New Lucario player, what are some of the first things I need to learn?

[Will Beachum]

Lucario has always been an interesting character for me, and I've recently wanted to start using him. But I'm not sure where to begin.

Any tips will help, probably!

 

[Darkgun]

Might start here. There are quite a few useful tricks in there. As a suggestion for early play, I would suggest working on On Hit Cancel (OHC) timing and Aura Sphere Canceling (ASC), as the former is the basis of everything Lucario and the latter enables one to make safer and more creative combos. Get comfortable with dash dance as Lucario has only one or two proper approach options and they're not all that prevalent, and learn how to sweetspot the ledge. Oh, and understand that to DI Lucario's moves is nearly a brain dead interaction: down+away to reduce combos and up+towards to mitigate kill moves (though there are a few exceptions to this).

Oh, and for practicing, I personally just set up a Lvl 9 Bowser in training and practice linking combos. This isn't to practice combos so much as it is to practice OHC, in which if you have to hit something you might as well make it the biggest something. And of course, one can find quite a few videos for the current version of Project M in the well titled video archive.

 

[HK_Spadez]

1. go play marvel vs capcom to understand OHC
2. pick lucario
3. ???
4. profit

 

[GogLP]

So I have a friend who recently picked up lucario. He's been having a pretty rough time in the harsh cold edge-guarding light that is 3.5. Neither of us are awesome players, but I come from a melee background so I'm having less difficulty with the changes. Poor guy is getting really discouraged. He's been having a especially rough time recovering against my Jiggs. What are his options now? He seems pretty convinced that there's really nothing that he can do.