Yeah, or do a setup that practically guarantees it.
This. My Lex combos almost always end on a probe or armor, depending on which one is up.
On a side note, I am a random, but going to do one for Joker anyway:
The Joker
Offense (3/5): This score may be a little generous, but allow me to explain. Joker has a wide variety of highs and lows, but sadly, none of them manage to work together to make any sort of 50/50 (Except for off of crowbar OTGs, but those are slow enough that you can react to them, which kind of defeats the purpose).
That said, he does have tools to create many different "unblockable" resets, especially on knockdown and in the corner. In fact in the corner Joker can easily take an entire health bar off of some truly stupid resets (Such as the low/high/low OTG which loops back into itself).
Unfortunately, once you have enough matchup experience against him, it can be difficult for him to get in since many of these resets are gimmicky and once you learn them can be escaped.
Outside of that, most of his strings are +, and most everything can be canceled into safe teeth or be made safe by canceling into flower or crowbar. MB laughing gas will also make everything safe, but it costs meter and due to frame gaps he can be poked out of it.
Defense (2.5/5): Here's the thing, Joker actually does have an amazing moveset for playing defensively (Teeth traps, especially when mixed with flower which stops people from pressing buttons and puts them back into teeth, gunshot, j3 and his amazing D2. Laughing Gas can actually be decent for this too.), but it doesn't really matter since in most matchups he HAS to play offensively. Very few characters are forced to approach the Joker, so while he seems like he would be a really good defensive character, nobody will ever put him in a position where he can.
Trait (1/5): I am only putting 1/5 because Dave said we couldn't use 0. This is the worst trait in the game without a doubt. Not only are the active frames on this counter terrible, but the reward is to get a HA, which speeds up dash and jump/fall speed. Unfortunately, this does not speed up his move activation or the ending frames on the dash. What this means is that when he gets 2 or 3 HAs, Joker actually becomes a worse character. At that point a lot of his combos and resets start working, and his dash, while faster, is still as unsafe. It also makes his already worthless backdash even worse.
Actually, the more I talk about it the more I hate it. Seriously the worst trait in the game by a long shot. There are other useless traits, but at least they don't make your character worse than he already was (Except maybe Deathstroke), so I'm putting a new, more fitting trait score:
New trait score: Cruel Joke/5
Damage (3/3): This is one area where Joker players can't complain. With good execution, we get 42% for 1 bar midscreen (Or roughly 40% meterless off of certain moves in the corner or teeth/AA d2 midscreen). We have countless resets into more damage. In the corner your lifebar is gone if you don't clash (Assuming the Joker player has good execution).
Zoning (1/3): While gunshot is a good move, it's not really a zoning tool. Neither are the gas canisters. They CAN be used to zone, but in reality that's not what they're for. Gunshot, while good, goes over a lot of other projectiles (By that I mean quite a few characters duck or move their hurtbox ever so slightly when they toss projectiles and therefore duck the gunshot) and dashes. You know what, actually I'm just going to stop explaining it and put it this way:
Shazam outzones Joker.
Enough said.
Anti-zoning (2/3): This is hard to categorize because of how character specific it is. Against zoners that don't duck when shooting projectiles, gunshot is a great way to keep them in check, especially since you can hold it or dash cancel it. Against characters like Batman, who duck when they throw projectiles, life is going to suck. Why? Because I can no longer keep him in check with gunshot which means all I have left to rely on is...
Mobility (1/3): Joker's mobility is atrocious. His forward dash is mediocre, but has more ending lag than I want it to, and his backdash is borderline worthless. Pretty much I use his backdash in much the same way I used spot dodges in Smash games: Any move that has few enough active frames that the backdash outlasts the active hitbox, you can use it. Everything else don't even bother. This tends to be just interactibles and GL's B13. You may wonder, what about projectiles? Well, that works for some, but when you can't backdash an Oa's Rocket, you know you have a shitty backdash.
Oh and his walkspeed is pretty bad too.
Basically, I play Lex and Joker, and I actually think Lex has the better mobility of the two. Just think about that.
Interactible control (1.5/3): Joker's not bad with interactibles per se, but really they're nothing special for the most part. I am however giving the .5 extra for the few interactibles that actually do help him tremendously.
Hall of Justice cars give Joker the ability to zone since Gunshot can be used to pin you in place while the car comes to you, or while waiting for a new one to appear.
The cars that tend to be in the corner and that Joker can plant bombs on can be used to set up corner combos, which in turn means you lost a healthbar.
This is something I haven't told anyone yet, but since I'm leaving for a month and can't use it, here you go: The electric wires on batcave grant an OTG-able knockdown if you let the opponent just drop from them. This allows Joker to do an unblockable OTG reset with teeth and any overhead. Lex can probably do the same thing with mine although I haven't tested it. (
rev0lver test this? Might be useful.)
The Lion's heads on Themyscara also allow Joker to control a large portion of the stage and can combo into teeth.
Total: 15/30
It's not horrendous, but compared to the rest of the cast he does seem to fall a bit short. Here's to hoping we find some sort of crazy new tech...
BONUS CATEGORY: Meter building! (3/3) This should actually be a category.
Anyway, Joker does do this well. Joker builds a LOT of meter. Gunshot gives an absurd amount of meter, especially since it still gains the same amount when canceled. Teeth also give good meter, and the fact that almost every string uses a special at the end, and combos tend to use a LOT of them, he builds meter incredibly fast.
Using 8-12 bars in per round is not unusual for me. This also allows me to use super to counter-zone without crippling myself for the entire match.
EDIT:
BONUS Category 2: Unclashable Damage (1/3)
Joker doesn't really have much unclashable damage. Everything is multihit and it generally takes 4-5 hits to get to something unclashable. All in all I just resign myself to the fact my opponent will clash every game.
