I didn’t realize he didn’t have any 3f moves, so you’re absolutely right, at 5LP range he is kind of doomed. Once you’re between that and max SPD/2LP range, you start to be in a world of hurt, I’ve had Giefs very often be at one pixel of life and take me all the way from 70% to 0 life because I couldn’t stay either in that sweet spot or mid-range+, especially if they have full meter. I think Laura’s mid-range game wins out a little bit, and you can definitely keep him out between fireballs and HP bolt charge, but you’re not going to do any real damage to him unless you get into point-blank range since most Zangief I meet eventually start closing the distance.
Still think it’s even, though. Fights with him are full of muscle spirit!
Congrats to DaFeeLee on winning NYU Spring Fighter 2016 with Laura! I admit, that grand finals was a little hard to watch (soooo many dropped stun combos and so many unpunished negative dash ins), but still nice to see a Laura have some success.
Do Laura players have a Facebook group? If not anyone want to start one? I was in the Hakan FB group in the SFIV days and it was great, had a lot of fun and really leveled up my game.
Btw I’m a former Ryu SFV main, still love him (got to 5000 LP with him), but I’m switching over to Laura. She’s sick, man. I think she’s really underestimated. I’m still learning her matchups so I’m not quite where I want to be but after dropping to 3000 LP after switching to her I’m now a Gold status with Laura baby. I think she’s a great character and can be as good or better than anyone.
Have people found out ultimately the best way to challenge Dhalism as Laura? Its honestly my worst match up and even the most basic beginner Dhalism can frustrate me.
I would think Laura of all characters wouldn’t have difficulty with keepaways given her rushdowns.
His slide is the most frustrating. It’s low profile and cant be hit with an ex. bolt.
Apart from that I try to utilize hp. thunder clap more when playing against a dhalsim. I use it as a shield to avoid his ridiculously long ranged normals.
There’s also the irritating inevitable grab that I swear has a longer range than I anticipate following the slide.
I do manage to occasionally have a Dhalism teleport into a thunder clap. I suppose I oughta go to the lab and play with Dhalism’s teleport to get a basic idea of how that move works.
Faster walk would be cool, but isn’t really necessary. She has good dashes. If you mean Vskill backdash, yeah I wish it recovered a bit faster. It’s nice that you can cancel it to special moves but still. If you mean regular backdash I don’t think that’s important
Fireball staying out even if she gets hit WOULD be broken. It’s fine in other games where everyone has crazy broken shit like Guilty Gear as that would make everyone more balanced but in this it would make fireball way way too good. You could throw it out in so many situations and they’d have literally no answer to it up close. They’d be FORCED to guess with no way out at all in far more situations. You can already force them in some of those situations, and that’s why it’s good still.
Against Chun, be a down-back blocking wall. Chun’s tools for opening up defensive players are predictable, in that you can knock her out of the 26f overhead, which means you can stay there and just antiair if they try fancy IALegs (which you can stop with HP bolt charge, 5LP, etc. due to the good hitbox on both) or similar air attacks, and if they try kikoken followups, she has a shorter throw range than you by a lot so you can usually either tech or stuff whatever followup they’re going to try.
However, if you try to rush her down or beat her in neutral, yeah you’re gonna be in trouble. Rushdown is possible if you’re fighting against turtle Chun, but the point is rushdown is only a good idea when you already know they back off a lot.
As for Vega, HP bolt charge and 5HK are your friends. Learn to read when the opponent is going to do his pokes and knock them out of it. EX clap is surprisingly useful in this matchup as well. No more advice than that, I need to dig through my Vega matches more lol.
Haven’t fought a Karin in ages and haven’t been practicing that matchup yet, so I’ll see whether I can come up with anything on that one. Note though that you can usually get away with a 5LP after a blocked ressenha if they try to follow it up with anything, which Karin players seem to never be aware of.
Turtle Chuns are a huge problem for Laura because she can easily abuse her normals, fireballs and 2LP to keep Laura out. I have had some success against her but mostly because they overextended and played more aggressively than they needed to. Laura’s 5HK is probably her best button here to challenge Chun but it has to be done at pretty much maximum range because Chun wins at all other ranges because they’re faster but of course, use at your own discretion. Laura can attempt to build some space by charging a full HP clap at full screen, so it’ll at least allow her to do something rather than sit back and look like an idiot.
I feel like that Karin and Cammy gives Laura a lot of problems, I think it’s mostly because they control that mid-range incredibly well where Laura normally tries to fish for 2MK xx LP bolt to get in. Of course, their walk speed is a problem as well, allowing them to stay in that mid-range very well. I’ve played against many Karins and Cammys and even though I’ve beaten some of them, I can’t say I can beat a good one. Good Karins won’t randomly throw out ressenhas and mess with her high-low game, she doesn’t need to to win and she’ll take unnecessary damage against people who knows how to punish it.
Mediocre Vegas aren’t really a problem but good ones, the ones who knows how to use all his buttons is a huge problem. I think the biggest hurdle for most of us is learning how to deal with EX wall dive. I still haven’t learned how to deal against them so if anyone can give me tips on what to do, that’ll be great. Usually, they can throw out a random EX wall dive and hit me on the way up, if I block it, then they can go for a cross up which beats out both of Laura’s anti-air options and if I go air-air, he’ll usually just claw me out of the air so I’m forced to just block it. I feel like if I am able to punish EX wall dive reliably and consistently, then it’ll shut down a big part of their game because they can’t just get away for free or get free damage. We’ll see though, there’s a lack of good Vega players who knows how to play solid without relying on EX wall dive gimmicks.
I was just messing around in training today and I stumbled upon something strange.
My dummy ken was set up to jab after block, and to block the first hit only. I did a point blank EX fireball into hk command grab and I couldn’t get it, no matter how many times I tried. mk and lk command grabs work just fine.
I also tried st lk, hk command grab, and that works as it should.
Disregard that, I’m dumb because Laura is not in range for a hk command grab after EX fireball
Been in the mud with the scrubs the past few days since I got PS+. Have been playing Laura exclusively. Not on purpose, just kind of happened. Her buttons, movement, meaty & counter hit combos, etc feel very natural to me. And her high stun makes me feel like I’m playing Makoto again. Love playing a mix up char in a game where you actually have to know how to defend…
Only gripe with the character is how sexualized she is. Not on some moral level; it’s just a little annoying to me, personally. Feels like it’s being forced on me… I’d like to see another costume outside her default that’s not lewd af.
What versions of command grab does everyone use? I pretty much only use lk. It’s so fast and always catches stuff. Will also set up meaty EX sometimes. But mostly lk…
All non-ex versions of command grab are the same speed (6f). They have slightly different ranges/damage output, lk being the largest and least damaging, hk being the smallest but most damaging. If you just want to be completely sure it’ll land then I guess you could stick with lk but you’re missing out on max damage by not using hk when you’re at point blank range.
Her costume also bothers me but it’s much more tame in comparison to her other two alts so I guess people like us are just stuck with what’s handed to us until she gets a more modest alt.
I almost always use HK grab if I know I’m in range so after a mix up, reset, air-to-air landing, hitting LP bolt, etc. pretty much anytime I’m right next to my opponent. I’ll use LK if I’m going for tick grabs or if LP bolt hit leaves me too far when catching limbs.
On a different note, I seem to be getting some success using 7HK against Vega’s wall dive so for others who’s looking for an answer against it, this might be it - the hitbox-to-hurtbox ratio on 8HK is really good and great for air-to-airs and it comes out in 5f, I’ll definitely try to use it a bit more since it hurts more than 8MK too.
