Us as people have habits. How we abuse those habits is how Lucario needs to be played. Revolve around studying your opponent to a degree that you know what he is going to do before he does it, and punish him for it.
To achieve this, a slower pace game play needs to be played for the first section of the match and use that time to study how your opponent reacts to your moves.
Now the trick to this is, it needs to be done multiple times, because if the person you are playing against is a decent player, they will be looking for your habits as well to punish.
Thank you so much for this. Lately I've felt that when I'm playing against someone at my level or higher, as soon as I adapt to that person's play-style I lose my ability to adapt again which usually makes me lose once my opponent figures out my play-style. But what you've just said made something click inside my mind.
But yeah, I'm glad I picked Lucario as my main. I have never felt like any character can shut down Lucario enough to guarantee an auto win against him and I always come away from smashfests or tournaments with an onslaught of new ideas on how to improve.
I think the main reason I like Lucario is because of his unique movements and hitboxes. He isn't a particularly fast character but instead has a whole bunch of options that work really well for him.
His ground movement may not allow him to keep up with some of his opponents but it allows him to position himself precisely enough to aim his various tilts and smashes accurately. And this brings me to Lucario's attacks; they have amazing properties and crazy disjointed range. Ftilt has two hits which is enough to throw off your opponent, utilt covers Lucario's entire body and basically acts as a pseudo-shield, fsmash hits a mile away and usmash lasts forever.
I especially love utilt; it is my favorite move hands down. Not only is it our best option to punish people that come from behind us out of shield or otherwise, it has enough disjointed range to act as a counter to many attacks from other characters. As an example I'll use Kirby who I have the most experience against.
Say Kirby wants to approach me with bair. If I move backwards and time an utilt just before he comes into contact with me, I can use utilt to hit him out of his bair and remain unharmed. Utilt has enough aura on it to shut down characters that lack large disjointed hitboxes (which is pretty much anyone without a sword except Ness). This ability to use utilt as a sort of force field really makes me excited to see how far I can go with him in tournaments.
Fair is the next amazing move on Lucario's list of amazing moves. To give a comparison of how amazing it is I'll use my secondary ZSS. Once upon a time I used to think ZSS was severly underrated and deserved somewhere around 7-10 in the tier list. Her speed was fast, her side B and bair gave her an above average level of killing power for her speed, her up B and usmash gave her an excellent pressuring tool when combined with platforms, her aerials were fast, she had an incredible spike and recovery and she had the ability to stun her opponents for quite a large amount of time.
Although after playing with her for a while, I realized most of her attacks except utilt needed strict spacing in order to hit. Bair hits in the area exactly where it looks like it would hit, fair doesn't get much use because it has terrible landing lag which is where it is most useful imo and side B has an
enormous blind spot. After I realized these issues I pretty much gave up on ever using her seriously.
This is where Lucario shines though; his fair not only hits a fair amount in front of him but also above him and to put icing on the cake, below him as well. How many other characters do you know of that have an aerial that hits in a half circle in front of them. Fair's usefulness doesn't stop there though; it also has very low lag after it's hitbox ends which makes it possible to link it into an nair (which shuts down most attempts to attack out of shield), a dair (which acts as a good combo finisher), bair (for when you've conditioned your opponent to nairs), airdodges (which you can buffer into utilts/reverse grabs) and even more fairs.
I'd like to quickly mention that Lucario's dair and uair are also amazing aerials. Uair has a good amount of disjointedness above him and also lasts a while and has a hitbox that extends across Lucario's body. This makes it an ideal move to punish Mach Tornado from above and it even acts as a surprise kill move. Then dair is a contender for one of brawl's most versatile aerials. It has a huge hitbox below Lucario, hits twice and best of all it can be used to stall in the air. Better yet this stalling can be prevented out of shield hit stun making it even more useful (seriously, punishing certain things out of shield wouldn't be possible without this aspect of dair).
I think I'll finish this post off with a discussion about aura sphere before it gets too long (assuming it isn't there already). Aura sphere is one of the worst projectiles when it comes to camping, I think there is universal agreement on this. Although when compared to those other projectiles AS would get a much higher rating from me. Mario's fireballs, Lucas' pk fire, Ice Climber's ice blocks and Pikachu's thunderjolt are really only useful for forcing an approach or manipulating the opponent's movement. AS functions as a projectile to force approaches and manipulate movement, a kill move, a shield punisher, a fear inducer and a technique to manipulate
our movement.
I might get some weird looks when I say it is a shield punisher (and not a completely useless one I might add) so allow me to explain myself. You know how we have this amazing aerial called dair? Well if you space it high enough above an opponent it
can be safe on block. Normally after this you jump away to avoid punishment. But you can go farther than this and space yourself slightly higher than usual so that you can condition your opponent to expect multiple dairs. Once this conditioning is done you can spring the trap while your opponent sits in their shield; just use aura sphere charge after a dair. The main issue with using ASC as a shield punisher is that it is nearly impossible to set up but by using dair to stop your momentum, you can position yourself perfectly enough to land on top of your opponent with a shield hungry ASC (do not try this at 0% without charging first).
Also, I assure you this is not theory craft. I have done this successfully at least 3 times.
Next in line is the fear inducing part. There really isn't much to this though, when you are at high percent with a FCAS you'd better believe your opponents are on their toes.
Alright, to finish this off I'll talk a bit about b-reversals. Simply put they are awesome. ASC combined with Lucario's ability to cancel ASC from the air into an airdodge makes this technique extremely useful. If you are being juggled, b-reversals can prevent you from getting your landing lag punished. If you space fair incorrectly or are just worried about being punished for using the move, you can b-reversal into a quick airdodge to do a surprise retreat. The opposite also holds true, you can use retreating fairs to b-reversals to do a surprise approach into an utilt. And better yet, you can use broversals to bait a laggy move from your opponent and then be in prime position to punish.
Lord did I make this post long and to be honest I still have more things to say. Lol, it'll have to wait until later since I have a tournament to get to tomorrow and I'd like to get some sleep. So yeah, hopefully I didn't kill anybody by typing this much. >>
Also, tl:dr Lucario is amazing.