Okay so here is how my hattrick Kung lao plays:
Hat trick Kung lao has to play very defensive until he gets a knockdown. So this variation is best for characters that aren't afraid to fight up close against buzzsaw, you don't want to use this variation against zoners. You basically sit back and throw out a hat trap in front of you and control that space. In that space you can convert the 11212, b12, f23 strings into a hat call back into b321spin, b321 hat trap. What this does is you end them in a hard knockdown while cancelling into a hat trap at the same time(wakeup attacks can't blow this up not even buzzsaw spin). The options you have after setting this up are:
- call the hat back and try to launch them if they aren't blocking. If they blocked the hat you get free guaranteed pressure, you can go into strings or a grab.
- pressure with 11212, b12 and after every string you can call the hat back so they always have to respect that option, which opens up a lot of grab options for you. all these strings can be htconfirmed into over 30% meterless damage by ending in the doubel divekick combo or almost 30% damage by looping the setup by ending the combo with the b321 hat trap ender.
- just grab, depending on how you pressured the opponent, he or she will still be in the hat trap range and will have to respect the hat call back after the grab tech. You will have to be wary of armor and jumps at times but try to scout that and block and beat the jumps with standing 1 which is a very good antiair.
- back up and the space you control will be even larger, your opponent will have to fear approaching you because you can call the hat back at anytime and it has an 8 frame startup and is hella plus if they block it. You could do stuff like run in after they block the hat you just called back.
- The opponent can walk back to try to walk out of the hat range, but you can call the hat back at any moment when they do so, also when you are at full screen you can prevent the opponent from walking out of that range because the screen has to follow both characters. Also backdash attempts after this knockdown setup can be blown up by calling the hat back.
Apart from the non variation tools he can use in this variation his hattrick ex straight hat can be used to whiff punish something that is from very far away. It is a 15 frame launcher and you have plenty of time to run in and convert it into the 44 combo.
Your game in this variation basically begins when you get in that first hit and end in the knockdown setup. It basically only takes the first hit and 2 succesful loops of this setup to end the opponents lifebar without counting in breakers. I just started messing with hat trick yesterday but there are probably a lot of possibilities off of this setup. I hate to use this word but this is kind of his setplay variation and Imo is very useful and a lot better than tempest.
I knew this variation had potential
