So we all know Kenshi and Kitana are bad right? I wanna take a few minutes to talk about this variation and why it sucks. Now you may be thinking to yourself, "But Panty, you're playing a risk/reward character and you make reads like you never passed kindergarten! why should we listen to you!"
Heres the thing, i still know a thing or two about how the character works, or should work rather. so ill go through a few problems with him and simple fixes that can be made to help see more Hat trick around.
Lao Cant spin:
this may be a design oversight from the other two variations. as when lao throws his hat it would seem fair that he has a short cooldown before he gains access to his hat based moves again. This variation suffers that same rule, the difference is the whole point of this variation is to set traps with his hat on the screen for an extended period of time. not being able to spin means he actually loses tools for punishes on teleports or certain armored wus.
Let Hat Trick Lao spin with hat on the screen. even if ex spin only gets 1 hit instead of 3 i think thats a fair tradeoff.
The Hat trap itself:
standard hat trap is a high, low hat trap is a mid. there is almost no reason to use standard hat trap. certain moves cancelled into a hat call will actually cause the standard hat to whiff, making it dumb. Another problem is they both have HUGE startup(39 for regular, 43 for low) i dont think he has any stagger strings even on hit with enough cancel advantage to make this not full combo punishable. The only truly viable way to set the hat up is on a b321 hkd cancelled into the hat. Any KD can work i guess but it can be tech rolled.
um make both hats mid. I guess Im ok with the hat trap only really being good on knock down but even there the opponent still has a lot more options.
The trap goes away when he gets hit:
All the effort you put into setting up that hat? gone with a poke! you spend more time trying to set the damn thing up than actually getting to use it. It's also really not very easy to convert off of in many situations.
In a game where d1/2/3/4 do not combo into specials, i dont think its unfair for lao to keep that hat on the screen until he gets to use it or it goes away after time. This can be a sensitive fix though because if lao can keep the hat when he gets knocked down without being able to spin, he has no wu. so i dont think its fair to give him 1 without the other. If in the absence of being able to spin with hat on the screen and he can keep the hat on hit, maybe he can keep it on stagger but it comes back when lao gets knocked down.
Hatarang:
His ex hat toss in this variation. Its a Mid- high. not only is there a gap between the hat going and coming back, its a frickin high.
make this move a Mid-mid.
Hat Trick Lao could possibly be the ONLY variation in the game where the draw to the variation actually TAKES AWAY his tools. hopefully some of this stuff is just design oversight as i cant imagine this character being intended to be this way or left this way.
