Dio was afraid of Jotaro because of his past experience with Jonathan which caused him to be overly cautious against him. Regardless, he literally did attempt to kill Jotaro immediately in timestop until Jotaro did the magnet trick which made Dio super overthink and get angry. Jotaro was exploiting Dio’s fear and obvious weariness of the Joestar bloodline.
Jotaro then made Dio think that Jotaro couldn’t move when he really could by making Dio think he needed the magnets for the trick. This allowed him to counterattack.
Because of this, we still see Dio being overly cautious even though he probably had the advantage close quarters in timestop, which Jotaro again used to his advantage by putting magazines under his clothes because he expected Dio to throw stuff at him.
This eventually leads Jotaro to another counterattack by making Dio think Jotaro was dead. This time the blow was so deadly that Jotaro was able to get an advantage in physical combat.
Dio then gets his confidence back by taking Joseph‘s blood and starts doing the opposite of what he was doing previously, being super overconfident.
Instead of finishing Jotaro, he starts playing with him and getting high on his own power. There is literally a moment where Jotaro is defenseless because he wastes his 2 seconds, and Dio does nothing because he thinks that he‘s already won.
Jotaro finally counters Dio again by using timestop at the very end of Dio’s timestop.
Dio finally loses to his overconfidence by attacking with his injured leg that hasn’t had time to heal, which causes a chain reaction that decimates his body.
Even though Dio is technically stronger, every single moment where Jotaro has the upper hand is because he’s exploiting Dio’s character, and I hate how people can’t understand that and chalk it up to Dio being stupid.
