hey guys, do you have any guide for someone who knows nothing about Laura and wants to learn? something from very basics to higher stuff would be great
I think it depends a lot on the distance, so for now, until someone makes a guide, we sort of have to wing it. If you do get sucked in, I’ve noticed that they go for throw almost exclusively since her combos don’t have the best damage and this way she gets to toss you back into zoning range. What gets me is when she pops v trigger and I hit her sometimes even if I connect an orb will still extend and hit me and she gets a free combo. So annoying!
@“Kuroi Aima” I’d do some YouTube digging but make sure it was released during season 2. A lot of the season 1 stuff is no longer accurate.
One channel that I’ve gone through that seems to be pretty good is Ben Stubbins’ channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UCi2t-yYcZLsSOi2Xq_exJnA
The guides are pretty good, they’re all text based so they’re fairly easy to review, he covers a lot about the character, and he has a season 2.5 update video that covers the major changes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edCILG-bx2M
This is a good starting point, and also includes more advanced stuff
I would actually like this. I’m not on PSN tho, I play off of PC, so I’m not sure how we would manage voice chat, but I have access to just about every voice communication application out there. Let me know when you do it next and I’ll try to join you.
@TWINBLADES Shouldn’t you be in the Cammy Kolin Menat Karin character forum? Or are you looking for another new main?
If so Laura is a fine choice. 
NEVER EVER
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Don’t let your past experiences with itzpookiie scar you. She even has a blonde color so she can match your other waifus!
I can already see st mk being reverted to 6f in season 3, so it doesn’t combo into itself. Sucks because cr mp after a st mk is not 100% guaranteed on ch
st.MK is definitely one of the highest profile (i.e. people hate) things Laura has that would be easy for them to nerf, so if they start swinging the hammer I can certainly see that happening.
Hopefully not, but all things considered if that was the only thing they changed on her I could live with that. Better that than getting the season 1 Mika treatment.
Abigail: stubby normals for Laura can make this fight annoying. I haven’t lost a set against him I think though. The thing to remember is that cross-ups intended to fake out your opponent into going for a command throw do not work as well with him because you hit him so damn high. He throws me so much on cross up despite natural combos you have that should work. One you are in close he is yours to play with as his fastest move is 4 frames and no reversals. Against a good Abigail, two combos and you are more or less done. There isn’t much room for error fighting the big guy. His slow normals are easy fodder for EX bolty lines, and you can punk his jump in HK with AA bolty line because of his oddball hit boxes. Also, he is so big its easy to hit him after throws and sunset wheels on wake up.
Menat: if she keeps her ball, you are in for tough times… the range plus crush counters… ugh. If she throws it and you beat her, stay on her like white on rice. Without her ball her normals suck and she is yours to play with. Her entire gameplay revolves around recalling the crystal ball and sending it out. A player that controls the balance between keeping you out and good ball play is a headache. Yolo crystal ball throwers are easy to deal with.
My brief experiences against both characters matches thisRalf’s.
For Abigail the biggest thing for me has been knowing his tricks and the things he has that are + on block. Anything that is - gives you an in and usually a punish, and once you’re in on Abigail you can and should smother him. Since Laura has a command throw I wonder how useful it is to use the Fuudo trick of cancelling an armor absorbed normal into command throw to blow throw his V-Trigger armored normals. Seems like it could be a good option. Another thing about Abigail that I’ve found is that his big health pool very often keeps him alive just long enough to get a chance at a V-Trigger comeback when other characters would be dead.
For Menat she is definitely a lot harder to work around when she has her orb in hand. Her heavy buttons are slow so you can jump if you get a read, but you definitely want to be careful with jumps because she has great AA options. One of the best bits of advice I’ve seen is that her orb normals are decently - on block at closer ranges, so you can sort of inch your way in while blocking. Another character you should smother when you close the gap on and unlike Abigail she has low health so she’ll melt pretty quickly. Her V-Trigger can be really dangerous - even at my level Menat players can mash out a decent combo with it.
Responding to above: yeah the Abigail life pool. Ken has a win quote against him is where you have to keep kicking till he falls down. That is the case with him, it just seems like what would normally be a ‘devastating’ combo barely annoys him. Sometimes the fight seems like ‘how much more damage do I have to do to bring him down’ the entire time.
I’d say the fight does not favor Laura mostly due to her normals being so short, and his being so ridiculously long. Not to mention so many moves having armor negating EX Bolty line. And much like the Zangief fight, if your opponent is controlling the match you are in for some really rough times.
I seem to be an oddity (or at least to me anyways). I have pretty decent success against Guile, Zangief, and Abigail: three characters you should have nothing with problems with as a Laura player. I used to crap my pants at the site of a Zangief player, but one day I cracked the code and that was it, they stopped being scary but instead a giant blob of meat you can screw with as long as you don’t fall into the Laura autopilot traps. My win record has gone up against him as a result.
Or it could be my opponent pool. I’m sitting somewhere around 6100 now. https://game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/profile/thisRalf
You’re further along than I am. I’m around 2100. 
Pretty much everyone here is still a spazz and while there are a few Abigails and more Guiles, there are very few Zangief players that come up online.
I agree with you about Abigail. I think what makes him scarier than Zangief from Laura’s perspective is that Abigail’s combo damage combined with his health and stun pool give him awesome comeback potential. Laura doesn’t do damage in big chunks outside of stun combos so she’s less likely to be able to “skip” that end of round V-Trigger activation, which can jolly well kill her after she’s had to navigate Abigail’s attacks. So where Zangief can put you in the blender Abigail can one touch kill you.
I don’t think its a terrible fight for her but it wouldn’t surprise if over time it ended up being a 4-6 or something like that.
ty guys!
Well I have two accounts. Technically. One that is at my home, and one is at my work. My home one is 6100, one work one (which is shared by others in my office) is part of an arcade X-Arcade machine I rebuilt from the ground up including pc, monitor, buttons, and switches. I’m still amazed the CEO approved the cash personally to rebuild it, and its cool to play on an arcade setup and get match requests there. Whats not cool is using that euroIL stick. I miss my hard corners provided by the sanwa gate. 360… bleh.
Anyways, on the machine I sit between 2000 - 4000 BP. Mostly because I try other characters, then use Laura to build up my self-esteem after a horrible string of losses using somebody like Alex. Seriously, he needs help.
Anyways, I agree: players in the range of 1700-3000 may not know as much about the game as I, but damn do they know their combos, and they make up for their lack of matchup knowledge with sheer tenacity. When playing a technical player sitting at 7000 then going back to 2000… I will sometimes lose because I expect a player to do X: and they do something completely different. Is actually helped my game a lot so I don’t get set in my ways.
Anyways, keep pounding away. You will get better, just try not to be discouraged. I’m not a natural. I’m not really that good in general. But I’m moving up because I refuse to give up and quit. Oh for funsies: here is the machine I play on at work. If you see a gamer-tag called ‘cylance-arcade’ playing Laura at the 3k range that is a bit better than they should be… that is me. 
Thanks man. I’m definitely gonna stick with it. SFV has it’s problems but I like it overall. Laura is also a lot of fun and I’m gonna enjoy her before Season 3 comes along and potentially kneecaps her. 
That arcade machine is awesome. Cool as hell thing to have at work.
I feel dumb. Really dumb. Ok, most of my wins with Laura came from extreme brute force. IE I had to find a way in as I was not using her fireball. At all. So I’d get in, pummel them, and use the EX fireball for combos.
I would use the fireball extremely rarely, just in a ranged capacity to make my opponent slip up. An ex fireball would be used occasionally for setups, but most folks read this and handled it well enough.
Then I saw 801 Strider in Canada cup use it to do something I never put two and two together about: movement control. See I was always afraid that I’d get jumped or blasted by players if I threw her normal MP fireball outside of normal ranged. Then I saw him do it at that ranged and it made his opponent pause. At that range, pushing a normal would likely have you get slapped by her fireball so it stops their assault. It also forces them to block instead of walk backwards (unless they dashed back or had a crazy good read/reaction time to do an invincible).
Its as if something in my head snapped. This morning I applied it to my game. There was an immediate change in the posture of players, they stopped just slapping me with buttons constantly and for a change were on the backfoot.
Two of my worst matchups, not because they were bad matchups, but I was just historically bad at them, was Ryu and Ken. For the first time I stopped a Ken player from running all the damn time because he was eating fireballs and could not make a good read. My Ryu opponent could not get away from me or apply his old man strength or stupid block strings and frame traps. On top of that, I did not need to jump in so damn much as at that range I could do a normal dash in and at least get them into a block-string, if not a mix-up and feel safe about it. When I did jump, it was usually more effective.
I’ve been playing Laura wrong the entire time. I cracked Ultra Gold and maintained it this morning as a result, sitting at an average of 6400-6600 instead of 5900-6100. I probably could have moved up further, but my kids woke up and I have a no ‘Street Fighter V’ policy when they are awake (no need to see Dad salty).
Here is to slow learners! Seriously. I feel dumb.