But unlike Abel, Laura’s command throw does little damage, has 0 range, isn’t throw invencible and doesn’t have a strike invencible EX version… so she’s a grappler who can’t really use her command throw 
He meant the EX elbow, not the projectile
Her jumping MP is very deceiving, because it looks a lot like a move that causes a juggle state, like Hakan’s j.MP…
You can punish back jumps by holding v skill for the forward dash into volty line. Depending how close you are and if you got a cc, you can reset with st mk cancelled into forward v skill
You use her command throw for mix up pressure and sometimes punish
When they use a move that leaves them -on block and next to me, I cmd grab
After getting used to hit confirming, I found her a lot easier to play
Her moves after hit gives a lot of time to confirm
I’ve had success abusing
stMP -> crMP
If counter hit, confirm into LP elbow and continue into stMP -> crMP or cmd grab
If on block, cancel into EX Clap to continue pressure or crMP again(it will hit if they press anything besides jump, even the shortest crLP will get hit)
I ALWAYS use VTDash with stMK
If it hits, I dash in and use stMP -> crMP pressure
If blocked, I VT out and see what they do. If they throw something out, I punish with stHK or stHP
I don’t think using stMK alone is optimal
So does anyone know the best way to reset off EX clap when in V-trigger **without **crossing up? Outside of V-trigger it’s easy (just cr. MP), but with the extra hit and dash boost in V-trigger I’m finding it’s a lot harder without being too obvious. The only way to make it happen with the same timing as crossup is in the corner, but then vskill doesn’t cross up in the corner so it’s not really a mixup.
Edit: okay you can cross up in the corner with V-skill if you’re moving in the direction of the corner before they land, so at least that’s fully ambiguous. But that’s only corners
I played a lot at undefeated this weekend. I lost twice to WT Kami, ridiculous Ryu, both sets went to last game last round. SFV is a tense game at that point, lot of fun. 3rd in my pool which is really disappointing, lots of the pools were free and 2 or 3 were stacked, but that is the nature of new games. Chris won our pool. Oh well. I beat everybody else I played this weekend in sets, several of them in top 8, granted I didn’t play snake, tsumuji, or Chris. In that sense I think I do have a good grasp on what laura is supposed to do in the neutral and at certain key points during the game. Chris, Snake, and several others I spoke to think that Laura is bottom 2 in the game, probably the worst, and I tend to agree, but we can examine why a little bit.
I’ll talk about Ryu since Kami was who I played the most this weekend and you can extrapolate from there. Laura is, as viscant said in his character intro, a footsies character absolutely. Your optimal range is just outside of Ryu’s c.MK range, same as Ryu. Unfortunately this match tends to play out a little bit further than that. There’s a small toolset you’re gonna need to work this neutral:
s.LK buffered into LP bolt charge is the main one since you can usually block a fireball from c.MK range if you whiff this. This is one of the few instances where I feel like Laura gets good risk/reward. You can also use EX shoulder if they’re near death and you’re abusing s.LK, but other than that I feel LP shoulder is the more economical choice.
c.HP at footsies range cancelled into MP shoulder on hit. If you do not have this, your game with Laura is actually hopeless. Luckily it’s not difficult, but really do yourself a favor and learn this, it’ll make a lot of matches a lot easier. It’s your only move that will whiff punish a c.MK properly but at the same range you may just happen to hit their hands at the beginning of a fireball or something and you wanna capitalize on this.
HP level 2 fireball in conjunction with neutral jumping fireballs can get you into the range you want to be in. I have decent reactions and I’m pretty convinced that with Laura’s jump arc it is very unlikely react to a fireball with a jump, you will get hit. This is sort of okay because if you do eat a dp, that’s all they get. Also Laura does have EX bolt charge. This is very easy to react to a fireball with. At mid-level what this means is you will EX shoulder through fireballs. At a higher level it means people won’t throw the fireball and you get to walk them down. People will throw EX fireball to bait the shoulder, if you get baited here that really sucks but if you don’t it’s really in your favor. Kind of a coin flip here.
At the further ranges you do have dash -> sweep. Do this when focus is entirely on long range footsies and they don’t have meter for a big punish and you will find success.
I’ll post more about close range and oki once the plane lands
Did you try stHP
I think that works
Nope, that only seems to work without V-trigger
If you hit them high enough in the air you have time to do two forward V-skill dashes to double crossunder but you’re negative when they land so not sure if it’s useful
Edit: yeah it seems like if you want true ambiguity you have to cancel into LP bolt instead of V-skill dash, but that leaves you at 0 or - when they land. Pretty disappointing if her V-trigger takes away reset options instead of giving her more.
Go to the Laura tech thread. See post 7 goes over her options after each grab/hit grab.
One thing i would love for Laura is the ability to cancel her charged fireball. People want to try to get around this move somehow and they especially dont want to deal with a charged version, so being able to cancel it for baits would be interesting.
I suck as I’ve only been fooling around with Laura for two days or so learning more of the cast, but I’ve been experimenting with trying to play her a lot more like El Fuerte in V-Trigger. With no real “I win this range” footsie buttons, I feel like you have to play more of a guessing game and force the opponent to react to your buttons (even if in reality they have better normals). A lot of the way Fuerte used to handle this problem was Run cancels just outside of the opponents normal/punish range. If you got impatient he’d be looking for the airgrab, and any point he could let the run go and try a splash, etc.
I think for Laura’s game to be successful, the opponent has to respect her potential to “just do it” or at the very least get them thinking “fuck what is she doing” than “I’m going to do this to her options”. Nobody else in the cast has Laura’s level of opponent-irrespective movement, and no one else can normal-cancel to dash. So there has got to be a bigger use for this part of her toolset than st. MK -> V-skill dash at -2 -> Block cause I’m negative.
With V-Trigger you now have two dash lengths. In some matchups with weak fireballs (aka not Ryu/Ken/Nash/FANG/Dhalsim) do you think there is any merit in gimmicks like trying to shimmy into a cr. MK range, backdash out, and forward v-skill jab if you saw a button? Backdashing twice in neutral just to v-skill forward in and jab to try and bait a walk forward (i don’t even care if it hits, just get me point blank at neutral frames)?
These kind of sound like scrubby tactics when I write them out but I feel like laura’s buttons in combined with her v-trigger dash and normal cancelling got to have more depth behind them. The frame data has to be the way it is for a reason right?
it’s not marvel with assists so you can’t really just move for the sake of movement and expect to throw anybody off too much
that said you DO need to be able to surprise people with a dash forward often. you just need to set it up with repetition of safer options first. let’s consider the situation where you just anti-aired a nash moonsault with s.MP
you can cancel that into vskill forward and go for a meaty s.MP and hope for a combo, or go into throw on the other side, but often you don’t want to side switch in that scenario. if they’re cornered I typically vskill back to set up for more anti airs. pretty often I’ll cancel that vskill back into a fireball, but every once in a blue moon, instead I’ll go forward again and go for grab, usually a normal throw so I can AA them if they jump (as an aside, I’m really disappointed in the risk/reward for Laura’s command throw). if you do it after some conditioning work against any player every once in a while.
Oh, sorry. In that case I do agree, it makes no sense to do EX bolt charge unless you really want the armor. Even for 2MK you can still do MP bolt charge cancel just fine from my testing, it’s just more rough on the execution than for the 5MP or 5HP hitconfirms.
Why are we still calling them Vice and Volty Line when they have different names in-game btw? Isn’t that just confusing for new people walking in to this general thread after getting the game?
it’s called volty line in game though
For me, it’s fireball and elbow, including HP elbow that looks like a DP.
The actual names are pretty confusing to me
Yeah I too just call it fireball and elbow. I mean I know the proper names but Its way much easier to just call it that.
either 1 of the following is good enough for me
longer normal throw range
longer command throw range
projectile doesnt disappear after being hit
VT + on hit
stMK cancellable into specials
I just want her ex command grab to go through projectiles. I know her ex elbow does but people always get cheeky and throw ex fireballs every now and then.
ah yeah that’s the plain overhead where linear movement (avante/esquiva/finta) are the dashes. That makes sense, I was thinking of linear movement.