I'm almost done with the "How to suck less with recovery" mini-thread.
Now for the rough but long awaited "Why Recovering with Lucario isn't all Hot Air" post
So I've been hearing a lot of miconceptions recently about how badly lucario's recovery sucks, and he's totally garbage offstage. "Just edgehog him, and ggs" some say, others are like "he can only wall jump, so just spike him or something". I've let it fly by, but recently it's been getting worst. While it is an imperative to discuss at highest levels of play what happens, there's a difference between OPTIONS and MINDGAMES. Most dismiss lucario's incredible "scrapes" of luck because he got lucky and didn't get hit properly, when in the reality of things, there's more to it than that. There are a few categories of lucario's recovering tools/traits I want to cover, but this will explain in due time why Lucario can make it and live with such an abysmal recovery.
1. Super floaty: Anyone who's played with lucario for the first time, the first thing I hear from him besides "OMG fsmash/dair is b0rk3n", is "Good grief he's got clouds for feet or something, he's so floaty". To be correct, he's about the 5th floatiest or so in the game, slower in fall speed than Peach and Marth. Floatiness actually affects a lot more things offstage than people realize. It allows lucario to do more aerials while aloft than most, and combined with dair allows for good control over his recovering game. This combined with disjointed aerial range compensates for average aerial movement, which allows him to get out of really icky situations. If a lucario realizes his tools and takes advantage of this, Lucario is actually a really tough bugger to gimp when he's not using Extreme Speed, as he can move away from an aerial and dair stall and jump while the opponent still has to suffer from the remaining afterlag of their edgeguarding aerial, and because of his floatiness, he doesn't suffer the problem of having to resort to "drowning survival behavior". What I mean by that is, many other characters have suffer from horrible jumps/fall mechanics (like Link), horrible warding tools (Ike comes to mind, as he can do only one aerial before he has to recover, so AD screws him over), or bad recovery distance (like Mario). Lucario has overall above average weight (about 16th heaviest), floaty, good survival DI methods (decently fast aerials, plus they have really low endlag/IASA/autoFF, and a really good second jump, which means by stats alone, there is much to be reconsidered besides looking at just "that lolzy upB" for how good lucario has it offstage. He outlives a large portion of the cast above him minus G&W, MK, Snake, D3, and Wario (these are including DI methods), so Lucario has got it made by stats.
Aerials: Our aerials are awesome. People really forget how good a lingering hitbox is. It says "AD doesn't exist". It also means you don't have to risk worrying too much about someone mixing it up by doing an empty hop, if you do things right, you can stall out pretty well via dair stall. Most characters that we wouldn't want to fair against, can always be outplayed by moving away from an aerial calmly -> dair stall and hop over, shoot BAS to slow him from getting off the stage or getting at you, or even turnaround BAS -> bair is a mixup that works somewhat well due to lucario's air time. Those who can't outrange us have it much worst, lucario's aerials are walls, and wasting time getting burned means lucario gets the window he needs. Dair also works really well when recovering from above the stage, nearly nothing competes with it if you use it right, plus allows you more control over mobility than most characters, nearly nobody has this kind of stall advantage for any character let alone ones that are similar in build to lucario. USE YOUR AERIALS, it gives you many more options than you think it does.
3. BAS: It's slow, something normally kind of bad onstage, because shield and Perfect shield ****. Offstage is an aberration. The slow speed of it is ideal for lucario's lingering disjoints and he can smear hitboxes all over if done correctly, what does this mean for the opponent? It's a complete mess. Lucario's biggest aspect is time when offstage, any time wasted by AD/shielding the BAS before attempting to go after lucario means lucario's chances have increased dramatically and is going to be onstage again and breathing with arguably one of the most frustrating walling/defensive plays. BAS if shielded onstage allows for you to even ES back to the LEDGE, depending on whether they PS'ed it or not. If they did, you still haven't lost much, you have a plethora of options. Oh, and if you really want to, you can stage-spike an edgehogging opponent with BAS.
4.Second jump: Good golly gastrointestinal disorders. This jump is a really good jump. Lots of height, length, and once again, MORE OPTIONS. The tip with this is, if you haven't used it to survive from a killing blow with survival DI, you'll want to save it. Using your jump immediately could cost you severely, but using your other options to harass will make your second jump possibly the only thing you needed. The natural height it gets is really good for dair stall -> DJ uair from underneath if you see your opponent is edgehogging, or fair/bair if from the sides. Additionally, you can even attempt to go underneath the stage by using double jump and ES and go all the way to the other side if he's got one side covered (like snake) and is attempting to seal it off by edgehogging. Additionally, you can always try for double jumping to another option that while is more predictable can be invaluable, wallclinging.
5.Wallcling: This is an underrated tool, and should be so: It's a somewhat last resort option and is very risky. At top levels of play, theoretically this is pretty problematic. However, in actual play I'll admit, I HAVE YET TO SEE A RECORDED MATCH, OR MYSELF GET KILLED WHILE WALLCLINGING. There's a great amount of things you can do while wallclinging, you can either bair, uair, BAS, or AD, which are probably your best options. Spiking is not a good option because of AD and how laggy most spikes are, and all the others are pretty decent for punishing an opponent period. Wallcling is that trick you save for last, because you don't want to be predictable with it, this is the sole reason it is so hard to read for most. In addition, you can double jump -> walljump on many stages that don't have wallcling, such as BF.
6.ES: The last thing a lucario can rely on when trying to recover, and arguably the most important. Extreme Speed on paper is horrendous, ranking along side firebird, falcon dive, and waterfall as some of the worst recoveries. ES has many complexities behind it that help it get better though. For one, there's how you land onstage. There are essentially four animations that lucario goes in for recovering, and each are important to remember. The first is the "air brakes animation" where lucario does a little flip/braces after landing, and this is the worst one to do. Second is the "hard bounce" animation, which while at first isn't much better than the braking, if you redirect lucario after the first bounce, you can gain more distance across the edge, and it will allow you to get just out of reach of most punishing attempts. The third is arguably the better and easier to do consistently, and that's the "glide". Lucario finishes Extreme Speed and has a nearly lagless ending depending on how much of the distance was left before he glides, it isn't noticeable, but it's there. He is fully ready if spaced properly, and to do so, I actually recommend judging ES's distance and trying to land at the very end of it, doing so will give you the least amount of commitment. This is also not to hard to do at least on a semi-consistent level. Last of all, there's the amazing Extreme-cancel, which is hard to do, but I'm sure with time will get easier as lucario's metagame progresses. You basically aim for just above the lip, but on the very corner. If done properly, Lucario gets NO LAG AT ALL, and can bound off immediately too. This is easiest to do on FD, but if mastered will theoretically negate many of lucario's landing problems. Here's the order of which landing method you will want, from best to worst:
1.Extreme-cancel
2.fully canceled glide
3.lagging glide
4.bounce across
5.helpless fall?
6.stationary bounce
7."Leg crippler", aka the hard brake
Another note (read VERY IMPORTANT), Going onstage may not be the best for lucario, but it isn't as bad as theorycrafters put it. Here's why:
If lucario has flown far enough away from the ledge back on the stage, the opponent has a limited punishment pool. The "oh you can just smash, gg" statement is a very false one, considering you have to have both a fast and long-ranged smash, and even then most of the time lucario has enough time to pull his shield up out of the lag. This means your opponent only has small window to fit a ledgehopped fair/longranged nair. Likely scenario =/= worst scenario, this is why this is good. On top of that, the fair sends lucario in only one trajectory 80% of the time, all the way to the other side of the stage. Lucario has a lot of room for letting DI/SDI affect it so he can aim high, and thus not be put in the predicament he was before, off the side. That being said, Lucario essentially has to "recover twice", it isn't actually an auto-gimp situation. Provided this may come across as "purely theoretical", but from what I've seen, the scenario is all too likely to happen, and lucario only dies when he's against a vastly amazing long ranged air game like marth/MK, or he was too high in percent to begin with and the opponent was a scrub for not killing lucario sooner.
There's also an unconfirmed, but apparent "Extreme Zip" that lucario can do. The details are unconfirmed, but it allows lucario to have no lag, and end up about halfway across the stage, which will make edgeguarding lucario near impossible. It's unconfirmed, but it could prove useful.
So in short, lucario looked from a narrow angle of "theorycrafting" is a sucky character with an abysmal "upB", but a closer examination reveals there's a lot more, ranging from his good options to natural benefits. Lucario may not be the best at a recovering standpoint, but a smart lucario player is able to minimize weakness.
...
