For the purpose of this discussion, I'm going to not comment on 2.1 Lucas or prior due to how far he's come since then. Any comparisons I make without specifying are between 2.6b and 2.5b Lucas.
I purposefully avoided making public comments about 2.6 Lucas because I didn't want to, as a relatively public Lucas main and PMBR member who helped develop 2.6 Lucas, influence others opinions on him. I figure a good two+ months is long enough however and wish to add my thoughts to the discussion.
2.6 Lucas is undoubtedly more viable. I've read all the posts of this thread as well as other random places such as Reddit or on Live streams, it's mostly universal. One thing I find common on said discussion is attributing this fact to 2.6 bair and dair, which is the point of my post here, but first I wish to clarify something I feel is important. No one or two moves has made Lucas more viable, and if you want my opinion, the improvement that made Lucas more viable than any other in 2.6 is his improved fair, which can still be djc-d extremely early, comes out extremely fast with disjoint, theoretically is the best vs. shield option, and has both combo and kill potential. Other notable changes to make him more viable include:
- Tether reel invulnerability on the head (notice not being poked by Marth d-tilt during reel anymore?)
- Much better nair due to the hitboxes being redone to be more consistent.
- Multiple down-b changes that make linking the hits better including the final, launching, hitbox
- Fixed his powershield reflect.
- d-tilt shield poking better
Okay, now that that is out of the way let us talk about bair and dair. 2.6 bair is a move heralded as the saving grace of 2.6 Lucas, and it is very good, being a true spike and also a horizontal launcher , albeit not as strong as 2.5's horizontal launching ability. It's true power, compared to 2.5, comes with how much faster the hitbox comes out and it being a sweeping motion, instead of a single, small hitbox. Remember that description, because it's about to be very important.
It's for that very reason that 2.6 dair is vastly inferior to 2.5 dair. Let's first talk about to good qualities of 2.6 dair, it's a pretty good move on the ground. Against CC'ing it's a great move, not that Lucas had any trouble with CC'ing (pkf, cross-up nair, 2.5 dair). You can even do neat tricks that work on some characters at some percent by djc dair to put them in a stunned state, although d-tilt already did this and more, but you can launch people from the ground to combo/usmash, something 2.5 dair already did, but it did it even faster, with much less time for your opponent to DI, and that's if they don't SDI out of it, which admittedly is harder to do on the ground. So in summation, 2.6 dair works great on the ground, but doesn't do anything that 2.5 dair/d-tilt couldn't do and it does 2.5 dairs things much slower.
Now let's discuss 2.6 dair in the air, and by “in the air" I mean your opponent is in the air just to clarify. This is where this move is mostly useless against a competent opponent. The first two hits of 2.6 dair do little to actually push your opponent down, it's not supposed to because you want to get that third, launching, hit to send your opponent downwards. An extremely competent opponent will just SDI the first one or two hits to avoid the third hit, it's not difficult to do if you expect the dair, and if they have their double-jump remaining, they can even punish you before IASA of 2.6 dair. In private conversation with various Lucas players defending 2.6 dair, they will say things like “You can just follow their DI, or just start the move early so only the third hit lands." The first point doesn't even make sense to me, Lucas isn't Wario or Jigglypuff, he cannot change momentum quickly in the air without utilizing his double-jump and he can't double-jump until IASA of dair. Besides that though, the thing that's most baffling to me about people defending 2.6 dair that way is that they're simply compensating for the move already being worse than a single launching hit.
Even if the player either is not able to SDI out of the launching hit or perhaps you compensated for the move being worse and do actually get that launching hit we get to my second point about why 2.6 dair isn't good; it just takes too long. I established earlier that it's the launching hit you want with 2.6 dair. The reason, of course, is that you want to send the opponent either to his death (off-stage) or to the ground (on-stage). Dair can't actually be used as a pillar combo, not without gross mistiming of techs, but anyone who is able to tech on a semi-consistent basis can easily tech the move. This of course being different from Falco who, with knockback stacking, can easily fast-fall past the person he launched to the ground and shine before they get an opportunity to tech. When you meteor with a character, for it to be successful, you have to have the element of surprise on your side. Meteor canceling (off-stage) or teching (on-stage), will negate the desired effect of the meteor, and because the launching hit takes so long for 2.6 dair, your opponent can practically count 1-2-3 before they need to tech or meteor cancel.
I joined PMBR in April and immediately I was shown the 2.6 bair/dair with Lucas (bair was quite weaker, but the animation was the same). I started play testing with many types of players ranging from relatively new to much more experienced and I was just the same as many of you seem to be in this very thread when you speak of 2.6 dair. But it didn't take me long to realize that dairs effectiveness diminished to the point of near uselessness when they understood the matchup, they understood that the move is nothing to fear because it's so premeditated. Axe, Oksas, and I due to the experience we have in the matchup SDI out of the launching hit regularly to the point that I don't even bother to use it against them in the air, and Lucas has always had better options against grounded opponents. So I rarely use it anymore. I have done a lot of research on 2.6 Lucas as a PMBR member, and even videos online I rarely see Lucas players attempt to use dair in the air on-stage, and less rarely, but still significantly rare off-stage. Part of the reason for this, I know, is how effective of a move bair is.
Here's what I do know, as a relatively recognized 2.5 Lucas main, I felt 2.5 dair was his best aerial, one of his best moves. I hear from other Lucas mains, post 2.5, that 2.5 dair was near useless, but one look at my 2.5 combo video, in which I landed it over 40 times in the video and it's utilized in over half my combos I feel prove otherwise. My argument isn't so much 2.5 dair was better, even though I feel that it was, no, my argument is that 2.6 dair is nearly useless against a competent opponent.
As stated earlier, 2.6 Lucas, from a PMBR perspective, was supposed to gauge player support for the bair and dair and ultimately see what the players want for Lucas moving forward; I am committed to that. I just want to, hopefully, help bring perspective to the discussion and perhaps awareness at what actually makes 2.6 Lucas better. I believe we all want future Lucas to be the most fun, competitive version of Lucas we can possibly make.