A Lucas+ Primer & Discussion: NOW DISCUSSING MARF MATCHUP

[stingers]

i need to zap jump more...i didn't play lucas in vbrawl so i never learned all those ats

 

[cman]

never played a samus before. D:

Sorry. In theory, shouldn't small missles and playing keepaway with retreating fairs be your best option? try to get early gimps with samus' awesome spike, because lucas' recovery is pretty terrible...

There are two problems with missiles in this match. Lucas is short enough that he can run under them if he is not under pressure when samus starts to fire if he is at moderate distance, or start pk firing if he is a bit farther. Basically, samus has to already be in control of the match before she can start camping. Distance alone isn't good enough like it is in some other matchups.

Retreating fairs are usable, but not particularly effective either because again, if samus is not already in control, her shorthop gets destroyed by pk fires. It becomes usable because samus' zair beats lucas' sh pk fire, but the zair generally loses to a rush from lucas. It becomes sort of a triangle of counters type of thing, but lucas benefits much more than samus can if his option wins.

Not if you zap jump -> magnet pull or tether.

Anyways one of the things with samus is you need to be careful with the charge beam (this is from the perspective of samus) because Lucas can use his Psimagnet. Also does PK fire cancel out any of Samus's projectiles?

I would actually very much recommend that you don't magnet at all in this match (except for recovery purposes and such). The magnet loses to every other ranged option of samus, and if you start magnetting, samus can homing missile -> charge shot, and you will get hit by both if you get hit by the missile. Otherwise, samus can just zair or approach.

Off the top of my head, pk fire beats everything except a full charge shot and a zair. I'll check when I get a chance.

 

[Mattnumbers]

I vote we discuss Samus next since we are already doing it.

Cman, if you powershield the missle/ hop over it you could probably get Psimagnet out in time. Really against Lucas I would advise only using the Charge Shot when Lucas is stuck in hitstun.

Personally, I would put this as a slight advantage to Lucas. Samus has troubles with short characters due to Zair not hitting them and Missles going over them. As Cman said earlier, there are some counter triangles but Lucas gets more out of them then Samus does. Also I would say that Lucas can very easily edgeguard Samus with either Downsmash or PK thunder.

On the other hand, Samus can also edgeguard Lucas. If she jumps over him he will Zapjump right into her Dair if he isn't careful, and its obviously easy to gimp him during PKT.

I would put it at 60:40 Lucas, possibly up or down by 5

 

[~tgm_Zeej]

I'd say 55:45 Lucas here.

It's only swayed in Lucas' favor because he has an easier time actually finishing a stock. Both characters can camp each other all day, but both are going to have to get in close to get the kill. Samus' main problem is killing, and fighting Lucas who can heal from a badly placed charge shot isn't going to make it any easier.

Magnet isn't fast enough to catch a Charge Shot after a Super Missile if I recall correctly, but with the wrong spacing, Samus can be punished for firing both in rapid succession.

 

[Gravyguy101]

Cman you fought me the other day(hambone/zzzz) I have a bunch of the matches saved I think I'll pick them apart in mroe detail let you know what works and doesn't work, I do remember you have alot better luck with homing missiles then with smash missiles. Again I'll let you know in a little.

 

[cman]

If anyone wantts to play me on wifi, my fc is 0387-8905-6438. Keep in mind that samus' timing gets screwed by wifi a bit and that i am personally also pretty bad on wifi, but it should give a pretty good idea of the type of things that samus can do.

Cman, if you powershield the missle/ hop over it you could probably get Psimagnet out in time. Really against Lucas I would advise only using the Charge Shot when Lucas is stuck in hitstun.

Personally, I would put this as a slight advantage to Lucas. Samus has troubles with short characters due to Zair not hitting them and Missles going over them. As Cman said earlier, there are some counter triangles but Lucas gets more out of them then Samus does. Also I would say that Lucas can very easily edgeguard Samus with either Downsmash or PK thunder.

On the other hand, Samus can also edgeguard Lucas. If she jumps over him he will Zapjump right into her Dair if he isn't careful, and its obviously easy to gimp him during PKT.

I would put it at 60:40 Lucas, possibly up or down by 5

Samus has some trixies which will usually get charge shots to hit even when they aren't in hitstun. For example, samus runs away, and if lucas chases, she jumps and reverses a charge shot. This almost always hits because no one is expecting it, and I've gotten many kills with it. At worst, it gets shield and samus can regain control of the match.

As for gimping, keep in mind that samus has a tether, so downsmash usually doesn't work unless you can force a screw attack. As for pk thunder, how can you di to reliably to not get gimped. Half the time, my di carried me back to the stage, and the other half it shot me the other direction. Care to enlighten me?

I'd say 55:45 Lucas here.

It's only swayed in Lucas' favor because he has an easier time actually finishing a stock. Both characters can camp each other all day, but both are going to have to get in close to get the kill. Samus' main problem is killing, and fighting Lucas who can heal from a badly placed charge shot isn't going to make it any easier.

Magnet isn't fast enough to catch a Charge Shot after a Super Missile if I recall correctly, but with the wrong spacing, Samus can be punished for firing both in rapid succession.

No actually samus is quite good at killing now. You can go for the gimp, but should that fail, she has 7 decent or really great kill moves. These are charge shot, super missile, fsmash, nair, bair, dair, and utilt. The last two are both useful onstage and for gimping.

And get this... you can combo into charge shot with four different moves at killing percentages. If you get hit with a dair at like 60%-100% (ish) and samus has a charge shot, you will be hit with it (samus will chase and then reverse the charge shot if necessary), and it usually kills. An utilt has enough stun to combo into charge shot as well. Timed well, a homing missile combos into it. In certain situations with poor di, a super missile willl even combo into a charge shot, and this is particularly deadly because you will already be halfway to the death boundary when you get hit by the charge shot. The last one is rather rare, but I've done it a few times in matches. You can avoid it by DI'ing up on the super missile hit fyi.

I also usually live quite long against lucas's (150+), unless you hit with an fsmash at like 100 or get a random gimp with pkt (because i don't know the di for the move). I would definitely say that samus has a much easier time killing.

The main problem samus has is terrible out of shield options while lucas is a good shield pressure character. A combination of the two means that you can basically trap samus in her shield on a lack of good options to get out rather than shield stun.

Cman you fought me the other day(hambone/zzzz) I have a bunch of the matches saved I think I'll pick them apart in mroe detail let you know what works and doesn't work, I do remember you have alot better luck with homing missiles then with smash missiles. Again I'll let you know in a little.

Yes i remember, and i would like you to send them to me if you don't mind, since i didn't save any -.- The problem is that her projectiles are like ten times harder to time well on wifi than they are offline (for me at least), which is the reason I rarely hit with them. They are possible to time so that lucas can't run under them. Still it would be nice to see some of the replays. What was your opinion regarding her in-shield options, if you were paying attention to that?

 

[Veril]

Cman, if you powershield the missle/ hop over it you could probably get Psimagnet out in time.

Don't do this.

On the other hand, Samus can also edgeguard Lucas. If she jumps over him he will Zapjump right into her Dair if he isn't careful, and its obviously easy to gimp him during PKT.

If he isn't careful is the key phrase here. Zapjumps can move in a lot of different ways and you can use PsiM to stall and position yourself for one. PKT is pretty bad here though.

 

[Mattnumbers]

I don't really know anyone who plays Samus and I'm going out of theory right now, so forgive me if I've gotten anything wrong.

What would you say the ratio is Cman?

EDIT: Veril, zapjumps always go up first, and a good Samus will just wait for the Lucas player to get into a position where he can't stall anymore and then jump out and gimp him as he rises.

 

[cman]

I don't really know anyone who plays Samus and I'm going out of theory right now, so forgive me if I've gotten anything wrong.

What would you say the ratio is Cman?

EDIT: Veril, zapjumps always go up first, and a good Samus will just wait for the Lucas player to get into a position where he can't stall anymore and then jump out and gimp him as he rises.

Well you guys definitely don't know enough about samus to call a ratio, and I don't think i know quite enough about lucas. I also want to wait to see if i can think of any better oos options for samus in this matchup.

How good is lucas' jab cancel? The games I've played the lucases never used them so i could get out of my shield when they finished the jab combo, but if he has a solid cancel, then it could be pretty bad.

 

[Mattnumbers]

Well you guys definitely don't know enough about samus to call a ratio, and I don't think i know quite enough about lucas. I also want to wait to see if i can think of any better oos options for samus in this matchup.

Remember, these aren't official, so we don't need extensive experience yet, we'll do that later. Just give us your ratio to the best of your knowledge, it probably won't be too far off the real ratio.

 

[Veril]

Veril, zapjumps always go up first, and a good Samus will just wait for the Lucas player to get into a position where he can't stall anymore and then jump out and gimp him as he rises.

Don't zapjump into the ****...

 

[Mattnumbers]

Don't zapjump into the ****...

But you have to or else you just fall and die, that's the thing. If your far enough away that Samus can't Dair you she can Super missile so you can't do a magnet pull without getting hit by it. Then your open for further edgeguarding.

 

[~tgm_Zeej]

No actually samus is quite good at killing now. You can go for the gimp, but should that fail, she has 7 decent or really great kill moves. These are charge shot, super missile, fsmash, nair, bair, dair, and utilt. The last two are both useful onstage and for gimping.

And get this... you can combo into charge shot with four different moves at killing percentages. If you get hit with a dair at like 60%-100% (ish) and samus has a charge shot, you will be hit with it (samus will chase and then reverse the charge shot if necessary), and it usually kills. An utilt has enough stun to combo into charge shot as well. Timed well, a homing missile combos into it. In certain situations with poor di, a super missile willl even combo into a charge shot, and this is particularly deadly because you will already be halfway to the death boundary when you get hit by the charge shot. The last one is rather rare, but I've done it a few times in matches. You can avoid it by DI'ing up on the super missile hit fyi.

I also usually live quite long against lucas's (150+), unless you hit with an fsmash at like 100 or get a random gimp with pkt (because i don't know the di for the move). I would definitely say that samus has a much easier time killing.

The main problem samus has is terrible out of shield options while lucas is a good shield pressure character. A combination of the two means that you can basically trap samus in her shield on a lack of good options to get out rather than shield stun.

Dair kills now? o.o

And yeah, I knew she could combo into charge shot. I only knew about dair from vBrawl though, as I played her a bit in it. Quite a number of things can combo into now it seems.

Hmm. I could really use more practice in this matchup...
I'll stay out of the discussion for now. I fear I might actually do more harm than good here.

 

[stingers]

I'll stay out of the discussion for now. I fear I might actually do more harm than good here.

Yeah that's why I'm not talking

 

[cman]

Dair kills now? o.o

And yeah, I knew she could combo into charge shot. I only knew about dair from vBrawl though, as I played her a bit in it. Quite a number of things can combo into now it seems.

I included dair and utilt as kill moves because they always combo into kill moves until really high percentages, but soon after they start to outright kill (like 160+). Delayed-kill moves you could call them i suppose. Plus, they both edgeguard well.

You guys can wifi me to get a bit of matchup experience, btw. fc: 0387-8905-6438

Anyway, no one got back to me on lucas' jab cancel. Is it decent?

 

[Mattnumbers]

EDIT2: Forget it, Lucas doesn't really need it, plus most Lucas mains don't even really want it
EDIT: Hopefully I didn't forget anything, I typed out a bunch of it and then hit back and had to retype it ~sigh~

ATTENTION LUCAS MAINS

To begin, I must say that I love playing as Lucas. He is a great character. He is also very balanced, Frankly the WBR did a great job when they decided to balance him. They raised him from a gimmicky character with bad matchups and many problems to a perfectly good and viable character who is amazing at pressure and can at least hinder every characters recovery and at most completely demolish others. But I still feel that he has one problem. This problem is PK Freeze. The move is useless, unless you count sandbagging. That brings me to the point of this post.........

​

Buffing PK Freeze

Why Buff PK Freeze?

PK Freeze is a useless move. Every use it has is either not effective or is overshadowed by another move.

Edgeguarding? PK Thunder is way better, lasts longer, and not to mention PK Freeze actually helps them get back onstage

Forcing an Airdodge? People usually bring this up when people say PK Freeze is useless, but really PK thunder can force them to AD just as well, it can even Force them to AD and then hit them afterwards.

Any form of offense? PK freeze is so easy to dodge that it doesn't work for offense. Even if you do hit them you can't follow it with anything since they can attack as soon as they get out of their ice. Plus they take less damage while in the ice.

Making useless moves useful not only expands a characters metagame, but makes characters more fun to play (I'm not saying Lucas has a shallow metagame or isn't fun to play however).

The move could also play on his strengths since we could change it to improve his edgeguarding.

Possible Buffs

Lets go over possible changes to PK Freeze, remember that it is not currently possible to alter the actual hitbox of PK Freeze so we can't change the angle/KB Growth:

1. Increase the speed of PK Freeze: This could/should be used in conjunction with another buff as this would be a big part of the buff

2. Increase the amount of damage PK Freeze does: This would make PK Freeze a damage racking move in used along with a buff that makes it easier to actually hit your opponent

3. Reduce the amount of damage PK Freeze does: This would serve as a way to indirectly lower the knockback of PK Freeze so that it could be used as a more efficient edgeguarding tool.

4. Reduce the winddown lag of PK Freeze: In other words, make the move spammable. This could serve the purpose of keeping the opponent away from you and racking up damage when they are out of PK Fire range. This would be used in conjunction with a speedup of the move.

5. Reduce the time before it is possible to detonate the move: If we could make it activate right above Lucas's head it could be used as way to ward off aerial approaches.

6. Although I doubt this is possible, turning it into PK Love (replace Freeze effect with regular damaging Heart effect) would be awesome, especially since if you didn't know, PK Love is Lucas's signature move in MOTHER 3.

The Tradeoff
As I said earlier, Lucas is currently a very balanced character, and buffing him without nerfing him would ruin that. This is a part that the entire Lucas+ community really needs to talk about since different people have different opinions obviously.
Personally, I was thinking of nerfing the damage of PK Fire a couple %s. depending on how much we buff PK Freeze this seems like a good tradeoff since Lucas uses PK Fire so much.



So, what does everyone think about this? What buff do you think the move should get and what nerf do you think Lucas should get? Do you even want a change? Please leave feedback as I can only do this with the backing of the community. Additionally, I need someone who can code to actually make any changes we will be testing.

 

[stingers]

we should lie and tell people it's awesome...

then neko will be all like "okay i've heard pk freeze is pretty good, we need to nerf it"

then we can be all "but it's a central part of our game, we'll need you to make fsmash kill around 40 to even it out"

"well okay that sounds fair"

LETS DO IT

 

[Mattnumbers]

we should lie and tell people it's awesome...

then neko will be all like "okay i've heard pk freeze is pretty good, we need to nerf it"

then we can be all "but it's a central part of our game, we'll need you to make fsmash kill around 40 to even it out"

"well okay that sounds fair"

LETS DO IT

****, scrap my idea this is way better

 

[Shell]

Just to reiterate on what I said in the other thread, we could only find one of the hitboxes for this move -- there are at least two. What this means, is that even though I tried to give it a much lower KBG and an away-hitting angle, the change would only work when the certain modified hitbox would connect. Most of the time it would do the old hit, and sometimes it would do the new hit.

This hit-or-miss nature seemed un-polished to me, and so I scrapped it in favor of buffing other things.

Which leaves us with speed changes, or the remote possibility of doing some creative work with our conditional animation modifier.

Candidates for trade off could include things like less DMG / KBG / Steeper Angle on PKT1, less KBG on F-smash or D-smash, less dmg on Dair / Nair, etc.

Personally I'm not sure any of this is necessary, but I'm always open to brainstorming and hearing ideas.

 

[Mattnumbers]

So it's not actually that you can't do anything, It's just that you can't actually find the other hitbox? Could you increase the size of the hitbox we know of?

 

[stingers]

i think we should just leave it and leave lucas how he is

lol

i mean if you guys really want it I'm sure we can think of something to give up but I'd rather not

 

[Veril]

Idea: Make it so that PK-Freeze doesn't leave you in a helpless state. I say this mostly because when b-sticking wavebounced psi-M, like for a reverse magnet pull, it is easy to accidentally pk-freeze to your doom. Its something that is certainly minimized with experience, but I still do it from time to time. I also think offstage PK-freeze would give us another option against edgeguards, and it actually gives a momentum boost ...

It would also make PK-Freeze gliding a possible strategy, since the glide distance is quite impressive.


Less damage on PKT1 would be a good trade, since it would preserve its use for gimping recoveries, but reducing the amount of essentially free damage on opponents offstage. (seriously, on BF, start it out of a thunderslide off a platform and its pretty much completely safe.)

 

[stingers]

That's a horrible idea oh my god -_-

If you're bad enough that you kill yourself offstage with PK Freeze, that's your own fault!

Offstage PK Freeze has no tactical use whatsoever, it'll just save your *** if you're stupid enough to use it. -_-

 

[Veril]

That's a horrible idea oh my god -_-

If you're bad enough that you kill yourself offstage with PK Freeze, that's your own fault!

Offstage PK Freeze has no tactical use whatsoever, it'll just save your *** if you're stupid enough to use it. -_-

um... no.

Wavebouncing a psi-m puts the c-stick incredibly close to the spot that will cause a c-stick neutral-b. I wavebounce that move a lot. PK-freeze accidents happen very rarely, but when they do, its a stock. I'm pretty d*** good at all of Lucas's recovery tricks, its just a risk inherent in b-sticking.

Since pk-freeze keeps momentum, you could start one while approaching the stage, and maybe its useful against edgehogging (since it can stage spike).

Fail kneejerk response fails. How would anyone know if there's no tactical use, its never been even a remote possibility due to the free fall.

 

[stingers]

So you want it changed...because you kill yourself with it.

Which is your own fault.

I don't want to hear it.

 

[Veril]

So you want it changed...because you kill yourself with it.

Which is your own fault.

I don't want to hear it.

Look, whatever... I want it changed primarily because of its momentum effects. I've gotta go to work now, but I'll post on it later. Removing the risk of a needless SD seems like a good bonus to me as well. There are so many things I would love to try out with PK-Freeze. If the codesets are "experimental", why not try it? Actually don't answer that yet. Seriously, just let me explain the momentum stuff and then maybe you'll be less hostile, K.

 

[Deleted member]

Well, DK and Zelda didn't have to trade anything off for their non Helpless State moves, why should Lucas?
If this isn't applied, I think Zelda and DK should lose theirs too.

 

[stingers]

The momentum never useful. There is never a time where you can use a wavebounced PK Freeze that a Magnet Pull would not of been the far better option, mainly because you have options out of a magnet pull whereas PK Freeze is utterly useless.

The only change(s) to PK Freeze that could make it useful would be to either raise or lower KBG enough to make it a viable killer, or a viable combo move. The arc is moves in is fine, and you shouldn't be using it close enough that you should need to detonate it right away...it's supposed to be used from afar like PK Thunder.

 

[~tgm_Zeej]

DK can kill with his neutral B, and can combo into it. Sometimes offstage.
Zelda can use her forward B to cover her recovery from offstage, and it stalls her out for a bit.

PK Freeze has no tactical use offstage. None. It sends them up with no hitstun and barely any damage. The only purpose this buff serves is to stop bad inputs.

That's like me complaining about accidentally Spindashing to my doom instead of using the spring because I held too far to the right. >.>

 

[Mattnumbers]

DK can kill with his neutral B, and can combo into it. Sometimes offstage.
Zelda can use her forward B to cover her recovery from offstage, and it stalls her out for a bit.

PK Freeze has no tactical use offstage. None. It sends them up with no hitstun and barely any damage. The only purpose this buff serves is to stop bad inputs.

That's like me complaining about accidentally Spindashing to my doom instead of using the spring because I held too far to the right. >.>

Except the window for using a neutral B on the c-stick is much, MUCH smaller. It also depends on pressure. It's such a small window that it seems completely random (Which it isn't I've tested it)

Anyways, the thing I personally would like to do to PK Freeze is speed it up and speed up the ending lag. It could be used as a ranged pressure move for when they're out of PK Fire range. It still wouldn't be hard to dodge but it would keep on the pressure the entire time they are approaching. I also think this would go well with a PK Fire damage nerf.

 

[stingers]

Nooo thats a bad idea...it doesn't need any more speed and the ending lag is minimal anyway, why would you nerf one of our best spacing options for that?

 

[Mattnumbers]

Well it would only nerf its damage output so It wouldn't make it space less effectively.

 

[stingers]

It's still a pointless buff...

 

[Mattnumbers]

Why? It would be a way to apply pressure from afar, and maybe rack up some damage if they actually get hit by one. Also it would be better at forcing an AD when they're offstage.

 

[stingers]

PK thunder would still be better at both those things. The buffs you suggested wouldn't help PK Freeze do those things at all.

 

[Revven]

PK Freeze doesn't need any buffs. Lucas doesn't need PK Freeze to be any better than he is currently, he is the best he can be right now. Buffing PK Freeze is like buffing DK's Side B, it has its uses but, other moves overshadow it immensely. DK's Side B is overshadowed by a lot of his other specials and his aerials and tilts, and has only one actual situational use: Bair > Side B. Comparatively Lucas's PK Freeze has some usage yet, it goes at an obscure angle and is easy to see coming. Any buffs to it wouldn't make it better, the move itself is just inherently bad and every move Lucas has it better than PK Freeze.

It doesn't help that the ice part of it doesn't even last very long. So, making it any better, you'd have to increase the time someone is in the ice for... it would take a lot to fix PK Freeze and overall, it's just not worth it. =\

 

[Mattnumbers]

Ok, well, Forget it then.

There's not really anything we can do without being able to change the hitbox. Plus since most other people don't want it I'm fine with not doing anything to it.

 

[Veril]

I can see there's not going to be any buff, but I don't think I made my point very well and I never followed up on the momentum thing since well... work johns...

Anyway, now that I've got some time and can respond:

1.

That's like me complaining about accidentally Spindashing to my doom instead of using the spring because I held too far to the right. >.>

No, its nothing like that. To do that you would have to have some kind of wacky finger spasm. B-sticking a neutral special instead of a wavebounced down-b is much much more likely. I'm not saying it isn't a mistake when it happens, but the comparison is absurd. Its basically a 90°error on the a-stick vs like a 20° error on the c-stick, which is really sensitive as it is.

I'm done arguing that point. Its true that it isn't a valid reason for the buff and that's that.

The momentum never useful. There is never a time where you can use a wavebounced PK Freeze that a Magnet Pull would not of been the far better option, mainly because you have options out of a magnet pull whereas PK Freeze is utterly useless.

What about ledge-momentum. PK-Freeze has an awesome slide. It would be a neat way to move really fast offstage or around platforms. Thundersliding... no. Psi-m has no ledge-momentum to speak of.

PK Freeze has no tactical use offstage. None. It sends them up with no hitstun and barely any damage.

It stagespikes... but...

Yes, there's no real good reason for the buff. Point conceded.

Who b-sticks here btw?

 

[stingers]

Not me, because it's too hard to use the neutral B. Just learn to wavebounce without it, it's not that difficult.

 

[ToxiCrow]

@ Veril- i dont bstick. i wave bounce without it.
i thought it would've been cool, but i couldnt really care less for the PKfreeze buff. it's not like he really needed it. could it have brought about some new tactics? maybe. its just a very situational move. trash? ehh, why not.

so now that Thats over with, what should we talk about? continue with the Samus matchup? does anyone have any videos of Lucas vs Samus +?