Yasuo's Balance
This is going to be a weird post. It will be regarding the balance of Yasuo. If you don't want to read the large body, just skip to the end.
So Yasuo is possibly the most hated champion on the boards, but is he really as OP as everyone seems to be claiming? I say no. Yasuo overall has weak teamfighting, mediocre splitpushing, dueling that is hard to pull off, and a kit that revolves around the midgame.
I mention Yasuo's teamfighting, and this is the most misunderstood part of him. His ult is not just a press R and win ability. Why is this? Well basically, his R requires the enemy champions to be knocked up, correct? But his knock up is not easy to get off, it requires you to charge up q to max. But if you just dive in to try to do this, you will be focused and will die fast.
So what if someone else delivers the knock up? Well, you had better hope it hits the enemy team's damage sources, because if it doesn't, and you ult, you will be a sitting duck for them to wipe off the map. It is the worst drawback to it, you have to sit while the damage is applied. You will die fast if an enemy vayne is not knocked up.
So this means that the ult is not good for teamfighting? What about the rest of his kit? The rest of his kit is okay, but if he just decides to dive in, things will go very wrong for him. He can w to stop some damage being sent to him, but in the end, that wall will go away, and he will be stuck in the middle of a team, full of damage. It will not end well.
If not teamfighting, what is he good for? Well, most other fighters are good duelists, and they start splitpushing. At the begining, this seems like a great idea! Yasuo can easily clear waves in around a second with an eqeq and he has good attack speed to take down turrets. What's not to like? The fact that he has no mobility without minions. Meaning that the second he clears a wave, any high dps duelist can engage upon him. Champs like Jax, Fiora, even Gnar if you do it right, can 1v1 Yas with ease.
"But his kit is OP!" you cry "It is over loaded!" So let's break it down.
His passive has two parts the first part loads a flow bar when he moves, when full, any damage will trigger the flow bar to empty and will block damage based off of how much flow he had. This alone would be a weak passive. It is so easy to trigger it. Dot rips through it after the first second, aoe does damage to minions and will get it to trigger while clearing minions, and autos. Ranged vs Yasuo match up goes back to a Ranged vs melee matchup after one auto. The only redeeming part of this is the fact that there is a second part to it.
The second part of the passive gives Yasuo Double crit chance, at the cost of reduced crit damage. This is an ok passive. It does give him an early item boost, however, it will rapidly fall off come late game, where opponents will be doing full damage, and Yasuo will be doing down to 75 percent of his normal damage. It makes him have an awkward midgame powerspike that he has to try to abuse to make hime keep his lead.
His q is good. It is a scaling ability that gives him a non-reliable access to his ultimate. It does good damage, and is a useful wave clear tactic.
Yasuo's w is one of the most hated things on the boards. People hate that he can block all ranged things. They even complain that a carry has a better version of a supports ability. But I will say a couple of things. First, it can't move. It just can't, nce it is placed you can maneuver around it or use non projectile abilities to damage him. Second, it has a long cooldown, so poke him down. If he is saving it for a big ability, he will be forced to take the poke. But if he does use it to stop the poke, all in him once the shield goes down.
His e is a low cooldown dash, but it has a medium to high per target cooldown. This is balanced. It only works well when minions are nearby, and it is fairly predictable as to where he will end up. It then has a cooldown, though it is small, it is enough to hit him with skillshots in.
His ult is also good, it relies upon him taking an extended fight, then managing to hit a large, yet slow skillshot, or dashing and using a small, fast skillshot on you in orer to use it. It has restrictions, and is balanced thus.
If you are still reading this, thank you. If you wish to comment in order to agree/disagree with me, please do so and give me some constructive feedback. It does no one any good if you don't provide reasons for your disagreement.
If you have problems with Yas, just pick Malzahar.
Again, thank you, have a nice day.
