Controlling space agressively with yoshi

[Rhett Blank]

Most of yoshi's moves have almost no priority and are laughably easy to ignore. As a result I don't see how yoshi can control space in the neutral.

Watch PPMD zone plup off the platforms within the first four seconds of this https://youtu.be/bhkMB6Y67DA?t=56 match. Plup jumps to the right platform, ppmd covers him jumping to the center of the stage with the back of a nair. It misses. Plup then jumps to the left platform. PPMD once again covers the platform with a similiar nair and it connects with Plup at 7:57, punishing him for not respecting the space PPMD is controlling.

This type of engagement is replicated many times throughout a typical match. But, if you were to put a yoshi in a similiar position and asked him to control plup from to center stage, I don't see how Yoshi would be able to accomplish it.

The only option for Yoshi is to wait for sheik to move off the platform, giving up the space until sheik attacks so that yoshi can maneuver around it and punish with his own move. However, this is no longer zoning and can potentially give up center stage. Just throwing out a move in a similiar fashion as marth in this position accomplishes nothing because somebody like fox/falco can simply dair you out of any action.

Am I missing something? I feel the inability to control space is a giant limitation. How can a Yoshi control space with success as PPMD does in the beginning of this match?

 

[KirinKQP]

A note-worthy factor is your controller port number. For certain stages, which controller port you are plugged into determines your spawn speed but more importantly your location.

Here's a thread on the spawn locations for each of the legal stages: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/2kiiap/spawn_plats_for_all_legal_stages_ssbm/

https://smashboards.com/threads/lets-talk-about-ports.347462/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTNl03-1fOM

If you choose a port and go to, say, Battlefield you control center stage and won't have to worry about zoning. Thus, you have an immediate advantage and play accordingly. If you're unfortunate to forget or end up in the same situation, you should learn to shield drop effectively. Being in shield on a platform and not knowing how to shield drop is the worst case scenario aside from being under the ledge on Battlefield.

After playing with Yoshi for a while, I learned that you kind of have to plank and lose center stage to stay alive in tough spots. Just DJ to instantly grab the ledge and start chucking eggs to hit the OPP or make them move. On stage, you can reverse DJ Nair at the enemy to dart in really quickly. Marth has extremely disjointed hitboxes because he uses a sword, so he doesn't have to worry too much about trading if spaced. Yoshi, however, has this problem as he doesn't have aerials that control a large space by him (like Marth's Fair). So kind of have to rely on baiting, dash dancing well and darting in on lag as fast as possible.

D-tilt, Nair, Fair, and F-tilt are some of your good spacing options, along with Up-B. Not much to work with, but you can take your Yoshi to the next level by parrying. That trick when on the early frames of going to shield you can jump out, if you bait an approach, crouch then time a parry, you can instantly retaliate. However, it takes a crap ton of practice and timings vary for every character, as well as how the player is drifting. aMSa doesn't have too much of a problem, Eggstinction on Axe's stream is pretty good at it too. This gives you the complete upper hand if done well.

I use to run at someone, react or guess if they'll attack then parry (or try), dash back from a dash dance, dash back out of crouch, or D-tilt.

 

[dvatch]

Pretty sure the second nair hit because plup thought that he would have hit with the needle. Plup came down without a hitbox because he expected pp to be on the ground.

If it were yoshi instead of marth, you place an up air, upsmash, uptilt, or nair beneath the edge of the platform after wavedashing past shiek's needle. If you get hit by shiek's needle, you get forward air grabbed, chaingrabbed to 40, etc.