Help my game!

[Lightening]

Alright I have not played smash in a long time, Gamecube days. I really like Lucina from the fire emblem series and was hoping you all could teach me a thing or 2 about her. I never really played marth all that much back in the day because i didn't know what FE was. Awakening was amazing so Lucina is my character of choice. Intro aside, here are the things i'm struggling with. Some of them may be smash things in general, some Lucina specific.

1. Down A in teh air, I get blocked and grabbed everytime. I get grabbed almost everytime i land actually.
2. What do i do after doing a short jump forward a? I can do the sj fa but then what? It knocks them to far for me to do anything useful.
3. How do i smash someone off teh screen most effectively with her? Seems like a pain to actually get someone to go flying. Villager i got to 200% and the mofo wouldn't die.
4. I can't seem to grab people consistantly. I always whiff. Is there something i'm missing or do i need ot practice timing.
5. Speaking of timing, her sword dance doesn't always come out for me. I can do it almost consistantly offline, but online its a 50/50. Is anyone else like this?
6. Anything basic you feel telling me about Lucina style. Like i said, i never really got into marth back in the day.

Thanks guys.

My friend code is 5086-1938-0670 if anyone feels like teaching me or wants to spar! I also have skype if you want to talk and teach!

 

[Shadestars]

I've played a few hours of Lucina, and here are my impressions that may help you. If anyone spots something wrong, by all means correct me.

Her down aerial has a lot more landing lag then her fair, it's highly punishable so yeah, expect to get grabbed when you whiff it or it gets blocked. I still find myself using it out of short hop sometimes just to mix-up, I think it's an easier to hit aerial than her fair in certain situations, but for me at least it certaintly is high-risk.

After her fair, you follow up with whatever you want I guess. I prefer another SH fair, nair or forward tilt. Marth/Lucina dont seem to have anything that really combo's out of fair, it's a spacing/approach tool. They actually don't have many combo's at all (that I know of), it's more about sneaking singular strikes through their defences, hence why the spacing aspect is SO important, even still on Lucina. We gotta keep at swords length to deal with what may come back at us for whiffing. Control the space and you can apply stupid amounts of pressure, they can't defend forever.

You grabs seem like a practice thing, from what I've played Lucina'a grabs are easy to land.

The DB timing is one of two things, you either don't have the timing down pat, easily fixable with some casual practice, or your fighting matches with a dose of latency, in which case....**** happens Personally, I use DB VERY sparingly, I heard the full DB combo can actually be shield canceled by the opponent, who would then grab you mid combo. I haven't tested it out, so I don't know how true that is, but god damn! :V

That's all the advice Im willing to give, I could say more but I've only got a few hours of her played, I'm still ironing out many of her nuance's.

 

[Gawain]

I use Lucina as a second to Falcon, so I'll post some stuff. First off, playing Lucina is pretty much exactly the same as playing Marth in this game. That means you still need to be spacing your hits. The moveset Marth has is designed around keeping people in the tip zone. Even though she doesn't have it, do it anyways. Both of them are also very defensive characters in this game. Their combos are really limited and their aerials for the most part have bad landing lag.

When the stage is neutral, your primary focus is going to be towards pushing them towards the ledge. Both Lucina and Marth have very good edge game. The landing lag isn't a problem when you're edge guarding and they've got the range and priority in the air to edge guard effectively. This is even more important for Lucina because she has a harder time KOing from the stage than Marth, who has it relatively easy with tipped fsmashes. If you aren't very confident in going WAY off the stage and really going deep on the edge guards, you might want to try Marth for a bit as you'll have an easier time KOing.

To build percent, just focus mostly on using your ftilt, smashes, and nair (or fair if you knock them up), with dash attacks from time to time. I feel like Lucina's throw game is pretty awful so don't rely on those. Really all they're good for is getting them off stage with b-throw. Punish with your smashes more.

As a final note, use your shieldbreaker more. It's an extremely effective move, its one of the few things about Lucina that is actually better than Marth. Against guys who shield a lot it'll net you very easy wins.