Melee yoshi is one of the most underrated, unique, and difficult to master characters in smash. This caused a lot of people to ignore him in favor of other characters like the spacies and marth. Same deal with 64 for the most part, where Kirby and Pikachu store the spotlight. In brawl, he was kind of not great but honestly who cares about brawl. (Jk ...or am I?) In smash 4, he was much higher tier than ever before but was again not picked very often. In ultimate, yoshi is a lot easier to pick up and is much more rewarding in terms of power than ever before compared to the rest of the cast. He’s still really unique, and he wins or goes even in almost every matchup so he’s a great character to main.
General info:
Mobility is one of yoshis most powerful tools. This, along with much of yoshis kit, has been buffed from his already powerful smash 4 self. With the best air speed in the game, as fast as melee jigglypuff, and a very solid dash speed at 16th place in the cast, yoshi can weave in and out easily from most ranges acting is sort of a guerilla warfare dinosaur. He can also pivot using his double jump which adds movement options. His projectile game is pretty darn good, and his eggs bounce now which is great, but overall Yoshi is much more of a rushdown style character. His hitboxes are solidly disjointed, but aren’t as long as most sword characters, mewtwo, or the Belmont’s, so attacking while moving is key.
All of his aerials are awesome for this as they are fast and lead into combos and kill confirms. His Nair is an excellent close range, out of shield, and edguarding tool, his bair is good for creating a wall of pain, his down air does a ridiculous amount of damage and can cause tumble and thus a tech chase now, and his upair is a very powerful juggling and knockout move.
Armor:
Yoshi also utilizes ultimates armor mechanic which is great. Armor lets you take hits while only receiving percent damage rather than knockback and hitstun. Yoshi has armor on a few of his moves, including egg lay, standing ground pound, and of course his double jump. Having armor on double jump means winning more trades with aerials, and it makes recovering a lot easier.
Recovery:
Speaking of recovery, despite his up b not moving yoshi as much as most other characters up b do, yoshis double jump height, air speed, and armor easily make up for this. The steps to recovering with yoshi can be simplified as followed
1: toss eggs to mess with your opponent and get closer to the stage.
2: try and recover from above the ledge as you are safer from gimps and can ground pound.
And 3: jump over your opponent, challenge them with a Nair, dair, or egg lay while you have double jump armor, or ground pound. You can ground pound into the ledge, barely on the stage, on a platform, or through a platform by holding down b. Try not to be predictable and mix it up almost every time.
Specials
In terms of specials, Yoshi’s side b is pretty terrible in most situations and should be avoided almost always. In fact it’s so bad, that you should practice angling his up b a lot so that you don’t accidentally get side b.
His egg toss is amazing and covers a lot of angles, but it’s not as useful compared to a lot of other projectiles like simons axe and young links bombs, arrows and boomerang. You Can do it normally to get an eggs that hits above and in front of yoshi, hold forward to get a longer reaching and lower angled egg, angle your stick back to get an egg straight above yoshi, or lightly tap it to get one that hits up close. When in the air quickly tapping up b sends the egg down and covers a unique angle compared to most other projectiles. Also up b let’s you easily pivot in the air. Btw, turn tap or stick jump off on yoshi to prevent accidentally jumping when going for an egg toss.
Just remember that yoshi is first and foremost a rushdown character, so when playing against a projectile heavy character like Simon or the links, use eggs to keep up with chip damage at long range, but mostly to catch your opponent off guard, and to cover approaches rather than playing the runaway egg toss game.
Yoshis down b or ground pound is a solid recovery, edgeguard, and knockout tool. It helps prevent him from being juggled, and because it can go through platforms now by holding down b it can be a good pressure and mix up tool.
Yoshis neutral b is egg lay, which is way better than it was in melee and is a bit faster than smash 4. It’s a command grab, meaning a grab that can be performed in the air, and if used properly it can rack up huge damage. Egg lay alone does about 7% unstaled, but more importantly it traps your opponent for a few moments depending on how damaged he is. Opponents break out easily at low percent, so be careful and try getting some eggs or moving nairs at first. At kill percents, try to wait for your opponent to break out and react with an up smash, up air, something that leads into an up air, or a fair. As with many of yoshis moves, try to use egg lay while moving so that you have a mobile hit box and can get away easier if you whiff. This makes the egg lay much safer than a regular grab. If you do land the egg lay, rack up percent rather than try to knock out. It’s good to know though that damage to an egg trapped opponent will take half damage and zero knockback, so spamming it is not optimal. Yoshis down air can be amazing after an egg lay, especially if you catch them as they break out of the egg.
KO moves:
In terms of knockout moves, yoshi has a good amount of them. Up air kills off the top at a decent percent and is easy to land, his fair can knock out quickly and the last part of it spikes but it’s a bit riskier, and yoshis smash attacks are pretty darn good, especially up smash. Even his Nair, probably his most spammable aerial, can knock out at high percent with a strong hit, but it’s much better used for edgeguarding, breaking combos, and racking up damage unless your opponent is at a really high percent
Combos- down throw, up throw at low percents, up tilt, up air, forward tilt, jab, grab, and a weak hit from nair are all awesome for starting and extending combos that can rack up damage or lead to a knockout. Yoshis combo game is simple, but fast paced. In order to get more combos in, you need to quickly react to where your opponent is flying after being hit. Yoshi can tech chase like no other, kind of like melee shiek or marth, so try to finish your combos with moves that lead to your opponent being stuck on the ground.
Defense-
Yoshis ability to punish your opponents mistakes is amazing. Aside from having high damage moves and quick combos, yoshi can use his speed to get in and punish the end lag of moves better than most other characters. Being mobile is your best defense. However, yoshis shield is arguably the best in the game. This is because there is no way to shield poke him as his body is intangible and the egg doesn’t shrink like normal shield. Also the first few frames of when yoshi is putting his shield up has intangibility on his head, then feet, which drastically minimizes his hurtbox before the shield comes up. Nair and bair our of shield are awesome get off me moves, making a lot of attacks not safe on your shield. Ultimates new perfect shield mechanic is also really, really good for yoshi as his shield is amazing and he can punish hits on shield even from long hitboxes with his air speed. However, be carful of using your double jump for no good reason, as it is your only way to recover and you can’t cancel it like in melee or fastfall during it.
Countering yoshi-
For counter play, a good general tip is to avoid being above yoshi as he has a wide arsenal of anti air attacks. Also just being aware of his movement and punish potential is important, so that you don’t feel too safe at mid range and drop your guard. Predicting his movement is key, because chances are yoshi is faster than your character so you have to be one step ahead of him.
While yoshi is definitely a top tier character in ultimate, he does have a few weaknesses you can exploit when trying to counter him. As mentioned before about yoshi using double jump, watch for his double jumps and punish them. Also try to attack him while he’s in the air doing short hop nairs or dairs so that you can out range him without having to risk hitting his shield like you would if he was grounded.
Your overall game plan against yoshi should be pretty character specific, but basically characters with good projectiles should try to kite for damage and predict where yoshi will Be next. Characters with swords, or have other disjointed hitboxes like mewtwo’s tail or the Belmont’s whips, have an easier time stuffing yoshis approaches. Just be sure that if you swing your sword hard it hits and isn’t perfect shielded, or yoshi will punish you heavily. Heavy characters often have command grabs which ignore armor, but they get totally run over by yoshis speed. Characters without good projectiles or swords have to be a bit more creative and make a lot of reads.
For edgeguarding, while yoshi has a solid recovery game you can react to all of his options, as they are pretty predictable. Yoshi can only recover two ways: High or low. If he recovers high you can bet that a lot of players will ground pound, so you can wait this out and punish the landing lag. A better option is usually to go out and intercept yoshis high recovery and gimp him off the stage once he’s double jumped. If he recovers low, he often has to grab the ledge so just go ham and gimp him or get ready to ledge trap him.
When you’re trying to gimp yoshi you have to play smart and deal with his double jump heavy armor. Notice I say heavy armor, not super armor, because after about 120 units of knockback yoshi takes full damage and knockback. Breaking the armor is doable in a number of ways.
One heavy hit can ignore his armor no problem, but landing it can be hard especially if you have to get close.
Ranged attacks with knockback like simons axe, anybody’s fully charged energy ball shot, or k rools cannon can deal with yoshis double jump armor really well, because you don’t have to get close and risk getting hit by a Nair. (but note that fox’s lasers, which do no knockback, don’t help at all).
Quick 1-2 combos like ryus Nair to shoryuken or young link bomb drop to nair are riskier but work too. Multi hit attacks have always been the standard for gettting through yoshis armor, but again you have to be close to him to land one. A command grab or tether grab will ignore his armor completely, and a well spaced zair can knock the armor off as well.
