Is young link difficult to master ?

[Wissl]

Hello,

Just seen this video from Jeok, saying that Yink is a character that is hard to master : https://youtu.be/pzasvSMajoc?t=627

To summarize he says that :
- So hard to play it makes him inconsistent
- Not so easy to space well his projectiles / attack
- Need to win way more interaction just to be even and so is not allowed to do too many mistakes
- Kill confirms are numerous but not so easy to pull off
- He has a lot of options for any situations but you need more work on it than you may need to master other character

What do you think about it ? Is he actually quite hard and need more work than other character ? Personally it's the first main i put time in but not sure it'll be viable seeing this. Nevertheless i don't intend to play at high level, just like local tournament level so i'm overall very happy with him.

Curious to have your opinion on this matters (the difficulty) and if it bothers you ?

 

[GhostM]

I don't think you should base your opinion on a character from someone else's opinion about how viable they think they are. I feel like you'll genuinely have a better idea about how Young Link feels if you experiment with the characters tools and kit without putting so much emphasis on someone else's opinion.

Young Link isn't a character that is hard to master, since Young Link has an overall good kit that makes him much stronger than regular Link and Toon Link. Young Link's kit allows him to apply pressure at a distance with projectiles to influence how your opponents play, and possesses a great close range game with many of his moves coming out quick with low cool down.

- So hard to play it makes him inconsistent

I feel like this is genuinely based on how well you perform your inputs rather than being solely because of Young Link. Even though I played Young Link in Melee, it wasn't a hard transition to get used to how different Young Link plays in Ultimate. If you tend to mess up your inputs a lot of the time, it will cause you to feel inconsistent, and you will continue to feel that way because you are building on that foundation. If you feel like you are inconsistent with your play, you should utilize the training mode with emphasis towards what you need to work on. I would suggest to work on the basics such as getting used to movement options, and performing your aerials and tilts especially if you use tilts on the c-stick. It sounds basic, but getting the hang of movement options and performing your aerials with ease will help you feel more consistent with your play. It also doesn't hurt to experiment with Young Link's various tools to get an idea of how to use them, since it will help you in the long run.

- Not so easy to space well his projectiles / attack

- Need to win way more interaction just to be even and so is not allowed to do too many mistakes

This depends on how exactly you play neutral. Explaining how to play neutral is difficult because it revolves around how exactly you utilize your options to influence your opponents to react, and to influence them to play a certain way to create openings for yourself to punish. It depends on how you bait and approach as well, but Young Link's kit consists of projectiles such as boomerangs, fire arrows, and bombs that you can utilize to influence your opponent to play around the projectiles to create openings for yourself. Depending on where exactly you throw the projectiles, throwing them at a distance especially when you know it's going to hit can lead to punishes if you can covert them well, but you don't want to throw them too close to the opponent to the point where they can easily parry or shield the projectile, which can put you at a disadvantage unless you know for sure it's going to hit. Even though his projectiles can influence how exactly your opponents play, Young Link's entire moveset and kit is extremely useful to utilize in neutral. Young Link's moveset is extremely flexible enough with great options to excel at close range because of how excellent his frame data is compared to the other Links, with many of his moves coming out quickly alongside with the short cool down that they possess. This is the reason why so many of his moves are extremely safe to use on shield, such as neutral air, forward air, and even down tilt.

Again, it depends on how you play neutral and it also depends on the match ups as well. You don't have to play perfect just to be able to play Young Link since you will always make mistakes.

- Kill confirms are numerous but not so easy to pull off

He has a lot of options for any situations but you need more work on it than you may need to master other character

One of Young Link's weaknesses before patch 7.0 was that he struggled to confirm kills due to the fact tat most of his moves killed at later percents. With patch 7.0, most of his strong moves such as Up smash and Up air have been buffed to deal more knockback, and granted a new kill option from just simply using forward throw. I will say that advanced kill confirm techniques can be difficult to execute, but can be practiced in the training mode to get an idea of how to pull them off and how they work. Patch 7.0 also allowed zair (aerial grab) to be used as another option as well.

But I will also say that I don't think that Young Link is the hardest character to master, since there's definitely other characters such as Ice Climbers and Shulk for example, where more work has to be put in order to pull of advanced techniques with them, and utilize their kit since they have more to offer. Young Link's playstyle is flexible, but he doesn't have Monado Arts nor Nana which adds more work to be done.