Now I will compare Yasuo with Yi.
#Gameplay
On the merits of Yasuo being a swordsman himself when it comes to gameplay, he flails his sword and his entire body far more than Yi anyway, so what are you even on about? Yasuo's kit is FAR MORE SPAMMY than Yi ever will be as an objective fact, so I don't get what you're trying to say there.
Yi at least is only "passively" spammy in which only the character model is spammy whereas the actual play style is actually really precision based much like the real sword techniques especially those in the bounds of Japan if we have to stick to the topic of samurai (I will get back to this later); you need to jump into fight in the right time or get absolutely wrecked, you need to time the Q dodge and W block at the right time or get wrecked, and you need to do pretty good estimates if you want to get the most out of your refresh mechanics, and in much higher level of play you even need to count the Double Strike stacks (both counting the normal AA, and the stacks from channeling W), supreme map maneuver skills are also highly advised for skirmish and evading counterpicks and objective stealing, etc.
On the other hand, Yasuo is only about stacking raw stats to be able to spam Q and E as much as possible, and actively encouraged to do so because there is 0 downside for spamming his attacks like a mad man given there is neither a resource management system nor do the vast majority of his features have almost any forms of cooldown, making him an "active" spammer because both the character model and the player themselves are spamming. There is barely any emphasis on precision in this regard, the sole aspects seems to be using E to cross terrains sometimes which can indeed be quite tricky especially if you have like 3 people going up your ass at the time, but otherwise his kit is as mindless and forgiving as it can get (landing 3rd Q does not count as precision because there is no downside to simply spamming it and landing it because of inevitability; W would've been actually about precision if it doesn't last like a million years, wide as all hell, and have completely broken both hitboxing and its queuing that collectively makes it almost impossible to fail as long as it is cast; and R well, it's basically automatic).
As far as the emphasis on precision is concerned, I utterly fail to see how Yi even managed to lose in your comparison exercise.
.......
#Thematic
Yasuo
Yasuo doesn't use his own sword properly, because his fighting style is counterproductive. He fights with Iaido and other similar sword-drawing styles, that is why his fighting style involves incrementally closing the game with his opponent and end the fight once the opponent is within his 'death zone' (his ulti allows him to teleport on condition and ignore the process of trying to get close to the opponent the hard way). So far so good, but here's the kicker:
- Contradiction #1 - ranged attacks has no place in this combat form and neither does Yasuo's primary gameplay revolving around ranged poking/harass/thrusting and anti-poking make any sense to his own combat form because it's about close range area denial. Windwall kind of has the right idea, but it has other various problems I mentioned in the gameplay section.
- Contradiction #2 - He spams way too much and never sheath his sword in between his attacks and neither does he swing the arcs with his draws outside of 1 single interaction in his entire kit, so that means he's not only betraying the "kill on draw" rationale of his own combat form, neither is he utilising the core and essential mechanism of sword-draws via exploiting the body rotational momentum when drawing the sword. This begs the question why he is even using sword drawing combat form; it's like he's consciously choosing to use a sniper rifle even when he's a close quarter combatant in a close quarter combat. And it leads to...
- Contradiction #3 - While he is completely failing in his sword-draw style by straight up not using it, he also doesn't wield his sword in the conventional manner of TWO HANDING it. Katana are made and taught to be used as TWO HANDED SWORDS for a reason, because it provides better control, more degrees of motion, less opening and weak points at the front, and ofc, more raw strength from 2 arms and your entire body than simply 1 arm and maybe the hip.
So to rephrase #2 and #3 by putting them together, Yasuo is neither taking the advantage of his drawing motion despite his combat stance as well as refusing to 2 hand the sword which further cripples his own strength for no reasons; now to combine with #1, that he also completely misses the point of his combat form by attacking mostly with thrusting motion even though he's using a combat style that is to swing arcs (Japanese blades do use thrusting motions, but it has no place in Yasuo's declared style that should be mostly if not entirely about slashing).
The apologetic response is that: This is all intentional, that Yasuo is intentionally handicapping himself by pretending to be a complete amateur in his arts. But then again, his extremely serious demeanor and his lacking sense of humour doesn't point to the notion that he's the playful type at all. Outside of his Project skin, which does 2-hand the sword upon his typically extended blade exposure after drawing, which singlehandedly makes it have far more sense than all of the rest of Yasuo's skins including his Classic; but as far as Classic Yasuo is concerned, due to the various fatal contradictions in his combat style at the extreme cost of his practical effectiveness begging his understand of sword fights, it can only be concluded that Yasuo is rather amateur in his craft; or to be more specific, his designer had no idea how to design a swordsman with eastern ideas.
Master Yi
Yi, on the other hand, gets the art of swords, or again, their designer did, and that establishes his mastery in the field at the very least, far better than Yasuo's does.
First of all, unlike Yasuo, Yi is not even modeled after the sword arts from Japan, but instead from China. The core differences include:
- China differentiates between a sword and a blade whereas Japan does not. A sword is mostly a thrust weapon but can occasionally be used for slashing if you have to, while a Chinese blade or otherwise called “dao” is always a slashing weapon by default. Dao may resemble katana, but they differ in that katana are also designed and used with thrusting, and that dao is also used against heavier objects and therefore are principally designed with much more mass than the typical katana. Yi's "sword" is a dao, therefore Yi’s combat form only involves only slashing and chopping and makes perfect sense that way. Dao is also typically seen in China as more “brutish” weapon compared to sword, and so things like sheaths is typically an after-thought for dao; and this is also why Yi’s weapon does not have a sheath.
- Weapon training in China are often not about the weapon but the person. This is the primly the reason why many a great deal of the martial arts were developed with both the usage of weapon and unarmed at the same time, such as Tai Chi where often it’s both applicable to be trained with both weapons or without. Yi's sword style may more "free form" simply because of this., as instead of using the blade according to a set of principals that guides his actions, he instead uses it as an extension of himself. It’s worth noting that Yi has trained himself to be ambidextrous to be proficient in the blade with both of his hands, and can be seen via the fact Yi swaps the sword between his hands every now and then, especially during the Double Strike animation in which you can observe the blade is exchanged between the hands mid-swing to achieve a fast double strike; this strongly but also subtly hints at a the prospect that Yi is a swordmaster.
Also, unlike Yasuo who primarily attacks by flying around and poking at the opponent until he is confident enough to jump in and finish the fight (as far as his gameplay goes), Yi fights strictly in a straight line. It invokes other dueling sports such as fencing and kendo and even things like boxing to some extent in which the opponents are forced to beat their opponent in a straight line, ie a fair fight, in order to prove their supremacy. And this contrast is also very telling of the difference between the 2 character’s mindsets. Needless to say, Yi proves superior in this regard, not only as a swordsman, but also as a better sport.
Yi is also a far more humourous person than Yasuo. He actually dances, his quotes are far calmer and collectedly reflective to the point of constantly reminding himself of the possible mental weakness he may have, he jokes with the enemy when he uses his spells such as asking if the opponent has missed their attack when he uses Alpha Strike, he would tell the enemy to defend themselves as he attacks them (though this quote can not be heard by the enemy player), and 1 of his 3 taunts is actually a joke (in which Yasuo is the opposite, only 1 of his 3 jokes are actually somewhat funny). All of this points to a far more experienced outlook in Yi, and obviously makes him a far more collected person than Yasuo.
…….
Final thoughts
It’s not that Yi is a perfect champion. If anything, his E is one of the worst spells in the game atm because of how redundant and how shockingly non-interactive it is that it isn’t even interactive for Yi’s own player; and if Yi were to receive any change, they should always start with E.
But to say that Yasuo somehow constitutes a better swordsman in terms of the high level design and the gameplay pattern, I can only disagree.
