I think footsies against everyone is difficult, but her advantage state is probably the best in the game.
Laura can hold her own against everybody…
Shes not only the rush down queen she is also quite capable of zoning…
All characters have a neutral… it just takes time and patience… cant throw pokes out…
However I vsed a Chun and none of that mattered because she rekts Laura…
Her pokes and zoning game is bs… but her defence is shit so go nuts when you get in.
Does anyone else here use ex bolt charge for fb? Its a good way to get your offence started.
I was honestly thinking the same thing the other day while playing and every time I saw the opponent’s character I thought, “this is gonna be tough.” I don’t think Laura is bad at all, and I remember people calling her bottom 3 during the last beta and thinking that if Laura is the bottom 3, then this game’s bottom 3 is the strongest I have seen in quite some time. If I could ask for one thing, just one, it would be armor on EX Bolt Charge from frame 1. Just that one change would alter a lot of things.
Anyone have some advice on dealing with Chun’s air kicks? She can cancel it pretty early into the jump, making it a little complicated to time AAs.
How to deal with Mika? Even the top Laura player is losing most of his/her matches against Mika 
Holy crap, what do you do against Birdie? He out ranges Laura, does more damage, has projectiles and the part that is pissing me the hell off is that you can’t cross him up because…HAIR!!! wtf
One button that helped me when I was going against my Birdie using friend was s. HP. Good hitbox and cancelable into LP or MP Bolt Charge. You can jab him out of his normal dolphin dive throws so be on the look out at certain ranges and at the end of block strings. Birdie’s c. LP is a pain in the ass but I found if they are trying to keep you out on their wake-up and are mashing it, s. MK beats it clean from range (i.e. after a forward throw).
I’ve heard people say Birdie is just good version Laura since, as you say, he has more health, better range, better damage, a slow moving projectile, faster start up, better range, and better damage on his command grab, and if I remember correctly, his dashes even cover more distance making him arguably more mobile. I’m not convinced that is the case, but it may mean this is a match up worth knowing very well because purely at a surface level, Birdie seems to have an advantage.
So my first step in trying to determine how to win this match up was to find out what Laura DOES have better then him, and try to exploit that. Comparing the two characters the things that stood out to me are the advantages Laura has in speed (outside of command grabs). Her normals, while shorter and weaker, do come out a little quicker on average, and while Birdies dash may cover more distance, his walk speed is a little slower. This suggests to me that while it may require more foot work on her part, taking advantage of her faster normals and her faster walk speed to pressure from just outside his grab range may allow her to actually have the edge in the footsie war, and this pretty much across the board start up speed advantage is worth being aware of at all ranges where both characters are at +0 and able to hit each other. For example, at st.lp range, Birdie basically always has to respect her st.lp since he does not have a 3 frame normal, and even though his command grab may be faster then her command grab, the speed decrease to all command grabs across the board in SF5 means that at 5 frame start up its still slower then said st.lp.
Well what about at a distance? Lets take a look at some of his options there:
Birdie Bull Head (Slide toward you head butt)
-Unlike Laura’s bolt, his dash forward strike move, bull head I believe, is unsafe no matter which version he uses, most -10, his safest (hp) being -5. I tested this in training and found that the push back from this move seems to prevent laura from sunset wheeling him after blocking, but does not push laura so far out that she can’t cr.mp (5 frame start up). It’s kind of a tight window for the punish, but once you get it down it should be guaranteed to hit so while there may be better combos off this, I just go straight to a mp bolt into its follow up for a cool automatic 186 damage every time he tries this.
Birdie V Skill (Soda/Banna drop)
-While Laura doesn’t have the best projectile in the world, she does have at least reasonable start up on it, on his v skill “projectiles”, Birdie does not. If Birdie dares to try to drop a can of soda or a bannana from about half to 3/4ths a screen away, mp bolt up into his face. Both banana and soda have 50 frames of start up, so you don’t even need the armor of ex bolt, unless you’re really slow on the react, you should catch him during the start up for a cool 153 damage.
Birdies Dive Throw
-As far as I can tell, this throw does not catch jumping opponents like Cammy’s hooligan can, so simply jumping on reaction and punishing as you desire should keep this move largely at bay.
Birdies Chain Throw
-This goes through projectiles, including lauras, so I’d recommend against just throwing out random thunder claps at distances he can use this, HOWEVER, it is -23 on block, making it a perfect candidate for punishing with mp bolt on block.
Just a few things I’ve observed/tested so far.
I’ve found nothing match up wise that is beneficial to Laura. Here is what I’ve noticed so far with matchups.
Nash- Put the stick down, go grab a beer. Literal nothing to see here. You can V Reversal him, for a moment of non ass kicking, but then he gets back up, and kicks your ass. Its pretty dumb.
Nec- He causes so much hit stun, and pushes back so far, it makes it near impossible to get near him. Not only that, but he can crush the fireball game, and pretty much have his way with Laura. To top it all of he shoves her chest up to the sky at the win screen, proclaiming his dominance over his new trophy.
Mika- She is Laura but better. Not much to say here. Beatable only if the other person messes up or does something extremely stupid.
Rashid- Not that bad actually, he is so unsafe.
Ryu/Ken- Patience. Wait for a stupid DP, capitalize.
Pretty much all I’ve fought online. So yeah I feel she is lacking in the footsies department a lot. Her +frames on her attacks don’t matter jack shit when the entire cast can beat her normals. She sucks against pressure. She sucks against footsies. I’m not too sure what I’m suppose to be doing with her, I have some cool tech I found in training, but it’s near impossible to use in a match. Maybe if people didn’t spam all the buttons in SFV she would be more viable. Just my experience with all matches.
TL;DR: Uphill battle for Laura most of the time.
You can also simply command dash under his dive throw and find yourself in ideal range for punishing out of medium attacks.
Overall he can’t do nothing at range you can’t easily block or dodge and all he could do to get in is extremely punishable on block or whiff… Patient is really the key in this matchup.
(edited because didn’t see someone posted before me)
While I certainly feel and understand your salt, particularly as pertains to footsies against a shocking amount of the cast, its also important to remember that you’re playing the player, not just the character, if the player is pushing buttons like crazy, recognize that, and don’t press buttons, instead be patient and punish their wiffs or disadvantage on block moves. If they’re only hitting relatively safe buttons, don’t forget, you have a projectile. Unlike most grapplers you don’t HAVE to come to them, to walk into their wall of jabs, you can charge up thunder claps and actually make them come to you, or follow them in so that they have to do something else or risk punching a thunder clap and counter hitting themselves.
It’s easy to just get on tilt when your trying to do something and its not working because of how your opponent is playing, but in those situations its essential to take a deep breath and take stock of what the implications of your opponents actions are, and more importantly, how you can take advantage. Just because you’re playing a grappler does not mean you have to throw, in fact one of the coolest parts of Laura is that this is true for her arguably more so then most grapplers do to that projectile. If you’re opponent isn’t blocking, try to assess the best counters to what they are doing, and do that instead until they adjust and start blocking, at which point they’re primed and ready for that throw you’ve been sitting on.
I’m not saying your frustration isn’t warranted, or even debating if Laura is bottom tier, I’m not nearly a high enough player to gauge any of that, just trying to give some hopefully helpful thoughts as some one whose found themselves feeling similarly in the past.
Don’t let Mika in that is all lol. You can keep her out. I think it is a even Match.
Ok so I discovered something. Necali vs his stomps, you can actually st.mk him out of them on reaction. Discovered by accident, but yeah I’ve found the secret.
playing neutral with some certain characters is worrisome with laura
as much to be said… laura lacks from frame advantage game and wakeup, once laura got cornered or close knockdown pressured she’s a dead fish
capcom need to fix+buff her, her normals range and frame startup and frame advantage is just horrid, she even barely got any good tools for whiff punish and proper punish on range
lots of her shenanigan is getting beaten by 3frame normals
her ex.bolt armor is getting rekt on wakeup but r.mika’s ex.butt doesn’t
idk why her ex.qcb+k all variations have a start dash animation, why cant it be just like other regular ex.command throw like the rest
this is coming from me struggling to make it to ultra silver and then got demoted to super silver
a lot of characters can just easily bully laura and easily kept her in bay (karin, necalli, dictator, mika, gief, birdie, claw, nash, cammy)
so far im not having any problem with ryu, chun, ken, dhalsim, rashid, fang, laura (mirror)
Holy crap you literally just described me and most of my thoughts on the character haha, rank too
I been learning Laura since day 2. @techisoba I agree 100% with everything you said. I HATE playing against Karin and Vega. I play a friend of mine who main Vega and getting around those normals isn’t an easy task. Once I’m in I hold my own but jeez Laura normals are really bad. She doesn’t have that normal most characters have where you can just throw it out because the range is too good and effective. To me it feels Laura normals are all situational . I like her st.HK but it sucks in a way because its so slow. Capcom really need to buff Laura. Fun character but the struggle is real.
All these are assuming I don’t get RTSD, so kinda like playing Juri with worse pokes. These are mostly what I’ve seen around super/bronze, and my Laura isn’t really that complex or good, mostly just focus on safe pressure.
Nash: Unlike a lot of the other common online characters I feel all my losses were from me making mistakes or getting too greedy or impatient. A lot of times f/b.VS into volty line will destroy his VT, or rush down if he jumps in. Usually after you punish their jump-ins and fireballs they walk themselves into a corner and will try shit like an unsafe jump or random VT to super if they got it.
Chun: The fact that capcom made an asian chick thicker then a brazillian kinda tells you what they had planned for this match up. Usually the only time I can get in or land something is if they do something stupid, or play scared. If they understand footsies at all I usually get steamrolled until I get EX or they jump, and then after getting close to a comeback I eat ex SBK and die or they get away and get poked to death. I feel I need to learn this match-up more, in the vain hope that there is a safer option then yolo with random shit and pray, or yolo via footsies.
Cammy: Don’t know if it’s just me, but Cammy seems like the new flowchart Ken. Just the shit she can get out of, or make safe with DP is ridiculous. Also her dive kick can beat out your hp bolt out both hooligan and jump-in if timed right. Can’t really say I’ve fought a good yet, that knows what pokes are, usually they just throw out random hooligans, drills, spinknucles, and jump-ins followed by DPs or sweeps. You can s. mp their hooligans, but be prepared to block because they will dp, and depending on how laggy the match is you might not be able to block. With all that being said I got no clue what to do against a good Cammy, I couldn’t really approach on the ground or air, and as soon as I got knocked down I couldn’t really do anything. In the few cases where I survived a set-up, I usually got immediately countered and punished if I tried to press them, or I’d get eaten alive in the neutral by pokes or RTSD.
Birdie: Not much to say just stay on top of him and try and keep a fireball over him on his wake-up. Most of the ones I fought usually tried to command grab(I think) me out of lp bolt, which dosen’t work against reg throw or s.lk>lp bolt. Only of them really whooped my ass, but im sure he would’ve done it regardless of who I was playing.
Mika and Necalli: I put them in the same section because generally, I just bully both of them even though they both have nasty damage and stun. Mika I just out poke and keep on her back with fireball shenanigans. She’ll eventually try and EX peach on wake up, but usually the fireball, nj, or ex elbow will take care of that. if she does get you in the corner it’s not really that bad compared to everyone else’s pressure. Necalli’s kind of the same except you have to watch out for his VS, and DP. Like with Mika I just stay in s.hk or c.mk range and punish their button presses. Also something I’ve noticed with all the Necalli players I’ve faced is that they’re really jump-happy, and after they’ve eaten a few hp elbows, they crumble, and just do walkback yolo charges, just block and punish. Also if they get greedy with their stomps you can block and get away, I like b. VS>voltyline/ex grab depending on what they do. This is also the only match-up that I can consistently pull off command grabs on their wake up.
- edit tried grabbing cammy’s hooligan in practice but it doesn’t work, but some how was able to pull it off last night a few times.
Just played at Walters Downtown here in Houston and went 3-2 so here’s some of my thoughts.
While I did lose to a Vega player I don’t believe it’s hopeless, this game is centered around crush counters and I think that should be taken advantage of, yes his pokes are good and in clawless he has a lot of plus things but that’s the way it should be. You have to find some way around the neutral because best believe that Vega player doesn’t wanna be knocked down. I don’t think Laura should have outstanding neutral alongside all her other tools, the character we got is the one we got. If vega is hitting st.mp then you press hp and CC the hell out of him for thinking he can just throw out his normals. You gotta scare players with this character but getting to that point will always be difficult.
I lost to a Mika as well but that was just me getting blown up lol.
How often did standing jab work to break up his pressure? Ive been getting away with hitting standing jab and then cancelling it into backdash v-skill after a blocked roll, but online isn’t always a good indicator of what actually works heh
The safest blocked roll that Vega has is LK with -6. You should be punishing with c.MP into bolt. EX is safe but is -2, so you can check him with the s.LP there.