The Meteors Approach: What 1.06 Could Mean for Yoshi

[Marrow]

As Mewtwo's release approaches, so does a new patch. This patch, version 1.06, is going to have character balancing tweaks. What does this mean for us? Me personally, I think we're on the chopping block for nerfs again, though hopefully nothing too detrimental. What do you guys think's gonna happen? What buffs do you want, what nerfs do you fear? Discuss it here!

 

[Scarlet Jile]

He's probably the character most overrated since launch, so I don't think any nerfs are warranted. In fact, along with Mario and Mega Man, I think Yoshi is one of the better-rounded characters in the game. One would hope that characters lower on a perceived tier list would be improved and that characters like Diddy, Sheik and Sonic are adjusted accordingly.

 

[Narth]

I don't think much will happen to Yoshi. I certainly hope not, he's a really fun and interesting character to use. As @ Scarlet Jile said, Yoshi is a very well-rounded character. If any nerfs would happen, I guess I would expect something like the Dair doing less damage, but that's okay. I dunno what could be buffed, maybe make the Side B have less ending lag and more power or something? I dunno, we'll have to see, but I think they would be very minor changes if any.

 

[Lukingordex]

To be honest, I am worried about Yoshi's future.

He's the most overrated character in the game, and with japan thinking he's the 3rd best character in the game, I fear he may be nerfed, which would make him even less viable than he already is.

 

[Delta-cod]

Japan still hypes Yoshi and a bunch of American players still overrate him drastically, even though nobody actually plays him. It's funny, because I remember someone from my crew telling me he was learning Yoshi because he was broken in this game. And I watched him play against someone else and it was just SH ET gimmicks. And it was working. Fast forward through time, and I don't think he's playing Yoshi anymore, or at least I haven't seen it since the Holidays.

And that's when I realized people didn't know anything about Yoshi. I wrote up a huge post in the Fox Board's MU thread about why people think Yoshi is really good, and it just comes down to their lack of knowledge. Yoshi is mediocre. As long as he has no neutral options and no kill setups, everything will be a struggle forever.

If Yoshi gets nerfed, it's curtains for him. He can't afford to lose much more without becoming literal trash. Nerfs coupled with drastic buffs on key moves (preferably those that can be used in neutral) would be acceptable. But I find the idea of him receiving important buffs to be unlikely. So his only hope is to see others around him fall below, not to rise up on his own.

 

[DragN]

There's....a lot of negative thinking on these boards... I really only see Yoshi struggling against the top tiers. He can handle everyone else fine. C'mon people, why are we all so doom and gloom when we could be figuring out ways to beat the Diddys, Sheiks and Rosalumas. Can't we all be positive and be happy that Yoshi is better than ever? And work to improve him and stand our ground against all odds.

 

[Delta-cod]

I very much agree with your outlook, but it's VERY important to be realistic about Yoshi's problems.

He will always struggle against fast characters because he simply lacks the frame data to compete.

By removing his pivot grab, they basically removed Yoshi's only real option against fast characters in neutral. This is CRIPPLING, because fast characters tend to be the best characters. In a world of Diddy and Sheik, if you can't compete with them, you're not viable. And it's VERY important to acknowledge this before moving forward, to know that you're playing a limited character. Because then you can really start to look into what works, and how to beat opponents, not characters. Because Yoshi doesn't just straight up beat characters.

Yoshi being better than ever is an iffy statement as well. They gave him some buffs, but they also took away a lot of what was good before, a lot of what his game centered around. There's no more pivot grab and egg lay shenanigans to be had (outside of customs). They made Bair not usable as a spacing/poking tool, so now we have to rely on our 20 frame Fair to do the job, which is pretty poor.

I think they made Yoshi stronger, but removed his utility, and utility is hugely important. All the knockback and damage output in the world won't matter if you can't set those punishing moves up. If you need to rely hugely on reads to win, you must realize you're not playing a good character.

Now despite this, I'm always down to draft up ideas and potential tools to deal with situations the top characters put you in. I used to spend a lot of time doing this for Brawl. But I don't think it's good to fool yourself into Yoshi's value as a fighter.

 

[DragN]

You are very knowlegdable Delta. I know to think realistically about Yoshi. Yes it is true that he can get walled out and beaten senseless by the blistering fast attack rate of the top tiers, but he's not completely helpless. I think that the real deal here is that he feels significantly DIFFERENT than previous iterations. We have to relearn him to an extent. He's a faster, more combo heavy character who relies on reads to secure kills. We can link up airs and nairs and set up jab jab dash grab/dash attack forever but we struggle for the kill. Our new up smash helps a bit though....it can beat out zamus and sheiks down b's. And a few of our kill moves have been restored. (The Yoshi Bomb and our D-smash for example) Alongside some new ones. (b-air and d-air near the top of the screen....situational but...atleast we have it...) I'm not trying to fool myself into thinking Yoshi is better than he seems, because he DOES have flaws. SignIficant enough to keep him just out of the best tier range. I just have a lot of faith in the character.

 

[Delta-cod]

The combos aren't even that great though.

Jab > Dash Grab works at low percents, but we also get NOTHING out of our grabs.
Uair only sorta combos into itself sometimes.
Utilts chain at low percents, but that's about it. None of our other tilts even combo.
Nairs don't really combo into anything, unless you think of extreme circumstances (softhit Nair or about to land initial hit Nair > Chase). But these aren't terribly easy to setup given the range/startup of these moves.

Our Jab setups aren't even really guaranteed anymore. Jab > Usmash almost never works, and Jab > Down B is also unreliable.

I realize that Yoshi feels different in this game, and I've tried out a bunch of different things to find out a general game plan for him. But I just don't see the options in neutral. You can try to rush down, but he lacks the frame data and priority to do that well. He can try to camp, but he lacks good moves to wall people out (pivot grab is meh, eggs are a bit too slow, Usmash is a good anti-air but quite costly on a whiff). I've tried doing my mix of reactionary play in neutral (walking back and forth, trying to get into spacing for a surprise dash grab or something) and camping, but that's not too good either because our movement speed in this case is not good enough to keep up.

I will say, I think Yoshi does GREAT against other campy characters. He's fast enough to handle them, his projectile leaves him quite flexible AND it sets up well for pressure on hit or shield. He also does GREAT against slow characters. But where it matters, the quick top tiers, I think he falls flat on his big squishy nose, and that really, really hurts.

I guess to sort of address the 1.06 patch topic, I'll say my ideal change list would have something like this:

Pivot Grab end lag reduced from 40 hours to something...reasonable...
Egg Lay (default) startup normalized to be like Egg Launch. This would make it faster and more reliable.
Do something to his jab1 knockback so that he can confirm kills off of it.

They could do almost anything else they wanted to him, but I think if he had these three things he would be significantly better as a character.

 

[DragN]

That's a good way to look at it. Well, maybe this upcoming patch will fix some of his shortcomings and by extension, everyone else while toning down some of the tip-top tiers' more....overwhelming strengths. (Completely off topic but.......any chance I could play a round of Smash against you? )

 

[AirJordans]

Watch, the patch makes the game just like Melee

 

[DragN]

So....mewtwo will suck again? No. XD

 

[Delta-cod]

That's a good way to look at it. Well, maybe this upcoming patch will fix some of his shortcomings and by extension, everyone else while toning down some of the tip-top tiers' more....overwhelming strengths. (Completely off topic but.......any chance I could play a round of Smash against you? )

Definitely can't happen this weekend, but I've got lots of time Monday evening if you wanna set something up.

Watch, the patch makes the game just like Melee

Super unlikely, given the direction the series has been going in and the general views towards Melee. Although that'd be pretty hilarious.

 

[DragN]

Ok. I'm on break this upcoming week so Monday would be great. Thanks Delta-cod.

Definitely can't happen this weekend, but I've got lots of time Monday evening if you wanna set something up.

 

[AirJordans]

Super unlikely, given the direction the series has been going in and the general views towards Melee. Although that'd be pretty hilarious.

I completely doubt it too. Basically everything you've been saying so far is in line with how I've been feeling about it. Hopefully being Yoshi being overrated doesn't get us nerfed.

 

[Sinister Slush]

All I want is either buffs to Yoshi in quite honestly any area, or not touched at all while other top tiers are nerfed in some way.

 

[AirJordans]

All I want is either buffs to Yoshi in quite honestly any area, or not touched at all while other top tiers are nerfed in some way.

Obviously that would be nice. Do you think there's a possibility of that happening or something similar?

 

[Sinister Slush]

There can honestly be only three things that can happen.

1. Yoshi buffed but the buffs are actually reverting him to his previous stance or even just % buffs like Shulk or something.

2. Nerfs cause Japan rates him highly

3. Nothing happens, but others are nerfed/buffed and possibly Yoshi still falling off the table more from whoever rises after the buffs/nerfs.

 

[Enoki]

Something interesting: all of the top tiers have good grab games. ALL OF THEM. Look at the list of Diddy, Sheik, Rosaluma, ZSS, Sonic, Pikachu, Luigi, Mario, Ness, Falcon, Fox, just to name a few.

• Every single one has guaranteed followups, at least at low percentages.
• Many have really good combos and strings out of a throw (Sheik, ZSS, Ness, Diddy, Falcon, Mario, Luigi, etc.)
  
• Some of them have throw-to-move kills (Diddy, Pika, Luigi, etc.)
• Some have throws that kill easily (Sonic, Ness)
• And some can throw, react to the opponent, and then punish hard (ZSS, Falcon, Rosaluma)

I mean, of this list, Fox is the only one whom I don't think massively benefits from throws. A good grab game is so important––look at Diddy and Sheik. All these top-tiers instantly are put in a favorable position because of a grab. The only slow-grabber, ZSS, has the paralyzer to help. I think that (maybe) Yoshi could maintain his perceived top tier position if he got a significant boost to his grab game as a whole.
I would love any of the following:
1. Standing grab be just a bit faster, making shield-grabbing more viable.
2. No unreasonable ending lag on pivot grab.
3. b-throw kills earlier, even if only at 140%
4. d-throw sets up for guaranteed aerials at early percents
5. Our command grab faster again. Whyyyyy did they nerf this from Brawl.
Unrelated to grab game:
1. Less landing lag (autocancel?) on bair
2. Kill confirms off of Jab 1
3. Usable Roll pls? (Just cause... it would be nice.)

Realistically, I feel like nothing will really change about Yoshi with this patch. But goodness, I would be so happy if he would get ANY buffs.

tl;dr Sakurai, please let Yoshi make use of his tongue. We have to work harder to get a grab, so could we please be rewarded for that? :3

 

[Sinister Slush]

Even if they go nowhere, fox and mario still can get something out of a grab simply cause you're high into the air now. Fox can start aerial combos or kill with Uair since his throws actually send you somewhere compared to Yoshi's. While Mario at least puts you in a position where you can be combo food for his Utilt or aerials/FLUDD.

 

[DragN]

The more i tussle with the top tiers, the more obvious this becomes. If our grab was faster and could reliably set up kills or even have a kill throw, we'd have the whole package.

 

[Delta-cod]

Ah, right. We also struggle because we can't kill people for shielding.

We do have Down B as a shieldbreaking mixup, however. But grab games are super important for a character's worth.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Too bad shieldbreaking barely happens.
Shields have 50 health and the move + extra shield damage a lot of moves in this game has is 20, so that means 39% on the shield.
So unless they purposely shield for more than 2 seconds and take a hit from literally anything in our kit and continues shielding even before the DownB animation starts and both hits hit, it'll break. But read what I just said and realize how often that'll never occur lol

 

[Scarlet Jile]

Something interesting: all of the top tiers have good grab games. ALL OF THEM. Look at the list of Diddy, Sheik, Rosaluma, ZSS, Sonic, Pikachu, Luigi, Mario, Ness, Falcon, Fox, just to name a few.

• Every single one has guaranteed followups, at least at low percentages.
• Many have really good combos and strings out of a throw (Sheik, ZSS, Ness, Diddy, Falcon, Mario, Luigi, etc.)
  
• Some of them have throw-to-move kills (Diddy, Pika, Luigi, etc.)
• Some have throws that kill easily (Sonic, Ness)
• And some can throw, react to the opponent, and then punish hard (ZSS, Falcon, Rosaluma)

I mean, of this list, Fox is the only one whom I don't think massively benefits from throws. A good grab game is so important––look at Diddy and Sheik. All these top-tiers instantly are put in a favorable position because of a grab. The only slow-grabber, ZSS, has the paralyzer to help. I think that (maybe) Yoshi could maintain his perceived top tier position if he got a significant boost to his grab game as a whole.
I would love any of the following:
1. Standing grab be just a bit faster, making shield-grabbing more viable.
2. No unreasonable ending lag on pivot grab.
3. b-throw kills earlier, even if only at 140%
4. d-throw sets up for guaranteed aerials at early percents
5. Our command grab faster again. Whyyyyy did they nerf this from Brawl.
Unrelated to grab game:
1. Less landing lag (autocancel?) on bair
2. Kill confirms off of Jab 1
3. Usable Roll pls? (Just cause... it would be nice.)

Realistically, I feel like nothing will really change about Yoshi with this patch. But goodness, I would be so happy if he would get ANY buffs.

tl;dr Sakurai, please let Yoshi make use of his tongue. We have to work harder to get a grab, so could we please be rewarded for that? :3

I would love the old pivot grab, but it's unreasonable to expect a buff on a character who is otherwise viable if Diddy, Sheik and Sonic are appropriately toned down. Egg roll definitely could be made useful, but if they couldn't do it for the first 3 games, I don't see how they're going to do it now.

Also, more back-throw kills is the LAST thing I want to see. A smart nerf to Sonic would be making his backthrow weaker and making his spin dash a little bit slower to up-B out of, so it's not just 100% safe on shield.

 

[Enoki]

@ Scarlet Jile I agree. As I said, "Realisticaly, I feel like nothing will really change about Yoshi with this patch."
Personally, I think Yoshi is quite overrated. Everybody talks about how good he is, but there are no major tournament results suggesting such. Once you figure out Yoshi, the top characters have very little problems with him. I don't think nerfing a few characters would be enough to make Yohi viable, because he would still lack a neutral game.
When I say viable, I just mean likely to win major tournaments when the meta is more developed.

(Also yes please Sonic definitely does NOT need that back-throw.)

 

[Delta-cod]

Yoshi is currently not viable BECAUSE of the top characters. Outside of Sheik/Diddy/Sonic(?), he manages the rest of the cast very well, and would only have somewhat problematic match ups with other very fast characters (Falcon, Fox, Mii Brawler, etc). In the case where these top 3 get hit with a significant nerf bat, Yoshi will actually be surprisingly good in this game.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Only if the fast characters with good grab followups are nerfed is when people have a good reason to start throwing Yoshi in top 5.

 

[Enoki]

How big of a nerf (or buff?) do you think it would take for Yoshi to no longer struggle against them? In general, I think it would take pretty significant nerfs for Diddy or Sheik to drop simply because they have so many tools. But then, there's the Rosaluma nerf that makes her not-as-extremely-powerful, then there's the Greninja nerf that really hurt. It would make me sad if anyone were nerfed TOO hard.
It's a nice feeling to think that we only have to wait a little over a week to see what actually changes! I'm quite excited.

 

[DragN]

I think all Yoshi needs in order to not struggle as much is a quicker grab and a more reliable setup for landing kills than up air or down b reads. I dislike killing people from center stage with a clean n air at 180%

 

[Sinister Slush]

All of Yoshi's kill moves require hard reads outside of maybe throwing out random bairs.

 

[DragN]

I know. I just wish I didn't need to spike so much for offstage kills. (Hey Sinister Slush, would u like to play Smash with me?)
NNID: jjaneck1

 

[Sinister Slush]

Oh didn't even notice that.
Guess you can add me, just I usually never actually play smash 4 or actively look to play with others. I tend to wait if people wanna play with me or not by asking me when I'm awake or available.

 

[DragN]

Haha ok. Well I'm busy cleaning up my house today so when I'm not busy, I'll ask u if u wanna smash. (Assuming you aren't busy atm. )

 

[Shiri]

Sm4sh is not a specialist's game; if you're playing a non-top tier in tournament, you likely need a CP character if you plan on seriously giving yourself a shot at winning.

Yoshi's always been countered by faster characters and I think Yoshi players have to be fine with that. He does surprisingly okay against his other matchups and he has quite a couple steamroller matchups in his favor as well. Get you a top tier CP or an anti-top tier CP and you'll be just fine. If you don't play in tournaments, then this doesn't matter.

If you want to be a Yoshi specialist, that's great, but you have to have access to exceptionally good players to grind out common tournament matchups. This is why most specialist players don't make it; they think the level of competition they expose themselves to is high enough when it definitely isn't. The other thing that hurts specializing (and Yoshi in particular) is the lack of ridiculous movement options--this makes matchups against the faster characters much harder. Grind out what movement you can because you'll need it.

 

[DragN]

I understand what you are saying Shiri, I know my character very well. Yes, Yoshi struggles against the top tiers but he isn't helpless. This isn't Brawl or Melee where the top tiers are nearly untouchable. They can be beaten, yes it will be difficult but I'm sticking to my guns with just Yoshi.

 

[Sinister Slush]

I'm sure TX is one of the more stronger states in terms of both character diversity and top players.

I know it wasn't aimed at me, but had a need to point it out anyways since the South is usually ignored despite us being a top 3 state back in brawl days.

 

[KENDARRR]

I'm sure his d-air will get a nerf, I'm pretty sure it can deal 40% if executed properly. It can also take out over half a shield, while giving them no opportunity to get out of it.

 

[Sinister Slush]

It does 34% less than half the time and takes out shields enough to shield poke for like 2-4%. Move is fine cause it requires yoshi to 1. Hit it while rising up from being off stage
and 2. if somebody is on a platform and allows us to fullhop past them and use the move.

 

[Lukingordex]

Dair is fine, it is a high risk/high reward move (when they don't shield of couse).

 

[Saturnity]

The worst part of this is that we can't really see why Japan thinks Yoshi is so good. There's hardly any footage of how Japan's Yoshis win top tier matchups, so we're pretty much in the dark unless one of our top guys starts maining Yoshi.