Help my Yoshi!

[rmusgrave]

Hey guys,

I've just been to my 2nd Brawl tournament, and I'm struggling in a few matchups. Guess which ones?

The first matchup I'm having trouble with is Snake. There was a very campy snake at the tournament that wasn't really that skillful, but I had to play so carefully to beat him. My issues are -

- Timing Snake's grenades. I have a feeling that they all have the same time to explode, but I haven't learnt this yet so I am just guessing trying to run past grenades to approach.
- I have trouble approaching in general. Snake can reliably shieldgrab Yoshi unless I space a backair really well, but it doesn't achieve a lot. I found I could outsmart this guy and dash grab him, but I would never really achieve anything from it.
- Snake has great kill moves and Yoshi doesn't. That's actually not entirely correct, but Snake will kill Yoshi earlier than vice versa, and I don't understand why. Yoshi is supposed to be heavy!
- Snake seems to have an advantage if he has plenty of free room to move, which I don't understand either. He doesn't seem to be a fast character, yet performs better with lots of room. *Shrug*

The 2nd character that I have even more problem with and you can probably help better with - Metaknight.

- He has amazing priority and speed. I can't see openings, and all openings I see I'm either too slow or it's not really an opening.
- He has a small frame. It's hard to combo someone with a small frame, let alone land combo moves.
- His up-b. Is there any way to beat this thing? It's practically the new Fox shine, almost instant, invincible to start with and is just scary. I have heard whispers of being able to mid-air dodge through it, and then punish after, but I've never seen it done.
- The other major problem I have is attempting to approach him. How am I supposed to approach a Metaknight?

So yeah - I suck at Brawl. Can anyone point me to some videos that show some good anti-Snake/Metaknight Yoshi styles? Any advice against the above characters (and maybe Captain Olimar too)?

[/end random noob post]

 

[Scarlet Jile]

Here's some tips against Snake, because I'm less qualified to discuss MK, having played him significantly less.

- Pivot-grab his dash attacks. A lot of Snakes use them often and they're easily punished.
- If you get hit by the beginning of Snake's Up-Smash at certain percentages, you can air-dodge the actual missile.
- Egg his high recovery. For some reason eggs seem to plow right through his roflcopter's super armor, knocking him off. You can usually get a few free shots in because he has no other option but to either drop for a mine-recovery (and risk being gimped easily) or keep trying to bust out the roflcopter, making him vulnerable.
- Chain-U-Air and egg combos when he's high on the stage. Snake is most vulnerable from below because his Dair is pretty ****ty in my opinion. Hit him with a U-Air and if you can't hit him with another, follow it up with an egg or two.
- Edge-cancelled eggs are great for his attempts to edge-guard. The Snakes I play generally try to F-Smash near the edge as you recover or Charge an U-Smash and then do another U-smash or two to get a few rockets raining down on your face. Just drop back and pop a few eggs into him, he'll get tired of it real quick and give you more space.
- Try to frustrate his grenade attempts by spamming lots of eggs to pop in front of him. If he tries throwing grenades with eggs flying at him there's a good chance they won't make it to you. If it hits your egg in front of him, it does a ******** amount of damage, having combined the grenade and egg's explosion.
- Don't do anything fancy with the grenades if he's holding onto one. If you try to throw a grenade, all he has to do is drop the one he's holding and (for some physics-defying reason) it kills the momentum of yours. This results in an embarrassing girl-throw that blows up in your face.
- Snake's U-Tilt is the most broken move in the game when it comes to hit-boxes. It will kill your face at pretty much anywhere on the stage. Not even joking. It's like trying to play Smash against Chuck Norris.
- I find that I kill Snake most with upwards-related attacks, be it U-Smash or Uair. It sounds pretty noob, but to be honest, in such an unbalanced matchup, you'd be silly not to exploit the one approaching advantage you have.


Other than that, good luck, toss eggs at claymores, watch for mines, and shield or roll (don't spot-dodge) grenades, because he can stop their momentum on a dime.

 

[Depster]

you're gonna have to bust out a lot of egg rolls and carefully thrown eggs to keep metaknight at bay, but if you are even thinking about going on the offense, then grab away.

 

[PRiDE]

mk - chain grab + eggs.. wait and block all mk specials, never try to out hit them. never chase mk off the edge. never go near the edge vs mk. lol. pivot grab pivot grab pivot grab.

 

[Meta Dude]

i think snake is an easier matchup than meta knight, but that's my opinion. snake's attacks can be shielded and dodged, mk match requires much more patience. i can't believe they made a lot of his moves shield stab, and most good mk players will have their timing down. i like eggs (rolls and tosses) and down smash. and to reiterate what others have said, grab. as much as possible.

 

[bigman40]

Metaknight:
Be on your toes. If the opponent is too aggresive, then pivot grabs will stop them (which can go into a chain grab). Don't attempt to fight a meta from above him. Yoshi's priority can't get past meta's that way. You have to keep your distance by using the ETS. Eggs will stop all his atks. Plus, if you time them good, you can go for a grab. I've actually started to find out that yoshi's Usmash can go through his specials. Keep that in mind when you need a smash off. Dsmash will be useful as a counter also.

Others have done snake. If you need anything else let us know =P

 

[Shiri]

Yo, Bringer. I'll offer what advice I can. You can parse out what you think is reasonable.

For Snake, you'll want to take a page out of his book and do a lot of walking. With walking, you can safely get past grenades without running straight into a tilt, dash attack, or shieldgrab. You can also put up your shield much earlier while walking than you can out of a dash and you're also able to use forward tilt, which is going to be one of your main "rejection" moves in this matchup. Just made sure not to angle the forward tilt if you decide to use it; you need as much pure horizontal as you can out of a move with its speed and priority. As far as shieldgrabbing goes, you'll want to stay on the ground most times to employ quick pivot grabs and jab/tilt shield pressuring. Spacing back airs on Snake's shield is good, even if you don't hit him, simply for the fact that you slowly wear down his shield and when a tall character's shield starts to shrink, their vertical extremities become very vulnerable, as I'm sure you know. You can then either use your preference of stun techniques on the exposed areas of Snake or you can continue to apply shield pressure to bait rolls, spot dodges, and any sort of panic move the Snake player may employ to prevent the shield from breaking. In general, though, you shouldn't be attacking the shield too often because you'll eat more forward tilts than you're willing to stomach; just focus on baiting some vulnerable sort of movement from the player and capitalize on their mistake. Due to Snake's above average spotdodge and his incredible tilt game out of ANYTHING, Yoshi has no real reliable approach, especially from the air.

Regarding KO moves, Yoshi is still heavy in this game. The new scaling, however, has crushed his survivability (in NTSC at least) because of how many more characters are now heavier than him--also, Yoshi's "heavy" in Brawl isn't the same as his "heavy" in Melee, which is unfortunate. Snake is also MUCH heavier than Yoshi with KO moves almost on par with Ike. Most of your KOs, if not all of them, will have to come from intelligent and abusive edgeguarding as opposed to flat out knockouts. It's all about gimping in some form or fashion, and once you get the hang of what you need to do to stop Snake from coming back (I believe we have a thread on this somewhere), you'll find yourself with notably improved success. Finally, the key to Snake's success on larger stages is less about his "stage control" (a.k.a. Nikita, C4, mine, and grenade spam) and more about his chances to play forceback with his broken tilt game and his ability to abuse his tremendous weight and superior recovery. Large stages also give Snake plenty of room to mortar slide, which seems good when you're getting hit by it, but is really only good for him moving from one side of the stage to the other. If you're getting hit by mortar slides, either pivot grab the attack or pull of a very precise forward tilt (the spacing and timing also has to be a twitch reaction). If you're getting hit by the mortar shell itself, either from the slide or from upsmash spam at the edge, just neutral air right through the shell but be careful not to get baited into an up tilt from Snake PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.

I'll drop some Meta Knight tips later, but for now I'll put down that no, you cannot stop the Shuttle Loop -BUT- you can take advantage of a whiffed one at ground level. If Meta Knight uses Up+B and misses or just doesn't hit you for what ever reason, you can attack before the glide attack comes out by hitting Meta Knight before the full loop is complete. Meta Knight has to perform a 360 degree loop (or, rather, has to loop and travel the distance of what would be the circumference of the loop without necessarily having to finish the loop in a perfect circle...if that makes sense) before he can use his glide attack, so bruise him with an up air or something before he can bust out his glide attack. Also, if you shield a glide attack at ground level and they cancel it with no lag, do not drop your shield, as you can almost always expect, with confidence, that the Meta Knight will immediately downsmash and Yoshi cannot beat Meta Knight's downsmash period (yet), so don't mess with it if you don't have a way to handle it. Finally, regarding the rest of Meta Knight's B moves, you can grab or downsmash his pseudo-teleport (for some reason, it seems really easy to see coming--not sure if it's me or what); you can pivot grab the neutral B tornado...if you can't pivot grab it just shield. Don't try anything fancy because you cannot beat it otherwise (actually forward tilt beats it, but it's very risky and almost not worth trying unless your timing is boss). Egg Roll beats the drill spin side+B, but otherwise you can run away or pivot grab...just don't get hit by any of his B moves essentially. Try to watch out for Up+B after forward air chains, too, as the DI can be tricky to avoid both the forward air and survive the impending Up+B...the good DI for one is the worst DI for the other, which makes staying in the air a bad idea in general in this matchup.

 

[Deleted member]

Uh both of those characters are really annoying and gay, but ill tell u what others didnt cover:

Ive started using DJC egglays against snake for an approach, and they work really well (not to be spammed, but in general attacking snake's shield means pain). If u dont know, u can gimp snakes recovery if he recovers low(which he shouldnt be doing unless u put him in a bad position), by grabbing him during his up b, dont use the bite attack, and then just let him break out, and he dies unless he does his c4 jump. U can out spam snake if he is outright cooking and throwing grenades. Everybody else seemed to cover everything else, but snake is really gay.

MK is even gayer.The main thing is use LOTS of pivot grabs, and if they are far enough away, use eggs to limit his approach options. Don't stay in the air. Dont chase him offstage (ive actually edgeguarded MKs before but if they have any yoshi experience they'll usually gimp u). Do everything u can to not be above him, and get him above you (ur uair beats his dair). The most painful thing is to get rising uaired to rising whorenado gimped =/ Mk is imo yoshi's worst matchup.


Olimar is easy, i wouldnt go so far as to say that yoshi is an olimar counter, but its in yoshis favor. Yoshis bair comes at an angle that avoids his fsmash, usmash and grabs, so that is a reliable approach. Olimar can use his up b to hit u at that angle, but u can short hop airdodge to avoid that. Egg roll is VERY good against olimar, it wrecks his pikmen, it beat uncharged smashes, and it sets him up for being juggled or hit offstage. Dont use it to approach usually because he can grab u out of it, but this move really shines in this matchup and is usually a safe option. Also, once olimar is off the edge, keep him there with an edgehog.

 

[Alexinho]

try a pateint approach as this helps with getting to know what kind of style the opponent plays with, also try the sideway dodging with up or down + C with the Wii remote, getting to practise with this will help tackle characters that have long range attacks such as snake, all the star wolf characters etc. what control do you use by the way?

 

[Deleted member]

I dont think bringer really needs help with rolling xD

 

[PRiDE]

..Burnt, I am telling you there was an Olimar at a Philly tourn recently that literally destroyed me. I was surprised I even got a stock off. I always thought olimar was as simple as you put it. The ones I played at least were easy untill this tourn. I am telling you it was a Pikmin ambush! There were pikmin coming uot of my ARSE after that fight. He was spamming pikmin throw like crazy and threw me the second I got close IF i even got close.. I lost it completely.

 

[Deleted member]

Its not as simple as i put it, but its not like supa hard or anything, u gotta put the pressure on him so he cant spam. U cant get sloppy with ur spacing, he has amazing grabs, but try to hit his shield with all 4 whips of the bair, or SHAD behind him and jab or dtilt. I dunno, itd be easier if there was a vid of u vs him which im sure there isnt but hopefully that helps a little.

 

[Alexinho]

I dont think bringer really needs help with rolling xD

Believe me, it helps a lot with the people that i've faced and it works completely. Just got to practice^

 

[Scarlet Jile]

Heheheheheheh