Meta Knight's New Match Up Thread: Lucario

I'd like to get a new match up thread up every two-three weeks if possible.



GO!

It's like 60:40 MetaKnight's favor

grounded shuttle loop is so gay in this matchup. goes through everything lucario tries to hit MK with except spaced Fsmash. and lucario has trouble punishing it OOS. MKs Ftilt beats everything that isn't Fsmash... as long as MK stays grounded and PSes through auraspheres he'll be pretty set. Lucario's Fsmash is very useful when he makes any sort of read. Aurasphere is great when charged and beats basically anything. Dair is wonderful for stuffing Shuttle loop when timed right and beating Uair. at higher % it will beat nado... but lucario's options in general are extremely limited against MK.

Lucario just can't land against MK... seriously lol. also lucario is completely screwed on both Brinstar and RC...

when adding it all up overall it's about 65-35, maybe a bit worse...I feel it's usually a 6-4 MK but MK's instant win CP brings it to 65-35 or maybe even 7-3... though I think MK's matchup ratios are horribly undersold in general. in practice though it's a 6-4 since the lucario will know the matchup much much better.

60-40 MK's Favor however if u can play the mu right it should be 55-45 not much but its better than nothing.

Ratios mean nothing

Contribute actual MU knowledge, not numbers

Numbers don't help you win

MKs like to bait airdodges for massive punish.

Bait our Dair as if it were an airdodge, SL the living **** out of us.

basically what john#s said. nado isn't so great... but shuttle loop is just so good in this matchup... it's almost disgusting how good it is in so many situations.

MK should play like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dt3c3OMEeY ugh, hate this MU.

Anyways, hitting us so that we get sent backwards via Shuttle Loop to gimp is soooo effective against us Lucs.

MK can afford to be much more aggressive at least the first 50% of our stock because Aura really isn't too much of a threat for you guys at that point.

If we're in the air you can somewhat aggressively nado us if we don't have a 10% AS handy (10% Spheres break Nado).

Your best CP against us is probably RC, but we'll ban that.

You can even dashgrab us out of a tippered perfect shielded FSmash. >.>

We Lucarios need to learn to DI/SDI your FAir/BAir better because we will do better in this MU.

Harass us with Shuttle Loop/DAir offstage, your FAirs/DAirs/Nado creates walls that make it difficult to approach.

Be careful against Lucarios (like me) who LOVE to DAir MKs out of their Shuttle Loop.

Brinstar I would not recommend CPing us to because if Lucarios understand positioning it will be rather difficult to approach us. You'd probably be better off with CPing us to Delfino or BF than to Brinstar.

*subscribing thread*

Super long post:

Zucco can tell you from experience that in fact Brinstar is in fact actually pretty effective against Luc. Idk how much Junebug or Trela play on it since it seems that MD/VA's stagelist is relatively conservative, and Trela only really plays Dojo the most for MK. Luckily for Lucario, more and more rulesets are limiting MK's CPs to either only RC or Brinstar, so these will often be banned.

Lucario needs his double jump for recovering, as you saw in Trela v. Anti, relying on lucario's garbage upB = gimp/edgeguard fodder.

cover rolls, they will be used a lot against your tilts and you have about 50-50 chance of getting it correctly, and it will frankly do some work on Lucario if you can time the back hit of dsmash to kill him from his roll with that stronger hit <_<

Don't throw out aerials without purpose, they can get either AS'd or intercepted by Lucario's aerials in return.

Learn to tornado lucario, he's really floaty, but you can still trap him fully w/ it if you do it right. If you don't pressure his shield properly, he'll roll to save his shield up for more tornado/aerial pressure later on.

don't grounded SL a full hop or AD obv, basic stuff. Lucario is going to look for your forced KOs, make sure to play very safe until he's offstage, then go for the kill then imo. Watch out for lucario uair, I personally find myself killing with this, AS, and fsmash most often because they punish a lot of whiffed MK stuff very well.

Don't spot-dodge, if you see fsmash, learn to react quickly and dash grab before it happens for free position and damage. You can also ftilt and dash grab lucario fsmash at lower percents, at higher aura it gets a little risky to do so.

imo you want to save SL gimps for when lucario has to upB, always put some tight pressure with aerials if he is recovering high, uair will especially be useful for damage racking/killing at very late percents if you can find a pattern in the Lucario's dair. If you try getting greedy for a SL kill when he has more of his offstage options available, you usually end up with lucario making it safe on the stage and often at high aura buffs to start hammering on you.

Lucario's jab, AS, DA, and fsmash mostly comprise of his ground game to combat you. Lucario's safest punish is usually jab, and he'll do that to get grabs in or just reset to neutral to charge AS some more.

I cannot stress this more, if you have an air dodge or dodging habit at all, you will be very frustrated against Lucario. Oh yeah, don't run a lot either, you'll eat more AS and fsmash if you aren't careful with your ground movement, once you start being patient, Lucario will find it hard to get damage on you directly.

nair oos is probably your best bet for dairs that hit your shield and are too close to the ground, especially since they do so much meaty damage at low percents, just watch out for high aura dair or dairs that hit just barely on the top of your shield, he has some mixups like nair, AD, or even frame 1 FP coming down. SL preemptively covers regular fair stuff, but watch out for things he can stuff it with, especially if he rolls behind you when you commit to it, he basically gets a lot of nasty punishes he can try if he reads correctly.

This is solidly MK's favor, and totally yucky on extreme CPs like RC and Brinstar. MK's more milder CPs Lucario has some interesting gimmicks to allow him to actually be relatively decent (I don't really want to say he actually does well on those stages, but compared to most other chars, he does well), on paper, Delphino looks bad, but I've seen a lot of Lucario matches get close or even won for Lucario because of how the stage works, Frigate's at first good for lucario until you start covering wallcling as an option as well, Shuttle loop is also very strong on this stage. Avoid FD obviously, and the other stages are more or less pretty decent for MK.

Basically with these more milder stages, I would pick ultimately on preference. Some MKs like Lylat (btw, Lucario's recovery isn't as hampered as most think it is on the stage, although complicating his recovery is always good period), some like Delphino, personally, I think Frigate is the better of these milder CPs once you're more familiar with Lucario's gimmicks on the stage.

Used to hate this MU a loooooot, now not as much as I used to. It's still really dumb what sort of landing traps MK can set in store for Lucario when pressuring with tornado and the like correctly.

There's no way Brinstar is that bad for us Lucarios.

If we learned to hang out on the bottom left side we have like 10 options against approaching MKs.

The acid also helps us not get gimped so much.

Brinstar is very good against Lucario. Shark until the acid comes and space Uair so that Lucario is only hit by standing on the ground. Lucario has no option to hit MK until the acid comes up. Stall in the air when the acid comes up. Lucario actually doesn't have a good way to attack MK when the acid is up; MK can just react and either evade or hit Lucario if Lucario isn't safe.

phi1ny3 said:

imo you want to save SL gimps for when lucario has to upB, always put some tight pressure with aerials if he is recovering high, uair will especially be useful for damage racking/killing at very late percents if you can find a pattern in the Lucario's dair. If you try getting greedy for a SL kill when he has more of his offstage options available, you usually end up with lucario making it safe on the stage and often at high aura buffs to start hammering on you.

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I'm going to partially disagree with this because of how bad Lucario's DJ is against MK's properly canceled Up-B. His aerials are relatively slow on start-up and his rising air dodge is floaty enough that he is still in a very bad position if he air dodges Up-B. Because of this, Lucario's recovery is only situational against a Meta Knight player with a good reaction time.

I don't quite follow, how does letting Luc arch over with double jump -> AD make it better when he gets hit towards the stage as opposed to eliminating that/covering that option first then hammering w/ SL when he runs out of options? I can see one scenario where if Lucario's too high in percent and he careens over to the other side from SL's angle and has to recover again but w/o a jump, but I'm not sure I see what you're seeing. I see this scenario happen so often w/ MK v. Lucario, and every time even top MKs when they SL they lose that opportunity to stuff Lucario and to get him in a worse position and the last thing you want coming back onstage is a high percent Lucario. I see this thing happen several times and I have to say that I honestly don't think SL is strong enough to hinge on alone, especially if Lucario's recovering high. Now if you do that one edgeguard where you can SL cancel -> edgehog and wait while jumping to cover any option lucario throws at you, I can see that working (Viviff and Jem do this to me sometimes, and I feel it's an underrated tactic, and I think Anti used it sometimes against Trela too), but the problem is that Lucario has to be recovering from lower angles (like where Falco or marth usually have to go for, mid/low recovery) for it to work effectively.

@MTI: Zucco has never won on that stage against MK, ever (even against pocket MKs). It's also ridiculously good timeout material if MK wants to go that route. It's got a couple of things going for Lucario, but it's in no way a good stage for him, and it's definitely better for MK than Delphino/Frigate/other milder CPs.

phi1ny3 said:

I don't quite follow, how does letting Luc arch over with double jump -> AD make it better when he gets hit towards the stage as opposed to eliminating that/covering that option first then hammering w/ SL when he runs out of options? I can see one scenario where if Lucario's too high in percent and he careens over to the other side from SL's angle and has to recover again but w/o a jump, but I'm not sure I see what you're seeing. I see this scenario happen so often w/ MK v. Lucario, and every time even top MKs when they SL they lose that opportunity to stuff Lucario and to get him in a worse position and the last thing you want coming back onstage is a high percent Lucario. I see this thing happen several times and I have to say that I honestly don't think SL is strong enough to hinge on alone, especially if Lucario's recovering high. Now if you do that one edgeguard where you can SL cancel -> edgehog and wait while jumping to cover any option lucario throws at you, I can see that working (Viviff and Jem do this to me sometimes, and I feel it's an underrated tactic, and I think Anti used it sometimes against Trela too), but the problem is that Lucario has to be recovering from lower angles (like where Falco or marth usually have to go for, mid/low recovery) for it to work effectively.

@MTI: Zucco has never won on that stage against MK, ever (even against pocket MKs). It's also ridiculously good timeout material if MK wants to go that route. It's got a couple of things going for Lucario, but it's in no way a good stage for him, and it's definitely better for MK than Delphino/Frigate/other milder CPs.

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My point is that MK can basically react to Lucario jumping with Up-B for an amazing mix-up that isn't nearly as good against fast-fallers like Snake and Fox.

MythTrainerInfinity said:

There's no way Brinstar is that bad for us Lucarios.

If we learned to hang out on the bottom left side we have like 10 options against approaching MKs.

The acid also helps us not get gimped so much.

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that acid also forces us to jump. which is bad.

that and the stage layout makes moving around on the ground harder... and it seems really easy to use shuttle loop in general on this stage... and MK can just shark lol.

but meh, this matchup is so icky... it sucks being forced to win game 1 to have a real chance...

I see Exdeath. The other reason why I like uair is because when you catch lucario up high like that, sometimes uair will kill earlier than usual (although uair is often a bit stale), so you also get the benefit of a safer KO sometimes.

^and what Steam said, sharking with MK alone is really difficult on this stage when you don't have a lot of room to run. Delphino at least gives you some good layout for camping and has some platforms that aren't reachable w/ SL.

I want to contribute more to this MU thread, but I'm GOD AWFUL at the Lucario MU. >_<

Yeah I always debate whether to go MK or Snake against another Lucario in my area, because the ditto is stupid (and I know people complain about dittos, but Lucario dittos are arguably some of the worst rofl).

phi1ny3 said:

Yeah I always debate whether to go MK or Snake against another Lucario in my area, because the ditto is stupid (and I know people complain about dittos, but Lucario dittos are arguably some of the worst rofl).

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fun in friendlies. **** no in tourney.

I can't decide if Cruise or Brinstar is worse, most MKs don't scrooge me so I let them have Brinstar usually.

MK should abuse his ground game more when both are grounded, Ftilt is a pain to get through. I wouldn't Tornado Lucario unless you do it OoS or when he can't pull AS, Dair, or Fsmash. He could DT it but it requires precise timing and doesn't usually hit MK. You can outspace him for the most part and are faster which makes it very hard for Lucario to work around.

Most of the Lucs covered it very well.

When you Dthrow as MK at low %, watch his DI Lucario should DI up and away done MK should have nothing guaranteed as I have been told, however at low % I think MK can still get a Fair off from a Dthrow.

If Lucario is in the Air try and get him to dedicate to a dair and SL/Uair in his end lag.

Ban FD on Lucario, always. It is his best stage against MK MU no questions asked.

There are more opportunities for you to take advantage of the stage as a lucario player than compared to brinstar. I say master one or the other and ban the one that you suck with.

Also if MK can get lucario off stage on a neutral stage lucario is guaranteed to get at least 20% damage just do to MK being about to ledge guard very well. Lucario on stage and grounded can avoid most of MK offensive options.

60:40 MK favor.

Lucario is a worse Sheik.

Roller said:

Lucario is a worse Sheik.

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but those characters work like complete opposites >.>

@hichez- no matter how much lucario learns MK's CP stage he's very very screwed on it... Lucario mains should probably have a secondary for it. personally I just learned how to use MK on RC, because it lets me screw over everyone else too :3

but yeah... I'd say it's 65:35... though it's honestly probably worse... just lucarios know the matchup better.

@ steam that is a great plan for the long run as I am in the process of learning MK right now. But in the short term it would probably better to learn the stages. If you know RC you can screw up a lot of other characters. And Brinstar is certainly not bad for lucario in many match-ups.

phi1ny3 said:

Zucco can tell you from experience that in fact Brinstar is in fact actually pretty effective against Luc.

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He just sucks on that stage in general... no :/

as for this MU.

IMO just stay grounded, and react really well. I think Lucario gets ***** if you play properly. Aura really becomes MUCH more scary in a tournament setting, so after my set w/ john#s where I had to time him out to avoid that I changed my strategy a bit.

I really focus on getting grabs, and just dtilt/sometimes ftilt to **** w/ lucarios spacing (and occasionally give me grabs of reaction + trip). Grabs reallllly mess up lucario, because he gets the risk of getting gimped, and he's so slow in the air that once you learn to deal with dair you can really rack up damage easily.

Practice reacting and powershielding AS and Fsmash, as those are your main threats

CPs = RC (if legal), Delfino,
Bans = YI, FD

edit: Tornado sucks for approaching, don't do it lol
edit2: dont glide

Orion* said:

He just sucks on that stage in general... no :/

as for this MU.

IMO just stay grounded, and react really well. I think Lucario gets ***** if you play properly. Aura really becomes MUCH more scary in a tournament setting, so after my set w/ john#s where I had to time him out to avoid that I changed my strategy a bit.

I really focus on getting grabs, and just dtilt/sometimes ftilt to **** w/ lucarios spacing (and occasionally give me grabs of reaction + trip). Grabs reallllly mess up lucario, because he gets the risk of getting gimped, and he's so slow in the air that once you learn to deal with dair you can really rack up damage easily.

Practice reacting and powershielding AS and Fsmash, as those are your main threats

CPs = RC (if legal), Delfino,
Bans = YI, FD

edit: Tornado sucks for approaching, don't do it lol
edit2: dont glide

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IMO it's pretty effective to be in the air as well and just jump away from him to bait a reaction. Lucario's aerials are pretty slow and don't actually have very good range, and if Lucario commits to a full-hop then you can Neutral B and cover all of his options because of how much he must commit due to his floatiness. Lucario can SH/FH his Neutral Bs to try and beat this, but you can air dodge that on reaction if you give him enough room and play patiently, and he'll eventually start making a pattern that you can read and get in on him with -- assuming that he doesn't make a mistake.

I feel that Lucario is a character that is unviable on paper, but people make a lot of mistakes vs. him because of how unusual his boxes/bubbles are and Lucario as a character is designed just toward that.

@ Orion

Close range nando isn't that bad as an mix-up approach option. I wouldn't say don't use it at all to approach.

@Xdeath
Lucario in this match-up in the air is pretty unviable but on the ground I would say it is possible as long as you don't attack MK's sheild. And lucario's hit boxes aren't all that weird(except upsmash) people still underestimate them though.

I would say it would be important how MK will play on the lucario's CP of choice. I was experimenting with PS2 a bit in the match up and the air transformation in PS2 surely doesn't help MK.

hichez50 said:

@ Orion

Close range nando isn't that bad as an mix-up approach option. I wouldn't say don't use it at all to approach.

@Xdeath
Lucario in this match-up in the air is pretty unviable but on the ground I would say it is possible as long as you don't attack MK's sheild. And lucario's hit boxes aren't all that weird(except upsmash) people still underestimate them though.

I would say it would be important how MK will play on the lucario's CP of choice. I was experimenting with PS2 a bit in the match up and the air transformation in PS2 surely doesn't help MK.

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It's more-so his hurt boxes (Fsmash in particular comes to mind).

Xdeath said:

IMO it's pretty effective to be in the air as well and just jump away from him to bait a reaction. Lucario's aerials are pretty slow and don't actually have very good range, and if Lucario commits to a full-hop then you can Neutral B and cover all of his options because of how much he must commit due to his floatiness. Lucario can SH/FH his Neutral Bs to try and beat this, but you can air dodge that on reaction if you give him enough room and play patiently, and he'll eventually start making a pattern that you can read and get in on him with -- assuming that he doesn't make a mistake.

I feel that Lucario is a character that is unviable on paper, but people make a lot of mistakes vs. him because of how unusual his boxes/bubbles are and Lucario as a character is designed just toward that.

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Well In that case yes. I do agree if you're trying to time the character out. I honestly think sometimes timing out lucario is probably the most viable strategy... It's like the character wants it LOL
But if you actually have to // want to fight lucario then I would still stick with my advice.

hichez50 said:

@ Orion

Close range nando isn't that bad as an mix-up approach option. I wouldn't say don't use it at all to approach.

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Nado = Committing
Committing = Bad unless you have a read

I don't like to commit to anything unless either
A) I am forced to
B) I have a read

Therefore I don't like tornado in general that much except for it's amazing ability to option cover. But better players punish it quite consistently, and I don't like relying on other players messing up. That only weakens my game and stops me from learning, because when I play someone better I'm going to get ***** lol

What is lucario going to do mid to high percents? Approach you in the air? You have a valid argument though. Usually mk would have better options.

hichez50 said:

What is lucario going to do mid to high percents? Approach you in the air? You have a valid argument though. Usually mk would have better options.

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Shield>Neutral B/Dash grab(/Fsmash/Dsmash for greedy landings) punish the various landings of Neutral B, and Lucario can cover retreating Neutral B options fairly well if he's already grounded.

are you saying what MK can do? I am a little confused what you are trying to say.

hichez50 said:

are you saying what MK can do? I am a little confused what you are trying to say.

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I'm telling you what Lucario can do to defeat/punish Neutral B approaches.

He can also counter nado

am i the only one who thinks that frigate is not that good of a counter pick against lucario lol

No I don't think it is either, I don't take Lucario to Frigate, it's one of their better stages.

Rainbow or Brinstar are your best

lucario can beat nado from above with uair (lolass hitbox). and it works at basically any %. Dair can if his damage is high enough to do 10% with one kick. also any aurasphere that does more than 10% will beat it. auraspheres will also go through all your aerials so it's definitely best to stay grounded since lucario can actually AA MK pretty decently.

as for lucario approaching... he's probably going to be very passive while doing so and mix up DA/Dash grab/ tilts/ Fsmash depending on what he thinks you'll do. if you have a good reaction time you can make it utter hell for lucario.

also if Japes is ever legal you can CP it for basically the easiest timeout ever.

I'll post in here soon I know this MU EXTREMELY well thank you my Trel Bell <3

Your main priority in this mu is to kill lucario before he gets too much percent(I'd say no more than 130%) and becomes supercario. To be quite honest, I feel a fully charged lucario is the scariest thing in this entire game, as well as the best character minus the fact he's almost dead.
I'll go into crisis management if he gets to that point later.

Lucario has some true combos on mk such as fair-fair fair-nair etc. Basically his fair combos into a bunch of stuff.

The other super-important point is that some of his moves have transcendent priority on the edges of the hitboxes. I don't know all of them, but dair is definitely one of them. People who know them please state them.

-Approach from the air. Don't try to challenge his fsmash. You can really only punish it if your either in the air, or you powershield it.

-Learn the timings of his hitboxes. His smash attacks have stupid long-lasting hitboxes, especially upsmash(Its still there even when the aura dissipates).

-Expect him to aura sphere camp. A LOT. Treat it like falco laser spam if he's just throw a lot out of them out. If he's charging them, and he's high percent, play it extra safe and try to predict when he's going to use it. Watch him throughout the match and catch onto his aura sphere habits. This is essential when it comes to characters with chargeable projectiles/chargeable moves.


-Offstage you can gimp him on several stages, although he can wall cling to many surfaces so he doesn't have to go for the ledge or stage every time. His upb is beat by everything; its just predicting where he's going with it. A lot of lucarios will fire a charged aura sphere at you while they are coming to back to make you react, then upb right away. So don't go after them linearly; go from above or below.



SuperCario crisis management: DO NOT BE AGGRO. When hes supercario think of him as snake, and that all of his smashes and tilts pack the power of snake's uptilt. Wait for him, react to him. If he whiffs and you know you have time to punish WITHOUT A DOUBT, Go for it. Lucarios will try to frame trap. They throw a move you think you can punish, you go for it, whiff, and die at 90. Don't do it.

The only time you should be aggro is if he's off stage. Just be wary of the auraspheres.



Stages:

Stages to pick: Small blast zones are the most important thing when cping lucario. Brinstar is a great choice. Rainbow is good due to limited mobility and several close blast zones. Smashville is good as well. Halberd is ok, but its short hitbox is off the top, so keep that in mind.

Stages to ban:
Yoshi's island. Its his best stage overall because of the pretty good sized blast zone, and he can wall cling anywhere on the sides of YI so its easy for him to get back.

FD: Huge blast zone, so he lives forever. Plus he can camp hard here.

MK vs Lucario
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcFhczwHEsA&feature=channel_video_title