussed above, all it needs to be an effective anti-air is more invincibility once she’s airborne, or an adjusted hurtbox. Needs to trade less, especially when timed right. Anything else done to it would be a nice to have kinda thing.