Kolin being able to command dash out of frame traps can be nasty. You probably should forget doing st. HP xx EX fireball as long as she has meter. Otherwise she’s very Laura-esque (high health, slow walk, fast dashes/command dashes, stubby normals, mix-ups) so you should probably take it as a mirror match.
So the 2 things that most attracted me to Laura were (T&A) er, her pressure game and her command grab.
I haven’t found any real posts or setups for her pressure game though.
When I say pressure I of course mean her “stale” fireball game. Where the fireball makes contact in later active frames and gives Laura frame advantage. Whether this is “gimmicky” or not, the best Laura’s (not named wolfkrone) seem to be based around this.
So since this is the Laura thread do any of you have any go to blockstrings that you like to use to get the late active frame fireball out?
Well, Laura isnt really made for abundance of blockstrings and pressure, she doesnt have the range for that. The real fear is mixing in her command throw with her normals. The EX FB is where its all at and where her true pressure can shine.
The blockstring into a fireball is good, but alot of characters can get away with using their crouching kick buttons and it go over them and catch you, negating it. Its hitbox is too poor to use that alot of the times.
But usually Ill do something like cr.mp to lp. FB, cr.mk to lp. FB, or st.lp to lp. FB. The best way to get them though is to do the string but hold the charge for it. It completely throws them into a mindfuck. WK uses this quite a bit, especially her cr.mp. I see alot of EX FB and mixing in her overhead as it travels to make her overhead safe on block.
An interesting thing I found is that some normals cancelled into an uncharged fireball actually act like frame traps. If you do cr. MP xx regular fireball and they press any button after cr. MP they will actually get hit by the fireball and you will be +2 because of the CH without spending meter. This only works with cr. MP and cr. HP AFAIK. It can be useful against people who react when they see the startup of the fireball.
yeah exactly. This is what i was getting at. Lauras cr.mp xx fireball is actually a frame trap that beats mashed 3 framers.
Anywho, since the thread doesnt really seem to be up on it, i think im going to make a laura pressure thread as its varied and also character specific.
Ive already found “infinite” blockstrings as a matter of fact without the use of v skill as an example.
Useful for 1 off pressure.
Example of an easy “infinite” blockstring to see what I’m talking about with stale fireballs and stuff:
Against all block ken, crouching:
Dash in point blank, st.lpx2 xx m fireball, (st.lp xx m fireball xN)
This blockstring will infinitely advance Laura on her ken opponent as long as he keeps blocking.
This blockstring has big gaps between the st.lp>fireball which is where the opponent should seek to break the blockstring… but if they try to break the blockstring there and Laura did oh say, a st.mk instead, then she CH her opponent into a cr.mp xx m elbow combo.
The thing is though this is a good spot for a pressure mixup, that’s not the point, the point is the stale fireball. There are tons of blockstrings that lead to this stale fireball and they can be done with both m and h fireballs but the blockstrings will differ.
An even better point is that just about any blockstring into a stale m or h fireball, can be mixed up with a blockstring into an l fireball that doesn’t connect fast enough and sets up a command grab before the L fireball, touches the opponent. Of course this can be mixed up with not throwing any fireball or doing a v skill instead or doing a v skill backwards.
That’s a lot of stuff to try to defend against and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Laura like any character can also add in delays to make her blockstring timing different and setup dash in command grabs.
So why not just do the ol command grab>frame trap mixup?
Well if you have a good read then there’s no reason not to do just that.
BUT WHAT IF YOU DONT HAVE THE READ? What do you do now? Do you just say fuck it and risk the command grab? Do you just let your opponent off the hook by going for an obvious frame trap and pushing them out of danger on block? Do you do a “gimmicky” VSF?
Nope. The “answer” in these situations is to go for stale fireball pressure. It’s the safest form of pressure that you have and it can make an opponent become predictable in their defense and give you easier reads for your offense.
Like anything though, if you get to predictable with it, you will get blown up, which is why you want varied ways to get the stale fireball and varied ways to make the opponent pay for trying to hit you during the startup of the stale fireball.
They are nice but situational. If your opponent starts walking back you’re going to whiff your normals and your pressure ends. The string I sometimes use is cr.LP, st.LK, cr.HP xx HP fireball (or you can self confirm the cr hp into mp bolt).
As for mp xx fireball, yes, it beats mashing, but if they block you’re at -5 in their face
edit*
Going for st mp, cr mk xx lp/mp fireball has proven to be more rewarding, at least for my play style. It stops them from walking back, and you get to see how they act when they have a fireball in front of them. If you do lp fireball you can squeeze in a mk command grab (if the string was done from point blank)
This is what really stops me from using that. A good player will make sure you get destroyed for pulling that stunt.
I use 2MPxxClap all the time, usually after a 5MP for frame trap. Most people seriously don’t know that you can punish this. Even good players. I’ve even scored command grabs after the clap on BLOCK when I know they aren’t going to press anything. It’s the kind of thing where I usually keep doing it until they give me a reason not to.
I think it’s worth a try at the beginning of a round when you don’t have meter. Easy way to see if they’ve done their homework on Laura.
Been destroying Kolins tonight.
A few early thoughts:
Obviously they will get better, but for now, a lot of them want to start pressure with her projectile. Claps won’t always collide with it, but they will totally interrupt any forward momentum on Kolin’s part.
The ones I played were mostly turtling and then fishing with counter. I know it seems obvious, but delaying your strings just by a few frames can shut this down and make her scared. Then it’s time for sunset wheel.
Her close anti airs are not great, or so it seems, so a lot of them will try high counter your jump ins. Empty jump low or empty jump grab= win. Again, this is basic stuff but I think a lot of it will still be relevant when people get comfortable with her.
Her two hit sweep when done close can be punished with 5lk > lp bolt when you block the first. There are possibly even better punishes (2Mp?) but I haven’t done any testing.
Her overhead is plus on hit so be weary.
Also, her 2MK has decent range, better than ours it seems, so watch your feet. The best platinum one I played was sticking it out like she thought she was Urien.
Oh, and I think her counter can interrupt ex clap dash mixups unless I mistimed. I had the best luck with regular throw buffering HP bolt for neutral jumps after the dash.
Her st. MK is almost identical to Laura’s (except it’s special cancellable) and cr. MK is + on block like Urien’s. Her only special cancellable low is the sweep, but only on hit.
Also she has absolutely no tools against projectiles without meter.
And finally she has only one frame trap that can beat 3f jabs (st. LP/cr. LP > st. MK) and it leaves her -2. Be careful though because her counter has a 2f startup (1f on EX version) and will therefore beat any button of 4f or plus.
Whooooooooooo got my PS4 back today yall! Gonne be hard getting back in there after all this time…
In other news, something that is really pissing me off is how everyone says that Laura is the new Mika…HOW???
Mika still has better range and safety on her normals, she has ways to get past fireballs with no meter, people have found ways to still put you in the corner easily with her rope throw, her corner game has not changed one bit, and she still has better range on her throws. Shes got to work a little, how is she suddenly bad??? How does Laura stand up to any of that with her own issues?
And if I hear one more person cry about her st.mk. Ken, Ryu, Cammy, Urien, Alex, Necalli, can all have bat-shit insane, low risk/high reward buttons but she cant have one? Its friggin -2 on block and can only be comboed into her jab at the right distance! Its one button for christ sake. She still has her major flaws from S1 that werent fixed. LET THE LOWER CHARACTERS HAVE SOMETHING FOR ONCE!!
I say it to anybody who will listen that Laura hasn’t changed in regards to fighting her (but I post it in EH, and that is troll central so whatevs). Stubby normals. You spend bar a ton. She just got the logical upgrades she needs to make her viable. Her block-strings are dangerous mostly because you can mix-up her command throw in them. Her over-head is still easy to block and her standing MK is still punishable. You destroy her in the neutral, you win.
Knee-Jerk reactions from people really. She is highly mobile, and surface level you can torch your opponent real fast if you don’t know how to react to her pressure. Combine that with some very simple combos that do crazy burst damage and you got everybody’s new favorite scrub character. Easy to learn, but difficult to master I feel. Not to mention if you don’t main her, she as a character is annoying as fudge personality-wise. OceanMachine made a good point about her being a strong, attractive female that can crush you… and has fun doing it in a non-spiteful way. Its ok if you are a villain (aka Juri), but when you are the nice girl that is a no no.
Meta hasn’t been out for 3 months and peeps are screaming. They said the same thing about Nash last season till after EVO. Then Nash suddenly fell off because peeps began to understand the match-up. I would predict that Urien and Laura would both fall down the tier once the match-up is understood. The characters that are climbing the ranks that peeps really should be worried about are Ibuki and Zangief.
But whatevs… the rumor is that the re-balance patch is dropping with maintenance tomorrow. We’ll see if she goes back to being a bottom feeder or not if its released. Laura is where she needs to be. If they gut her I hope they don’t take away her standing MK. I love S-MK (CH) - cr MP - cancel Super Art. It hits so fast it throws people into a loop in a ‘what the heck just happened!?’ sort of way. 
Yeah, I’m so over the complaints. I get so much hate mail now lol. Most of it from Urien players /go figure. She really hasn’t changed THAT much all things considered and most of the things people bitch about were also possible in season 1/ again, go figure. If they decimate her, I’m probably done with this game. Not to be negative, but I put up with a subpar character for a year, they finally made her play the way she should have all along and if whiny herpderp Shoryukening scrubs get their way I’m out.
So far, no discernable changes to the game after server maintenance. I wonder if they are setting up for some changes to the gaming network? Apparently there will be some sort of announcement today, but it probably has to do with the Capcom Pro Tour starting this weekend.
They already announced a while ago that radical changes to the CFN are due to come this Spring.
Yeah I remember. Hopefully they re-do the UI as part of it. I still have trouble getting around the UI it is so cumbersome. Anyways, I digress… I’m leading this conversation away from Laura. There are better places for this discussion I accidentally started.
Yeahhhhhhh I think Im gonna be done with this game for a while, especially to keep my platinum ranking. The Urien army is becoming outrageous and everyone in platinum and above is maining him. At least casual you can get some type of diversity but this is worse than the shoto army.
I’ve been rocking ultra gold for forever, but I mostly join platinum lobbies. Haven’t played ranked since season 1, should probably try to play some and level up before she gets destroyed. Is rage quitting less prevalent in ranked these days? It’s the reason I gave up on it so many months ago.