Elegant
Smash Apprentice
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2014
- Messages
- 149
"I feel bad for this. But it keeps happening and people aren't bothering to research/search for five and a half frikken seconds to get the answer said to them plain as day. I think I need to end up making a "The Unfortunate Truth of Lucina: Please Stop Asking" thread, but it would ultimately be very patronising to her players.
Marth is almost universally a better character in every scenario. I would not feel confident in saying he is superior in 100% of cases, I already know this is not true, but 90%+? Very likely. Is there reason to use Lucina in tournament over Marth? The answer is unfortunately no. Is she viable though? Of course she is, she has a winning character design and while her deficiencies separate them, their differences don't change how match ups are played at all and anything Marth can win, Lucina can in practice do so too.
The most crippling and objective difference is how their swords work, but it's a lot more drastic than just "oh tippers do more damage and kill earlier".
This is not necessarily obvious to people, but there's a property in this game called Hit Lag, that applies whenever an attack hits somebody or something, the length of hit lag is based on the % Damage of the attack and a scaling modifier. Marth's tipper attacks produce extra hit lag, just like Captain Falcon's knee, to exemplify hitting with their sweetspots, their modifier is above 1 (or above 100%). On the contrary, Marth's untippered attacks produce less hit lag, their modifier is below 1. In Brawl this was 130% on Tippers and 70% on non-tippers IIRC.
Now onto how hitting shields work. When an attack hits a shield, the hit lag the person in shield experiences does not consider the modifier, whilst the initiator still does. This means that Marth's untippered hits on shield are safer than they normally would be by several frames, whilst his tipper hits are less safe.
Lucina does not have this effect anywhere on her sword (I've tested tilts/jabs conclusively, I'd assume it's standard); her attacks have no hit lag modifiers whatsoever.
This means that Marth spacing poorly is safer on shield than Lucina spacing well on EVERY single attack. The frame disadvantage received by tippers by Marth through hitlag are compensated by the still higher damage scaling with shield stun and shield knockback and ultimately still end up giving Marth higher frame advantages on shield with tippers than Lucina does as well.
So what does Lucina get for poorly spacing that Marth doesn't? 1% extra damage on average per hit and killing 10% or so earlier on Smash attacks. A rough estimate would be that Lucina's sword is 12.5% more potent on damage and knockback, while Marth's tippers are up to 25% more damage and knockback or BETTER, the kill differences between them when it comes to tipper forward smash is pretty disgusting.
While I cannot be [near] objective on the next point, I say it with confidence. Combo ability difference is a load of crap. I've been playing Marth for close to a decade, I don't think about combos, I think about hit confirms into more hit confirms and acting as fast as possible out of my actions. Marth and Lucina are not combo heavy characters in this game, and this will not change. I hit people with forward air and through the hitconfirm know exactly where they're going to travel towards. When I hit people with tippers on Marth in combo strings it gives me even more breathing space/time to be in a position to reduce enemy options/guarantee successive hits, while weaker attacks can be punished on hit; this applies to Lucina as well. I really cannot begin to even understand any Smasher having a mindset on Marth or Lucina that involves knowing what percent things combo into each other perfectly, because that's just not how Smash Bros works at all, there are so many variables that exist already (enemy percent, move staling, rage, DI/Vectoring, Smash DI/Shuffling; good players have to react to these things) that something as minor as 10% more or less knockback requires no adjustments. If you think it does, you're not comfortable with Marth or Lucina in the first place at the skill required to succeed at high level.
So,
Is there any scenario Lucina is safer on shield than Marth? Literally never. I'm not sure about what people mean by being able to play more aggressively on Lucina Every time you hit a shield as Lucina and get punished, the same may not have happened on Marth.
Is there any scenario Lucina is safer on hit than Marth? Yes; but the window this matters is very small (mostly eradicated by the time any enemy is above 30%). Some moves very poorly spaced on hit may also be punishable for Marth in scenarios it wouldn't be for Lucina. Marth's jab is a low knockback move unless tippered, and for a wide array of percent isn't safe on hit (it eventually becomes something you can combo out of and is likely to trip), this is not as pronounced on Lucina, who can use her jab more liberally.
Is comboing with Lucina easier/more consistent? I would say no. Another technical point is that hitstun scales with knockback, and hence Marth's tippered attacks are producing more hit stun and hence more comboability than Lucina would, but as I mentioned in that big paragraph, it really doesn't and shouldn't matter."
Taken from a locked thread that I don't know what happened to, but I saved the text. Posted by Shaya I believe.
Edit: Reformatted for easier reading.
Marth is almost universally a better character in every scenario. I would not feel confident in saying he is superior in 100% of cases, I already know this is not true, but 90%+? Very likely. Is there reason to use Lucina in tournament over Marth? The answer is unfortunately no. Is she viable though? Of course she is, she has a winning character design and while her deficiencies separate them, their differences don't change how match ups are played at all and anything Marth can win, Lucina can in practice do so too.
The most crippling and objective difference is how their swords work, but it's a lot more drastic than just "oh tippers do more damage and kill earlier".
This is not necessarily obvious to people, but there's a property in this game called Hit Lag, that applies whenever an attack hits somebody or something, the length of hit lag is based on the % Damage of the attack and a scaling modifier. Marth's tipper attacks produce extra hit lag, just like Captain Falcon's knee, to exemplify hitting with their sweetspots, their modifier is above 1 (or above 100%). On the contrary, Marth's untippered attacks produce less hit lag, their modifier is below 1. In Brawl this was 130% on Tippers and 70% on non-tippers IIRC.
Now onto how hitting shields work. When an attack hits a shield, the hit lag the person in shield experiences does not consider the modifier, whilst the initiator still does. This means that Marth's untippered hits on shield are safer than they normally would be by several frames, whilst his tipper hits are less safe.
Lucina does not have this effect anywhere on her sword (I've tested tilts/jabs conclusively, I'd assume it's standard); her attacks have no hit lag modifiers whatsoever.
This means that Marth spacing poorly is safer on shield than Lucina spacing well on EVERY single attack. The frame disadvantage received by tippers by Marth through hitlag are compensated by the still higher damage scaling with shield stun and shield knockback and ultimately still end up giving Marth higher frame advantages on shield with tippers than Lucina does as well.
So what does Lucina get for poorly spacing that Marth doesn't? 1% extra damage on average per hit and killing 10% or so earlier on Smash attacks. A rough estimate would be that Lucina's sword is 12.5% more potent on damage and knockback, while Marth's tippers are up to 25% more damage and knockback or BETTER, the kill differences between them when it comes to tipper forward smash is pretty disgusting.
While I cannot be [near] objective on the next point, I say it with confidence. Combo ability difference is a load of crap. I've been playing Marth for close to a decade, I don't think about combos, I think about hit confirms into more hit confirms and acting as fast as possible out of my actions. Marth and Lucina are not combo heavy characters in this game, and this will not change. I hit people with forward air and through the hitconfirm know exactly where they're going to travel towards. When I hit people with tippers on Marth in combo strings it gives me even more breathing space/time to be in a position to reduce enemy options/guarantee successive hits, while weaker attacks can be punished on hit; this applies to Lucina as well. I really cannot begin to even understand any Smasher having a mindset on Marth or Lucina that involves knowing what percent things combo into each other perfectly, because that's just not how Smash Bros works at all, there are so many variables that exist already (enemy percent, move staling, rage, DI/Vectoring, Smash DI/Shuffling; good players have to react to these things) that something as minor as 10% more or less knockback requires no adjustments. If you think it does, you're not comfortable with Marth or Lucina in the first place at the skill required to succeed at high level.
So,
Is there any scenario Lucina is safer on shield than Marth? Literally never. I'm not sure about what people mean by being able to play more aggressively on Lucina Every time you hit a shield as Lucina and get punished, the same may not have happened on Marth.
Is there any scenario Lucina is safer on hit than Marth? Yes; but the window this matters is very small (mostly eradicated by the time any enemy is above 30%). Some moves very poorly spaced on hit may also be punishable for Marth in scenarios it wouldn't be for Lucina. Marth's jab is a low knockback move unless tippered, and for a wide array of percent isn't safe on hit (it eventually becomes something you can combo out of and is likely to trip), this is not as pronounced on Lucina, who can use her jab more liberally.
Is comboing with Lucina easier/more consistent? I would say no. Another technical point is that hitstun scales with knockback, and hence Marth's tippered attacks are producing more hit stun and hence more comboability than Lucina would, but as I mentioned in that big paragraph, it really doesn't and shouldn't matter."
Taken from a locked thread that I don't know what happened to, but I saved the text. Posted by Shaya I believe.
Edit: Reformatted for easier reading.
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Just tested it, 3 out of 3 times Lucina runs across from one edge of Battlefield (Small) to the other in 1.6 seconds, and Marth runs the equality of the distance in 1.7 seconds. While negligible according to the data Lucina is faster than marth. Also, I -can- back this up with video evidence.
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