3.5 Lucas Guide

[D e l t a]

This guide has been moved to:

http://smashboards.com/threads/lightning-fast-a-project-m-lucas-guide.392732/

If you have any questions about my guide, please post them in the above link or feel free to directly message me. I will be answering any and all questions you have there.

Thank you,
Delta

 

[D e l t a]

Reserved for the future

 

[Han D Mon]

This is a great guide. I'm wondering if PK magnet(shine) to DJC fair is even a good option on shield as it was in 3.0.
I'm also curious about any of his shine>wd back combos especially since the hit lag was increased.

 

[Han D Mon]

Update: I just found out that you can actually practice Lucas shield pressure by using the pillars in Shadow Moses Island. This serves useful in training your Lucas shield pressure. You can also pretty much just decrease the damage ratio in group smash and practice that way.

 

[D e l t a]

This is a great guide. I'm wondering if PK magnet(shine) to DJC fair is even a good option on shield as it was in 3.0.
I'm also curious about any of his shine>wd back combos especially since the hit lag was increased.

First off, thank you for the compliment!

I am filling in the shield pressure section when I get a complete write-up. I apologize if the guide is still somewhat incomplete, college life is hard to do everything at once haha.

tl;dr - Yes, magnet still works as great shield pressure and can combo very effectively in 3.5 In debug mode, Magnet -> aerials / magnet -> magnet on shield still works, just not to the same degree that 3.02 Lucas / spacies can pressure shield. Magnet combos are still super hype and work very well.

==

PRESSURE

3.5 Magnet eats away a large portion of an opponent's shield, but the timings are very strict now. Being frame perfect with jumping out of magnet is a few frames slower than 3.02 magnet, and will be -2 on shield according to the PM website.

As for myself, I have abandoned previous shield pressure with magnet into another magnet / aerial and instead I force the opponent to react with running in magnets -> wavedash back. This is not 100% safe; however, it is very hard to react to and punish accordingly. Furthermore, running in and putting out light taps on shield accomplishes decent shield damage, safe pressure, and will cause one of the following to occur:

1. Baits out grabs / OoS options, making them whiff and think twice next time how to counter this approach. This slows down their gameplay because they're thinking more and acting less.
2. I force them to retreat, granting better stage control
3. They attempt to rush me down at which point I have already calculated this option and planned out how to beat their typically reckless approach.
​

With running up magnet on shield, the enemy feels rushed down and runs back or I punish their whiffed option OoS.

MAGNET COMBOS

I am in the process of filling up a section in this guide about combos. His magnet combos work close to the same because hitlag will essentially affect both players. Most magnet combos other than Magnet -> immediate aerial such as Magnet -> DJC Uair for combo starters or Mag -> Bair to kill are extremely tight on timing, if not frame perfect now. I stick with the guarantee of Magnet -> WD back aerial / Upsmash with these new timings.

 

[D e l t a]

Update: I just found out that you can actually practice Lucas shield pressure by using the pillars in Shadow Moses Island. This serves useful in training your Lucas shield pressure. You can also pretty much just decrease the damage ratio in group smash and practice that way.

This is the way I used to practice shield pressure / Lucas magnet hitlag timing

• Have an extra controller. Doesn't matter how good it is, as long as the analog stick works.
• Hold up when plugging into the game.
  • Registers as holding down after you plug it in and release from the "up" position
• Select Bowser
• Use a different controller for Lucas
• Change Damage Ratio to 0.5x

I generally chose FD so that platforms didn't get in my way while practicing multi-magnets or magnet -> aerials. Bowser's CC armor combined with 0.5x dmg ratio will make Bowser go minuscule distances. Until about 200-250%, he rarely went anywhere for me. I found this method to work more efficient in terms of time and consistency. SMI pillars take too long >_>

 

[Badge]

Being frame perfect with jumping out of magnet is a few frames slower than 3.02 magnet, and will be -2 on shield according to the PM website.

The 3.5 Lucas changelist is jank. Magnet has 3 frames less advantage on shield now, making it +4 into jump. Thus it's +0/+3 (grounded/aerial) for when your opponent can do anything versus when you can do an aerial. 3.0 magnet used to be +7, which was quite broken (like, had Lucas had a normal grab, he could have grabbed out of magnet even against buffered spotdodges.)
It takes 5 frames more before you can jc than in 3.0, because the repeating hitboxes also had their hitlag normalized. That doesn't really affect advantage on shield, though. (iirc a buffered roll/spotdodge now comes out between the hits, but gets hit by the release hit, which is actually an advantage as long as magnet isn't stale enough to allow frame 2 invincible moves.)

That Bowser training-dummy idea is genius btw.

 

[D e l t a]

Thanks for the knowledge drop. I'll be sure to add some of this to the guide. If only PM website could make an official change log with correct information completely filled out as they changed stuff...

 

[Swampy948]

This guide will be very helpful. Especially the shield pressure. Thanks.

Does anyone know why players like Neon and Calabrel short hop before using PSI magnet? I assume it's supposed to make jumping out of it easier, but it actually makes it more difficult for me.

 

[D e l t a]

This guide will be very helpful. Especially the shield pressure. Thanks.

Does anyone know why players like Neon and Calabrel short hop before using PSI magnet? I assume it's supposed to make jumping out of it easier, but it actually makes it more difficult for me.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe his magnet is similar to Falco's shine, where performing in the air allows for earlier jump input out of magnet.

 

[Swampy948]

Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe his magnet is similar to Falco's shine, where performing in the air allows for earlier jump input out of magnet.

I didn't even know that about Falco @.@ I'll try it. I see everyone do that and it kind of confuses me. I know for sure that it's easier to hit that way, rather than running crouching, then PSI magnet.

 

[Badge]

Does anyone know why players like Neon and Calabrel short hop before using PSI magnet? I assume it's supposed to make jumping out of it easier, but it actually makes it more difficult for me.

You can't use magnet during your initial dash, but have to wait until you go into run. Dash lasts 11 frames for Lucas, so you can't magnet until frame 12 out of a dash. If you jump before using magnet you can use it as soon as frame 6 after starting dash. It'd be even faster to pivot magnet, but that's also a lot harder. SH magnet also works in both dash and run, so that makes things easier still (it's unneeded during run, but only really detrimental if you're being reactive and couldn't plan 4 frames in advance.)
Another reason to shorthop before using magnet ist that your DJ only takes 1 frame before it can be interrupted. This makes anything you do out of magnet faster, even more so for DJC aerials (because you'd have to DJ anyway.) For this to work you have to wait at least 1 frame after the shorthop, because otherwise you'd land between the two magnet hits.
Wavebounce magnet also doesn't work out of run, only b-reversed magnet.

In 3.0 you usually wanted to wait for one frame after the shorthop because you'd otherwise land before the first hitbox of magnet comes out, which delayed it by 3 or so frames, making magnet slower than had it been used 1 frame later. Since 3.5 this doesn't occur, making the 1 frame wait less vital (you still often want it for the DJ instead of jump cancel.)

This new thing in 3.5 is actually pretty cool. Magnet on frame 1 vs frame 2 of a shorthop now both has advantages. Magnet on frame 1 is faster and the jump cancel doesn't use up your DJ, making it safer and allowing dj-canceling a followup magnet. Magnet on frame 2 is slower (by 1 frame), but the cancel is faster and leads directly into DJC aerials if so desired. It also has the additional mixup of waiting for 4 frames before the jump cancel to get a grounded jump again.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe his magnet is similar to Falco's shine, where performing in the air allows for earlier jump input out of magnet.

This is wrong. Neither Falco nor Lucas can jump sooner out of DownB while airborn. You may be mixing it up with DJs taking less time than grounded jumps (grounded jumps taking 4 frames for Lucas, 5 for Falco, DJs being instant/1 frame for the purpose of jump cancels.)

 

[D e l t a]

This is wrong. Neither Falco nor Lucas can jump sooner out of DownB while airborn. You may be mixing it up with DJs taking less time than grounded jumps (grounded jumps taking 4 frames for Lucas, 5 for Falco, DJs being instant/1 frame for the purpose of jump cancels.)

I thought it was that, but it always seemed like Falco's shine took way longer to jump out of than Fox's on the ground (excluding the fact that Falco takes 1 frame to jump out of than Fox's).

Thanks again for the frame data! I love constantly learning new things about this game. It's what inspires me to make guides like this

 

[Swampy948]

So it makes landing it sooner easier. Okay, cool. Thanks a ton!

 

[zFrost]

advice on edgeguarding ike squirt and roy?, ike has hitboxes that cover the ledge by the time he pulls himself up(unless i'm timing it wrong), squirt i can kinda bair but it's pretty difficult, roy has long lasting hitboxes and kinda floats near the ledge

 

[D e l t a]

advice on edgeguarding ike squirt and roy?, ike has hitboxes that cover the ledge by the time he pulls himself up(unless i'm timing it wrong), squirt i can kinda bair but it's pretty difficult, roy has long lasting hitboxes and kinda floats near the ledge

Im actually in the lab this month working on specifics to ledge guarding their recoveries. I don't have exact pictures & hit boxes yet, but I'll do my best to write up a section once I learn how to properly ledge guard these characters.

 

[Kipcom]

advice on edgeguarding ike squirt and roy?, ike has hitboxes that cover the ledge by the time he pulls himself up(unless i'm timing it wrong), squirt i can kinda bair but it's pretty difficult, roy has long lasting hitboxes and kinda floats near the ledge

For Roy, what I usually like to do is look at his positioning, and if he's at a point where he's pretty much forced to sweetspot the ledge, you can do a full jump and then steal the ledge before he can grab it. The ending of Roy's Up-B has about 12 to 13 frames on the end of it with absolutely no hitboxes whatsoever, and he can't grab the ledge until the animation for his Up-B is completely over, giving the opponent a feasible amount of time to actually get to the ledge before he does.
If he goes for the high recovery, whether it be because you tricked him by fooling him into thinking you were going to take the ledge, or because he's trying to land on some sort of platform, you have Up-Smash (though you should use this only if it'll kill him) if he's planning on landing on the stage, and Down-Smash and Forward-Smash if he tries to drift back to the ledge. You could also go for a back-air if he's high, just make sure that his animation is at the point where the hitbox isn't there.

For Ike and Squirtle, I'm just making theories here, as I don't have that much experience with either of these matchups. It's something I hope to change in the near future.

For Ike, you can try to stuff out his side b recovery with either PK Freeze or the tail of PK Thunder. If he uses Quickdraw to try and sweetspot the ledge, you can use Lucas' down smash (preferably OU Down Smash).
If Ike gets a walljump from his Quickdraw, you already know the Up-B is coming right after. At this point, if he's recovering low, you'll want to wavedash to the ledge as he's about walljump and then use Up-B. A neat little trick with Lucas (and other characters with a Z-tether) is that if you grab ledge, immediately hold back on your control stick, and then press Z while still holding away from the ledge, you'll tether the ledge very quickly. What makes this interesting is that if you immediately reel in after the tether connects, the invincibility from your first ledge grab will last the entire time during your tether reel, preventing you from taking any hits of Ike's Up-B. You also get more invincibility from grabbing the ledge that second time. From here, you can roll off the ledge and laugh as Ike plummets to his death.

For squirtle, his Up-B has hitboxes in front of him, with a giant hitbox in front of him at the end of the attack, so really your only options here are to try and get a Down-Air from directly above or a Back-Air. If Squirtle opts to recover to the ledge with Side-B I guess you could try an F-Smash or a D-Smash.

Hope this helps. As I said, the examples for Ike and Squirtle are just some theories of mine that I'll have to try out in the future. I've done the Roy edgeguards multiple times before. Obviously, nothing is truly set in stone here as long as your opponent is good at mixing up recoveries. Sometimes you'll have to go for the unconventional options to get rid of your opponent.

 

[SunnieHD]

Ok so I'm a new lucas main, and I can combo most players fairly well, but I don't use DJC very often. What are the benefits of DJC and how can I apply them to my game?

 

[Sur Fartsalot]

DJC shortens the lag of a move, and also allows you to travel a bit farther than a regular short hop. For example, if you use DJC magnet or freeze, it allows you travel a bit farther. DJC cancel aerials will have slightly less lag than a regular aerial.

 

[AntSSB]

DJC doesn't shorten the lag of the aerial. It allows you to do the aerial quicker and closer to the ground.

 

[D e l t a]

Hey guys, I'm loving the discussion. The updates to the guide in this thread outdated; however, I am updating the guide currently stickied in the forums. If you could continue the conversations there, I would appreciate it.

 

[Swampy948]

DJC doesn't shorten the lag of the aerial. It allows you to do the aerial quicker and closer to the ground.

Actually they don't come out quicker. It comes out slower because of the DJ animation and the initial jump. Regular short hop aeriels are faster by a little bit. I think what he meant by reducing landing lag, is that you return to the ground faster than you would through a short hop, since the DJC is done closer to the ground, thus speeding up combos

 

[D e l t a]

Official discussion has been moved to the updated Lucas guide here:

http://smashboards.com/threads/lightning-fast-a-project-m-lucas-guide.392732/