I find Ness and Lucas to be some of the more exciting matchups for Zelda. Both shut down the ability to use Din's from long range, though I don't find this to be a bad thing because who gets hit by Din's Fire offstage anymore? I've been counterpicked Ness and Lucas a lot in tournaments, but I've never really understood why...sealing Din's shouldn't be a reason to pick them ever.
Lucas has a great ground game with several fast moves such as ftilt, fsmash, dtilt, jab, utilt etc. If Zelda is within range of these moves she'll probably be taking the hits, with Lucas' jab and dtilt being faster than every move Zelda has and ftilt being as fast as usmash with more horizontal range. He has a dtilt lock as well, though I don't have the details down.
His aerial game is fairly decent. It's actually probably more of a nuisance for Zelda than other characters. His dair outranges usmash and utilt so it's extremely tough to punish a falling Lucas. Nair is a good damage racker and good at applying shield pressure. Uair is fast and arguably his strongest aerial. Lucas' best approach against Zelda is probably his nair, which closes the gap between the two and autocancels so he can usually pull off another quick move right after like ftilt or jab.
PK fire will definitely be used a lot, it's a good medium ranged projectile and at max range Nayru's won't be able to reflect it back to Lucas as it disappears fairly quickly. PK thunder is also fairly good but it's super slow and can usually be reflected safely, but if not Zelda will be taking a lot of damage.
Lucas really doesn't seem to have a lot of kill moves, but the ones he does have are freakishly strong and can kill at dangerously low percentages. However all of Lucas' smashes can be telegraphed with usmash coming out at frame 28, dsmash frame 20, and even fsmash at a decent frame 14. Bthrow is actually pretty good at killing at later percents too but again his grab is fairly slow and while it is a tether, it only has the range of about Zelda's fsmash.
I think most of us know Zelda's ground game proficiency, with her fsmash and ftilt outranging all of Lucas' ground attacks save his grab. I tend to use fsmash a lot against Lucas (and in general I guess) just to keep Zelda's spacing intact. If he tries to punish fsmash with one of his ground moves, which is pretty hard to do, he'll usually get hit again. Dtilt works well as usual, however you risk Zelda getting into Lucas' range of attacks.
It's hard to punish Lucas' air game but sourspot fair and bair outrange his aerials horizontally and work nicely to keep Lucas from closing in distance. His dair trumps usmash, so usmash will probably be used considerably less in this matchup, but at least it keeps it fresh.
Din's Fire is good to use sparingly at medium range, unless you make it glaringly obvious. Most Lucas' usually assume that Din's is sealed due to his down b but it just sounds that way on paper. Most people don't have the reaction time to immediately down b a din's fire at medium/close range if it's unexpected, and if they do just detonate it off the stage.
One of Zelda's biggest weaknesses is that she can easily be exploited in the air, making it hard for her to recompose herself onto the stage. Lucas just doesn't seem to have the tools to keep her aerial, which makes it much easier to get back on the ground. His air game also offers little KO potential with his strongest probably being uair making it significantly tougher to keep a check on her. That means Lucas will probably have to rely on his smashes to get those kills, landing them can be tough though. If Zelda treads within Lucas' range on the ground though she'll have a tough time not getting hit. They can't really "camp" each other so they'll usually be in range of one another. Overall I find this matchup to be 55-45 in Zelda's favor, 50-50 is fine too though since I admit I don't know the ins and outs of Lucas as well as some.
Also, I have a video of me playing against Irsic back in February...lagfi mind you. I honestly think Irsic is the better player but, Lucas' mistakes are more punishable (especially on wifi
). For some reason I spammed bair and fair tremendously during these games, but hey whatever works I guess!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpeJa_Syjpc
