SINGLES Lucario Match-Ups and Directory! Mario will brb saving a princess

[ksizl4life]

The matchup is 6-4 Lucario. You lose if you don't know what you're doing though. Pikachu has so many gimmicks that he has a lot of matchup advantages over the cast if they don't know the matchup. You need to put in work in the MU and it isn't a free ride like some are making it out to be.

 

[ShippoFoxFire]

The matchup is 6-4 Lucario. You lose if you don't know what you're doing though. Pikachu has so many gimmicks that he has a lot of matchup advantages over the cast if they don't know the matchup. You need to put in work in the MU and it isn't a free ride like some are making it out to be.

Free rides 8)

I'll come out with my guide later when I get home from class.

 

[ksizl4life]

Just want to throw out that I beat Anther in his prime at Apex 2009 using lucario with no MU experience. That doesn't mean I didn't know what I was doing. While I didn't know the MU, i paid attention to every little gimmick I saw and every habit on the ledge ground and air. I also played extremely safe (i'm one of the more safer lucarios out there) so that helped. Of course, the metagame for both characters has evolved since then but I noticed a lot of the same things Anther did when I watched esam vs lee so yeah.

The MU is not a free ride. Idk if you're trying to say that shippo but in case you are, for everyone else, just remember this player has no accomplishments. ever. lol

 

[ShippoFoxFire]

Just want to throw out that I beat Anther in his prime at Apex 2009 using lucario with no MU experience. That doesn't mean I didn't know what I was doing. While I didn't know the MU, i paid attention to every little gimmick I saw and every habit on the ledge ground and air. I also played extremely safe (i'm one of the more safer lucarios out there) so that helped. Of course, the metagame for both characters has evolved since then but I noticed a lot of the same things Anther did when I watched esam vs lee so yeah.

The MU is not a free ride. Idk if you're trying to say that shippo but in case you are, for everyone else, just remember this player has no accomplishments. ever. lol

I'm joking around when I say it's a free ride. You have to understand all of Pikachu's gimicks and how to get around them. At higher percents Pikachu WILL change in style that becomes a lot more risky to fight(for pika). Pika will come in close to try to nair/usmash which is VERY unsafe on block against lucario. Pikachu can camp well, but Lucario's fair shuts down the jolts, along with aurasphere at higher %/charge. Pikachu at the ledge is a pikachu about to be dead. Having a fully charged AS and stutter fsmashing the ledge is a great option to scout out your opponent's strategy on the ledge(on stages that aren't delfino/halberd/other passunder stages). If you are high up and hear "Pika" double team ASAP(dont predict, act upon to reduce mindgames), it gets you out of the way and makes it easier to return back down. [IRCC you can double team in reaction to "PIKA!"]

Will come out with more later.

 

[culexus・wau]

pikachu has A LOT of dumb gimmicks.

but once you learn them its a definite advantage.

I've yet to play anther/esam calibur pikachus however =\

I guess to make this a less useless post I'll grab some QUACK vids to show what I mean.

TO THE KPRIME VIDEO VAULT

 

[RT]

Yeah, you can find some vids of Trela vs Kprime floating around that are kind of recent...

 

[phi1ny3]

uair and nair are imo the aerials you'll more realistically catch QAC in. Other than that, I don't think QAC is what it's "QACked" out to be, due to AS/smashes.


Although it makes for a terrific ledge option that makes getting edgeguarding damage/kills against pika on the ledge unlikely. imo that's time better spent charging AS, since fully charged AS is a huuuuuuuge boon to this MU.

 

[ShippoFoxFire]

Quick Attack Cancel's are a mindgame in themselves, they can be used to scout out habbits with them, however Lucairo's fair goes right through it, and if you see Pika hit the ground from up-B you can obviously know whats gonna happen(Nair/Bair/Fair/another QAC). A large Aura Sphere/Stutter Fsmash should cover ALL those options XD

Is there anyway to get ESAM on smashboards or some other good pikachu to come here?

 

[~Radiance~]

wow no pikas post here yet? anyways.

PS1 WE think gives lucario more of an advantage. we actually prefer to strike PS1 and go for SV or FD if possible. PS1 alows pika to dtilt lock on the fire part of the stage and teh earth part, but aside from that lucarios fsmash can reach thru the tree whereas ours cant, and your AS means we cant win any camp war. PS1 is usually a no no for us a a neutral tbh lol

Brinstar vs pika shldnt happen tbh, but seing as how you guys are stupid good on YI we will probably ban that but as a rule of thumb Brin is the usualy ban for pika, its just terriabd for him.

usually the match from pikas view breaks down to trying to get in close, but mostly we hang out in mid range since we cant camp you. if pikas in close utilts work on us, just like everyone else, and if a pika fthrows u at 0% just dair that ******* cuz that combo is only guranteed after one fthrow at 0 or when ur at 10%. be careful tho cuz we may run in after the fthrow and shield bait the dair to a regrab, in which ur getting a guranteed fthrow to usmash.

pikas dthrow to uitilt/shenanigans work but any combos we try like uairing you in a string after the dthrow will be beat like hell by your dair. and lucarios so flaoty that u can get dair off b4 our utilt sometimes at higher %'s.

For the most part tho a GODD pika will be taking you on the ground. lucarios tilts are slower and have less range than most of piks tilts, and we are fast enough that if your fsmash isnt spaced properly we can run in and grab b4 it comes out.

Be careful for stages with low ceilings because we rely on utilt/usmash/dsmash to thunder combos since having you above 80% means ****s about to suck. Halberd is a CP i like to use v lucario cuz of its low ceiling. that being said, if an usmash, utilt comes out be sure to NOT momentum cancel or airdodge out of habit, because we may watch for that and thunder once your airdodge is over, or if u use a move to try and MC.

Aside from all of this tho the lucario MU is a hard one for pika. ESAM beat lee at MLG but lee was playing that MU wrong imo. if you play right we have alot of trouble getting in and killing becomes a big issue. nair OoS is a common punish method we use as well as usmash oos so dont be pressuing that sheild to hard. Our arial game which is comprised of mostly uair strings is shut down by your dair, and in the front we cannot do a thing, we have to get behind you. Your ability to camp beats out ours, and with that, our grab not being as affective because of dair, and not being able to kill you easily, this MU becomes frigin tough lol. just space right and stop the strings, this MU comes down to us reading you better and having some crazy mixups.

Hope this has helped! I personaly play the MU on the ground mostly cuz srsly in the air vs you guys its just plain stupid, along with most of our grab game being dair'd out this MU is just balls sometimes.

edit: also as phil said, qac in this mu wont be used as much cuz ur hitboxes are out for so **** long lol. only time you may see it is if your using a fsmash and we can qac to nair u b4 it comes out or if we just see an opening. itll be a mixup, not a common occurance. you can just usmash and there will be no more qac if the pika is abusing it.

 

[Leaf.]

I fight Trela a lot.
And sometimes RT. But mostly Trela, because RT is busy in his murderhouse a lot lately...

When I'm fighting this, I always seem to be on the retreat. Run away, camp, get around, run away, run away. I'll try to only go in when I see an opening, the rest is camp. I'll especially be camping later in the stock, because pika has a tough time killing, and lulu gets stronger as damage goes up. But I definitely try to create a wall in between the two of us.

When I do go for an attack, it's a hit and run, something fast too. Then, I'm right back to running away looking for another opening.

Lucario wants to be careful of being far above pika, thunder kills are easy/fun to get.

AS is a bit of a problem, at high percents they can be mowed down and still go to hit pika. The wave of the uncharged ones can also be a trouble to PS sometimes. Low percent/uncharged AS < T-jolt < High percent/charged AS.

I like stages with obstacles in this MU, it helps my camping. That and flat, kinda-cramped stages.

Lucario definitely wins the air. I just want to stay away in the air...
I can come up with better stuff later, too. I'll get some matches at MLG this weekend to help, too.

I would also watch out for PS2 because they can pull some shenanigans there.

Didn't stop you, though...

 

[RT]

Yes, I'm being mentioned!

*ego raises one level*

But yeah, if you can get pass Pikachu's shenanigans, it's in Lucario's favor. Just watch out for Thunder when you get knocked near the top blastzone...it can kill faster than you think.

 

[culexus・wau]

K prime

ESAM

Anther

uh

Gallax

idk

/namesearch bait

 

[ShippoFoxFire]

K prime
ESAM
Anther
Gallax
/namesearch bait

PikaPika
NinjaLink
...
Atomsk?

 

[~automatic]

Pika shouldn't be within Lucario's range. Pikachu should be right outside with well spaced jolts. Pika's tilts are great but they don't work that well in this MU imo. Personally I throw or jab OoS since tilts and aerials get punished like 80% of the time by the two **** Lucarios I play. QAC is only good for making it back on stage and a mindgame or two.

Pika is outclassed in the air. Simple as that. I don't even wanna write about it (primarily because Lawrence did but w/e).

On the ground Pika's poorly spaced tilts and smashes get F-smashed or grabbed by the blue thing. Pika should stick to a mid range game in which we are right outside his best zone for this mu and in our best overall zone. Grabs are my favorite punishes as Pika and the most effective vs Lucario's failed smash attempts (I guess) since we can follow them up with an aerial or a jolt from outside your range once Lucario gets back on the ground.

As far as stages go for this MU, I like FD, Frigate and Smashville for Pika. PS1 is good for Pika imo just not for this matchup. I'd ban Yoshi's or Halberd. I naturally dislike Battlefield as a Pika even though it's not actually bad imo.

IceDX has some matches vs my Pika recorded so Imma talk to him and see if he can send them to me or something. Give you an idea of what a **** Lucario does to an allright (rusty mixed with apathy johns) Pika. XD

 

[PikaPika!]

PikaPika
NinjaLink
...
Atomsk?

terrible person

 

[ShippoFoxFire]

We need SOME Pikachu for this PikaPika.

That wasn't a trap, we were just calling for matchup knowledge.

 

[PikaPika!]

We need SOME Pikachu for this PikaPika.

That wasn't a trap, we were just calling for matchup knowledge.

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=270486

Couple months old but they know more about the MU then I do.

 

[Steam]

wouldn't japes be a good CP if availible? sky high ceiling plus if we're on the side platforms pikachu can't really do much with Tjolt.

 

[~Radiance~]

id say yes to japes due to ur explanation. cept its never legal where im at so lol i cant really speak from exp.

idk how lucario does on brin but since we are gonna be banning YI v u and not brin you could try there if you guys do good, cuz its our worst stage by far, we ****ing hate it.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Brinstar is ok, it's one of those stages that we're like, this is a nice stage...oh wait a couple of other people are better here...woops.

 

[~Radiance~]

if the pika bans YI go brinstar, if the pika bans brin go YI. you shouldnt be affected by daves stupid rule here because no smart pika isnt gonna strike YI for the first game, its just hard to say if the pika will ban YI or Brin. Id personally ban YI because its got bigger zones and brin has smaller ones which means we have the potential to get early thunder kills.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Generally I see Lucario's CPing YI, Frigate, PS1, as general CP ideas. Other stages like Brinstar, FD, Castle Siege, etc. are more MU dependant if you want to go there.

In this match-up if Brinstar is really a problem for Pika he could very well CP it, the only problem is that in our current metagame a lot of people are going to see you CP Brinstar and they might go, "Ok going MK lol!" I don't see it being used as much when he is a very very common secondary/Co-main for many people.

So if your sure they won't switch to MK if they can play him competently then by all means it's fair play and good vs Pikachu. I'll speak for the MU assuming solo mains so I see this being a good CP.

I agree with banning YI against Lucario if your fine with Brinstar or is Frigate isn't bad for you.

 

[~Radiance~]

yeah i know what u mean. as it stands atm, none of the good pikas ull be able to beat actually alt mk LOL. Our common alts are snake, ike, and a few alt falco. my alt is snake and PT, so going brin wld be safe (cept for maybe v squirtle). but yeah i know what u mean, seems like everyone has a pocket mk lol. alot of us pikas will usually stick tho mu out tho just cuz its taken us alota practice to be good with pika since his learning curve is so high lol

 

[Pitbuller26]

Most people never pick Brinstar or Rainbow Cruise as a counterpick because of the high probability of your opponent going MK.

 

[hichez50]

Well if your opponent actually CP brinstar and RC vs. you that have tons of experience on those stages and know the niche's for their characters so I would be extra careful if a pikachu is considering RC as an option.

 

[MythTrainerInfinity]

RC is still you are forced to approach, which can suck a lot if the MK knows how to play the stage.

On Brinstar play against MK like this:
Get away when he tries to shark; if he gets uncomfortably close you can DAir wisely.
Aura Sphere goes over the bump in the middle if you fire it from the left side.
Safest position is the bottom left because you wont have to deal with hitlag on the breakable parts unless you want to. They have to go over the bump if they want to approach, which is even less safe since AS can just go right over it.
Use Jabs/FAir on the breakable parts to refresh moves if they are silly and do not pressure you all the time.
Bait MK into running into breakable parts to extend his hitlag. This can if played right give you more of an opportunity to punish his hitlag if he misses you.
Try to stay away from the breakable floor as it can hinder your movement and give you extra unwanted hitlag.

Oh and for mindgames with recovery you know you can cling on the sides of the breakable floor.

If you don't think this works ask some MI MKs what happens when they CP me to Brinstar.

 

[phi1ny3]

Well if your opponent actually CP brinstar and RC vs. you that have tons of experience on those stages and know the niche's for their characters so I would be extra careful if a pikachu is considering RC as an option.

He does have a point, especially with these grab release gimmicks v. MK on the rise as of recent. You always need to watch out for little gimmicks like this, so they don't trip you up.

MTI has some good points too. There are some gimmicks that can work towards your advantage, although from my perspective I'm prone to changing characters on that stage

Yeah, I think Yoshi's is legit, PS1's okay, Halberd is probably a good ban, I'm about as inclined to go FD as I am Frigate tbh, wallcling is nice, but general rule of thumb for me is only take characters to Frigate that have a worse recovery than you do/ don't camp severely there.

I also think Picto if available would be a good idea to try, although tjolts might become annoying with the stage transformations. Basically a FD with transformations, in terms of borders (also has wall clingable sides, although a bit small).

Japes would be a double edged sword, since it has the potential to also being a good timeout stage with Wario/MK. I've had very unfun experiences with this stage and the said scenario, so I'm used to not being inclined to go there .

I'm curious as to how Delphino works out for Pikachu, I can see Pika doing reasonably well with this stage, considering it's very pro-sharking, and gives him some leverage with several of his moves (and can make early kills against Lucario possible).

Seems somewhat straight-forward, I think we can move on.

 

[~Radiance~]

phil:

Japes im not sure lol but it seems bad for pika due to high ceiling

Picto is a no go for us v lucario, its like ps1 in that u can abuse the stage better, we do amazing here v EVERYONE and its an ecnouraged CP if its legal, but not v lucario lol.

Delphino is a weird one. its a cp for us but we wld usually pick Castle because it has the same stuff as Delphino but its easier to get, i.e walkoffs. we have dtilt locks in 3 places and 3 walkoffs, but seiges walkoff stays for longer. V lucario i wldnt mind going here, we cld shark it but again ur dair will **** it down just fine, plus not many pikas shark tbh lol. certain parts of the stage i cld see as being beneficial for both partys, some have higher ceilings which is good for u and some have lock setups for us. I wouldnt really see this as being a typical CP tho because we have better options such as Halberd if its not banned. But i would make sure you know how this stage works just in case u get cpd here.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I'll leave this at Pikachu until the discussion in the meta game discussion on Sunday.

Unless someone has something else to contribute any ideas on who to move on to?

 

[MythTrainerInfinity]

Foxxxxxxxxxx please. This MU has been plaguing me lately.

I need to learn to DI that FAir and UTilt on reaction >.>

 

[phi1ny3]

I think that Lucario does well against fox when he's grounded imo.

Especially considering that dair -> kill moves generally are better on Lucario when he's in the air (in terms of comboing into it for finishing lucario).

 

[phi1ny3]

stupid double post

 

[culexus・wau]

has anyone even tried walking against fox when he's camping lasers?

sure you take more damage but it keeps you neutral.

I haven't played enough foxes to actually try it.

 

[phi1ny3]

It's a good idea to mix it up, because he can easily condition you to pull up shield and cross up or grab you and reset the process. Jumping is also necessary, but you gotta be smart and reactionary, which is harder than normal because lots of fox's stuff is bait and punish.

I've only played one or two foxes, both were meh though (one was super cocky about the MU, he was like "stop using Lucario against me, that MU's easy, I need to learn sheik!", and I was like "yeah, that's why I two stocked you on your CP just now rofl".)

I wish I could show TKD v. IceDX, this is a good representation about how frustrating it can potentially be. It's doable for Lucario, but probably his hardest lower tier MU imo.

There's some new matches of Trela against Ozz, but imo Trela does some avoidable mistakes in the MU. I do have to stress the idea about staying on the ground as much as possible when in kill range, he's got little in the way of true setups for his kill moves besides you over-commiting on the ground (which unfortunately happens all too often) or throwing you back up to get you. uair and usmash are doozies and they nail anyone in the air hard (usmash also has an invincible bone iirc) so it's not wise to stay in the air much against fox imo.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Lets' get this rolling again, Fox is up!

 

[culexus・wau]

We should re-do DDD soon

I'll post fox stuff later

Imma just say that is probably a solid disadvantage.

 

[phi1ny3]

Dedede means hard camp like a mofo nao

I only get grabbed like 5 times per game, but when knowing one of them could kill you (not to mention you could get a ton of damage CG across stage -> dthrow -> buffered usmash).

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Just curious am I the only one who doesn't think Fox is a bad match-up?

 

[MythTrainerInfinity]

I think its pretty darn even if you ask me. Fox has a lot of tricks and gimmicks that you'll fall into if frustrated.

If you stay calm I think its a fairly easy MU.

 

[Browny]

Fact:

The further you live away from SoCal/Mexico, the easier your opinion of the Fox Matchup is.