Match-Up Discussion #35! Lucas

Lucas​

Go ^_^

While Lucas is able to break out of the release grab earlier, I believe he get's ***** HARDER.

Ness has superior aerial ability compared to Lucas, in my opinion.
While Lucas has the better 'ground' ability.

Lucas' ground ability is destroyed by Marth, and due to a weaker aerial game can't even defend around there either.

Ratio = Ness +5 for Marth, -5 for Lucas

Lucas is tricky. Marth does outrange him, but Lucas has a few tricks that make it interesting for Marth. As with Ness, we will not mention grab release tricks until the end of the discussion.

Fair zoning and dtilt still apply here, but be cautious of PK Fire and PK Thunder disrupting your zoning. PK fire should be perfect shielded quite simply, but PK Thunder is another story. Use smart dodging tactics to avoid it.

Lucas' Nair is cherished by him, due to it's speed, damage, auto-canceling, and combo-ability. Try to Dolphin Slash out of shield on reaction. Lucas's Fair loses to most of your stuff, and his Dair is mediocre at best, same solution if used as an approach. Both the last hit of his Bair, and his Dair are meteor smashes, so try to be wary of this. Counter if either of these moves are going to hit you, and can be clearly seen.

Don't try and hit Lucas more than twice in a row off stage. Returning to the stage and batting him back out there is more effective. Dairing Lucus while he's trying to PK Thunder should be relatively easy though. RAR ftw.

Lucas' Fsmash has tremendous range, so be cautious. Counter it the answer to this move, and make sure the Lucas is not charging the usmash to bait out your counter and punish. The same goes for Dsmash, you can just jump into this with counter. The Fsmash is just good, and though good zoning should defeat it, it's still relatively sneaky, and has good knockback. DI appropriately and pay attention here.

I'm not sure if Lucas even has a Zair, as I never see it used. Even so, I'm relatively sure that it doesn't apply much, as we out-range it probably.

Someone else more knowledgeable than me please talk about B-Sticking.

65-35 Marth.

Marth has a very good option for anything Lucas may try to do. In another words...Marth ***** Lucas. If Lucas is throwing out PK Fire, you can simply Perfect Shield, even if you do get hit, its not as bad as Ness's. PK Thunder you can SH airdodge or stand there and wait for it to hit your shield. If you can close to him as he uses it, you can dsmash (Marths quickest smash) him easily. All Lucas's smashes and tilts are beaten by either your ftilt, dtilt, SB, or SH F-air. Lucas really has no options, if you space correctly.

Edgeguarding is as simple as a f-air, which youll have plenty of time to hit him as he tries to recover with his PK thunder.

Oh...dont get hit by his upsmash lol.

65:35 Marth.

Uh, you can't run into hit PKThunder for a guaranteed K.O.. This is Lucas, not Ness. The PK Thunder will just own you as Lucas recovers, by going right through you.

Pierce7d said:

Uh, you can't run into hit PKThunder for a guaranteed K.O.. This is Lucas, not Ness. The PK Thunder will just own you as Lucas recovers, by going right through you.

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Really? I could of sworn that works on Lucas as well. Learn something new everyday.

I'm oing to have to go with 70-30 here, because this is like Ness, but just not as bad for Lucas since you can't run into PK thunder for the gimp and he breaks out of the grab release quicker than Marth. This should be fairly easy, but I have to say watch out for his meteor smashes, they are annoying. Lucas has a good ground game, but Marth can get through fairly easily. Watch out for PK Fire though.

This is a matchup that I've played a lot, actually, since one of my only sparring partners mained Lucas. He wasn't too up to date on all the advanced techniques like zap jumping, though.

Anyway, the basic idea on the ground is to get inside the PK fire range but outside his ftilt / jab range, both of which are VERY quick (jab comes out on frame 2 and ftilt has gotta be in the first 10 frames). You have to act quickly once you get inside otherwise he can just take a step toward you and ftilt. dtilt is your friend, as usual. Fair is also a good option, as usual, just be careful upon landing because he has a long grab range (even if it's laggy), and he has PK fire.

If you're above him, be careful. His Usmash is really predictable, but charging mindgames catch everyone once in a while. His uair and utilt are both fairly quick, though neither have great range. PK Thunder can be annoying. You can try to swat at it or just airdodge / fastfall and DI away from it.

PK Thunder is really annoying when you're recovering. The Lucas player can put the PK Thunder in the path of your DS trajectory to return to the edge. If you activate DS, you're going to be hit (and sometimes stage spiked, unfortunately). Mix it up with rising DB, save your double jump and I dare say use shieldbreaker momentum gimmicks once in a while (best if you're far away, obviously, but it can help you get away from PKT).

Aerially this is a cake walk. His fair is quick with decent range, but proper spacing beats it. Dair is not really an issue. Bair can be annoying when you are hanging from the ledge, because it has a weird range and can spike you once the invincibility frames from hanging are over. Nair is nice for combos but if you space you can avoid it and punish it (shielding -> DS works too).

His dsmash has multiple hits, be wary of this when you are getting back onto the stage / ledge invincibility frames. Usmash is really powerful but slow. Fsmash is his best smash, it's fast, has fairly good range, good damage and good knockback. He should be saving this, so look out for it.

My suggestion is do what you can to get him into the air. He's harder to fight on the ground.

You can run into it, there's just some kind of specific way that it happens. I think you have to run into it as soon as PKT1 starts up, but I'm not sure. I've definitely done it on accident before, though.

Without chain grab I'll put this at 65:35 because he's like ness, only he honestly has a better moveset. He has the strongest spike in the game if you get hit by it(which you shouldn't), a better pk thunder for edge-guarding, and a better recovery due to wave-bouncing pk fire. With chain grab, he does a bit better than ness so it goes up to 70:30....maybe 75:25? Honestly, to me Lucas actually has half-way decent spacing tools to keep Marth back for at least a little while as he racks up damage. Also, his usmash(while slow as hell), can kill Marth pretty **** early if they connect it.

stop comparing Lucas with Ness, please
Grab-release is not as bad as it is with Ness. Marth pummel is weak, and if the Lucas knows what's he doing, then each grab will make only like 2%. Grab-release is good when going for the kill.
If Lucas uses nair and you shield, the best thing you can do is your upB, but be carefull, Lucas can move horizontally enough to avoid the attack and then punish. Also, it is hard to grab with after the nair, because Lucas can fast fall the attack and avoid the last hit, so the nair doesn't last the same time always.
if Lucas traps you in a nair to nair combo, use your counter.
counter won't stop lucas dair, if lucas full hop dair, and you counter the first hit, the other 3 hits will hit you
don't airdode the PKT, Lucas can turn around hit for a PKT2 or to hit you again. The best way to stop PKT, is hitting the head of it with a fair
PK Fire is really annoying, is not that easy to avoid like "just powershield"
i have a lot of experience vs Marths, i have videos vs my friends' Marths (K1000o and Kingke), you can watch them in my signature

Ankoku's right. The sad-grab isn't nearly as effective as it is on Ness (I hear conflicting data about dash-grabs, but when it comes down to it, if the lucas is trying to escape the grabs range, he leaves himself open in stun at exactly tipper range)

Lucas's recovery is good, marth's gets edgeguarded really easily. This is the one and only advantage lucas has in the matchup imo.

DS beats any of lucas's "combos", which is unfortunate, because without them, lucas is inferior at damage racking and spacing.

Which leaves pk fire. you'll get hit sometimes, but it doesn't make that much difference. Learn to get inside it quickly, but learn to space well so you don't get hit with the ftilt/utilt. but come on, you play marth, so it's not like spacing is something you don't do EVERY game.

Usmash on lucas isn't a threat. I'm disappointed to see it mentioned so much.

Wavebouncing is used for one of three things: spacing PK fire more safely, a mixup for the psiM KO, or really fast recovery. the second one of those points is really situational, and you can react with an ftilt to prevent this because you're marth.

APC is right. Lucas =/= ness. They don't even have similar playstyles. I'd automatically discount matchup information given by someone who said "ness" in their post, if it wasn't preceded by "lucas isn't much like".

I powershield PK Fires alot, actually.

I constantly play a spamming lucas with my marth... plz help

sounds good... what about his up a? that is spmmed like 15 times a match and i always seem to get caught in his cheap-o charge up attacks cause their range is so good...

Pierce7d said:

Uh, you can't run into hit PKThunder for a guaranteed K.O.. This is Lucas, not Ness. The PK Thunder will just own you as Lucas recovers, by going right through you.

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Can you just swipe at the PK Thunder?

you can counter it tho. that i do know but it just defends you and usually doesnt do anything to lucas (unless you counter the very end of his thunder pk)

ok. sounds good. glad marth is my main

The matchup is 65:35 Marth's favor. If the Lucas knows what he's doing with spacing it's actually not all that bad. Fair can hit PK Fire so that the burst doesn't hit you if you space it right. Perfect shielding PK Fires is easy. A good Lucas player will work the lag from it and his spacing so that even were you to rush in after perfect shielding he can jab you as you approach. Dair is not counterable when done correctly. Up B does not stop autocancelled Nair combos if they're done correctly. I don't mess around with unautocancelled Nair combos because they're easily stopped by shielding things. Autocancelled Nairs repeated with proper spacing once you've shielded is only avoided by rolling. Nair has low priority though so if you predict it and are watching your spacing you can always outprioritize it easily. Lucas's game will revolve a lot around Dair combos, well spaced PK Fire and lots of edgeguarding. Marth is very vulnerable during his recovery. Lucas should never get edgeguarded by Marth. His recovery is long distance enough to avoid it if you know what you're doing.

Using Marth, I would suggest more ground approaches because it's easier to get inside Lucas's safety zone that way. With Marth in the air Lucas has more opportunities to hit with tilts and PK Fires. If the Lucas player isn't spamming smashes all over the place you won't get too many opporunities for a grab. Lucas's aerial approaches are safe if you use the right ones and space them just right. Grab release infinite is very bad for Lucas but we'll pick counterpick stages such as Brinstar or Norfair to help us out there. Marth is very beatable for Lucas. Don't act like winning is a foregone conclusion because it definetly is not. I would argue that Lucas does significantly better against Marth than Ness does but that's not really what this thread is about.

Also watch out for cross stage spamming. PKT1 and PK Freeze can both be used to camp from across large stages. These are both for the most part easily avoidable as long as you don't let them catch you offguard. Again, both of these are not easily punishable if the Lucas player is using them correctly. PKT1 can't be perfect shielded if directed correctly but you can hit it with an attack and might be able to make it there to punish in time if there isn't too much distance. Play it safe against PK Freeze. There is hardly any lag after the explosion for Lucas so he can be waiting with jabs if you're slow on punishment. In fact I use PK Freeze to bait opponents into walking right into my jabs all the time.

Hope this helps. Don't underestimate Lucas. You have the advantage by a good margin. Don't get cocky.

That was a well written explanation, I will save this for future reference when battling, thank you very much every question I have for now has been answered PM me so we can battle please Tyr_03 I wanna battle you

I havent played any great Lucas players, but how much do they use Usmash?

His smash attacks are generally good but slow, but i'm not sure what his most frequent moves would be besides zoning with PK fire and PK Freeze.

Nibbity said:

I havent played any great Lucas players, but how much do they use Usmash?

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Hardly, its super punishable and very difficult to land. If used constantly than it becomes a high reward, higher risk kind of thing.

i'm a lucas player. balance is the key for me. personally, while his air attacks may be weak, timing can make it just as good as the ground. :D besides, ganondorf has the best spike.

The best spike in the game actually goes to Ness >_>

whatever the case, i think lucas has the better margin against marth. and to answer other questions, i don't use usmash too often. i typically use r and lsmash, with combos in between

I dont think his spike will really matter.

Ignore his u smash. Lucas players will NEVER or maybe,, use u smash.

His n air is amazing, his f smash have almost no lag at all but very deadly


Edit. 65 : 35 btw

maybe? usmash is fairly common, actually

and anyone care to brawl, anyway?

oh ok i see

BengalsRZ said:

Hardly, its super punishable and very difficult to land. If used constantly than it becomes a high reward, higher risk kind of thing.

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That's what I figured, if you miss with that thing it's a good fmash if you so choose. I also think Dsmash isn't too popular for the same reason.

u smash common in Team? yes. but i rarely use u smash.

70-30, advantage Marth.



The Grab Release to FSmash thing hurts alot.


Though I still wouldn't suggest playing against Lucas at Norfair.

You mean grab release infinite... That's what hurts, the fact that Marth can infinite him and then tip a Dsmash for the kill.

S.O.L.I.D. said:

You mean grab release infinite... That's what hurts, the fact that Marth can infinite him and then tip a Dsmash for the kill.

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Wrong. It's an even shorter chaingrab than it is on Ness. The "deathgrab" will usually be literally the follow-up from the release, and not even multiple chained grabs. <_<

What? I do not understand what you said... I mant tha=e fact that Marth can not only chain his rabs but then like I said, tip a dsmash for the kill.

Thats what i do. Lucas gets pwned. Some times i just mess with the person and get them to 200% and then throw them up.