Colony
Smash Rookie
So, Cloud is the new character, and tons of people are picking him up very easily. He relies heavily on all his aerials, and retreating to charge his Limit Meter. This baits players into trying to chase him, or staying back and helping hin even further charge his limit. I'm not quite sure what to do vs all these new Cloud players. People are now saying that Cloud has a good MU against Yoshi, and I can see why since his aerial reach spans larger than Yoshi, and benefits from getting sandbagged.
I would like to know from the Yoshi Community, how do you deal with the Cloud MU?
Do you wait for a punishable moment and go in?
Do you use aggressive techniques to rush down Cloud while he is charging?
What stages do you want to take Cloud to?
Or do we have to camp the ledge, cause his recovery is awful enough for some to not use him... https://gfycat.com/RadiantCarelessCrab
IMO Cloud is as braindead as prepatch Diddy, and If I really want to win, I have to play him just like prepatch Diddy. Most just try to l keep Yoshi above them with autocanceled Uairs and utilts.
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Moderator Edit: DJlive has written up a great guide and starting point for looking into this match up. It can be found just a few posts down on this page, or here: (http://smashboards.com/threads/mu-discussion-cloud.429168/#post-21249274), It has also been copied into the collapse tag below.
I would like to know from the Yoshi Community, how do you deal with the Cloud MU?
Do you wait for a punishable moment and go in?
Do you use aggressive techniques to rush down Cloud while he is charging?
What stages do you want to take Cloud to?
Or do we have to camp the ledge, cause his recovery is awful enough for some to not use him... https://gfycat.com/RadiantCarelessCrab
IMO Cloud is as braindead as prepatch Diddy, and If I really want to win, I have to play him just like prepatch Diddy. Most just try to l keep Yoshi above them with autocanceled Uairs and utilts.
________________________________________________________________________________
Moderator Edit: DJlive has written up a great guide and starting point for looking into this match up. It can be found just a few posts down on this page, or here: (http://smashboards.com/threads/mu-discussion-cloud.429168/#post-21249274), It has also been copied into the collapse tag below.
You all have a pocket one, and so does the rest of the community. Cloud is one of the characters that is easy to pick up and can ruin our chances in getting far in our tourney. The good news is that he's so linear, we have the tools to beat him out.
First of all, please do watch ZeRo's video in how to beat Cloud. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3lQNxDbtUM
Alright, so I'll start with Cloud's strengths against us:
1. Cloud's sword makes it hard to approach him.
The sword provides an extra layer of protection that must be respected at all times. This means that a strategy of fair spacing would not work. Also, given how easily he can use nair, fair, ftilt, fsmash, utilt, usmash to break eggs isn't fun.
2. Cloud in limit increases his mobility to a degree more than ours
With limit, Cloud has increased speed and mobility. This literally makes him Sword Yoshi (patent pending, rights reserved to BlaiseAgain). And we all know how bad the Yoshi MU is. So be even more careful when he's in limit.
Alright, so a match like this can be overwhelming so here's a list of DONT'S against him.
1. Do NOT play aerial against him. Yoshi's aerial mobility against Cloud is a weakness. It makes us overextend more and get easily hit by the sword.
2. Do NOT fair space against him. Any of his tilts, smashes, or aerials can stop us from using our nose to hit him. It's not something to throw out in neutral.
3. Do NOT short hop egg toss him blindly. Be aware of Cloud's range when throwing eggs. Cloud can easily break your eggs, or just powershield them.
So how do you play neutral then?
1. Play defensive. Shield is your best friend.
You want to bait him to overextend to you. Just how aggressive Yoshis are bad against shield (unless you already use egg lay and grab often), Cloud is the same. He, like Yoshi, also doesn't get much from grabs anyway so he'll rarely use it unless you're being overly predictable with your baits.
Shield gives you tons of oos options that will work in the match up, jab, utilt, nair, uair, jc usmash and down b. The first four are to combo him, the last two are to kill. The combo moves (jab, utilt, nair, uair) is your opportunity to go hard on Cloud and punish him. Time to go to juggle city.
You would want to shield the following moves if you know they will come out: nair, fair, usmash, utilt, fsmash, ftilt, dsmash, dtilt, beam blade, limit beam blade, cross slash, limit cross slash, climhazzard, finishing touch. You can bait by approaching then shielding, perfect pivot then shielding and basically, most of the grounded movement tech.
2. In neutral, Cloud usually AC dairs to lead to combos. Utilt is your best friend.
Now you don't want to shield this move, given this move is easily auto-cancelled and would normally give Cloud a chance to grab you if you shield. You can generally just quickly perfect pivot (or uturn) utilt to catch his landing. You want the tail disjoint to hit Cloud while spacing it so the sword won't reach your hurtbox. Now once you get the utilt, profit with uair and nair strings.
3. He'll bait you with nairs and uairs. Aim for the body.
A common strategy for Cloud is just to throw out random nairs and uairs. He's essentially baiting you to approach. You can follow advice 1, run then shield, or you can go for a safer egg throw if you're a good sniper. You want to aim at Cloud's body, avoiding the sword. If he uairs, aim for the feet. If he nairs, aim for the head (it circles around so time it so that the sword is down when it's supposed to hit).
4. He'll try to block your recovery with limit cross slash, just jump.
He'll always try to intercept recoveries with limit cross slash if he has it. Know this and recover with your jump safely. If you must, air dodge but time it so you don't leave yourself vulnerable. We have enough air speed to do this.
Alright, so we covered neutral, how about when you're disadvantaged...aka you got hit by the big sword...
1. DI away!!!
Once you get hit, you might be tempted to fight. Do not. Our aerials (except sometimes nair) just lose against that big chunk of sword. Get yourself out of the situation quick. That goes whether it's utilt, nair, uair, ftilt. Just get away and reset neutral.
2. When in the clear, egg toss
Turn the disadvantaged state into an advantaged one and lob an egg to disrupt any aerial he's still doing. This gives us the advantaged state.
3. Do not always do this, but if you know he's just going for an(other) uair, air dodge downwards and punish with our own uair. Then it's juggle city again.
So how do we get the kill?
1. Capitalize on the fact that he has a really bad recovery. Use nair, dair, dtilt or egg toss.
Out of all your edgeguard options, nair is arguably the best move you can use. Just nair him when he uses his double jump or when he's using climhazzard. Dair also trades or outright beats climhazzard. Dtilt is also a good option if you can get the frame 2 punish. Or just lob an egg so that it hits right after he jumps. Easy kills.
2. Use shield neutral. Shield an extremely laggy move and punish with oos down b, nair or jc upsmash.
Other advice?
Know when he would normally throw out kill moves. His kill moves are normally usmash, utilt, fsmash, ftilt, dsmash, dair, uair, fair spike, limit cross slash, finishing touch.
Usmash, utilt, fsmash, ftilt, dsmash and grounded limit cross slash should be shielded. Dair was covered above, same with uair and fair spike, and also offstage limit cross slash.
For finishing touch, they'll normally do it from a combo starter, so just keep mobile from the combo starter, double jump and get away.
Questions?
First of all, please do watch ZeRo's video in how to beat Cloud. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3lQNxDbtUM
Alright, so I'll start with Cloud's strengths against us:
1. Cloud's sword makes it hard to approach him.
The sword provides an extra layer of protection that must be respected at all times. This means that a strategy of fair spacing would not work. Also, given how easily he can use nair, fair, ftilt, fsmash, utilt, usmash to break eggs isn't fun.
2. Cloud in limit increases his mobility to a degree more than ours
With limit, Cloud has increased speed and mobility. This literally makes him Sword Yoshi (patent pending, rights reserved to BlaiseAgain). And we all know how bad the Yoshi MU is. So be even more careful when he's in limit.
Alright, so a match like this can be overwhelming so here's a list of DONT'S against him.
1. Do NOT play aerial against him. Yoshi's aerial mobility against Cloud is a weakness. It makes us overextend more and get easily hit by the sword.
2. Do NOT fair space against him. Any of his tilts, smashes, or aerials can stop us from using our nose to hit him. It's not something to throw out in neutral.
3. Do NOT short hop egg toss him blindly. Be aware of Cloud's range when throwing eggs. Cloud can easily break your eggs, or just powershield them.
So how do you play neutral then?
1. Play defensive. Shield is your best friend.
You want to bait him to overextend to you. Just how aggressive Yoshis are bad against shield (unless you already use egg lay and grab often), Cloud is the same. He, like Yoshi, also doesn't get much from grabs anyway so he'll rarely use it unless you're being overly predictable with your baits.
Shield gives you tons of oos options that will work in the match up, jab, utilt, nair, uair, jc usmash and down b. The first four are to combo him, the last two are to kill. The combo moves (jab, utilt, nair, uair) is your opportunity to go hard on Cloud and punish him. Time to go to juggle city.
You would want to shield the following moves if you know they will come out: nair, fair, usmash, utilt, fsmash, ftilt, dsmash, dtilt, beam blade, limit beam blade, cross slash, limit cross slash, climhazzard, finishing touch. You can bait by approaching then shielding, perfect pivot then shielding and basically, most of the grounded movement tech.
2. In neutral, Cloud usually AC dairs to lead to combos. Utilt is your best friend.
Now you don't want to shield this move, given this move is easily auto-cancelled and would normally give Cloud a chance to grab you if you shield. You can generally just quickly perfect pivot (or uturn) utilt to catch his landing. You want the tail disjoint to hit Cloud while spacing it so the sword won't reach your hurtbox. Now once you get the utilt, profit with uair and nair strings.
3. He'll bait you with nairs and uairs. Aim for the body.
A common strategy for Cloud is just to throw out random nairs and uairs. He's essentially baiting you to approach. You can follow advice 1, run then shield, or you can go for a safer egg throw if you're a good sniper. You want to aim at Cloud's body, avoiding the sword. If he uairs, aim for the feet. If he nairs, aim for the head (it circles around so time it so that the sword is down when it's supposed to hit).
4. He'll try to block your recovery with limit cross slash, just jump.
He'll always try to intercept recoveries with limit cross slash if he has it. Know this and recover with your jump safely. If you must, air dodge but time it so you don't leave yourself vulnerable. We have enough air speed to do this.
Alright, so we covered neutral, how about when you're disadvantaged...aka you got hit by the big sword...
1. DI away!!!
Once you get hit, you might be tempted to fight. Do not. Our aerials (except sometimes nair) just lose against that big chunk of sword. Get yourself out of the situation quick. That goes whether it's utilt, nair, uair, ftilt. Just get away and reset neutral.
2. When in the clear, egg toss
Turn the disadvantaged state into an advantaged one and lob an egg to disrupt any aerial he's still doing. This gives us the advantaged state.
3. Do not always do this, but if you know he's just going for an(other) uair, air dodge downwards and punish with our own uair. Then it's juggle city again.
So how do we get the kill?
1. Capitalize on the fact that he has a really bad recovery. Use nair, dair, dtilt or egg toss.
Out of all your edgeguard options, nair is arguably the best move you can use. Just nair him when he uses his double jump or when he's using climhazzard. Dair also trades or outright beats climhazzard. Dtilt is also a good option if you can get the frame 2 punish. Or just lob an egg so that it hits right after he jumps. Easy kills.
2. Use shield neutral. Shield an extremely laggy move and punish with oos down b, nair or jc upsmash.
Other advice?
Know when he would normally throw out kill moves. His kill moves are normally usmash, utilt, fsmash, ftilt, dsmash, dair, uair, fair spike, limit cross slash, finishing touch.
Usmash, utilt, fsmash, ftilt, dsmash and grounded limit cross slash should be shielded. Dair was covered above, same with uair and fair spike, and also offstage limit cross slash.
For finishing touch, they'll normally do it from a combo starter, so just keep mobile from the combo starter, double jump and get away.
Questions?
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