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A Yasuo Rework Should Focus on Eliminating the Gap Between Low Elo and High Elo

Masala Chai·5/14/2018, 8:32:43 PM·19 votes·9,434 views

Yasuo's winrate in low elo is amongst the highest in that tier, up to around ~53% in Bronze, but his performance in higher elo is often inhibited by meta picks shoving him in to turret and roaming or getting cc'd and blown up in an extremely quick period of time. His winrate in Dia+ is around 48% which further decreases as one travels up higher up to Diamond I and Challenger.

For a champion that should be hard and have a lot of skill associated with the kit, he certainly has too many handholding mechanics that make him super overbearing in low elo. On the other hand, he does not enough base defensive abilities that actively allow him to reliably deal with melee or tankier threats as most skirmishers do have.

I think a large portion of the ban force that is both detrimental to Yasuo mains and those who hate his kit. Is the result of a kit that in practice has a high and extremely inaccessible skill ceiling, but an unfathomably low skill floor. This causes his winrate to be tilted positively to Bronze and negatively towards Diamond, in contrast to the other high skill cap champions like Kalista, Elise, and Lucian.

End Result:

  • Fewer Yasuo QQ threads on the top of the boards.
  • Higher access and satisfaction to Yasuo mains at the top of the ladder.
  • Lower accessibility to him at a lower tier, but much more rewarding and somewhat easier to master the extremely mechanical elements of his kits (keyblade, airblade etc.)

27 Comments

Votable Jester5/14/2018, 10:43:53 PM11 votes

I think it should more focus on eliminating the gap between projectile-heavy champs vs no-projectile champs.

TheSingularity5/15/2018, 8:53:28 AM7 votes

In my opinion it should focus on removing Yasuo's ability to deprive the enemy of "agency"

Yasuo has the same fundamental flaws as most of Certainty's champions. Now don't get me wrong, he thinks outside the box and that's invaluable. However since they never throw some hand cuffs on that creativity, he usually goes overboard. The most common issue, is that these champions remove agency from the player. IDK if you know what agency is in this context so will explain. It's essentially how much you're able to do against the opponent, how much can you punish, counter, out play. How much control, do you have over the outcome? My prime example of a perfect champion is and always will be Velkoz . 100% skillshots so you can dodge everything, short range and has to land combos. You can evade, get on top of him, bait his E, interrupt his ult, disengage at 2 stacks ect. You decide how the fight against vel'koz will go. You can out play him and he can out play you.

Champions like darius, yasuo, Kalista and fiora (not one of his but a prime example) remove agency. You're playing their game, and it is up to them, to make the mistake. It isn't up to you, to out play them, they must out play themselves.

Yasuo specifically removes agency through mobility and safety nets. If you're in a lane it doesn't matter where you are, with W/E you won't stop him from getting on top of you. His ult safety net (shield reset and places you safely out of turret range), the shield period (I manage to mid with yorick and kled without a shield, don't see why he needs it), windwall working from all sides (means you can't out play it). With a little attack speed he then has an obscenely spammable projectile that costs no resource, so you must endlessly dodge it or else you die. Without agency, there is no fairness. And there never can be until agency is returned to the opponent. I can pop his shield, that's the only agency there is over yasuo. Everything else is up to him.

Not gameplay related but insanity driving is the sheer obnoxious nature of having to hear 'WASABI!" every 2-5 dam seconds and "swoosh, swish, swoosh" constantly. It make players want to hammer splintered pencils into their ears. I'd gladly take this ^and no gameplay changes

Zero Skill Tank5/14/2018, 8:39:10 PM4 votes

but an unfathomably low skill floor

That's not true. Yasuo is hard to play, even at 'floor level'. It's just that's even harder to play against Yasuo, even at or below said floor level, especially since Yasuo players discovered it's not obligatory to go mid and they can go top to face other melees.

Red Wreckage5/15/2018, 6:23:50 AM3 votes

bronze is a different celestial entity that should never ever be a concern for balance team. I've seen fresh new players with 2-14 ranked win loss in silver ~4. If that does not warrant bronze, then I can't imagine the kind of players that dwells there. and as such, entire bronze stats should be completely overlooked before making any balance decision. this is the elo of smiteless junglers and nunu supports ffs. and you're concerned that Yasuo has 51% win rate here. L O L

FlameHalbrdOkido5/15/2018, 6:50:31 AM2 votes

I wonder about this two OP, Yas was advertised as this high skill lvl champ but that seems to not be the case as all you ever hear about is bad Yas players and how they can be bad and still win, and you don't hear so much about the gud yas players and the cool skilled outplays they do.

I agree if Yas is supposed to be a high skill lvl champ then he should have less hand holding measures, the problem is that he was designed for the mid land with ranged poke champs in mind, but people took him to other lanes, which shouldn't be an issue, but Yas was so specialized for Mid that he could handle other lanes much easier.

In order to make him more skilled they should make his W an instant horizontal slash in a cone that negates all abilities it intercepts (the ones that it does now). It should force him to stand still for 0.25 sec. It could work on a charge system. So that with enough charges Yasuo players could come close to the old 3.75 sec windwall, except this time they'd have to stand in place and repeatedly press W, or move and stand still every time they wanted to block and ability. Although each charge would have a LONG recharge time to discourage Yas players from trying to wait to get the max amount of time as it wouldn't be effecient

I believe that Yasuo's passives are inherently flawed as they give him free advantages but i believe there are ways they can fixed by having the passive effect his abilities in nuanced ways I am not sure that he should keep the passive shield as it is a hand holding mechanic. Instead or additionally it could decrease the recharge time on his W based on units traveled and the time it was at max. Getting hit by any ability at any time will reduce the amount of Flow gathered by % of the dmg taken. This encourages skilled players to rely on dodging by walking out of the way or using E to avoid dmg rather than just letting the shield tank the dmg for you, and it would separate the gud Yas players from the bad as the gud Yas players would have more acess to W which should be doing the job of the shield anyways as it takes skill to aim and time the cone slash effectively

His amount of Flow could also effect the amount of time his 3rd Q knocks up for. And his Ult could deal dmg based on the amount of time the targets are knocked up for. again this shows how much more effectively Flow as resource could be used to split gud and bad yas players as Gud Yas players will avoid taking too much dmg and will be able to get higher knock ups.

The 3rd Q should be a skillshot if its not already, and it should knock up the 1st group of champs intercepted in an AoE. This would allow tanks to body block for allies and would separate the Yasuos who can aim their tornado's to go in the right direction

And the Ult should NOT genereate Max Flow, and it should be changed to an Unstoppable Targetted Dash, it should suspend enemies based on the knock up time from Flow

get rid of his 2x crit chance

koshkyra5/15/2018, 11:47:42 AM2 votes

In low elo, where people are less-skilled, people dont play against him correctly and therefore he does well.

In high elo, where people are skilled, they dont just have to rely on the yasuo fucking up and they can actually outplay him and do well against him.

Z3Sleeper5/15/2018, 11:51:43 AM2 votes

Close the skill gap? Gotchu man.

Q - now targeted and undodgeable, including the tornado W - wind wall now follows him E - reworked, now simply teleports to cursor, no cooldown R - can now be used on any form of cc, including slows. Cooldown adjusted to 3 seconds (not that that’s all that much shorter than current).

VICHEL CHAOS5/15/2018, 5:20:49 PM1 votes

Who cares about qq threads on the boards? 98% Of them are mindless whining that will get ignored by Riot (and rightfully so), the other 2% are somewhat fundamented and well argued and may be slightly taken into account. Whowever, the boards are a minute minority of the playerbase and thus should not be fully taken into account when designing or balancing.

iPooUnicorns5/15/2018, 5:21:26 PM1 votes

Honestly I would just make his Windwall share his Flow health.

In essence: Yasuo consumes his Flow or shield gained from Flow to create a Windwall. The Windwall has health equal to twice the Flow/Shield Health consumed upon casting, the Windwall takes damage from projectiles blocked, when the Windwall runs out of health, it is destroyed. The Windwall will still block a projectile that would destroy the Windwall.

Additionally, the Windwall has damage reduction vs projectiles equal to 10/20/30/40/50%, scaling with the ability's level. This would give the shield an effective HP of at 220 at level 1 (although it would really be 242 since Windwall isn't taken until level 3) to 1630 at level 18.

To compensate for these changes, his Flow generation would need to be buffed.

This would make Yasuo much less punishing against ranged champions. It would give ranged champions much more room to work around, if they pop his shield before he can Windwall(Yasuo would have 1 second to cast Windwall), he loses his ability to block enemy projectiles.

Wild Geese5/15/2018, 5:09:29 AM1 votes

Yasuo is pretty hard to play, in that he's very unique so it takes quite a bit of games to get used to him. This doesn't mean he requires a skilled player however, I think that's where people get confused. No champion really requires anything beyond a silver elo skill level to reach their skill floor.

ChaddyFantome5/16/2018, 2:57:07 AM1 votes

Imo, just remove his flow and buff him elsewhere. Also remove the dumb hand holding mechanics like how his Ult procs of every displacement instead etc.

YoRHa 2B5/15/2018, 7:16:30 AM1 votes

I'm a simple person, saw "Keyblade" in post and upvoted it

princeblumpkin5/14/2018, 9:39:21 PM1 votes

Yasuo is harder to play against than he is to play, and I'm not sure how you would deal with that. Adding even more counterplay would only exacerbate the problem and lowering his counterplay would just piss people off.

Takua Nuva5/15/2018, 4:39:50 PM1 votes

imo late games champions like Yasuo Vayne or Irelia are super strong and not very hard in lower elos because the games last forever so they will eventualy scale