Her st. and cr. HK actually beat most of their buttons including sweep. While they’re slow, it means you can almost always counter-sweep them in ranges where they would whiff. Her cr. HP has also enough range and active frames to catch an impressive number of buttons.
And of course yeah, walk and dash speed compensate for the relatively short normals of these guys. They are indeed good at neutral, but we’re far from the “total destruction” zektback was talking about.
lol Gimme a break dude I was completely trashed between 2 cans Loko’s and shots of vodka and fireballs, and doing terrible online…jeez I wonder what was the correlation… -_-
PSA: Do not EVER play SF when drunk. It just does NOT work at all. =)
However I do think her overhead needs adjusting. There is no way she should be swept and grabbed out of the air like that.
It’s not the first post you wrote suggesting that Laura is a total mess, that’s why I felt it was necessary to make a point.
Her overhead looks like she’s airborne but she’s not, it’s a ground move like all other overheads. I never got thrown out of it but it got stopped many times by jabs. If I had a real grief about her overhead is that its animation and sound make it extremely easier to notice compared to the other overheads; the opponents are literally warned that they’re gonna get hit, which may be good if they get scared and hit a button too late but it often just lead to being stopped.
I’m fine on the other hand with it being very negative on block since it has an incredible range, a whopping total of 6 active frames, can be cancelled from almost every normal and can catch everything from backdashes to backjumps. Though for that -7 you barely see any pro player using it in tournaments.
P.S. Playing SF while drunk can be pretty funny. I generally avoid though playing my main in that case because I would actually try to playing correctly.
Well yes I have and I may have been over-exaggerating, but I think its also a bit blind to say she doesnt have a fair share of issues compared to the upper part of the cast.
Sidenote: IF Capcom fixes the input lag, do you guys think that will help or hurt her?
Yes you can easily be thrown and even command grabbed out of it before it reaches. I agree it being so negative on hit is acceptable being long reach and such, but being grabbed with that animation just seems so stupid to me.
And ditto with her and all that yelling when she does that or her command dash.
have you tried drunk Super Smash Bros.? BEST. TIME. EVER. lol
Btw where the hell is everyone on this forum? Its like only 4 regulars on here compared to when it all first started.
^I think a lot of people dropped Laura when they realized how hard many of her matchups are.
I think her command dash noise is idiotic. Ken gets away with far more with his silent dash.
I think an input delay change would be give and take. Command dash/ex fireball mixups would get punished even more than they already are but I think we would get more crouch MP punishes and more HP bolt anti airs. I don’t even try to anti air with bolt if there’s even a hint of a rough connection. I am sick to death of knowing I jabbed someone out of a walk up throw but being thrown nonetheless lol.
I don’t think the drop in number of people here have much to do with Laura, it’s just a general drop in number of players due to the delays and the lack of solution to many game issues. On Steam we’re now approaching the 1k regular players from the 3k a few months ago and I guess on PSN it’s about the same thing.
The amount of negativity on this forum about this character is obnoxious. I just play the game and stick to twitter.
Overwatch.
I’ll definitely pick this game up again once the update hits.
Picking Laura back up
I mained her the first 3 months of this game’s life
Now I’m back
Was it ever considered bad? The amount of rounds I’ve closed with that move is almost uncountable. It’s not a special you can throw out whenever you feel like it (à la EX Messiah Kick in SFIV) but if you use it once per round or per game it’s pretty much guaranteed to hit if you know the timing and set-ups (on wake-up, when they’re landing from a neutral or back jump, after a whiffed poke etc.).
As for Laura in general I’m having way more success lately but that could be tied into me getting better at the game overall and people moving up ranks while I’m not (don’t play ranked). Some match-ups still give me headaches (Chun, Gief, Vega, Karin, Nash) but even those I manage to win regularly now. I still think her biggest weakness is the lack of a proper reversal. In a game where meaties and Crush Counters are so important, every character without an invincible ‘get off me’ move is going to suffer on defense and Laura is one of them.
Or at least make EX Bolt faster. Because I don’t get why Mika’s EX Peach or Nash’s EX Scythe must be 8 frames faster than Laura’s EX Bolt while having almost the same weaknesses.
Both have less HP though so maybe that was the reasoning behind it.
Following the discussion in the general thread, what are your thoughts on the Ibuki and Balrog match ups?
Balrog is rather favorable for Laura I think. Laura shines when she can pressure after a knockdown and Balrog has no answer to that. He can be grabbed out of every special and his V-Reversal is pretty bad and can be punished if it doesn’t connect. He’s arguably better in the neutral game but that’s pretty much the strength of his character design, so no surprises there.
No idea about Ibuki to be honest. Kunai destroys claps and EX uppercut means Laura has to make a guess every time on Ibuki’s wake-up which I feel has a huge impact on how well she does in a match-up or not. On the other hand, Ibuki only has 900 health so whenever you get an opening you dish out some serious damage. Hard to say. Right now I’m having some trouble with Ibuki but that might just be a lack of knowledge.
I think Balrog definitely swing in her favor (for now). Honestly I havent had too many problems with him, I guess due to the fact that he has no reversal now so you can go ham on him when you get in, and he’s susceptible to her fireball and will get hit by it trying to do the spin dash, just make sure you are a safe distance away before just throwing random ones out there. The only issue I have is the low that he uses when he dashes. He looks like he’s still standing but with how quickly it comes out it can almost seem like it’s unseeable. He just seems to have alot of unsafe moves and specials that cr.mp can easily punish and you can jump in on him for the free as long as your crossup is on point (we got another case of a jab beating air attacks). Knock him down, get a meaty, rinse, repeat.
Ibuki seems a bit of a hit or miss sometimes, but I think it swings a bit in Laura’s favor (again, for now). The throwing kunai’s will be annoying, but if you’re at less than half the screen and she tries to reload you can use QCF+MP or command dash in to catch her off guard and have at it, but she’s got a reversal also so make sure to be careful of course. And if she fires the kunai of course you can EX Bolt through it also. No use for fireballs because like the poster above me said her throwing kunais can mess it all up for Laura, nothing but EX fireballs when finally in. Her bombs can be hit away using Laura’s fireballs, and the fully charged on will keep it bouncing away from her so it will keep Ibuki off track trying to get the bomb towards you and trying not to get hit by you. Jump-ins are a no-no, not only can she jab you out of the air and your crossups, but he’s got another move that hit directly upwards, none of your air attacks will work in this if the Ibuki player is decent. She can leave you a bit out of range because she’s very quick with her pokes, but really just have her come to you and have her mess up. Not too hard really.
I really havent had any issues with these two, even from the really high ranking players.
Balrog feels like a nice MU. I’m so relieved when people come to me instead of just making me chase them down. He’s definitely stronger than Laura in neutral but as soon as he throws a rush punch it’s your turn. EX shoulders even seem to beat his armored moves for some reason.
Ibuki is quite the opposite. Her neutral is worse than Laura’s and she more likely will find way to escape rather to engage the fight. The only thing we really need to care about are kunais, they hit fast from far away and her very small recovery might make it very hard to punish them on reaction with the EX shoulder. Anti-airing her with the HP bolt might not be a good idea unless she has no kunais left, even it actually beats the kunais they come out fast enough to hit you before even reaching her. Honestly this MU looks kinda similar to Dhalsim in that you need to be patient from far away, to respect the jumps and to be aware of left/right mixups.
Kunai’s also beat Laura fireball. Makes it hard to use Clap in neutral. Not that you need it… Like you said, Laura wins in footsies. Even if you’re not great at footsies, the damage differential is too high for Ibuki to keep up. Ibuki has crap damage to punish your whiffed attacks. The meter Ibuki wants to use on damage/mix ups ends up being used for EX uppercut. Also her backdash sucks from what I’ve seen. She ends up being susceptible to dash up grab, Ex grab or fwrd hp during the recovery of her backdash. She’s super free to set ups post Laura V-Reversal, as well. So you VR > Dash > Ex grab, Ibuki can’t backdash to escape if timed properly.
A good time to use EX elbow that I noticed was when Ibuki reloads her kunai.
I’m not sure that you have to respect Ibuki’s jumps. I found st.mp to work exceptionally well against her. Moreso than any other MU that I’ve grinded out so far. Sometimes I’d do it so late that I was surprised I didn’t get counter hit. HP elbow worked well as always for me. I will say I didn’t notice the guy I play using many kunais during jump-ins unless it was in a set up so idk.
If you’re not patient, Ibuki can win with run away. If you can’t block she can win with V-Trigger mix ups. But as long as you’re solid, I don’t see Ibuki being a problem at all. Of course it’s still early to say for sure but the guy I play knows what he’s doing fundamentally. His Ibuki actually beats my sub characters.
I have to agree with the above sentiments. I think we might FINALLY have a favorable match up in Balrog, lol. His specials are unsafe, he has no 3-framer and no reversal. He has great high/low mixup but that’s pretty much it and it isn’t enough to carry a round. Finally a match where well spaced claps seem useful (yes, I’m being over dramatic haha).
I’ve had a few troublesome Ibuki encounters but I attribute that to me not being familiar with her side switching mixups yet so we’ll see but for now, I predict this to be mostly even once they figure out all their tech and we have time to adapt to her gameplan. Kunais are annoying but the damage is laughable.
Rog’s st lk is 3 frames
Played a pretty good Balrog earlier who just refused to get hit or knocked down. It was a neutral footsie game 95% of the time and kinda exhausting - for both of us probably. I also noticed that his backdash is pretty good.
Still consider it in Laura’s favor though. She just can do way more after knockdown than he plus she has a fireball and a cross-up. It’s funny when you think about it, because the only reason it’s in her favor is because Capcom decided to take headbutt away. Wonder how much impact this change has on his other match-ups.