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Yasuo has significant weaknesses

Kal Vas Flam··17 votes·1,154 views

Hi guys, Poundman here on his iPhone. On vacation at the beach and for some damned reason decided to check league boards. I'm a gluten for punishment I guess.

Anyway, I just wanted to counter my own arguement. What? You see, I've be been on the "Yasou is broken" bandwagon for a while, but I officially change my stance today. Something about crashing waves, Bacardi, and unfiltered starlight makes a man think. Yasou, if anything, is grossly underpowered.

I am sitting on a deck alone (as my family is sleeping) and began reminiscing over my Yasou encounters, as well as a challenge I accepted shortly before vacation to try Yasou myself, and what I realized is he has more counters than almost any champion in the game.

Let me help you out here, as many of you are no doubt baddie Silver players just like me.

  1. His best ability, windfall, has a very long cool down. I first noticed this when I was playing him. Good players would simply wait for it, back off accordingly, and then proceed to rape me as my only defense was to try either flash away or try to murder them first, which was a major problem because;
  2. Yasou has garbage burst until late game. A champion like Yas is not meant to fight in long drawn out duels, but that's exactly what he has to do until late game. My best advice is to not panic early game when he charges you and instead trade back with him. He probably cannot out trade you.
  3. His high mobility is situational. He has to have creeps around to outmaneuver you. Use this to gank sidelanes. I realized when I played him that leaving lane is a death warrant early game as there are no easy escapes. Put the pressure on him to choose between farming or taking a large risk across the river.
  4. His crit chance is high, but he becomes an absurdly easy target when going all in. When Yas ults into a fight he is literally easier than Warwick to target an destroy. And unlike his werewolf counterpart, Yas has no built in sustain to offset damage taken.

Aside from all that, several champions just hard counter him. Many mages have abilities that can ignore his wall. Beating Yas is not about being stronger; its about being smarter. Most of you are smart people, I believe you can do it.

20 Comments

PrinceOfStorms9 votes

  1. The cooldown is not long enough if it can basically deny a fight. Good Yasuo players will also wait to use windwall only for game-changing abilities, like projectile ultimates, or in a teamfight to prevent the enemy team from following up after their initiator goes in. Your statement of "Good players would simply wait for it, back off accordingly, and then proceed to rape me as my only defense was to try to either flash away or try to murder them first" only applies to when Wind Wall is used defensively. What if Yasuo uses it offensively, as he goes in, to prevent his target from being able to fight back?

  2. Yasuo is a lane bully. He doesn't need insane burst, he has the sustain that he needs to take minimal damage from trades (because of his Flow shield) and Warlord's Bloodlust allows Yasuo to sustain himself through a fight with an enemy champion. Having double crit makes it incredibly easy to get procs off of it, an the nerf (that prevented it from working on minions) does little to actually change how Yasuo fights in lane.

He also doesn't have any resource, so he can force out a lot of mids through that alone.

  1. So what you're saying is that Yasuo should shit on everyone in lane? Seems legit. Most fights HAPPEN IN LANE.

  2. He actually does have sustain. His flow shield is fully recharged when he ults. And typically when he ults into a fight it will be to follow up off of someone else's initation (like Malphite R), or alternatively be when he catches 3 people in a tornado, making it incredibly safe to do so.

Yes, "several" champions can hard counter him, but Yasuo hard counters roughly 75% of the game's midlaners. The mere threat of the enemy picking Yasuo discourages picking one of these unless he's blind first picked.

IMO Yas could use one or more of the following nerfs:

  1. E costs 50% of his maximum flow for every stack he has (so it's not spammable).
  2. His passive shield isn't refreshed when he ults.
  3. His passive shield no longer scales, so it's exclusively an early game ability, like Lissandra's passive, considering how hard Yasuo scales into the lategame.
  4. EQ interaction removed. The only way for Yas to knockup someone is to tornado them.
  5. Double crit passive changed to 50% more crit gained from items (down from 100%), OR Yasuo's crit damage is reduced by 30%, and he becomes unable to increase his crit damage by any means.
  6. Give him the Kalista treatment. His attacks deal 90% of his AD on hit.
  7. Wind Wall can no longer block projectile ultimates (The edge of a windwall stopping a Nami ult is really stupid).
  8. Remove the ability for his Q to crit and apply on hits.
Wyrmblade1 votes

I think I read a cool idea for a nerf where he uses flow to charge the wind wall and it can only block an infinite amount of skillshots if the flow bar is full.

Penns5 votes
  1. For such a fight changing ability, not really long.
  2. He probably can since he is a lane bully lol.
  3. True but that doesnt really help anyone outplay Yasuo 1v1 in lane.
  4. Technically he has 15% life steal on any attack against enemy champs... with 2 items.

Also lets not confuse "being overpowered" with "having no counters/ counterplay"

JustMyBassCannon2 votes

{quoted}

  1. For such a fight changing ability, not really long.
  2. He probably can since he is a lane bully lol.
  3. True but that doesnt really help anyone outplay Yasuo 1v1 in lane.
  4. Technically he has 15% life steal on any attack against enemy champs... with 2 items.

Also lets not confuse "being overpowered" with "having no counters/ counterplay"

  1. 18-26 seconds, majority of players rank W last, so it's usually >20 seconds cooldown. That's once-per-fight cooldown, and Yasuo almost does not benefit from building CDR.
  2. The thing about lane bullies is that they require you to obey their expectations. If you do what they want, they'll win every time.
  3. Actually, pointing out that his mobility is reliant on having extra enemy targets is extremely valuable information in the lane. How you use that information is up to your own wisdom.
  4. That applies to one crit per 2 seconds, and while I don't think that mastery is balanced out yet, it's not going to mean more than 70 health when it does work with just those two items.

Also, people continue to claim that he is overpowered and has no counter-play, but history has determined these to be lies.

DragonShea1 votes

{quoted}

  1. For such a fight changing ability, not really long.
  2. He probably can since he is a lane bully lol.
  3. True but that doesnt really help anyone outplay Yasuo 1v1 in lane.
  4. Technically he has 15% life steal on any attack against enemy champs... with 2 items.

Also lets not confuse "being overpowered" with "having no counters/ counterplay"

True. Being Overpowered means that the champion is better overall in doing their task and their power is so great that it mitigates their weaknesses. Having no counter or counterplay means that their "counter" have no effect on them and its as much of a challenge as a champ they have have an advantage over.

Matezoide3 votes

Still a shit to face

AATTRROOXX2 votes

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/degrassi/images/b/b7/At_Last_I_See_the_Light.gif/revision/latest?cb=20140406021016

Slamurai Jack2 votes

I'm pretty sure I'm being trolled right now, but nice post anyway. Couldn't have said it better myself. Everything you said was pretty much spot on; particularly the part about having awful burst, which is why the Shiv nerf last patch hurt him so much. Amazing how actually playing a champion changes your perspective on them.

Teridax682 votes

I think the main issue with a lot of these weaknesses is that they tend to diminish or disappear completely past a certain level of mastery, which makes them less significant than they should be overall. Sure, when baited, Wind Wall's massive downtime hurts, but that just relies on Yasuo messing up; if he saves up at the right time, he can block an ultimate or a large part of an opponent's combo. Yasuo does tend to suffer in protracted duels, but he also has the tools to poke his enemy from a distance and retreat if necessary, so again he has a large measure of control over when he has to fight. His mobility is situational, but that's not a weakness so much as it is a caveat to his otherwise tremendous mobility, as he still has plenty of opportunities to outmaneuver people in fights even in the jungle (any jungle camp can let him jump over walls and towards safety, and unlike other champions, he can do so at no cost or cooldown). Yasuo has no built-in sustain (thank goodness), but has a shield designed to buffer his health when going in, and his Wind Wall also makes him less of an easy target than he could be. Overall, he does tend to not do too well in teamfights unless far ahead, and does have counters, but the problem with many of his weaknesses is that he has the agency to mitigate them almost as much as he wishes to, given enough skill, which is why it often feels terrible to play against an experienced Yasuo, as combat feels like it relies more on him messing up than you genuinely outplaying him. He's definitely weak for most people playing him, and right now he's more or less balanced, but with the kit he has he's always going to be irritating to deal with to some extent if whomever's playing him is aware of his power and breadth of options.

Catastrop2 votes

Again, someone else who fails to see what the community doesn't like about Yasuo. It's not that he's OP. It's the fact that he has so much bullshit built in to his kit to outplay you. You can have major weaknesses yes, but when you have such a great kit, that everything in it compensates for those weaknesses, then you have a problem. Also, the bad thing is, it's not like Riot can take some part of the kit out without completely gutting him in some way because he needs everything in his kit. No idea why this posted twice.

AATTRROOXX1 votes

Not so sure about that last statement... Most of the people being smart.

Full Brain1 votes

Everyone has major weaknesses but everyone doesn't have an absurdly great kit. If they did something about one of the things in his kit it would be fine and he would be on par with every other character like him.

flibitydoo1 votes

he's actually pretty bad when you compare him to other squishy, melee ads (as in, champions that build purely offensive ad items with few tank items)

Riven Tryndamere MasterYi Fiora Gangplank Rengar Zed

no invulns (or cc cleanse, or untargetability, or natural lane sustain), no mobility for running away (or chasing distant targets), his burst is among the slowest, probably the worst ult out of all of them

windwall is his "invuln" and quite often it does nothing depending on the opposing champion.

WookieJesuz1 votes

Last statement qusetionable

Zhire1 votes

so are you questioning yourself or..?

WookieJesuz1 votes

Most of you are smart people, I believe you can do it. Thats questionable :3

MunchCrunchLunch1 votes

its not about if champs counter him or not. its if champs in HIS LANE counter him or not. the only champs that counter him are top laners for hte most part and even then its a close fight. HE LITERALLY DESTROYED EVERY MID LANE MAGE

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