Yasuo Post (Wall of Text Inc)

#VERY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER! I do not hate Yasuo, if you are expecting a post just detailing every reason the weeblord should be removed, you are in the wrong place. Also, like with Riven, I knew zero about Yasuo when I set out to make this post. I had to go and spend a lot of time, my time, watching videos, reading guides and losing ten games as him before I understood what it was like to play him on a shallow and generic level. So Yasuo mains may not approve of everything in this post. I do please ask that both Yasuo players, and haters, keep an open mind when reading this. Please read the entire post and then comment constructively if you feel the need to. I would rather have a discussion on the matter than a rage fest of angry, bias and hateful players. Oddly enough I am more worried about haters than mains... probably past experience trying to post about Riven. Also I am a silver player, I don't really try to climb, I am more interested in game design and characters than I am in having a badge to show off.

#My Findings Skillcap Oh fuck is Yasuo hard. People who hate him would like to claim otherwise but he is very hard to play well as consistently across many games unless you were born with an Otaku, Bleach watching, "Ninja sword" wielding, correcting people when they call Japanese animations "cartoons" beast inside you who has been yearning to come out all your life. Yasuo is quite hard to play well as. Not just because I lost most my games as him either. Statistically it is backed up, logically it is backed up and anybody who plays him for their first 15 games as him will understand. That said, Skillcap, like skillshots, counterplay, winrates and the like, doesn't always mean a design is healthy. We will talk more on that later.

Fun Yas Yasuo is fun, even losing on him he is incredibly fun to play. Mind you, I am neither a fan of Anime nor the champion, but he is still very fun to play. "But fun is subjective!" Playrates are not, neither are skin releases. Playrates and the champions Riot most often release skins for are a huge indication of which champions people most enjoy playing, whether it be for aesthetics, lore, voice acting, gameplay or so forth. Something about that character is liked. Despite his high ban rate, like Ahri, Riven or Lucian he always maintains a decently high playrate. He is fun to play for a larger number of people than otherwise.

Statistics and balance Yasuo is not imbalanced. I know a great number of his detractors would stop reading here out of close mindedness. But the fact is, he is not 'the most OP thing in the history of DOTA!' Because so many people hate fighting him and ban him so often it is hard to get a true read on his statistics. Even if a tad over or under tuned however Yasuo isn't 'unfair' from a balance standpoint. But don't worry, there will be some negative talk shortly.

A good concept Yasuo is a very good champion concept I just think the execution was a tad off but. I mean nothing is perfect. The idea is he can dash to multiple targets like Yi but is exposed while doing so, he also controls the dashes making it less Luck/Statcheck and more controlled and skill based. He has empowered AAs like Yi but instead of just making his AAs better half of them are skillshots which can be dodged, a bad Yasuo will miss more but bad players will dodge fewer, good players will dodge more and good Yasuo's will hit more. Scaling with skill is always good because it keeps a champion as relevant in Bronze as they are in challenger unlike stat champions who either are just tuned too high for Bronze or too low for Challenger. His wind wall gives him the tools to solo lane vs mages so we can have a melee fighter go mid. His double crit allows for build flexibility and earlier powerspikes to make up for being a melee ADC. His ult gives him a lot of power but makes it team synergistic and skill based rather than just R to win like some champions have. That said, while it is great on paper it does have issues.

#So what is 'wrong' with Yasuo When I set out to make this post, I intended to defend him like I have done with Riven, Marksmen and Darius in the past. But the truth is, I cannot... but no, this isn't just a circlejerk saying "I couldn't because he is total bullshit and should be removed #cancer!". There are two very specific parts of his kit I just thing do not work, and a few others I feel could use some minor editing. But I like to think positively so let's talk about the good first.

The Good Stuff Passive: I think Yasuo's shield is fine and 100% should stay. Yasuo's shield gives him trading power that otherwise would hardly exist, and it lets him lane vs ranged enemies who otherwise would stomp a squishy melee who doesn't have the HP regen and tank stats to deal with ranged poke. Almost all Skirmishers, Divers and Juggernauts have a defensive ability on a short CD(Riven's E, Fiora's Parry, Darius Q), and most of them who don't have some sort of passive sustain/steroid(Nasus Passive, Garen's W) or steroid that is always active or a long CD but powerful steroid(Garen's W). Yasuo's passive is plenty in line with the design of your A-Typical Skirmisher, and while I know a lot of people hate it, I think it would be fine to have if other things in his kit changed. It shows it's fullness, it has down time, it can be removed with a love tap, doesn't help him vs turret or minions and overall seems fair outside the context of certain other assets.

Q: I think Yasuo's Q is perfectly fine. I might lower how long he can hold onto his third Q so he cannot just zone you for a full 10 seconds like Jhin does with his 4th shot. Or perhaps narrow the Tornado. But otherwise I am fine with this ability. It is no different than any other melee carries AA boost except that it can be missed and in return gets to be a tiny AoE. It gives him the DPS steroid melee carries are suppose to have but is skill based, it scales well with the skill of the Yasuo player and his enemies.

E: After a couple nerfs I think his E is actually fine. The dashes are annoying and resource-less but it is a conditional dash that requires planning and skill to use. I might consider making it so enemies and allies can see the CD of his dash on targets to make counterplay and strategies regarding it more apparent, I highly doubt this would 'gut' him as some extremist mains might try to say, as high level players already track his dash targets mentally, it would simply make counterplay vs him in lower tiers more apparent.

R: After adjustments to the armor pen mechanic this ability is mostly fine. It is a conditional ult that cannot just be pushed at any time like most others in the game. It doesn't actually do a lot of damage on it's own the suspension, lifesteal, shield and armor pen are the most important things that come from it.

The Bad stuff Double Crit Chance: In my very unprofessional opinion this feature of his kit can never be healthy. While it can be 'balanced' from a win/play rate point of view, it has severe design problems. The problem with granting double crit chance is that it assures Yasuo can reach 100% damage efficiency with only 2 crit items. Now I choose my words carefully, mains who are about to say "But Yasuo needs to build!" Yes, Yasuo can and usually will build other damage items. But the thing is, the weakness of Crit as a mechanic is that it amplifies overall damage with each % that you get. You reach 100% damage efficiency with 100% crit. That also comes with reliability, when crit is designed to be unreliable. Riot's crit mechanic making it reliable on Ashe resulted in nerf after nerf after nerf to her overall DPS output and the fact that she gets 0 burst, even then she still has to get 100% to get 100% out of her passive. Giving this kind of reliability and free power spiking in Yasuo's kit has allowed toxic things like tank Yasuo as well as Yasuo getting 'shut down' but unlike Riven he becomes relevant the second laning ends anyway and gets a quadra shortly after. I feel this mechanic is a problem.

Windwall: From a balance point of view this ability is 100% A-O-K. But this is probably the biggest 'anti-fun' middle finger in LoL alongside Tahm stealing an ADC right before you kill them or Lulu's point and click Polymorph. They are abilities that aren't even all that fun for the user. But they make the enemies utterly miserable. The thing is, in most games people would tell you to suck it up and git gud. But Riot caters a lot to the whiners and crybabies. The thing is, that is fine. While whiners are annoying it is nice to see one game care about fun alongside balance. So this ability goes against their policy that something should provide a healthy equilibrium of fun and upset when successfully used. Wind wall has the unfortunate design of Yasuo just throwing it out haphazardly in mid game and without any skill or effort deletes 2 incoming ults in a team fight and completely removes the fun out of the game for your mage, enchanter and marksman as well as shutting your Sej out of the fight because her ult was swallowed up. Meanwhile the amount of fun it provides to be used is... eh. it feels okay sometimes but most the time the fun of Yasuo is just running in and killing shit or using your skills to 1v1 like a true weeblord. Windwall takes minimal skill to use in lower tiers. It can just be tossed out and removed fun from the game. I think it is a huge problem.

#What would I change about Yasuo? Here is the segment you should take with a grain of salt, or in the case of some players a fucking dumptruck of salt. Because the thing is I don't know Yasuo's design extremely well, I studied it the best I could but suck at him. But despite that I don't believe in complaining without offering resolutions, so here are a Silver Shyvana one trick's suggestions on how to 'fix' Yasuo.

Nerfed • Gathering Storm duration reduced to 5 seconds.

• Sweeping Blade now displays CD indicators for enemies and allies as well.

Buffed • Resolve shield increased to 110 - 600 based on level.

• Base HP, AD, Armor and Magic resist increased by noticeable amounts.

• Steal Tempest base damage increased to 30/60/90/120/150.

Reworked Intent: No longer grants double critical strike chance. Instead Yasuo's basic attacks will now strike for bonus damage based on his critical strike chance and increased by critical strike damage like Ashe's passive, except no bonus 10% to start with as currently he starts with no benefit from the double crit without crit chance anyway. Instead he will scale slightly harder with the crit. Yasuo's Q will also benefit including the base damage.

Windwall: Yasuo will create a blast of air in a 180° half circle knocking enemies in melee range back a short distance(does not count as Airborne for his ultimate) dealing 15/30/45/60/75 damage increased by 2% for every 1% of critical strike chance Yasuo has and blocking ALL attacks against him for .75 seconds. After that it will expand out into a wall that will slow projectiles that pass through it by 20/25/30/35/40% and reduce their damage, debuffs and crowd control effects by an equal amount.

Reasoning My goal was to place more power into being skilled at Yasuo and less into stat checking with 100% crit chance and tanky itemization options. Nerfs to Gathering Storm and Sweeping Blade are to reduce frustration laning vs Yasuo, but aren't big enough to completely destroy him.

Buffs to Resolve, HP, Armor and MR make up some survivability lost in laning and team fighting from the change to windwall as well as lost lifesteal from the removal of double crit.

The Buffs to base AD and Steal Tempest base damage was to try to offset SOME of the lost damage from double crit. All these changes to damage would actually be a slight buff to a 0% crit chance Yasuo in fact.

Reworked intent will force Yasuo to actually build damage if he wants damage. It will keep the reliability of 100% crit so he doesn't feel crappy(I hate RNG too, I play Ashe for a reason), but he would have to buy 100% crit to get 100% benefit. I'd like the numbers to be edited in a way that allows Yasuo to scale up to just a tad higher than the current when accounting for loss of double crit itemization and the crit damage reduction being removed. But not too much as the goal is to force him out of building 2 damage items and making up for going 0/10/0 in laning. This should give him less of a power spike with each crit item purchased, compensated for in other abilities above, but a stronger final result when nearing full build on a damage build.

Windwall change will make Yasuo even higher skillcap. He will gain some damage on it to compensate the lost damage of double crit chance, the damage will scale with his crit chance as well, the damage is minor and only melee range however. The change to the wall itself means he only gets to fully eat projectiles for the first .75 seconds, more like a spellshield, but it eats ALL attacks now not just ranged, timing it perfectly would be a skill to make Yasuo very lethal. Now once beyond that .75 seconds the wall will only nerf projectiles speed and effectiveness by a % scaling with level. I feel this would be far less toxic. Yasuo could no longer invalidate half a team with a haphazardly button press, but still has the overall utility of the wall and during that initial burst it has gained power. Why? Because again, Yasuo is balanced mostly fine right now, he is just frustrating to fight. So all nerfs must come with compensation. His wall got a little better when used as a timed block, but the overall brainless anti-fun part has been toned down plus seeing 40% slowed global ults in some Vandiril video would be fun.

#Again, take the rework suggestion with a grain of salt! I am no Yasuo expert, I simply believe in providing suggestions when complaining. If you have a better suggestion, or feel you could fine tune this one to be better. Feel free to post below.

Anyway! That is my Yasuo post. I hope it wasn't too ignorant or silly. My goal was simply to convey this, Yasuo is a fun champion, a good design concept, from a balance standpoint he is 'fair' and he takes a lot of skill to play well. That said he has some frustrating aspects, and I think I highlighted the right ones in pointing to Windwall, the duration of his third Q and how his double crit chance interacts with itemization and powerspikes. Hope you enjoyed.

With the best intentions - Mira Arya Enthe.