It’s the age-old debate: Where should Lucina be placed on the Tier List? Next to Marth, above, under? If Marth reaches high tier, should she naturally follow in his position in spite of lacking the same results?

Today, I’ll be looking at this through data analysis. As per usual, my data comes from my tournament database, linked here with an explanation of the methodology for character scoring:

https://smashboards.com/threads/tournament-placing-database-scoring-project.437773/

For reference:

Phase 1 = Tournaments used from March 15th-May 15th, 2016.

Phase 2 = Tournaments used from May 15th-August 31st, 2016.

Phase 3 = Tournaments used from September 1st-December 31st, 2016.

Phase 4 = Tournaments used from January 1st to April 30th, 2017.

Phase 5 = Tournaments used from May 1st-August 31st.

The trend eventually evolved into using tournaments in four month periods before resetting all scores and archiving the previous results into “Phases”. This is to keep up with character results and trends in the now but also have snapshots available.

This article and the research behind it was spurred by another internet debate over the subject, namely on reddit- where monthly tier lists are voted on. My pro-Lucina argument shifted mid-post as I researched her results, resulting in a bit of a jumbled mess that was knocked down, inspiring me to re-evaluate the character’s data in the metagame.

So, here we are.

A brief history of Lucina and Marth:

Phase 5 does not end until the start of September. However, with several majors and nearly three months to work with, I believe that this will be roughly indicative of the final result of the four month period used – May, June, July, & August.

This demonstrates a few things.

Marth peaked in late December with MKLeo’s victory at 2GGT: ZeRo Saga and proceeded to decline in a fashion not seen by any other character in the game’s history as of the post-patch era. Lucina’s results were effectively nonexistent until Marth began to seriously climb. Lucina’s results have remained relatively stable between Phase 4 and 5 – the make-up of 2017.

Lucina’s height is current. Despite the lower score, due to Phase 5’s partial data, Lucina retains a higher raw placement position – 26th – while Marth rests at 21st.

Lucina, unlike Marth, is heavily supported by secondary usage. Nairo, ZeRo, Ranai, komorikiri, and NAKAT have all successfully used the character to take either games or sets (both are counted towards a character’s point total) meaning she attains upwards of 6 points per major win (per half-value rule on secondaries) by ZeRo or Nairo where they used her to some level of success. This may not initially sound like much, but it can amount to nearly 10% of her sum during Phase 5. This is significant.

If you were to exclude all secondary results, Lucina would have 26 points from solo-usage or solo-with-secondary usage during Phase 5, with a bulk of this coming from Mr. E’s stint with her.

Emphasis: Her numbers would decline from 63.5 to 26.

Lucina with all results:

Marth: 92.5

Villager: 91

Bowser: 81.5

Greninja: 76.5

Toon Link: 64.5

Lucina: 63.5 (26th)

Lucas: 62.5

Olimar: 61.5

Lucina with solo results:

Little Mac: 35

Ike: 31

Wario: 26.5

Roy: 26.5

Wii Fit Trainer: 26.5

Lucina: 26 (40th)

Robin: 26

Charizard: 25.5

Link: 20

Palutena: 18

Pit: 18

Pac-Man: 17.5

…In this position, she becomes tied with Robin for worst scoring Fire Emblem character, both a nudge below Roy, who has shown a number of solid regional performances as of late that carry his score.

In defense of Lucina: This goes back to my earlier character analysis article. Clones do not effectively score as well as their counterparts because every clone is generally agreed to be a worse version of the base character, meaning a “patch” exists in the form of another character on the select screen. This heavily depresses a clone character’s results.

Lucina is placed in a unique position. She is an easier to use and perceived more consistent clone of Marth – a powerful character with a lot of hype surrounding him – making her an appealing secondary pick. As a result, she is maintained by her appeal as a secondary.

This presents an issue for the character. If her success is tied to Marth’s – and it absolutely is – what happens now? Marth no longer appears to be such an exceptional character and his meta development is currently in the process of landsliding. This will likely have consequences on Lucina’s development.

For example: When the numbers reset on September 1st, all her successful secondary numbers go away and be relegated to that 4 month snapshot – meaning she’ll start at 0 again, needing to climb up in a new 4 month period. If she loses her secondary backing from top players – as appears to increasingly be the case – she will decline further, likely to the 20-40 area over a 2-4 month period.

This is further compounded by her most valuable taker- Mr. E – seeming to use her character less and less in tournament.

Does this mean she should be placed a significant amount of tiers/placements below Marth? I’m not sure. Marth has effectively collapsed from a 2 consecutive phase 11th position to a shaky Top 20 placement. I think declaring either as Top 15 at the moment is very dubious based on data, leaving the question of “How much lower should she be?”

Through her better viability compared to Dark Pit and Dr. Mario, she retains a superior playerbase to her clone counterparts, but the results she scrounges up are measly, and the score from them is likely temporary and set to significantly decline – much like her counterpart, Marth.

With evaluation of the data, I’m inclined to call myself a Lucina skeptic. She has tangible results both solo and secondary, but they come off as fleeting. The major discussion, in my opinion, should be the meta collapse of what was generally considered to be a top 10 contender character for a period of 2-5 months.

This is largely unprecedented in the way it happened with Marth. Hype-spurts have supported people’s opinions of characters (I see you Bowser), but heavy Marth usage in Top 8s brought MKLeo two of the biggest wins in Smash 4 history. Now, it seems like Marth & Lucina’s gold has been dug up and the mine left abandoned.

Marth has declined from 17th to 21st in the period of less than a month and stands to lose more if Villager or Bowser do exceptionally well at the end of July. His future is brighter based on his meta experience, but it’s looking more likely that Marth will bottom out in the 25-20 range as time goes on unless some turnaround occurs.