Some ideas for changes to Yasuo from someone who casually plays him sometimes I guess.
EDIT: Jeez, I really rambled on for a while with this one. Skip to the end for a TL;DR of my proposed changes.
I would like to preface this by saying that, as the title indicates, I am not the most incredible Yasuo player around, or the most incredible League player. I would consider myself a Yasuo main in that he's the champion I play by far more than any other, but I don't mean to imply that my perspective has any form of higher authority or greater insight than most. So, if that hampers the validity of my opinion in your eyes, I get it. Still, I like to think that I play to at least an acceptable standard, and that I have a reasonably good understanding of the game, so I hope you'll consider what I have to say.
As you've all probably noticed, there's been a big influx of Yasuo complaints on the boards since around the time the preseason hit. My intention with this thread is to propose some ideas for changes to Yasuo, mostly aimed at making his laning phase less frustrating without significantly harming his playstyle or making radical changes to his kit. Note that I don't necessarily think that all of these changes should be applied simultaneously, just that they are are things that independently I think would make Yasuo more tolerable. The specific numbers I'm proposing are also obviously subject to manipulation by those more knowledgeable.
I'll start off with what I think would be the safest and easiest to implement, making windwall's duration scale with ranks.
I've seen a lot of talk about what people find to be frustrating about Yasuo's windwall, and to be honest, I think a lot of them sort of miss the mark. I don't believe that the problem with windwall is that it starts inside Yasuo's hitbox, allowing it to be used like a spell parry even at odd angles. In fact, the ability to use windwall as a parry is what I think is the most cool, satisfying, and thematically appropriate things about it, it should be made to be more like a parry, not less of one. I don't think that the problem is that it blocks things that by real world logic it shouldn't be able to, which to be honest is more a nitpick than anything. Game logic being consistent and design making sense is more important that whether or not something in-game works the way it would "if it were real" (i.e. why Brand isn't immune to ignite, Sion, Darius and every "brave warrior" type isn't immune to Shaco boxes, Bard is allowed to exist etc.)
From my experience against Yasuo, the most frustrating thing about windwall is that it just lasts so damn long. At first rank, it completely walls off projectiles for four entire seconds. Blocking a powerful spell with a well-timed windwall is fine, but the fact that from the moment he puts a single point in it, he can simply re-position behind a botched windwall and you can't follow up for such a huge window of time is infuriating. As the game progresses, he really does need to utilize the duration of his windwall to be able to survive a fight with a ranged attacker, but in the early-mid game it gives him more protection and dueling power than he has any right to have while being considerably more forgiving of a misplay.
As such, I would propose reducing the duration of windwall from 4 seconds to something more like 1/1.5/2/2.5/3 seconds. This is a pretty significant reduction to it's duration, so lowering the cooldown of the ability by a couple seconds at first rank (while keeping it the same at max) would probably make sense.
The next change I would propose is to drastically reduce the amount of time he can hold on to the third stack of his Q. I don't think that his third Q is in and of itself too powerful, but the fact that Yasuo can apply pressure and zone his lane opponent for 10 entire seconds simply by holding on to his tornado is usually extremely frustrating for them. Reducing it to something more in the area of 3-5 seconds (possibly also scaling with ranks so that he can stack it prior to an engagement later in the game) would be a tremendous step towards making his lane less oppressive while not significantly reducing his strength or affecting his playstyle.
Finally, Yasuo's shield. To be honest, I think it wouldn't even be horrible to just remove it from his kit and buff his defensive stats proportionately. Yasuo's shield is easily the least noticeable and least satisfying part of his kit for the person playing as him, while simultaneously feeling infamously frustrating for the person playing against him.
I very often see Yasuo players (myself admittedly included) barely pay attention to their shield at all.. Yes, good Yasuo players are more likely to pay attention to and manage their shield effectively, but even so I often see even very experienced Yasuo players almost forget that it exists, especially later in the game when it's consumed so quickly that you usually never see it (despite it still having a significant effect on damage taken).
The main problem is that Yasuo has so little agency over his shield compared to the rest of his kit (in fact, his opponent usually has more control over it than he does), while having a rather unexciting effect, unlike an ability like, say, Mega-Gnar which is very engaging simply because of the magnitude of it's effect despite the player's minimal amount of control over it. As such, I don't think many Yasuo players would really miss it's presence, provided that their durability was compensated in other ways. On the flip side, Yasuo's shield is a constant point of frustration among people who dislike him.
I had also toyed with an idea for a change to Yasuo's double crit passive, though I'm much less confident in it. Yasuo's double crit is a bit of a balancing nightmare, as this preseason has demonstrated. It's affected extremely heavily by even small changes to crit items, which is a huge obstacle to balancing his interaction with them directly. To be honest, I don't think it would really be that bad if Yasuo had to complete an entire Infinity Edge before having 100% crit chance, but the fact that he can accomplish it with just a Shiv and an 800 gold component (2800 gold sooner) is excessive to say the least. An idea I hear often is to have his crit chance multiplier scale with levels or with ranks in one of his abilities, but ultimately this still presents the same problem and also shifts his power away from the time when he's actually supposed to be strongest, which is in the mid-game.
After thinking about it for a while, an idea I came up with is to have his crit chance multiplier scale with the amount of gold he has acquired over the course of the game. In other words, having his passive be something to the effect of "Yasuo's chance to critically strike is multiplied by X for every XX gold he has acquired, up to a maximum of 2x at 6100 gold (the cost of shiv + IE)."
I think that this could actually be a rather eloquent solution, because it means that you can always assure that Yasuo is getting his powerspike when he's supposed to, and more importantly, it's infinitely easier to adjust if changes are made that throw Yasuo's balance out of wack. If it feels like Yasuo is getting his powerspike too early, it would be simple to lower the increase he gets to his crit chance multiplier per gold obtained (and thus require him to obtain more gold before his crit chance is doubled) and if it feels like it's coming too late, it would be easy to do the opposite.
Still, this is definitely a much more bizarre change and as I said, I have a lot less confidence in it.
TL;DR
Reduce the duration of windwall from 4 seconds to 1/1.5/2/2.5/3 seconds. Possibly reduce cooldown by a couple seconds at first rank to accompany the big reduction in duration.
Reduce the time that Yasuo can hold on to his tornado to 3-5 seconds, possibly also scaling with ranks.
Possibly remove shield and buff defensive stats proportionately.
Possibly make his crit chance multiplier scale with the amount of gold he's acquired so far, from 1x up to 2x (what it is now) at 6100 or so gold.
I'm not proposing that all of these changes should be applied, just that if some of them were applied individually they might reduce people's frustrations with Yasuo.
Anyway, that's all for now. I hope that if nothing else these ideas give some perspective for more productive changes, since as much as I love Yasuo, I can understand why people don't enjoy laning against him.
