It's not because we're playing a low tier character.
It's not because we have a bad matchup against Marth, Metaknight and other common tournament characters.
It's because we suck.
Lucas has the potential to win tournaments.
Discuss
Eeeeerm, although I'll agree that we suck, I'm gonna have to disagree that Lucas being low tier and having bad matchups against commonly used top tiers (and borderline unwinnable matchups against some less used ones) has nothing to do with it.
Looking at the tier list, no character in the general area of Lucas is winning tournies. Even chars like Yoshi (who don't do half-bad against MK) aren't taken too seriously. Lucas is bad. He has some nice tricks, early kills (if the opponent decides that he likes to airdodges into the ****) and a great recovery if nobody gets in his way. Problem is that many of his tricks are punishable, like how you can react to a magnet pull and get a free hit; early kills shouldn't happen against good people for a number of good reasons I'll explain if somebody wants me to; and while his recovery goes really far, it is waaaaay too easy to **** with. Even the logic behind is recovery is awful: You have 1.5 seconds to destroy Lucas, he will stand perfectly still in mid-air because he wants it. During this recovery, he will even be forced to di down and away for a good duration of it because game designers thought it'd be HILARIOUS.
We're not getting alot done in tournies but that's pretty disrespectful to say that it is clearly our fault since Lucas is great. He's... not. If the people who are saying Lucas is underrated are the same people that 5 mins ago said "Woooah, how did Lucas jump so high?", they don't know anything about the character's strengths or faults and are making baseless statements.
Think about it. Lucas is a close range damage racker, mid-long range spacer and a mid range killer. Know what the problem with that is? Just about every char in the game can force him out of his element and **** him at the range he chooses. The ones that can't are the chars that Lucas happens to beat. Against inexperienced people, Lucas probably seems amazing cause he can 'pressure shields' and has such fast moves and can randomly deal out high damage. All of that goes away with experience. ALL OF IT. Pressure shields? My balls, roll away, Lucas can't do **** about it. Even if he predicts your roll, unless you're Samus, you can react before Lucas reaches you unless he shamelessly dash attacks in anticipation. That's not even getting into the yomi that is heavily not in lucas's favor most of the time. Lucas nairs your shield, he's gotta guess now. The person blocking might as well block because none of Lucas's options outside of grab are gonna be advantageous. If he jabs, just about every char in the game can shieldgrab the first jab (only exception being if they were spaced away). If they tried to grab before the jab, they get jabbed for... /gasp 10% undiminished with no followups.
The Lucas could nair twice but that gets beat by shameless shield grab. Most Lucas's will ftilt with no intention of big damage but just trying to punish shield grabs/oos options. Great option but now we're back to the rolling away issue. While all of that doesn't seem so bad, you gotta realize that Lucas isn't effective if he's not in your face. Know the best part? The chars with GOOD oos options. Lucas gets **** on by bowser, marth, mk, gw up-b's oos. So back to long range... Pk fires for 8% undiminished don't rack up fast. The times he does get in, 10% jabs aren't much scarier. A char like Snake could force Lucas to approach, putting out way more damage as a threat and then kick your *** in close range too. Does that mean the Lucas failed somewhere in there? Not really, this is just a char flaw we've all been working with. Even Wario who has to fight in close range like Lucas is much harder to hit, racks up as much damage as you with stronger individual pokes (yes, 20% fsmashes mmm) and has the potential to kill you much earlier. But these are top tier chars, let's go down the list.
Wolf. This char gets ***** by all the top tiers and has a terrible recovery. So why's he so much better than Lucas? Cause he has stuff. Great FAST kill moves, a passive aggressive spacing game that outdamages Lucas's by a good bit and is generally more intimidating. If a Wolf bairs your shield, you know how many people shieldgrab it? Nobody. That's char respect. They know they're just asking for a quick followup that would bring on a heavy damage or killing smash. Now how many times do you hit shieldgrabs as Lucas? I bet you do it all day. Cause Lucas simply isn't scary. Nair has no range so you had to already guess right to make it a pressure move. Fair even when done with no lag is shieldgrabbable unless your retreat. Only scary approach would be dair which has its own list of problems.
So let's pretend Lucas is amazing and we've all been playing him wrong since the start of brawl. Let's focus on his strengths. He has good tilts and can kill. He can also edgeguard some chars (MK being one of them so good ****, Lucas). Lucas can space other close range chars with his tilts. That's great, that's how I play as a matter of fact. Problem is the killing part. Lucas has no means of setting up kills generally. Think about Pit. If your airdodge his uair, you get fsmashed/fair'ed/bair'ed. It's a trap. Lucas doesn't have cool tricks like this. He's watching your roll/sidestep pattern and trying to hit those unless you're bad and like to airdodge onto Lucas's stage (see: requesting the d!ck). If your airdodge Lucas's uair (why? hit the *****. even if it trades, it's not gonna kill you till 160 undiminished...), you get ftilted. Since this is Lucas's primary spacing move, it's not gonna kill you. If an uair that woulda hit got airdodged, there's no time to fsmash. It'll get blocked. There are bluffs and stuff but in matches against really good players, you can't expect to mindgame the player into fsmash each stock. I'm sure people would like to disagree with this, but mr. shield beats lucases who want to kill. Lucas edgeguarding is good, as long as it's a char with no options. MK's who have no Lucas experience will explain because Lucas can keep MK offstage easily... unless MK waits for Lucas to do... anything then recovers in the lag. Chars like Ganon who have no options are gonna take it, so that's something... I guess.
Another Lucas issue is that his rock-paper-scissors is more dangerous/ineffective than alot of others chars in the game since he lacks a fast grab. It's really easy to shieldwhore Lucas. Him trying to mix in grabs gives other chars options they shouldn't have. Whiffing grabs and getting Ike fsmashed on reaction isn't fun. When most other chars mix up, they don't have to accept these types of punishments. There's not even much incentive to play the poking game all day since Lucas doesn't even do that much damage. Even his heaviest damage setups like dair become really low damage when the opponent sdi's up.
There's also gimmicks. Watching Lucas is fun cause in a random vid, you'll see a Lucas pkt2 some player for 43%. That's sooo much damage!!! and... it'll only happen once. **** like that shouldn't happen. After enough experience vs Lucas, you know how far you can chase him out, you know how long you have to punish him, you know how to outprioritize his pkt2 and you know when to airdodge. Even things like b-stick pk fires aren't scary against people who know Lucas. Walk block eventually corners Lucas. Magnet pull? No need to anticipate. Wait for it and hit him in his lag. Don't worry, you have time. Lucas spacing with that high priority dair? Trade if you can (5-10% compared to the move you're doing) or block and treat it like a nair. Pivot grab it if you want. You have the option.
There's also the issue that some chars cut off Lucas's options just by being that char. How many Snakes/DDD's can your shield pressure with nair then space an fsmash? The answer is 0. Even bad snakes can ftilt out of shield and it'll hit any range you could reasonably hit with fsmash/ftilt the farthest you can di away after a nair. Even bad DDD's can shamelessly shieldgrab your nair before you hit their shield, at any side you're di'ing away or just when you land 100% of the time. If they aren't, they don't have the Lucas experience/timing. So what does this mean for Lucas? Against Snake, upon landing, he has to block (after blocking 1st ftilt, he can jab before the 2nd for...... 10 DAMAGE!!!!) or land and jab before the ftilt can come out for.......10 DAMAGE!!!. Same thing for DDD. Cept if the DDD doesn't suck, he'll realize your options (1 of which isn't block btw since grab beats block) and grab. You can jab but any good DDD will know that's your option, wait for a jab and grab you across the stage for 30 damage into dtilt. You know what happens when you guess right?.......... 10 DAM.... you get it.
But Galeon! You could di behind these guys and take away their options. That's where matchup stuff comes in. DDD could just throw out a grab whenever you run at him. Beats nair, block and sometimes trades with fair. That's.... pretty fair. You shouldn't even be able to run close enough to DDD to decide that you can land behind him with nair.
There's also the situation that Lucas cannot chase people. This is something people don't really bring up because... who plays Lucas? To make the point the clearest, let's go with one of the best runners: Wario. If he runs from you, you won't catch him. He can jump... jump away. Jump... airdodge. You know what you're gonna do about it? Nothing that works. But Galeon! You can pk fire his landing. He can choose how close he lands to you. Since pk fire does have a startup, with Lucas experience, he'll know where he has to land to have enough time to block. You can throw out predicting fairs but aggressive fairs are less effective because of how the hitbox works. It's a valid option but if you whiffed, you're gonna get hit back from more damage which can actually lead into a combo. You know what happens when you land a fair? Nothing, you get to guess and try to bull**** together an escapable setup. If he wants to, he could just let you approach. Lucas approaching is a sad sight. I play a ZSS time to time, you know which approaches beat d-smash?... Pk fire. Think about that. So when Lucas has to deal with sneaking inside Snake's invisible dome of tilts, MK's up-b range, DDD's grab range, it's all multiple predictions that lead to your all important...... 10 DAMAGE!!!
So Lucas. Regardless of how much everyone likes him here, I'm sorry, he's bad. He has less options than many chars and the options he does have are less effective than just about everyone else unless it comes down to pure kill power. Luckily, that's why teams is amazing. You can just focus on your strengths without having someone abuse your many flaws in a 1 on 1.
I've been playing this game since before it came out. I'm by no means a genius at this game but I understand it really well. Lucas is a char with no setups, an abusable recovery, a really lacking approach game, a rock-paper-scissors game without a paper, and a pressure game that only works on some characters when they don't know how to deal with it. He's not even good on paper when people get to understand the char.
He's not garbage, though. He has a bunch of nice things that have kept me playing him all this time. However playing Lucas means that you're not playing with the same tools that everyone else is. I also decided to omit how easy it is to counterpick Lucas because I didn't want to make this any longer than it already is. The fact of how easy it is to CP Lucas is already the reason why Lucas shouldn't be winning anything major. I believe we could all stand to be better but I'm not gonna let you all believe that Lucas is perfectly fine as a char.
TL;DR: Lucas IS bad. But he's sexy enough to remain a secondary.
