I’m still processing it. Seriously. EX grab is invincible against fireballs. Gonna ponder that just a bit more.
Laura is getting all sorts of juice. She isn’t bottom tier anymore by a LONG shot.
And with the meterless dp nerf and jab aa nerf we can finally have a few more rewarding moments! This is so cool!
AND PROJECTILE INVINCIBLE EX GRAB!!! YES GAWD!!!
I hope these changes are true. They aren’t exactly what I was hoping for but it seems they have definitely addressed some of her weak areas. I’ll miss back throw oki but it’ll be fun to figure out new setups and I’m glad that st MK is finally the pressure tool it should have been all along.
This was exactly what I wanted from her EX grab. It was pretty much useless outside of a wakeup oki option. It now has purpose.
My only major concern is still Zangief. He got a bunch of buffs, and unless her fb hitbox got adjusted he can still just bust her up with st.hk. @OceanMachine Do you think we can manage this time around with how she looks versus him?
I tested and it definitely works, you can endlessly loop cr. MP xx EX fb, dash, cr. MP xx VS if they crouch lmao.
Gief will definitely still be a problem since he only got better mixups, meter gain and even combos while retaining the same oki and damage. But I guess everyone needs to have bad MUs?
A free match up goes from free to bad. The balance gods are fickle.
+6 VS. Nuts.
Im gonna feel bad for some people here having their hopes high only for the final build to not include all these changes. Balrog has CC on his st fp no way this can all be the final changes for season 2
Lets see Ryu, Ken, Chun, Necalli AFTER everything is revealed before we starting talking about everyone having bad matchups 
I may be the only one but I’m not liking these changes much, for me the biggest problems were getting in with fireball characters, being completely outpoked by many characters, being free to crossups with no decent AA normals since St. Mp Hitbox is pretty lame and no gtfo move. She got some 135 damage combos with cr. Lk, cr. Lp qcf lp yay and better frame traps, but she was already really good once face to face to begin with, and backthrow nerf is huge for her mixups.
Not feeling this changes, I’ll probably go for Akuma on s2 if these are all the improvements.
But you have to remember that the other characters recieved nerfs that benefit her also. And while slower meter gain hurts, it also helps her against certain other characters.
Not every character can be a shoto. If you think you can’t trade amazing mixups, pressure and damage output against whiffing AAs against cross-ups and having no invincible reversal then probably she isn’t a character made for you. As much as you’d like your main to be a jack of all trades… that would just make the entire cast play the same exact way.
The gtfo moves are nerfed all across the board anyway, which means your opponent has either to spend meter or to guess correctly to stand against your pressure. Also her damage output is almost identical and even bigger for command grabs while the damage of other characters like Ryu got nerfed.
Plus with the EX grab being projectile invincible you have an unvaluable tool now against fireball characters.
I’ll be super happy even if only half of this stuff remains after the 20th
Yeah. I mean Christ, Laura had two COMPLETELY useless normals, an EX grab that was a pure gimmick and a target combo with no real purpose outside dizzy punish. Now both of those normals are gonna become staples of her ground game, EX grab will punish fireball spammers easily and her f+HP got new meaty setups and might even be more viable in neutral. She’s almost like a complete character now.
What really annoys me is that even other grapplers, not shotos, have a great AA normals like Alex, Birdie, Zsngief or Mika, it makes no sense she doesn’t have one, im not asking for a jab AA even though they are nerfed now, but I hate that even the most stupid ryu can take 300 damage from a half ambiguous jump in.
Same thing with fireballs, Mika has a bucketload of fireball invincible moves, Birdie and Mika have invincible reversals, again they are grapplers not shotos and have those kind of tools.
I could happily stay with her current mixups as they are but I feel she desperately needs better pokes, improved defense and non meter anti fireball tool, but Capcom gave her better tools for something she already excelled at.
Still I’m far from a pro so I’m most probably wrong.
They did the same for everyone, they improved what the characters were already good at instead of giving everyone the same tools.
tbh Laura’s AAs are overall pretty good against anything that doesn’t cross-up. st. MP is maybe the normal with the most active frames in the entire game and while H bolt has a 7f of startup it is actually upper body invincible from frame 1 to half of its active frames. The cross-up weakness might be a trade off for having one of the best cross-up buttons in the whole game.
And neither Birdie nor Mika have invincible reversals… they only have armored moves like Laura, and Birdie also has a throw invincible EX grab.
Don’t be so hard on yourself lol. It’s true that Laura doesn’t have perfect anti airs, so you have a point, but she’s not as bad as say Karin or Urien in my opinion as far as Anti Airs go. Also, Mika most certainly does not have an invincible reversal anymore so than we do.
HP bolt is decent and I’m hoping that I will trade less often with it when input latency is reduced (who knows, my reactions will probably still suck lol but it’s worth hoping for) and the fact that st. MP doesn’t move forward so much may make it a better Anti Air button as well.
This version of Laura wasn’t really what I was asking for, but as I said earlier, they were definitely paying attention and addressed many of her shortcomings so I’m pleased with what I’m reading.
Can’t wait to see what we can do with a Cr. LK and St. MK that actually lead to something useful!
I know it’s scrubby but I also can’t wait to do some YOLO volty lines! There, I said it lol.
Hp bolt could be a lot more useful if latency is improved so I hope you’re right, still I think that many people didn’t react to vskill dash mixups because of the high latency so that could be a problem.
One question is lp bolt still -2 on block? Lp bolt is one of her best tools for getting in and put her on mixup distance on hit, but - 2 on block made it a lot less useful.
HP elbow was always 0 after a regular dash. MP elbow punch follow up was 0 after a dash.MP elbow kick follow was negative after a dash I forget the exact number but I think it is like -2. I edit this when I posted the frame data somewhere in the beginning of this thread.
Edit found my old post in the Laura combo/tech thread lol. It is like 4th post lol
MP elbow kick follow up is -10 after a dash.
I forgot to ask about her command grab. It is currently -4 after a dash in. What is it now?
Also to quote myself
Seems like capcom read my mind hahaha. If these still stay I’m so going to dominate lol.
Wait, this doesn’t sound right.
She’s at +17 after mp elbow > Kick (so +0 if she does a normal dash), and +9 after mp elbow > Punch (so -8 after a normal dash).
Maybe you were thinking about vskill forward?