Pressure
EX Spin fastest move in entire game (if not is top 3 for sure)
Teleport safe in many situations
and only with those tools Lao can wipe the entire roster
u now thats true bruh , thats no sin using Lao , but its true that lao is OP since MK 2...
Btw congrats for all ur wins foxy u deserve it , ur matchs r highly enjoyable .
Right, his pressure only comes from spending meter, and 2 of the he uses afterwards make him lose his turn and force him to either spin or block, he can't move (very important). His only +moves for pressure come from an 8f high (so any character with a 6f normal doesn't have to respect his 'pressure') so he's kinda weak to fast low pokes, which means you gotta throw people loads in a round to win. Either that or check people with f2, which again loses him his turn unless he wants to spend a bar for +frames.
Also, his main pressure string has a gap in it that a lot of characters can full combo punish him for doing.
Teleport is just all round a bad move and he doesn't have any safe teleport set ups anyway. And especially considering the reward from a successful teleport is greatly overshadowed by the opponents potential to punish it in most cases. This is a golden rule of playing Kung Lao 'never teleport'.
His general design seems good but his frame data and movement just don't really work for him. He can be -3 and automatically be forced to hold whatever anybody with at least an 11f mid has to put on him, so for example:
Shinnok gets guaranteed f4 check
Kitana gets guaranteed b1 check
Mileena b12
Cage f3
Cassie b1
Kotal b1
Liu b1
Lao f2
And so on.
He doesn't have the luxury of using his normals for baiting a response for example, using max range f2 to bait pokes against a lot of characters because his walk back sucks.
Another thing about him is he has no real comeback factor, the only reason you get hit by Lao is because you're pressing buttons when you shouldn't be, but it's usually quite clear where his pressure ends.
His neutral game forces him into these situations I've listed, because his hat 'zoning' will only get him so far.
So IMO Lao isn't (in the current build or the beta) this amazing top 1 character everybody's been freaking out about, he's just had multiple good representatives in tournament. Which is fair considering he stops people from jumping, which seems to be a staple habit for a lot of MK players.
And if you wanna talk about ex spin, it's usually more of a risk to Lao to spin, than it is his opponent. But again, people don't wanna bait.
If you wanna see the weaknesses of Lao exposed, just watch any footage of me in the mirror up to this point. I put what I say into practice.