Happy Friend's Lau Thread

Okay, so I play Lau a lot. I want to help the little junior Lau's out there but I don't really want to write big long posts. Instead, I will try and and write about particular Lau moves and how to use them. Of course the basic stuff about p and 2p are general to all characters so learn the basics of those before you do anything else.

The first move is:



This is Lau's somersault kick. The best use I have found for this move is to punish people who try and put you in the monkey box. That is, they try move far away from you and make you guess in one way or another. Lion does this with his long sweeps Lei does this with his annoying stance roll toward --> kk or throw. Wolf and Blaze have their running shenanigans. Jacky has the Spam Shuffle, etc. Basically, it sucks for a Lau to have the initiative taken away when not at disadvantage and be forced to guess between these moves. If your timing is good can allow you to get out of those situations without having to play your opponent's guessing game. It won't be effective against all moves and it will take some practice to get the timing down, but when it works, it's happy time!

 

Can you get into some in depth lau shit....like frame traps, set ups..oki. And why the hell P+k is soooo good lol

 

seems like a good move but I haven't really incorporated it enough into my game to say much about it. Now for the next move I want to talk about:



This is Lau's sidekick. It has the good properties of most sidekicks:

It can cause that big stagger if it hits a backdasher; it hits mid.

It is fast enough to interrupt two low punches if done with good timing.

It is a great anti-shenanigins move (for example: it hits Shun when he is doing most of his nutty shit; it is not crushed by Vannessa's magical tranny elbow; it is not crushed by those weird crouch moves like Akira/Monkey/Goh shoulder or Lion's uppercut).

It can cause wall staggers.

It has better range than p,2p, and elbow.

It is fairly safe.

Lau's sidekick also has the canned follow up. The last is pretty useful because it finally hits mid and can be delayed.

The first hits high so the string can be interrupted if the opponent blocks the kick and low punches. If the opponent is keen on the low punch, use after your sidekick gets blocked to crush the predicted low punch. used to be useful in these situations but now it gets more easily stuffed by low punch when at disadvantage and it seems to connect or miss depending on stance. In short, it has been nerfed so just use to punish low punchers.

Once your opponent is afraid to low punch and also fears the final of the sidekick combo, you can have more fun. I don't really play the game thinking in terms of flowcharts, but for those that do, here roughly how it could go after :

of course! The final punch is delayable, knocks back a little, gives a little advantage on normal hit and medium advantage on counter.

or

switch to Kokei!

or

Throw!

or

use the low sweep! Your opponent is not likely to be ducking because the string's last and most of the Kokei options are mid.

or

just do a jab to get a counter hit or small adv since again, the opponent is unlikely to be ducking.

or

if your opponent likes to dodge, this does big damage and is generally awesome.

 

Just to put this out there: I am not the most technically knowledgeable VF player, but I have played a ton of Lau over the years (since VF3!). I think he is a very cool character style-wise. He is also very straightforward in terms of having good tools to use in certain situations and having a fun pressure game. This makes him good for new players to use while all his Kokei stuff gives him trickier things to work on for more experienced players. He is supposedly weaker in FS relatively speaking, but I still think he is a great guy to play. In VF the tiers are very narrow anyway so play whoever you think is cool.

 

Low Punchers!

Lau perhaps has the best tools for punishing low punchers. I will list some of the best anti-low punch moves:

This is an obvious one but it works great and causes a stagger. You can use it after a blocked elbow and it will still beat a So basically you can use it up to medium disadvantage and it will crush low punches and kicks. A lot of low punchers will low punch in the same situations. People want to interrupt your fun Lau strings with low punch. Use this move after or after when you know you are vulnerable to low punch.

seems to crush low punch up to a certain disadvantage but to be honest I haven't really gotten around to using this move regularly.

is great because it can crush low punch up to some disadvantage. It hits mid and is half circular and therefore good when you are fighting someone who mixes up evades with low punches when at disadvantage. It also seems to crush high punches sometimes.

This is basically a crouch dash backward followed by a low sweep. This is awesome because it will often get the person who is trying to poke you with a low punch or high punch or even an elbow and it's half circular. Just watch out for silly hopping Blazes or Vanessa's Tranny Elbow of Doom!

A lot of low punchers do not hit check. I have seen some room matches where the players don't know how to punish this and it makes me a little sad. Here's what to do against these people after you block their low punch:

this is the most obvious. Just elbow them, get the free high punch after and then go to kokei if you like.

This move hits mid and the follow up knocks down. Good stuff.

This is very easy to do after a blocked low punch, especially if you are already hold while you are blocking. It also knocks down, unless you are fighting the big fatty.

I cannot stress how awesome this move is against low punch spammers. It causes a big stagger when you get that counter hit. Follow up with for very good damage. The stagger can be struggled out of, but anyone who spams low punch without hit checking is not going to be the kind of fighter who struggles out of a big stagger on reflex.

Yes, low punch back. You will get a counter hit and then you can make them guess between WS / crouching or throw. Some guys will always block or dodge every time they get low punched. You have to throw them, even if it feels kind of cheap. It is a guessing game, but if they do the same thing everytime, you just need to always win that guessing game. They will get better in the long run if you keep punishing them for being silly.

Anyway, I am sure there are additional ways to punish cock punchers, but these are the moves I use.

 

I agree with everything you've said here about the somersault kick.

However, just as a note, in FS, is Lau's somersault/back flip kick. It will execute on , but it's not required to execute the move.

This is a great thread, thanks for posting it!

 

Great thread, Happy Friend. Thanks for sharing your Lau knowledge

 

Way to step up HF! Love seeing stuff like this from strong players. Maybe we'll see some more lau.

 

I think using K+G shaves 1frame off the execution, though with the current hop system I'm not fully sure of that and am unable to test it at this moment.

Happy Friend, it's always an honor fighting you online. I'm very happy you made this thread!

 

Tested this every way I could think of in dojo, gives 16 frames, 25 damage on hit, so does +. So, unless I'm missing something, I think they both just execute the same move.

 

Thanks guys! I will try and post more Lau stuff. I have just moved into an awesome new place so I have been super busy. I have still been playing though and I am having a lot of fun with Lau in this version. He is pretty low tier now but that doesn't really matter too much. At least now people can't say he is overpowered when they get spanked with Lau's swooping arms of doom.

 

After one evening with him, I am really feeling this easy 6P+K+G move to open people up when they're just blocking PP. Something rather deadly his daughter doesn't have! The low claw style move as well, similar to Fei Long's crouch fierce in ST, got some good mileage out of that already.
Time to go work on these 2_3 combos post-float. I've been used to having that as my launcher so far hehe

 

In vanilla with moves like this it did shave off a frame of execution if it was done from neutral and not buffered (or rather doing it without the G would add a frame), but as far as I can tell this is not the case in FS? Always good to know.

Anyway, great thread Happy Friend. Nice and to the point info about Lau.

 

they are the same
Maybe a combo vid of cool combos, strings and setups would be cool but thanks for tips. My fave string has to be 46 into to catch them then 66, 4,, need to learn something for the stagger (6) as I forgot the meaty combo I used for it and cant find it anywhere.