Random Lum Thoughts

As I’m exploring Lum, here are random thoughts that have come to me. In no way am I saying that these are high-level play notes. I am not the Lum authority. Please feel free to add on any info that you think will be worthwhile that I have missed. Without further ado:

Random Lum Thoughts:

General:

Use C as much as you can. Protect your mini-Lums. You can also use them as bait if the opponent is trying very hard to get rid of them by approaching with jA.
When cloud, bomb, or fireworks come out, use them to safely execute jS.
When you have dice, don’t always immediately roll towards the dice. Stay near the dice and continue fishing for items. Smack a die toward the opponent if they try to approach.
B is very good to help capitalize on item combos because it’s quick, has good range, and deals chip.
fA helps a lot to get that final point of damage such as from a counter-hit jA or a hit from cloud.
B can roll under projectiles with the right timing. You want to press it right before the projectile hits you.
Although B can crossup on okizeme, it can be punished on hit by a throw.
jB is good to capitalize on fireworks.
Prefer jS over gS. Some matchups will push you to use gS a lot defensively, however.
Fireworks, bombs, and mini-Lums are great items to pressure the opponent into blocking. That’s when you can throw them.
If you throw a mini-Lum or coin after a knockdown, you can pressure the opponent into blocking so you can get another knockdown using throw. Thus allowing you to do the same thing again. If you throw an opponent, throw a mini-Lum, and immediately throw the opponent again, the mini-Lum will now be a meaty attack on the opponent. It will become a true 50/50 as to whether the opponent will have to block or yomi.
You can use jC to stall over your own bombs.

Notable Combos:
jA->A->B His standard 3 damage combo. Because his nA is such short range, it’s possible that it will whiff.
A->B Standard 2 damage combo.
A->C This is a good option to sneak in an item if they block your A. Rarely gets punished.

Character Specific:

Grave:
He will use hold B to get rid of your mini-Lums.
Wind is devastating to your items because it will blow them toward you as well as allow him to get rid of two items at once with one B.
He can sword through your fireworks, so be careful about trying to use jB.

Geiger:
You can B under his fA.
You can apply good pressure through a Time Spiral with B. If he uses delayed Time Spiral, he can flash gear you, so be careful.
Geiger has some difficulty with getting rid of mini-Lums. Protect them to apply pressure.
Dice are very good at allowing you to approach him by rolling. You can also choose to wait by the dice and get more items before using the dice to approach. It’s dangerous for him to advance toward the dice because you can roll at any time.
If you see him use Phase Out, you can roll underneath him and nA.
If you get him in a corner, mini-Lums can continue to pressure him while you throw items at a safe distance. He will not be able to fA through the mini-Lums and he cannot use gS because you can throw him.

Jaina:
Charged arrows can get rid of mini-Lums.
You can roll under her jC and use nA. Same with her jB, but usually you’ll end up using fA or bA.

Argagarg:
His rushing river can get rid of mini-Lums which makes it difficult for Lum.
You can approach Argagarg by waiting for fireworks and using jB. Another tactic is waiting for bomb, cloud, or fireworks, wait for rushing river to go by, then use jS. Immediately roll through the dice to close the distance. If you do not have those items, Arg can use fA to hit the first die and you. Then he can fA again to get rid of a second die.
You can roll under his blue fish and his super fish.
You can change the timing of your jump in by using melon to avoid his bA.

Setsuki:
Her B can get rid of one mini-Lum. So, if you have multiple, she cannot safely use B to get through.
Roll will defeat her B kick on block regardless if it crosses up.
Your gS will cleanly beat a meaty fA. This usually happens on an air reset.
gS will beat all the tumbler mixups except for throw and super.
Your gS is not useful against her B. Her kick option cleanly beats your gS and her throw loses cleanly to your gS.

Valerie:
She can BBB for full chip with almost no repercussions. She will be too far away to throw immediately. She recovers fast enough that none of your attacks can punish. If BB hits, you can mash super to beat yellow cleanly. If you block BB, you need to delay hitting super until 1-2 frames after blockstun ends to beat it cleanly. If you do it too early, you’ll trade. If you do it too late you’ll get hit.
After a roll, she can BBB.
If you anticipate BBB, you can use jA to catch her on recovery of cyan.
After BBB, if she is conditioned to block, you can walk up throw.
After BBB, you can bA to catch an attack.
She will try to fA your mini-Lums, so you can protect them by blocking.

Rook:
Rook can thunderclap, nA, and land on (using earthquake) mini-lums.
Rook can react to B and throw you if done from far away.
Rook can super your B.
Really focus on getting as many items out without getting too close.
When he thunderclaps, you can B right after to take advantage of the momentum given.

Midori:
Don’t use jB against him. He can parry at will.

Lum:
You can roll under his melon and use nA.
bA is good to get rid of mini-Lums.

DeGrey:
Protect your jS with cloud or fireworks. He can go over bomb with his jS.
Ghost can take out two items at once.

3 Likes

Rook:
When you do his cartwheel, don’t try to follow up with nA. Most of the time it will whiff and you will get punished pretty hard.

Jaina:
You can roll through her dragonheart.

Grave:
You can roll through his sword.

Midori:
You can roll through his parry.
Melons are pretty oppressive to Midori.
Use your melons to help keep spacing to allow you to throw items.

Lum:
If the opponent uses dice, you can usually roll and pressure with nA on their recovery.
Roll and fA are very good to get rid of mini-Lums. Be careful if there are multiple because you can only get rid of one at a time.
When bomb is out, you can use this opportunity to use your melon to target the opponent’s mini-Lums.

1 Like

General:
If you’re feeling lucky and an item is about to hit the opponent, you can use A->C->fA to try and get a 4 damage combo. The item should hit after your first A, then hopefully a coin will come out to hit the opponent and then fA for the follow-up. Either way, it’s a safe way to get another item out at the expense of guaranteed 3 damage (using A->B and item hit).

Grave:
You cannot roll under any of his projectiles.

Argagarg:
Arg’s jB (Staff Drill) is very good. It’ll defeat your roll and can take out multiple mini-Lums. Predict it with either a jA or a delayed melon.
When Arg is in the corner, you can pressure him really well in two ways: by standing just outside of his bA range and throwing items or by repeatedly throwing melons at him.
If you repeatedly throw melons at him in the corner, make sure that you adjust your timing and spacing for the melons so that if he chooses to jump, you can still hit him out of his Staff Drill or his jA with the melon. It requires delaying the melon. He cannot nA your melons because he will get counterhit. Be careful with this tactic if he has bubble shield.

General:
After a forward throw, if you roll immediately, you’ll end up on the opposite side of the opponent. If you immediately do nA, it’ll hit meaty. If you want to throw, you will need to delay your throw ever so slightly for it to be meaty.
After a forward throw, if you delay slightly before throwing an item, a coin will hit meaty. You can still do a meaty throw while the coin is coming out by walking forward slightly. This gives a true 50/50 to the opponent. You can combo with nA->B for 3 damage or throw for another knockdown.

Jaina:
Be very careful using melon in the matchup. She can usually dragonheart you.

Edit:

Valerie:
You can punish a blocked neutral yellow with a microwalk forward for 1-2 frames and then throw. Observe carefully if you’re whiffing the microwalk throw or getting yomi’d after blocking it. If that is the case, she is likely delaying her neutral yellow to get that spacing. You can then start to try and throw her out of her neutral yellow startup. Be careful because it can lead to a counter-hit if she does not delay her startup by more than 2 frames.
If she’s using fA predictably (such as clearing out mini-Lums), you can use jA->A->C for 3 damage on a predicted fA.
You can reach her with a throw after a blocked rainbow, unlike most of the cast, so she has to respect your ability to throw her after a blocked rainbow.
If she uses rainbow disc too high when you’re getting up, you can throw her with pretty tight timing (she has 2 frames of landing recovery). As a bonus, it’ll usually get you out of the disc. If she does rainbow disc too late, you can jump out before it starts hitting you. If it’s high and you don’t want to risk missing the throw, you can get a guaranteed 1 damage by rolling into her. However, the disc will then start juggling you so it’s really only useful as a round ender.
If you try to use dice when she’s on the other side of bomb, she can usually reach you with an air rainbow during your recovery, so be careful.
Being able to react to her jB (the rainbow stroke crossup) with a throw is extremely useful. I would recommend when she jumps, immediately assess whether you can use nA (probably not on a good Valerie), then just keep holding back and only look out for the startup of jB. Once you see it, you should throw. Ignore any other air moves she may do, they don’t matter because you’ll automatically block them anyway. Don’t forget to fuzzy guard as needed when she gets to the ground.
As a counterpoint to the previous point, you can instead focus on whether you can use B as an anti-air or as an avoidance measure. B is very good at getting away from rainbow cross stroke or can be used as an anti-air at some distances. You want to be able to hit her body if she tries to use jA.

3 Likes

I know what A, B, C means but what button are you referring to when you say the S button? Is that the same as C?

S is Super.
That is the move that uses meter.
By default it is B+C, but exists also as standalone input, that is why it is mentioned separately as S and not as B+C

1 Like

Thanks… forgot about that super button. =P

General:
I don’t have precise probabilities on each of the items for Lum’s Item Toss, but I have ran 500 trials and Daniel Stretulch ran 665 trials. Here are the results:

500 Trials:
Mini-Lum: 100 (20.0%)
Bomb: 91 (18.2%)
Coin: 81 (16.2%)
Cloud: 63 (12.6%)
Cherry: 59 (11.8%)
Cake: 54 (10.8%)
Fireworks: 51 (10.2%)
Mini-Rook: 1 (0.2%)

665 Trials:
Bomb: 124 (~18.65%)
Minilum: 120 (~18.05%)
Coin: 111 (~16.69%)
Cherry: 88 (~13.23%)
Cake: 80 (~12.03%)
Cloud: 79 (~11.88%)
Fireworks: 60 (~9.02%)
Minirook: 3 (~0.45%)

So, it seems that Bomb/Mini-Lum are most common, followed by Coin, then Cherry/Cake/Cloud, then Fireworks, then Mini-Rook.

1 Like

General:
I did another test on item frequency because I didn’t like my first Trial (because it was too small to get a good enough estimate on minirook probability and I decided to end it exactly when I got my third minirook).

So, here are the results of my new 5000 Trial test:
Mini-Lum: 998 (19.96%)
Coin: 911 (18.22%)
Bomb: 826 (16.52%)
Cherry: 615 (12.30%)
Cake: 559 (11.18%)
Cloud: 553 (11.06%)
Fireworks: 509 (10.18%)
Minirook: 29 (0.58%)

Fun fact: You can’t throw an item while minirook is in the air.
This includes when minirook flies back after the minirook hits the opponent, after the minirook is blocked, and after the opponent hits minirook.

1 Like

Good find! I was expecting mini-rook to be around 0.5%. Also, I think that’s worthy of a bug report for the mini-rook blocking item toss.

Hmm, so, Mini-Lum, Coin, Bomb are about equal, and so is Cherry, Cake, Cloud, and Fireworks? I’m honestly surprised that fireworks would be so high of a chance.

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Midori:
When he is in Dragon form and he does a crossup B (dragon headbutt) when you’re getting up, you can usually stop his follow-ups by using nA.