Stacking armor and "playing safe" are not legitimate answers. Specific champions to counter him don't count either. As any champion, regardless of who they are, what can you do against him? So many champions have options beyond those. I find it hard to find that against Yasuo.
Penns8 votesThe best, and probably the only real counterplay to Yasuo is to hope hes bad. Because if hes one of those Yasuo only boys, you know youre getting smashed lel.
Lugg1 votesThis is the correct answer. Sad but true.
Eternal Nocturne1 votesThis. Literally this. Nothing counters his troll wall, the only option is to run face first past his wall and die or run away from his wall and die.
Only Play Darius1 votesOnce decided to play as Yasuo in teambuilder. Got matched against a guy with the cowboy skin who's username was [Team Name] YasuOnly.
I was scared shitless from the start, and let me tell you it was disgusting, he started E and proceeded to destroy me, it was so bad I had to laneswap with my toplaner. Only reason we won was because he went AFK.
Incognonymous6 votesNothing. Infinite sustain, infinite mobility, infinite harass. He has more defensive elements in his kit than 90% of the tank roster. There is no counterplay.
Durzaka2 votesApparently a slowly charging shield is infinite sustain now.
Man, G&B and is a funny place.
Incognonymous1 votesApparently a slowly charging shield is infinite sustain now.
Man, G&B and is a funny place.
Ever see a Yasuo not start Doran's? Infinite sustain. Also, "slowly charging"-- please leave. E charges it. You know, the infinity mobility move?
Durzaka1 votesShields arent fucking sustain. it doesnt matter how you want to twist it.
TheSlogs1 votesTell that to junglers like Diana
Durzaka1 votesTankiness and damage mitigation are not sustain.
Let me repeat that. Damage Mitigation is NOT SUSTAIN!
lB2kGRlc8y1 votesYou might want to look up the dictionary definition of sustain before trying to make an argument about what it entails. Tankiness sustains a champion's ability to stay in lane, just like self healing.
TheSlogs1 votesWhen you take damage and then use an effect like life steal to gain it back, you negate the damage that was dealt to you. When you use a shield before you take damage, you negate the damage that was dealt to you. I don't understand what you are trying to say.
pripustas4 votes
you wanna play too?
Blu3 Blood Blues3 votescc, so like bursty brusiers champions ex riven,leo,ect
TheSlogs3 votesthose are specific champs sir
Subject 53 votesthose are specific champs sir
How do you deal with Zed?
You can't tell me specific items and champions. You can only tell me strategies that are realisticly possible. That is basically what you are saying.
HaIlMonitor1 votes[{quoted}](name=Subject 5,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Q3NjksqZ,comment-id=000000000000,timestamp=2015-08-29T20:56:55.505+0000)
How do you deal with Zed?
You can't tell me specific items and champions. You can only tell me strategies that are realisticly possible. That is basically what you are saying.
Are you high? Zed there are two items 
which help that match up a ton. Yes there will always be basics but if you are to stubborn to learn counter picks or god for bid learn the champion in question to learn the weaknesses you are going to always lose that lane. The only reason I EVER played Darius before the patch was for Riven/Irelia/Singed match ups. Winning doesnt always mean it is fun, but if that is what you want to do you have to play accordingly and learn the Counter champions and then go from there.
Lol my bad I thought you were the OP
Subject 52 votesAre you high? Zed there are two items
Lol my bad I thought you were the OP
Yeah, your argument would have actually been valid. But you know, you can't involve like 75% of the game in your debate. God your so dumb, how dare you even try to use logic!
HaIlMonitor2 votes[{quoted}](name=Subject 5,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Q3NjksqZ,comment-id=00000000000000000000,timestamp=2015-08-29T21:03:25.105+0000)
Yeah, your argument would have actually been valid. But you know, you can't involve like 75% of the game in your debate. God your so dumb, how dare you even try to use logic!
So true. HAHA
Nameless Voice1 votesI'm not sure I quite understand what you mean. Zed is another badly-designed champion without clear weaknesses in his kit, whose best counter is "don't play a mage". Quite similar to (though not as extreme as) Yasuo.
It doesn't in any way invalidate the original question.
UltraSceptile1 votes[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Q3NjksqZ,comment-id=0000000000000001,timestamp=2015-08-29T21:50:36.219+0000)
I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean. Zed is another badly-designed champion without clear weaknesses in his kit, whose best counter is "don't play a mage". Quite similar to (though not as extreme as) Yasuo.
It doesn't in any way invalidate the original question.
Don't play a mage if you don't know how to play said mage. Just because you're used to farming creeps from fog of war and not getting punished for it doesn't mean it should exist. There are plenty of mage players who are good enough to beat pretty much any opponent, and if you can't do that don't whine.
Catastrop1 votes"don't play a mage".
Well, there is 
HaIlMonitor2 votesWatch the lcs. It seems to me bad players are his counter play.
Subject 52 votes
There is more but that would require concentration XD
4ManVotedAgainst2 votesWhen laning against him absolutely DO NOT SHOVE LANE if the enemy jungler has ANY kind of early ganking ability (especially the ones with knock-ups like 
). ONE kill can set 
ahead of you to the point where you will lose every attempted 1v1 against him after that without back-up (and even with back-up it's no guarantee as their jungler will probably just counter-gank anyway). I personally use either 
or 
against [due to being two of my mains of course], but between the two, I find that I often have more success winning game as against a comp with a , considering that can just go with a build-path that itself counters the archetype, plus with being a tank-archetype that can go 21+ in masteries, has a harder time being able to kill a early even with a jungler-gank, unless carelessly pushes too far, too early/quickly).
P.S. : 
is a hard-counter to from level 6 onwards even though you seemed to have an aversion to specific champion-picks in this thread.
LadyRenly2 votesuninstalling
Trash MammaI1 votesShut him down early and don't let it get to late game.
If you end up losing early game that's your own fault for being outplayed so hard.
A lot of people don't understand a late game hyper carry (ex, vayne) once the game is about 25-30 minutes in there's no reason he shouldn't be doing what he does. He's suppose to scale hard late game and be weak early which is why he can easily be trashed in lane.
makes his laning a nightmare.
Tl;dr not letting the game get to late game is his counterplay. Same as nasus/vayne/veigar etc.
Nameless Voice2 votesThe problem I have with this advice is that Yasuo's laning phase is incredibly strong against most mage champions if his player is reasonably competent.
Most people who dislike Yasuo don't complain about his late-game hypercarry ability, but his oppressive laning phase with tools that hard-counter a large subset of the champion pool, forcing you to counterpick him (and pray you are not picking before him.)
Ahurath1 votesexhuast and swain. And wtf is this you can't just say these strategies that are perfectly viable does not count? It's like you want us to say that there's no counter to yasuo and he's totally broken.
UltraSceptile1 votesThe counterplay to Yasuo is the same counterplay to Viktor or Anivia.
Don't stay clumped up stack resists and CC him to hell.
TyroneWatermelon1 votesPoint and click cc,hardcore knockup,gangbang
Stars Shaper1 votesReactivity and exploiting your champions strenghts.
Yasuo isn't the best in anything and all of his moves have fallacies that can be exploited and nullified so just pick the one more convenient for your champion.
67chrome1 votesWhat is the counterplay to Yasuo?
Counter-play is mostly just the number of responses to this question: "What could I have done differently to prevent that from happneing?" After a Yasou kills you.
In which case you do have plenty of things to do. Vs. Q you can list lazily to the left. Dodgy movements as a melee or range, and simply walking through him as a melee, will often prevent him from landing the skill. Vs. W not standing next to your own minions prevents him from using it to reach you, and more importantly to bail if the situation doesn't go in his favor. Vs. E - you can walk through and around it, bait it out, and hold back on skills to not get obliterated by it. Vs. R - dodge to the side vs. his tornado, or apply mobility-silencing CC on him if the tornado looks like it's inevitably going to hit, as doing so will often disable his ultimate while airborne CC is applied on your character. Vs. his passive - 1 mana potion can generally allow enough skill use to get past the HP shield on anyone with decent ranged harass. On anyone that's melee - you should be able to Crush Yasou in a straight-up 1v1. Double crit is useless with 0% crit chance, and his HP shield is mostly good at staving off occasional poke, nothing amazing in a fight to the death. Vs. his AA's - those are melee range. Anything beyond being a potato allows you to play around melee AA's.
Captain Aishi1 votescounterplay to champions generally revolves around their ressource management or cooldowns... Yasuo just happens to have neither of those
Mordepool1 votesAA. Wait for shield to break. Poke repeat
windwolf7771 votes
SparrowPriest1 votescc and high damage, ignite, exhaust. Nasus, swain, riven.
Only Play Darius1 votesWell the problem with Yasuo is that his overloaded kit gives him the tools to work around any matchup if the player is good enough (admittedly Yasuo takes a fair amount of skill to play properly). Yasuo is somewhat weak early game and vulnerable to ganks, but Shiv is a massive powerspike for him and once he has this you pretty much can't beat him 1v1.
Short answer is, you need to pick an overloaded champion you know well and use your knowledge of both champs to outplay him. It's called power creep.
The good news is that many of the reworks are adding new mechanics to older champions, giving them more tools to let them deal with newer, overloaded champs like Yasuo.
GreenLore1 votesIn lane when you are a ranged character you should try to deplete his shield with ranged attacks. A single ranged attack and his shield will activate,which will give you a window for damage once it goes away. When you see that he has his storm ready,you should start to get a bit of distance between you two,so that you can dodge it easier and keep an eye out for his windwall,it has a pretty large cooldown,so if he blocked one of your attacks with it,be a bit more agressive,because the cd of his wind wall is probably larger than the cd of your spells.
Aside from that look out for your minions. They are a possibility for him to get closer to you,which you should keep in mind(outside of the laning phase you may want to fight him not in lane so that he can't use your minions to navigate)
