New to Smash and I am Maining Lucina and Falcon

[Roguelorian]

Hey there people of the smash community, I last played a smash game 4-5 years ago on sm4sh, I was half-decent, but had yet to discover the competitive universe, then I started playing smash flash, the browser game about two years ago, and discovered Marth, now I ordered ultimate and am going to start playing Friday evening (tomorrow). I wanted to main Marth, but my best friend said Marth's tipper got nerfed going into ultimate, so use Lucina, so now I ask for tips primarily on Lucina, but also on my old main, the Captain, that way I can stay in shape with him. Please and thank you!

 

[Roguelorian]

Please somebody I beg of you to help me.

 

[A_Kae]

Hello there!

First of all I want to say that if you like Marth specifically and want to use him you absolutely should. He's still quite strong in this game and imo only a small bit worse than Lucina.

But I'm not really here to convert anyone (back) to the ways of Marth, so about Lucina...

I don't know exactly what you're looking for here, if you want just a basic overview type thing or something more specific and in-depth, or what kind of skill level you are, so I'll try to keep things simple and general. If you want more or something different let me know.

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Your focus in neutral should be to try and create space around you and stop opponents from getting in on you. You'll do this primarily with dtilt and ftilt on the ground, and in the air with fair and nair. Dtilt is very quick to start and recover from, so it's pretty safe even if you miss or it gets blocked. It's a great poke and pressure tool. Ftilt is slower, especially to end, but unlike dtilt covers a huge arc if front of you, which makes it really good for anti-airs and is also a lot stronger. You can think of fair as sort of like ftilt, covers an arc in front, quick to start but a little slow to end (unless you land with it, then it's very quick). A strong strategy with fair/aerials generally is to short hop, wait a moment to see what's going on/what your opponent is doing, and then if you feel it's a good idea, go for a fair/other aerial to counter. With aerials try to land soon after swinging so you can take advantage of the low landing lag and not the high air recovery.

Oh and with all of this and everything else you should try to keep your opponent at around the tip of your sword (Even though Lucina doesn't have a tipper like Marth, this is still what you want to be doing because that's kinda the whole advantage of a sword anyways). Your safety comes mostly from range instead of raw frame advantage, so space accordingly.

Also try to maintain stage control and push your opponent away from the center and towards the edge. A lot of your damage and kills come from edgeguards and ledgetraps so you'll want to get in those positions often. Getting them above you for juggles with uair/utilt or traps into usmash is also good.

And finally the number one thing, (and I can't stress this enough): patience. With quick movement and big sword attacks and low landing lag you can kinda get away with hyper aggro lucina, it's very risky vs someone who know how to counter it and you WILL get blown up if you play too recklessly. Play defense and pressure opponents into making errors and then go in. Too often I see people in a strong position and then over-extend a bit and lose everything because of it. Not saying you can't play aggressive but be careful and be smart about it.

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I think I'll end this here because I don't want to write too much if this sort of thing isn't what you're looking for. But if it is hopefully you can read that and sort of get a basic idea of a gameplan/foundation from that and fill in the rest when you actually start playing. There's a lot more that can be covered and a lot more depth and complexity to even just the little I talked about, so if you want more (or something else) let me know.

edit: also might be helpful: Lucina frame data (https://ultimateframedata.com/lucina.php)

 

[Roguelorian]

Yes, this is exactly what I needed and was looking for! Thank you very much! And I tend to play the roman phalanx, block and evade until an opportunity arises and then land the big hits and take total control for 0-to-kills that was my old strats at least, I don't know how well that will work now.

 

[stixie]

So my secondary is Marth in this game.


Marth vs Lucina

Marth is a good character but NOT online... spacing tippers online is like playing the game on hard mode. What happened to Marth in Ultimate is he has a really difficult time killing sometimes. He lost some kill confirms from sm4sh and his dancing blade in this game is like winning the lottery. His tipper hitboxes on the ground are REALLY tight and easy to miss. His aerials WERE but received buffs a couple patches ago and are a LOT better now. The other issue is the fact that connecting a tipper in Ultimate doesn't give near the reward for the work you put in to get it. Like some of Lucina's hits are almost as powerful as Marth's tippers. Personally I think the tippers should do more WAY more damage and a tiny bit more knockback. On the other side though Marth can delete you at 50-60 and leave you asking why you're playing the game (but it feels like complete RNG when that happens... especially online).

Lucina on the other hand is a straight fundamental character with no gimmicks (unless you count shield break as a gimmick). She's very good gameplay oriented and really rewards patient skillfull gameplay. No tippers (except for downair) means she doesn't have to play as campy as Marth does. She can kill very early with a good bair or fsmash.




When I'm training people to play I always put them on Lucina and have them learn the fundamentals of the game. Personally I like Marth a LOT. I think his tippers need some help but I really love the character and if you put the work in to get his spacing correct he can really reward you with short stocks but he most definitely takes way more work than Lucina.

 

[Kirijo Nyte]

In addition to the above I will refer you to these:

How to think like a PRO - What NOT to do in Neutral. || Play like MKLEO in Smash Bros Ultimate ||

We are back in the set with MKLeo against Tweeks Wolf. Today we will focus on seeing the things that MKLeo DOES NOT do that many players tend to fall into th...

www.youtube.com

How to play AGGRESSIVE in Smash Bros - Learning to be smarter about aggression like Marss

As we usually focus on MKLeo's safe, reactive playstyle, seeing how explosive and aggressive Marss can be is a nice change of pace. Let's learn what it means...

www.youtube.com

I think the guy who does these analyst pieces is fantastic. He's also not beyond criticism, if someone finds a habit the players in the video do which he judged a mistake, and point it out as "not a mistake" he will correct himself and thank them for the pointer. I think he's the best analyzer for this type of work I've seen.

There's a lot of information about the game, good guides and videos out there, I suggest you look at a lot of the tournament videos of Lucina & Marth in action and ask why were both opponents doing what they were doing exactly then, and then what were they doing in response to what the other opponent was doing as this is vitally important. You will find many good Marcinas out there, my favorites are Protobanham and Mr E, but there are plenty of good ones.

I will expand a bit on a subject that exists from beginner to pro level- mindfulness of what you're doing and the systems of the game, so as to better manipulate, wield and force them over your opponents-- this is a competitive game after all.

There are many fields and moments of this game that everyone has certain skill at and can get better or worse, I will simplify them to mechanics, (technical skill) timing, (this along with spacing is all of the difference between hitting someone and not) decision making, spacing, (which I will combine / will make synonymous with accuracy) punish game / combos and knowledge, (forgive me if I forgot a pillar of skill)

Mechanics is how you interact with the game, controller, etc. It is important you can do what you want exactly when you want to do it, else you are 'behind' in that sense, and more at mercy to your opponent than should be. This is very important and encompasses everything, so for instance, if you are uncomfortable with instant SH bairs OOS, (out of shield) you will input something wrong and miss punishes, sometimes you can input it very wrong and get heavy punished due to it, e.g. pressing B and A at same time = smash attack. Another example; new players will not know how to or reliably shield grab, it is important to know 'what is safe to shield grab and not' but so is the mechanical skill to execute it. Another example; IRARs & wavelanding. If you can reliably do this, it will open up your opportunities to punish, extend attack strings, even evade and punish in some cases. Everything is included you can think of that has to do with mechanics. Is your walking accurate? Is your dashing accurate? Is your wavelanding accurate? Are your feints and fadeaways accurate? Pivot ftilt cancels? Could you perform as well as the best player in the world? Could you perform better? Could you be pixel perfect being exactly where you wanted to be when you wanted to be? Movement is how you approach & dodge in neutral, and how you chase down & combo enemies, it's how you weave in and out. Very important. It makes sense then that better players typically are a good amount better in movement than others. And it is so when it comes to players that are better than me. I notice they seem real smooth and flow nicely compared to me.

To get good, a smash accurate one I've seen I believe is:
Punish game, neutral game, spacing, timing; another IIRC

You need to know 3 things in this game:
How to apply shield pressure, how to shield, how to move.

There would also be ledgetrapping & edgeguarding in the repertoire

I will hope this one elaboration of just mechanics (somewhat combined with timing/accuracy) is suffice to say that that if you think more about it, and watch and talk of this game with others more, you will know many ways that you can get better. The mechanics and general knowledge of this game takes awhile to get better at, and that's fundamentally a good thing imo, because it speaks to the depth, complexity of this game akin to other fighting games. Tekken 7 if it had 5 moves and 2 characters would be a lot worse for a game than it currently is.