Kung Lao is not underrated at the moment. His biggest strength is f1, which can not be safely confirmed. You have to commit to giving up your turn(f12) or offering a potential punish(f13).
F21 is unsafe. There is nothing but orbiting hat to save you. This string will KB to allow a popup and some pretty decent damage. Being slower and punishable, best saved for whiff punishing.
B3 is a good low starting string that no one should ever be hit by because Lao is the only character that has virtually no overhead unless he leaves the ground.
D3 will sometimes jail a s2, unless the opponent is female or breathing heavily or had sausage for breakfast or you dont believe in the heart of the cards.
Wakeup u2 doesnt catch jump overs and often not even jump ins, which is hilarious looking since he swipes his hat from front to back.
Teleport is more useless in this game IMO than ever. Ending combos in f4 tele- its sometimes useable with amplify to wait for them to whiff their wakeup but its really a gimmick.
Hat toss.
Divekick is very strong in this game, IADK are great for punishing D4s on whiff and just mistakes in general. Jumping around(not in you buffoons) becomes sort of a mind game when you mix in short hops and whiff dive kicks, esp in certain matchups(Geras, looking at ya with the sand trap)
Orbiting hat is exclusively to create staggers and make strings safe, but each use costs half of your resources. One offense, one defense. So hopefully one stagger will open someone up. Which leads to
Some characters unreasonably depend on grabbing. Lao is one.
Ji2 is awkward to get used to sorta, but its pretty good. Consistently air-to-airing Kabals n shit.
Hop1/2 has a pretty good hotbox.
ZHat Deals great chip damage, provides oki that is defeated entirely by forward escape roll and sometimes a decent jump in. Meterless version can straight up be punished this way, even if cancelled off f4.
Hat Toss
His Damage is pretty average. His non KB and Fatal Blow combos range from 21-40%, with both he can net up to 51%.
His mids are average to below average.
His pokes are decent at best, except stubby d1, its trash. Always use d3 close, d4 for
Farther.
Counter Zone? Sure. You can try. Hat Toss is really good in this game.
Variations are garbage.
Worst Teleport in the game.
Grab and D2 Krushing Blows aside, he gets one reasonable KB requirement. Whiff punish with f214. Two Divekicks in a row is bad, you have to play sub optimal to fish for that. Same for tele3 then tele4. Just garbage.
Match Ups? I havent ran into a landslide sloppy Helpless feeling due to a character match up yet, I will say that Cassie, Sonya, even Kabal and Baraka, and others with fast projectiles or mobility, give Lao trouble.
To me, he falls in that middle of the pack. I play Lao and Noob. Noob is far better for many, many reasons.
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