Hi!
Before I go into my post, a quick introduction - Hi, I'm Atash. I main/second Olimar/G&W and play just for fun matches using Luigi and Yoshi (my two mains from SSBM). Needless to say, I'm a very green person. I'm particularly green with envy of Lord Exor's wonderful mastery of longwinded vocabulary (just teasing :-P ).
Alright, now that that's out of the way, a more important side-message: I'm not here to argue. At best, I wish to see a debate regarding the finer points of Yoshi's status as a low tier character.
To Lord Exor: Nice avatar; but please explain what you mean when you say 'he sucks.' Examples beyond the simplistic gimpage that is footstooling would be very appreciated. Also, on a tangent, I'd respectfully prefer it if you used 'he licks' or 'he chokes' or something to do with a comical situation involving Yoshi's voracious appetite for foes (just throwing it out there).
To Kitamerby: Same for you - you've been designated the 'he chokes' guy. Not that my designations matter much, again.
Back to Lord Exor:
It's good to see at least someone listens to reason.
I'm sorry to say this, and please don't turn elitist in your response (if you respond), but I've yet to hear full fledged 'reason.' I've heard (well, read, but let's only get technical with our characters here) some impressive vocabulary, but no intelligent remarks. If one wants to make one's audience understand 'reason,' one must provide 'reason' that connects with the audience. Please 'connect,' otherwise the more enthusiastic frequenters of the Yoshi boards will probably only consider your statements as mindless banter.
To anyone who agrees with Lord Exor and is an enthusiastic frequenter of the Yoshi boards:
I apologize for grouping you in a basket with everyone else. However, please provide information.
To Lib93 (I realize you posted a long time ago, but I just wanted to pull up an example):
There must be loads of theories surrounding the Yoshi-MK match-up for there to be, on the MK match-up thread, in the MK section of the boards, a seemingly (keyword) up-to-date ratio of 4.5:5.5 MK's favor. Purely integer values on the specific range of 1-10 don't seem to be widespread from what I've seen (and I'm too lazy to read the other tens of character discussion boards to find out - a one-third sample size should be sufficient for this kind of activity).
<anecdote>
My response to the thread's original topic:
I haven't read up on any of the details, however, from what I understand, Yoshi is indeed a heavy character. From what little experience and anecdotal evidence I know, his main issue with the blast zones is the loss of a second jump. I'm not saying that he will consistently lose this second jump, I'm just saying he has an issue with it. Now, I'm going to use a theoretical example that I hope other people will replicate with different variations to explain my idea:
Here's Battlefield (bear with my horrible ASCII art, and the periods represent empty air by the way [stupid auto-removal of spaces]):
. . . . . . . . ______
. ______ . . . . . . . .______
_______________________
As everyone in this discussion knows, Yoshi has a horrible time with MK here. His few advantages are ruined - the chain release is nulled by the platforms, the platforms perpetuate MK's airgame, etc.
Now, note that my Battlefield is not to scale, it's squished in the vertical direction. To give a sense of distance, here's Yoshi's height over battlefield after having made only a double jump from the ledge, with the generally abhorred granularity attributed to time-constrained ASCII art:
. . . . . . . . ______ . . . . . . . . . . Y
. ______ . . . . . . . .______
______________________
Another thing that we should all know - although Meta Knight's speed is pretty nice on the ground, in the air he's pretty slow relative to Yoshi.
. . . . . . . . ______ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Y
. ______ . . . . . . . .______
______________________
I've now placed yoshi pretty far out from battlefield. Using the physics defying mechanics of aerial maneuverability that I wish all humans in real life had, he can easily make it back to the edge by just holding to the left. I'd give the slope to be something like this (continue to note that I've scaled down the cartesian y-axis):
. . . . . . . . .______ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <-----Y
. ______ . . . . . . . .______ . . . .<-----Y
______________________ <Y
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Y(hanging)
A fresh up-b pops him up over the edge very easily from his standpoint (in the air he's tossed up at least his own height by a fresh up-b). Now, continuing with the knowledge that this is only theorycraft and that any further deviations from hard repeatable-at-all-skill-levels observations are controversial, a forewarning: I. Am. A. Novice. I'm just trying to get some better examples so that, as a novice, I can understand the weakpoints of my more favorite characters. I don't simply want to know, as in being told over and over again, I want it to be shown to me. Then again, since when has the wants of a knowledge been answered by a more skilled and obviously better informed crowd?*
Anyway, anywhere within about one Yoshi's length of that trajectory a Meta-Knight can land an aerial hit on a non-dodging Yoshi. However, Yoshi can egg throw and pop right over a Meta-Knight coming from directly below anywhere along that trajectory. From diagonally down and to the left, an approach from Meta-Knight will give Yoshi trouble because it's directly in line with his trajectory. Egg throwing over him won't exactly solve the problem. Also, from his somewhat leftwards position, MK can reverse shuttle-loop our poor dinosaur without too much fear of missing because of Yoshi's high aerial movement. Yoshi could air-dodge and possibly get chased in the air by MK's sword's length for prematurely assuming such an attack, or could double jump. With regards to this scenario, please note that it's a very limited scenario. Also note that this is taking place about a third of the length of battlefield away from the edge - not a place a Meta-Knight normally gimps people as far as I've seen.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. If anyone wishes to utilize Yoshi's horrible recovery as an example of just how bad he is, could you please explain it in some sort of an intelligent manner? I've only used what I have said above as an EXAMPLE. It is in no way a proper scenario for recovery because it assumes one thing that, as far as I've heard, a good MK will never do unless there's a guaranteed kill from a wall of pain - chase horizontally away from the edge.
Actually, that being said, I'd like to see if my generalization of Yoshi's recovery is correct:
. . . . . . . . ______ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Y
. ______ . . . . . . . .______
______________________
Yoshi has no problems from this distance with recovering - it's a matter of dodging the incoming blows (which vary in difficulty and/or impossibility), and saving the double jump just in case the yoshi gets hit away. If the foe has slow fall-speed, a double jump and edge-canceled Brriing-Op! can generally work. If the foe has fast fall-speed and/or air-speed, proper timing of super-armor + {neutral aerial or air dodge} in transit have a chance at getting one through any attempts at wall of pains.
. . . . . . . . ______
. ______ . . . . . . . .______
______________________
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y
From here, Yoshi must double jump + egg throw hop to make it over the edge, or just double jump to grab the edge. If someone is standing watch at the edge (and someone should else they aren't a very good gimper), the Yoshi could egg-throw once and waste an egg and lag time in the hopes of clearing the edge with some lucky blast-radius hit to double jump onto the edge, or he could just double jump and air dodge. If anyone grabs the ledge, they will be mentally lagged to keep their invincibility frames on the ledge if firm in their ways. If they grab the edge and release to attack the big-nosed dinosaur, Yoshi could neutral aerial (hopefully outprioritizing the other aerial) and then egg-throw to make it back to the edge, or air-dodge and egg-throw.
If, on the other hand, Yoshi is pinned down by someone who refuses to grab the ledge, or is hovering in the air over the edge, he probably has problems. That's the case when he can be gimped - but then again, pretty much anyone else (Falco being the high/top tier example I'd like to point to) could be gimped at that position.
Now then, going back to the loss of a second jump... Yoshi can always make it back to the stage with his second jump from the lateral blast zones at the height of the edge for pretty much every stage. Without his second jump, he might have troubles. The gray zone lies in the chances that he'll get walled down into oblivion or not.
Do I have the above section properly understood or am I missing a few finer points?
Also, I motion (in I'm assuming one of the most informal ways possible) that a second thread be created simply to understand why people disregard Yoshi's recovery action as a pointless endeavor. In conjunction with that, yes, Yoshi is underplayed, but that doesn't necessarily tell anyone why it's somehow 'common knowledge' that he's more gimpable than Yoshi players perceive him to actually be.
* To alleviate any translucency with regards to that section, I'm directly referring to Lord Exor's patronizing attitude.
And back to Lib93:
... wellllllllll... I have a friend who's an MK and he's... OOPS! ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE! Must be cited as such:
<anecdote>I have a friend who's an MK and he's random and he's... yeah. He's annoying.</anecdote>
Postscript: Lord Exor, does your username originate from Super Mario RPG? If so, I laud your name choice - giant swords with teleporters in their mouths are awesome.
Postpostscript: I'm all for an underplayed character being mid-tier in practice by small contingency of the generally unskilled Yoshi crowd who are of low-tier in practice. It makes for interesting tourney-by-tourney results.
Postpostpostscript: I am a novice. I haven't played tournies, only thought a lot about this.
Postpostpostpostscript: Yeah, I spent a lot of time on this post. Sue me.
Postpostpostpostpostscript: Please don't be elitist just because I'm a novice, I'm only asking for information through a rational interface.
Postpostpostpostpostpostpostscript: Oops, one too many 'posts' in that post[...]script line.
Postpostpostpostpostpostpostscript: READ THE ACTUAL BODY OF THE POST NOT THIS PART!!!
Postpostpostpostpostpostpostpostscript: XML 'anecdote' tags for the win :-P
</anecdote>
(yes I have nested anecdote tags, oh well >_< )
As a serious post-script: It'd be nice if one of the upper level players spoke up and shed some awe-inspiring light on the topic...
EDIT: I edited one of the ASCII images so it looked proper.
LOL @ the Meta Knight main getting under everyone's skin!
