Yoshi's Pre-game Prescence

[ATH_]

This is more of a question thread, again. What are your experiences when playing other people in tournaments who see you pick Yoshi? Have you seen a common theme to who they pick? Has anyone commented (harsh or not) on your choice of character?

This sort of leads into the question of who/what counters Yoshi honestly. I know someone won't just pick a counter if they've never played them. However, I'd like to know if you've seen someone favor picking another character who wasn't their main when playing against you. What characters do people think have a better chance against Yoshi compared to other characters.

I'd like to know this so I can figure out who I should practice against. I haven't done any hardcore practice against a specific matchup other than Shulk. And I'd like to know who I should watch out for, with the back up of experience hopefully.

 

[Scarlet Jile]

Yoshi's hard-counters from Brawl don't feel quite as bad, but honestly, Lucario is still a giant dong.

It used to be that playing against Toon Link, Falco and Lucario felt like smashing your face into a wall. I think Shiek is going to be a decent counter-play to Yoshi. I can see Robin being problematic as well in the right hands. I'm not even sure Yoshi has any -2 MUs in Smash 4.

Really, though, I'd worry less about practicing your counter-picks at this stage of the meta and more on learning to play the FotM characters like Diddy and Rosalina.

 

[Delta-cod]

Although I lack the first-hand experience for this game, I can tell you that people in general don't tend to think Yoshi is really "countered" by anyone at the moment, meaning you probably won't see any specific trends/"counterpick" options against you.

I recommend that you just become moderately familiar with all the characters in the game so at least their move properties aren't surprising to you (although specific applications and setups might be). As Jile said, learning to play the FotM characters is also important, and I'd put extra time into learning those match ups for now.

From what I can tell, some of the current popular characters are Sheik, Diddy, ZSS, and Rosaluma. I've seen some Duck Hunt Dog, Falcon, and Kirby as well, but I don't think they're as good, nor as popular.

 

[Shiri]

I agree with both Jile and Delta. Since the game is so new, learning matchups right now takes a different priority than it would a year from now.

For new games, you want to learn matchups in the following order generally:

- Day one good characters (Greninja, Rosalina, etc.)
- The characters with the most keepaway (Duck Hunt, Mega Man, etc.)
- The hot new flavor character (Diddy, etc.)
- The scrubhammer (Little Mac, etc.)
- Characters people in your area play often
- Characters you see online/in footage often

This is the spread I've found to be pretty good at preparing yourself for competition at various levels. Of course, if you have matchups you hate in particular, you can prioritize them as high as you feel you should in order to overcome them (Lucario can ead, I personally don't like Pit, things like that). Don't worry about things like counters so early in the game's life; less than half of this game is even understood at a basic level right now so if you can focus on the matchups that matter (or that matter to you), then you should be sufficiently prepared.

 

[Boshi Kafka]

I got 9th at a well sized NC tournament with only using Yoshi. People were excited to play against a good Yoshi generally. Yoshi seems like the character everyone wants to play and heard is good but haven't put time into him yet. I only lost tight battles (game 3 last stock KO %) to a textbook diddy and a slightly campy rob.

Diddy is winnable (especially on Delfino)
For hard campy matchups, I might start switching to Villager.

 

[555mars]

Yeah, Yoshi is probably -1 against Sheik, Diddy and Lucario. That's probably about as bad as it gets for the dino. Just practice the Diddy matchup a lot (big FoTM pick,)

 

[Nikes]

Basically what the other's have said, it's too early to worry about counters and more important to just improve in general so you'll handle all matchups better by default. I haven't come across any scenarios in-game or strats that counter Yoshi since he has all the tools needed for any situation now, we just need to learn and start applying them.

I got 9th at a well sized NC tournament with only using Yoshi. People were excited to play against a good Yoshi generally. Yoshi seems like the character everyone wants to play and heard is good but haven't put time into him yet. I only lost tight battles (game 3 last stock KO %) to a textbook diddy and a slightly campy rob.

Diddy is winnable (especially on Delfino)
For hard campy matchups, I might start switching to Villager.

Out of curiosity, why do you feel Delfino's good against Diddy?

 

[KayJay]

A good Shulk can be very effective against Yoshi's air play.
Also Donkey Kong is underrated, a good DK is a Nightmare, his uair, nair, bair and dtilt beats like every approach maneuver Yoshi has.

 

[Boshi Kafka]

Out of curiosity, why do you feel Delfino's good against Diddy?

Like what you were saying, what gives Yoshi has more options and angles than most characters in smash4. What I liked about Delfino was that it made the diddy kong have to switch up his plan, much like taking a fox or falco to Fountain of Dreams in Melee. Because Diddy Kong can suffer from being flowcharty and textbook, taking them to a stage that forces them to move around and take a new approach just widens it mentally for me.

Mechanically speaking, the nature of the moving stage weakens his bananas and grab game. There are some parts of that stage (the pillars in the water/some of the rooftops/etc) that dash grabs are hard to approach with, where it basically becomes an aerial game. While Diddy may beat out our aerials, our superior aerial mobility with our double jump and eggs can let us out maneuver him.

In summary, we play Yoshi out of love and we should be able to adapt to a moving stage better than a textbook Diddy. While it may seem like I have claimed a few mechanical things, it is mostly a mental thing. You can argue and study stages and how they effect matchups, but I think a lot of time how you feel about a stage is going to be the biggest thing.

 

[Sinister Slush]

A good Shulk can be very effective against Yoshi's air play.
Also Donkey Kong is underrated, a good DK is a Nightmare, his uair, nair, bair and dtilt beats like every approach maneuver Yoshi has.

He still suffers from the same thing in Brawl.
We can just lame it out and do egg lay/egg toss to get a good amount of strings and % on DK just like Bowser. Especially since I honestly think Utilt to Uair is one of our true combos at lower percents and even high for certain characters.

Only thing we don't have on DK now is the sneaky grab release to Usmash if the DK player knows we actually don't have that on him when having a few frames to UpB away from it. But that still would put him in the air and prone for another kill move.