Yoshi stuffs (I gots some vids now too)

[yoshiiscool]

(vids are on top of page 2)
So, I was at a tourney over the weekend for the first time in a long time, and with all the matches I played, and watched, It's made me think of the Yoshi metagame. Honestly, I think there's quite a bit of potential left in Yoshi that I never really saw before, and I'd really like to start taking this game (with Yoshi) seriously again.


Anyways, on to the actual point of the topic, I'm just gonna start a discussion on what you guys all think of Yoshi in general, and prolly delve into some specific topics like match-ups, or techniques, etc along the way. Pretty much I'd like this to be a general Yoshi help/discussion thread, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask, and I'm sure me or other Yoshi's on this board can help you out ^^.

It's my personal opinion, that Yoshi isn't a bad character... As a matter of fact, he's actually pretty decent if you focus on his strengths, and have your play style try to mask his bigger flaws. Overall, I think Yoshi has some of the best movement options in the game, it's just my opinion, but before you completely cast aside what I say, hear me out. He has pretty decent ground speed, great aerial mobility, good wavedash/waveland, and that double jump just has so many ****ed up mechanics (DJL for instance) working with it, that almost that alone is what makes his movement game so badass and unorthodox. As if that all weren't enough there's his good dash dancing ability, a slightly useful moonwalk if you can do it well, light shield sliding, and the way he contorts his body on half of his attacks might as well just be called movement also (especially useful for pivots as mentioned hundreds of times before). Again this is all just my opinion, but I think Yoshi has some pretty solid options when it comes to moving, and it's probably his biggest strength just how versatile he can be in this department.

His moveset isn't terribly bad either, he's got great combos, he's quick, some moves pack power, he even has a somewhat decent projectile, the only thing he's missing really, is the range and priority that is really necessary to fight back against some characters, but I think his mobility makes up for alot of this, which includes the fact that he has some great defensive strategies with his lightshield grab, pullback, CC, and double jump. Also speaking of grab game, I think Yoshi has one of the most underestimated grab games, the dash grab is quick with ok range. Unfortunately, he can't do much out of a grab vs non fast fallers, but what it does do is put other characters in bad situations, not to mention it opens up more options for you to play some mental games.

So, those are a couple of Yoshi's strengths, so I'll try to highlight some of the weaknesses now too. Easily gimped, which normally comes off of silly uses of the double jump, or being knocked out of it. Bad floatiness/weight, ugh Yoshi gets comboed(including chain grabs) to all hell and back, by just about every character, he's like a smaller, cuter version of bowser. Shield game, can't jump out of his shield, leaving his options... quite limited. No real third jump for recovery. There's the bad range mentioned before, and laggy grab.

I can't think of anything else really off the top of my head, really, and the ones that are there... I can't really believe hurt Yoshi so much that he can't be played against the higher tier characters at a competitive level. I think every character in the top level of play has gimps that they abuse on other characters, and a lot of the other "weaknesses" in Yoshi's game rely on the player himself. Smart playing with the double jump, with good DI can help a lot against being helplessly thrown into the fray and getting your *** handed to you.

So I wanna ask everybody who cares enough to read this post some questions: What do you think Yoshi can do to be played in a manner that competes with high level players/characters? What strengths should you focus on, what should you do to overcome your weaknesses?

Let's try to get some life in these boards a bit . I'd like some intelligent conversation about Yoshi strategy. Thanks guys.

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

well when I play as yoshi(I love his combos so much) I basically run around avoiding stuff, keep them out of my face and try to get a combo starter and I like you randomly throw eggs the way I think they will or won't DI so I cut off the ways they can go

 

[zack152]

If you want to somehow unlock Yoshis actual potential and move him up the tier list, get frame perect timing and work on the short hop bair >dj turn around nair/dj uair. Its really hard to do but if you do his bair and the first possible frames of his short hop you have just enough time to dj out of it before you land =D

 

[yoshiiscool]

Well, if I was going to go with the "frame-perfect timing" thing, I'd have to prioritize supershielding, or double jumping through attacks, to the b-air cancel... and without frame perfection, I'm perfectly happy just counter-picking stages with uneven floors so I can do it without having to worry about frame perfection (DK64 ftw).

Anyways, I figure I'll just say what I think a Yoshi needs to do to be successful in todays game. Pretty much the only thing we can do besides the whole frame perfect thing, I think, would be to focus on what I said earlier was Yoshi's main strength, his movement. Insane guy said some sort of thing I'm trying to get to, Yoshi is a dodgy sort of character, and I think if someone can master all of his quirky movements, and can intelligently put them to use in some kind of erratic (would also be erotic ) style, it would be the best way to go about a competitive Yoshi.

 

[Mind Trick]

If you want to somehow unlock Yoshis actual potential and move him up the tier list, get frame perect timing and work on the short hop bair >dj turn around nair/dj uair. Its really hard to do but if you do his bair and the first possible frames of his short hop you have just enough time to dj out of it before you land =D

Doesn't work if the bair actually hits, because then it lasts longer.

Yoshi's movement game can only be described as erratic as you said, however he's missing the essential part that all other characters have, the ability to shield and deactivate it quickly by jc or a quick grab. Getting pressured into shield is a really bad thing as you're then stuck and getting punished for sure if you're up against a fast character.

I've been working on delaying my (light)shield as late as possible to aim for supershielding and have had some success with it now, mostly against Ganon's and Peaches (their fair I find easiest of all chars to practise against, and if you do it too early you get a long slide from which you can safely egg). The use of it against spacies is somewhat limited though as they have the guaranteed shine follow up anyway and frame advantage because of that. Taking hits and comboing from it has a lot of use though against them, one of the best ways to hit those **** fast buggers.

Another thing that's essential but kinda comes to you naturally as you progress is punishing as hard as you can, mostly against spacies and falcon. You're gonna get ***** until that one opening, where you need to aim for that 0 to death to even it up. Their weight is perfect for yoshi's combo game and dashgrab is amazing as a techchase to continue your combo. Also once their off the stage and recovering (not from high) you have to make sure they don't make it back. If you do let them they can devastate you further. What I'm trying to say here really is, every little hit you get on them needs to lead to a stock.

Also a really essential thing to learn against worst matchup (PAL) falco is powershielding his lasers, done easier by crouching.

I still lose to players I can beat with my spacies though with Yoshi His shield is such a limitation >_<

 

[Shiri]

Snap, it's good to see Moo posting again. :D

Well, since the meta has regressed quite a bit, I think all Yoshi players really need is the ability to fight Fox and Falco and Falcon. Nobody really plays anybody else nowadays (although things are slowly starting to stir again after Genesis), so knowledge of those three matchups, I think, is paramount.

Fox, more than Sheik in my opinion, has been what has kept Yoshi from being a truly significant bracket pick/counterpick. I agree with Moo that Yoshi is actually very decent. Of course, I get the "Yoshi player thinks Yoshi is good" line all the time, but the facts are there and anybody who actually knows how the game works can tell you that Yoshi isn't as bad as people make him out to be. He is essentially Peach with a bad grab game and nothing abusable. I was going to go into his strengths, but everyone knows what those are by now. That being said, whenever people compare characters like Yoshi to garbage like Fox, of course Yoshi is going to seem like trash tier...but if you get comfortable enough with the matchup, I think it's possible to find satisfactory results as a tournament Yoshi.

Fox's matchup with Yoshi, I think, is impossible, and I've played lots of Foxes from across the country (and a few European ones). On paper and in practice, I think it is just un-doable, but you will have to play it at some point, so you might as well learn it as best you can to take out as many Foxes as you can for your skill level. I think the most important part to fighting Fox is learning how to manipulate the player into switching between offensive and defensive modes. If you spend too much of the match running away and trying to capitalize on their bad or sloppy approaches, they can just resort to laser camping into pivots or neutral airs, which even really good characters can't beat reliably. The trick, I feel, is to keep the player engaged long enough and often enough so that they don't readily hesitate to approach you; I know from the half-year that I mained Fox and played lots of other Foxes, whenever I feel insecure about approaching, I will either feint and approach or just throw red sh*t until they come after me. This is what you want to avoid as Yoshi. My advice as far as actual gameplay goes is to abuse reverse neutral air for ground defense, up tilt launchers into combos, and use that forward tilt on the hop kick.

Falco, I think, is the one character that most Yoshi mains either loved to fight or hated to fight. I think it's important in this matchup to be as absolutely super gay as possible. The best part about this matchup is that even if Falco stops getting comfortable approaching, laser camping doesn't work thanks to powershield wavedashing. Edgeguarding is of absolute importance; I don't even try to combo Falco anymore, I just try my best to string him along in the air or on the ground with down tilts until I can carry him over the edge and gay him hard. DOWN TILT. Please abuse it. When you can't down tilt, just work on effective edgeguarding; you'd be surprised at how many moves beat both the Illusion and Firebird.

Falcon is a very tough matchup for me and I don't like playing it at all. All the character does is dash camp (which is super lame when you think about it) and spam knee and stomp. Neutral air is a bear because you can CC it, but it pushes you out of range on the second kick and I forget the numbers exactly, so I don't know if it's possible to retaliate between the first and second kicks if you CC the first one. The best advice I can give for this matchup is to run away a lot and supershield his stomps and counter as best you can. His body frame makes combos weird to do sometimes, so if I have to finish a combo early, I just watch for possible retaliation and try my best to either straight up avoid it or protect myself with reverse neutral air. Lastly, I think up tilt (don't quote me on this one; I can't remember exactly) stops lots of the captain's regular approaches, so try to experiment with that.

I do have to say that if Brawl has taught me anything, it's how to use tilts better, and my Melee Yoshi has only improved because of 1] more tilt usage and 2] intelligent tilt usage. I would encourage everyone to experiment with both forward and up tilt extensively in terms of defense (what moves, especially aerials, they can beat).

 

[KirbyKaze]

What Linguini does with Ganondorf is CC Jab in between the Nair hits. Hold down and back.

 

[Mind Trick]

Uptilt usually beats all the aerial approaches by Falcon if timed right and if he catches on to that and changes the spacing there's always reverse nair and pivot fsmash, but CC ftilt sounds like a decent option if you're too late for all that and see a nair coming.

 

[yoshiiscool]

Being perfectly honest here, I don't see how the crouch powershielding for Falcos lasers is really much of the utmost importance in the matchup, I've never had big problems vs Falco, besides getting past his gay priority and just how easy Yoshi is to gimp/combo with him. I think the main thing to do vs Falco, like Shiri said would be to just get them off the stage ASAP, and go edgeguard style on them.

Now to clarify on my view on the lasers. I've spent my whole smash career pretty much playing some of the best falco's in my region constantly, I've gotten so used to how to DI vs falco, how to combo falco, pretty much everything about the falco matchup by playing Eggm and Reik up in jersey. In my opinion... Yoshi doesn't want to be on the ground vs falco, unless he's in the air, or you're going for a grab. You stay in the air vs falco, but you do it in a way so that if lasers come your way, you can always safely dodge them, or at least eat them with your jump, while staying relatively close to ground /platforms, so that you can waveland during your jump, and get right back to pursuing. There's a nice perfect range you want to be at vs falco that's not far away enough for him to comfortably spam lasers, but also not too close so that he can just overwhelm you with his priority and lock you in those uber combos. Find this range, and play it safe, always be aggressively defensive, don't give him room to get his lasers off safely, but don't get in too close cuz it'll lead to cheap shines

That's enough for me for now on Falco match-up, but I'd like to talk about some other things now, a couple moves that've interested me quite a bit, and made their way into my playstyle and managed to change it quite a bit. As most of us know, Yoshi's ground game is pretty much all about defense. D-tilt is perfect for pushing people away and giving you space, f-smash has the dodgy pull back, his tilts are amazing launchers, and have some pretty surprising range for spacing, and his jabs are great for pressure and quick enough with relatively decent range to help defend yourself against some approaches, but the one attack I want to highlight for now is the up-smash

I don't know why I don't hear more people here talking about this move, it's absolutely crazy. It's uses are just... great. It has so much range once you get used to it, and especially realizing how Yoshi contorts himself(ducks during start-up animation) and hits mostly behind/above him(think of the range like a big u-tilt, that's focused behind, rather than in front). Not to mention I'm pretty sure his head is invincible during most of the attack, which makes this move a disgustingly good asset when fighting people that love to approach from the air. So why isn't this move talked about more often? The knock back is relatively decent, lag makes it not-so-smart to use at very low%s unless you hit em onto a platform, but it can set up for great tech chasing/combos at mid%s, and just stops sooooo much. I love this move.

Second move thing is just the grab. We need to grab more. That's just all I can say, and I can't stress it enough. I think a lot of melee is based on fear, for tricksies, and if nobody fears that Yoshi will be grabbing, they pretty much feel free to stick in their shields, and play a defensive game thinking "what's a Yoshi gonna do?" Catch people off guard with your dash grabs, and hell, like I've said time and time again, lightshield grab works wonders when you learn how to control your shield, and expect laggy aerials, followed by shield pressure tactics (jab/shine, etc) Also something some people tend to just be completely oblivious to, Yoshi CAN regularly shield grab attacks, you have to know the difference of WHEN to lightshield, and when you can actually grab people from the shield itself, for example: I said before I played a lot of falcos, and I'm ashamed to say it, but it's only been fairly recently I've found out you actually can shieldgrab a f-smash, rather than having to just lightshield and do the work of getting back up past his lasers and to him. Also along with most smashes, you can shield grab get-up attacks, and other laggy moves, just gotta try it and see what works. But this is just me trying to say that even though Yoshi has great shield pressuring game... you won't get anywhere without learning to embrace his grab, because otherwise you just don't have the same options as everyone else, and you'll be punished because of it. I don't think this includes the neutral b really, because it's just sort of a worthless tactic, as you get nothing out of it, but eh... if you can't use his regular grab, I guess this is a very mild option, that can at least act like it's some sort of successful pressuring technique.


That's about all for now, I still have quite a bit I wanna say, but I'll leave it for next time, since I hate leaving these long *** walls of text, and I'd hate to bore people to death on Yoshi stuff (though that is the topic name) xD. Anyways, opinions on this stuff? And things to look forward to for next time are spacing, prolly falcon matchup, and maybe a thing or two on my views for edgeguarding? I dunno, depends on responses. C ya

 

[Shiri]

We used to talk about upsmash, but it was back in like...06.

I think people are so comfortable with it that it's just understood. That's my impression, anyway.

I want to agree with you on more grabbing, but after doing all manner of experiments in tournaments, during friendlies, and on my own in practice as well as looking at and researching the data personally, there are very few situations that warrant the risks that grabs entail, in my opinion. The combo potential out of throws for heavies and fast fallers is ludicrous, I agree, but I think it's really hard to make those opportunities for grabs reveal themselves. I've always prefered playing it safe, anyway, especially against the fastfallers, but I still end up losing to them most times, so go figure.

 

[YOSHIDO]

Im quite happy were this thread was made. I love yoshi, but I believe he is okay in this game. And like shiri said fighting a smart fox is near impossible to win. Sure my yoshi can take fox's that try and just rush in on me. But the second they start to think and camp effectivly its over.

As far as grabs go, I like them, but not enough to get kneed for missing. I personally like to use egg lay to get some space and time from the opponent. And most of the time I djc and rdjc it. That's one thing I did like about yoshi in Brawl. You can actually grab.

 

[Mind Trick]

Perhaps not essential to win the matchup, but ****ing great asset definitely. Powershield a laser, wavedash to dtilt in a fraction of a second is an almost guarantueed opening on falco.
Staying above lasers works when there's platforms around or if falco is near the edge on Final, but you can't stay above them forever, you have to come down sometime. On stages with platforms this is much less of an issue (although shine to waveland is ridiculously good for falco, not to mention his insane combo's with the help of platforms), on FD a smart falco will just wait for you to come down and begin the ****.

I agree with you on upsmash, its ****ing amazing, beats pretty much everything coming from above.

The risk factor is big for grabs, but for shieldcampy players and techchasing I'd the reward is worth it. I myself am not too comfortable yet with shieldgrabbing though...

 

[Shiri]

Supershieldgrab is pretty good for panic reactions to heavy moves like many characters' forward smashes an' junk.

 

[DstyCube]

What are yoshi's safe moves?

 

[Shiri]

Jab.

DJC neutral air.

DJC up air.

Down tilt (kinda, but not really).

This list is assuming you mean safe on block, given reasonable spacing.

 

[yoshiiscool]

Yoshi videos for you peoples!! Only friendlies, but eh, I guess some are better than none, right?

It's me vs cornell(not sure of spelling), from munkaid 8, about half a month ago. He's a good fox/falco player, with a falcon secondary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyW8ys0xayc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGqTEKk77Z8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1V1k75fxCE

Feel free to critique/comment if you want, but I know I suck at edgeguarding, and have bad timing

 

[YOSHIDO]

Very good matches man. Cornell is very good. You made him fear your areials which was nice. Against falco from my experince is that you can't get in that lockdown of lasers. You did a great job of moving around them when he was shooting. Your spacing was great. Especally like the use of back air and up smash when he got too comfortable with jumping in without lasers. And a great job of grabbing him while he had his sheild up, trying to think of what you were going to do next.

And like you mentioned there were some missed edge gaurd attemps. I think u know what to do, its just that u didn't expect to hit him. ONe notion that I believe in is if popped of the ledge. Since the spacies are either A going to go for the ledge or B go over the ledge like u were assuming, I sugges stay in between the ledge and 3/4ths of the stage. IF you know hes going for the ledge you can go for an instant edge hog. I can't rember but im pretty sure u did that atleast once on falco. Also if u see him trying to go above the ledge. end that mess with an short hopped n air, a smash will probably work too. I saw u try an dash attack. That works too but its risky. I also like to do a low aimed egg toss. This can set up for a well placed down smash, Which means death. But yeah man great stuff. 2 woots for new interesting yoshi vids

 

[Pakman]

Hey MOO you should watch some of my yoshi vids. I am still learning him but this is the most recent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kn9-X74xVc

 

[yoshiiscool]

It's not lookin too bad Pakman. I can definitely see a bit of the egg masters yoshi in it though, and I know he was bragging to me recently about you being his Yoshi apprentice... but then again, it is eggm, and we know he likes to say random sh*t. I prefer a bit more speed, and relative flashy awesomeness in my Yoshi .

Btw, why the hell is your vid like 4 times more popular than mine? I feel unknown, and unloved T.T What's a Yoshi to do without love? :<

 

[Pakman]

I almost have 900 subscribers.

 

[Shiri]

Moo, how far are you from New Stanton?

I know there is the Internet and everything, but I figured I'd ask anyway.

 

[yoshiiscool]

It depends on where from you're talking about Right now I'm in college down in tennessee, so it's far as sh*t, and at home, I'm in eastern PA... so it's still a good drive I'd say. Maybe like 4-5h from home, and 7-8h away from here. If I bring my car down next semester, I could prolly stop by on my way down/up, seeing as it'll only be a couple hour detour, and it might allow me to shimmy past virginia... cuz **** driving in that state.

 

[Shiri]

Okay.

I was here until Friday, so I figured I'd ask just in case.

Maybe another time. D: