Real Talk: The Yoshi Main Struggle

[KenboCalrissian]

I had a little pow-wow with other Yoshis in my region, and I'm hearing some troubling things from them: The better ones are wondering if their character is holding them back. The only ones who didn't feel this way were either new to playing Yoshi, or myself.

However, I can understand the frustration, as it's a question I too have wrestled with.

My closest competitor as far as Yoshi mains go is the best Yoshi in a neighboring region. I missed an opportunity to ditto him yesterday (where we both placed 9th in an Arcadian, so we're basically even) because he was pretty salty he didn't make top 8. We still managed to sit down and have a one-on-one discussing what went wrong and why we're not placing higher - but the context was he's seriously considering switching mains, and I was trying to convince him not to.

Basically, the conversation boiled down to this: Despite our frame data, aerial mobility, and adaptability, something's not panning out for us. It seems to go beyond the strengths and weaknesses of the character itself - his concern seemed to be that a good Yoshi needs to be highly technical and put a lot of effort in, but there are two glaring issues with this: 1) Many of our kill confirms require a hard read, but that in turn makes us easier to read; and 2) There are other characters out there who require less work for higher placements.

As for other Yoshis in our area, we had ourselves an all-Yoshi FFA to warm up before today's tournament. Even though it was supposed to be a fun exercise, I heard those same concerns echoed from an up-and-comer who's quickly catching up to me; Yoshis in our area aren't placing very high, and there seems to be little reason for others to want to pick him up.

Personally, I have faith in the character, and I know he's not holding me back because I haven't hit his skill ceiling yet. Unfortunately, while non-Yoshi mains will agree with me that he's still great a character with untapped potential, actual Yoshi mains are doing the opposite - it seems many of them are heading for the door.

To this, I have a few questions for you guys:
-Have you noticed this attitude in your regions as well?
-Have you felt this way before, and if so, how did you deal with it?
-How would you convince someone that Yoshi isn't holding them back?
-From a meta perspective, is there anything we can do differently to mix things up?

I know we all want to see our favorite dino rise to the top, and that's not going to happen if we keep losing reps. This is a call for brainstorming ideas to inspire new levels of play from Yoshis.

 

[100AngryTurtles]

Funnily enough just yesterday while driving home from a tournament I was wrestling with the exact same thoughts. The reason I play Yoshi is because I find his moveset to be intriguing. I feel that Yoshi is the perfect character for me as he has everything I want in a character. But more and more I find myself frustrated because I feel that I can place better than I am. I don't believe that I have hit Yoshi's skill ceiling, because I don't believe anyone has. I am constantly wondering how I would place if I played a different character that is slightly more consistent or easier to get results with. I am probably going to try to pick up a different character for a few weeks and halt my Yoshi labbing and practice. I want to see what it's like playing as a different character in a tournament setting.

 

[muddykips]

...i feel like all that "yoshi is an incredible character, he's got this and this, he's just got untapped potential" stuff is something that's been said so often that, at this point, people believe it only because so many other people say it. in today's meta, i don't think that phrase has any more relevance to yoshi than it would to pretty much any other character in the game... the way people say it makes me think they're just repeating what they've been saying since the early days of smash 4.

yoshi started off strong back in the early meta, like top 3 or something? he was fast, strong, and heavy - but the main thing was that people didn't know how to play the game yet; how to play safe, how to bait, how to punish. if the opponent doesn't have a deeper understanding of the game, yoshi will regularly land fair spikes off throws, 32% dairs, downb shield breaks, and raw usmashes basically whenever he feels like it, to list a few (stuff like that is why i think yoshi is the ultimate scrub buster). i even remember not minding the prepatch diddy matchup; i didn't have any trouble with it, because diddies would only go for bananas or grabs, and wouldn't always space correctly or use fair / dtilt.

then as the meta progressed a bit, people started to realize stuff like how bowser is slow as balls, or how little mac can't recover at all, or how duck hunt has an ungodly time getting kills. it became obvious what things were overhyped by the community, but the thing is that yoshi never had such an obviously exploitable flaw - there was no reason to doubt the early-made assumption that yoshi is way up there.

and the way i see it, since yoshi's downsides were never apparent enough to become common knowledge + yoshi has never gotten significantly nerfed, that mentality that yoshi is really strong and has no notable flaws has persisted unchallenged even though it isn't actually relevant. the truth is we have a ton of flaws; our grab is horrible, our throws have no reward, our rolls are almost the worst in the game, our shield IS the worst in the game, we're an aerial-based character in a game where the air is unsafe, our lack of disjoints means we're easily walled by disjoints, and we need harder reads to land our kills. besides, barring low tiers, yoshi's frame data doesn't strike me as that extraordinary. he's got nair and uair, and then what? a frame 21 command grab? i'd rather have a dtilt that combos or one of those nifty free-to-throw-out bairs.


basically, i feel like yoshi's strengths are exaggerated way more than they should be. the best excuse people can give for placing yoshi not as high on tierlists is because he doesn't have the results to justify being put higher... but even when presented with this, people try and back it up by saying he's got "untapped potential", or other similar half-arguments that don't address the actual character attributes. take zero's tierlist video for example; you can tell right from his tone that putting yoshi in 27th place is a pretty controversial thing to do. he justifies this by citing tournament placings, but makes no actual comments on what aspects of YOSHI HIMSELF might be holding him back. he just recycles the argument that yoshi "clearly has potential we have not seen", and "hopefully we'll see more of him in the future". there's no content to that line of thinking, besides the fact that it's a common thing to say and believe.

i'm always going to stay a yoshi main; i've played him since brawl, and intended to play him in sm4sh as well, his viability wasn't important to me. for the most part this is still true, and i'll be playing yoshi for the vast majority of matchups, even those where yoshi has a little trouble; but in polarizing matchups like diddy or cloud, i'm looking for other options, because the way i see it, no matter how much work i put in, playing yoshi in those matchups is like bringing a sword to a gunfight.


i dunno, this got way longer than i intended it to, lol. bottom line is i'm tired of hearing yoshi's strengths overly-praised while his downsides are sort of swept under the rug, all just to fit the narrative that yoshi will ~magically~ be super good if you believe in him; there's a lot more characters that are proving their superiority right as i type this. besides, how the hell are you supposed to predict untapped potential? if it's untapped, then there's literally no basis behind believing it even exists??

 

[Sinister Slush]

-Have you felt this way before, and if so, how did you deal with it?
-How would you convince someone that Yoshi isn't holding them back?
-From a meta perspective, is there anything we can do differently to mix things up?

I know we all want to see our favorite dino rise to the top, and that's not going to happen if we keep losing reps. This is a call for brainstorming ideas to inspire new levels of play from Yoshis.

1. I felt like this halfway into the game after Diddy nerfs, my losses started to be either other top tiers but mostly ZSS due to my region. Way I dealt with it is either keep trying or take a short break.

2. Best I can tell em is try harder give tips on how to improve and such, basic help at that point. If they still can't improve than prolly can't help them much and they will most likely drop the character or even the game completely.

3. Not really no. Just prolly need to be more consistent with our BnB combos and minor kill setups.

 

[ReturningFall]

To this, I have a few questions for you guys:
-Have you noticed this attitude in your regions as well?
-Have you felt this way before, and if so, how did you deal with it?
-How would you convince someone that Yoshi isn't holding them back?
-From a meta perspective, is there anything we can do differently to mix things up?

1) Yes, by local scene is dominated by Yoshis...and each one is slowly moving onto other characters (myself included). There's a mixed opinion on how much our character is at fault, but there is a definite migration in progress.
2) Alternated between switching characters and coming back. Also moved onto other things for a little (Splatoon is excellent, by the way)
3) Pick another character. No seriously. We need to hit reads. That means we need to understand how other players tick. Personally I feel this means playing other character types and understanding how they work. Yoshi demands need more than technical sophistication, he requires fundamental perfection.

The only thing that we might possibly have that's underdeveloped is traps, but in my experiments we tend to get instead trapped by those that can fall faster than us. (Smash has an imbalance in how fall speeds work--the floatier you are the less you can gain from fastfalling, which means AD->fastfall tends to pass through us and place us above the opponent--often without a jump). We can of course trap character with roughly comparable fall speeds, or a lack of vertical options, but I think that's already well known.

Realistically, if we developed to the point where we became top tier...people would just learn to footstool.

Sorry if this sounds really sad and depressing, but it seems to be the theme.

I'm also a Brawl Yoshi. Thinking back to then...I'm not sure we are that bad, but I don't think we are going to do much better either. Maybe it's for the best--one of the characteristics that defined the Yoshi community has been a loyalty to a technically complicated and not terribly viable character. I personally find it makes the community really nice to get along with. Too bad our brush with viability will probably make outsiders think we are lazy or some kind of similar nonsense.

 

[The Wall]

I still believe in Yoshi having the potential. I see myself playing, I note my mistakes... I have a huge ****ing way to go with this character and moving myself into the top echelon. I think the same mentality should take hold in the rest of the Yoshi Empire if you actually plan to be a loyalist. There are absolute reasons to switch to something higher tier with better frame data... but we do this for fun/uniqueness/style. I won't switch off Yoshi for that reason. If you're struggling with this character you're going to struggle just as hard picking up other characters except now you'll just have a fresh excuse to make when you lose. Stick with what you know and attempt to improve it IMO.

 

[Yikarur]

**** you back-up.
I did a really long post and If I just had taken 1 minute longer everything would be fine but nope the back-up took my whole post.
I'm super pissed right now -.-

Short Version:
- Yoshi is an inconsistent character because he doesn't have an easy kill move you can just land in neutral
- I lost a tourney set last weekend, because of an ftilt instead of fsmash misinput and couldn't get the kill afterwards, the weakend before I lost a game because of failing jab dsmash.
- Yoshi needs to be on-point with his kill confirms (jab -> stuff, uptilt upair) and needs to utilize every hard punish he can get. You need to learn airdodge punish windows (don't miss them, ever!!!) and what you can punish of which characters with which moves, you need to learn a lot match-ups and their moves because optimizing your punishes is really important with Yoshi.

This is probably the reason a lot of Yoshis struggle at top level play but you can keep improving yourself by optimizing those things. I don't even thing you need to be that technical but you have to maximize your killing potential, because taking off stocks is the most important thing in this game.
and get a secondary for Diddy, because you can't win against a Diddy Kong that knows how to play the MU correctly except by getting lucky

 

[DJlive]

At this point, I can't actually shift to any character because I have things that I find that are awesome:
1. A 360 degree quarter stage length projectile
2. Nice heavy weight
3. Best air speed and good ground speed
4. Egg lay as a second grab

I think Wall said it best as to what our actual flaw is:
1. Too many kill options, it's not a lack of kill confirms but the knowledge of when those kill confirms actually work well. Like the Jab confirm, you have to know the property of Jab to know which smash should work. You actually have a few frames to read your spacing to judge the best kill option whether fsmash, dsmash, usmash, down b

2. Easy to pick up but to optimize neutral means perfect inputs. Some examples:

a. B-reverse and wavebounce egg lay - when mastered, this tool makes it harder to predict our movement and what we're going for. And it becomes a 50:50 since your opponent won't know if you'll attack, retreat or grab. Downside, if misinput, it becomes the early punishable bouncing egg roll.

b. Egg toss - I love this move but it's f'ed me up so many times. You can literally cover the stage without leaving a spot. But a straight up egg toss can become a reverse egg toss and vice versa, missing a punish or a set up. It also becomes egg roll.

c. Kill confirms - so many times I go for Jab smash and it becomes Jab tilt, making me miss an easy kill. Or I go for perfect shield oos reverse down b and it becomes egg roll.

At this point, it's the, I've considered reason number 1 to adjust but I'm just not perfect with my inputs. And this is what frustrates Yoshi players.

But really, I still think our character has the most versatility to beat any character. We have flaws that I don't even bother with much (grab, roll) because I know you can't optimize with that, just mix up.

 

[KenboCalrissian]

I'll be honest, I was a little afraid to look back at this after I started it - it's usually not wise to shake the beehive

I tried to keep my own opinions out of OP as best I could so I wouldn't sway anybody, but I'll share them now. I went through a rough patch my second season in our PR, and I blame a lot of that on mental state. I started off strong, placing 7th in my first two Sm4sh tournaments with Yoshi (back when Diddy was broken - muddykips has it dead on, I felt no qualms bringing Yoshi up against a Diddy back then and I still have no fear against Rosas), but mentally I'd set the bar at "I'm top 8, I belong up here forever." Then I placed 13th. Then 17th. Then 20-something. And on, and on, and on, until finally I hit rock bottom with a big fat 0-2.

That was when I first started questioning Yoshi. I play him because I love the character outside of Smash. I've only mained him in 64, but I'd tried in every other iteration and had problems. I had a list of "demands" I'd secretly wished they'd change about him. Then, Sm4sh came along, and lo and behold, every single thing I ever wished I had came true - and then some. He's only the second character I played after I bought the game, and I immediately latched onto him. No matter what, I don't think I'll ever truly let go.

However... it was becoming clear to me that something wasn't working. I still like Yoshi because he seems to have an easier time slipping out of combos from top tiers like Sheik and ZSS, but a lot of his problems have already been mentioned - the big one for me that no one mentioned yet was suffering when someone camped me out. That's when I started bringing R.O.B. to cover matchups where I needed range - I mained him in Brawl and actually won a couple of tournaments with him, so it was a natural secondary for me.

I still hung onto Yoshi though, even though I was only getting more and more stressed out at my placements. I'd been practicing harder and I knew my skills were increasing pretty rapidly, but it wasn't showing in brackets. I was choking out.

It wasn't until very recently that I rose above it - and The Wall touched upon this himself; My very first 7th placement was roughly a year ago at Tekko, a huge anime convention in Pittsburgh. I remembered why I'd entered in the first place - it wasn't my first, but I also wasn't playing too competitively at the time. I did it because I loved Smash, and I chose Yoshi because I love the history of Yoshi. After all, Smash was created as a celebration of Nintendo's history. I decided then and there to forget everything I thought I'd been fighting for - forget the PR, forget my ranking, even forget about the fear of losing. I was just there to have a good time.

My buddy and I took 2nd in doubles, and I placed 5th in singles - higher than I had last year, at the same tournament and a larger turnout.

That's when it really sank in - I'm not playing Yoshi for the sake of rising in rank. If I were doing that, I'd drop everything and pick up Sheik or Cloud or Bayonetta or something, though I feel little or no personal attachment to those characters. I'd considered picking up Fox or Pikachu, but there are already too many of each in our scene.

But I'm not doing this for rank - I'm doing it to rep Yoshi at my scene. I'm doing it because I don't want my region to forget this great character exists. I'm doing it because I love the character for what he is outside of Smash, and he deserves to be recognized.

 

[DJlive]

You bring up an interesting point KenboCalrissian. Most of what gives Yoshi a hard time is that optimizing Yoshi means perfect inputs. But tourney nerves increase the tendency to misinput, causing me to get punished or worse SD.

Technical characters are inconsistent because of tourney nerves. That's why too dumb to play is a big thing. Sure they'll have their weaknesses like Cloud and his recovery, but mastery isn't that technical, but more fundamental. Our character struggles to be consistent because of this technicality.

Yoshi is easy to pick up but the only way to stay with Yoshi is to commit and have a can do attitude. All this negativity will only drive Yoshi to be worse because the more negative you are, the more misinputs, the more motivated you will be to leave.

So let's not dwell with the weaknesses and focus on our strengths:

1. Hard to kill
2. Hard to combo
3. Versatile, mobile and adaptable
4. Tons of kill setups and combos
5. Great ground, aerial and off-stage tools

To expand on 3:
1. Tail attacks (utilt, ftilt, dtilt, uair, bair, dsmash) - swordie
2. intangible smashes (usmash, fsmash) - like Mario, Doc
3. Egg toss and egg lay - spacer
4. Aerials - aerialist
5. other attacks (Jab, Nair, side b, dash attack) - rush down

 

[KenboCalrissian]

It's sounding like that questioning phase is pretty common for us. It's like Yoshi has a curse on him... before you get good, you're going to have to get through that hump. He's probably not the only character who has that issue, but I definitely see it strongest amongst our own.

You bring up an interesting point KenboCalrissian. Most of what gives Yoshi a hard time is that optimizing Yoshi means perfect inputs. But tourney nerves increase the tendency to misinput, causing me to get punished or worse SD.

I hadn't thought of it that way, actually... so, you're sort of suggesting that some people play 'easier' characters to mask their nerves, because they're more forgiving on a missed input?

That makes me think the next area I should work on is optimizing punishes. I hadn't realized how vital that was to Yoshi, though I have noticed the higher ranked players most frequently get kills on me by punishing landing lag.

Another recommendation: For a while, I was having a lot of trouble with Yoshi's approach game. Know how I got over that hump? I learned Kirby. He has a much harder time approaching and forces you to learn to play patiently, identify openings, and wait for the right moment. Playing Kirby for a week improved my Yoshi game drastically.

I suspect there are other characters out there who have lessons to teach us - Ryu would probably be a good one for fixing input errors for example, since an error with him is often suicidal.

 

[DJlive]

It's sounding like that questioning phase is pretty common for us. It's like Yoshi has a curse on him... before you get good, you're going to have to get through that hump. He's probably not the only character who has that issue, but I definitely see it strongest amongst our own.



I hadn't thought of it that way, actually... so, you're sort of suggesting that some people play 'easier' characters to mask their nerves, because they're more forgiving on a missed input?

That makes me think the next area I should work on is optimizing punishes. I hadn't realized how vital that was to Yoshi, though I have noticed the higher ranked players most frequently get kills on me by punishing landing lag.

Another recommendation: For a while, I was having a lot of trouble with Yoshi's approach game. Know how I got over that hump? I learned Kirby. He has a much harder time approaching and forces you to learn to play patiently, identify openings, and wait for the right moment. Playing Kirby for a week improved my Yoshi game drastically.

I suspect there are other characters out there who have lessons to teach us - Ryu would probably be a good one for fixing input errors for example, since an error with him is often suicidal.

Yeah, I play other characters and find that even if you misinput, you don't get a bad move, like egg roll. Lol. Don't get me wrong, I love it when a misinput Nair becomes bair and then it spikes, react to misinput and fsmash kill.

I play other characters to gain fundamentals in the strengths of the others. Mario improved my utilt uair strings. Pikachu improved me with my usmash punishes. Luigi improved my approach game. Swordies improved my spacing game. Corrin improved my pivot game. And so many more.

 

[White_Pointer]

A lot of the discussion in this thread is going over what has been said in the "Yoshi is not high tier" thread. I made that thread in August last year and my opinion hasn't changed since then. I've got a secondary Yoshi myself but honestly I'm beginning to think he's not a viable secondary anymore and that I should perhaps have someone else in my pocket...but this is also going hand in hand with me becoming more confident with my main in a lot more matchups, so I'm pulling him out far less than I used to.

I'm still not much of a believer that he has "untapped potential" and that he can be a top tier character though. I just don't see it. If he truly had potential, we would have seen it by now. Instead, as this thread is discussing, we see more and more players actually dropping him.

 

[DJlive]

I'm still not much of a believer that he has "untapped potential" and that he can be a top tier character though. I just don't see it. If he truly had potential, we would have seen it by now. Instead, as this thread is discussing, we see more and more players actually dropping him.

For tournaments, you would want to be a more consistent character. If you have to be on point with all your moves, the tendency would be to move away and drop that character, and pick a simpler, more forgivable and consistent character. You can't see really good results if the character is prone to be inconsistent. It's the same reasons why you would not see the following, despite their so called 'untapped potential':

Peach - Float cancels, turnip play, footstool combos
Pac-man - Fruit micro management, Side b trajectory, Hydrant
Olimar - Pikmin micro management (some would be good for grabs, some for kills, some for tacking on damage)
Lucario - Aura mechanic (hard to stay alive, when at peak killing potential)
and many more...

Main problem I think with Yoshi is that freaking egg roll. LOL. Since the egg tosses (which has difficult trajectory), egg lays (that can be b-reversed and c-bounced to be more effective) and Yoshi bombs (which you can use to surprise by doing b-reverse) can become the unreliable egg roll, you need to be on point with all inputs.

Look at Yoshi in past iterations, like Melee. Yoshi is really good in that game, but only with the hands of aMSa. The character is solid, but not so easy to play. Fox became top tier in Melee when people mastered the technicals of Fox. For it to become visible, the meta for that character needs to develop. No development, no meta, and they'll keep going down. That's why I'm thankful for The Wall and Raptor who are motivated to keep developing the meta and it encourages me to not just simply drop the character myself and continue developing him.

 

[KenboCalrissian]

There's one huge thing going for us, and it's a big reason why I stick with Yoshi: a lot of high-tier characters hate us. I see this mostly with Rosalina and Sheik - both are tough matchups for us, but apparently it's even tougher for them. I often get feedback from opponents of many different characters that they hate the Yoshi MU because we're able to put on a lot of pressure and their kill confirms don't work as well on us. To advance, I believe those are the areas we should focus on.

 

[Pixel_]

a lot of high-tier characters hate us.

imo everybody hates playing against Yoshi. Let's just make the Yoshi meta about annoying people as much as possible.

 

[Garde Noir]

I think Yoshi's largest strength comes from his inconsistencies, similar to what's being mentioned just above this post. I don't think I'll ever switch because IMO, being able to switch it up constantly is how you remain on the top. Characters that are execution based get downloaded, and from there get nerfed. I don't have fun and don't do well needing to go from one hit to the other every single time. I would much prefer having up-throw to up-air be as consistent as up-throw to full hop Bair, so that the mind games aren't a "Will he, won't he upair" mind game, but a "what the **** comes next" mind game. The versatility of the character means no, we won't really ever be the best character, but we will always place high. Development isn't meta-wide with Yoshi for the most part, but personal. Each Yoshi plays slightly differently, enough that the strings can be predictable in some ways, but more extreme than every ZSS's "differently."
If you want a character that wins big tourneys, switch your main to whoevers top in this patch, but you're now competing against your character until you follow what your character wants-- like a rubric. Or you can stick with a character that is flow, and has slightly less reward, for much bigger upsets.

-Have you noticed this attitude in your regions as well?
Hell yea, everyone wants to win

-Have you felt this way before, and if so, how did you deal with it?
Definitely, but I got over it when I realized that I didn't want to shoebox my playstyle. I wanted to be adaptive to the point that I wasn't even quite sure what I was going to do.

-How would you convince someone that Yoshi isn't holding them back?
You can't. Maybe Yoshi is holding you back, but then you're playing for a different reason than I think Yoshi is meant for. You play Yoshi to **** with people, to be unpredictable and to beat the people who play the game like a flowchart by learning their flowchart and doing exactly what they don't want you to do differently.

-From a meta perspective, is there anything we can do differently to mix things up?
Yes and No. Yes in that I'm sure there is, but I'm sure as hell not innovative enough to come up with an idea worth writing down, but No in that Yoshi's having a set meta kinda ruins what Yoshi is IMO-- a character that is by definition versatile. Let me know if you disagree, but that's what I feel Yoshi is better at than being another character that I have to follow up X move with Y move.

 

[KenboCalrissian]

Those are great points. We haven't really talked about Yoshi's versatility yet. I both love and hate being a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none (except aerial, we're pretty great there). We have lots of different ways to play, though it does make it hard to confirm a kill - but then, that also makes us hard to kill too.

Knowing when to use what playstyle is a great area to improve upon, for me personally anyway.

 

[DJlive]

I mentioned the versatility, and what I love about using Yoshi is that because of the versatility, I can deceive that I'm doing this, but I'm doing that. Here's some examples:

1. Jump back leads into:
a. Wavebounce egg lay
b. Fast fall grab
c. Retreating fair
d. Fast fall jab/utilt
e. Just running away

2. Jab leads into:
a. Jab 2 Fair
b. Utilt
c. Down b
d. Fsmash
e. Dsmash
f. Usmash
g. Grab
h. Egg lay

3. Shield leads to
a. Grab
b. JC Usmash
c. Down b
d. Nair

Those are just examples, but what makes Yoshi annoying is that there's more room for unpredictability due to frame data and mobility.

And the main comment about my gameplay is dude, so many mix-ups. It leads the opponent to do wrong anticipated moves that you can punish. You just need to be aware of how often you're using an option. It's not just 5050s with us, and that's a good thing.

 

[White_Pointer]

There's one huge thing going for us, and it's a big reason why I stick with Yoshi: a lot of high-tier characters hate us. I see this mostly with Rosalina and Sheik - both are tough matchups for us, but apparently it's even tougher for them. I often get feedback from opponents of many different characters that they hate the Yoshi MU because we're able to put on a lot of pressure and their kill confirms don't work as well on us. To advance, I believe those are the areas we should focus on.

In my experience people hate playing Yoshi because they perceive him as being easy to play, like "mash face into controller" kind of easy to play. They see him as not requiring skill. I really don't know where this idea originated but it's very annoying. I always counter by saying something like "okay, if Yoshi is so easy, go ahead and win a tournament with him". He's a technical character that plays very differently to most other characters...his recovery is very non standard, his shield is unique, his projectile actually needs to be manually aimed, etc etc etc...I know you guys know this already, it's preaching to the choir. But it annoys me when anyone who doesn't play Yoshi claims that he's easy to play.

 

[muddykips]

they see him as not requiring skill because, on a basic level of play, yoshi actually is super easy to play. if you and your opponent are still learning how to properly space / approach / combo / kill, yoshi is honestly the easiest character to pick because:
- airspeed and floatiness make aerials simple and easy to space
- his fair does 14%, has good range, can kill via launch or spike
- nair is frame 3
- bair and uair both kill
- dair is lol
- dash attack has a TON of range
- running usmash has very good range and power
- downb kills and breaks shields
- he's fast AND heavy
- not many combos to learn :^)

if your opponent doesn't know how to think ahead, then yeah, yoshi is going to run up and raw usmash kill them, or spike their recovery, or get 32% off of dair because all they do is roll or stand at ledge; they don't know to counter yoshi with disjoints, or shield yoshi's attacks, or bait yoshi's approaches, or even just run underneath yoshi's upb, because ironically their in-the-moment playstyle means that they're the one just mashing buttons. again, that's why yoshi was so high in the early meta; he could easily get away with his whole kit because everyone was still learning the game and could only play at a basic level.

anyways long story short i'm calling people who whine about yoshi noobs

 

[KenboCalrissian]

In my experience people hate playing Yoshi because they perceive him as being easy to play, like "mash face into controller" kind of easy to play. They see him as not requiring skill. I really don't know where this idea originated but it's very annoying. I always counter by saying something like "okay, if Yoshi is so easy, go ahead and win a tournament with him". He's a technical character that plays very differently to most other characters...his recovery is very non standard, his shield is unique, his projectile actually needs to be manually aimed, etc etc etc...I know you guys know this already, it's preaching to the choir. But it annoys me when anyone who doesn't play Yoshi claims that he's easy to play.

I've fortunately never encountered a player with this mindset... I get the opposite, hence the 'untapped potential' comment in my OP. That was more or less a direct quote from our PR 1 about a month ago. He was ranting and raving wondering why there aren't more Yoshi mains when he's such a great character (he plays Fox and Cloud). He wasn't exactly being cool about it either, but that's a whole other issue.

I actually get tired of hearing people say "but he has great frame data, why aren't you placing higher." The answer is because there's more than one dimension to the game.

 

[HoboJoe]

I've had similar feelings about Yoshi in the past. Hell, I even picked up bayonetta for a while because I simply thought Yoshi just wasn't cutting it for me. However, after some self reflection a few weeks back, and changing up how I think about the game on a fundamental level, I dropped bayo and picked the old dino back up and started placing top 3 with him at one of my more stacked locals a few weeks back. Yoshi is a character with very strict windows to kill. If you miss those jab confirms it could very well mean the difference between killing someone at 100% and 170%. He has a complicated neutral that's going to take time for any of us to really optimize. I legitimately think Yoshi is most definitely a viable character, and has potential to rise even further, but he's a time sink. While everyone on Reddit is pretty much led to believe Yoshi is a very easy character to do well with, it simply isn't true in tourney play. Yoshi is no where near hitting the cieling of where he could be optimized, and when I lost to 2nd and 3rd place last tournament, losing to a Sonic and a Ryu, I never felt I lost because my character couldn't handle the matchups, I lost because I played unrefined and didn't play as smart as I perhaps could with more training. Obviously there's more than just frame data to this character, but he really does have an effective option in almost any situation in neutral. Do I think Yoshi is ever going to be top 5 in the game again? Probably not, but do truly think he has potential be at least around the same power level as mario or sonic right now.

 

[White_Pointer]

I actually get tired of hearing people say "but he has great frame data, why aren't you placing higher." The answer is because there's more than one dimension to the game.

His frame data isn't even that good honestly. Outside of his nair and jab 1, the frame data on the rest of his moves is average at best. I really wish people would stop throwing this out as an argument.

 

[KenboCalrissian]

Obviously there's more than just frame data to this character, but he really does have an effective option in almost any situation in neutral. Do I think Yoshi is ever going to be top 5 in the game again? Probably not, but do truly think he has potential be at least around the same power level as mario or sonic right now.

I mean, I just watched some kid we've never heard of walk in and sweep our scene under the rug with a Samus (IcyMist, apparently he's ranked 30th on Anther's and 5th on some other big ranking board), so there's no reason why Yoshi can't do that too. Our adaptability is among our biggest strengths, right up there with aerial play.

 

[Fuerzo]

I'm thinking Yoshi fits in the "viable with secondaries" sphere. Based on the matchups I struggle with I've been using Cloud to fill gap--even though my Cloud is highly unrefined it still does far better against Diddy and the sword characters.

 

[DJlive]

Sky Williams says there are levels of Yoshi...

1. First is the level of the campy Yoshi, using egg spacing and fair spacing.

2. Second is the level of the defensive Yoshi, using oos Nair and oos down b.

3. Last is the level of the tricky Yoshi, using Jab cancels, wavebounce, Crouch sliding

And I don't disagree. Depending on where you are, certain matchups will be difficult for you.

Example:
Egg spacing against Sonic... Will be difficult as the moment you try to toss an egg, they'll just speed towards you. Bad match up.

But get to second level Yoshi but Sonic becomes easy. The more you bait Sonic, the more punishable he becomes.

Fighting against swordies normally just require getting to Level 2 Yoshi. Fighting against Diddy is going up Level 3 Yoshi.

 

[Sinister Slush]

It was more of "this yoshi just spams moves"
Next two is basically kinda detailed explanations.

 

[KenboCalrissian]

I'm thinking Yoshi fits in the "viable with secondaries" sphere. Based on the matchups I struggle with I've been using Cloud to fill gap--even though my Cloud is highly unrefined it still does far better against Diddy and the sword characters.

Likewise, I second R.O.B. particularly when I'm fighting someone who plays campy. Working on Kirby too since he seems to have good MUs against a lot of my problem characters (Fox, Cloud, and Bayo).

I still really like Yoshi against Rosie and Mario, even Sheik sometimes. Those are big deals.

 

[WalrusBiscuit]

The only thing I've really questioned myself playing Yoshi was when I didn't find him that fun to play. But thinking that the character is holding me back? Nah, I think its the opposite.