BunLantern
Long live b13 minigun
So does anyone have any actual advice for this matchup? I found it exceedingly difficult. In the games I won, I always did it one of two ways.
1. Get some early pressure before Fate could get a lot of meter, and take a big life lead. At this point I was happy to trade EX boulder or EX lantern with Fate's shots from full screen because eventually I would win the attrition war.
2. Push Fate into the corner where I could run the corner blender that I posted about a few posts back, and hurt him enough to get a healthy lead.
The fact that, unlike Deadshot, you can't duck under his shots from fullscreen means that Fate builds an insane amount of meter and, even when blocking properly, it takes me what seems like too much life to get in.
One of my biggest system complains is actually about EX Roll. This is supposed to be the way to get around zoners by spending a bar, but I feel like it doesn't let you start the EX early enough, so I found I was eating shit a lot of the time just trying to actually make the roll on an otherwise correct read. General gripe.
Anyone with notes on this matchup, I'd love to hear what you're doing, or to see any match footage of a Lantern consistently handling a (competent) Dr. Fate. Meanwhile, I'm just going to keep grinding with Dancock and hope I get things closer to 50/50 before Evo hahaha.
Getting the first hit and applying pressure seems like the best way for GL to beat a competent Fate. If you let him get away at the start of a match you're giving him a life lead and a meter lead even if you work your way in perfectly blocking everything (which let's be honest is rare even for a great player). The match up is surely in Fate's favor but there are some things GL can do to get in.
B1 his fireball, it moves you closer faster than crouching in and you avoid the chip. However a meterburn fireball will blow this up and if he has an orb set up on screen this might not be an option. This does nothing to help with Fate gaining a hefty meter advantage.
Use Brick Wall to block orbs and projectiles. This again can be blown up by meter burn projectiles or an orb and a fireball hitting in quick succession. However if timed right it can help to at least keep the meter advantage some what close for if and when you get in.
Land a Bowl Over. If you manage to land a bowl over you can cover some serious ground. It's not the easiest thing to do because Fate recovers much quicker than Lantern but the risk can be worth it. This is usually something to try if nothing else seems to be working.
Traited Battery Blast can help even out zoning. I don't like doing this but sometimes it's necessary in this match up. For a few seconds when trait is active you can at least compete in the zoning war with Fate due to a speedier Battery Blast. The downside is obviously that if you do get in you won't have trait for set ups and bigger damage causing you to use precious meter assuming you even have that.
TLDR: The match up is a pain in the ass and GL has ok options, just no great ones.