Switched from cyrax to lao and the difference is night and day.
Just going over the more general pro's:
-It gives johnny a solid zoning tool.
-It allows johnny to approach with his stubby normals.
-Low hat is inexplicably +2 on block.
-Johnny has 3 strings that synergise very well with low hat. 212, 214(4) and F124. All of these will make it that the person has to fuzzyguard for their life while reacting to staggers.
-Meterless trait activation midscreen
OKI:
in the corner you want to end every combo in s4 lowhat- this give you +25 when they stand up without sacrificing much damage. You get jailing pressure after or can sneak in a f4 to keep them on their toes.
For slower armour this will armour break, effectively this gives johnny a meterless +25 restand in the corner against most of the cast.
Even for faster wakeups its possible to armour break. (though you need to give up a bit more damage)
Midscreen you can do your normal BNB but end it in s4 hat.
This pressure is obviously a lot less guaranteed but depending on your timing you can create horrible mix with f124 and 212 2144 from the hat.
I like to delay the hat to hit low just before the overhead of f124 and 212- or 2144 you can have it hit low (low) overhead in very quick succession.
If you release hat early it will give you more guaranteed pressure outside of them armouring but less mix potential.
this can give you setups like these:
The other dirty thing is with trait you can do low hat on block off specials. I have been able to sneak trait into shadow kick on block because people are conditioned by all the hat mix.
Only 6f pokes can trade with this and its got a mix of if you will do it on the second or third hit.
This also means when you finish combos into NP with trait active you can do blockstrings into specials and end with hat into +2
(you can just do 214 lao spin s4 trait NP for that as a starter on trait combos)
Biggest counter to this is subzero cameo with ice armour. Really shuts it down entirely.
