but how does lucas struggle against cc when he has djc dair lmao
Jamwa
unleash your rage over SDI
anyone comfortable enough to not panic during lucas' combo game and realize DI is not as significant in mitigating lucas's reactionary combos as much as SDI will roll the control stick in a circle, and provided they aren't playing fat characters like ganon or rob, will tend to escape the plethora of multi-hits of electrically hitlag-enhanced attacks.
escaping usually means
- ASDIing to the ground so that your character can crouch cancel the incredibly low base and growth knockback hitboxes such as the first 2 hits of dair, the many hits of nair before the last
(the landing one gets ccd a fair amount too since the trajectory means you usually dont need any SDI before you ASDI), and from there either shielding, shining
(for spacies), or using up-b
(samus & gnw-esque up-bs).
>>please note, you can only ASDI and cc shield dair if you are airborne when first hit, and then crouch cancelling the 2nd hit so that you may shield before the 3rd. of course, being grounded before any of the hits allows you to cc right away.
-SDIing upwards
(against mag, nair, jab) so that you can either footstall out before lucas has finished his endlag
(obviously this doesnt put lucas in the footstall lag animation but it lets you keep your double jump), double jumping out
(and DJCing to punish if your character can do that, or using a b-move that cancels vertical velocity), up-bing, or just using an aerial/b-move before you fall back down into the hitbox.
-the stagger animation of certain characters whose hurtboxes are very thin horizontally can often escape the following hit of dair
(whether that be the 2nd or 3rd hexagon) in certain situations where lucas is not able to manipulate his aerial drift enough to compensate for how the stagger animation changes those characters' hurtboxes
(shiek, mario). this isn't really something that occurs often, because situations where you cant manipulate lucas' aerial movement are few and far between, but the most common scenario is when using dair to punish a whiffed attack, where you dont have the time to space dair appropriately
(this is also considering they aren't SDIing which is unlikely, especially since whiffing an attack is usually a trigger to begin SDIing incase the opponent reacts). this basically means that dair is useless in these quick moments, and forces lucas players to focus on using either grab
(which is also horrendously slow but its our main option that beats CC), pivot tilts/smashes, or a DJC fast falled bair from above.
so all that^ is why saying
If you're ccing then you're sdiing down
which won't help you
is actually opposite to the truth.
sure lucas has shield pressure
(which is only safe if you're frame perfect), but the fact that you can force lucas to shield pressure even after he's gotten a hit confirm on his main aerials
(nair/fair), or even punish if you have a quick oos option against dair, reduces the consistency of his punishes by increasing the amount of scenarios we have to either predict or prepare for depending on the situation.
as i said, this is all provided the opponent is comfortable with DI and SDI in this specific matchup, which is rare because lucas players are rare post 3.0, and thus the counterplay to this character isnt widely known. its hard to see a flaw in lucas' combo game when players such as hyperflame and neon showcase it so well, and especially when all you can hear is a bunch of multi-hits and buttons.
but once recognized, its very easy to learn and eventually implement this counterplay, as you mainly only need to focus on SDI when you're being combod, and learning to ASDI/CC isnt difficult.
When Lucky came to Australia, he could consistently ASDI and CC shine my nair approaches as fox, even up to 110%
(he used shine before i could land/finish nair), and he could CC shield my dair and then shine oos. yes, lucky is a god because thats hard to do, but if a top level player can neuter lucas options out of neutral so effectively i dont see much of a future for this character's punish game.
i personally have no qualms with lucas' range, nor the priority of his hitboxes
(as in, sweetspot/sourspot priority, not transcendence and all that). the things that i think are most important to lucas' moveset are either reducing his weakness to SDI by using SDI multipliers, or reducing the hitlag induced by his moves
(but please, keep the electric aesthetic). i like how lucas focuses on using multi hits, and how he has to micro-space using DJC to be effective with his aerials/mag, and i think crouch cancel being strong against lucas is a necessary flaw we have to deal with as it forces you to be smart when throwing out his grab.
the current lucas is very in-line with his playstyle from brawl, in which he also had the ability to safely shield pressure
(his nair and dair were +0/-3 on shield, and his jab was frame 2) if the opponent relied on shield as a defensive response. basically a character that flourishes in close quarters, and uses unconventional movement options to put himself into close quarters.
cc i consider healthy counterplay, because you must be somewhat close to the ground to ASDI into it.
Being able to SDI lucas' aerials/mag no matter the position is quite a lot less manageable though, as is dair's susceptibility to SDI and ASDI no matter the percentage or position due to its small horizontal range.
im not a very organized writer
(which is why i use parentheses all the time), so if any points aren't clear i will elaborate and clarify when asked.
