Lucas is really good. As NintendoGalaxy says he is often placed in Ness' shadow, but they are absolutely nothing alike, which is evident in every game state. Please don't bite into that myth.
Lucas' gameplan is broadly a mid-range counterpoking/walling character whose main goal is to force an unsafe approach, preferably from the air, and punish with a grab combo. Should they get too close, he has options to reset with his frame 2 jab or generate more space / use an alternative method to win neutral with PKF. Against most characters, this works well, he has strong, functional tools to follow this plan (i.e. forcing *unsafe* approaches) and they all work pretty well together. Unlike someone like Sheik or Diddy however, Lucas' neutral isn't particularly low-risk at doing so hence why he doesn't dominate any MUs despite his strong toolkit on paper. (PKF as a commitment and sacrifices stage control, Fair is also a substantial commitment, generally low air speed, run speed, walk speed). He also can't approach to save his life, his approach options are legitimately terrible and if you can force him to approach you, you definitely should.
Lucas' MU spread is pretty good. A generally-agreed advantageous MU against Mario, a strong case for even MUs against Rosa and Bayo backed up by tournament sets, is disadvantaged but holds up ok against Fox (this MU will get worse over time), Sonic and ZSS.
However almost every character that forces Lucas to approach beats Lucas. This includes the likes of Sheik - not to compare the two but as someone who plays both, I feel the
MU is much worse for Lucas than it is for Ness, and Ness doesn't exactly sail through it.
Other strong characters like Olimar, Greninja beat him handily and there is a case for others like Peach, but none of those are Sheik-awful. They just aren't.
Diddy is an underexplored MU. Some have lost faith due to set results and in particular ZeRo beating Taiheita at SSC, but if you watch that VOD, to me at least, it looks more like ZeRo countering Taiheita, not so much Diddy countering Lucas.
He also has a bit of a range problem with swords. Lucas is mostly a mid-range character and if you can out-footsie him, he is forced to play the MU at a longer range than he wants (he can't apply rushdown-type pressure - no viable approach options) and he isn't so good at that. (PKF as a commitment, sacrifices stage control, PK Freeze can work to win neutral, as Mekos shows us, but it's not that great.)
His neutral is good and his disadvantage is decent relative to other characters (small floaty character, momentum mixups with wavebounces give him more landing options, stalling with PSIMag, decent recovery + tether to use, but no frame 3 sex kick to escape strings and can only trade with fair, not great off the ledge).
His advantage, however, is not good. To illustrate this point I want to remind people of the VoiD and Mr R discussion we had a while back, where we looked at how Mr R's advantage state was better than VoiD's even though VoiD had superior true combos. Advantage is more than true combos, which Lucas has (mostly just one hit off of dthrow), but outside of those combos and catching landings with pivot grab or PKF his advantage state is subpar. Even with his combos, his footstool combo is overrated as hell (hint: ban FD) and nair can be SDI'd very efficiently so as SDI becomes optimised, Lucas' nair will become less and less usable to extend true combos and strings. I think that's common knowledge but people aren't doing it enough. And outside of that, his advantage kind of blows. He has some strong grab combos including up air at death % (which is guaranteed regardless of DI by the way, and Lucas can REACT to your DI, he does NOT need to READ it), and then up throw starts killing almost as soon as that stops working.
Much of his advantage outside of combos is underoptimised, but many of his tools aren't that great for it anyway.
On that point, I think it's worth mentioning that if we in this thread are correct in believing that the meta is shifting towards having a workable neutral leading into a powerful Advantage state, Ness is objectively better than Lucas. Lucas' neutral is better but his advantage is mediocre. Ness' neutral isn't good but it isn't bad either, and his advantage state outclasses Lucas at every point. Punish game, ledgetrapping, offstage pressure, everything that isn't trapping landings. Lucas also lacks any kind of burst range threat, which is something that comes up often in this thread.
Just some food for thought. One of these statements - "the meta is shifting like this" and "
is better than
" - has to be wrong.
What's really holding Lucas back is his players. Not so much the lack of them - he quietly has a lot of excellent players, many are solo mains and getting some very impressive results. Hakadama and PK Blueberry are incredible players but their attendance at major tournaments is very rare. Taiheita and Mekos don't get around, although Mekos is showing his face a little more now. There are others, like Kodystri with wins over the likes of Fatality and ScAtt with Lucas, although I believe the set count is solidly in their favour and Kodystri plays an amalgamate of characters (and then wonders why his Lucas doesn't put in as much work as he wants).
And then you have the Lucas Discord, which is filled with plenty nice enough people who want the best for their character but they focus on all the wrong things. I don't stick my head in there too often these days but when I do, they're usually discussing the same few things, things like optimising the footstool combos and down throw to up air. It's rare for them to talk about enhancing any other important aspects of Lucas' gameplan, like ledgetrapping, frametrapping, or, I don't know, neutral, and if they do look at something else it is only very briefly and with barely any detail.
I love you Lucas Discord guys, you really are great people, but my god you need to get your **** together.
But yeah. Lucas is, at his core, a decent solo character but he won't win anything solo and will struggle to break top 8 by himself, held back not so much by lack of representation, but lack of attendance from his strongest players and overall poor development/exposure. Even since release and buffs he has constantly been neglected by the wider Smash 4 community partially due to this.
Lucas is good. Don't sleep on him, but be aware of his unfortunate issues and bad matchups because they really do hold him back. I maintain he's top 20. He's Mid-B tier at best imo. But definitely better than most of current C tier.
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