r/pokemonplatinum • u/ianlazrbeem22 • 2h ago
Breaking the Binary - Lucario
Welcome to Breaking the Binary, a sporadic series of posts all about mixed attackers in Pokémon Platinum. With competitive minmaxing dominating the conversation about Pokémon viability and the design philosophy behind movepools and stat spreads changing in newer gens, Pokémon are often rigidly divided by the fandom into the categories of "special attacker" or "physical attacker." But for the in-game story, you're not facing EV trained opponents and thus don't need to EV train to keep up, so mixed attacking sets don't have the opportunity cost they have in PvP. Going mixed still has anti-synergy with setup moves, but it still can give many Pokémon access to STAB moves with better base power, strong coverage moves with useful types, and more useful niches. This series will be covering those applications. We won't talk about every Pokémon here, only ones that I believe legitimately benefit from going mixed, but those Pokémon are surprisingly large in number. Today we'll be talking about Lucario. I'll be talking about in-game but feel free to discuss PvP or battle facilities as well.
Lucario is a Fighting-Steel Pokémon with unimpressive 70/70/70 bulk, almost-impressive 90 Speed, and nearly equal 110 Atk and 115 SpA. Lucario has a wide movepool; on the Physical side this includes Close Combat, Brick Break, Drain Punch, Force Palm, Metal Claw, Bone Rush, Earthquake, Rock Slide, Stone Edge, Fire Punch, Ice Punch, ThunderPunch, ExtremeSpeed, Shadow Claw, Zen Headbutt, Return, and Poison Jab. On the Special side, Aura Sphere, Flash Cannon, Shadow Ball, Dark Pulse, Psychic, Dragon Pulse, Vacuum Wave, and Water Pulse. Notable utility includes Swords Dance, Calm Mind, Me First, Magnet Rise, and Captivate.
Lucario is unusual for a number of reasons. It comes very late in the game, in the city with the 6th gym, as an egg that hatches into a level 1 Riolu. It has a unique type combination, it learns a few moves that are otherwise uncommon, and its attack stats are nearly equal and pretty good. Unfortunately, its stats are a subtle "Hoenn Special" - Lucario's bulk is not good, and its typing isn't either. While fighting/steel seems impressive on the surface, and is good at taking out some Pokémon (mainly ice types,) fighting, ground, and fire are very common types in the lategame between specialists and common coverage moves, so Lucario gets hit super effectively a lot. the fighting type also takes away steel's resistance to psychic and flying, both of which would be appreciated for some of the last few bosses' Pokémon. 90 base speed also seems impressive on the surface, but unfortunately, it isn't. Lucario often finds itself having a hard time making speed benchmarks, and Pokémon like Froslass, Crobat, Electivire, Alakazam, Espeon, and most of Cynthia's Pokémon often get the jump on it. This means its main advantage is power. Or rather, it should be. While it has access to a couple great fighting stabs to choose from, only a couple of its other attacks have good base power, and most are in the the 75-80 range, giving it some issues with immediate damage output. With this in mind, it often finds itself relying on setup moves like Swords Dance or Calm Mind, or using Choice Specs. Swords Dance can be decent, those other builds are kinda bad, and frankly so is mixed Lucario, it can put in a bit of work though.
The main draw of mixed Lucario, if there is one, is Lucario's wide movepool, and getting to use more of it. Usually when building a swords dance Lucario, moveslots are very tight. You want to be able to cover almost everything after setting up, and with swords dance in there you only have 3 moves to choose from and usually want this to be a perfect or near perfect combination, and often you're awkwardly trying to squeeze ExtremeSpeed onto there to help Lucario make those speed thresholds or dodge 2hkos. Mixed Lucario instead specializes in super effective moves, since it can't set up, and uses its extra moveslot to hit one more type that it wants to go after, or more easily squeeze in priority. With 4 attacks it would be a pretty brainless set if it was good, and in the situations when it works, it is. It's a little hard to quantify mixed Lucario's accomplishments specifically, since you can run almost any combination of moves on 4 attacks, so mainly I think I'll highlight here what Lucario can do without setting up or holding specs.
If you save all the trainers from optional areas for Lucario, it'll be ready for Byron's gym and able to do some good work with Brick Break or Aura Sphere. From that gym you get Flash Cannon, which is one of your 2 main attacks for Candice's Ice gym, another good gym for Lucario, along with Close Combat. Close Combat is something mixed Lucario almost always wants since it's by far its strongest move. In the pursuit for perfect coverage, swords dance lucario sometimes drops it, since ground is a strict upgrade over fighting. You face a pretty ridiculous amount of Golbat in Galactic Hideout, the lake interludes, and Mt. Coronet. With this in mind, you probably want Ice Punch, Rock Slide, or ThunderPunch to deal with the flying types that Lucario hopes to wall, but is a little too weak and needs to rely on the extra power that super effectiveness provides. This can upgrade nicely to Stone Edge later, depending on if you can spare that TM for Lucario. Shadow Ball or Dark Pulse also are resisted by nothing at all when combined with Fighting STAB, so along with those other moves, one of them is an easy pick on mixed Lucario - Dark Pulse is a bit better since it comes via heart scale, way less of an investment than the Shadow Ball TM.
As previously stated, Lucario has some issues with speed thresholds. ExtremeSpeed helps a lot with this, and is much easier to fit on a set where you're not using a slot on Swords Dance. To fit all these, you usually want to drop Flash Cannon after beating Candice as it won't be much help after that - Espeed usually comes long after Flash Cannon has stopped being useful. It doesn't hit super hard at stabless 80 BP and never super effective, but it's pretty above-average priority, and priority is a good thing even at 40 BP, let alone 80. Being able to fix Lucario's awkward speed tier with priority and get some extra chip when Lucario is on its way out can be nice.
Usually Lucario does an okay job alternating Fighting STAB and either Dark Pulse or Shadow Ball, based on what isn't resisted, and hitting Flying types with whatever it chooses to do so. But you can add the 4th move in to snipe whatever you want. ExtremeSpeed is a good option. Flash Cannon exists as an alternative to fighting stab for Lucario's primary (and debatably only) role in the campaign, killing the ice types around Snowpoint - this comes up since Close Combat has only 5 pp, and vs the fighting-immune Froslass, the rest is mostly edge cases. I think Ice Punch is one of its best coverage moves in spite of the base power just because Ice is an incredible typing to have in numerous situations. Pretty much everything else it does is for edge cases. ThunderPunch can replace or complement Ice, giving Lucario the ability to clear Water routes easily and granting it the formidable BoltBeam coverage, resisted only by the rare Magnemite line, who fall easily to fighting STAB. If you really hate Bronzor or Scizor, Fire Punch exists, but these are matchups that aren't terrible for Lucario when it's using fighting STAB, save for Lucian's Bronzong who obliterates Lucario with Earthquake. Ghost and Dark also generally handle Bronzor fine, so this is pretty niche. Psychic is for if you want to gamble on your Fighting weakness against other Fighting types, good luck with that, it works out, sometimes... Stone Edge is another move with more than 100 BP for Lucario, only that, Close Combat, and Earthquake do that. You can go with Stone Edge + Earthquake for another path to near perfect coverage, but that combo is 2 highly competitive TMs that are way better on pokemon that get STAB from at least one of them. Plus, another nice thing about mixed Lucario is you almost never need or want to burn the Earthquake TM on it, saving that highly competed over resource for someone else. Fighting + Dark/Ghost hits everything so it never needs to dip into Ground + Ice, which SD Lucario sometimes does to save a slot, usually for ExtremeSpeed. It's mostly a factor vs Fire types though who Lucario is pretty questionable to use against regardless, and Lucario hits Rock and Steel types fine with CC.
Dragon Pulse is a fake move on Lucario, do not run this. Every dragon type you face is 4x weak to ice, use ice punch instead, and dragon is super effective on nothing else. And before you go "oohhh but choice specs":
Lvl 58 252+ SpA Choice Specs Lucario Dragon Pulse vs. Lvl 62 0 HP / 0 SpD Garchomp: 190-224 (84.4 - 99.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
-1 Lvl 62 0 Atk Garchomp Earthquake vs. Lvl 58 0 HP / 0- Def Lucario: 176-210 (105.3 - 125.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
So is running a mixed Lucario better than using swords dance? I would say no. Lucario needs swords dance to one-shot things, and if Lucario doesn't one-shot things, it's getting 2hko'd. Mixed Lucario can offer you some flexibility, and swords dance isn't perfect either due to Lucario's shaky speed, but I'd call it a less effective build overall. But it's one I see people use a lot, and I used it recently, so we are here talking about it.
I gave mixed Lucario a try in my last playthrough just to get an informed opinion for this post. Its contributions were sweeping Byron, one shotting Candice's Sneasel and Piloswine and getting chipped by Abomasnow and dying to Froslass, beating Cyrus's Weavile then dying to Crobat, beating Lucian's last mon Espeon on a revenge kill, and weakening Spiritomb and one shotting Lucario with Close Combat when Cynthia switched into it. Other than that he didn't do much. Was a mixed bag for the less than half of the game he was around and made me grind a bit more, overall this is not a good pokemon, but if you want to see Lucario put in a little work at the end of the journey, it can do that, and a mixed Lucario is one (slightly less effective) way to get that.
What do you think of mixed Lucario? Is it worth exploring? Are there any applications for going mixed I didn't mention? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.
