Lucas: the Essentials & Advanced Techniques updated 02/04/13

[MVP]

This thread and many upcoming others is dedicated to the "Essentials" of the metagame of Lucas. What to look for when playing him. It's suppose to go beyond just whats good and bad, it's suppose to provide inside knowledge of a character. Tips and tricks and so forth. I'll update the first post as others post here


To start off......

http://projectm.dantarion.com/characters.php?character=lucas


ESSENTIALS:


Side-B: Side B has many uses. One in-particular that few people know or utilize (i don't know why) is its faster than a waveland when coming from the ledge. It allows you to instantly land and attack faster than a normal waveland.

Charge (Neutral) B: I see this move constantly underutilized. It's Lucas' most unique move and in my opinion the most unique move in the game. It's a charge input that not only charges you Neutral-B like other characters, but provides "charge" to all of his grounded smash attacks This is HUGE for lucas! But there's more, it has relatively low charge time allowing for safe charges in between stocks, and if you land a smash attack while charged- it automatically charges it again instantly for the next smash attack. This equals gimps, low % KO's, and overall intimidation. I've literally seen matches won by lucas simply because the opponent was scared of his charge.

Quote Smashmods: "When the B button is pressed, Offense Up begins to charge not unlike Samus' Charge Shot or Donkey Kong's Giant Punch. After a few moments, Lucas's hands glow with power and the next smash attack that he performs deals greater damage, shield damage, and knockback. While the charge can be canceled and held at any time during the charge, there is no benefit to holding a partial charge; Lucas' smashes will remain at their normal power until the full charge is complete. If you are accurate with this power, it'll serve you well - Connecting a hit with Offense Up will not expend the charge! Punishing predictable opponents has never been so satisfying!"

EDIT: i have been informed that it does not charge a partial charge. You have to fully charge in one sitting.....


Double Jump Cancel: Double jump cancel provides quick aerials faster than SHFFLing and lower to the ground. It's Lucas' and Ness' signature techniques. What it is is

Quote smashmods: "When using his second jump, if Lucas holds his jump button while an attack is being performed, he will attack while continuing to use his full double jump – but if he releases his jump input before an attack comes out, he will cancel the double jump and drop immediately. This allows quick transition from Lucas' aerial game to his ground game without interfering with his ability to chase opponents into the sky. Former players that used Double Jump Canceling characters should soon find themselves with a very powerful and familiar tool at their fingertips if they choose to play Lucas."

This is a MUST learn technique of you want to succeed with lucas.

*it is recommended that you learn the Essentials of Lucas' game before takleing the Adv.Techs and Technical aspects of Lucas*[/SIZE][/I]

ADVANCED TECHNIQUES:

[COLLAPSE="Advanced Techniques/Technical Aspects of Lucas"]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvJVvQwIaC8
*please note that this vid is 2.1 and outdated (and crudely put together), but most of those techniques (i think all) can still be used in 2.5.*


Down-B:

I feel that using aerial down-b to space djc'd aerials could become a very strong aspect of his game, yet I rarely see it utilized.

In particular, jumping in and gliding towards them with down-b seems to be a pretty useful approach in my experience due to the ways you can it mix-up, but it might be easy to counter if you're predictable with it or spam it a lot.

If your reactions are good, or you can get a good read, you can make this pretty safe:

• If they shield it and you space the down-b well, you can land and keep the repeating boxes on them and wavedash out if they have the ability to OoS you, or keep it on them until they roll or are sheild poked if they can't. If they roll, simply wavedash out to get away, or if you are fast enough, to chase their roll and terrorize their now tiny shield.
• If you are too far for your magnet to hit them or their shield, you can djc fair which will often hit or at least be difficult to punish if they shield it, and unless they are expecting it they may be looking to punish your down-b rather than thinking about shielding.
• At low percents, you can often cancel the release hit of air magnet immediately into an djc aerial before they even go behind you
• If you sense danger or want to mix-up this option even more, you always have the option to jump out of the magnet and waveland in any direction or hop up out of your opponent's range/onto a platform. What this should mean is that this option has a very low level of commitment.
• Outside of approaching, aerial down-b can just be a helpful way of spacing your aerials when playing in the air against certain characters.

I'd like some other Lucas mains to experiment with this against the people they play, or at least tell me when you think doing this might be a bad idea. Maybe there's something I'm missing that's making me think this is stronger than it really is.

Related side-note: While coming up with this list I also thought about maybe djc pkf out of the jump-in magnet, but this mixup I haven't put into practice and I think that spacing it well might be an issue. If I find success with this I'll add it to this list.

[/COLLAPSE]


More moves and techniques will be added/updated in the future.

 

[MVP]

reserved for future posts

 

[Bose]

I have been experimenting with options of grounded and airbourne PSI magnet, and I find Lucas to be able to apply reliable pressure on his opponent, while also having seemingly endless mixup and followup opportunities. If I get a chance to record stuff I'm going to post a few videos of my Lucas, hopefully showcasing some of the technical stuff you can do with him.

Has anyone fast enough fingers to do PSI -> djc fair pressure on shields? It's very difficult to do consistently, I'm curious if it can compare to Fox Nair -> shine etc.

 

[Oracle]

if you get a grounded shine on shield you should just jump cancel a grab for the unblockable

 

[Z-Z]

demon you have to use tap jump for it when your jumping out of psi. so you can use x or y when your hopping into the psi then you simply press up on the analog stick and then down on it and forward on the c stick at the same time (to fast fall it for more effective shield pressure) and then l cancel, and repeat. it becomes bread and butter when you get use to it. i not only use it for shield pressure but i usually use it after a close landed pkf as well. i feel if you try to just throw it out it gets punished way to often. so try to restrict it to shield pressure and after pkf or even after another psi gives it a nice set up.

 

[Badge]

To expand on that: tap jump is basically a necessity for DJCs, because it allows you to input an attack on the very next frame after jumping and still get the DJC without having to let go of the jump input. Fastfalling is unnecessary if you're doing perfect DJC FAirs/DAirs from the ground, because you're landing as soon as the attack comes out - FFing would either cancel the attack before the hitbox comes out or do nothing. DJCing UAirs or any aerial from greater heights still profits from FFing, though.

 

[Dudex11a]

I noticed that some techniques were missing on here, correct me if I'm wrong but here are the ones that I know of.

Fast PK Thunder - This can be preformed by jumping after dashing and using PK Thunder in the direction that you dashed in. This will result in a very fast PK Thunder dash attack (or the state that you go in after hitting yourself with PK Thunder (whatever that's called)). Now this can be pretty timing specific so it might take a couple tries to get down.

Air Snake Dash? - OK, I found this rather recently and it is rather strange how it works. So after being hit and knocked into the state when you are just flailing around if you use your second jump and then very shortly after airdodge to the right or left (up and down don't work as far as I know) and then press A resulting in Lucas throwing out his snake Lucas will get a very large boost of speed in the air (similar to his DACUS). I have no idea why this happens but I know it works. Now doing this isn't really viable in a match besides throwing someone off or trying to position yourself on a stage since you can grab the edge while already having the snake out.

That's all I have found, if people wish to see this I guess I could make a video demonstrating this later on if people wish to see it but that's all.

 

[Burnsy]

Thanks for posting about the "air snake dash", this was actually something that existed for Toon Link and others in 2.1 whenever they double jump, airdodge, then quickly cancel that airdodge after hitstun wore off (including airdodge cancels through AGT in addition to zairs)

Curiously, this physics oddity was corrected in 2.5 for everything except for Lucas z-air. As far as I know, he is the only one who can do this now.

I have to disagree that this is not viable or useless. I actually find myself using this a lot to divert my knockback path to prevent followups-- if I'm feeling bold and the positioning is right, I've even used it to counter-attack them directly out of my hitstun, often flying across the stage to smack them in the face. Its fast as well as hard to predict, making it fairly hard to punish. Make sure that you are airdodging horizontally, whether that be straight or diagonally, as this AT does not seem to give you any extra vertical momentum, only horizontal.

Keep in mind that you can get the boost even from hits with low knockback, you don't need to be sent very far at all for it to be possible. Pretty much any hit giving you enough knockback to be sent airborne, even for juggling are eligible. It has been quite usable to me as a "combo breaker" to get away or confuse your opponents and avoid follow ups.

 

[Oracle]

any technique that changes momentum will give you a boost if you use it out of hitstun. all characters agt and rob's side b all work for the quick boost

 

[Burnsy]

-Momentum when canceling an airdodge after knockback now works correctly

This is from the 2.5 changelog, so I assumed AGT method no longer works. Perhaps the changelog was only referring z-airs? Because I have tested this with Toon Link and Link's z-airs in the same way as I do with Lucas and have not been able to get it to work at all since 2.5.

How does it work with R.O.B.'s side-b, do you need to jump first like with the Nayru's Love jump or can you just do it?

 

[Oracle]

with rob if you side b out of hitstun and immediately attack then you'll get a boost

 

[Ishiey]

For Lucas, the ASD or whatever you want to call it is really useful as a punish OoS against attacks that would otherwise put you way out of punish range, like Link fsmash and whatnot.

 

[Burnsy]

I don't want these two things getting confused. Ishieymoro, we're talking about something different. What Dudex described as "Air Snake Dash" is different than just doing a jump>airdodge>snake cancel when in a neutral state or out of a sheild. When the same combination is used as an action out of hitstun, it sends you across the stage at ludicrous speeds. This AT deserves its own name so it can be discussed without confusing it with the more offensive version of the same action.

 

[Farkle the Oddly Shaped]

How do you do the Lucas shine bounce backwards in midair? In Brawl it was called wavebouncing, but I don't know if the mechanics are the same for Project M. Is it just a B-reversed down-B?

 

[SixSaw]

Is it just a B-reversed down-B?

Yes

 

[Lukingordex]

How do you do the Lucas shine bounce backwards in midair? In Brawl it was called wavebouncing, but I don't know if the mechanics are the same for Project M. Is it just a B-reversed down-B?

Run -> Jump -> pkfreeze -> magnet -> reverse it quickly

I think it's even easier to do it in PM than brawl.

 

[LordJ]

Run -> Jump -> pkfreeze -> magnet -> reverse it quickly

I think it's even easier to do it in PM than brawl.

I see what you're saying, I picked up Lucas a few days ago, and what I noticed was it's good for recovery, but I prefer the psi-magnet recover that Pink Fresh uses. While I haven't seen PF Use the Freeze Magnet trick, I would actually prefer to use it as an approach. Now here me out, I know it sounds strange right? "A recovery as an approach? Lord J how, that's crazy!". Jokes asides, I find it useful as an approach because it:
1) Easily psychs out people who don't know what it is.
2) Have an OU Charge ready because the magnet can cause the opponent to get behind you, and at low % it can lead to a quick Forward Smash for decent damage and space.
3) A lot of projectile players use their projectile's against approaches, and if you have some damage, and they haven't adapted to the Freeze Magnet, it can easily lower your percent. And finally, off the top of my head,
4) It glides you in the air. On Final D I always find myself going across the stage and sometimes off the edge. If you play hard, you can easily get back on, and when your opponent (who usually should) chase you to get an, "easy" spike, you grab them, down throw, and follow up with a hop back into a Bair or Dair for quick stock kills.
That's all I have to say about that, but if you find more uses please let me know! I'm no pro, but an aspiring smasher that hopes to try and make it big. Also I just wanna hear what you think. I hope I helped!

 

[NeonApophis]

Magnet gliding is actually not very useful for recovery since you only get the huge momentum boost when you do a running jump. Doing a pkf at the top of your double jump and then doing a magnet can give you a small recovery boost, but it's mostly useful when you're on stage and can get the full momentum.
It's also not very good for approaching since it puts you too high in the air, is extremely predictable once you start it, and can therefore be easily stopped and punished by any decent opponent. The main use is following your opponent after you hit them far away and then following up with an aerial while they're still in the air or off stage. I guess it might also be possible to short hop pkf off a platform and then do a magnet glide low to the ground, but I haven't tested this yet.

 

[MysteryRevengerson]

I guess it might also be possible to short hop pkf off a platform and then do a magnet glide low to the ground, but I haven't tested this yet.

I tested this on most legal stages. It's possible on pretty much all of them with platforms save for Lylat (other platforms get in the way/are too close to the ground) It's a little tricky.