Yoshi's design throughout Smash has been more focused on how unorthodox he has to be played to achieve similar results as other characters. He's continuously had this play style throughout the smash iterations; however, it feels that the recent changes with PM has made Yoshi feel as if he's incomplete. Walking a fine line of having broken or insignificant options, Yoshi's foundation (Melee) has helped find spots to improve on his overall game to fit within the PM meta, but I feel as though some of the changes has begun to hurt Yoshi's than improve it.
Yoshi has the ability to instantly change his momentum, which allows for multiple angles of approach within a small space that the character's aerial movement allows, but one special mechanic that is only available to specifically Yoshi is his ability to use Double Jump Armor (DJA) to effectively tank hits for counterattacks. It is to note that DJC, while seemingly strong at a first glance, is more so a double-edged sword due to how trades function in fighting games. DJC is similar to Crouch Canceling, but the downside of using DJA is that Yoshi can become heavily combo-able if he is knocked out of his armor or uses an attack before tanking an attack. This negative becomes a bigger threat at the later percents because weaker moves will be able to send him offstage without any way to recover as how other characters would be able to.
Yoshi's defensive options are fairly lackluster, and this mainly stems from the fact that Yoshi could not jump out of shield in Melee. This limits his options to just basic rolls, spotdodges, and lightshielding. His rolls are fairly poor, so he has more reliance on spotdodging (one of the best in the game) and lightshielding. A major problem that Yoshi is often unable to deal with is when someone waits behind him and does not touch his shield. This situation makes him completely useless to where he is almost always taking some form of punishment. Parry is also a huge reliant move that allows him to play similar to regular characters, but also opens up his selection to stronger OoS options that no character possesses. With a special technique from Double Jump, he is to land and use grounded moves within reasonable time as it takes to use regular OoS aerials. The downside is that the window for landing on is not lenient and is only usable vs single hit attacks.
On the positive side, Yoshi is fairly strong in dishing out damage because of how his moveset is comprised. Yoshi, while requiring a lot of precision and reaction, can combo opponents out of CC range easily and can also potentially kill his opponents with correct reads from improper DI or techchases. It is very seldom when Yoshi gets in a situation where he can't deal a lot of damage outside of the more floaty characters in the game.
Neutral-B is one of Yoshi's command grabs that has more flexibility than his other grabs due to being able to use the move in the air with or without DJC and even B-reverse/wavebounce. This allows Yoshi to create some ambiguity within his shield pressure game, but a huge problem that lies within landing the move is the how low of a reward is given without requiring multiple hard reads. Not only that, but the opponent receives invincibility frames (14 to be exact) when coming out of the egg, which forces Yoshi to respect the opponent's options with minimal chance of capitalizing. Platforms reduces Yoshi's chance to make an opportunity happen since opponent's are given more options to get away from the situation. To further add to the imbalance, opponent's are given jumps back when breaking out, which helps an opponent that did not have one to begin with get out of the situation without feeling much pressure.
Yoshi's speed is another issue that comes up when considering how he can handle the neutral game. He has an average run speed across the cast, which does not help his dash dance game. At the same time, Yoshi does not have the best short hop game due to his jump being very high and aerials being slow outside of Neutral Air and Up Air. With all of this being said, wavelanding is one trait that allowed Yoshi to speed up and gain some mobility to handle playing the neutral more comfortably. Yoshi's wavelands allow him to move faster horizontally than his running speed, but it also opens up a few other options to space using armor and vertical speed. With his vertical speed being above average, he can utilize both horizontal and vertical spacing to play the neutral game more effectively.
With the introduction of side-B moves in melee, Eggroll has had a frustrating time to make a linear move useful. It's Yoshi's fastest option to move horizontally, but only on wide stages that allows the speed to reach it's max potential. It's a weak move offensively because the opponents are able to become immune to followups at higher percents from a hit, but low percent followups are also not possible because the cooldown from exiting egg roll is too high for Yoshi to capitalize on. Even then, Yoshi is able to use other moves to benefit from the same situation better than what side-B can offer. Defensively, the move plummets even worse. Yoshi goes downwards extremely fast when using the move and doesn't get any realistic chance to use the aerial acceleration it can provide.
Currently, Yoshi in PM has had some changes that most Yoshi players have not enjoyed the direction Yoshi has taken. In a way, he's centered closer to Melee, but still breaks from the trend due to the changes that were done when Yoshi was implemented back in 3.02. He currently has conflicting play styles that detracts from the overall design and enjoyment of the character.
With the removal of aerial grabs, Yoshi is forced to use a similar style as Melee. A style that is very reliant on platform movement and DJC (this includes DJA). This creates an imbalance in which Yoshi has to rely on using more DJC, but when you look at how damaging Yoshi's grab followups are, it's a sudden realization that Yoshi still needs to grab his opponents to maximize the damage. This creates a conflicting play style where Yoshi players want to use safer moves to minimize the danger that proceeds from a whiffed option, but has to use those dangerous options to net the best output.
The grab followups, namely D-throw, also brings up a concerning issue where Yoshi is able to kill an opponent no matter what option they use. This creates a grab that is able to do everything offensively with only a neutral game use issue. Yoshi already has a plethora of tools where he can setup for kills upon landing a good hit confirm, but they will become artificial options since grab gets the job done without as much effort as the others. D-throw reduces the amount of precision that was necessary for a character that contains a moveset that is extremely strong in removing how much an opponent can play for making a mistake.
Precision and reaction time is what made Yoshi require the tech skill needed to make damaging combos. The common DJC U-air string is one of the easier combos to pull off due to the timing not requiring as much precision, but many other combos that get Yoshi into F-air and/or U-air setups do require the precision and reactions. Those types of combos are often overlooked because of the imbalance of how to land damaging combos. It promotes more use of landing a grab and D-throwing or landing a U-air to nail damage without putting the effort into fully encompassing the character like an experienced player (AmSa). To even emphasize how important a Yoshi player's reactions and precision is required, Yoshi is forced to make decisions within a small amount of time to gain access to combos that would unleash a lot of damage on spacies in melee.
PM has taken a shot at making Side-B more use for Yoshi's overall game. Offensively, it's possibly one of the best designs it could be, but the move falls short to the expectations when used defensively. Considering Yoshi's recovery methods, he is quite limited since his main recovery option is through Double Jump. Whether it's through using armor, using his below-average air mobility, or his above-average fast fall speed to grab the ledge, his entire recovery game is centered around Double Jump.
Neutral-B is fairly flexible in the situations that it can be used, but a common issue is the lack of punish from landing one. Opponent's take 7% for getting grabbed, and then take half the damage of a move used on the egg, which makes the move similar to a few pummels and a throw. This would be perfectly fine if opponents couldn't break out far before the egg has a chance to even be safely hittable. Floaty characters can break out high in the air to get away from any further damage, and fast fallers can break out quickly to land on the ground almost instantly.
To add on top of this, the characters have 14 frames of invincibility upon breaking out the of egg while regaining their jump. This massively makes egg lay a weak move in terms of punishment because Yoshi first has to follow the opponents' DI and wait for them to break out, then has to react to their first option out of the breakout to avoid being counter-attacked. The range is a great start to the move, but the profit for using it is negligible for landing one.
Overall, Yoshi players end up relying on using DJC more often since grabs are not as efficient to use due to the margin of error being extremely small and with opponents being able to neutralize the threat of the option just by jumping. Other Yoshi players forcefully use grabs, despite the narrow success rate, since it's very beneficial to land one and to prevent overusing DJC so that opportunities are minimized from rendering Yoshi's recovery obsolete.
To make Yoshi closer to his Melee design, but vary enough to have a PM feel to him, he needs to retain his Melee aspects, where his combos are precise, but damaging. Throws are altered to bring more meaning to his grab game than just D-throw alone. Movement is slightly increased to make platform movement more consistent with the character. Lastly, Yoshi's aerial grab should be re-implemented to bring more options to the character's neutral without changing his overall style immensely.
Having aerial grabs brings more focus towards his neutral game and minimizes the precision that he requires on the regular just by a little. This improves his neutral game, defense, and allows him to break some opponent's zoning with a ranged grab similar to Neutral B. The biggest problem is having a grab bubble that it unaltered, which is shown below:
Typically, the grab bubble(s) make no real difference vertically since they can only grab opponents on the ground, but when they are able to grab aerial opponents, everything is changed and Yoshi now has an absurdly safe option due to the coverage the bubble takes up. This removes precision from Yoshi's gameplay by a huge margin, which is more problematic in the long run for the character and the meta. To make sure that Yoshi still has to remain precise for using grabs, the grab bubble has to be reduced horizontally and vertically to a size shown below:
With this new grab bubble size (the small bubble in the bulb of Yoshi's tongue), Yoshi's margin of error is diminished to where he does not have the luxury to throw out the move, but it is also not as strict as timing a grab on an opponent that is landing from a short hop, full hop, or any form of landing lag. At the same time, opponent's (namely disjointed ones) are able to punish with proper spacing.
One major change that would need to happen is changing D-throw back to how it functions in Melee with a few extra modifications due to aerial grab being put back in. At it's current form, D-throw would allow Yoshi to combo, chain grab for stage control, and kill, which brings about overpowered options. Even making opponents launch up higher from D-throw would not remove characters that fast fall quicker to be immune from all the said options. So, to maintain D-throw to be a combo type throw, a combination of higher knockback and lower launch angles is needed to prevent proper DI from being punished with CGs or kill moves as would improper DI would allow.
Concerning his Forward and Back Throws, they serve no purpose within Yoshi's grab game. Throws are typically there for damage, combo, stage control, or killing. Since D-throw (and sometimes U-throw) is already a combo type throw, adding slightly more knockback would allow those F-throw & B-throw to be centered towards stage control, which would indirectly help create a DI mixup for getting a D-throw DI'd improperly.
An issue to Yoshi's horizontal prowess through platform movement is the physics delay. With the collision detection being slightly more precise, platform movement is more difficult to maintain consistent wavelanding speed for Yoshi to add in his overall movement. A slight increase in initial aerial speed velocity to compensate for the precision needed to get a perfect waveland would allow Yoshi to be able to consistently move quicker via platforms than on the ground.
Neutral-B can be tweaked by decreasing the amount of invincibility frames opponent's receive when breaking out, and by increasing amount of frames it takes for the opponent to break out of the egg. Decreasing the amount of invincible frames forces the opponent to choose an option within a more constrained amount of time, but not so much that the opponent is completely susceptible to Yoshi's attacks the instant the opponent breaks out of the egg. Less time before the character becomes vulnerable increases chances for more mistakes only if the opponent does not maintain a level head in mid match.
Making Side-B help Yoshi recover would help set the dino back into into the PM meta, but he doesn't need to have entitlement to his egg roll from previous builds. A little aerial acceleration only helps close-ranged (or properly DI'd attacks) recoveries to reach the stage, and since Yoshi loses his jump, he cannot afford to use the option early without taking extremely high risks. While talking about side-B, I believe that slightly increasing side-B's speed would truly encompass the move's ability to speed along the ground and catch up to an opponent. Whether it is through the startup or while the egg is rolling, Yoshi would be able to knock opponent's away and quickly catch up to apply more pressure more so than how he is able to through running. At the current state of egg roll, the pop out hit box and current cool down would allow for low percent combo attempts more consistently, but only if the player can quickly react to the circumstances since the hit stun is fairly low.
It goes without saying that bugs and graphical mismatches on moves hurt a character's ability to function properly. Yoshi having so many issues with his shield forces players to play around the problems instead of being able to trust the character's options during matches. An instance is how Yoshi gets shield poked from under his shield. This bug has been in the game since PM has started, but has never been fixed as of yet. This and a handful of other shield issues (I currently know of 4 personally) add up to be extremely troublesome for Yoshi. The four that I know are:
Stuck in shield after rolling
Cannot jump during frames 1-6 of shielding animation (fixed in custom build)
Shield poke from below egg (fixed in custom build)
Aerial Egglay not having grab bubbles on frame 17 (fixed in custom build)
To elaborate and expand on the egglay bug, Yoshi's aerial egg lay starts up 1 frame later (frame 18) than how his grounded version starts (frame 17).
Neutral-B:
With a little altering in the moves coding, Neutral-B can properly work just like it's grounded version.
A different example is how Forward and Up Smash has hit boxes that do not correctly represent what is visually seen in the game.
Build 3.6 F-smash
This misrepresentation can lead to mistakes happening when a player is learning a character. With hit boxes that are negatively covering a character's visual move, which in this case is Yoshi's head, the player playing Yoshi and the opponent will have initial confusion due to visual representation not matching up with the hit boxes. This also can make Yoshi players not use the move due to how it is unreliable and difficult to land, but once they're changed to fit attacks visually, this problem gets solved almost immediately. Plus, these two moves match Melee's iteration when comparing the proper positioning of hit boxes.
I added D-smash because the move shows a size difference that helped more so than hurt. Graphically, it's overcompensating the visual effect, but when you view how Yoshi's D-smash is shown in Melee, the size given is almost like an anti-air for PM. Bigger than they appear can open up combo's that realistically shouldn't happen as easily, and making them smaller brings back precision, but maintains it's strength.
With these changes in mind, Yoshi's design comes back to a precise character that can threaten with massive damage from poor mistakes from encompassing his entire moveset to achieve the highest damage. Utilizing primarily as a melee style, the changes into his toolkit add more completion by allowing a few more options to situations where Yoshi had trouble with beforehand, and also allows him to create more threatening situations to maximize stage control while limiting opponent's options without an overwhelming amount to where opponent's are helpless. His combo game remains intact, but toned down to bring about the necessary character specific knowledge to bring innovation and flair.
Conclusion
Yoshi's design has became over-centralized into Down Throw to the point where most of the risks outweigh the reward, but since it is his best reward, he is forced to make the move work under extreme constraints. Penalizing a character's already weak neutral game can sway players from supporting their character due to how much more effort is required to gain a win in the neutral game. Yoshi strays from his Melee counterpart by addressing the weak grab and shield game to make them become more of a staple within Yoshi's overall gameplay, and while some traits did not carry over (lightshielding & parry), Yoshi gains a consistent answer to situations and can even use his shield as an approach option just like the rest of the cast.
Yoshi's reliance on grabs becomes normalized with the changes, and then Yoshi encompasses the full use of his DJ options while utilizing options that traditional characters constantly use. The other changes allow Yoshi's weaker moves to have the ability to create more threatening situations in ways that Yoshi wasn't able to do.consistently. Upon these moves having more purpose, Yoshi also nets a boost within his options at neutral (only a little) and at combos.
Lastly, Yoshi opens up to his other options when moves are represented correctly from a visual perspective. Fsmash and Usmash are pointed out particularly because the moves will be-able to fill in the purposes that they were given from the previous iteration and from the current iteration that brings any additions. He becomes the combo machine that can finally play within the rules of smash without the visual misrepresentations.
TL:DR = Read the conclusion. Or better yet, read the entire thing again to make it clear of what I'm explaining. :^)
Credits to everyone that helped test my build and gave me ideas as well as their thoughts on the overall design!
Naucitos
PsychoGhost
Pug
Ponkapa
Yoshi's Fundamental Design
Yoshi has the ability to instantly change his momentum, which allows for multiple angles of approach within a small space that the character's aerial movement allows, but one special mechanic that is only available to specifically Yoshi is his ability to use Double Jump Armor (DJA) to effectively tank hits for counterattacks. It is to note that DJC, while seemingly strong at a first glance, is more so a double-edged sword due to how trades function in fighting games. DJC is similar to Crouch Canceling, but the downside of using DJA is that Yoshi can become heavily combo-able if he is knocked out of his armor or uses an attack before tanking an attack. This negative becomes a bigger threat at the later percents because weaker moves will be able to send him offstage without any way to recover as how other characters would be able to.
Yoshi's defensive options are fairly lackluster, and this mainly stems from the fact that Yoshi could not jump out of shield in Melee. This limits his options to just basic rolls, spotdodges, and lightshielding. His rolls are fairly poor, so he has more reliance on spotdodging (one of the best in the game) and lightshielding. A major problem that Yoshi is often unable to deal with is when someone waits behind him and does not touch his shield. This situation makes him completely useless to where he is almost always taking some form of punishment. Parry is also a huge reliant move that allows him to play similar to regular characters, but also opens up his selection to stronger OoS options that no character possesses. With a special technique from Double Jump, he is to land and use grounded moves within reasonable time as it takes to use regular OoS aerials. The downside is that the window for landing on is not lenient and is only usable vs single hit attacks.
On the positive side, Yoshi is fairly strong in dishing out damage because of how his moveset is comprised. Yoshi, while requiring a lot of precision and reaction, can combo opponents out of CC range easily and can also potentially kill his opponents with correct reads from improper DI or techchases. It is very seldom when Yoshi gets in a situation where he can't deal a lot of damage outside of the more floaty characters in the game.
Neutral-B is one of Yoshi's command grabs that has more flexibility than his other grabs due to being able to use the move in the air with or without DJC and even B-reverse/wavebounce. This allows Yoshi to create some ambiguity within his shield pressure game, but a huge problem that lies within landing the move is the how low of a reward is given without requiring multiple hard reads. Not only that, but the opponent receives invincibility frames (14 to be exact) when coming out of the egg, which forces Yoshi to respect the opponent's options with minimal chance of capitalizing. Platforms reduces Yoshi's chance to make an opportunity happen since opponent's are given more options to get away from the situation. To further add to the imbalance, opponent's are given jumps back when breaking out, which helps an opponent that did not have one to begin with get out of the situation without feeling much pressure.
Yoshi's speed is another issue that comes up when considering how he can handle the neutral game. He has an average run speed across the cast, which does not help his dash dance game. At the same time, Yoshi does not have the best short hop game due to his jump being very high and aerials being slow outside of Neutral Air and Up Air. With all of this being said, wavelanding is one trait that allowed Yoshi to speed up and gain some mobility to handle playing the neutral more comfortably. Yoshi's wavelands allow him to move faster horizontally than his running speed, but it also opens up a few other options to space using armor and vertical speed. With his vertical speed being above average, he can utilize both horizontal and vertical spacing to play the neutral game more effectively.
With the introduction of side-B moves in melee, Eggroll has had a frustrating time to make a linear move useful. It's Yoshi's fastest option to move horizontally, but only on wide stages that allows the speed to reach it's max potential. It's a weak move offensively because the opponents are able to become immune to followups at higher percents from a hit, but low percent followups are also not possible because the cooldown from exiting egg roll is too high for Yoshi to capitalize on. Even then, Yoshi is able to use other moves to benefit from the same situation better than what side-B can offer. Defensively, the move plummets even worse. Yoshi goes downwards extremely fast when using the move and doesn't get any realistic chance to use the aerial acceleration it can provide.
Build Issues
Currently, Yoshi in PM has had some changes that most Yoshi players have not enjoyed the direction Yoshi has taken. In a way, he's centered closer to Melee, but still breaks from the trend due to the changes that were done when Yoshi was implemented back in 3.02. He currently has conflicting play styles that detracts from the overall design and enjoyment of the character.
With the removal of aerial grabs, Yoshi is forced to use a similar style as Melee. A style that is very reliant on platform movement and DJC (this includes DJA). This creates an imbalance in which Yoshi has to rely on using more DJC, but when you look at how damaging Yoshi's grab followups are, it's a sudden realization that Yoshi still needs to grab his opponents to maximize the damage. This creates a conflicting play style where Yoshi players want to use safer moves to minimize the danger that proceeds from a whiffed option, but has to use those dangerous options to net the best output.
The grab followups, namely D-throw, also brings up a concerning issue where Yoshi is able to kill an opponent no matter what option they use. This creates a grab that is able to do everything offensively with only a neutral game use issue. Yoshi already has a plethora of tools where he can setup for kills upon landing a good hit confirm, but they will become artificial options since grab gets the job done without as much effort as the others. D-throw reduces the amount of precision that was necessary for a character that contains a moveset that is extremely strong in removing how much an opponent can play for making a mistake.
Precision and reaction time is what made Yoshi require the tech skill needed to make damaging combos. The common DJC U-air string is one of the easier combos to pull off due to the timing not requiring as much precision, but many other combos that get Yoshi into F-air and/or U-air setups do require the precision and reactions. Those types of combos are often overlooked because of the imbalance of how to land damaging combos. It promotes more use of landing a grab and D-throwing or landing a U-air to nail damage without putting the effort into fully encompassing the character like an experienced player (AmSa). To even emphasize how important a Yoshi player's reactions and precision is required, Yoshi is forced to make decisions within a small amount of time to gain access to combos that would unleash a lot of damage on spacies in melee.
PM has taken a shot at making Side-B more use for Yoshi's overall game. Offensively, it's possibly one of the best designs it could be, but the move falls short to the expectations when used defensively. Considering Yoshi's recovery methods, he is quite limited since his main recovery option is through Double Jump. Whether it's through using armor, using his below-average air mobility, or his above-average fast fall speed to grab the ledge, his entire recovery game is centered around Double Jump.
Neutral-B is fairly flexible in the situations that it can be used, but a common issue is the lack of punish from landing one. Opponent's take 7% for getting grabbed, and then take half the damage of a move used on the egg, which makes the move similar to a few pummels and a throw. This would be perfectly fine if opponents couldn't break out far before the egg has a chance to even be safely hittable. Floaty characters can break out high in the air to get away from any further damage, and fast fallers can break out quickly to land on the ground almost instantly.
To add on top of this, the characters have 14 frames of invincibility upon breaking out the of egg while regaining their jump. This massively makes egg lay a weak move in terms of punishment because Yoshi first has to follow the opponents' DI and wait for them to break out, then has to react to their first option out of the breakout to avoid being counter-attacked. The range is a great start to the move, but the profit for using it is negligible for landing one.
Overall, Yoshi players end up relying on using DJC more often since grabs are not as efficient to use due to the margin of error being extremely small and with opponents being able to neutralize the threat of the option just by jumping. Other Yoshi players forcefully use grabs, despite the narrow success rate, since it's very beneficial to land one and to prevent overusing DJC so that opportunities are minimized from rendering Yoshi's recovery obsolete.
Build Considerations
To make Yoshi closer to his Melee design, but vary enough to have a PM feel to him, he needs to retain his Melee aspects, where his combos are precise, but damaging. Throws are altered to bring more meaning to his grab game than just D-throw alone. Movement is slightly increased to make platform movement more consistent with the character. Lastly, Yoshi's aerial grab should be re-implemented to bring more options to the character's neutral without changing his overall style immensely.
Having aerial grabs brings more focus towards his neutral game and minimizes the precision that he requires on the regular just by a little. This improves his neutral game, defense, and allows him to break some opponent's zoning with a ranged grab similar to Neutral B. The biggest problem is having a grab bubble that it unaltered, which is shown below:
Build 3.6 Standing Grab
Build 3.6 Dash Grab
Typically, the grab bubble(s) make no real difference vertically since they can only grab opponents on the ground, but when they are able to grab aerial opponents, everything is changed and Yoshi now has an absurdly safe option due to the coverage the bubble takes up. This removes precision from Yoshi's gameplay by a huge margin, which is more problematic in the long run for the character and the meta. To make sure that Yoshi still has to remain precise for using grabs, the grab bubble has to be reduced horizontally and vertically to a size shown below:
Custom Build Standing Grab
Custom Build Dash Grab
With this new grab bubble size (the small bubble in the bulb of Yoshi's tongue), Yoshi's margin of error is diminished to where he does not have the luxury to throw out the move, but it is also not as strict as timing a grab on an opponent that is landing from a short hop, full hop, or any form of landing lag. At the same time, opponent's (namely disjointed ones) are able to punish with proper spacing.
One major change that would need to happen is changing D-throw back to how it functions in Melee with a few extra modifications due to aerial grab being put back in. At it's current form, D-throw would allow Yoshi to combo, chain grab for stage control, and kill, which brings about overpowered options. Even making opponents launch up higher from D-throw would not remove characters that fast fall quicker to be immune from all the said options. So, to maintain D-throw to be a combo type throw, a combination of higher knockback and lower launch angles is needed to prevent proper DI from being punished with CGs or kill moves as would improper DI would allow.
Concerning his Forward and Back Throws, they serve no purpose within Yoshi's grab game. Throws are typically there for damage, combo, stage control, or killing. Since D-throw (and sometimes U-throw) is already a combo type throw, adding slightly more knockback would allow those F-throw & B-throw to be centered towards stage control, which would indirectly help create a DI mixup for getting a D-throw DI'd improperly.
An issue to Yoshi's horizontal prowess through platform movement is the physics delay. With the collision detection being slightly more precise, platform movement is more difficult to maintain consistent wavelanding speed for Yoshi to add in his overall movement. A slight increase in initial aerial speed velocity to compensate for the precision needed to get a perfect waveland would allow Yoshi to be able to consistently move quicker via platforms than on the ground.
Neutral-B can be tweaked by decreasing the amount of invincibility frames opponent's receive when breaking out, and by increasing amount of frames it takes for the opponent to break out of the egg. Decreasing the amount of invincible frames forces the opponent to choose an option within a more constrained amount of time, but not so much that the opponent is completely susceptible to Yoshi's attacks the instant the opponent breaks out of the egg. Less time before the character becomes vulnerable increases chances for more mistakes only if the opponent does not maintain a level head in mid match.
Making Side-B help Yoshi recover would help set the dino back into into the PM meta, but he doesn't need to have entitlement to his egg roll from previous builds. A little aerial acceleration only helps close-ranged (or properly DI'd attacks) recoveries to reach the stage, and since Yoshi loses his jump, he cannot afford to use the option early without taking extremely high risks. While talking about side-B, I believe that slightly increasing side-B's speed would truly encompass the move's ability to speed along the ground and catch up to an opponent. Whether it is through the startup or while the egg is rolling, Yoshi would be able to knock opponent's away and quickly catch up to apply more pressure more so than how he is able to through running. At the current state of egg roll, the pop out hit box and current cool down would allow for low percent combo attempts more consistently, but only if the player can quickly react to the circumstances since the hit stun is fairly low.
It goes without saying that bugs and graphical mismatches on moves hurt a character's ability to function properly. Yoshi having so many issues with his shield forces players to play around the problems instead of being able to trust the character's options during matches. An instance is how Yoshi gets shield poked from under his shield. This bug has been in the game since PM has started, but has never been fixed as of yet. This and a handful of other shield issues (I currently know of 4 personally) add up to be extremely troublesome for Yoshi. The four that I know are:
Stuck in shield after rolling
Cannot jump during frames 1-6 of shielding animation (fixed in custom build)
Shield poke from below egg (fixed in custom build)
Aerial Egglay not having grab bubbles on frame 17 (fixed in custom build)
To elaborate and expand on the egglay bug, Yoshi's aerial egg lay starts up 1 frame later (frame 18) than how his grounded version starts (frame 17).
Neutral-B:
Build 3.6 Frame 17
Build 3.6 Frame 18
With a little altering in the moves coding, Neutral-B can properly work just like it's grounded version.
Custom Build Neutral-B Aerial Version Frame 17
Custom Build Neutral-B Grounded Version Frame 17
A different example is how Forward and Up Smash has hit boxes that do not correctly represent what is visually seen in the game.
Build 3.6 F-smash
Build 3.6 U-smash
Build 3.6 D-smash
This misrepresentation can lead to mistakes happening when a player is learning a character. With hit boxes that are negatively covering a character's visual move, which in this case is Yoshi's head, the player playing Yoshi and the opponent will have initial confusion due to visual representation not matching up with the hit boxes. This also can make Yoshi players not use the move due to how it is unreliable and difficult to land, but once they're changed to fit attacks visually, this problem gets solved almost immediately. Plus, these two moves match Melee's iteration when comparing the proper positioning of hit boxes.
Custom Build F-smash
Custom Build U-smash
Custom Build D-smash
Melee Yoshi's F-smash
Melee Yoshi's U-smash
Melee Yoshi's D-smash
I added D-smash because the move shows a size difference that helped more so than hurt. Graphically, it's overcompensating the visual effect, but when you view how Yoshi's D-smash is shown in Melee, the size given is almost like an anti-air for PM. Bigger than they appear can open up combo's that realistically shouldn't happen as easily, and making them smaller brings back precision, but maintains it's strength.
With these changes in mind, Yoshi's design comes back to a precise character that can threaten with massive damage from poor mistakes from encompassing his entire moveset to achieve the highest damage. Utilizing primarily as a melee style, the changes into his toolkit add more completion by allowing a few more options to situations where Yoshi had trouble with beforehand, and also allows him to create more threatening situations to maximize stage control while limiting opponent's options without an overwhelming amount to where opponent's are helpless. His combo game remains intact, but toned down to bring about the necessary character specific knowledge to bring innovation and flair.
Conclusion
Yoshi's reliance on grabs becomes normalized with the changes, and then Yoshi encompasses the full use of his DJ options while utilizing options that traditional characters constantly use. The other changes allow Yoshi's weaker moves to have the ability to create more threatening situations in ways that Yoshi wasn't able to do.consistently. Upon these moves having more purpose, Yoshi also nets a boost within his options at neutral (only a little) and at combos.
Lastly, Yoshi opens up to his other options when moves are represented correctly from a visual perspective. Fsmash and Usmash are pointed out particularly because the moves will be-able to fill in the purposes that they were given from the previous iteration and from the current iteration that brings any additions. He becomes the combo machine that can finally play within the rules of smash without the visual misrepresentations.
TL:DR = Read the conclusion. Or better yet, read the entire thing again to make it clear of what I'm explaining. :^)
Credits to everyone that helped test my build and gave me ideas as well as their thoughts on the overall design!
Naucitos
PsychoGhost
Pug
Ponkapa
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