Hey guys,
A yoshi player just moved into my local scene and he's pretty good relatively speaking (places top 10 in 50 man locals). Chances are, I'm probably going to play him in tournament, and I want to be prepared for him. That being said, can I have some advice against the modern yoshi? The old matchup guide is kind of outdated in that section.
Yoshi is actually a difficult matchup for ICs as demonstrated with Fly Amanita, Nintendude and ChuDat all having difficulty with it. In my scene, we have a very strong Yoshi player that places top 5-8 in our locals so I have some experience.
After some analysis here is what I came up with:
Bo3 sets = Ban Yoshi's story no matter how comfortable you feel on this stage. The closeness of the platforms give Yoshi so much speed in movement it's ridiculous.
Strong stages = Our strong stages would be Dreamland, Final Destination and Pokemon Stadium (generally stages with a lot of room or ones that limit platform movement)
Weak stages = Yoshi's strong stages would be Battlefield and Yoshi's story.
Neutral = Fountain of Dreams
Here are some notes I can think of:
-One thing to keep in mind in neutral is that Yoshi has an aerial grab so remaining in shield is definitely not safe in contrary to some other matchups.
-What I like to do is blizzard or Ice Block camp when I have the space to do so and intercept platform approaches with uair.
-Yoshis LOVE their downsmash and it is something you have to respect. The moment Yoshi corners your Nana off stage, he will most likely go for a Dtilt -> Fair. If he sees you coming to help Nana trying to jump back, he will most likely downsmash to cut off Nana as well as hitting behind him to cut you off.
-Yoshi also like the use of their downtilt. If you can whiff it, try a Fair to hit him out of it.
-Bair is great in this matchup for edgeguarding. It cuts Yoshi's armor relatively early and during the moments when it doesn't, you can still follow up with a downsmash. Sometimes what I like to do is when I notice Yoshi coming back, I follow his jump to Bair them.
-Yoshis love to air dodge onto the stage when their recovery might not be able to make it, so always keep an eye on that.
-Their only other mixup in recovering is egg roll (side B). If you have impeccable timing, I think you can grab them out of it. If you don't feel safe to do so, a blizzard or Ice Block will reset neutral.
-Sopo has a CG from maybe 0-20%. If you can punish Yoshi from Egg laying Nana, you can continue this until she re-syncs with you and start a wobble/grab combo from there. A decent grab combo would be the classic dthrow-usmash-uair-uair/bair.
-CGing with both Climbers, I tend to do dthrow-dtilt to rack up some percent if they are not sync'd.
-Sopo has a very difficult time in this matchup.
-Yoshi's also love to CC as they are a heavy dinosaur. Limit your jabs, but definitely use it as a mixup.
-Abuse the fact that Yoshis also love to shielddrop in this current meta. When you get them on a platform, you can sometimes fake a jump and then waveland onto their platform right beside them and grab them.