For Raven, I think he's more of a hit and run kind of character. It's possible for him to rush down an opponent but I think his strengths come from mid and long range. His moves are deceivingly far, you can still get hit even from a small tip of the move. His move list isn't that big so your options may be limited but they're 50/50 and relatively safe if blocked from far away. A lot of his good set-ups come from back turn but it's very risky, you really need to know the character well to pull them off. He has a lot of high and low moves though so you need to be careful with those.
In a way he's similar to Yoshi cause he's full of shenanigans. I've been playing against a Raven player for years now so I know him pretty well. People call my friend a ninja and I get called a samurai whenever we play each other. Raven also has f,f+3 which is similar to Yoshi's f,f+4, everyone in the arcades hates those knees. Oh he also has body blow, I think 50% of my losses on Raven come from f,f+3 and the other 50% is from d/f+1. He's not a simple character to pick up but Yoshi being (in my opinion) the hardest the character to play, it won't be that hard to use him.