Is yasuo/vayne/lee and crew too popular to deserve a high winrate?

So Let’s take a look at some Riot given data. https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2017/11/champ-popularity-mixing-math-art/

First of all let’s cover some definitions on Breadth vs Depth. Breadth = # of unique players who played a champion. Depth = avg # games players play on a champion.

According to Riot Popularity is Breadth X Depth which means that the more unique players that constantly play a champion, the higher the popularity.

Let’s take a look at Yasuo. Yasuo has both a high Depth and Breadth. That means he has both a high number of unique individuals who play a champ, and those players all have a high number of games on Yasuo.

I guess this is where we should start asking questions. If all Yasuo players play yasuo for a high number of games how do we determine which players are considered to have "mastered him"? Do we consider the High MMR players to have "mastered him" or do we go off of mastery score, winrate, playrate? What does “to have mastered" really mean. I mean I could one trick yasuo in bronze until I have 2 Million mastery, does that mean I've mastered him? I might be bad at the game, but does being bronze mean I'm bad at the champ; or could it mean that instead of being bad at the champion I'm just bad at pushing, team fighting, objectives, warding or so on? Better yet, how do we deal with players that throw off win rate data by just being absolutely terrible on a champion but they spam that champion for 1k games at a 33% (or worse) win rate?

So this leads me to my next question. Is yasuo being picked in matchups where he shouldn't be picked? Here is something that I read on the issue that I believe strongly resonates with this argument. I will copy the argument word for word for lack of better paraphrasing. I do not think I could make this argument better myself.

> {quoted}

I feel like Yasuo should see a below-50% win rate for two reasons, and you're only addressing one of them (that he's a high skill cap champion and players that haven't put a lot of time in to him will do poorly on him).

The second reason which I've not seen addressed anywhere, is that Yasuo simply does not fit in the majority of team comps in league. That should make him a niche champion, and yet as the graphs Riot released show he has the widest and deepest playerbase of all champions (I think largest breadth, and second deepest after Kayn).

That's a huge red flag to me. Why is a niche champion being played so much? Is it because the teams that allow him to thrive are super popular right now? Absolutely not. The meta is actually very against comps that Yasuo would thrive in. So the alternative is that players are picking Yasuo in the wrong situations.

Why is Riot buffing a champion who is losing games that he should lose?

What do you want your mid laner to bring to a game of league? Typically a threatening amount of magic damage, ranged waveclear to stall from behind, and some utility. If you look at historically good mid laners they all have all of these: etc... all demonstrate all of these properties. Yasuo demonstrates none of them.

What do you want your top laner to bring to a game of league? Typically engage, peel, tankiness. In the recent meta even more than ever, you want a lot of peel and tankiness to let your ADC thrive. Yasuo does none of this.

Then, Yasuo has a kit that's more dependent on allies than most champions. His ultimate is only usable on champions that are airborne, and he only has a somewhat unreliable way of doing it himself and often only on one target. Allies like etc... are great for Yasuo because they can knockup multiple enemies fairly reliably. Most champions don't bring AOE knockups for Yasuo to thrive with.

You throw all of this together, and I'd expect that if Yasuo is being consistently picked with disregard to his team comp (which as we've all seen in solo queue, that last pick mid goes Yasuo in to allied ). In games like that, he should lose. Yet I've had plenty of games like that where I'm on a true tank and stacking 300 armor and still struggling to win what should be free because Yasuo just puts out soo much damage through armor.

So what I want to know: is Yasuo mid seeing a sub-50% win rate in all team comps, or is his win rate varying a lot across different teams? What is Yasuo's average win rate with any of these champions on his team: ? What about with these champions? , Support (i.e. his support can bring the magic damage).

Or better yet, use the data to identify which champions Yasuo does well with, and see if he's consistently winning over 50% with a subset of specific champions.

Tell me those are under 50% and I can be on board with Yasuo buffs. If they're like 54% then I think it's clear that Yasuo mains are just picking him knowing it's not a good time to do so, and they shouldn't get compensated for that. They're volunteering to have a sub-50% win rate if they're going to pick like that.

With that being said, maybe we can ask the next question of if a highly popular champion has at or above 50% winrate does that mean he is just in general too strong? This win rate should in theory cover both OTP’s and new players on a champion. Well what does riot say about his winrate? “He's struggling to win the "promised" number of games based on what you would expect from a mastery curve “. So what exactly is the promised number of games for mastering a champion vs new champions? Does that mean that if I master Yasuo and I’m in bronze I can just ‘get gud’ and go to diamond with a promised number of games? Does this mean that he needs a higher base win rate to compensate for his high skill curve? Is his skill curve too high to be properly utilized? What about other champion mastery curves? How do we treat those in comparison to Yasuo’s? Are all champions “promised” a number of wins? How does this correlate to each MMR? Does this mean that there are no bronze yasuo players, since his playerbase “has the highest average games played per player out of EVERY champion in League” ~Riot That should at least mean he has the least bronze players of all champions, because all of his players are OTP’s which should statistically have higher win rates right? Does this mean if we get enough players to OTP a trash tier champion does that mean that he too will get buffs, because that champs player base also isn’t getting their “promised wins”?

Next Question, what if the players that mained yasuo while he was “OP” just won too many games and got where they don’t belong? This could just be the fallout of players being in an MMR that they don’t belong in.

Give us the internal data riot, and how it compares to champions that aren’t popular and have just as low of a winrate and low popularity/high winrate. Data comparisons of champions like Morde, Volibear, Gragas, Ryze vs Vayne, Lee Sin, and Yasuo vs ziggs, anivia, corki, singed. I’d like to know what the “promised” win rates are for mastering all of these champions, along with their mastery curve. There are just too many questions to possibly ask about performance and if we should be giving popular champions buffs before we first ask ourselves are there too many players that just suck playing this champion, or are we making this champion too easy to play with these buffs.

Last question is how does all of this correlate to casual vs. hard core I play 5 million games players?

In my honest opinion, high popularity champions should conceptually have a lower winrate because they have a broader audience of players in a broader number of MMR’s OTP’s or not. Champions that have a very small playerbase that have a very high number of games should have a higher winrate simply because there are fewer players throwing off the data on the champion(s). However, unless Riot is willing to give up internal data on how they justify a champion is balanced I do not believe that we will ever have an answer.