Fantasy Strike MatchUp Chart

Updated the chart with Lum and a few changes to the existing MUs, didn’t give it much thought though.

@Octorockandroll Yeah, we’re in almost total agreement here. The main reason I didn’t mention a couple of the things you brought up was just so my post didn’t get absurdly long, but I can post a few more thoughts about some of those matches now.

For Jaina, another huge problem in this match is her ground super. If you attempt to jump at her at all, she presses super and you take 2 damage. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crossup, it still hits from the back (IMO, this is one of the things about Jaina that most needs to be fixed). Even jump back melon gets hit, so you can’t even really bait it out. Her air super is also insanely bad, being a virtually guaranteed 1 damage at range that also keeps you out. I feel like if you don’t guess right at the start of the round and get in, you’ve already lost.

I’m actually surprised I didn’t mention that for Midori, because I brought it up on the Steam update announcement. I agree that that makes items unusually bad in this matchup. The worst thing is throwing a cake when his Dragon form is already out, so he gets it for even longer. As for @SaSSolino’s note about using ground B to grab cakes, this is possible, but at midrange he can just counter this (or, if Dragon, use ground command grab), so it’s kind of a risky option that you wouldn’t want to show too often.

I still think Setsuki has some advantage. One thing I noticed is that you cannot use Air Super in this match, wherever she is onscreen, she just presses B and you take 1 damage and you lose all your dice. She can frequently interrupt regular item tosses this way as well.

Your points on Grave are interesting. Like I said, I haven’t played this matchup much. I think the few times I did I won it fairly easily, but that could easily be due to Grave not knowing the matchup. It sounds like Grave would want to be pretty patient in this matchup, and allow Lum to create bad situations for himself. At least Grave’s projectile options aren’t as bad as Jaina’s, so I doubt this is quite as bad for Lum (if I’m forced to rush down, I’d rather it be against Grave), but I could see this being in Grave’s favour, but I still need to play it more.

When I played against Val, I certainly FELT like I was at a significant disadvantage the entire time, but even though I was playing against pretty good players we were trading matches pretty evenly. I definitely noticed that Val seems to control the matchup for like 90% of the game, but during that other 10% she just melts. There were so many times where I’d like lose my first 4 hitpoints and then get control of the matchup briefly and take her out immediately. Like Lum, her reversal options are pretty bad, so they can kind of bully each other in similar ways. Her ground super is a significantly better reversal than Lum’s ground super, though, so maybe that gives her a slight edge, the Val that gave me the most trouble made very smart use of it.

For Rook, like I said, I could see it being in Lum’s favour, but it can go south very fast. Ground Super is very good against any regular jumps, and his normal throw is also godlike, frequently being able to grab Lum out of absurd situations where it doesn’t seem like it should be possible (for example, if you air to air him from high up with A, he can grab you when you land). This forces you to guess with Yomi Counter a lot, and of course, he can just mix up with the kick to scare you. I was usually still winning these matches but I feel like I had to work for it.

I feel like there’s a pretty general trend in Lum MU’s, which is if the opponent can prevent Lum from tossing items, the matchup is bad. You’d pretty much expect that to be the case, so I feel like these matchup results shouldn’t be too surprising.

And yeah, as I posted in the tierlist thread, I feel like Lum is near the bottom overall. However, as a character, I think he’s almost exactly where every character should be in terms of overall power level. He’s extremely fun to play and I feel like he’s an “honest” character. He doesn’t have a lot of situations where he just autopilots buttons and destroys you or whatever. While I do think this game is pretty cool and I love how easy it is to learn, there’s still a lot of really dirty stuff in this game, maybe even moreso than most fighters. For example, a big part of why the Midori matchup sucks so much is Air C. If you get hit by this on the ground, the game says “jumpable!” but it’s actually not jumpable, it will also grab you out of a jump, the only option is to hit it with an air attack, but its hitbox is so favourable that it also beats out air attacks fairly often. He already has enough really good air to air options that he really doesn’t need to sometimes get free damage from this move even though you responded to it correctly.

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Any ideas on the Geiger vs Lum MU?

Oh yeah, that’s odd since I played against Geiger more than most other characters.

I’d say it’s about a 6-4 in Lum’s favour since while Geiger can space him out pretty well and keep up a lot of pressure with projectiles combined with easy escape options, this also lets Lum bring out items, allowing him to heal himself and throw out some minions, which the Geiger players I played all had a pretty hard time dealing with.

@Tero I think I forgot to mention that Grave also has some really good mobility which seems to make the matchup about as difficult as against Jaina despite the latter’s superior projectiles. Grave can either outzone Lum, easily dealing with his items while he’s at it, or get in close and exploit the crap out of Lum’s lack of reversal options. Either way, Lum is usually fucked without super in this matchup.

I agree with what you say about Val with the 90% and the 10% but I feel that that’s what her specific playstyle entails, so I don’t think it really evens itself out. Especially when as you mentioned she has better reversal options. I also find that she has an easy time dealing with minions because of her normals, which again are way better than Lum’s so I’d say it’s definitely in her favour.

At the risk of coming off as stubborn, I’m going to stand by my Rook matchup analysis. Yes Rook can do a ton of damage following a single grab if his opponent isn’t smart with their escape options, like with most characters, but unless it’s a rushdown character with the short healthbars and such, I don’t think this alone is enough to put a matchup in Rook’s favour. His mobility means getting to that point will always be a challenge and Lum’s items can be a big hindrance to that as well as his good crossup options as I mentioned before. Whenever I thought my opponent was trying to get a command grab, I would jump and use the trampoline move to bait it out, which lead to a crossup into neutral A into his little Blanka spin thing. It worked very reliably and did not only a lot of damage but gave me some time to bring out some items as well. Lum’s jumping A is also a relly good crossup tool that can lead to the combo I just described so he has enough tools to really bring the hurt to Rook.

Also, if you want to avoid Midori’s air command grab you can jump out of it but you have to space correctly. This seems like it’s especially difficult for Lum, sure, since he’s got a huge hurtbox, but it’s still doable and punishable. I’d say Jaina’s fire arrows are the dirtiest thing, honestly.

In all honesty, it sounds kinda weird that Lum wins against a projectile character, but I don’t know the MU at all and you usually don’t say stupid things so I’ll belive you.

EDIT: Wait, that means that Geiger finally has a counter?! Damn! Now I’m not sure that Geiger counters Grave anymore though, so the latter is now missing a bad MU.

Man, having a G as your first initial in Fantasy Strike is like having a D as your middle initial in One Piece.

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The changes I’ve made in the existing MUs of the chart are:

  • Geiger vs Grave from 6-4 to 5-5: Geiger’s ground Super was the major problem in the MU
  • Geiger vs Jaina from 7-3 to 6-4: Geiger’s ground Super was a huge problem in this MU also, but it’s far from being the only one
  • Valerie vs Rook from 3-7 to 4-6: Valerie’s buff helps her a lot in this MU
  • Setsuki vs Rook from 3-7 to 4-6: Setsuki’s buff should have helped her a little

I didn’t have much feedback nor experience, so this is more of a hinch than anything else. The chart wasn’t too accurate before either, hopefully it should still help getting an idea of things.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t saying I thought Rock had advantage in Lum vs Rook, above I had it at even or mild advantage Lum. I just don’t think Lum has significant advantage. Rook definitely has the tools to win this match. I could see this one coming down to item luck in a number of cases.

I’m hoping I’ll come up against some Geigers the next time I play so I can give some thoughts on Geiger vs Lum. He seems rare online.

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Yeah, the Jaina matchup is 8-2 for sure, maybe even 9-1. I was just playing a completely terrible Jaina player who couldn’t even do basic combos and they were still able to easily fraud out wins by basically doing nothing. Granted, it was so laggy that I suspect they were playing from the international space station, but the advantage she gets in this matchup is just insane. Some ridiculous tidbits about this matchup.

Jaina can mash out ground super during the A->B blockstring, and it will hit, so there’s absolutely no form of safe pressure against her while she has super. You basically have no choice but to get hit.

If Lum lands a punish with B vs Air Super, he takes 2 damage, because the two air arrows both hit him after he bounces off her, and she recovers early enough to start charging an arrow, so there’s literally no bad way to use this super, even at point blank. Punishing with Forward A takes 1 damage instead, but can only be done at extremely close range.

If Jaina does Air C, ground B, this looks like one of the only times Lum can get in, but he has no way to get through, even when predicted. The Air C will always hit any form of jump, and then ground B will combo. Even if you roll through the ground B, the air C will still hit you, giving advantage back to Jaina. This means she can spam this string infinitely and there’s really nothing he can ever do against it.

Back A also straight up beats all of Lum’s normals.

Also, just played some more Lum vs Geiger. This is also heavily minus, probably 7-3 or worse. Lum cannot roll under Geiger’s gears from any range, and if he tries to jump over them he can always be air to air’d by Air A or flash kicked. You can throw an item during a regular gear toss and still have time to block, but since you have to block if it’s a cherry or cake Geiger will always get it, and basically no item allows you to take advantage. Giving Geiger extra super is also terrible because Lum has absolutely no counters to Air super and is always forced to take damage when he uses it.

So yeah, Lum is the worst character in the game, which is a shame because he’s fun. I think it’s fairly clear that the answer is that his roll needs some projectile invulnerability, so he can threaten projectile users to some degree. Right now they can just autopilot projectiles and he has absolutely no answer to them.

Jaina beats Lum 7-3 tops, let’s not get too worked up here.

If Jaina can Super (or C for the matters) out of Lum’s AxxB “blockstring”, that means that wasn’t a true blockstring at all and that you messed up the spacing. That said, if the Jaina player spams Super (or reversal) like that, just bait it and punish for 2 + a wasted Super that in the MU is very good.

To punish Jaina’s air Super up close do B to go under her and throw, you need to be very quick though. Otherwise you have to hold 1 damage, it’s a 3-7 for a reason after all.

If Jaina does jC into B all the time, just jump on her afterwards. The recovery on her B is longer than it seems and if you are quick enough she shouldn’t be able to C out of your empty jump, giving you the advantage.

bA has an absurdly long recovery, you should be able to punish it up close and get advantage otherwise.

Finally Lum does have some tools too, namely his fA that is quite good to check Jaina or even punish her jC. Also from time to time it doesn’t hurt to stay fullscreen and just hope for cherries.

It bad, but not unplayable bad.

@Octorockandroll The guys says it’s 3-7, you say it’s 6-4. It’s almost as bad as that Rook vs Setsuki discussion where one said said it was 3-7, the other said 9-1. I’ll put it 5-5 in the chart, but help me out here!

If you’re suggesting to block the air C first, then jump up towards, I’m quite certain she can Air B for a hit. The best option is probably to slowly walk up and then try to ground B to punish an Air C, but this is only one damage and doesn’t really give any advantage afterwards, and you’ll take quite a lot of chip getting close.

The problem is that any second you’re not killing Jaina, she’s building bar. Also, from max range, Air super is guaranteed 2 damage, not just 1, since you can’t avoid getting hit by both the last arrow and the unblockable (if you jump, you just get hit by one of the air ones and fall onto the arrow. If you block, the arrow hits you, then the last air arrow does too). Well, you can nullify one of them using ground super, reducing the damage to 1, but it’s still really bad.

I remain convinced that with no source of projectile invulnerability, Lum is almost totally nonviable. Note that all other characters who are ever expected to rush down have projectile invulnerable or armored moves. The frame data in this game clearly expects you to use invulnerability to deal with projectile pressure.

@Tero No, I suggest you block the B, then jump in an angle where her jC doesn’t hit you. It’s possible, you just have to space it correctly. If you get close enough punishing Jaina’s jCs with Bs is a good idea actually, and you have more than enough time to toss an item afters.

I understand that Jaina is building bar while you are fullscreen, that’s why I said from time to time, but if you need the life leed some luck can come.

That said, what are you saying that she gets 2 damage off of an air Super?! At most you eat the unblockable, but you shouldn’t have any problem blocking the other ones.

The Geiger matchup? I’ll just have to play more Geiger matches ig.

You could always give us your opinion, tho.

Yeah, it looks like the 2 damage off the unblockable can only happen if you try to challenge it, and thus end up also taking one of the arrows. I’ve seen situations where ground Super actually gets you out, but this may have been some kind of weird fluke. It looks like the best option is just to take the unblockable every time.

I still definitely think roll should be at least briefly immune to projectiles.

I’m also changing my opinion on Lum vs Rook and DeGrey. Both are also neutral to negative for Lum. Both can basically just stall until they get super, and once they have super, Lum can never Air B because it’s trivially easy to counter with super. Without Air B, Lum has zero way to create offense. This is also why Jaina ground super is so bad for him, it also easily shuts down Air B.

I quite honestly think Lum loses every matchup in the game, and is the unchallenged worst character. I think a big part of the problem is that they made sure that his items all have counters, without properly considering that he has to work to create space to throw an item. Battling for space vs characters who have far better tools only to throw them a cherry is just garbage that no other character in the game has to put up with.

There is also no such thing as a “good range” to throw an item. At very short range, they can just hit you, so that’s right out. At midrange, coins, bombs, and lightning clouds are most effective, but you can also easily throw them a cherry or cake, which is worse than the advantage that you get for throwing a good item. At long range, they can’t usually get the cherry before you, which is good, but most of the items you can throw do nothing useful, so they can easily push you into the corner or stall to build super. Even the firework, which is the one unquestionably good item, is fairly easy to simply block and doesn’t give Lum much pressure. He also just generally seems to have terrible frame data, I feel like he has almost nothing that’s plus on block except maybe Air B, and as already mentioned, many characters can easily shut down Air B.

I feel like his best gameplan is probably some kind of super stall-based tactic where he plays for timeout every round, using a combination of rocket and dice to accumulate chip, but even then the fact that he might throw a cherry can instantly destroy this tactic, and it’s nonviable against the rushdown characters because their offense is simply too strong.

Just change all lum’s matchups to 1-9 and be done with it imo

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It’s not that bad but honestly I think he might lose every matchup. See the tierlist thread for more of my thoughts about this.

@Tero He was being ironic…

Also your bA is plus.

@Octorockandroll I would give you my opinion on the MU, but I don’t have one. I have almost no experience at all and my Geiger sucks.

Yes, back A is plus (I mentioned this in the tierlist thread), but it has huge pushback so it gives basically no follow-up pressure on block. It’s sole use is that if you get the knockdown, you can ground super safely, as there are a number of opponents where ground super is never safe if they’re not knocked down.

Anyway, I played a bunch of matches vs Squible last night, and I think I’ve found the root of why Lum loses so many matchups. You might remember that when discussing Jaina vs Geiger, Sirlin said “when Geiger has ground super I basically just assume I’m going to take 2 damage”. This is Lum’s life in every matchup. Because it’s trivially easy to react with supers in this game (it’s just 1 button) and because Lum’s moves have so much startup, pretty much everyone just gets free super vs him. We did a bunch of Lum vs Valerie, and it often came down to within 1 health point, but the fact that Valerie gets an invincible ground super that is basically 1 point of free damage (whereas Lum’s supers are, at best, a chance to get damage, and generally require a knockdown first), it gives her a substantial edge. Ditto for Grave, Jaina, DeGrey, and Rook, all of whom have ground supers that heavily restrict Lum’s offense. Lum has no moves that can be considered fakeouts and no way to create pressure situations on block, so he has no way to draw out these supers other than to get hit by them, and this free damage makes most of his matchups heavily minus.

I feel like the key to Lum being viable is that he needs a way to drain your super meter with items. In Divekick, there was a similar item-using character called Markman, and one of his items was a flask of poison that he could throw, and when it landed it created a cloud that progressively drained your super bar. If Lum had something similar, he could try to progressively push you to the corner with items and forward A, and then drain your bar (or punish you if you tried to use a risky escape option to escape the meter drain), allowing him to go on the offensive without the threat of super. This would make him feel like a far more complete character since he would actually have a gameplan in most matchups now. In general, I think Lum’s items need tweaks to better fit what he actually wants to achieve during matches, as right now most items are rarely useful. It should also actually be scary to be cornered by Lum, whereas IMO, right now I’d far rather be in the corner vs Lum with a firework on the way than be in the corner vs almost any other character.

You are an >>>ABSURD<<< downplayer, but I like the idea of the meter draining item.