Yasuo is a Problem

Yasuo is, to date, the single most uninteractive and poorly designed champion yet conceived of by Riot Games, and new conqueror actually makes it worse.

So, to start, let's talk about old conqueror. Old conqueror was a rune which was designed to reward champions who can already establish the scenario to trade positively in lane. The rune was designed to "win harder" when controlling the wave. As you might suspect, a rune which give lots of bonus damage would be really desirable on any form of late game champion.

However for most of them, it was often a little to crippling early to basically have no Keystone, since they wouldn't often have control of the lane, and would suffer to hard against their already weak matchups. Some champions found a way to cheat this system, namely Yi in the jungle, who would just power farm until nothing could stop him not even tanks.

But not Yasuo. Yasuo just took that into lane like it was nothing. Now, having a lategame hypercarry run the most greedy of runes early and finding not just success, but that it was the most effective tactics, might imply that there is perhaps maybe just a little something wrong with his lane phase. It could potentially be the case, that the laning conditions for Yasuo are just the slightest bit too safe, consistent, and reliable to allow them to trade positively or just not trade at all. But rather than some wild speculation, let's just talk about Yasuo flat out.

So, for starters, Yasuo passively gains double crit chance from all items and effects which grant crit. This may give you a hint hint as to what his champions win condition is: Yasuo buys late game synergistic items, with the intention of providing insurmountable damage output at a value that the enemy team simply can't match.

This is a tried and true dynamic of league of legends, one which you may recognize from Marksmen. Characters who's win condition is to output and astounding amount of value which the enemy can't answer are generally refered to as "carries" which Yasuo most decidedly is.

Add into his passive crit gains the 50% armor pen after casting his ultimate (yes, that's right, 2250 Gold worth of stats passively from his Ultimate based on value of LW)

If you're starting to think. "After first back, if Yasuo manages to get even just a Zeal, he has 1750 gold worth of free stats up on me, and that's usually not a condition Carries get to at level 7" you'd be absolutely right. (BTW, numbers adjusted to account for not getting full worth out of armor pen due to low total armor values) Usually, stat amplifiers are reserved for tanks and bruisers, especially stats which are gained by casting a spell. These usually take the form of damage or durability steroids which occupy a fairly short window, and which define the pressure/trading windows in which you fight the champion.

Well, I guess he's a melee champion, so we'll let him bend and even break some of the traditional balancing and design tenements of a hyper carry. I mean after all, it's not like the benefits he gains which spread beyond the traditional scope or expectations of a hyper carry are balanced or designed as if they were normal parts of a hyper carry seeking long extended fights.

Except that, his ultimate grants total armor pen for 15 seconds to all targets, meaning that after even the worst ultimates, he can do fairly close to true damage to any champion, especially squishies who's only form of resist comes from armor since none of them have reductions like Warwick or Alistar do. It's definitely not as if this ability was designed to be used at the start of a fight as soon as the opportunity arose as a form of initiation, which would provide him access to the backline instantly, and with no threat of rebuttal or inhibition, as the 2 full seconds of crowd control enable his team to move and reposition, such that literally no matter who was hit, his team would have the complete and total positional advantage in any fight, be it by catching out the backline or by disabling the front line such that they have no chance to peel, or to impede the approaching enemies and maintain space for their backline.

Well, ok, sure, he's a hyper carry with an incredible form of engage that nearly guaruntees his team the positional advantange. And sure, the ability has the potential to do upwards of 5000 damage distributed over the entire enemy team guaranteed and unmissable. And sure, it's also a mobility to reposition in fights.

But, I mean, at least as a hyper carry with incredible sustained damage, and ridiculous stat efficiency, who can also engage the team fight, at least he has to choose between using his ultimate to either gain backline access OR to make use of access once he has it.

It's totally not at all the case that he has both the ability to set himself up totally independent of his team AND the ability to play off of his team to incredible effect, with one of the most powerful combo peice ultimates in the game.

Oh but wait, he does, because he doesn't JUST have a guarunteed thousand damage ultimate in late game. He also has his Auto attacks, which are doing near true damage, 750+ crits every time, plus an EMPOWERED CLEAVE AUTO RESET whose cooldown is eventually so low, that the ONLY limiting factor is your own animations. Which by the way, is another several hundred gold worth of CDR on the Q from attack speed. Which can also be guaranteed off the back of a 100 damage dash with no cooldown, in order to make it literally impossible to miss. At which point, it will knock up the target, a form of CC which can not be mitigated, cleansed, canceled, or in any way interacted with. Which lasts longer enough, that he can actually auto Q AGAIN during the CC.

But hey, those ridiculous numbers and burst potential are totally things which belong on a hyper carry. After all, as a champion who relies on intense micro precision to orbwalk, animation cancel, and kite with an seriously fragile healthpool and no form if durability, having to constantly walk a thin tight rope of maximizing damage output without over committing cooldown such as to have no way to remain alive in the fight.

Except Yasuo literally does none of that, because his base stats are significantly higher in all ways than any other hypercarry (since all of them are Marksmen) and the ridiculous gold value he gains from his passives YES, PLURAL, TWO SEPARATE GOLD VALUE GENERATING FREE STAT PASSIVE WHICH DON'T JUST SYNERGIZE WITH HIS ITEMS AND ABILITIES BUT ALSO WITH EACH OTHER DRASTICALLY INCREASING THE RAW VALUE OF EITHER ONE BY ITSELF. He can freely itemize defensively, while still having abundant damage to completely wipe any fight. Such that the only way to kill him is to have a lead AND totally dump absolutely everything on him to assure he dies instantly.

But wait, what's this, it wasn't enough that his passive doesn't just give him thousands of gold worth of synergizing stats, and enable him to buy all forms of defensive items he could ever possibly want. No no no. It ALSO gives him a shield, with which to totally ignore the harass, trades, and poke he was receiving just so that he can truly gauruntee that he will definitely 100% be able to sustain through the harass off a single creep wave.

And, should it all ever be a bit too much, should he ever absolutely spaghetti his combo, should you ever find a way to flash hook him, should you ever do anything that might come mildly close to resembling interacting with him in a meaningful or productive way, he will just press W amd all of the set up and commitment you put into developing that situation is entirely negated. Meaning you must either do nothing, or grossly over commit such that there is literally no possible way for you to win the subsequent team fight given all the cooldown and positioning you would have to waste trying to interact with Yasuo.

Now, surely, surely there are one or two of you who still think. "Well yes, sure, but that's all lategame. You know, that's the play fantasy for Yasuo, the true 1v5 experience at 3 items which is 22 minutes into the game, essentially meaning that if Yasuo or his team can stall that long, there is literally nothing to be done about it, because of how heavily he outvalues most champions, and how he is in every way designed to satisfy every conceivable win condition in a teamfight, ranging all the way from Engage, CC, assassination, zoning, sustained damage, Frontline battle of attrition, even poke with his Q which has no cost, barely a cooldown, and does 1200 damage to all targets as an AoE Cleave which can crit and applies on hit effects.

Well, now it's time to talk about lane phase for Yasuo. Or as I like to call it "Spam Q on the wave, and push in the enemy such that then having Mana and cooldowns it's such that the frequency with which they can actually do something productive without gambling the entire game away is so incredibly low, that you can just Press W and totally negate any threat they had, assuming that your passive you got for JUST FUCKING WALKING doesn't entirely win you the trade anyway"

So what does Yasuo have.

Well, his Q is a low cooldown 0 cost cleave which pushes in the wave, and pokes, and doesn't draw minion aggro, meaning he can just sit in the wave.

He has no Mana, so any champion with Mana must either.

A.) Fail miserably to match his push, ooming yourself and losing all the minions to the tower. B.) Attempt to trade with him, losing every trade because he has the wave advantage at all times. And still oom yourself, because you can't trade and push.

"People who complain about his W just don't know how to play around it" Right, because the existence of counterplay on some champions in some situations, and if the Yasuo has downs, DCs, and no fingers totally negates how frustrating and uninteractive it is to have the most powerful zoning tool against ranged champs in the game, who's positional advantage alone puts every single tank combined to shame.

It doesn't matter that his W only lasts 2 seconds and has a 22 second cooldown because my ability to control the wave and set up the scenario where I can force a decent trade on the wave which favors me while I have my cooldowns to trade with is not more than once in that window. If I as the laner create two separate situations where the Yasuo MUST trade against me to maintain a secure position in the lane, essentially through superior wave management and control I force a skill check, and he fails it, he totally negates my ability to capitalize on the combination of my good play AND his misplay. Then, in order to capitalize on it I must recreate that situation again, AND have the Yasuo play it worse than me AGAIN to see any benefit. AND I have do it through his passive.

Oh, and I have to do it enough times to negate a 1750 gold advantage from innate stats, which by level 7 is usually all of the good i have farmed at all. He gets more stats from his kit passively, than I get from the first 7 levels of laning. Plus all the gold he actually earned.

Since being even is losing to Yasuo, a common trope in many carry vs non carry matchups, the only way to beat Yasuo is: Deny 6 whole waves to the tower by level 7 without backing, while also trading positively against his shield passive, while being at a constantly being at a push disadvantage, while also CSing perfectly, while also dodging ganks, while also having to remain at a sufficient range that Yas can't E through the wave and be on top of you while wasting no significant cooldowns, or negating his ability to escape if the jungler is there.

That's at least 2 kills. I don't own a champion who can kill twice and shove in the waves before level 7. I don't have the money to dump into the game to experiment and learn what champions meet those conditions. I play the champions I like, and none of then even have the Mana necessary to do those things. Like, even if the Yasuo stood in the perfect position every time, dodged nothing, and just spam Q autoed the wave, I actual don't think with Xerath before backing, that I could cast enough abilities to actually kill him and shove in the wave before I oomed myself.

That's without considering my cool down windows, the danger of ganks, and how spamming the wave can hinder your ability to CS. Just, playing against a bot who constantly shoved and walked in a circle to get their passive, I don't think it could be done before you oomed. Definitely not on Ryze.

But, you can't even use your autoes to abuse him in these situations. You can't use the creeps to gain damage like you can for those champs in every situation. It's not realistic to control the wave against him. If you're in range to auto and prep the wave properly, to set up timings and health values to CS and properly shove, his E means your in his melee range. He can just dash to you, but not onto you cause it's a fixed distance dash. Then, auto Q auto, walk away, and Q tornado back through the wave to stop you chasing him into the wave. During all that, he was AoEing the wave, maintaining his shove, his passive tanked the minion aggro and all your damage, and even if you attempt to abuse this window, he has W to stop you, and you completely miss out on your chance to gain wave control by forcing his W cooldown.

But, despite all this. Despite being the most uninteractive, masturbatory, one sided, boring, linear, unfun lane, even then, it was still possible. Last patch, against Yasuo, I could at least pray that he was a complete scum sucking mouth breather.

I could hope to God in heaven above, that he really was the degenerate that he probably was. In a lot of cases, I'd be right. Previously, I could intentionally walk into tornadoes thrown off the wave, and then once his Conq procced, I could wait for it to fall off, and id have a window to trade, where most Yasuo players who treat the words "resource management" like the Boogeyman, are to brain damaged to realize their steroid isn't active, and they will take bad trades in the wave.

Yes, old conqueror was the %%%%% in the armor, where terrible Yasuo players got to really show how terrible their awareness was.

The champion which is so incredibly unbalanced and uninteractive, that my only hope was that I could simultaneously manage his own resources better than he could, on a resourceless champions with the single most simple resource to manage, just spamming the wave to maintain Conq, would fail at that because of how stupidly brainless the champ is, such as to attract such subhuman trash players, had a weakness.

And now, with new Conq, that's gone. The last piece is finally in place. He is officially, 100%, totally, and unquestionably, the single most uninteractive champion in all of league.

Yasuo has gone from ungodly frustrating anf unfun to play against, and ascended to his final true form of complete and total masturbation, where playing Yasuo is now the official single player experience for League.

Good job Riot.