Can Lucario's Counter please be a Counter again?

[Mimsy]

Possibly the most safe move in the game besides meta knight's side b, lucario's "counter" makes him the best character in the game. While many have requested extreme speed and aura sphere to be nerfed in 4.0F, the problem with lucario can be identified in his "counter".
Great for escaping combos, starting combos, killing, and racking damage, Lucario's down b is what makes his other tools seem to be broken. I know that many characters are bound to get nerfed in 4.0F, but if Lucario remains in his current state, that will only make his position on top further from reach. I am aware that the dev team "nerfed" his down b in BC, and i'm sure this will be the main argument against my point. However, while removing grab cancelling did reduce two ways of free punishment to one, it is not grounds from protecting debatably the best character from further balancing.
All I ask is that his "counter" be an actual counter. Marth, roy, and ike all must play by the rules of restricting their very fast acting priority punish move to only being hit, while Lucario is granted a free pass to brokeness. With his extreme speed giving him the second highest recovery in the game (besides falco), aura sizes bigger than him, disjointed hitboxes, and a Monster Aura taunt that guarantees loss for an opponent (i might get to this later), Lucario will still be 100% viable without an automatic "counter". Heck idek if y'all make it more powerful, just make it a COUNTER.

 

[Thor]

It could be a counter that paralyzes on-hit if the functionality was changed because of the unreliability of the old counter.

I think this would be a good change. Or perhaps altering it some other way, but... as it is, it really is quite obnoxious.

 

[Mimsy]

i have thought about other alterations, but in the end, i just kept thinking, it'd be nice if it actually was a counter

 

[Bent 00]

Sounds like a decent idea to me. More than this, however, I'd like to see ExtremeSpeed Nerfed so that it cannot be used twice in a row if started from the ground. I don't think Mewtwo needs that second Teleport either. Not sure about Pichu and its three uses of Agility...

 

[Gold_TSG]

Sounds like a decent idea to me. More than this, however, I'd like to see ExtremeSpeed Nerfed so that it cannot be used twice in a row if started from the ground. I don't think Mewtwo needs that second Teleport either. Not sure about Pichu and its three uses of Agility...

That sounds like the kind of nonsense that belongs in smash 4, a game where every character but Dorf, Mac and Doc can come back from the side blast zones.

 

[Bent 00]

I think we should either do away with extreme cases of "super" aerial mobility -- such as ExtremeSpeed, double Teleport, triple Agility, extra Jumps for winged fighters, etc. -- or go in the opposite direction, and Buff the aerial mobility of all the appropriate fighters who don't already have great air game. The former option would likely be a step toward greater overall balance and more interesting ledgeguarding, while the latter option (while I'm sure it would be fun for a while) would probably just show how broken stuff like "use Up-Special twice if started from the ground" has been all along.

I like how giving fighters amazing air mobility and great recovery allows them to "go deep" for flashy offstage finishes, but I have two problems with how this is currently implemented in Minus:

1.) Only a select few fighters get awesome air mobility and recovery (Lucario, Mewtwo, etc.) while others go without (Falcon, 'Dorf, etc.)
2.) Excellent aerial mobility makes a fighter's aerial moves overshadow his/her/its grounded moves. Look at Lucario and Mewtwo -- why stay on the ground when you can fly or warp straight to your opponent with powerful aerials? Their Up-Specials let them skip the Neutral game.

Ideally, unless a given character is supposed to excel in the air and be weak on the ground (or vice versa) by design, I think that fighters' aerial and grounded moves should be nearly equally useful. I hate to see wasted move slots that never get used because they're just too unreliable, or simply outclassed by other moves.

That said, this topic is about Lucario's Counter, so I guess we should focus on that.

 

[Thor]

That sounds like the kind of nonsense that belongs in smash 4, a game where every character but Dorf, Mac and Doc can come back from the side blast zones.

Pichu and Mewtwo are intended to use them as combo extenders as well as recovery options. While I'm not sure about Mewtwo's weight, his double jump is a normal double jump now, not the extra-long movement ones like Ness/Lucas/Yoshi, and Pichu is a lightweight which helps offset its recovery [ala Melee Puff]. Agility is also a single use burst [Pikachu's QA moves in 2 directions and induces helpless... Pichu's Agility only moves in one direction at a time, but you get 3 uses].

I also, however, think there's a lot of bias that "my character can't do this so it's unfair"... but like, last I checked, most of the fighters with the "absurd" aerial movement options lack the benefits characters like Falcon and Ganondorf have [I'm unfamiliar with Pichu's stuff, but I don't think he has a finishing move like the knee or *insert Ganondorf aerial"... Falco certainly doesn't, aside from offstage dair, which can be meteor cancelled].

I don't like double extremespeed myself, because from seeing it in use, it makes Lucario feel like his only job is to carry people off the top [the way Samus was built around a re-design when she was actually a lot of fun waaaaay back in MAX and 3.3]. I'm *not* saying rebuild Lucario or Samus at this point, but I agree that double extremespeed is silly.

Those things said, double Teleport as Mewtwo I think works quite well - he lacks the insane ground speed of Falcon and the overwhelming power of Ganondorf, never mind that effectively using double Teleport is hardly child's play, and if it's perhaps broken...

Then, maybe, just maybe...

*falls to his knees*

The dev team set out to create the world's strongest Pokémon... and they succeeded...

*keels over*

 

[player_03]

One other thing to discuss. My main problem with this move (and a few other moves like Meta Knight's Drill Rush, Wario's bair, and grounded Falco Phantasm), is that even if you read them and react correctly, a lot of characters are unable to punish. A disjointed move will usually just clash, and if you shield or spotdodge, Lucario will slide past, out of range for a reliable follow-up.

One solution is to make Lucario stop moving when it hits a shield. That way, if you anticipate the move and/or react in time, you can get an easy punish. (Less easy if you're going for a shield grab, because Lucario can mix up which side it appears on.)