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V1.210 of the post (Last edited Apr 16th, 2018, see bottom of the post to find out which sections were edited).
Poking around and thinking about Yoshi is fun. The char has a lot of potential, lots of unintuitive and untapped strengths that haven't been developed or discussed much yet.
Several things frustrate me a little though.
So ye, gonna talk about some of the misinformation surrounding the char, and then about some of his unintuitive attributes, and the directions the char can be pushed in.
I'm also going to be really nice and talk a little bit about playing vs Yoshi. It annoys me a little to have to do that because :
Anyway, fallacies about the char and stuff :
It's also not actually that common an occurrence. Yoshi doesn't often have to recover low, and if he is able to recover at an ambiguous spacing, he can make the Falco think twice about going out there.
In some cases, perhaps Falco can cover everything with shine bair or whatever, but :
No, no it doesn't. A lot of the time, anyway. Please STOP SPREADING MISINFORMATION on that topic, ack.
Why ?
Well, let's talk about blocking a move, first. Yoshi can punish or at least garner a frame advantage from blocking on the ground against many moves.
How ? He suffers no shieldstun (this is also what makes his shielddrop especially potent).
What does this mean ? It means it's impossible to be + on Yoshi's shield in a 1v1. (The only way you could do it is by combining a move with the hitlag of a projectile). You're always going to be negative on Yoshi's shield.
Let's give an example, to illustrate the differences compared to other other shields. Take for instance, Marth tipper fsmash. I distinctly remember a high-level player posting on twitch chat that "the marth player on screen should just fsmash, Yoshi can't jump out of shield, he can't do anything", so this should be a good example.
On a non-Yoshi shield, the tipper hitbox is -25 to -28 or so. That's plenty of time for most chars to WD oos into something.
On Yoshi's shield it is (provided he acts immediately out of hitlag, which admittedly is not easy to be consistent at for most moves) -35 to -38 or so. Yoshi's shield release animation lasts 16 frames, which gives him ample time to shield release dash run cancel dsmash, or even walk fsmash if he's good at acting out of hitlag.
If Yoshi parries, the hit, he gets even more time to act out of shield/parry, since Marth suffers 9 frames of hitlag and Yoshi doesn't. (And yes, Yoshi can parry → shield, parry is just the preshielding animation, he doesn't have to jump out of it).
If a move isn't laggy enough to be shieldgrabbable / that shield release would allow a punish, and if shieldrelease → ASDI down is not desirable, Yoshi can lightshield out of most moves.
If Yoshi's shield is being pressured by very weak moves (jab, Peach dair, …), Yoshi can lightshield and force the opponent to move along with his shield to keep pressuring, giving him slightly more leniency for escaping. He can also switch between light and hard shield (to make a Peach dairing his shield keep going in a direction while he stops). This can essentially force 50/50s vs some types of pressure, and creates windows for escape.
If the opponent isn't hitting the shield at all, Yoshi can only roll, spotdodge, grab, or shield release.
However :
This is only partly true. First off, Standing grab works fine. The z-axis issues lie with dash grab. Dash grab only has issues when the opponents enter certain animations, and the whiff also depends on which way they are facing relative to Yoshi. Also note that Yoshi's dashgrab can grab any character in shield during the very latest parts of his dashgrab, so not every stance or animation can be abused against him, and while it does require more careful spacing vs several chars, dashgrab is usable vs the whole cast in shield.
Yoshi's dash grab has issues, but it can be used with good awareness (and more labbing, probably). You can also option select parry dash grab to partly mitigate some potential punishes.
Like most things relative to Yoshi, it's harder to use, is less intuitive, and has hidden strengths to it (the parry option select being one of them). I'm not saying Yoshi's dash grab is amazing, or anything, and it definitely has some unique flaws to it, but like most moves in the game, it has its use cases. Outright dismissing it is not the way to go.
This is also a weird one. Idk why people say that. While Yoshi's roll does have average intangibility and is pretty short in distance covered, it also has several unique advantages to it.
This vid from aMSa's channel showcases some of roll's quirks :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6tesI_px8Y
Nope. It's pretty deep and unique in some aspects. There's a lot more that can be developed around it. More on that later.
Not quite. A strong tool, to be sure, but not a silver bullet. See the section further down on challenging egg stall.
Neither is strictly true.
You can parry some moves on reaction (if you're good). SH stomp, for instance, or telegraphed late aerials.
However, mixing one's timing up for most moves will mean the Yoshi player has to read the timing. For instance, early knee and latest knee out of Falcon's SH can't both be covered by the same parry, in most scenarios.
You could consider it a 50/50.
Note, however, that Yoshi can empty parry anytime before he jumps, if he so chooses. So he might 'randomly' parry a move, ie neither a read nor a reaction.
This is false, for several definitions of false. Yoshi was changed in four ways in PAL :
All this already overall significantly buffs Yoshi in PAL, both vs fastfallers and floaties. But he also benefits a lot from the Fox and Sheik nerfs. More so than most of the cast, in fact.
Sheik's lack of chaingrab, lack of kill confirms off of grabs in PAL, and few strong moves vs armour, means Yoshi can essentially DI techchases away/offstage, or lightshield away most of her stuff, while he himself has strong combo tools, and edgeguard setups. Sheik struggles a lot more at low % vs Yoshi. And he kills earlier, too. I'm oversimplifying, of course, but the difference is very noticeable.
Vs Fox, the killing power is basically swapped around. Yoshi kills 15-30% earlier, Fox usmash kills 10-15% later. Yoshi also heavily benefits from the firefox nerfs. He's not the only one, of course (Samus, Luigi, etc. also unlock new edgeguarding tools vs the smaller flames), but :
In comparison, a char like Pikachu also benefits from the nerfs on firefox, but the execution requirements and the amount of rinse-repeat necessary to finish off the offstage spacie are not impacted anywhere near as much. Most of the time, a Fox that gets uair semi-spiked is dead, regardless of version.
Of course, there are certain spacings and angles in PAL where the Fox recovery is better than the NTSC one so it's not 100% an improvement (something which people never really talk about, same for the reduced flames, idk why), but overall the benefits in PAL greatly outweigh the downsides.
Several nerfed moves can be armoured through for a good while longer. Ganon, Sheik, Falcon and Fox are the most affected matchups.
Another minor difference that generally is a buff for Yoshi in PAL is that several weight-dependent throws have a smaller frame advantage against him.
You can find the full list here (https://smashboards.com/threads/pal...e-advantage-differences.449710/#post-21825800), but amongst other things this includes :
Now, a lot of these changes aren't as meaningful at very high levels compared to the rest. Still, the Fox and Sheik matchups are a little easier at all levels, and lower/mid-level Yoshi players have a little bit of an easier/slightly more lenient time getting overcoming some obstacles.
Uhhh, ok. Commentator's bluffs can be a little irksome.
Yoshi can DJ nair from ledge, he can intangible uair → land onstage and L-cancel, he can dair from ledge, bair from ledge, fair from ledge, egg lay from ledge, and even reverse DJC fair/bair fom ledge. He can regrab ledge in some cases.
While I'm at it, he can also intangible side-b onstage, intangible down-b stall, ECE, and reverse-ECE.
He also has a few frames intangibility from his ledgedash, and a few more off of his aerial interrupt. His DJ also has the usual armour frames. He can extend his intangibility after AI/ledgedash with invulnerable parry frames, and has a haxdash that is humanly doable.
He can also release ledge, drop down for a few frames and DJ back on with armour. This is very effective against some options meant to catch aerials from ledge, or armour at higher % (Sheik dsmash is an example, you can wait it out by dropping down, jumping back up and punishing its endlag). Yoshi can even No-Impact Land the DJ if he cares to.
So, uh, yeah, he can aerial from ledge, amongst other things. Spending an hour prepping for commentating a Yoshi set (or Ics, or whatever), or actually messing with the char / reading about the char would have told you as much.
I don't really care about this much, but others do, so...
Yoshi's armour isn't technically super armour (the way the term is used in other fighting games, at least). It's a subtractive or knockback reduction armour. (-120 KB, which is the same as the CC threshold), which still suffers hitlag. Nana similarly has a -5 KB armour on at all times.
No. He parried the grab, and then grabbed. Parry → shield/roll/spotdodge/grab/... are all options, you know, Yoshi doesn't have to jump after parrying.
I've come across this several times, so I'm mentioning it here, even though it seems really obvious to me (I guess this is something I knew about intuitively from my days of casual play). You can force aerial release by including jump inputs in your mashing. People like Setchi have labbed aerial/grounded release in more detail if you're curious about the specifics, but Yoshi is not dead in this situation. The only potential exception is Koopa Klaw, which (I believe, it's a bit weird) forces grounded release on mashout.
Strong options, not silver bullets. There are ways around several of those, with or without parry.
See the section on Yoshi vs Multihit moves (2018 tech) for Yoshi-specific options vs multhit moves.
Not always. Too lazy to detail here. Just gonna use this space to point out that while the recommended setup for most chars by TauKhan is one trigger tricked, the other setup in such a way that you can't digitally press shield (powershield with trigger tricked trigger, lightshield/shield with the other, avoid ADT, and still have the better WD oos setups available). With Yoshi you don't want that setup. You want one controller trigger tricked for consistent parries, and the other one untampered with, ideally.
OK, enough about misinformation, let's move on.
A couple of these I am less sure of, but I'll mention them anyway, because you never know.
Note that a lot of this is aimed at high-level players, far better than I. Not all of it though. Of course, the counterplay I'll mention afterwards applies at all levels. Some of this is also known in some circles, so some people will have to sift through this, but I hope there's food for thought for everyone.
Hopefully somebody with a deeper understanding of the char will add some stuff / correct some of what I say. It's a long shot. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, of course. A couple of bits of tech here (mostly related to DJ Land) also apply to Peach.
I see a few too many Yoshi players airdodge up after losing armour at spacings where there are many mixups available. The reverse side b in particular is one I believe could be seen a little more.
I wonder if some crazy situations like get baired at 80% by Falco → lose armour but SDI away from him → egg lay → get to stage asap would work. My guess is 'probably'.
The section on Option Select SDI also relates to recovery.
There are also other mixups from the ledge that are worth considering (most are mentioned in the 'Yoshi can't aerial from ledge' commentator crap section). On top of those discussed options, Yoshi has a humanly feasible haxdash, and can DJ into AI or NIL on some top and side platforms. He can also make the normal options safer than other chars can by tossing an egg first (ie, toss an egg before doing a ledgehop, meaning an opponent has to beware the egg first, and Yoshi can turnaround DJC egg toss back to ledge if need be).
This one sounds incredibly obvious, but... I see very few Yoshi players pummel.
OK, in some matchups you might really want to dthrow as fast as possible to try and get the most favourable Dis out of your opponent. However, in matchups where grabs net you very little, or matchups and % where uthrow/dthrow provides a DI mixup, you should almost always pummel. That 3-9% is nothing to scoff at (and Yoshi's 'combo' window for pummel is lenient enough even for non-buffered throws, meaning you can still pummel once and throw without losing a DI mixup even at fairly low %).
We Yoshi players prob don't do enough of this. Uangled fsmash and dangled fsmash are both useful for some throw followups. On top of that, dangled fsmash will hit low crouches, and hit quite low making it useful for some edgeguards (plus head intangibility). Uangled can also be used more vs a floating Peach.
This is something I see few Yoshi players experiment with. I see aMSa and Plata occasionally chain 3 ftilts together, or Avalancer go for uangled ftilt → dangled ftilt, but a lot more could be developed there. aMSa makes very little use of dangled ftilt, for instance, which is a shame. At some % you also have enough time to wavedash through turnaround tilt, (or dash through pivot ftilt if you're good at that stuff), for an additional layer of DI mixup. And similarly to dangled fsmash, dangled ftilt will hit low crouches.
Some of the stuff I mention here also applies to turnaround/no turnaround nair, too.
I feel that a lot of Yoshi players are a little overfond of extended comboing, when simply sending a Falco offstage at 50 % can get you a kill, or some damage off of their attempts to recover. A lot of people tend to DI out by default at low % and in at high % vs Yoshi players that don't make full use of this mixup. Those Yoshi players also expose themselves to potentially harder followups through knockback stacking. Mixups will net you some earlier kills, some extended or easier combos.
I can safely assure you killing a (PAL) Fox from center stage by landing uair → fsmash at 45 % will provide its amount of satisfaction, too.
Dair has several advantages :
You can expect a lower-level player to be bad at SDIing out of dair (a lot of high-level players don't seem to do it well atm), and fail the punish. If you're low-level like me and you feel you have to go in and do a potentially a little dumb SHFFL nair into a Peach, try dair instead. Food for thought, anyway.
Very strong options for Yoshi. However, I'm not very knowledgeable on pivots, and how/when to use them so I won't detail these further, sorry. Pivot bair is also a strong tool, Weedlar makes use of it a lot.
Yoshi has a long body, long hurtbox, and a big nose, but he has some of the best hurtbox manipulation in the game. His crouch, jumpsquat, fsmash, fair, usmash, dashback and turnaround double jump instant land (DJLand) all shift his hurtboxes around significantly. Here's a few details on fsmash and fair :
The pullback on fsmash is halfway complete on the first frame of the move, almost done on the second frame. This enables Yoshi to whiff punish any move aimed to hit his nose. Double fsmash also is a usable tool. Fsmash is also not always easy to punish on whiff.
Yoshi pulls his head back completely during the fair startup, and then brings it down in ONE frame (and the hitbox expands in size vertically the frame after that). This makes it a move that's harder to challenge than it looks from certain angles. It can also autocancel from a SH (not trivial, requires some practice), making it a better zoning tool than one might think at first glance.
Other examples of hurtbox manipulation creating whiff punishes include Marth'd dash (his dashback is an infamous source of frustration to some), Sheik's grab (not too useful, but Pika can't grab Sheik from behind if she's in her grab animation), Ganon/Falcon fsmash and down b. Several low crouches and jumpsquats, too.
This piece of tech also applies to Peach, but Peach's most interesting ground options (a lot of the time), are also run-cancellable, or usable from run (dtilt, dsmash, dash attack). Yoshi has other moves he might want to use, such as utilt, ftilt, fsmash. I'm only briefly mentioning this, but it opens up *a lot* of options.
Aerial interrupt and DJ Land both provide faster means of getting onto side plats or top plats than wavelanding, enabling more coverage during platform techchasing, or more extended followups off of fair at high %, amongst other things. Another benefit of these platform movement options is that you can punish many attempts at calling out a waveland (through AI -> dsmash, for instance).
Given how much top Samus players make use of aerial interrupt, and how much Peach players make use of DJ Land, there's a lot to be developed for Yoshi too.
DJ Land also has several extra benefits which are discussed in other sections.
Something I also forgot to mention is that Yoshi can DJ NIL onto some top platforms. He can even do so from the ledge on some stages, reducing the amount of vulnerability frames after armour and before parry.
A way to make DJ Land more lenient is to input backair right afterwards. I'm not knowledgeable enough about it to know whether there are any frame tradeoffs in some situations, but it almost certainly has its uses.
I've talked about out-of-shield options earlier, but only thought of this one recently, and it's worth having its own section. Shield release/spotdodge -> jab 1 are also interesting options, especially the former.
Shield release -> jab is borderline unpunishable on reaction for most characters (only jabs and similar moves can hope to connect, and depending on the character the option might be counterable).
And remember, Yoshi can parry as soon as the move is done.
On top of that, jab 1 is 'unccable and unASDI-downable' for a very long time (and jab 2 starts beating ASDI down around the time jab 1 starts being ASDI-downable).
Unstale jab 1 is at worst -7 on hit, at 0%, on the whole cast (except on PAL Yoshi, DK and Bowser, where it's -8).
If they don't true CC it, of course (CC still affects hitlag, even on moves with too little KB for CC landing to occur). It is about -11 on block on a non-Yoshi-non-double-ICs shield, so not every move will be able to punish, if it's well spaced. When the opponent is at higher %, jab 1 on hit gets closer to 0.
Additionally, I believe it to be quite hard to act frame-perfectly out of the mini-hitstun jab 1 provides, even when expecting it, so those numbers are probably pessimistic.
In any case, jab 1 is an additional usable mixup out of shield for Yoshi (or jab 1 -> jab 2 at higher %), and if exploited correctly may open up other mixups out of shield, depending on the opposing character.
(These jab options are not as good vs ICs in the majority of scenarios though and should presumably be avoided).
In matchups such as Samus and Marth for instance, there is some merit to approaching with shield.
Marth has few direct followups off of grab, and several of his grounded moves are punishable on block.
Samus's slow grab also makes it an interesting option to consider vs her.
Yeah, in any case, players of most characters consider run-up shield to be an obvious tool worth using in some situations, but for Yoshi players it's not as intuitive to use, and more committal.
And worth mentioning, cause few Yoshi players currently think to use it.
I've mentioned the parry dash grab option select detailed by PerhapsMan a couple of times, but there are other strong option selects out there waiting to be developed. (I believe Leffen's hinted at some but never detailed them, unfortunately).
Here's one example to give an idea (note I am not a proper lab rat and haven't fleshed this out fully) :
f1-4 parry with hard shield
f5 input jump, and switch to light press of the trigger
f6+ (depends on opponent's move) Release trigger, input parry followup
If you parry the move, you will jump out of parry and do your followup.
If you parried a little early and ended up parrying/powershielding in the later parts of the preshielding animation, you will lightshield → shield release and avoid being stuck in shield in front of your opponent.
This loses if you parry too early and get grabbed (but there probably is an alternate OS with spotdodge/amsah tech waiting to be discovered), and you won't get an ideal select if you powershield before f5. You also lose if you get grabbed after the parry window. Otherwise, you more or less gucci.
Note that this requires the Yoshi player to have at least one trigger not locked into digital mode. If you use Z to lightshield this stuff isn't available to you.
This is something I think aMSa already implements but never talked about, and that I hinted at earlier, but a practical example here could illustrate the idea.
Suppose Yoshi is recovering high at 80% vs Falcon, and that Falcon jumps towards him and knees. Strong knee will overcome armour at that %, but not weak knee (both in NTSC and PAL, btw).
Yoshi can Option Select SDI (for instance, down and behind Falcon, to potentially avoid a subsequent followup, or to get hit by a weak hitbox, or perhaps down and away to sweetspot ledge grab) for this strong/weak knee situation. If hit by a strong knee, the SDI will apply and we'll be in the situation I just described. If hit by weak knee he'll keep rising, and the SDI won't apply.
There might also be specific % windows and spacings where Yoshi may wish to input an aerial, or an airdodge, or something, to Option Select a counterhit after weak knee. That input would get eaten up by hitlag or early hitstun if strong knee connects. He can then do another input after the strong knee hitstun that'd counterhit after strong knee, but be eaten up by the first aerial if weak knee occurred.
It can also be useful when you aren't sure what % you're at, or how staled the move thrown at you is, or when you don't know (tut tut) / have forgotten the armour % related to the moves the opponent can throw at you.
You get the idea, I hope. It's complex, and very underlabbed, so I'm sure there's many other situations where Yoshi has access to some of these -occasionally exploitable- options. But at the moment, too many Yoshi players default to (often panic) survival DI, which can devolve into a much more linear and clear-cut coverage for the opponent.
This idea is related to this smashboards thread discussing tech/autocancel OS :
https://smashboards.com/threads/tech-autocancel-option-select.338244/
If you've read this thread, you'll see where I'm going. Instead of going for an autocancel, Yoshi can try and DJ Land out of hitstun. This has several benefits and drawbacks :
N3z has also mentioned some of the benefits of **** DI on uthrow uair. With **** DI, you can option select SDIing out of the uair → punishing it with an uair/SDIing out → jumping out/tanking the full uair → wiggling out of tumble or uairing depending on %. Once again, not too much detail here, but Yoshi has very good and unique defensive options vs uthrow uair and uair in general waiting to be developed further.
Some angles are pretty hard to hit (tossing an egg straight up, for instance). Useful in some specific situations, not often used.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I've seen a couple of people misunderstand something about tossing eggs to force approaches. When tossing an egg at (say) a Puff to try and force her to approach / rack damage if she doesn't wanna, you shouldn't always aim the egg at her, or at where you think she will be. Since the egg explosion hitbox is bigger than the egg hitbox itself, it can be beneficial to aim near where you think she will be, since the egg explosion will be more likely to hit, and it will be harder for her to break the egg at that spacing with her aerials (or at the very least whe will have to expend more frames or lose some movement options to break the egg).
Another aspect of egg toss that I've not seen till recently (aMSa showcasing it at GTX and the like), is tossing eggs from ledge/when grabbing ledge not at a recovering opponent, but at where they will land. This is interesting especially vs characters like spacies, as they may fastfall without a hitbox near the end, egg toss generally loses to the firefox hitbox (even more so in NTSC), and the endlag of their Up B is low enough that Yoshi can't often punish it directly from ledge. You can study aMSa's sets vs Ryan Ford and Colbol for some examples of this usage of egg toss.
An untapped movement option, very useful for baiting moves, and outspacing to create a whiff punish. Anytime Yoshi is actionable with DJ available in the air, he can DJC back with dair or straight down with dair (with or without turnaround), and if he's close enough to the ground, he can autocancel the moves before they come out. This enables him to use his SH as a bait, for instance (you can even get the DJ audio cue out to confuse headphone users), or you can land almost instantly to use grounded options (fsmash/parry to dodge, CC/ASDI down, tilts, …). It's very strong.
Here's an example from aMSa's channel :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30dIVROcNho
I see a lot of Yoshi players go through the same-ish patterns between stocks, which isn't great. At high-level, they still waveland around, but they mix it up somewhat, and it's ok. The thing is though, if you miss a waveland, you are often without a DJ, and if you get kneed that's it. Depending on matchup and Yoshi %, a more conservative strategy might be to wait on the ground, low DJ → AI onto plat → shield, or something similar, could be a pretty effective turtling strategy.
With armour frames on the DJ, and an unshieldstabbable no-shieldstun shield, Yoshi is pretty safe. Can't start a combo on him with armour, and the only vilnerability frames are during the AI, or if you manage to catch him out of shielddrop. In some matchups, immediately shielding on a plat could even be a goto strat, given how some chars aren't too big a threat to a Yoshi in shield. And of course, he can lightshield and the opponent has no way of telling whether he is lightshielding or not.
Something else that is worth doing between stocks (or even during stocks if the opportunity presents itself), is storing powershields. This makes Yoshi even harder to punish shielding on a plat. There is a section on this topic on the Yoshi boards (the 'Some Yoshi Information' thread).
This is fairly-known stuff, but Yoshi has a rather unique way to deal with a get-up attack above him. He can armour through get-up attacks for quite a while (and even at % where it can overcome armour, you can still punish them some of the time), and then come down with a fair, down b, etc. If he jumped through and didn't successfully bait the armour, he can choose to stall with DJC fair or down b, or alternately DJ AC bair/dair to the ground and punish its startup. There is some risk involved, but armour does provide Yoshi with a unique way to punish such get-up attacks without having to outspace it.
Armouring through can also be done on grounded get-up attacks, but the armouring timing and spacing is very different, and significantly harder, as you are at risk of cancelling between both hits and getting hit by the second part of get-up attack. Mess up and you are very much at risk from getting hit offstage without a jump and dying if you mess up. You can alternately outspace every get-up attack in the game with fsmash (and some with down-b, I believe, but it is much tighter).
You can also deal with ledge attacks (or any attack from ledge) by going offstage and DJ armouring back onstage.
Yoshi has several moves that can be interesting to use after a slide-off (bair, uair, egg lay, for instance), but he can also DJ back in and use armour. It's another spot where armour can force your opponents to give you Yoshi-specific respect
Similarly, one can make use of how low the landing animation is on platforms. AI may be slower than Double Jump Land, but it makes the parry window easier, much like crouching does. It makes Yoshi an even stronger threat when moving on platforms, especially given the automatic parry frames of shield and his immediate shield drop.
Purely looking at frame data, his latest unstaled nair is +1 on shield, his bair -5 or so, fair -1, and uair -2. Not too bad. Repeated DJC nair is 0 on shield, I believe, making it by itself a rather strong tool when hitting an opponent facing away from you's shield.
Yoshi has some pretty decent shieldstab potential on some chars with nair → dtilt/dsmash. It can stab some spacies, but can be quite good vs chars like Marth, Samus or Falcon, too. Dtilt is -9 on shield, and few chars can punish it on block when it is well-spaced.
His dash attack can be used in a similar way to Samus's DA, as a crossup on shield. He can also wavedash through the way she does, but to less effect as his hurtbox is longer and doesn't use his grounded moves on shield the way she might.
The jab/double jab stuff you see a lot of players do is also useful in the same way it can be for other characters, of course. Jab 2 can still be ASDI'd down for a while though.
Yoshi's bair can also poke at opponent's shields safely if well-spaced, as Yoshi can weave back out safely thanks to his aerial mobility, or threaten with a DJC nair crossup. Note that if he moves too much into the shield during a bair, he is vulnerable to fast oos options such as a spacie shine.
Being able to Djcancel means Yoshi can mix up his fastfall timings at almost any point during his jump to catch opponents out. On top of that, you can DJC nair/uair through the shield as a crossup, or DJC away from the shield to avoid a grab or other followup. You can do a retreating DJC egg lay, which doesn't net much and is rather technical for us low-level Yoshi players, but is very hard to punish. And, you can also parry. You can mix up parries between aerials on shield to make some punishes whiff. You can bait out grabs with a 'poorly spaced' dtilt on shield, and if the grab punish attempt is not perfect, you can parry the grab (aMSa showcased this several times in his recent win vs Plup, for instance).
Some characters have a hard time grabbing Yoshi when he enters certain animations. Or at least, much more so than when he is standing. While crouching, or especially when in jumpsquat, his landing animation, or his nair landing animation, Yoshi dips low, and in some his head goes into the z-axis. Peach cannot standing grab his jumpsquat and landing animations, and some chars like Marth or Falcon (and probably others) also struggle a little. aMSa has two vids on his channel that showcases this : in it, he misses an L-cancel against Falcon but the grab whiffs. This can be one use case where one could choose to deliberately miss an L-cancel.
The aMSa vids :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9qx_QXOM7s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5rGgfVYqbw
All the above makes Yoshi's shield pressure especially threatening for a character like Jigglypuff or Peach. Peach can't outright beat repeated DJC nairs on shield with aerials, her up B doesn't hit low enough, and her grab will fail to connect on Yoshi when he is landing or jumpsquatting. Yoshi can parry other followups, partly follow her rolls thanks to his aerial mobility, and stab her shield after a couple of hits.
Yoshi also has other available tools. Landing close to an opponent and fsmashing can make them whiff a followup attempt thanks to the fsmash pullback. I also mentioned bair above, but Yoshi can actually, if he's tight, instead of autocancelling the bair or fastfalling it, DJ, input a DJC aerial, or DJ Land. DJ Land opens up other mixups, since he can immediately parry or fsmash out of them, or dtilt. It essentially reduces the – on shield of bair. DJC aerials opens up crossups and new shieldstab setups.
And finally, tomahawk. Weird to talk about it last. Yoshi doesn't have the fast grab followup other chars do, but he can dtilt/fsmash/start an aerial/parry. He can also DJ Land the tomahawk to reduce the landing lag. He can also do shorter tomahawks by DJCing with bair/dair at any point during the tomahawk, fastfalling and autocancelling his landing.
I'd expect there to be some useful option selects around DJLand, too.
Weedlar discusses the usefulness of uair after bair on shield here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXl-2ob_Dgw
Project Knee showcases some possibilities of DJ Land after bair in several videos (four, actually, here's a couple) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0KPlqYYPl0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HabWIc5Xjeo
(An addendum regarding Bair -> DJLand, aMSa has been experimenting with this recently. If I understood correctly, his verdict on bair into DJLand was that it was somewhat inconsistent. Bair into DJC waveland, however, was good.)
One of parrying's quirks is that if you buffer it (ie buffer shield), Yoshi can't jump out during the parry window. To avoid buffering a parry after an aerial on shield, one solution is to crouch, which also makes some oos aerials whiff in the process.
VS characters that can easily hit or grab Yoshi's crouch from shield, an alternate option after an aerial on shield is to start a turnaround. Yoshi's head moves back and goes into the z-axis slightly, meaning depending on spacing, some oos options (examples given by aMSa were Falco shine oos and Falcon grab) will whiff, and Yoshi can parry during the turnaround. This effectively extends the window where some oos options will whiff, and makes timing the parry easier (since if Yoshi ends up buffering it, he will not jump oos, and turnaround makes avoiding the buffer easier). This isn't required after all of Yoshi's aerials, if I'm not mistaken. Fsmash (pullback) and spotdodge (Head goes into the z-axis frame 1) also apply in these situations, but turnaround is a lot less of a commitment compared to fsmash.
When low offstage, Yoshi can DJ -> NIL onto the ground or a platform (and parry immediately afterwards). I don't know if there are any non-armour frames before the NIL though.
I mention it above, but side b away -> fade in is one of his best options at outspacing atttempts to hit Yoshi back offstage.
Note that Egg Roll's damage depends on Yoshi's speed, so it is generally desirable to have high speed if you are forced to move towards an opponent (high speed will also make the hitbox more likely to connect and the move more likely to clank).
It can also be interesting to exit Egg Roll as you are falling off a platform, since you will still be moving during the exit animation, and therefore slightly harder to chase/hit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36mK83F-V3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOduhv7OWcU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN1103p-R9A
People tend to think Yoshi's parry loses to multihit moves. This isn't really 100% true, but they have shown to be an interesting option. For instance, puff and Fox drill can be awkward to deal with on block, and they both lead to followups on hit.
As it turns out, Yoshi has unique options to deal with them.
This is 2018 tech, discovered by myself :D and is another beneficial consequence from Yoshi's lack of shieldstun. (I wouldn't be too surprised that Leffen might have known about this and never discussed it, but then again, this is something I've never seen anywhere).
Every other character in the game is generally unable to act between hits of a multihit move on shield due to shieldstun. (This is not true of some moves with more delay between hits, such as Sheik dsmash, which I think several other chars could also deal with on block using spotdodge).
One possible exception is ICs, who with their complex dual shield hitlag/shieldstun interactions may be able to create some windows where they are actionable. I don't know, I haven't looked into it.
However, Yoshi has no shieldstun (though his shield release has an extra frame at the start he can't do anything during). What this means, is that he can block, and spotdodge between multihits.
Now, Yoshi can't buffer spotdodge, but the Directional stick buffers spotdodges for three frames during hitlag (shoutouts to tauKhan for clarifying this point). This means that Yoshi can input the spotdodge during hitlag without issues, and no risk of shield release, or of an accidentally delayed input (he doesn't even have to release shield, in fact).
This opens up unique mixups, neutral reset opportunities, and punishes out of shield.
For instance, Peach dsmash. Most chars have to shield DI the dsmash away, and wavedash in shine/grab/usmash/etc. to get a true punish on block. This is pretty technical, requires extensive practice. You get hit if you mess up, and you need your shield to be able to tank one or two hits.
Well, not Yoshi. Yoshi can, with a full shield, tank the full dsmash, and if he is facing Peach and has been able to stay close to her, has a two-frame window to shield grab her.
This is already pretty interesting, but still has flaws. If Yoshi is facing away, he can only reset neutral with lightshield or shield release. If he misspaces the grab, he gets punished.
However, he can spotdodge between hits. On reaction. And this opens up new opportunities.
Example with Peach dsmash : https://clips.twitch.tv/TangibleThankfulClintmullinsJonCarnage
If Yoshi spotdodges after the second hit (not the first one, unless shield is low, because if you're too early the last hit will then connect), the spotdodge will avoid the subsequent hits of dsmash, and Yoshi will be able to get a true punish during Peach's endlag.
Yoshi gets around 8f advantage out of this, which is enough to get an ftilt, dtilt or dsmash out.
If he was able to spotdodge between the first and second hit (riskier), he gets a couple more frames.
Note that if the spotdodge input gets eaten up because it was done too early in hitlag, Yoshi can still shield DI in and input the grab during what would be the spotdodge frames, so this actually turns into an Option Select for him. (He can also try going for another spotdodge, of course).
The only way Yoshi can get hit while inputting spotdodge is if his timing is off (too early, but then that wouldn't be on reaction, or slightly too late, and his body is hit during the first vulnerability frame of dsmash -since his head goes into the z-axis).
Spotdodging has other advantages to it. Since Yoshi can spotdodge between any hits, it essentially changes endlag timings for the opponent. This requires them to either Option Select a Fastfall and an L-cancel/to Option Select followups during endlag, or to guess, to get the fastest followup they can. So it also increases the opponent's technical execution to keep up with the situation (and I don't think there are many Option Selects that can cover every unreactable spotdodge timing for most multihit moves, so it is likely that they lose some frames, too).
It also preserves shield, so Yoshi can if he wishes to, shield again and parry/block subsequent attacks.
This isn't limited to Peach dsmash. Sheik dsmash and Pikachu dsmash become easier to punish with the right timing (and more punishes become available). Yoshi is also able to get out of shield vs several moves on shield on reaction (Doc/Mario dair, for instance), Falcon nair (though he has better ways to deal with it), Samus uair, etc. if they don't land before the end of the hit. He has slight frame disadvantage vs some of them (a floating Peach's dair, I believe), but the amount of moves he doesn't have time to parry/buffer parry after the spotdodge to avoid the opponent's fastest option out of lag is actually very small.
Amongst other moves, this opens up new mixups vs Fox drill and Puff drill, which is also worth talking about.
Puff may land with sufficient frame disadvantage, or not have enough frame advantage to get a true followup, where without the spotdodge Yoshi could only at best reset neutral from shield. So this allows Yoshi to more aggressively shield/lightshield, and if Puff wants to challenge the spotdodges, it -I think- requires her to take more risks (by mixing fastfall/no fastfall), and provide more vulnerability windows.
Vs Fox, the mixups are complex -Fox may double shine to try and cover the spotdodge endlag, but that wouldn't beat a very late spotdodge and if the first shine hits he won't get the waveshine (I think (I don't play Fox, and I rarely play vs Fox, so I'm not sure)), but they provide Yoshi with escape opportunities and potential reversal (with parry or fsmash). Fox may also miss his shine if he does it immediately after landing, and Yoshi spotdodged the last couple of hits. And so on. I also think this is good for lower-level Yoshi players, since I'd expect lower-level Fox players to mess up the L-cancel or fastfall more often in this situation.
Here's an example of one possible mixup with Fox drill (it's more complex than that, of course, but you'll get the idea) :
https://clips.twitch.tv/TangibleThankfulClintmullinsJonCarnage
I won't list all the multihit moves here, but aggressively blocking many of them can be a thing, especially the ones with lots of endlag.
Shield into spotdodge may also be interesting in other situations - Specific double IC hits, and single-hit moves with lots of lag (Ganon dair, perhaps ?). I haven't looked enough into it to judge yet.
If you're a Yoshi main, working more on a grounded shield game and out-of-shield options should pay its dividends. He has much much more to his out-of-shield game than panic rolls.
So, yeah...
I haven't really talked about a lot of other stuff here. Shieldstab setups, reaction techchases, partial techchase coverage with DJC aerials, platform pushoff setups, platform techchase coverage through aerial → tilt/dsmash, using down b as a hard read finisher in neutral, tech traps, doubles (creative use of egg lay, egg throws as disruption/combo extenders, tilts into teammate followup, disrupting an opponent's setup, run in shield to create frame disadvantage for them …), matchup-specific strats and tech, small situations like wall teching stuff, tech chasing spacies with dash attack, using firefox/firebird to get back onstage when without a jump, making use of intangibility on usmash/fsmash/dash attack, anti-camping strats…
There's lots lots more that's worth discussing/exploring with the char and his unique depth. But I wanted to focus on more general stuff and it's already gone on long enough.
Onwards to the counterplay.
I'll mention some basic stuff, and a couple of less obvious things. Won't go into as much detail, cause I can't be bothered as much.
Here's some stuff to think about when considering the Yoshi matchup :
You can presumably prepare DI when attacking a Yoshi in the air, a form of OS in case he is able to armour through and hit you back, in order to make followups of his harder. You may also want to do a tech input while you are hitting him, in some cases.
Similarly, some moves are 'safe' on parry (or very hard to punish through parrying). A well-spaced second hit nair of Falcon's is safe on parry, for instance. Yoshi cannot pull out his juiciest punish options fast enough to outright punish the Falcon even if frame perfect after his parry.
(Setchi showcases this here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoqxyeHdVMc)
Baiting out DJCancels can be very good when the Yoshi can't actually punish whatever he tried to tank. Good usage of multihit moves, or moves that are hard to challenge through DJC/parry. Falco uair is an example of a move that is quite hard from Yoshi to challenge from above. Good awareness of Yoshi's drift and how far he'll travel during hitlag while in armour can also give you a good idea of what is 'safe' vs armour and what isn't.
Another interesting example is Falcon uthrow uair. If Falcon is in port 1, Yoshi can armour through uthrow uair from 0-36 % and at 107+ % (tested by Setchi, I believe it's 0-30% and 120+ when Falcon is port 4). However, Yoshi dips during the initial frames of his DJ, so if he doesn't cancel armour into an aerial because of the threat of uair, and doesn't airdodge out, you may be able to land a knee on him. Pseudo-combos on Yoshi can work, but the mixups involved are a little different.
I've hinted at those earlier, but moves that overcome armour kb reduction super early can be used to kill Yoshi really early. Reverse up b by Doc, Mario or Peach (in NTSC), Roy reverse up b (also works in PAL), Bowser KK grounded grab release, Marth/Roy counter vs a recovering aerial, this is all specifc stuff which will only work on Yoshi, or affect him very differently compared to the rest of the cast.
Edgeguarding him is often very different from the rest of the cast, and moves that work vs other chars (Bowser bair, Ganon tipman, Fox shine) are useless vs armour (but not as armourless Yoshi). And moves that can be dealt with by most of the cast (Ganon dair, for instance) are effective vs Yoshi.
Yoshi has tech traps, and some of his tech timings are weird, but there is stuff you can expect. You can tech dtilt at most any %, for instance. Similarly, there's a lot of stuff you can amsah tech for quite a while. Fair, dsmash, fsmash, nair are all amsah-techable, I believe.
A lot of the time, it's not that worth it. No shieldstabs and no shieldstun (enabling immediate followups), as well as the possibility to get armour through DJ, or land on the platform with aerial interrupt, means the only ways you can challenge Yoshi shielding on a platorm are through well-spaced aerials, repeated tilts beneath him (Sheik utilt is one of the harder moves for Yoshi to beat when shielding, spacies utilt are hard to punish but do have some vulnerability), or command grabs (most notably egg lay and Falcon/Ganon up b). For chars without these options, unless you have a read on his timing, you don't have much.
He can also be pushed off of platforms the way other characters can. I don't fully know the specific interactions related to platform pushoff, so perhaps Yoshi may be able to avoid the subsequent hit due to lack of shieldstun if he isn't quite off the platform after hitlag.
Also note that Yoshi can lightshield drop (no shieldstun), which means he can follow you if you try and cross up his shield on a platform.
If you know the Yoshi misses his shielddrops, or is a little slow, or always shielddrops, you can exploit that, of course.
It is SDIable though, I've seen people do it on occasion as low as 30%. This is something you can OS, and I see so few people be aware of the jab reset and attempt the SDI that I find it worth mentioning. You won't always get it, it's hard, but hey.
Dealing with Egg Lay
Egg lay is a weird move. A few things to keep in mind :
The move is very useful vs ICs, however, and requires a lot of respect from them. It's not easy to whiff punish, the invincibility makes some punishes whiff, and it provides either a 1v1 vs Popo or a 1v1 vs Nana, and Yoshi has some very good kill setups on Nana (dtilt -> dtilt -> fair, for instance). Nana doesn't mash out of the egg, either.
People seem to be rather bad at SDI out of dair, which is kinda odd. Bair is a more complex move, but you can also avoid some followups or make them harder with proper DI/SDI.
Depending on the comboing style of the Yoshi player you're facing, you might be able to get out of his combos through specific DI options. Note that uair sends straight up and therefore cannot reverse hit. If you DI multiple uairs in the same direction, kb stacking will apply and make further followups much harder.
Yoshi's hurtbox is very long, and a character like Falcon can reverse grab him from outrageous spots. This is something that takes getting used to when playing Yoshi, and something that can be exploited against him to some extent.
Egg roll's hitbox is not good, but it's an odd move since the damage dealt depends on the speed at which Yoshi's going. Also note that it takes about half a second on the ground before Yoshi refreshes his DJ when in the egg, so if you hit right back off right as he lands, he will not be able to recover.
If Yoshi does a high down b to ledge, you can beat it out as it's negatively disjointed beneath him.
If expecting dashgrab, turning around when playing a char that Yoshi can't always dashgrab is a way to avoid the grab while setting yourself for easier followups than a spotdodge would (not that his dashgrab is that hard to whiff punish). Just an amusing thing I thought I'd mention.
Yoshi cannot buffer spotdodge. He can spotdodge, but not buffer it. Note that the directional stick buffers spotdodge during hitlag for 3 frames (thanks tauKhan), so when hit on shield he can spotdodge without issues. But he might be a frame or two off in some scenarios. Now, he can parry -> spotdodge to avoid being vulnerable for a few extra frames at the beginning, but that should still leave a vulnerability frame somewhere, so if you expect a spotdodge/parry spotdodge you might be able to cover both with a long-lasting hitbox.
Egg stall is a pretty strong tool in Yoshi's arsenal. Some characters have a very hard time challenging it.
Note that the egg explosion hitbox is a lot bigger than the egg hitbox. I'm not sure I'm the best example for this, but I tend to mixup egg tosses such that some aim at my opponent, some aim at where I think he'll be, some aim *next* to where I think he will be, and some are sort of random.
Egg stalling does have its weaknesses though. It cannot cover all of the larger stages
Most characters can weave around the eggs and hit Yoshi out of it (he can never be fully intangible, there is always at least one frame of vulnerability).
Almost any move will kill him if you hit him in the latest stages of the egg toss (Fox dair provides a sad death for Yoshi as he just barely fails to regrab the ledge). Sheik can hit an egg-stalling Yoshi with her standing needles, but it is not a silver bullet. Yoshi can airdodge to regrab ledge, or even onstage, if he reacts in time.
I believe some of the recent Avalancer or aMSa sets showcase this (I also remember Android going for aerial needles with only very partial success). Spacies can attempt to shine eggs back at Yoshi, but Yoshi players with very tight egg stalls will not be hit by the reflected egg. Unless (maybe), the spacie is right in his face, in which case other options are available. Other characters' projectiles may work to an extent.
One move that is very good vs Egg stalling for most chars is dash attack. Players such as Hungrybox and Wizzrobe have started to do it.
I've seen Yoshi players die to Puff, Falco, Falcon, Sheik, Marth, Pika, Samus, Yoshi dash attacks, and others can probably connect too.
Here are excerpts from Setchi's Youtube channel showcasing this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md8Db3lCiLU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP7vZQXv9TA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZxFSGXrYuk
A few words of warning here :
Don't get me wrong, dash attack will work very well against predictable egg stall patterns (so, for the moment, most Yoshi players), and its reward when it successfully connects is very often a stock. But I've seen some people treat it as a silver bullet, when I think vs high-level Yoshi players, the risk involved may be quite high too, especially when considering Yoshi's other ledge options.
Shoutouts to the people who've labbed Yoshi extensively, cause without their insight we'd be a lot worse off than we are now. Most notably PerhapsMan, Dondon151, TauKhan and Ponkapa. Other people who've helped Yoshi in some way other or showcase some of his stuff, such as aMSa, V3ctorman, Weedlar, VJ, n3zmodgod and Project Knee. The Melee Yoshi discord, from which I've pinched a good chunk of the stuff I'm mentioning here. Thanks to Ponkapa as well for reading through this and providing feedback (such as the section on DJ Land out of run/dash). And I'm probably forgetting other people, sorry for that. I also feel like I've forgotten to talk about some important stuff I wanted to talk about, too, so I might edit this post or add some stuff if I remember it.
Shoutouts to Setchi and Psyant for being the only non-Yoshi players I know to have properly labbed Yoshi-matchup-related stuff. I hope other people start doing so and teaching me stuff about my character.
***
Other stuff to add someday, not sure whether all are relevant. Some isn't so much 'underexplored tech', and other bits would be better suited for a proper char guide, so not sure if I'll end up detailing them.
Unintuitive wallteching scenarios
Uthrow/Dthrow forced platform techchase scenarios regardless of DI vs some floaties
Option select multiple DJC aerial inputs to cover potentially different hitlag timings (if you don't know which move / which hitbox will be thrown at you), and usage of the Z-button for option selecting L-cancel
usage of jab - more disjointed than ftilt, etc.
Potential specific hitlag burning intangibility frames exploits (really really marginal)
Crouch jab pressure (see PK's video)
Grab release stuff
OS jump during throw hitstun to armour through jab regrab (unexplored, no idea if viable)
spotdodge Z-axis
Hitting meteor cancel windows
side b hitting the edge from the other side
parry frames at the end of a platform waveland (definitely worth talking about)
***
Edit (Dec 28th, 2017) :
Small nuggets of info added to the dash grab section, the roll section, the aerial from ledge section, the what to do between stocks section, egg toss section, recovery mixups section , platform AI/DJ land section.
Added a couple paragraphs on slide-off DI -> armour, and armouring through get-up attacks.
In the counterplay section, I added some notes on preparing defensive DI when hitting Yoshi in case of armour counter, SDIing his jab, and some additional subtleties regarding followups off of throws on Yoshi.
Edit (Jan 12th, 2018) :
Added a small section on run-up shield/parry, and some small comments on platform pushoff, DJLanding with bair, and a couple of very minor details.
Edit (Jan 24th, 2018) :
Added a section on Shield release -> jab 1, a Counterplay section on challenging egg stall, a small bit about NIL -> Parry as a recovery option, some extra notes on Egg Roll as a recovery option, a small bit about his grounded movement quirks, a couple of sentences about lightshield dropping, a small bit about grab/parry during spotdodge battles.
Edit (Feb 15th, 2018) :
Added a section on shield release -> spotdodge, another on Option Select SDI, and a big section entitled 'Yoshi vs Multihit moves' on what appears to be new (or at the very least previously undiscussed) 2018 tech.
Edit (Feb 19th, 2018) : Minor additions to the 'Yoshi vs Multihit' section and the 'Miscellaneous' section from the Counterplay bit.
Edit (Feb 21st, 2018) : Added tauKhan's Egg Lay invincibility loss clip, and the weight difference affecting some throws in PAL in the PAL/NTSC differences section.
Edit (Apr 16th, 2018) : Added the sections on turnaround parry, aerial interrupt -> parry/shield, edited bits relating to bair -> djland (all stuff picked up from aMSa's stream). Minor stuff on the recovery section, a small bit on shield pressure, and lots of random stuff in the TODO section just above, which I recommend looking at, since a couple of useful options (amongst more situational / unexplored / meh stuff) mentioned there that I have been to lazy to detail or have lacked the time to.
Poking around and thinking about Yoshi is fun. The char has a lot of potential, lots of unintuitive and untapped strengths that haven't been developed or discussed much yet.
Several things frustrate me a little though.
- The character is very misunderstood on several aspects, partly due to how unintuitive he is, how hard he is to play, how uncommon the character is, and how people keep spouting incorrect 2008 smashboards crap. Or blindly repeating crap like 'just fsmash as marth, he can't do anything".
- I have recurring wrist issues limiting my practice time with the char, meaning I can't implement much or showcase what I've implemented well.
- Top Yoshi players don't seem to be making use of some of these untapped strengths.
So ye, gonna talk about some of the misinformation surrounding the char, and then about some of his unintuitive attributes, and the directions the char can be pushed in.
I'm also going to be really nice and talk a little bit about playing vs Yoshi. It annoys me a little to have to do that because :
- It's not a hard character to theorycraft against, when you understand Yoshi a little. It's easier to develop counterplay than it is to push his meta, anyway.
- It is somewhat frustrating to talk to lots of people about the char, what to do against him and get little useful information specific to the char or the Yoshi matchup in return. I guess he's not the only char this happens to.
- People who've been playing for ten years, have ample opportunities to play vs the character at tournies, never took the time to theorycraft or play the char and still john that 'they lose because they don't know the matchup' irk me a little.
Anyway, fallacies about the char and stuff :
Misinformation/incomplete information about Yoshi
« Side B is disrespect »
No. NO. It is almost always is a flubbed egg toss (when not used as a recovery move). Playing the char 5 minutes would have told you that.« Side B is disrespect »
« Falco wrecks Yoshi hurr durr, shine spike breaks armour at 0% 90-10 matchup »
Nope. Well. Falco's shine has enough knockback at 0% to overcome armour, yes. BUT :
- It only barely overcomes the knockback reduction. Yoshi is therefore almost immediately actionable, and can do a quick airdodge/uair/etc. He can airdodge back when close to the stage.
- If Yoshi cancels armour right before being shined, he will be hit 'normally' by the shine and will be sent UPWARDS. (So this 2009 smashboards stuff was talking crap, and has probably hampered the char's development in that MU by subconsciously making Yoshi players think that situation has no solution. If only half the cast's meta development weren't also limited by similar kinds of misinformation).
- Either Falco attemps the shine spike, or he fakes it out to bait an armour cancel.
- Either Yoshi cancels armour or he doesn't.
It's also not actually that common an occurrence. Yoshi doesn't often have to recover low, and if he is able to recover at an ambiguous spacing, he can make the Falco think twice about going out there.
In some cases, perhaps Falco can cover everything with shine bair or whatever, but :
- Not possible at every shine spike spacing, so not always an option
- Not really explored afaik.
« Yoshi shielding on the ground sucks »
No, no it doesn't. A lot of the time, anyway. Please STOP SPREADING MISINFORMATION on that topic, ack.
Why ?
Well, let's talk about blocking a move, first. Yoshi can punish or at least garner a frame advantage from blocking on the ground against many moves.
How ? He suffers no shieldstun (this is also what makes his shielddrop especially potent).
What does this mean ? It means it's impossible to be + on Yoshi's shield in a 1v1. (The only way you could do it is by combining a move with the hitlag of a projectile). You're always going to be negative on Yoshi's shield.
Let's give an example, to illustrate the differences compared to other other shields. Take for instance, Marth tipper fsmash. I distinctly remember a high-level player posting on twitch chat that "the marth player on screen should just fsmash, Yoshi can't jump out of shield, he can't do anything", so this should be a good example.
On a non-Yoshi shield, the tipper hitbox is -25 to -28 or so. That's plenty of time for most chars to WD oos into something.
On Yoshi's shield it is (provided he acts immediately out of hitlag, which admittedly is not easy to be consistent at for most moves) -35 to -38 or so. Yoshi's shield release animation lasts 16 frames, which gives him ample time to shield release dash run cancel dsmash, or even walk fsmash if he's good at acting out of hitlag.
If Yoshi parries, the hit, he gets even more time to act out of shield/parry, since Marth suffers 9 frames of hitlag and Yoshi doesn't. (And yes, Yoshi can parry → shield, parry is just the preshielding animation, he doesn't have to jump out of it).
If a move isn't laggy enough to be shieldgrabbable / that shield release would allow a punish, and if shieldrelease → ASDI down is not desirable, Yoshi can lightshield out of most moves.
If Yoshi's shield is being pressured by very weak moves (jab, Peach dair, …), Yoshi can lightshield and force the opponent to move along with his shield to keep pressuring, giving him slightly more leniency for escaping. He can also switch between light and hard shield (to make a Peach dairing his shield keep going in a direction while he stops). This can essentially force 50/50s vs some types of pressure, and creates windows for escape.
If the opponent isn't hitting the shield at all, Yoshi can only roll, spotdodge, grab, or shield release.
However :
- Roll is a bit weird, so not everything works against it (see further on). Yoshi players tend to panic roll too much though, so it's easy enough to react to if it's the only option most of the time.
- Spotdodge/shield release is a workable (not great) mixup, since Yoshi can parry straight out of either of these options. Spotdodge is intangible f2-15 (and Yoshi's head goes into the z-axis f1), and lasts 21f. Shield release is borderline unreactable and lasts 16f. You can't easily cover both spotdodge and shield release, and a slightly slow punish attempt might turn against you.
« Yoshi can't grab Sheik, and also sometimes Marth, Falcon and Fox, his grab stinks ».
This is only partly true. First off, Standing grab works fine. The z-axis issues lie with dash grab. Dash grab only has issues when the opponents enter certain animations, and the whiff also depends on which way they are facing relative to Yoshi. Also note that Yoshi's dashgrab can grab any character in shield during the very latest parts of his dashgrab, so not every stance or animation can be abused against him, and while it does require more careful spacing vs several chars, dashgrab is usable vs the whole cast in shield.
Yoshi's dash grab has issues, but it can be used with good awareness (and more labbing, probably). You can also option select parry dash grab to partly mitigate some potential punishes.
Like most things relative to Yoshi, it's harder to use, is less intuitive, and has hidden strengths to it (the parry option select being one of them). I'm not saying Yoshi's dash grab is amazing, or anything, and it definitely has some unique flaws to it, but like most moves in the game, it has its use cases. Outright dismissing it is not the way to go.
« Yoshi's roll sucks »
This is also a weird one. Idk why people say that. While Yoshi's roll does have average intangibility and is pretty short in distance covered, it also has several unique advantages to it.
- Yoshi can parry before rolling to delay the initial vulnerability frames (not in every situation, though).
- Since the egg stays during the whole roll animation, it requires reacting to a different animation compared to the rest of the cast (and the animation itself is slightly more ambiguous). Sidenote : the roll ends as soon as the egg breaks, so people tend to be caught out by the fact that Yoshi is immediately actionable.
- Yoshi goes into the z-axis for part of the roll, avoiding some stuff (he can dodge lasers during some of the vulnerable frames that way).
- His hurtbox shrinks to the size of a pea (about the size of the rest hitbox), meaning some punish attempts will whiff, or require much more precise spacing/timing. I've seen some grabs and dtilts whiff. Some chars have fewer issues with this than others, of course.
This vid from aMSa's channel showcases some of roll's quirks :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6tesI_px8Y
« Yoshi's shield pressure is very linear and limited »
Nope. It's pretty deep and unique in some aspects. There's a lot more that can be developed around it. More on that later.
« Sheik needles wreck a Yoshi throwing eggs from the ledge ».
Not quite. A strong tool, to be sure, but not a silver bullet. See the section further down on challenging egg stall.
« Just shine the egg back at him, it'll kill him, dude » (HomeMadeWaffles)
This is mostly untrue vs a good Yoshi player, see the section on challenging egg stalling in the counterplay part of this post..
« Parrying is a read / Parrying can only be done on reaction »
I hear these from time to time (ah, I wish Melee commentators were putting in the effort 64 commentators put into understanding the characters).
Neither is strictly true.
You can parry some moves on reaction (if you're good). SH stomp, for instance, or telegraphed late aerials.
However, mixing one's timing up for most moves will mean the Yoshi player has to read the timing. For instance, early knee and latest knee out of Falcon's SH can't both be covered by the same parry, in most scenarios.
You could consider it a 50/50.
Note, however, that Yoshi can empty parry anytime before he jumps, if he so chooses. So he might 'randomly' parry a move, ie neither a read nor a reaction.
« Yoshi is mostly the same in PAL ».
This is false, for several definitions of false. Yoshi was changed in four ways in PAL :
- Weight increased from 108 to 111.
- Dair total damage is reduced from 51 to 38 %. To be more accurate, each hit's damage was reduced from 4 to 3%, (therefore also affecting hitstun and kb).
- Usmash deals 1% more damage AND has more base knockback (26 → 30). Yes, I know, that info isn't on the wiki.
- Fsmash deals 1% more damage AND KB growth was increased from 94 to 98 (not on the wiki either).
- Usmash followups are availble at lower % windows (and generally these windows are smaller).
- Fsmash and Usmash beat CC slightly earlier
- You combo off of dair later in PAL, and it's overall a slightly less useful move.
- The weight change makes him heavier than Samus and Ganondorf in PAL. It allows him to CC/armour through most moves for an extra 1-2%, and makes some specific set-kb moves, such as Mario up b, Peach Parasol first hit, Doc up b first hit, ccable and unable to surmount armour in PAL. So some NTSC gimps don't work in PAL, or are a lot harder to connect.
- Worst-case scenario, usmash and fsmash kill 12% earlier than in NTSC. Usually, the difference is about 15%. But the moves become kill threats much earlier than NTSC, as a DI trap fsmash will kill some characters 30% earlier than they would in NTSC. They also break CC earlier.
All this already overall significantly buffs Yoshi in PAL, both vs fastfallers and floaties. But he also benefits a lot from the Fox and Sheik nerfs. More so than most of the cast, in fact.
Sheik's lack of chaingrab, lack of kill confirms off of grabs in PAL, and few strong moves vs armour, means Yoshi can essentially DI techchases away/offstage, or lightshield away most of her stuff, while he himself has strong combo tools, and edgeguard setups. Sheik struggles a lot more at low % vs Yoshi. And he kills earlier, too. I'm oversimplifying, of course, but the difference is very noticeable.
Vs Fox, the killing power is basically swapped around. Yoshi kills 15-30% earlier, Fox usmash kills 10-15% later. Yoshi also heavily benefits from the firefox nerfs. He's not the only one, of course (Samus, Luigi, etc. also unlock new edgeguarding tools vs the smaller flames), but :
- He can armour through the flames for quite a while longer due to the reduced damage.
- Nair and bait beat/trade with the flame hitbox in situations where they would trade with/lose to them in NTSC and result in a failed edgeguard.
- The reduced distance means Yoshi does not have to hit Fox offstage four-five times like he does in NTSC. Yoshi does not have a 'gimp move' at low % on Fox. He doesn't have a Pikachu uair, Luigi dair or charge shot, so in general his nair, dash attack, and dtilt have to be rinse-repeated (or can't be used vs some angles) several times in NTSC to send the Fox sufficiently far. Edgeguarding a Fox at super low % in NTSC is very hard to do.
In comparison, a char like Pikachu also benefits from the nerfs on firefox, but the execution requirements and the amount of rinse-repeat necessary to finish off the offstage spacie are not impacted anywhere near as much. Most of the time, a Fox that gets uair semi-spiked is dead, regardless of version.
Of course, there are certain spacings and angles in PAL where the Fox recovery is better than the NTSC one so it's not 100% an improvement (something which people never really talk about, same for the reduced flames, idk why), but overall the benefits in PAL greatly outweigh the downsides.
Several nerfed moves can be armoured through for a good while longer. Ganon, Sheik, Falcon and Fox are the most affected matchups.
Another minor difference that generally is a buff for Yoshi in PAL is that several weight-dependent throws have a smaller frame advantage against him.
You can find the full list here (https://smashboards.com/threads/pal...e-advantage-differences.449710/#post-21825800), but amongst other things this includes :
- Fox's uthrow on Yoshi (uthrow -> bair connects for a shorter while, uthrow -> uair barely ever is a thing)
- ICs dthrow on Yoshi (affects the chaingrab)
- Mario Bros dthrows (affects the chaingrab vs the marios, and followups vs all three)
- Link dthrow (several followups affected)
- Marth / Roy dthrow / bthrow / fthrow (easier to react to the DI mixup attempts)
Now, a lot of these changes aren't as meaningful at very high levels compared to the rest. Still, the Fox and Sheik matchups are a little easier at all levels, and lower/mid-level Yoshi players have a little bit of an easier/slightly more lenient time getting overcoming some obstacles.
« Yoshi can't really aerial from the ledge (Toph) »
Uhhh, ok. Commentator's bluffs can be a little irksome.
Yoshi can DJ nair from ledge, he can intangible uair → land onstage and L-cancel, he can dair from ledge, bair from ledge, fair from ledge, egg lay from ledge, and even reverse DJC fair/bair fom ledge. He can regrab ledge in some cases.
While I'm at it, he can also intangible side-b onstage, intangible down-b stall, ECE, and reverse-ECE.
He also has a few frames intangibility from his ledgedash, and a few more off of his aerial interrupt. His DJ also has the usual armour frames. He can extend his intangibility after AI/ledgedash with invulnerable parry frames, and has a haxdash that is humanly doable.
He can also release ledge, drop down for a few frames and DJ back on with armour. This is very effective against some options meant to catch aerials from ledge, or armour at higher % (Sheik dsmash is an example, you can wait it out by dropping down, jumping back up and punishing its endlag). Yoshi can even No-Impact Land the DJ if he cares to.
So, uh, yeah, he can aerial from ledge, amongst other things. Spending an hour prepping for commentating a Yoshi set (or Ics, or whatever), or actually messing with the char / reading about the char would have told you as much.
« Super armour »
I don't really care about this much, but others do, so...
Yoshi's armour isn't technically super armour (the way the term is used in other fighting games, at least). It's a subtractive or knockback reduction armour. (-120 KB, which is the same as the CC threshold), which still suffers hitlag. Nana similarly has a -5 KB armour on at all times.
« Oh my god the pullback from his grab dodged the opponent's grab » (Crunch).
No. He parried the grab, and then grabbed. Parry → shield/roll/spotdodge/grab/... are all options, you know, Yoshi doesn't have to jump after parrying.
« Grabbing Yoshi near the ledge means he's dead cause he gets released without a jump and dies ».
I've come across this several times, so I'm mentioning it here, even though it seems really obvious to me (I guess this is something I knew about intuitively from my days of casual play). You can force aerial release by including jump inputs in your mashing. People like Setchi have labbed aerial/grounded release in more detail if you're curious about the specifics, but Yoshi is not dead in this situation. The only potential exception is Koopa Klaw, which (I believe, it's a bit weird) forces grounded release on mashout.
« Drill beats parry, multihit moves wreck Yoshi »
Strong options, not silver bullets. There are ways around several of those, with or without parry.
See the section on Yoshi vs Multihit moves (2018 tech) for Yoshi-specific options vs multhit moves.
« Parry is a two frame window »
Not always. Too lazy to detail here. Just gonna use this space to point out that while the recommended setup for most chars by TauKhan is one trigger tricked, the other setup in such a way that you can't digitally press shield (powershield with trigger tricked trigger, lightshield/shield with the other, avoid ADT, and still have the better WD oos setups available). With Yoshi you don't want that setup. You want one controller trigger tricked for consistent parries, and the other one untampered with, ideally.
OK, enough about misinformation, let's move on.
Underdeveloped stuff and unintuitive or not well-understood aspects of the char
Let's talk about Yoshi's potential. I can think of several things Yoshi players aren't doing at the moment, most of which could have a largely positive impact on their play.
A couple of these I am less sure of, but I'll mention them anyway, because you never know.
Note that a lot of this is aimed at high-level players, far better than I. Not all of it though. Of course, the counterplay I'll mention afterwards applies at all levels. Some of this is also known in some circles, so some people will have to sift through this, but I hope there's food for thought for everyone.
Hopefully somebody with a deeper understanding of the char will add some stuff / correct some of what I say. It's a long shot. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, of course. A couple of bits of tech here (mostly related to DJ Land) also apply to Peach.
Usage of uthrow
I see a lot of Yoshi players almost exclusively use dthrow, and that's a shame, cause there are followups on some of the cast with uthrow, and it creates a very interesting DI mixup with dthrow (meaning a grab on a Fox at 115ish % in PAL, or 130 % in NTSC should b e a 50/50 for a kill, more or less).
Armour % awareness
I get the impression that many Yoshi players aren't aware of the % at which armour may give in, and that they react to it instead of anticipating it. Which is a shame, because :
- You can punish some stuff that overcomes armour since you are in so little hitstun when not sent into tumble (ie a slow move that does 121 KB will inflict 1 KB on a Yoshi with armour, and will be punishable). You might at least want to trade damage.
- You can bait a move of theirs, tank it, lose armour, and be actionable almost immediately with reduced KB if you're smart, and punish. This can be used offensively.
- You may want to DI/SDI differently when armour is overcome (yeah, you can SDI when armour loses, you can't if armour holds). You may want to SDI towards the ground and fastfall to land faster for an easier followup, or move away to avoid a followup of their own. Too often we tend to survival DI/SDI, or input something that won't work, when better spacing and awareness of % would lead to more favourable situations.
- Awareness of tumble % would also be beneficial.
- In cases where you aren't sure of the %, there are probably some option selects that could be implemented (or vs different hitboxes, I'm sure there's an option select at some % vs Marth tipper/non-tipper where tipper overcomes armour and non-tipper doesn't just waiting to be discovered). See the section on Option Select SDI for an example.
Recovery mixups
A lot of Yoshi players tend to default (on reaction perhaps ?) to the same stuff when they lose armour, but also have limited recovery patterns. Yoshi actually has a large amount of mixups that change up momentum, all of which can be useful in some spots. Here's a sample :
- Fall/fastfall, with drift. Yoshi's overall very good air mobility allows him to weave offstage and then back in. Sometimes just landing directly onstage works.
- Aerial
- Egg lay
- airdodge
- Side B
- Reverse Side B (has a different stall and dodges some moves in ways side b wouldn't)
- Egg toss to halt momentum
- airdodge back/in, fade in/out, fastfall/no fastfall
- Down B to ledge or onstage (the latter isn't usually recommended unless you know the stars will hit or can make your landing ambiguous by falling between plats).
- DJC aerial to halt momentum
- Egg toss to sweetspot ledge.
- Release ledge, fall for a few frames, then DJ back onto stage with armour (good for waiting out a dsmash or dash attack or whatever, and can NIL on landing).
I see a few too many Yoshi players airdodge up after losing armour at spacings where there are many mixups available. The reverse side b in particular is one I believe could be seen a little more.
I wonder if some crazy situations like get baired at 80% by Falco → lose armour but SDI away from him → egg lay → get to stage asap would work. My guess is 'probably'.
The section on Option Select SDI also relates to recovery.
There are also other mixups from the ledge that are worth considering (most are mentioned in the 'Yoshi can't aerial from ledge' commentator crap section). On top of those discussed options, Yoshi has a humanly feasible haxdash, and can DJ into AI or NIL on some top and side platforms. He can also make the normal options safer than other chars can by tossing an egg first (ie, toss an egg before doing a ledgehop, meaning an opponent has to beware the egg first, and Yoshi can turnaround DJC egg toss back to ledge if need be).
CC/ASDI down → stuff
Oddly enough, players like aMSa don't seem to ASDI down or CC as much as they could, which is a shame, given Yoshi's weight and great options out of ASDI down (dtilt/dsmash, ftilt and utilt, dtilt in particular beating an opponent's own ASDI attempt). I think this'd help Yoshi's ground game further. Parry is always on the table, too.
Pummelling
This one sounds incredibly obvious, but... I see very few Yoshi players pummel.
OK, in some matchups you might really want to dthrow as fast as possible to try and get the most favourable Dis out of your opponent. However, in matchups where grabs net you very little, or matchups and % where uthrow/dthrow provides a DI mixup, you should almost always pummel. That 3-9% is nothing to scoff at (and Yoshi's 'combo' window for pummel is lenient enough even for non-buffered throws, meaning you can still pummel once and throw without losing a DI mixup even at fairly low %).
Angling Fsmash
We Yoshi players prob don't do enough of this. Uangled fsmash and dangled fsmash are both useful for some throw followups. On top of that, dangled fsmash will hit low crouches, and hit quite low making it useful for some edgeguards (plus head intangibility). Uangled can also be used more vs a floating Peach.
Proper use of tilts/turnaround tilts
There are many many DI mixups we can net off of tilts. Dangled ftilt (DAFT) and utilt can both with the right DI lead to Nair/uair at very high % on spacies (utilt → uair can connect after 150%). Ftilt has 3 different hitboxes that send at different angles. Depending on %, spacing, positioning (nearby platforms and the like), and what DI mixup you want, you may want a specific angled ftilt, and a specific hitbox.
This is something I see few Yoshi players experiment with. I see aMSa and Plata occasionally chain 3 ftilts together, or Avalancer go for uangled ftilt → dangled ftilt, but a lot more could be developed there. aMSa makes very little use of dangled ftilt, for instance, which is a shame. At some % you also have enough time to wavedash through turnaround tilt, (or dash through pivot ftilt if you're good at that stuff), for an additional layer of DI mixup. And similarly to dangled fsmash, dangled ftilt will hit low crouches.
Some of the stuff I mention here also applies to turnaround/no turnaround nair, too.
Proper use of tilt/smash DI traps
Another important point. There are many % windows and moves out of which Yoshi can choose to combo into either a tilt, or a smash. We don't make enough use of these DI traps. Fsmash and dsmash both send at very nasty angles, and can outright kill a fastfaller at mid % on the right DI (especially in PAL). And there are many places where one can choose to fsmash or dsmash instead of extending a combo through an uair or whatever. Hard nair at low %, soft nair and first hit bair at medium-high % can also lead to dsmash with the right DI on several chars.
I feel that a lot of Yoshi players are a little overfond of extended comboing, when simply sending a Falco offstage at 50 % can get you a kill, or some damage off of their attempts to recover. A lot of people tend to DI out by default at low % and in at high % vs Yoshi players that don't make full use of this mixup. Those Yoshi players also expose themselves to potentially harder followups through knockback stacking. Mixups will net you some earlier kills, some extended or easier combos.
I can safely assure you killing a (PAL) Fox from center stage by landing uair → fsmash at 45 % will provide its amount of satisfaction, too.
Grounded followups off of parry / parry → GTFO
Yoshi's parry → DJ Land → grounded followups is something I very rarely see. Few Yoshi players have implemented these followups into their game. I'm not saying everyone should be multiparrying (also known as parry hopping) multishines, but dsmash, uitilt ftilt and the like can all lead to a lot more at some % than nair/uair would. Some Yoshi players fall victim to parry an aerial → DJC nair, at % where they can be ASDI down shined or grabbed. Grounded options (even JC usmash), or simply GTFO after parrying are better at these low %, though a little slower and in some ways more committal.
Dair vs CC
I'm not sure how much this one applies in every matchup or whether it really would work at high-level. But vs a char just waiting to CC/ASDI down punish a SHFFL nair or something (Falco cc shine, or more commonly for the SHFFL Peach/Samus waiting to CC dsmash), it may be more useful to dair instead, especially in NTSC.
Dair has several advantages :
- No need to fastfall in many situations, since the output is continuous, meaning you will be able to prepare for defensive options more easily (and avoid getting hit for 60%) by Peach
- It is harder to properly time the CC/ASDI down for them.
- You are less at risk of outright losing to an early move due to the bigger hitbox of dair compared to nair
- It'll combo at higher % if they don't escape out of it
- Damage output potentially greater
You can expect a lower-level player to be bad at SDIing out of dair (a lot of high-level players don't seem to do it well atm), and fail the punish. If you're low-level like me and you feel you have to go in and do a potentially a little dumb SHFFL nair into a Peach, try dair instead. Food for thought, anyway.
Pivot ftilt/fsmash
Very strong options for Yoshi. However, I'm not very knowledgeable on pivots, and how/when to use them so I won't detail these further, sorry. Pivot bair is also a strong tool, Weedlar makes use of it a lot.
Hurtbox manipulation
This isn't really a new or underdeveloped thing but something I thought I'd touch on a bit because it's not intuitive for many players (I see a lot of people chuckle sourly when they get hit by an fsmash, as if it were something they shouldn't have gotten hit by). Understanding how Yoshi's hurtboxes shift will help develop some unintuitive approaches/baits/whiff punishes.
Yoshi has a long body, long hurtbox, and a big nose, but he has some of the best hurtbox manipulation in the game. His crouch, jumpsquat, fsmash, fair, usmash, dashback and turnaround double jump instant land (DJLand) all shift his hurtboxes around significantly. Here's a few details on fsmash and fair :
The pullback on fsmash is halfway complete on the first frame of the move, almost done on the second frame. This enables Yoshi to whiff punish any move aimed to hit his nose. Double fsmash also is a usable tool. Fsmash is also not always easy to punish on whiff.
Yoshi pulls his head back completely during the fair startup, and then brings it down in ONE frame (and the hitbox expands in size vertically the frame after that). This makes it a move that's harder to challenge than it looks from certain angles. It can also autocancel from a SH (not trivial, requires some practice), making it a better zoning tool than one might think at first glance.
Other examples of hurtbox manipulation creating whiff punishes include Marth'd dash (his dashback is an infamous source of frustration to some), Sheik's grab (not too useful, but Pika can't grab Sheik from behind if she's in her grab animation), Ganon/Falcon fsmash and down b. Several low crouches and jumpsquats, too.
DJ Land for turnaround/acting out of run
This can be an alternate for pivots, with some extra use cases and benefits (but loss of a few frames wherever pivot is available as an option). It's essentially the fastest way in the game to do a grounded move out of run that requires you to be standing/walking. It also doesn't have a distance constraint the way pivot has. You can extend dash dances with it. You can find yourself standing and facing either direction at any point of a run at the cost of a few frames, which is something chars without DJ Land can't do. The turnaround also shifts his head and tail hurtboxes around, which occasionally comes in useful.
This piece of tech also applies to Peach, but Peach's most interesting ground options (a lot of the time), are also run-cancellable, or usable from run (dtilt, dsmash, dash attack). Yoshi has other moves he might want to use, such as utilt, ftilt, fsmash. I'm only briefly mentioning this, but it opens up *a lot* of options.
Aerial Interrupt (AI) / DJ Land for platform followups
A lot of Yoshi players are overfond of wavelanding. A player used to calling out jumps or wavelands can often catch on to those regular movement patterns (Samus players notably come to mind). Yoshi has many movement options that can make his movement harder to predict and call out, but some of them are underused.
Aerial interrupt and DJ Land both provide faster means of getting onto side plats or top plats than wavelanding, enabling more coverage during platform techchasing, or more extended followups off of fair at high %, amongst other things. Another benefit of these platform movement options is that you can punish many attempts at calling out a waveland (through AI -> dsmash, for instance).
Given how much top Samus players make use of aerial interrupt, and how much Peach players make use of DJ Land, there's a lot to be developed for Yoshi too.
DJ Land also has several extra benefits which are discussed in other sections.
Something I also forgot to mention is that Yoshi can DJ NIL onto some top platforms. He can even do so from the ledge on some stages, reducing the amount of vulnerability frames after armour and before parry.
A way to make DJ Land more lenient is to input backair right afterwards. I'm not knowledgeable enough about it to know whether there are any frame tradeoffs in some situations, but it almost certainly has its uses.
Parry out of roll/spotdodge/shield release/tech
Yoshi cannot parry out of roll, etc. without releasing the trigger and pressing it again. I've detailed usage of parry for getting out of shield pressure, but I see few Yoshi players actually do it. Parrying out of tech is also something to work on, since it provides a frame 1 way of dodging grab (to my knowledge, excluding chars with frame 1 attacks such as shine and rest, the only characters who have frame 1 grab dodges are Pikachu and Kirby in some matchups with their very low jumpsquats). Anyway, ye, parry is stronk, and available a lot of the time. Lightshield out of these options is also useful.
Shield Release/Spotdodge -> Jab 1
I've talked about out-of-shield options earlier, but only thought of this one recently, and it's worth having its own section. Shield release/spotdodge -> jab 1 are also interesting options, especially the former.
Shield release -> jab is borderline unpunishable on reaction for most characters (only jabs and similar moves can hope to connect, and depending on the character the option might be counterable).
And remember, Yoshi can parry as soon as the move is done.
On top of that, jab 1 is 'unccable and unASDI-downable' for a very long time (and jab 2 starts beating ASDI down around the time jab 1 starts being ASDI-downable).
Unstale jab 1 is at worst -7 on hit, at 0%, on the whole cast (except on PAL Yoshi, DK and Bowser, where it's -8).
If they don't true CC it, of course (CC still affects hitlag, even on moves with too little KB for CC landing to occur). It is about -11 on block on a non-Yoshi-non-double-ICs shield, so not every move will be able to punish, if it's well spaced. When the opponent is at higher %, jab 1 on hit gets closer to 0.
Additionally, I believe it to be quite hard to act frame-perfectly out of the mini-hitstun jab 1 provides, even when expecting it, so those numbers are probably pessimistic.
In any case, jab 1 is an additional usable mixup out of shield for Yoshi (or jab 1 -> jab 2 at higher %), and if exploited correctly may open up other mixups out of shield, depending on the opposing character.
(These jab options are not as good vs ICs in the majority of scenarios though and should presumably be avoided).
Shield release into spotdodge
Yoshi cannot jump out of shield release, unlike other characters. However, like the rest of them, he can spotdodge. This has the advantage of shifting the expected intangibility and vulnerability frames of both shield release and spotdodge, and mixing up opponent's timings and visual cues. So yeah, when aiming for a Yoshi oos option, it's a guess. Even with a multihit move (see the section on Yoshi vs Multihit moves), you cannot cover every possible escape window, especially if you act on reaction. And the reversal potential is almost always there.
Run-up parry/shield
Some characters have few followups on Yoshi after a grab, and some have laggy moves on the ground.
In matchups such as Samus and Marth for instance, there is some merit to approaching with shield.
Marth has few direct followups off of grab, and several of his grounded moves are punishable on block.
Samus's slow grab also makes it an interesting option to consider vs her.
Yeah, in any case, players of most characters consider run-up shield to be an obvious tool worth using in some situations, but for Yoshi players it's not as intuitive to use, and more committal.
And worth mentioning, cause few Yoshi players currently think to use it.
Option selects (OS)
I've mentioned the parry dash grab option select detailed by PerhapsMan a couple of times, but there are other strong option selects out there waiting to be developed. (I believe Leffen's hinted at some but never detailed them, unfortunately).
Here's one example to give an idea (note I am not a proper lab rat and haven't fleshed this out fully) :
f1-4 parry with hard shield
f5 input jump, and switch to light press of the trigger
f6+ (depends on opponent's move) Release trigger, input parry followup
If you parry the move, you will jump out of parry and do your followup.
If you parried a little early and ended up parrying/powershielding in the later parts of the preshielding animation, you will lightshield → shield release and avoid being stuck in shield in front of your opponent.
This loses if you parry too early and get grabbed (but there probably is an alternate OS with spotdodge/amsah tech waiting to be discovered), and you won't get an ideal select if you powershield before f5. You also lose if you get grabbed after the parry window. Otherwise, you more or less gucci.
Note that this requires the Yoshi player to have at least one trigger not locked into digital mode. If you use Z to lightshield this stuff isn't available to you.
Option Select SDI
This is something I think aMSa already implements but never talked about, and that I hinted at earlier, but a practical example here could illustrate the idea.
Suppose Yoshi is recovering high at 80% vs Falcon, and that Falcon jumps towards him and knees. Strong knee will overcome armour at that %, but not weak knee (both in NTSC and PAL, btw).
Yoshi can Option Select SDI (for instance, down and behind Falcon, to potentially avoid a subsequent followup, or to get hit by a weak hitbox, or perhaps down and away to sweetspot ledge grab) for this strong/weak knee situation. If hit by a strong knee, the SDI will apply and we'll be in the situation I just described. If hit by weak knee he'll keep rising, and the SDI won't apply.
There might also be specific % windows and spacings where Yoshi may wish to input an aerial, or an airdodge, or something, to Option Select a counterhit after weak knee. That input would get eaten up by hitlag or early hitstun if strong knee connects. He can then do another input after the strong knee hitstun that'd counterhit after strong knee, but be eaten up by the first aerial if weak knee occurred.
It can also be useful when you aren't sure what % you're at, or how staled the move thrown at you is, or when you don't know (tut tut) / have forgotten the armour % related to the moves the opponent can throw at you.
You get the idea, I hope. It's complex, and very underlabbed, so I'm sure there's many other situations where Yoshi has access to some of these -occasionally exploitable- options. But at the moment, too many Yoshi players default to (often panic) survival DI, which can devolve into a much more linear and clear-cut coverage for the opponent.
DJLand/autocancel/tech/waveland option select
This also applies to Peach players (I've no idea if they use it, but I think the situation would arise less for them).
This idea is related to this smashboards thread discussing tech/autocancel OS :
https://smashboards.com/threads/tech-autocancel-option-select.338244/
If you've read this thread, you'll see where I'm going. Instead of going for an autocancel, Yoshi can try and DJ Land out of hitstun. This has several benefits and drawbacks :
- You gain three actionability frames compared to autocancelling a move.
- If you wish to throw out a move, you may limit the directions in which you can tech (I may be wrong on this depending on available stick angles for moves vs the ones available for techs, and given that you can turnaround the DJ Land).
- Harder to act perfectly out of DJ Land
- Hurtbox isn't as advantageously positioned against some followups compared to autocancel landing
- If done improperly and you fail the waveland you will just DJ and that can be highly undesirable in some situations.
Tap jump out of some forms of hitstun
This applies to the whole cast, but in some situations to Yoshi exclusively. Now, I believe in most situations x/y/tap jump all provide the same amount of buffer frames for jumping out of hitstun. However, out of throws that is not the case. Only tap jump buffers. Therefore, avoiding some throw followups (uthrow uair anyone?) is easier with tap jump. And since Yoshi gets armour on the first frame of DJ, there are more situations where it might be interesting to consider, since he'll get out of followups immediately without losing jump.
**** DI out of uthrow uair
N3z has also mentioned some of the benefits of **** DI on uthrow uair. With **** DI, you can option select SDIing out of the uair → punishing it with an uair/SDIing out → jumping out/tanking the full uair → wiggling out of tumble or uairing depending on %. Once again, not too much detail here, but Yoshi has very good and unique defensive options vs uthrow uair and uair in general waiting to be developed further.
Punishing moves on block / blocking on the ground more
I've explained in detail earlier why Yoshi's shield was stll decent on the ground, so I won't talk about it again. But ye, a lot of stuff is punishable on block, or can be blocked and escaped from, don't forget it.
Lightshield grab
Similarly to Luigi, Marth, or Ics (the lack of shieldstun making up for the slower grab), Yoshi can lightshield several moves and grab them. The most obvious are dash attacks (spacies dash attacks are a good example), but I think some overshot moves that hit Yoshield early can probably also be lightshield grabbed, depending on spacing. It's something I very rarely see, in any case.
Egg toss usage
Some angles are pretty hard to hit (tossing an egg straight up, for instance). Useful in some specific situations, not often used.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I've seen a couple of people misunderstand something about tossing eggs to force approaches. When tossing an egg at (say) a Puff to try and force her to approach / rack damage if she doesn't wanna, you shouldn't always aim the egg at her, or at where you think she will be. Since the egg explosion hitbox is bigger than the egg hitbox itself, it can be beneficial to aim near where you think she will be, since the egg explosion will be more likely to hit, and it will be harder for her to break the egg at that spacing with her aerials (or at the very least whe will have to expend more frames or lose some movement options to break the egg).
Another aspect of egg toss that I've not seen till recently (aMSa showcasing it at GTX and the like), is tossing eggs from ledge/when grabbing ledge not at a recovering opponent, but at where they will land. This is interesting especially vs characters like spacies, as they may fastfall without a hitbox near the end, egg toss generally loses to the firefox hitbox (even more so in NTSC), and the endlag of their Up B is low enough that Yoshi can't often punish it directly from ledge. You can study aMSa's sets vs Ryan Ford and Colbol for some examples of this usage of egg toss.
DJ FF AC bair/dair as a movement option
An untapped movement option, very useful for baiting moves, and outspacing to create a whiff punish. Anytime Yoshi is actionable with DJ available in the air, he can DJC back with dair or straight down with dair (with or without turnaround), and if he's close enough to the ground, he can autocancel the moves before they come out. This enables him to use his SH as a bait, for instance (you can even get the DJ audio cue out to confuse headphone users), or you can land almost instantly to use grounded options (fsmash/parry to dodge, CC/ASDI down, tilts, …). It's very strong.
Here's an example from aMSa's channel :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30dIVROcNho
Wiggling out of tumble
A little something Yoshi players could work on a little more. Note that wiggling out of tumble requires a stick smash input, which suffers from the same polling issues dashback has. I see some Yoshi players do a backair out of tumble, which is fine at most spacings, but there are some very specific spacings where only a D-stick smash input will give you enough time to survive.
Dealing with the opponent's fountain invincibility
I see a lot of Yoshi players go through the same-ish patterns between stocks, which isn't great. At high-level, they still waveland around, but they mix it up somewhat, and it's ok. The thing is though, if you miss a waveland, you are often without a DJ, and if you get kneed that's it. Depending on matchup and Yoshi %, a more conservative strategy might be to wait on the ground, low DJ → AI onto plat → shield, or something similar, could be a pretty effective turtling strategy.
With armour frames on the DJ, and an unshieldstabbable no-shieldstun shield, Yoshi is pretty safe. Can't start a combo on him with armour, and the only vilnerability frames are during the AI, or if you manage to catch him out of shielddrop. In some matchups, immediately shielding on a plat could even be a goto strat, given how some chars aren't too big a threat to a Yoshi in shield. And of course, he can lightshield and the opponent has no way of telling whether he is lightshielding or not.
Something else that is worth doing between stocks (or even during stocks if the opportunity presents itself), is storing powershields. This makes Yoshi even harder to punish shielding on a plat. There is a section on this topic on the Yoshi boards (the 'Some Yoshi Information' thread).
Armouring through platform get-up attacks
This is fairly-known stuff, but Yoshi has a rather unique way to deal with a get-up attack above him. He can armour through get-up attacks for quite a while (and even at % where it can overcome armour, you can still punish them some of the time), and then come down with a fair, down b, etc. If he jumped through and didn't successfully bait the armour, he can choose to stall with DJC fair or down b, or alternately DJ AC bair/dair to the ground and punish its startup. There is some risk involved, but armour does provide Yoshi with a unique way to punish such get-up attacks without having to outspace it.
Armouring through can also be done on grounded get-up attacks, but the armouring timing and spacing is very different, and significantly harder, as you are at risk of cancelling between both hits and getting hit by the second part of get-up attack. Mess up and you are very much at risk from getting hit offstage without a jump and dying if you mess up. You can alternately outspace every get-up attack in the game with fsmash (and some with down-b, I believe, but it is much tighter).
You can also deal with ledge attacks (or any attack from ledge) by going offstage and DJ armouring back onstage.
Slide-off DI -> armour
Yoshi has several moves that can be interesting to use after a slide-off (bair, uair, egg lay, for instance), but he can also DJ back in and use armour. It's another spot where armour can force your opponents to give you Yoshi-specific respect
Aerial Interrupt -> parry/shield
In the shield pressure section, I mention the benefits of Yoshi's jumpsquat and landing animations.
Similarly, one can make use of how low the landing animation is on platforms. AI may be slower than Double Jump Land, but it makes the parry window easier, much like crouching does. It makes Yoshi an even stronger threat when moving on platforms, especially given the automatic parry frames of shield and his immediate shield drop.
Shield pressure
There is a lot to say about Yoshi's shield pressure. Some of the stuff I discussed here is used by everyone, some is very underdeveloped and doesn't always come to mind.
Purely looking at frame data, his latest unstaled nair is +1 on shield, his bair -5 or so, fair -1, and uair -2. Not too bad. Repeated DJC nair is 0 on shield, I believe, making it by itself a rather strong tool when hitting an opponent facing away from you's shield.
Yoshi has some pretty decent shieldstab potential on some chars with nair → dtilt/dsmash. It can stab some spacies, but can be quite good vs chars like Marth, Samus or Falcon, too. Dtilt is -9 on shield, and few chars can punish it on block when it is well-spaced.
His dash attack can be used in a similar way to Samus's DA, as a crossup on shield. He can also wavedash through the way she does, but to less effect as his hurtbox is longer and doesn't use his grounded moves on shield the way she might.
The jab/double jab stuff you see a lot of players do is also useful in the same way it can be for other characters, of course. Jab 2 can still be ASDI'd down for a while though.
Yoshi's bair can also poke at opponent's shields safely if well-spaced, as Yoshi can weave back out safely thanks to his aerial mobility, or threaten with a DJC nair crossup. Note that if he moves too much into the shield during a bair, he is vulnerable to fast oos options such as a spacie shine.
Being able to Djcancel means Yoshi can mix up his fastfall timings at almost any point during his jump to catch opponents out. On top of that, you can DJC nair/uair through the shield as a crossup, or DJC away from the shield to avoid a grab or other followup. You can do a retreating DJC egg lay, which doesn't net much and is rather technical for us low-level Yoshi players, but is very hard to punish. And, you can also parry. You can mix up parries between aerials on shield to make some punishes whiff. You can bait out grabs with a 'poorly spaced' dtilt on shield, and if the grab punish attempt is not perfect, you can parry the grab (aMSa showcased this several times in his recent win vs Plup, for instance).
Some characters have a hard time grabbing Yoshi when he enters certain animations. Or at least, much more so than when he is standing. While crouching, or especially when in jumpsquat, his landing animation, or his nair landing animation, Yoshi dips low, and in some his head goes into the z-axis. Peach cannot standing grab his jumpsquat and landing animations, and some chars like Marth or Falcon (and probably others) also struggle a little. aMSa has two vids on his channel that showcases this : in it, he misses an L-cancel against Falcon but the grab whiffs. This can be one use case where one could choose to deliberately miss an L-cancel.
The aMSa vids :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9qx_QXOM7s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5rGgfVYqbw
All the above makes Yoshi's shield pressure especially threatening for a character like Jigglypuff or Peach. Peach can't outright beat repeated DJC nairs on shield with aerials, her up B doesn't hit low enough, and her grab will fail to connect on Yoshi when he is landing or jumpsquatting. Yoshi can parry other followups, partly follow her rolls thanks to his aerial mobility, and stab her shield after a couple of hits.
Yoshi also has other available tools. Landing close to an opponent and fsmashing can make them whiff a followup attempt thanks to the fsmash pullback. I also mentioned bair above, but Yoshi can actually, if he's tight, instead of autocancelling the bair or fastfalling it, DJ, input a DJC aerial, or DJ Land. DJ Land opens up other mixups, since he can immediately parry or fsmash out of them, or dtilt. It essentially reduces the – on shield of bair. DJC aerials opens up crossups and new shieldstab setups.
And finally, tomahawk. Weird to talk about it last. Yoshi doesn't have the fast grab followup other chars do, but he can dtilt/fsmash/start an aerial/parry. He can also DJ Land the tomahawk to reduce the landing lag. He can also do shorter tomahawks by DJCing with bair/dair at any point during the tomahawk, fastfalling and autocancelling his landing.
I'd expect there to be some useful option selects around DJLand, too.
Weedlar discusses the usefulness of uair after bair on shield here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXl-2ob_Dgw
Project Knee showcases some possibilities of DJ Land after bair in several videos (four, actually, here's a couple) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0KPlqYYPl0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HabWIc5Xjeo
(An addendum regarding Bair -> DJLand, aMSa has been experimenting with this recently. If I understood correctly, his verdict on bair into DJLand was that it was somewhat inconsistent. Bair into DJC waveland, however, was good.)
Turnaround parrying
Something that usually relates to shield pressure.
One of parrying's quirks is that if you buffer it (ie buffer shield), Yoshi can't jump out during the parry window. To avoid buffering a parry after an aerial on shield, one solution is to crouch, which also makes some oos aerials whiff in the process.
VS characters that can easily hit or grab Yoshi's crouch from shield, an alternate option after an aerial on shield is to start a turnaround. Yoshi's head moves back and goes into the z-axis slightly, meaning depending on spacing, some oos options (examples given by aMSa were Falco shine oos and Falcon grab) will whiff, and Yoshi can parry during the turnaround. This effectively extends the window where some oos options will whiff, and makes timing the parry easier (since if Yoshi ends up buffering it, he will not jump oos, and turnaround makes avoiding the buffer easier). This isn't required after all of Yoshi's aerials, if I'm not mistaken. Fsmash (pullback) and spotdodge (Head goes into the z-axis frame 1) also apply in these situations, but turnaround is a lot less of a commitment compared to fsmash.
Additional notes on recovery
When low offstage, Yoshi can DJ -> NIL onto the ground or a platform (and parry immediately afterwards). I don't know if there are any non-armour frames before the NIL though.
I mention it above, but side b away -> fade in is one of his best options at outspacing atttempts to hit Yoshi back offstage.
Note that Egg Roll's damage depends on Yoshi's speed, so it is generally desirable to have high speed if you are forced to move towards an opponent (high speed will also make the hitbox more likely to connect and the move more likely to clank).
It can also be interesting to exit Egg Roll as you are falling off a platform, since you will still be moving during the exit animation, and therefore slightly harder to chase/hit.
Grab/parry during spotdodge battles
This is pretty situational (I thought of it when watching a Samus ditto), but if ever you end up in one of those spotdodge/strong move/grab/... battles, parry is of course very strong. But grab/parry grab can also work in much the same way Samus's grab does, beating immediate or preemptive spotdodge, with the right timing, due to its delay. I am not experienced or good enough to be able to say more on the matter though.
Random quirky movement thing
As some people have noticed over the years, there are a couple of odd things about Yoshi's grounded movement. Here are a few examples :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36mK83F-V3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOduhv7OWcU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN1103p-R9A
Yoshi vs Multihit moves - 2018 tech
People tend to think Yoshi's parry loses to multihit moves. This isn't really 100% true, but they have shown to be an interesting option. For instance, puff and Fox drill can be awkward to deal with on block, and they both lead to followups on hit.
As it turns out, Yoshi has unique options to deal with them.
This is 2018 tech, discovered by myself :D and is another beneficial consequence from Yoshi's lack of shieldstun. (I wouldn't be too surprised that Leffen might have known about this and never discussed it, but then again, this is something I've never seen anywhere).
Every other character in the game is generally unable to act between hits of a multihit move on shield due to shieldstun. (This is not true of some moves with more delay between hits, such as Sheik dsmash, which I think several other chars could also deal with on block using spotdodge).
One possible exception is ICs, who with their complex dual shield hitlag/shieldstun interactions may be able to create some windows where they are actionable. I don't know, I haven't looked into it.
However, Yoshi has no shieldstun (though his shield release has an extra frame at the start he can't do anything during). What this means, is that he can block, and spotdodge between multihits.
Now, Yoshi can't buffer spotdodge, but the Directional stick buffers spotdodges for three frames during hitlag (shoutouts to tauKhan for clarifying this point). This means that Yoshi can input the spotdodge during hitlag without issues, and no risk of shield release, or of an accidentally delayed input (he doesn't even have to release shield, in fact).
This opens up unique mixups, neutral reset opportunities, and punishes out of shield.
For instance, Peach dsmash. Most chars have to shield DI the dsmash away, and wavedash in shine/grab/usmash/etc. to get a true punish on block. This is pretty technical, requires extensive practice. You get hit if you mess up, and you need your shield to be able to tank one or two hits.
Well, not Yoshi. Yoshi can, with a full shield, tank the full dsmash, and if he is facing Peach and has been able to stay close to her, has a two-frame window to shield grab her.
This is already pretty interesting, but still has flaws. If Yoshi is facing away, he can only reset neutral with lightshield or shield release. If he misspaces the grab, he gets punished.
However, he can spotdodge between hits. On reaction. And this opens up new opportunities.
Example with Peach dsmash : https://clips.twitch.tv/TangibleThankfulClintmullinsJonCarnage
If Yoshi spotdodges after the second hit (not the first one, unless shield is low, because if you're too early the last hit will then connect), the spotdodge will avoid the subsequent hits of dsmash, and Yoshi will be able to get a true punish during Peach's endlag.
Yoshi gets around 8f advantage out of this, which is enough to get an ftilt, dtilt or dsmash out.
If he was able to spotdodge between the first and second hit (riskier), he gets a couple more frames.
Note that if the spotdodge input gets eaten up because it was done too early in hitlag, Yoshi can still shield DI in and input the grab during what would be the spotdodge frames, so this actually turns into an Option Select for him. (He can also try going for another spotdodge, of course).
The only way Yoshi can get hit while inputting spotdodge is if his timing is off (too early, but then that wouldn't be on reaction, or slightly too late, and his body is hit during the first vulnerability frame of dsmash -since his head goes into the z-axis).
Spotdodging has other advantages to it. Since Yoshi can spotdodge between any hits, it essentially changes endlag timings for the opponent. This requires them to either Option Select a Fastfall and an L-cancel/to Option Select followups during endlag, or to guess, to get the fastest followup they can. So it also increases the opponent's technical execution to keep up with the situation (and I don't think there are many Option Selects that can cover every unreactable spotdodge timing for most multihit moves, so it is likely that they lose some frames, too).
It also preserves shield, so Yoshi can if he wishes to, shield again and parry/block subsequent attacks.
This isn't limited to Peach dsmash. Sheik dsmash and Pikachu dsmash become easier to punish with the right timing (and more punishes become available). Yoshi is also able to get out of shield vs several moves on shield on reaction (Doc/Mario dair, for instance), Falcon nair (though he has better ways to deal with it), Samus uair, etc. if they don't land before the end of the hit. He has slight frame disadvantage vs some of them (a floating Peach's dair, I believe), but the amount of moves he doesn't have time to parry/buffer parry after the spotdodge to avoid the opponent's fastest option out of lag is actually very small.
Amongst other moves, this opens up new mixups vs Fox drill and Puff drill, which is also worth talking about.
Puff may land with sufficient frame disadvantage, or not have enough frame advantage to get a true followup, where without the spotdodge Yoshi could only at best reset neutral from shield. So this allows Yoshi to more aggressively shield/lightshield, and if Puff wants to challenge the spotdodges, it -I think- requires her to take more risks (by mixing fastfall/no fastfall), and provide more vulnerability windows.
Vs Fox, the mixups are complex -Fox may double shine to try and cover the spotdodge endlag, but that wouldn't beat a very late spotdodge and if the first shine hits he won't get the waveshine (I think (I don't play Fox, and I rarely play vs Fox, so I'm not sure)), but they provide Yoshi with escape opportunities and potential reversal (with parry or fsmash). Fox may also miss his shine if he does it immediately after landing, and Yoshi spotdodged the last couple of hits. And so on. I also think this is good for lower-level Yoshi players, since I'd expect lower-level Fox players to mess up the L-cancel or fastfall more often in this situation.
Here's an example of one possible mixup with Fox drill (it's more complex than that, of course, but you'll get the idea) :
https://clips.twitch.tv/TangibleThankfulClintmullinsJonCarnage
I won't list all the multihit moves here, but aggressively blocking many of them can be a thing, especially the ones with lots of endlag.
Shield into spotdodge may also be interesting in other situations - Specific double IC hits, and single-hit moves with lots of lag (Ganon dair, perhaps ?). I haven't looked enough into it to judge yet.
If you're a Yoshi main, working more on a grounded shield game and out-of-shield options should pay its dividends. He has much much more to his out-of-shield game than panic rolls.
So, yeah...
There's lots lots more that's worth discussing/exploring with the char and his unique depth. But I wanted to focus on more general stuff and it's already gone on long enough.
Onwards to the counterplay.
Counterplay vs Yoshi, Yoshi matchup quirks
I'll mention some basic stuff, and a couple of less obvious things. Won't go into as much detail, cause I can't be bothered as much.
Here's some stuff to think about when considering the Yoshi matchup :
Armour awareness
Yeah, this also applies to the opponent. Knowing at what % armour is overcome is very useful. You may want at lower % to hit the Yoshi and space yourself to avoid followups (or bait them), but when your move overcomes armour enough that the Yoshi doesn't have time to followup, go right in and juggle him offstage. As I mentioned above, Dondon151 compiled a spreadsheet with armour % that has been posted on a few character discords.
You can presumably prepare DI when attacking a Yoshi in the air, a form of OS in case he is able to armour through and hit you back, in order to make followups of his harder. You may also want to do a tech input while you are hitting him, in some cases.
Safe on parry, safe vs armour
Similarly, some moves are 'safe' on parry (or very hard to punish through parrying). A well-spaced second hit nair of Falcon's is safe on parry, for instance. Yoshi cannot pull out his juiciest punish options fast enough to outright punish the Falcon even if frame perfect after his parry.
(Setchi showcases this here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoqxyeHdVMc)
Baiting out DJCancels can be very good when the Yoshi can't actually punish whatever he tried to tank. Good usage of multihit moves, or moves that are hard to challenge through DJC/parry. Falco uair is an example of a move that is quite hard from Yoshi to challenge from above. Good awareness of Yoshi's drift and how far he'll travel during hitlag while in armour can also give you a good idea of what is 'safe' vs armour and what isn't.
Proper knowledge of CG%, and potential counter punishes out of slow followups
Yoshi can be CG'd by Sheik, Ganondorf, Ics for a while (less by ICs in PAL, and not at all by Sheik in PAL), and to a lesser extent by Doc and Mario, but the % and strats aren't all well-known, I believe. However, being 1f slow on a throw followup means he has the time to armour. Always good to be aware of what he can pull off out of tanking your slow followup. For instance, depending on DI, Samus might be able to get away with an ftilt even if the ftilt isn't true and Yoshi has time to armour through it.
Another interesting example is Falcon uthrow uair. If Falcon is in port 1, Yoshi can armour through uthrow uair from 0-36 % and at 107+ % (tested by Setchi, I believe it's 0-30% and 120+ when Falcon is port 4). However, Yoshi dips during the initial frames of his DJ, so if he doesn't cancel armour into an aerial because of the threat of uair, and doesn't airdodge out, you may be able to land a knee on him. Pseudo-combos on Yoshi can work, but the mixups involved are a little different.
Yoshi-specific gimp setups
I've hinted at those earlier, but moves that overcome armour kb reduction super early can be used to kill Yoshi really early. Reverse up b by Doc, Mario or Peach (in NTSC), Roy reverse up b (also works in PAL), Bowser KK grounded grab release, Marth/Roy counter vs a recovering aerial, this is all specifc stuff which will only work on Yoshi, or affect him very differently compared to the rest of the cast.
Edgeguarding him is often very different from the rest of the cast, and moves that work vs other chars (Bowser bair, Ganon tipman, Fox shine) are useless vs armour (but not as armourless Yoshi). And moves that can be dealt with by most of the cast (Ganon dair, for instance) are effective vs Yoshi.
Teching his stuff
Yoshi has tech traps, and some of his tech timings are weird, but there is stuff you can expect. You can tech dtilt at most any %, for instance. Similarly, there's a lot of stuff you can amsah tech for quite a while. Fair, dsmash, fsmash, nair are all amsah-techable, I believe.
Don't hit his shield when he's on a platform
A lot of the time, it's not that worth it. No shieldstabs and no shieldstun (enabling immediate followups), as well as the possibility to get armour through DJ, or land on the platform with aerial interrupt, means the only ways you can challenge Yoshi shielding on a platorm are through well-spaced aerials, repeated tilts beneath him (Sheik utilt is one of the harder moves for Yoshi to beat when shielding, spacies utilt are hard to punish but do have some vulnerability), or command grabs (most notably egg lay and Falcon/Ganon up b). For chars without these options, unless you have a read on his timing, you don't have much.
He can also be pushed off of platforms the way other characters can. I don't fully know the specific interactions related to platform pushoff, so perhaps Yoshi may be able to avoid the subsequent hit due to lack of shieldstun if he isn't quite off the platform after hitlag.
Also note that Yoshi can lightshield drop (no shieldstun), which means he can follow you if you try and cross up his shield on a platform.
If you know the Yoshi misses his shielddrops, or is a little slow, or always shielddrops, you can exploit that, of course.
SDI his jab reset
Yoshi's jab 1 is very good. If I'm not mistaken, it forces an optionless reset at low %, for quite a while. It's not quite at the level of jiggs jab or laser reset, but it's potent.
It is SDIable though, I've seen people do it on occasion as low as 30%. This is something you can OS, and I see so few people be aware of the jab reset and attempt the SDI that I find it worth mentioning. You won't always get it, it's hard, but hey.
Dealing with Egg Lay
- Similarly to when you are buried into the ground by DK's side b, when in the egg you only take half-damage.
- You can DI when the egg pops out (I rarely see people DI it). This means you can avoid most followups as a floatie, and avoid going offstage when the egg lay occurred onstage.
- There is a specific mashout pattern for Fox that enables him to get out almost immediately and threaten Yoshi. Too lazy to look for it. Dunno if other chars have similar setups.
- You should have a different mashout setup when offstage. You don't want to airdodge out, nor do you want to fastfall when in the egg.
- Egg lay gives jump back. So unless your jump input gets eaten up while breaking out, you should have some options in recovery when offstage.
- Yoshi is invincible for 24 frames if the egg lay successfully connects. Invulnerability starts when the opponent enters Yoshi's mouth.
- You are intangible when you break out of the egg for 14 frames (similary to DK side b, I believe).
- Yoshi loses invincibilty if he successfully Egg Lays in the air and then lands (as demonstrated in this clip by tauKhan). In doubles, and as/vs ICs, it's good to bear that in mind, as greedy use of Egg Lay can give Yoshi some grab opportunities. When this (presumably) bug doesn't occur, Egg Lay invincibility covers the entire endlag of the move (ie Yoshi can extend his invincibility even further with a parry, and no vulnerable frames in between).
The move is very useful vs ICs, however, and requires a lot of respect from them. It's not easy to whiff punish, the invincibility makes some punishes whiff, and it provides either a 1v1 vs Popo or a 1v1 vs Nana, and Yoshi has some very good kill setups on Nana (dtilt -> dtilt -> fair, for instance). Nana doesn't mash out of the egg, either.
Proper SDI on bair and dair, getting out of incomplete combo games
People seem to be rather bad at SDI out of dair, which is kinda odd. Bair is a more complex move, but you can also avoid some followups or make them harder with proper DI/SDI.
Depending on the comboing style of the Yoshi player you're facing, you might be able to get out of his combos through specific DI options. Note that uair sends straight up and therefore cannot reverse hit. If you DI multiple uairs in the same direction, kb stacking will apply and make further followups much harder.
« Grab his long hurtbox »
Yoshi's hurtbox is very long, and a character like Falcon can reverse grab him from outrageous spots. This is something that takes getting used to when playing Yoshi, and something that can be exploited against him to some extent.
Egg roll
Egg roll's hitbox is not good, but it's an odd move since the damage dealt depends on the speed at which Yoshi's going. Also note that it takes about half a second on the ground before Yoshi refreshes his DJ when in the egg, so if you hit right back off right as he lands, he will not be able to recover.
Miscallaneous
If Yoshi does a high down b to ledge, you can beat it out as it's negatively disjointed beneath him.
If expecting dashgrab, turning around when playing a char that Yoshi can't always dashgrab is a way to avoid the grab while setting yourself for easier followups than a spotdodge would (not that his dashgrab is that hard to whiff punish). Just an amusing thing I thought I'd mention.
Yoshi cannot buffer spotdodge. He can spotdodge, but not buffer it. Note that the directional stick buffers spotdodge during hitlag for 3 frames (thanks tauKhan), so when hit on shield he can spotdodge without issues. But he might be a frame or two off in some scenarios. Now, he can parry -> spotdodge to avoid being vulnerable for a few extra frames at the beginning, but that should still leave a vulnerability frame somewhere, so if you expect a spotdodge/parry spotdodge you might be able to cover both with a long-lasting hitbox.
Challenging egg stall
Heh, I forgot to talk about this in my first few versions of the post, amusingly enough.
Egg stall is a pretty strong tool in Yoshi's arsenal. Some characters have a very hard time challenging it.
Note that the egg explosion hitbox is a lot bigger than the egg hitbox. I'm not sure I'm the best example for this, but I tend to mixup egg tosses such that some aim at my opponent, some aim at where I think he'll be, some aim *next* to where I think he will be, and some are sort of random.
Egg stalling does have its weaknesses though. It cannot cover all of the larger stages
Most characters can weave around the eggs and hit Yoshi out of it (he can never be fully intangible, there is always at least one frame of vulnerability).
Almost any move will kill him if you hit him in the latest stages of the egg toss (Fox dair provides a sad death for Yoshi as he just barely fails to regrab the ledge). Sheik can hit an egg-stalling Yoshi with her standing needles, but it is not a silver bullet. Yoshi can airdodge to regrab ledge, or even onstage, if he reacts in time.
I believe some of the recent Avalancer or aMSa sets showcase this (I also remember Android going for aerial needles with only very partial success). Spacies can attempt to shine eggs back at Yoshi, but Yoshi players with very tight egg stalls will not be hit by the reflected egg. Unless (maybe), the spacie is right in his face, in which case other options are available. Other characters' projectiles may work to an extent.
One move that is very good vs Egg stalling for most chars is dash attack. Players such as Hungrybox and Wizzrobe have started to do it.
I've seen Yoshi players die to Puff, Falco, Falcon, Sheik, Marth, Pika, Samus, Yoshi dash attacks, and others can probably connect too.
Here are excerpts from Setchi's Youtube channel showcasing this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md8Db3lCiLU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP7vZQXv9TA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZxFSGXrYuk
A few words of warning here :
- I am unsure all of these dash attacks connect on very tight eggstalls. Several do, of course.
- Yoshi may have some types of defense vs several of these dash attacks (teching, airdodging, good SDI, etc.)
- If the Yoshi player previously tossed an egg, that egg may hit the opposing char during their dash attack, and may lose to it, cancel it, or beat it. It adds hitlag to the opponent but not to Yoshi, who may get to regrab ledge thanks to this.
- Good awareness of this option and good ledge option mixups will make this connect only rarely
- For all I know, some defense when DA hits/counterattack when DA whiffs Option Selects may exist vs some characters.
- Moving towards the ledge exposes you to a potential punish if the Yoshi player doesn't toss an egg but does something else. For instance, with the right timing, normal getup -> dsmash may connect on several chars, which may force them to look for defense/followup option selects, or to choose between defense and followup, if no option selects are available, possibly turning even guaranteed kill setups into mixups. This potential punish cannot happen if you stay away from the ledge.
Don't get me wrong, dash attack will work very well against predictable egg stall patterns (so, for the moment, most Yoshi players), and its reward when it successfully connects is very often a stock. But I've seen some people treat it as a silver bullet, when I think vs high-level Yoshi players, the risk involved may be quite high too, especially when considering Yoshi's other ledge options.
Thank you, and good night.
Ok, I think I'm done. I hope some people find this post beneficial and it helps Yoshi players work on more stuff. I hope those who find incorrect statements in what I said point it out, and if I've missed some critical topics that they'll mention them. I also hope commentators take a couple of notes and try and understand Yoshi more (though this last bit could also apply to other chars).
Shoutouts to the people who've labbed Yoshi extensively, cause without their insight we'd be a lot worse off than we are now. Most notably PerhapsMan, Dondon151, TauKhan and Ponkapa. Other people who've helped Yoshi in some way other or showcase some of his stuff, such as aMSa, V3ctorman, Weedlar, VJ, n3zmodgod and Project Knee. The Melee Yoshi discord, from which I've pinched a good chunk of the stuff I'm mentioning here. Thanks to Ponkapa as well for reading through this and providing feedback (such as the section on DJ Land out of run/dash). And I'm probably forgetting other people, sorry for that. I also feel like I've forgotten to talk about some important stuff I wanted to talk about, too, so I might edit this post or add some stuff if I remember it.
Shoutouts to Setchi and Psyant for being the only non-Yoshi players I know to have properly labbed Yoshi-matchup-related stuff. I hope other people start doing so and teaching me stuff about my character.
***
Other stuff to add someday, not sure whether all are relevant. Some isn't so much 'underexplored tech', and other bits would be better suited for a proper char guide, so not sure if I'll end up detailing them.
Unintuitive wallteching scenarios
Uthrow/Dthrow forced platform techchase scenarios regardless of DI vs some floaties
Option select multiple DJC aerial inputs to cover potentially different hitlag timings (if you don't know which move / which hitbox will be thrown at you), and usage of the Z-button for option selecting L-cancel
usage of jab - more disjointed than ftilt, etc.
Potential specific hitlag burning intangibility frames exploits (really really marginal)
Crouch jab pressure (see PK's video)
Grab release stuff
OS jump during throw hitstun to armour through jab regrab (unexplored, no idea if viable)
spotdodge Z-axis
Hitting meteor cancel windows
side b hitting the edge from the other side
parry frames at the end of a platform waveland (definitely worth talking about)
***
Edit (Dec 28th, 2017) :
Small nuggets of info added to the dash grab section, the roll section, the aerial from ledge section, the what to do between stocks section, egg toss section, recovery mixups section , platform AI/DJ land section.
Added a couple paragraphs on slide-off DI -> armour, and armouring through get-up attacks.
In the counterplay section, I added some notes on preparing defensive DI when hitting Yoshi in case of armour counter, SDIing his jab, and some additional subtleties regarding followups off of throws on Yoshi.
Edit (Jan 12th, 2018) :
Added a small section on run-up shield/parry, and some small comments on platform pushoff, DJLanding with bair, and a couple of very minor details.
Edit (Jan 24th, 2018) :
Added a section on Shield release -> jab 1, a Counterplay section on challenging egg stall, a small bit about NIL -> Parry as a recovery option, some extra notes on Egg Roll as a recovery option, a small bit about his grounded movement quirks, a couple of sentences about lightshield dropping, a small bit about grab/parry during spotdodge battles.
Edit (Feb 15th, 2018) :
Added a section on shield release -> spotdodge, another on Option Select SDI, and a big section entitled 'Yoshi vs Multihit moves' on what appears to be new (or at the very least previously undiscussed) 2018 tech.
Edit (Feb 19th, 2018) : Minor additions to the 'Yoshi vs Multihit' section and the 'Miscellaneous' section from the Counterplay bit.
Edit (Feb 21st, 2018) : Added tauKhan's Egg Lay invincibility loss clip, and the weight difference affecting some throws in PAL in the PAL/NTSC differences section.
Edit (Apr 16th, 2018) : Added the sections on turnaround parry, aerial interrupt -> parry/shield, edited bits relating to bair -> djland (all stuff picked up from aMSa's stream). Minor stuff on the recovery section, a small bit on shield pressure, and lots of random stuff in the TODO section just above, which I recommend looking at, since a couple of useful options (amongst more situational / unexplored / meh stuff) mentioned there that I have been to lazy to detail or have lacked the time to.
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