Gameplay advice (videos)

[Nayyr]

Hi everyone. I'm still fairly new to Lucas having only played him for a few months, but I've progressed a lot since then. Lately I've been carrying my combos further and sd'ing a lot less. I don't happen to have any good local lucas players to talk to, so I'm really just looking for general advice/things I can do differently in my gameplay. Any and all constructive criticism will be most appreciative! Some things I'm aware of and working on; I roll too much (really bad habbit I'm trying to break), shielding too much at bad times, forgetting that I've used my jumps. Here are my most recent 3 sets. Thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f715ok-DEeo&list=UUX12or5oeu7n5DZdKRdSKsw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10XIxDCnNIw&list=UUX12or5oeu7n5DZdKRdSKsw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9lb1qCl1cs&list=UUX12or5oeu7n5DZdKRdSKsw

There's also plenty of other matches of me on my youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/rhills18/videos

 

[Ya Boy GP]

For the most part, this is what I noticed.
- Work on your magnet stalling, your timing is off and you hold it for just a bit too long sometimes.
- Sometimes you have a bad move choice, like they'll be at kill percent and you'll punish with a nair when a lot of other moves would've been better in the situation.
- More often than not, you have the mindset of "I see he's here, so I'm going to throw out a move where he is" when that's not always right. You want to think about where they're going to be, try to predict their movement and throw out a move there.
- You should be comboing a lot harder since lucas is a combo machine, but it's fine I guess, as you get better as a player, you'll see different combo options.
- Your movement seems very stiff. Like you'll do something like jump, and when you land you kind of just sit there for a second, maybe shield or something, then do something else. Work on doing things right when you have the option to, start running or wavedashing right when you're able to. Make yourself a harder target to hit, don't be too stagnant.
- I don't know if it's me, but you seem to have slow reactions or just not react to what your opponent does sometimes. A good note is that you should be looking at your opponent at all times. To do this though, make sure you have all your tech skill like wavedashing and l-cancelling down perfectly.
You'll get better as time goes on, I hope this helps.

 

[Nayyr]

For the most part, this is what I noticed.
- Work on your magnet stalling, your timing is off and you hold it for just a bit too long sometimes.
- Sometimes you have a bad move choice, like they'll be at kill percent and you'll punish with a nair when a lot of other moves would've been better in the situation.
- More often than not, you have the mindset of "I see he's here, so I'm going to throw out a move where he is" when that's not always right. You want to think about where they're going to be, try to predict their movement and throw out a move there.
- You should be comboing a lot harder since lucas is a combo machine, but it's fine I guess, as you get better as a player, you'll see different combo options.
- Your movement seems very stiff. Like you'll do something like jump, and when you land you kind of just sit there for a second, maybe shield or something, then do something else. Work on doing things right when you have the option to, start running or wavedashing right when you're able to. Make yourself a harder target to hit, don't be too stagnant.
- I don't know if it's me, but you seem to have slow reactions or just not react to what your opponent does sometimes. A good note is that you should be looking at your opponent at all times. To do this though, make sure you have all your tech skill like wavedashing and l-cancelling down perfectly.
You'll get better as time goes on, I hope this helps.

1. Thanks on the magnet stalling. Just tried tapping it faster today and it's working a lot better.
2. Can you give me a specific time example from the videos? I guess I don't always know what is optimal or even really think about it, I tend to just....go
3. I definitely need to do this more
4. I don't really know what to do to "combo harder". I've been carrying mine much further than when I started. If you look back at the really old videos you'll see what I mean. Any advice on how to actually put this into practice other than just play more and gradually progress?
5. I didn't really notice this until you pointed it out. Definitely trying to throw out something when I land, be it a magnet or a wavedash.
6. There were a few times in those games where my c-stick wasn't working and I would try to throw out a smash and nothing would happen, if that's what you mean. I know there were a couple of times where I tried to upsmash when they were above me and I just stand there looking stupid.

Definitely helped! I know I'm nothing amazing, I just want advice so I can get better. If you come up with anything else that I can practice at home or when I go to casuals please let me know.

 

[Ya Boy GP]

An example of poor move choice?
I'll just go over game 1 of your third video you posted (vs marth on BF) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9lb1qCl1cs&list=UUX12or5oeu7n5DZdKRdSKsw
At 1:45, you hit him with an upair at 124% when a bair would've killed.
At 1:53 I see an example of you reacting slow like I mentioned in my first post, you hit him with the dair and didn't react quick so you hit him with the spike part of the hitbox instead of the one that would kill.
At 2:07 you could've done quite a few things since he used his double jump right before you hit him with the usmash, the easiest and possible best thing you could've done with do another upsmash, but instead you just kind of throw out a nair which missed horribly and even if it did hit, it wouldn't have led into anything. If you chose to do an aerial, an uair would've been better because you would have the ability to potentially follow up.
At 2:10, you got the hit confirm with the zair and the optimal solutions would've been either to magnet him to force an edgeguarding situation or grab and try to combo him for some percent, but you just jabbed instead and even got punished for it.
At 2:25 You again confirm with the dair and tried to fsmash, I'll either chock that up to poor timing or an input error when you tried to fair but didn't jump. Either way, it wasn't an optimal move choice. The best thing there could vary, I would probably djc uair and try to string a few uairs into an usmash.

I only critiqued roughly a minute and you can see how much I have to say about your poor move choice. Watch players like Neon or Pink Fresh to get a good idea of how Lucas should combo better.

What else you can work on that I noticed is your use of pkf. You tend to hit with the pkf and either a. Not follow up, or b. Follow up too late and get punished for it. You need to learn the range where you can safely follow up after confirming with a hit on a pkf. Again, the best way to do that is watching someone like Pink Fresh hit someone with a pkf and see if he follows up or not, and how he follows up is important too. Mixing up your approaches keeps you ambiguous and adds another dimension to your game, it makes your opponent think about something they previously didn't need to think about.

 

[Nayyr]

Thanks so much. That helps a lot. I've been watching pinkfresh and neon, they're just so hard to follow. I usually watch them at half speed. I'll try to think more about how I follow things up.

 

[Nayyr]

Quick question regarding reading a followup for Dairs. You pointed out at 2:25 I hit the dair. Now I've had many times where the opponent doesn't bounce up after the dair, they simply get smashed onto the ground. Is there any way to predict whether or not they will be bounced up into the air or be stuck to the ground following a dair confirm??