In my experience playing with friends, Lyca is an incredibly great character with easy and fun combos, but has very subpar killpower against heavier characters. At ~125%, shooting a character like Uza with a wisp-enhanced arrow offstage and near the blastzone didn't kill, which seems ridiculous even on a heavy character. Other killmoves like back air and F-strong seem to suffer from the same noticably low killpower at similarly high percents. It could perhaps just be the increased weight of other workshop characters as those are the only characters I used Lyca against, from my experience either slightly increasing knockback or changing launch angles on her kill moves to make them more consistently kill would improve her chances greatly.

Additionally, when charging neutral special without wisps, she is still able to charge up to a wisp arrow if she keeps charging. I'm not sure if this is a bug or intended, though I personally enjoy having it around so she does not lose a kill move when wisp-less.

Did F-smash get nerfed? I distinctly remember killing with it without spiking but now it looks like it has fixed knockback to act more like a combo move. Which is fine i guess, but if that's going to be how this functions from here on out it needs less end lag so you can actually act off of it. Perhaps you could make the enhanced version kill so it acts kind of similar to Iroh with his combo focused smash attacks that turn into kill moves when he's enraged. I'd say something about the f-smash spike but i'm honestly not sure how to feel about it. On one hand the fact it spikes at all is awesome and very fun, but on the other it always spikes people into the stage so they can tech off of it and evade death. I feel that the angle should be adjusted so that it sends the opponent more down than in so that it's harder, but still possible to recover off of a wall tech.

One immediate problem I notice with the rework is that with you having moved the enhance function of NSpecial to the opposite direction press when using the move, is it's incredibly inconsistent to B-Reversed Nspecials without using a wisp to empower it. I personally never had any issues using both attack and special together in the previous build to get the empowered versions of NSpecial and Strong attacks, and personally thought it felt rather intuitive.

I do think that having to sacrifice a Blue arrow charge makes a bit better balance sense, as the way empowering Strong attacks was before was literally zero risk, all reward, and it's not like it's especially hard to get arrows back, nor did your recovery options suffer that much given how many tools Lyca has for recovery. It makes a lot of sense that either you're stacking blue arrows for zoning pressure, or making the choice to save it, get close, and risk it on a beefy Strong attack to try and kill.

I personally don't see a lot of value to the Uair endlag change, as it doesn't really feel like it adds anything useful to the moves functionality. You can't throw out 2 in a short hop. It doesn't make for laddered Uair combos using fullhops. Unless I'm missing something with it, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense as a change, especially since Lyca doesn't have a USpecial that she can use as part of air combos to try and kill of the top that would make you wanna fish for Uair as a set up more then other buttons. I find myself killing my opponents 90% of the time of the side or bottom of the stage, and honestly barley even use Uair, as Lyca feels like that kind of character that controls horizontal space so well that I never want my opponent above me, as I loose the pressure from all her best tools when they go too high.

I do have to agree with GodSlayerFenrir's comment on the FStrong Spike. With it going straight down, it makes it super easy to tech and, with some opponents, leads to you getting punished for a good read, kinda like Captain Falcon USpecial and the whole RockCrocking issue, if that reference makes any sense.I think GodSlayerFenrir has a good idea with their thought of a slight adjustment to the FStrong angle; at least just enough to maybe make a DI inwards still lead to a tech but further down on the stage walls. Heck, you could even make it so that the altered angle is a property of the Empowered FStrong, giving it a little extra value. I feel like if Dair wasn't already such a good tool for spiking, especially since it's moderately disjointed and allows for you to get less committal spikes at the ledge then FStrong, FStrong just needs to have some extra "oomph" to it to make me wanna use it over Dair spam.

One idea that I really like is the ability to bounce off the wisps using Dair and DSpecial, and one idea I had was what if you got the wisp explosion when bouncing off of it if you have a Blue Arrow charge? Kinda like Absa sweet-spot Dair-ing a cloud, but with a bit more set up. It could lead to some really cool kills and reverse edge guards, but would require some good set up from the Lyca player. Just a thought I had; whether it's any good, I'll leave in your obviously capable hands.

One Bug I've noticed is that it DSpecials Arrow seems to just not hit opponents under some circumstances. The most consistent instances where this happened seemed to be when either the opponents hurt box was hanging off the edge of the stage or a platform, or when the arrow itself traveled through a platform. Under both circumstances, it seem that the arrow just passes through the opponent hurtbox with no effect. I tried this on multiple stages and with multiple characters, and it seems that this bug works on everyone on every stage so long as the above mentioned criteria are met, at least from my messing around. Hopefully this help you suss out any actual bugs or issues.

Anyway, love the character and have been sinking a ton of time into them since they came out. Great sprite work, super cool ideas, and just all around a really impressive character that Rivals ;) the original cast with what it brings to the game. Keep up the great work, and I look forward to continue dunking on people with Lyca.

I love Lyca, but i feel there are some areas where she could be improved. To start, the angle that her blue arrows send the opponent makes it no where near as good of an off stage kill move as it should be. At the moment it seems to send at the same angle as the regular arrow but with higher knockback and DIing in mitigates pretty much all horizontal knockback making it very rarely kill at even 150% offstage. for using her main resource and being a big part of her kit it should be able to kill better as she does have issues killing the opponent. I also feel the method of using special and attack was better before the most recent patch

Her strongs, at the moment have multiple issues, her fstrong broke in the patch but its getting patched out soon. Up strong has WAY too much hitpause, almost an entire second at about 170%. Also I cant exactly describe it but the knockback growth on up strong except for the sweet spot feels... off. I feel down strong is not that useful, i feel like if it was faster but weaker it could be a more interesting combo finisher as right now its out-shined by her other strongs (when they aren't broken) and wisp-charging it is pretty much worthless because of the small hitbox. Wisp-charging her strongs could use another rework though, either making it strong+parry, of strong+stored wisp arrow (which could be very interesting).

The last issue i have with her is with her side special. Why does the flame exist, it really shouldn't as its not hard to get more wisps and you should be encouraged to get your wisps back. the blue arrow on wisp explosion very much needs to be nerfed, it covers a lot of the stage and kills too early. I think that if the high knockback was kept to a smaller hitbox closer to the center of the explosion and the rest of the blast was about the same knockback as shooting a wisp with a regular arrow.

Love the character and am exited to see how she gets changed!

After further playtime with the new patch i have new things to say. For one thing, i've seen CPU's just straight up tech f-smash, negating what little knockback the move had after getting nerfed into the ground. I don't know what's different now, maybe it's my timing or the fact that i'm actually using it to go offstage, but it feels like f-smash is actually spiking properly now. But that being said, why would the offstage spike be so much more powerful and lethal than the on-stage one? I agree with several other comments on here on well, in that the enhanced n-special is far too weak. Getting snipes offstage feels less like something worth doing, and more like a game of "how many times can i hit my opponent before i screw up?" I like that hitting a wisp arrow refunds the wisp, but aside from dealing more damage there's basically no difference between it and the uncharged version. On top of that down special has to much startup. For something that's designed to get you into the air as a mixup it's way too slow. Just compare it to ZSS's down special in Ultimate. Samus's is basically instant whereas this one feels the need to read "backflips for idiots" cover to cover before even thinking about doing the thing, the arrow part of this feels fine to me but the kick is too situational, only activating at the apex of the jump. Again in comparison ZSS's flip kick activates on command rather than having fixed timing. Down smash could also use a buff, as the hitbox is deceptively small and i find myself missing it frequently, and the enhanced version feels like i smacked the other guy with a slightly heavier piece of soggy toilet paper. I can get kills with it around 150% but... really? i have to rack up that much damage to kill with a smash attack? All around this character is still oodles of fun to play but could still use quite a bit of balancing and reworks.

If the enemy parries the red arrow it stills gives you a wisp, I dont know if its intended but its kinda unfair

I like the new reworks. Easy to use, and the enhanced moves actually feel worth using now. Although i'm still losing my wisp charges on hit rather than on parry. It's still usable as it is, however it's really irritating to use a wisp charge and get nothing in return because you got sneezed on.

Arrow charges are still removed on when Lyca is hit.

If the enemy gets hit by the first part of up tilt near the tip, they are able to parry the second hit if on a platform or mash air dodge in the air. Probably intentional, but figured I'd mention it.

The reworks feel a lot better than the previous patch. Very happy with how this character is developing.

@GodSlayerFenrir
@agath3r

We're glad you like the new changes.
v1.5 now correctly removes on parry rather than hit -- sorry about that!

Love the update and everything is feeling real good in this version.

That said, I still see the bug I mentioned before is present when firing DSpecial arrow through platforms and when DSpecial arrow tries to hit an opponent who's Hurtbox is partially hanging off an edge. In both cases, the DSpecial arrow still simply flies through your opponent, ignoring their hurtbox completely. I'm not a hundred percent sure I've got the circumstances nailed down as to what makes this happen, but I seem to be able to replicate it fairly reliably if I meet one of these 2 circumstances.

Looking forward to putting some more time into the character and hopefully coming back with some useful input/findings.

Keep up the great work.

Aaaaand I take it all back.
Did some practice as her. Her new strongs are very rewarding.
I notice I'm not carrying a charge as much as I was, just so I can use my normal strongs.
The A+B insta-charge is way better than pulling back. I can do that reliably without turning around accidentally.
My muscle memory doesn't like the change, because I keep doing the input for the previous enhanced strongs, but I'll get used to it.
A small issue I found with Lyca though.
When you're on fire against Zetterburn, you have no way of knowing if you're charged or not, because the flashing is being overridden by it.
A small indicator would be nice.

I am having the same issue as the other users such as Rota Abyssian.
I am simply cant get gimmick ( will of the wisp) to activate despite following the instruction as per the latest patch. This is the perfect example of breaking things that do not need fix. She was good at first release. Now she does not even work. I may as well delete her. But great job from the author. Great design and everything but this character is not at her full potential. Anyway. Best luck

Alright, so Lyca 1.7 has been released! It addresses a bunch of balance / visual concerns and adds new functionality to wisps.

Note: I just released that I had forgotten to update the wisp-empowered versions of fstrong and dstrong so as a result they glitch out at the end of their anims. This, among other things, is pending a fix.
THIS HAS BEEN FIXED IN v1.9