Does Yoshi like to sidestep?

[Dinolover]

Hey guys
As I watched some Link's videos, I discovered that link players sidestepped alot more than Yoshi players. Am i right?

What are the pros and cons with sidestepping? Can Yoshi sidestep easily? Whats the best option between shield grabing and siddestepping?

thx

 

[unknown522]

Yoshi shielding in general is really bad. Unless you are powershielding or doing light shield. He has no options out of his shield.

 

[Shiri]

Link players sidestep for a few reasons.

First, Link's defensive mobility is not terribly good; his rolling, his wavedash back, and his shield are kind of abusable. Spotdodging is a better option for Link, however, because of his almost instant counterattacking ability with short hop neutral air in place. He can also punish slower moves with the good range on his five frame Up+B.

Yoshi doesn't spotdodge as much because while many of his defensive options are also not good, there are a few key differences between him and Link. First, Yoshi's main counterattack is also neutral air (jab would work, but doesn't have enough priority against air attacks). The problem with Yoshi's counterattack being neutral air is that the hitbox is arranged very poorly; the range on the neutral air extends mostly behind him while the front portion stops somewhere by his angle or the middle of the boot--very bad for defending your front, but it's the fastest attack option he has with good priority. Yoshi can risk doing a turnaround DJC neutral air, but has to risk tying, leaving the opponent able to come back (if they are fast enough) and carry Yoshi off the stage without his jump. The second key difference between Yoshi and Link is that Yoshi's wavedash has much more utility than Link's does in a defensive situation and wavedashing back not only lowers Yoshi's bodybox, but adds a great deal of mobility and counter options (especially wavedash back forward tilt and wavedash back down tilt).

Overall, you may find that when you are spotdodging with Yoshi, you feel "stuck" where you are and that it's hard to move from that spot. Spotdodging has its obvious uses, but when using Yoshi, try experimenting with different defensive options as spotdodging does, essentially, commit you to that spot where you are. Lightshielding, powershielding, supershielding, wavedashing, triangle jumping, pivot grabbing, pivot smashing, are all different things you can try to keep yourself out of trouble on the defensive front.

 

[KirbyKaze]

Link's Up+B is not hit on frame 5. It's later than that, like 8 or something.

 

[Shiri]

Sure, whatever.

 

[Dinolover]

wow Shiri!
I couldn't have dreamed of a more complete answer
Thx alot

 

[Shiri]

I hope it helped. There are probably other things I didn't cover or may not be aware of.

Keep asking different people to get some more perspectives.

 

[Opfer]

If you want my opinion, he doesn't like to sidestep at all.

Before I started playing Brawl, I never sidestepped. I would try to supershield whenever possible. Since supershielding is pretty hard, I would only press the shileld button lightly, so that I would get a light shield and slide away, in case the supershield wouldn't work. That worked pretty well most of the time.

Then came Brawl and both the supershield and the lightshield were gone. And since Yoshi's normal shield is really crappy in Brawl, sidestepping became the most effective defensive option. It took me weeks to adapt my defensive game to sidestepping, and when I arrived at a point where I wouldn't use the shield at all anymore, substantial improvement could be noticed.

Then, after trying out Melee again after some time, I noticed that I liked Melee a lot more, so I started playing it again. That was about a year ago. Now, I'm still sidestepping like a ******* and cursing Sakurai and myself everytime I use it, because I get punished for it 90% of the time and can't drop the habit, no matter what I do.

Please note that this is my opinion which may only apply to my scenario (i.e. playing a lot of Marths, and playing a lot of people that I know very well) and may be of less use to other people.

But watching old videos of me fighting just hurts right now...

 

[DstyCube]

"stuck"

Haha so true. But really, does anyone 'like' to spot dodge?

Yoshi Spot Dodge Frame Data:
Total: 22 frames
Invincible: 2-15 frames
Invincibility duration: 14 frames
Vulnerability after invincibility: 7 frames

To be honest yoshi has a decent spot dodge. But at higher levels of play I don't really see much spot dodging from most players anyways. So why does it really matter? It's much better to space yourself appropriately instead of using laggy spot dodges.

Everyone is right, you can get by with light shielding and super shielding. The worst part though is if you are caught within range in your shield your a pretty easy target. Hopefully, you are shielding as they are doing an attack which you can light shield to slide to a safe range. But if you just happen to be in your shield, it's fairly certain they will try to grab you, this is probably the only time I'd spot dodge as its really the only option.

Lesson: Never get caught in your shield.

 

[Riddle]

Yoshi's shield options are terrible so Yoshi should bever be caught shielding. Characters like falco utilize spot dodge at high levels of play, because of a quick spot-dodge with a quick and high-priority option to use afterwards (shine)/ Yoshi's spot-dodge is not especially quick and his options out of it aren't fast enough to justify using the spot dodge so most high-level yoshi players just supershield or light shield.

 

[Velox]

If you're a newer player though btw, you might at first get punished often for spot dodging and get discouraged from spot dodging ever again in your career, but it's actually a good option, and you will see high level players (I guess specifically in this case Yoshi) use it a decent amount, but obviously nothing in this game can be used constantly with little regard to punishment, spot dodge is clearly a case of this. Most of the time it's better to roll away if you're trying to avoid being hit if you like wiffed a f-smash or something, but spot dodge is just another option, like jabbing immediately after you're wiffed f-smash, or just flat out jumping away, it really just depends on the level of play to make the right decision.

You know, much of this game is about doing moves with low lag (with Yoshi this is like b-air, any aerial started well before you hit the ground (l-cancel will be quicker), neutral 'B', etc.) just far enough away from your opponent (spacing) so that you can get out of the way of their counterattack JUST in the nick of time and as a result you will be able to counterattack the counterattack. If you're newer, don't underestimate the gravity of this paragraph, it's quite honestly the most used tactic at professional tournaments. You need only see players like Azen and Mew2King (if you're new these guys were like the best players back in '07..) doing things like this every 2 seconds in tourney's to see how often and necessary this kind of mindgame is. Spot dodge is a good way to quickly avoid things and set up for a counterattack, nuff said. Literally you can walk into the middle of the stage with Yoshi, neutral 'B' at thin air at just the right distance away from your opponent, they'll try to run and dash attack you or something, you'll spot dodge and either immediately hit them back or chase their roll they they will likely do after wiffing the dash attack.