A nub's Lau

Poor misunderstood Lau. I read the choosing a character thread and he was described as 'boring' and 'All you do is press punch and arrow keys'...

I'm completely new to pvp VF, as is shown by my massive loss record, but, let me share what I've learned.

1kk
You can't combo off it unless there's a wall, but you can play a wicked ranging game with it. It ducks under high strikes, kds and generally is a great way to break pressure and get some breathing room. I've won games playing a cautious 1kk and 4k and kk strategy. Anyone who thinks Lau is all punch just needs to learn the beauty of range timing.

Are they blocking 1k and ducking the second kick yet?
Once this happens, the game is yours. Start unloading with 3p combos and walk them to the walls where 1kk is really brutal. Dropped your combo? No problem! Hang back and use 1kk to punish any chance of counter pressure.

Lau is patient. Leave pressure to Jacky and Akira. Learn defense and sidestepping and how to break pressure with KD. Wait for your moment and punish any time you get advantage. Maybe other people find this boring, but Lau is all about finding the single moment to break his opponent in half. His damage output is some of the best in the game, and he knocks back for miles. Boot them out or wall pound them until they're sorry they ever attacked you.

And remember.. 1kk beats all ppp strings.

 

Good stuff so far. It is funny that Lau's considered the boring character, and maybe he is boring to WATCH, but I do enjoy playing as him.

Do you have a 5-10 best moves you use for Lau, yet? I'm going to spend some time going through the movelist tonight trying to figure out a few to use. The one thing I definitely don't know is what his best mid/long range poke is.

 

Well, I'm bad at this game, but...

Lets talk Lau ranging.

He doesn't have Akira's crazy long step hit range, but Lau has surprising range.. In his kicks. KK will hit further back than you'd think because it's walking forward. 4K has surprising range on it, and 1K+G has a very long hitbox. Fun fact, 1K+G will duck under peoples charge attacks, like Jacky and Jean's dashing jump kicks. Timing it just right will let you score a rising attack as you recover.

His P+K stuff is also good for ranging, and leading into combos, but doesn't have the surprising range of other players range options. Often when ranging, I try to bait an opponent into closing and interrupt the movement, or get them to whiff their step attack, and counter hit them.

 

for pokes 3k is his bread and butter IMO. just be sure to NOT follow it up. But if you're desperate to close a gap, 9k is surprisingly safe.

 

4k is also decent for poking. pretty quick, huge range and pushes back really far. Plus you get 100 dmg if it wall staggers someone. I like 66p+k for closing gaps, if you get nh or ch you get to mixup from backturn.

 

Welp, it's been a while since I've posted. And I've discovered that I'm about the most unsafe Lau player in the world. So, I'm in the middle of trying to retool my game.

+ sweep is great for KD, but is super unsafe and slow enough that if they know it's coming, you can get counter hit out of it pretty easy, or just blocked and pounded, since it's -16 on block (-22! if you do it at the end of a P string. DON'T DO IT!)

is -16 on block as well. Use sparingly and only when you don't have 6 extra frames of time, because...
+ is 26 frames to 's 20, is a double mid, bounces a /tiny/ bit lower (which means slightly different combos off it, but similar) and is only -8 on block. If you are using this as a ranged oki option, you get put in nitaku guess mode, but it is better than the combo potential of

cheap, easy, and annoying, it pokes for a longer range than you'd expect, and slides under highs.

+! This is a ducking launcher which you can use to slip under a lot of high attacks.

+ This is a combo starter throw. I want to start using this one more, and need to. The fact that if it hits, you get a guaranteed combo out of it makes it feel a little stronger than the + that I used to rely on as my 'strong' throw. To be honest, Lau's throw game is pretty limited, as most of his good throws are forward, so using this one more is definitely something I need to work in.

+ use this near ring edges to switch places with your opponent. This is a cheap and easy ring out, if you can land them half off, when they try to stand up/roll, they'll fall out. If they're throw breaking this instead of back throw, on a no walled stage, they've lost their mind.

Things I want to improve at:
I'm terrible at evading online, and need to work on doing so during matches, and not on accident.

Big Combos! I know only a couple combos, most of them off and recently discovered that the ones I knew weren't even the max I could come up with on my own! (Lazy, Lazy me.) So, a goal for the next month or so is to learn at least a couple combos for each launcher (One for wallsplat, one for ring out, one for middle of the ring..) I also want to work on using more for punishment situations where it works, in actual games.

Play Safer!
Jab more, elbow more, all around, be more pokey and less 'Launcher Friendly.' To that end, I'm trying to use my + more than for my oki games, and all around be more cautious about when I'm throwing out big moves.

Good games to Akira Zero, HSeiken, and Cruz, who were nice enough to play with me today in a great room.

 

I like mixing repeated with + and _ when they try to block low/ retaliate. Safe? Not at all! But fun.

 

OK I wanted to post this but didn't want to create a new topic just for this tidbit, so this seems like a good thread to go in.

I was trying to figure out how to punish Kage's on guard. The move is -12 when blocked and Kage recovers in a backturned position, so you have an additional 5 frames to play with before Kage can turn around and guard.

Lau's seems an obvious choice as it's fast enough and nets a decent combo. However there is the added complication that you're attacking from a crouching guard, so if you input just , you'll actually end up with , which is nice but is one frame too slow to hit! I tried buffering a dash before to go to a standing state (as in ), but the timing of this is very tight, plus it had an unintended consequence that if it hits whilst Kage is still backturned it won't slam for a combo.

Anyway I happened to figure out that you can punish with ,, - The hitstun against a backturned opponent is enough that it will guarantee the whole string. Thought it was a handy thing to know against one of Kage's strong attacks

 

Not guaranteed. He can crouch the first hit (or attack with BT 2K for a combo). You need a mid to hit him. 3K should be good for frames and potential CH crumple. I guess the best guaranteed damage for Lau is 6P+K,P

 

Ah snap, I didn't think that through properly. Will teach me to test properly I had Kage on a standing guard. I think , is the best punisher then? Not that high damage compared to what other characters can gain though.

 

Oh yes, forgot about that move. More dmg and knockdown so yes, it's better.