One of the hottest debates in Smash Wii U is where Lucina and Marth stack up against each other.  In this feature, we're going to explore some of the rationale behind professionals preferring Marth, but why Lucina does have a few edges of her own in certain matchups.

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There's many reasons professional players pick Marth over Lucina and only a few seemingly negligible downsides that edge her out over him.  One of the most important, which capitalizes off of mind games, is early kill potential.  

As you escalate to higher levels of play, the difference between how a player plays when at a high percent versus a low percent is easily distinguished.  This is where mind games come into play and you want to bait your opponent into leaving a vulnerability window to strike.  Marth gets heavily rewarded for landing his tippers, even if they do require more precision.  

Many opponents who are familiar with the Marth matchup will avoid tippers at all costs, but that doesn't necessarily make Lucina any safer, which we'll get to later. If you're a Marth player, you want to make sure, above all else, you're capable of patience and capable of predicting human psychology.  Hard reads on your opponent's behavior allow you to more effectively land tippers.

To some, this can be seen as both a pro and a con.  Sure, in a sense Marth is forced to play reactively, but the payoff for playing a proper defense is much higher.  And can Lucina actually play more offensively, or is it a placebo?  Lastly as a "con", Marth has worse sourspots, and lacks any kill potential disregarding outrageous percents. The caveat to this, however, is that it's only true if the attacks actually land.  By this, I'm implying it is actually safer for Marth to sourspot on Shield compared to Lucina.  At low to mid levels of play, this isn't a huge factor and favors Lucina, but at high levels of play where the shield receives more optimal use, this eliminates the safety net that is Lucina's precision-pillow of blows.  

  Lucina does have some legitimate benefits to her.  An undervalued one is the fluidity of her gameplay.  The way her attacks chains together feels so much more smooth.  As a result, this makes it seem safer to play more offensively -- again, something we'll elaborate on later.  

Objectively, Lucina does have higher hitstun on her abilities.  This means that it's more difficult for opponents to punish out of shield compared to Marth's sourspots due to her parallel falchion. Also objectively, it's easier for Lucina to KO at higher percents. Remember I mentioned how opponents will play differently and avoid zones where you can land a tipper?  Your opponent has less risk-averse options when fighting Lucina.  This is because you don't need the precision to finish off your opponent.  If your opponent is medium weight and in the triple digits in the center of the stage, chances are your Fsmash will kill regardless of where the blade lands.  For instance, when we compare this to Marth, this is fairly significant, as Marth's opportunity cost for throwing out a forward smash is severely punishing for a miss vs. largely unrewarding when not landing an ideal hit. 

Additionally, there are parts of Lucina's moveset that are strictly superior to Marth's. Due to the nature of Dancing Blade, it is superior to Marth's in any given case; the same can be said for her Dair.  While Usmash is up for debate due to the tipper element, Lucina's is better in any scenario that doesn't warrant the difference between a stock and no-stock from the tipper knock-up.  This is because Lucina's Usmash does more damage than Marth's even when tippered, making it a safer option to follow up rolls or to prevent edge recovery.  Lucina also finds it easier to throw it into a string with fast falling Nair and jab.  

Offense, Defense, and Frame Data

To iron out the misconceptions of safety in offensive and defensive play that we brought up earlier, I'll explain how threat works at higher levels of play. Experts tend to understand when they are at risk to losing a stock to many more matchups than beginners; this is why the mental aspect of the game is arguably more important the the mechanical part.  There's several level of mindgames at play at all times, and Marth players need to utilize that as well as having uncanny spacing ability relative to their knowledge of their opponent's movement.

So sure, maybe Lucina has better rushdown, but Marth has superior options strictly because of the threat of tipper.  When an opponent knows a tipper will kill and a sourspot will not, they have to react accordingly. This gives Marth room to condition opponents to react as he pleases.

As an example, suppose Marth's opponent is recovering from the ledge and knows that an Ftilt or Usmash will kill him. His likely recovery option would involve spacing himself to avoid that result, which gives Marth an option to grab and acquire free damage.  Then, once the players are reconditioned to prevent poke and additional credit on the stock, they'll be unsuspecting of the kill move.  To any Marth that has mastered their spacing, this is a critical advantage to their gameplay and opens options that novices may never realize exists for the character.  While Lucina is still capable of conditioning, the static result of her blade results in more predictable and less creative options to explore in that regard.

As you can see, the frame data between both characters is nearly identical; both characters have the exact same weight, run speed, walk speed, air speed, fall speed and so on.  However, there are still some minor disparities worth noting.  For example, Lucina's range is also exactly the same as Marth's, but still can't hit quite as far because the character itself is slightly smaller even though the swords are the same size.

While hardly noticeable in actual gameplay, Lucina also has a slightly higher acceleration in her dashing animation -- so while she's not faster, she can be on the move slightly quicker, amplifying her position as the "rushdown" character between the two.

Lucina's jab has less knockback growth, opening up different follow-up options after the second jab hit. It's worth noting that this is irrelevant to most Marth players as many prefer to combo something out of jab1.

The debate on who has the "better" aerials is argued often between the two and often comes to preference, but the consistency of Lucina's knockback values on her aerial attacks opens options for more strings, making it "better" in my opinion, though lacking kill threat.

Lucina also has a strange modified damage mechanic in her uptilt, albeit extremely minor.  Unlike Marth's tipper spacing, Lucina's uptilt is based on how long the attack animation has been out. For instance, if you uptilt an opponent directly in front of you, you'll hit for roughly 7.6% damage -- but if they are behind you and it takes awhile for the sword to reach the target, it'll deal up to 8.1% damage due to the length of the animation.

Finally, Lucina's upthrow kill percentage is inferior to Marth's by approximately 1% (This was tested on Mario with no rage or DI on Final Destination, where it killed at 167% for Marth and 168% on Lucina).

So who should I play?

People frequently put Marth and Lucina very close in their tier lists and oftentimes it's because they aren't capable of examining the slight nuances in gameplay forcing different variables and outcomes.  As many say with most competition, it's a "game of inches," and even the slighest variation allows for huge dynamic changes in how balance is approached. 

Objectively speaking, the amount of options a character has is generally a proper gauge to their strengths, which makes Marth the "better" pick.  Sure, there's some matchups that the Marthcina community will agree where Lucina shines over Marth (such as Pikachu and Sonic), but despite this, you rarely see Marth players switch over.  This is because -- again -- despite the similarities between the two characters, the application of skillsets isn't the same, and so you may not be rewarded for proper spacing playing Marth where Lucina is slightly favorable.

Unfortunately, the answer ultimately comes down to what many may deem a cop-out, but it is the most honest: you should play whatever you are the most comfortable with.  Marth is certainly a "better" character than Lucina, but not so much that, excluding the top 99th percentile of play, you'll be punished in your placements at events, locals, or even online ranked ladder by character choice.

In Wisconsin, one of our top 10 players, Inui, plays Lucina; he feels more at home on the character, and you don't truly begin to understand how little balance applies (even between C and S tiers, and we're talking about two characters in similar stature) to where you are as a beginner or mid level player and how much more of it is usually attributed to fundamental flaws.

If you come from Melee and play Marth, you may actually appreciate Lucina more as the playstyle transfers more smoothly. The fluidity can come across as less frustrating; the character feels a lot more momentum-based and you don't have to rely on extreme patience.

If you enjoy spacing, cutthroat discipline and playing the match out as if it were a blade-wielding boxing match, you will probably prefer Marth.  

The disparity in character strength is not enough for it to matter for those reading this, but you probably won't find any Lucinas in the top 20 at majors any time soon, whereas Marth is creeping into the spots and many pros are wielding him as a secondary.

Michale 'Drexxin' Lalor is the Editor-in-Chief at Esports Heaven. If you enjoyed this, follow him on Twitter at @ESHDrexxin.

Data courtesy of SSBWiki, Kurogane Hammer, and internal testing.