Some cool stuff here!
On the topic of tournament prep, there were a few bad habits that stood out to me about your play (even though these are just casuals). Jumping yourself into the corner over and over, and not going for 44 after ex straight hat, but instead going for tele-grab (which is less damage) or tele-overhead (mad unsafe)
Time stamp for ref: 7:30
Also, why do you do throw the low backward trap on knockdown in the corner? Having a hard time seeing what it covers.
Yeah, when i place a trap away from my opponent and have no enough meter, the goal is force them to block in order to build it more quickly, its not exactly a mixup attempt to open someone up, the variation needs constantly of it to maintain a certain rate of pressure with ex call backs, that is why you see me jumping over in the corner most of the time, so i can put them in between KL and the hat to get the guaranteed chip as a whole.
Those are also riskier and if they decide to punish me for it they can do it either if they think its a jump into call back or just a jump 2 to force a stand block, the thing is, if i can read it, i should also be able to punish them for it, problem is, the variation only combos in two conditions:
1. Hat needs to be in the head, which allows for any type of punishing
2. Hatless Kung Lao can only do good damaging combos when the opponent is in between him and the hat.
About the combo intentional dropping, those are just testings, i was trying a few new stuffs out with those resets, to see how people respond to those, that grab was definitely miss calculated, needed one more bar to get the ex grab, and the blocked overhead is definitely the draw back of that decision.
As i said before, i'm re-exploring it, i like the away hat trap concept a lot, a good ex TP~MB throw into a combo from the oposite hat can be 43% which is pretty good, sadly indeed those aren't options to go as much on a match since they're just gimmicks and would definitely be real tech if he could have these type of threats of comboing even with hat away or above, those new experiences you can see them summarized here:
The fruits of your hat trick guide can be seen in these 2 videos, be wary tho, these past versions are pre- XL and even then he was still better than the actual version now, since he was also affected by general gameplay issues, general changes and so on and nothing to compensate, still like him regardless:
