Makoto can punish hard on a read with a Fukiage + followups. Meaning that risk-reward for your opponent is way worse.
But that’s another debate completely.
The other characters don’t get to be in that situation quite as often as Laura, just because Laura’s main combo leaves your opponent standing.
Unless you can hit confirm a single hit into qcf+MP (I can’t), you have to rely on hit confirms that end up with qcf+LP, and you never will get any KO nor Oki game.
That, right here, can’t be applied to every character, considering that most of the cast can easily confirm into a KO move from at least 2 mediums.
Not even considering the damage loss (2 mediums into special > 2 lights into special) and no oki afterwards, you also get no grey damage out of your normal pressure at all (only medium or stronger normals chip out).
All in all, you attack for less damage, don’t chip for grey during pressure (that adds quickly, just look at Karin’s pressure), and your reward is a standing opponent that’s -2 behind you.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s fun to play, but I don’t see people getting wrecked by Laura by March, when they understand that her gimmicks are all unsafe, and she is free on wakeup.
Just look at Sabre’s vids, you can see him jumpin like crazy against people not AAing, using command dash after MK all day etc : that shit won’t work as soon as people get past the staring at her boobs
What do you mean they are not in that situation? The situation that LP Bolt leaves you in is pretty damn similar to landing a light that is +2/3 on block. People still need to open you up so that situation comes up a lot. They are going to s.LP to be +2 and then go for a frame trap or a tic throw. This is the whole basis of SF5 (and pretty much street fighter in general) offense. How do the rest of the cast stop jump outs against tic throw/frame trap pressure?
Being +2 with Laura in throw range is crazy good. You can stuff any button they press. And if they neutral jump your st.mp beats literally every jumping button there is thanks to having an incredible vertical hitbox and leads into a left/right strike/grab. You can also do a single button into EX Fireball, which is plus on block and gets you a left/right strike/grab on hit.
I think one of the benefits to Laura is that all of her grabs (incl. the command grab) leave you close to the opponent that you can pressure with.
It’s gonna be a real problem for characters like Karin if people refuse to press anything during pressure and just take the throw, where you eat 120 or so damage and get put full screen again.
I think, above all else, you play better with a character you like/enjoy playing. If that’s Laura for you, then there’s no reason you can’t make her work… especially since we’re just playing a Beta and have yet to see the final build or the meta really develop.
LP bolt on hit leaves you in the same situation (actually worse situation) as most LP on block. I agree.
The rest of the cast doesn’t leave people standing after low damage + high chance of getting away, that’s my point.
You need a lot of raw openings to kill someone that just jumps back out of your pressure for example (meaning your throw > HP bolt is useless). Something that doesn’t happen to most of the cast, with damage being way greater + KO afterwards. Even if your opponent does that like 50% of the time, it’s still an easy way out and he only took low damage from your combo + back to neutral without any oki.
People don’t necessarily jump out of jab pressure because there’s nothing really scary coming after that, at best you eat 120 damage from a throw.
You’ll see them jump out of jab pressure from Gief a lot though for example, because his SPD tick throws ARE scary, and Gief can air SPD to punish jumps or HK or Lariat or …
Again, it’s not that she doesn’t have options to cover an opponent’s escape, it’s the fact that her initial damage is low, and her options afterwards aren’t that rewarding compared to your opponent guessing right on a command throw (full combo punish) or whiffed HP bolt (about the same I guess).
On a side note, I really hate the fact that her fireball disappears once she gets hit :s
Apart from the whole frametrap argument, don’t you agree her V-Skill overhead needs improvement (framedata tweaks) / her EX command grab needs something to make it shine (armor / hard KO etc) ?
For now, those moves are either a big gamble (overhead is -7 on block, meaning a world of pain incoming for very low reward) or not worth using at all (EX throw can be used for gimmicks on your opponent’s wakeup or after a command backdash, but like all gimmicks, people won’t get caught by that after a while : “you see Orange Laura on that setup ? >jump and punish for free”)
I agree on v skill overhead, but Laura is not alone on this. If you look at the frame data, almost all overheads are 0 on hit and -6/7 on block. This should be a universal buff to overheads. I feel EX command grab should either have armour or be able to cancel from normals.
Still, EX fireball is still a great use for meter. +3 no matter where so its an auto reset pressure tool and you get an air reset on hit.
Not really “won’t work” but more like “won’t be as free as it is for now”.
When you see Sabre abusing this and only getting hit by a few LP as punish because people aren’t prepared for it, it will become way more damaging after a while.
I can see her command backdash cancel into specials (you can cut the recovery of the backdash by inputting one of her non-grab specials) being way more useful than MK>dash gimmicks, honestly.
Yeah EX fireball is great utility, most likely her best move overall, and I agree about overheads needing some love, especially Laura since hers is actually her VSKILL lol (though Chun can pull some huge damage from her overhead during V-Trigger)
You realize keeping them standing is better than most knockdowns in this game, right? People can just backroll out of most character’s pressure for free. If you think they’ll jump back, do a light or a medium to catch them grounded. If you catch them rising you’ve got an aerial reset that puts them back in a shitty situation. Or you can jump right at them and meet them in the air.
Again, I know she has options to still get some damage out of a neutral/backjump, it’s not the problem here.
Keeping them standing is ok when you have powerful options to cover your opponent’s choices, jumping right at them and meeting them in the air is not one of those.
I’d be fine with being able to leave them standing if it wasn’t the -only- choice available after her main confirms.
Problem is, if you do the math, you’ll end up more often with low damage out of your mixup than you’ll get high damage, while your opponent can get a full combo punish / a free pass out of pressure just by mixing up his options VS yours.
Sure, sometimes, you’ll get a nasty chain of events / stun / perfect.
But pretty sure a reliable confirm into MP bolt for more damage overall > KO > more pressure (having to guess hard to read crossups, then next mixup) would be more damage in the long run.
About KOs : most soft KO are hard for you to apply oki afterwards, that’s true, but that’s where grapplers have an advantage : most command grabs (and hit-grabs) prevent backrolls, meaning you just have to worry about quickrise.
And backrolls aren’t that “great” depending on matchups, considering you corner yourself quite fast if you keep on doing so. And that can be worse than anything.
Anyway, let’s agree to disagree on this, it’s no big deal, I just love arguing for the sake of it sometimes
You’re supposed to mix command dash forward with command dash back mixups. That’s how you get the forward dash to work. If you mix it up, it’s impossible for anyone to punish the forward dash on reaction every time because they’ll have to guess
This sums up why I don’t think she’ll be great in the long run. I feel like she could be great if she got even some minor buffs (give her some links off her mediums without counterhits is a good start), but as she is, she needs help.
Also, is her V-Skill backdash considered airborne to avoid throws? I don’t see much reason at all to use her forward dash since it’s pretty garbage compared to her V-Skill one, so I wonder if there’s reason to use her normal backdash.
Love Laura’s j. LK and j. MK. Great for crossups AND anti-crossups via jump back. Standing MK is nice in close range footsies
Eager to see what changes are in store for her. From the beta I feel she’s a solid mid-tier character. Fun as fuck when you really get rolling with her. WTF do you do against Vega and Rashid? Seems like they can just press shit and wreck her.
What changes are you hoping come to release? Maybe a V-Skill overhead buff… or something that gets her through fireballs that isn’t ex. elbow.
Regular “avante” is about 20+ frames, add to this anything at all (from LP to command grab) and you basically have the same frames as most overheads or more to react.
If you can block her overhead on reaction or even interrupt it, you most likely can interrupt her dash-in.
And since pro players react a lot better to this shit than I do even after a good night’s sleep, I don’t think it will be that scary in the long run.
Her command backdash cancelled into qcfLP (etc) to fish for a counter hit or cancelled into one of her fireballs, seems more useful overall than rushing to someone with 20+ frames of animation to hint them at pushing buttons.
Anyone has framedata on her “avante” during V-Trigger ? Dash is longer, but I wonder about frames being the same or worse …
