The community's median skill with Zed/Yasuo is absurd.

Wolfalisk318·Jun 30, 2018·22 votes·10,813 views

This has always seemed like an elephant in the room to me but I've rarely or never seen attention brought to it, maybe because we're too busy meme'ing about the 0/12 "My Team's Yasuo." Both of these Champions are billed as being ultra-difficult and ultra-complex to play effectively, requiring mechanical prowess beyond that which is required by other Champions. Yet both are as common as grass and the median competency of players who play Zed and Yasuo is just absolutely unbelievable. Even that garden variety 0/12 Yasuo is mechanically outperforming most people in the match, and you're left speechless when that Zed in your low Silver game just pulled off a stunt that you would expect to see in Diamond.

I'm confused about how I should perceive this. I'm a Mid-Silver player (so, not good), and I just feel like my peers are over-performing with these Champions beyond what they should be capable of. Players who are not good should not be able to access 75%-80% of the efficiency of complex Champions like Zed or Yasuo. That, for me, is the elephant in the room.

What do you think?

65 Comments

Daddy AntsJun 30, 201817 votes

I'd say Riven is harder than Yasuo or Zed tbh

AtmosphereJul 1, 20182 votes

{quoted}

I'd say is harder than Yasuo or Zed tbh

Riven is more animation cancel based. While both Zed and Yasuo can utilize animation cancels, they're more combo based than animation cancel based. I'd argue that animation cancelling is harder to master than combos.

IcyPepperJul 1, 20181 votes

I never understood the point of having animation cancelling being the pinnacle of a champion's skill expression. Is it healthy, or do I just not get it?

BarcidJul 1, 20181 votes

It's not really healthy and it was labeled a bug a long time ago in Rito's spaghetti code - a "behind the scenes" on Riven basically said that it was something that they thought about fixing and then decided they "liked it".

It's not actually particularly balanced or fair since animation canceling makes the champ required to be balanced around it, much like an overpowered item or keystone. So players who don't use the mechanic will never get the full extent of the champ and will often underperform while simultaneously being a mechanic that isn't told to you at face value - you're forced to work on it yourself.

That has some attraction to it - you do get a feeling of really "mastering" a champion if you have to go super in-depth into the finer points. However, it gives vastly mixed signals in a competitive game where your ability to calculate something can win or lose a game for you, and these are completely uncalculable. You'd notice this a ton if you went from one game against a Riven that never animation canceled into a game with one that does - and it is a very noticeable difference because the second one you're going to get stomped when you're pretty sure you can win.

"But Riven is modeled after fighting games, where these kinds of things are meant to be a feature." Except League doesn't share that - most of League's champions have zero animation canceling whatsoever (or at least no beneficial ones), and it's not even a natural part of the game, so the fact people say that it's okay is absolutely confounding.

AtmosphereJul 4, 20181 votes

I personally find it unhealthy, because it solely relies on improper coding to allow champions to do much more damage than they're meant to do. It definitely does take skill though. Inputting movement commands as abilities are casting to move while using abilities isn't easy, but it also isn't fair for those who are able to do it. That's why a lot of people hate Riven: there's a lot of montages with Riven at below 30% HP, someone comes to kill her and she stun locks them while autoing between each Q and 100-0's them

Irelia BotJul 1, 20181 votes

{quoted}

I'd say is harder than Yasuo or Zed tbh

Skill floor on all of them is fairly straight forward but Riven probably has one of if not the the highest skill ceilings in the game.

Ok sure but whyJul 1, 20181 votes

I think Malphite is harder

GrãñðmãstêrShãçøJun 30, 201811 votes

zed is easy tbh

HügöJun 30, 201810 votes

What I think? I think I'm impressed that people still think Zed and Yasuo are hard to play.

AlmightyJun 30, 20187 votes

[deleted]

Arcane Blue BoiJul 1, 20182 votes

bUt tHoSe aReN't aS fLasHy, wHiCh aUtOmAtIcALLy MeAnS tEhy aRenT aS hARd!!1!

HibekiJul 1, 20181 votes

I was with you until the stupid forum signature

captainpokecraftJul 1, 20181 votes

Why is Jayce on there lmao

GodlyBaneJul 1, 20181 votes

zyra? jayce? taric? bard?? those aint that difficult to play man man

lilpokflufJun 30, 20185 votes

But they're not consistent, what you see is more of a lucky break. We all have them in low elo. i personally fee like low elo knows how to play the champions when they're strictly ahead. If at any point they fall behind they become 0/12 memes. Probably because a large majority of them rely on an all in to test their strength against the opponent.

Silly NeekoJun 30, 20185 votes

Those same Zed and Yasuo players cant even play Soraka well. Just because they practice with a champion and figure it out, does not mean they are mechanically skilled.

Also, keep in mind there are smurfs in those ranges between bronze and gold, so perhaps those tricks being done that look like they should be in diamond.... actually are a diamond Zed main. Who knows? But it takes a different mindset than most can muster to be able to play every champ.

Really, its kind of funny when you think about those amazing plays and then realize they cant even play a simple champ well, but it is all about the person. Some people can keep track of 7 abilities and press them all at the correct time nearly every time (jayce, Elise, Nidalee in a way though she is much easier to figure out in my opinion...), some can pull off that insane Lee flash kick and can ward hop flawlessly... others can keep track of ally hp and when they are in trouble, so Soraka and Shen and Galio are some of their picks... others want to make it feel like the enemy is being trolled (usually because the enemy is), so Leblanc and Shaco and Zilean and Fizz are nice picks there....

Each champ has their own unique style and play, that often can be done in multiple different ways, once you find a champ that you click with and are like "yeah i like doing this stuff!" Then its about practice.

LeveretteJun 30, 20184 votes

A majority of even Silver players are honestly pretty solid in their mechanics. That means in a fight, Yasuo and Zed are going to be nightmares to deal with in such a low elo when you can't be expected to have a team that will actively work cohesively to try and utilize their various powers to uplift each other and suppress these powerful enemies. I have honestly told myself many times, "If pros play Zed/Yasuo even 30% better than the dudes I'm seeing, then their opponents must be dying in the loading screen because there's no way to singlehandedly handle some of these dudes."

Mechanical skill will only take you so far, so these folks tend to stay in Silver because even though they are a veritable meat grinder of champions, they squander that ability by not pushing when they should, not grouping when they should, not building what they should, not utilizing proper team play and probably getting a big head while trying to handle everything themselves... not to mention playing the vision game and actually acting on it.

Basically, yes, I agree 100% that most of the Zed/Yasuo players out there really know how to kick someone's ass, and although that skill alone will not climb the ladder for them, it certainly creates a hellish environment for the lower tiers of gameplay where you're expected to have to handle them all on your own.

LordOfDarkness61Jun 30, 20181 votes

Completely agree here... I'm Zed main in S3 xD and I cant climb for god's sake and I'm completely aware that I cant climb as I literally have no idea what to build (I see Darius with Warmog's armor and Dead Man's plate and I have no idea should I go LDR or MortalR)and when to push,but my combat skills are good enough and that is proven against platinum 2 players...

And i completely agree with some guys here Zed is amazingly easy to pick up. It takes you about 4-5 games to learn how much dmg he can dish out and in low elo its pretty much everything you need to know...when to all in.

Some plays ofc take more skill but I feel this is more matter of is someone into mechanically heavy champs or some simpler ones, as I know by myself that after zed i picked up kata and man is she simple... Don't know am I just good with these champs or they are not hard as everyone says.

Pierce The VealJul 1, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Completely agree here... I'm Zed main in S3 xD and I cant climb for god's sake and I'm completely aware that I cant climb as I literally have no idea what to build (I see Darius with Warmog's armor and Dead Man's plate and I have no idea should I go LDR or MortalR)and when to push,but my combat skills are good enough and that is proven against platinum 2 players...

And i completely agree with some guys here Zed is amazingly easy to pick up. It takes you about 4-5 games to learn how much dmg he can dish out and in low elo its pretty much everything you need to know...when to all in.

Some plays ofc take more skill but I feel this is more matter of is someone into mechanically heavy champs or some simpler ones, as I know by myself that after zed i picked up kata and man is she simple... Don't know am I just good with these champs or they are not hard as everyone says.

You should avoid dueling darius, but if you must

Black cleaver and a mortal reminder would be a good combination. I would have previously said botrk but long ago its activation lost its %hp damage so I’m not sure if that’s even valid anymore.

You should, if possible, avoid him and eliminate the carries.

My Waifu VanillaJul 1, 20181 votes

Typically speaking the main thing that keeps silver players down is poor macro play. It is especially a problem when MULTIPLE people on the team don't know how to macro. You can USUALLY wrangle in some people with pings, but there will almost always be one person who doesn't know what they are doing AND they think they know better than the shotcaller and won't follow the call and instead leave you with 4v5 scenarios while they get nothing. The amount of people that don't group and get nothing from it in lower elos is astonishing. If you aren't going to group you better take a tower or two and not just get US all killed to hard engage while you farm a few creeps for 2 minutes and then recall while they are STILL pushing mid.

LeveretteJul 1, 20181 votes

Oof. Yeah you're hitting on some real prevalent issues, no doubt. I usually have to shot call any given game I'm in, and it is indeed almost guaranteed that at least one person will never group when asked, even if they're a teamfight oriented character, or just generally won't work in synch with the rest of the team. Now, if you're a Yorick and you just wanna be left alone while you cave in top lane? Hey my man, more power to you. You just keep doin' exactly what you do. I'll even try to make sure the rest of us are on the opposite side of the map and pressuring that lane too just to optimize your efforts! That is... if I can get them to do it when the time comes...

woodvsmurphJun 30, 20184 votes

Yasuo 2 sec cd's w/o building any cd items or taking it in runes... when your cd's are that low, you can miss 60% of your abilities completely and still land them as frequently as most champs hitting with 100% success rate. Champ doesn't require nearly as much skill as people claim. And honestly, some of the "simple" champions are actually more difficult than the credit we give to them. Take swain for instance... he's fragile enough (even w/ zhonya and roa) to die pretty fast in teamfights if he's not hella fed and he runs in. But if he doesn't run in at some point, he doesn't deal damage. So it's not per-say "mechanical" skill, but it requires more skill than some other champs on knowing the optimal time to run in, the optimal time to zhonya during fights, which enemies to run after if they split up, which target to pull in if chasing several people who split up, etc.

Now, played at MAX potential, sure maybe a yas requires some high skill, but to play an average yasuo actually takes probably less skill than to play some other champions. And a SIMILAR (but not the same) argument can be made for zed. Also... lower elo means your OPPONENTS will have lower skill level. Which makes it easier to pull stuff off. And people have a bad habit this season of not even trying once their team falls behind. They just go through the motions and make bad decisions which they would normally never make because "it's over" or "we lost already". Once in a blue moon I'll see someone who has truly amazing mechanics, but it's pretty rare. A vayne that can jump in 2v4 with me through a bunch of enemy aoe, cc, and burst and survive to rack up 3 kills. A riven that actually knows how to combo properly and with SPEED that makes me have to actually work to win lane. A zed that knows how to w in during the middle of a crazy fight and ult onto a carry for an assassination via coordinating with our jg or toplaner rather than some hella fed zed who just flashes in 1v5 or 5v5 and kills whomever he wants purely because he's 12/2/0.

EvenJun 30, 20184 votes

I have level 7 yasuo and i can confirm unless ur high elo he doesnt take any mechanics

Daddy AntsJun 30, 20183 votes

Zed is by far the easier of the 3.

LacerationJun 30, 20183 votes

Answer: Low skill floor with High Skill ceiling. Bare minimum level only requires silver? but they get increasing difficult to play the higher you go.

TekkenPlayerJul 1, 20183 votes

Bard Thresh Jhin Gangplank Velkoz Elise Nidalee to me are the actual champions that require tremendous amount of skill + game knowledge and maybe Riven to some degree because you not only have to manage auto cancels, you have to find more ways to be useful outside of lane too

Zed Yasuo Draven all have in a sense a laning bandaid eventually spiraling into living stat checks. Having outplay mechanics built in to their kits vs a majority of the cast - which has to use sheer prediction and reaction to manage their behaviors isnt a reason why the champion is hard

MorticianjohnJun 30, 20182 votes

It falls to player type. Players who are more mechanically oriented might be drawn to those champs but if they have bad macro they could be stuck in silver for a long time. Or maybe they just like to soak up team resources and call everyone else on their team bad as they watch their lead go up in smoke.

ProvengreilJun 30, 20183 votes

Man, lead-soaking needs a thread of it's own. It's actually quite common in silver to watch a jungler get like 12 kills mid and top, then go around sweeping all the farm out from his own team while not actually pushing anything, taking any objectives, and ignoring suggestions because "he's carrying", and starting fights way ahead of his team every time an enemy is on screen only to get 2 kills and give one with no assists. He then gets infuriated when his own team loses a team fight because they've basically been only getting passive gold for the last 10 minutes.

Bonus points if he got that far ahead by leaving his bot lane to rot, they get triple and quadra ganked and put behind, and then he wont let them farm back in. But he expects them to keep up in damage.

iDarkWindJun 30, 20182 votes

Can't understand how you're telling me that they perform so well and yet they're Silver - Gold players. If they were that good wouldn't they climb out of low elo?

Silly NeekoJun 30, 20182 votes

Just because they can kill someone does not mean they can kill the nexus.

I literally had a game that we were 13 kills or so, and they had 40 or so, and we won because we were not worrying about killing them, we were wave managing and they couldnt do anything about it.

Thats like saying "we got baron, why couldnt we win the game?"

iDarkWindJul 1, 20181 votes

Dude, you actually made no sense there. They didn't won because they can't take their lead and transfer it to a win. Wich basicly means, they don't know how to play the champion. Don't come with such bs like "Just because they can kill someone does not mean they can kill the nexus.". LOL.

I love how people keep saying he isn't hard to play, yet when they play him they go 0-6, and even if they check rank lists on youtube about him of Midbeast or even watch LL Stylish they will stay say that Zed is a easy free elo champion.

Yes, I guess you're right Silver players.

Silly NeekoJul 1, 20181 votes

Ohhhh look, another cocky over confident wannabe challenjour that doesnt even realize that even in LCS the commentators make commentaries about being unable to utilize a numbers advantage due to the waves pushing against them.

Btw, this silver wemt from B4 from prelim to G5 in about 200ish games last season. I didnt do anything more after that. Before you start trying to rank shame like every other wannabe challenjour, might get your facts straight

iDarkWindJul 1, 20181 votes

Dude, I'm not acting like I'm challenger or something, it's just a fact. People come here complain about certain situations or champions, and I try to give answears and show them why they're wrong and how they could fix it. But isntead, what happens? They still don't care, they don't listen and refuse to actually learn how to play this game properly. Rank shaming is wrong, yes, but when people act like idiots, they get treated like one.

Silly NeekoJul 1, 20181 votes

Except for what you are trying to say is that kills = winning game. This is not the case. You can be 400 kills ahead and still lose simply because the enemy has better wave management.

When my team was behind about 30 kills, we still were ahead in gold, we just had 1-2 people in bott and mid setting up the waves and using Zzrots and banners and we had the rest in top and then we all went top and drew their entire teams attention because we were still ahead in gold. If someone tried leaving we applied enough pressure to bring them back, we eventually die but we take some of them with us and then they have to then deal with the waves crashing down their towers.

We were still ahead in gold at the end of the game.

So you tell me just how they were supposed to push an advantage they didnt have?

Pika FoxJun 30, 20182 votes

Because most people that play yas, riven, zed etc either play them a game or two then quit, or play them for hundreds of games and learn that specific champ.

Flawless FetusJun 30, 20182 votes

I don't think so. Zed and Yas are both easy to play at a 'competent level. Their skill floor is low. Their skill ceiling, however, is pretty high. I'm not in your games, so I could be wrong, but I doubt silver Yas's are reliably pulling off the "keyblade".

Meep ManJun 30, 20182 votes

Zed becomes a lot less complex looking when you realize the only thing he actually has to aim is his Q and then you really just have to have your cursor floating over whoever you jump on with R. The old RWEQR combo is much less complicated than most think and, with practice, can be executed in a very, very small amount of time. This is further proven when you realize that if the Zed suddenly thinks anything is gonna go wrong and he won't be able to get the combo off before getting off'd himself, he can just press R to instantly get the heck outta there.

Zed is a "hard champion", but only in the sense that you need time to perfect him. He has a ton of safety nets that make bad players not too heavily punished for messing up on him, and I'm saying this not in a "Zed is OP" way. I'm just stating my beliefs on a champion that many falsely consider to be a "hard and punishing champion to mess up on".

fƒ15Jun 30, 20181 votes

Yasuo Zed Riven Kled Irelia Camille really quite a few champions are difficult to play at first and require mastering/understanding them a bit more since they are very flexible and sometimes complex. I believe they are all pretty strong at the moment though bc low elo players do about as much easier to play champions with better stats. For example ryze with his low winrate, but high potential and strength in high elo play.

Mokuto BunshiJul 1, 20181 votes

Kled is pretty easy to pick up, and really easy when ahead. He becomes hard against unfavorable match ups when you must manage remounts.

MarumíJul 1, 20181 votes

I think these champions may take little to no skill, people can just play and get the hang of them very easily mostly like other champs. I played Ahri when I first started playing and now she's easy. You can have good mechanics and then have shitty decision making, but, in the end you'll improve (I think, quote, I THINKKK) [sg-miss-fortune]

TykennJul 1, 20181 votes

You have to keep in mind that being good at a champion, and being good at league. Are two very different things.

Summonah12369Jul 1, 20181 votes

Nidalee How come nobody plays this? :(

My Waifu VanillaJul 1, 20181 votes

Because you die the second XinZhao Graves LeeSin look at you? You're a feast or famine jungler that is absolutely useless on the famine side. Yes, you can potentially 1v9 if you get ahead, but those games are few and far between.

Summonah12369Jul 1, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=My Waifu Vanilla,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=9HftOqPr,comment-id=001b0000,timestamp=2018-07-01T14:16:43.514+0000)

Because you die the second look at you? You're a feast or famine jungler that is absolutely useless on the famine side. Yes, you can potentially 1v9 if you get ahead, but those games are few and far between.

Downvoted %%%.

My Waifu VanillaJul 1, 20181 votes

For what? Being right? Please tell me what you do when Lee invades you? You have to run away. You cant duel him and post 6 he can and WILL do 80% of your health with a full combo because you are one of the squishiest junglers in the game. Nidalee is literally only good if she's a better early game jungler than her competition and as it stands after all the nerfs she's gotten her early game isn't THAT much better than Nocturnes.

Summonah12369Jul 2, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=My Waifu Vanilla,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=9HftOqPr,comment-id=001b000000000000,timestamp=2018-07-01T23:16:42.382+0000)

For what? Being right? Please tell me what you do when Lee invades you? You have to run away. You cant duel him and post 6 he can and WILL do 80% of your health with a full combo because you are one of the squishiest junglers in the game. Nidalee is literally only good if she's a better early game jungler than her competition and as it stands after all the nerfs she's gotten her early game isn't THAT much better than Nocturnes.

I main Nidalee, I would know if he would be a threat or not.

EkyonKunJul 1, 20181 votes

I tried out Zed to see if this high skill requirement held true. And I have to say his E can drain his energy like he just ran a goddamn marathon. But other than that, he's kinda face-rolly in lane.

Outside of lane I found it kinda pointless to dive into team fights because I'd see GAs and Zhonya's/Stopwatches and just kept getting cockblocked while trying to do my job of bursting squishies. I also realized that Zhonya's/GA doesn't mean a whole lot to him in a 1v1. It's only in a team fight where it's really a pain to deal with. In a 1v1, he can just wait out the untargetability and burst them a second time. So I just kinda split pushed and hoped a lone squishy would come to try and stop me. Though without attack speed or auto attack steroids, he's a lot slower at taking towers than say Jax or Nasus .

Zed in team fights DOES have a high skill floor because you have to deal with CC, being burst immediately after ulting, using your shadows to dodge skillshots, making sure your ult actually manages to kill a carry, making sure you have enough energy to do what you need to do. And a lot of the times when I tried using my ult to teleport back to safety, I found someone waiting for me to either kill me or lock me down after I used up all my energy trying to kill someone else. So I eventually stopped feeling as safe as I thought I would be.

So, from experience, Zed vs most standard mid laners requires very little skill to play at an adequate level, while mid-late game you kinda have to think about what you're doing. Just my 2 cents though.

GodlyBaneJul 1, 20181 votes

You said it yourself they need to be played effectively, but in bronze/silver zed and yasuo dont exactly NEED to be played effectively and so, they do good in low elo