Getting your first last layer skip is so cool! My first was on an OH solve which ended up being a 19, which is quite bad for me because the F2L was rubbish. It was even weirder because it was a pure last layer skip, so there was no AUF. I have had another last layer skip since then, but that was also on quite a bad solve, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get a PB or very very good time the next time one crops up. Was this your PB?
You could try scrambling behind your back and rotating the pyraminx during your scramble, maybe. I would struggle to follow the orientation of any cube after just turning it around randomly a few times
Yau is definitely better. It makes lookahead during edges easier, it's much easier to turn faster during last 4 centres, and every top solver apart from Max Park uses it.
Do you know what causes your cross to go wrong, or does it just sort of happen?
I think it's because I don't the last four edges in any special order, just the easiest one first. Then I end up with the last two being diagonal to each other and I tend to solve that with an R2 and forget where to put the cross-edge back. I guess I just can't to do last four edges efficiently, I've seen people talk about "cycles" instead of doing slice-flip-slice but I don't even know what the difference is.
Yeah, Yau does have some restrictions that Redux doesn't have, which can cause it to be more inefficient sometimes - it doesn't really matter if you do cycles or spam slice-flip-slice, but doing R2s will break the cross - instead, you might have to take an edge out and then reinsert it somewhere else, or slice with Uw2, if that makes sense - doing slow solves where you practise not breaking the cross might also help.
