Alright, alright I feel like I'm holding back a lot of things with Lucario. Truth be told, I am.
You want the basics, let's go.
Spacing with certain moves
- Fsmash -
Like I said earlier, learn to properly space it. Meaning, know when to pressure, punish and zone with it. Just cause it wont hit, doesn't mean we wont get punished right away. Practice it a lot seriously if you know when you can fsmash a snake, mk, diddy, falco, etc... Without them punishing you for using this move, such as MK dash grabbing you, or dash attacking to prevent you from executing it, or snake ftilting you when you hit his shield, or dash attacking out of shield into mortar. You will feel a lot better.
Also I'm not seeing us really stutter step with fsmash as much, it actually helps out especially when an opponent is near the edge, and they know you like to fsmash. I usually stutter step into them, when they try to avoid it and they get tippered.
- Fair -
This is golden, extremely golden if we learn how to space with this better a lot of characters will feel really uncomfortable fighting Lucario. If you do a full hop, you can get 2 out immediately and still have time to shoot an aura sphere, dair, nair, b reversal away, airdodge safely. If you try for 3, you will suffer landing lag.
Short hop, you can only get one, but you're able to bair, shoot an aura sphere, b reversal, nair, dair but obviously at a shorter distance.
Of course we know this, but we're talking about the basics, so yeah it's time to be obvious.
Knowing when to approach, retreat, reverse aerial rush, or just stay still with fair is really important it sets up for different options. Let me explain the uncommon one.
Reverse Aerial Rush Fair - In case you didn't know, Lucario does have a hit box behind him when he does fair. It's least expecting to RAR with fair, however our opponents mostly assume that we will fair them in front of them and not really go through them, in doing that if we space it improperly, we can get punished out of shield. Dedede - Grab/Utilt, Snake - Utilt, MK - grounded shuttle loop, Falco/Fox - usmash. You get the idea however, with a reverse aerial rush, we get that short hit stun, be facing behind them if we go through their shield, and if they don't move their shield on time we can poke them with dair, aura spheres, even nair or just land and grab them or whatever you feel like doing.
What are the negatives about this? It can be risky yes, this isn't one of our best options, personally I like to use this to fall on opponents especially Falco, cause the knock back doesn't send them too far, so you're able to keep hitting him while he's dropping and it sets up for bairs and rising nairs.
Short hop Fairs - Extremely common, too extreme. We become predictable, pretty much telling your opponent. "Alright time to put up the shield and punish this now." Tell me that doesn't happen to you a lot? If it doesn't, then you're an extremely smart Lucario player or you opponents are just too easy and you need better competition. Is it good? Absolutely, in moderation, usually when we think of approach we all say fair, or short hop fair. Until we remembered that full hop was a lot better especially to avoid a lot of punishing techniques, so why did we stop? Who knows, I mainly stopped full hopping fairs, cause I was trying to force out combos, and when it didn't happen I got punished, when I should've just been spacing my fairs.
So what should we really use short hop fairs? We can still use it to approach, but I see it more as a punisher and zoning method. We have talked about our options out of shield. I've recently started to use this as a way to punish out of shield, if I can't utilt, rising dair my opponent or I don't have a charged aura sphere ready. Especially if they attack from the air, we can still push them back with a fair, then rising with one and fall down on them with nair or dair.
Zoning with it is useful, short fair to aura sphere, short hop fair to retreating nair to get the quick land, short hop fair to airdodge. We can even use that get around a shielder if they don't react fast enough.
Neutral fairs - I mainly use this, when an opponent is grabbing the ledge, full hop, short hop. It's all about pressuring you opponent into thinking they are safe remember the count, 2 full hops, 3rd one will make you land with lag if you don't double jump, short hop is 1, 2nd one will make you land with lag. What can you do to make them feel uncomfortable, say they roll from the edge, you can start to DI to where there roll will end, hit them with a bair, hell even use your 2nd hop and dair to punish, even turn around and shoot an aura sphere into their back, or if you think you can do it well enough land and get ftilt or fsmash in there. It's up to you, what if just do a regular get up? Kick them back off, dair their shield so they grab the ledge again, shoot an aura sphere on landing, move away and regroup. If it's MK get away if they like to spam shuttle loop once they rise up. If they jump? If you full hopped and know you can get them before they airdodge, hit them back off stage, then hit with rising nair or dair (All depends on your height when descending).
- Aura Sphere -
The love factor, it racks up damage, it's annoying (Not as annoying as Pit's Arrows), it makes Lucario flash, we can spam with it, it gets bigger with aura. It's one of our kill moves if not our main one.
How to use it wisely
There are many ways to use Aura sphere. We can use it to get a kill in if necessary one of our main ways of killing as a matter of fact. However we can use it for pressure, rack up damage and harassing our opponents.
Pressuring - Baby Aura spheres, half charged, fully charged aura spheres all have their uses in pressuring. Shield pressuring, stage control, how our opponent can approach us.
Flame told me that people like to walk up to him and perfect shield his aura spheres. Annoying yes, however if we're at low percent our aura spheres wont do squat to their shields even if they perfect shield it. It wont really diminish it at all, but charging one and shooting one off, then immediately getting another one ready is a lot better. We can spam them off pretty well especially if one is slightly charged (I don't understand why, but we can which is really weird. Someone should check into that for me and give me some results.)
But what if they don't perfect shield them? Well, their shield gets eaten up, and if they suck at it, they will probably start hopping over them. In this way I think of street fighter, when people usually hop over hadouken spams if they don't have a projectile to clash with and just like Ryu's hadouken's speed can be altered if you press, weak, strong or fierce punch, our aura spheres travel at different speeds depending on how much they are charged thus making the hopping game a bit harder and when they get close it's time to punish.
----- To be continued once I wake up. I have a lot more on my plate, but it's **** near 4 in the morning.