Lucas's edge game

[MoMonay]

Currently in my development as a Lucas player, I rely heavily on the PK pizza toss (up throw) and setting up charged upsmashes to finish people. I'll put on a ton of damage on them, but it takes me upwards to 150% to actually get a kill on different players. I'm at a loss on how to play the edge game. The two moves I can pull off with horrifying inconsistency is a downthrow into a b-air spike, and a downthrow into a d-air spike. However, I have no idea how to play people off the edge. I'm already pretty bad at reading people as they come back from the edge, and I find it difficult to land Lucas's downsmash on the edge as well.

Personal thoughts, get more consistent with the back air spike. I'm really REALLY bad at aiming where I hit someone with the back air. The d-air spike is super risky for me because I don't always get the last foot hit, and I also kill myself a lot when I try it. The d-smash also is a little meh because I'm not very sure when someone is gonna sweet spot the ledge, and I find myself getting hit a lot before I land it.

What other options does Lucas have for playing the edge game?

 

[Farkle the Oddly Shaped]

You can do a few options hanging from the edge:

-edge stall with Magnet to regrab edge (you can also hit them with the shine if they're too close)
-if they're returning level to/above the stage (you'll have to play around with the heights to see what works), you can ledgedrop to a rising bair--odds are, unless you completely flub it, you'll hit either the meteor hitbox or the high knockback hitbox--I've seen Hammertime use this one pretty effectively
-you can thunderglide from a platform/onstage to get an edgeguard and it might be able to stagespike if they don't hit the sweetspot correctly (I wouldn't really recommend this option--it can be risky if you don't do it right and it's more flashy than effective

other than that you can use the onstage dair meteor and down smash/down-angled forward smash to cover ledge
watch videos of Neon, Calabrel, and Hammertime and watch what they do to cover ledge options

 

[stones]

fair to fair then pkt back and try to clip them if you can this is not that good of a kill tactic but it leaves them with no jump and can be repeated until success (which may take a while) the fair sweetspot is either while his foot comes out or in between his hexagon and foot.

 

[drummaniac28]

You need to get good at hitting with the bair. I know you said you're really inconsistent and kill yourself often, but you have to get worse to get better. Sure you'll lose to everyone for a while, but it'll be worth it in the end when you aim those bairs perfectly and get some easy gimps against a lot of characters. With Lucas' DJC, you can always pick the perfect height to hit with, but I've found that its pretty easy to hit it if you do the rising aerial version. Doing that also gives you a bit more vertical distance to help you get back on the stage after you disrespect your opponent with the spike.

Two quick things:
1. Against spacies, doing a downthrow to bair doesn't work since they fall too fast, so what you want to do is downthrow to fsmash. This still doesn't work at super low percentages, so just utilt for a while and laugh while they cry as you get a free 40%.
2. Keep in mind if you go for the downthrow to dair that dair is not actually a spike, but is a meteor smash and can therefore be meteor cancelled. It's still super strong though, and even if your opponent meteor cancels it, you can usually hit them with it again and they won't be able to make it back, even with a meteor cancel.

Most people probably already know all this but I thought I'd give my 2 cents anyways.

 

[cloudz]

f-tilt can do wonders, and don't underestimate ledge hogging spaces, esp if they try to overB to the ledge lol, lucas has a great slow edge roll with tons of invincibility. this all depends on how often they go for the ledge though with it though

 

[210stuna]

Hitting people with 3 fairs is nice and could be more depending on DI, percent, and if platforms are available or not.

Depending on the opponent, how they're recovering, and who they're playing as, magnet pulling can be an effective to get to them off stage for one hit and then you recover safely.