An Analysis on Why Yasuo is Hated

I'm going to analyze why Yasuo has such a stigma surrounding him within League's community. I'm not going to advocate for or against nerfs. This is just to discuss why certain things are or are not problems.

First lets talk about his kit:

I want to propose that what makes him powerful and what makes him un-fun to play against are separate things. Him being powerful does make him more frustrating, but not any more than any other character being powerful would make them frustrating.

Yasuo has an overloaded kit. He has two passives, and two abilities that are spamable. Now this isn't inherently the problem, as there are other champions with overloaded kits that are not as widely hated. But it does contribute to people's frustrations with him.

I think that the most frustrating thing about Yasuo is that his Wind Wall takes agency away from enemies; there is something inherently frustrating about being negated that is so different from simply being out-played. Instead of playing around the opposing ultimate, it erases it and takes away the 'cool moment' that player could have had by using their ultimate. On top of that it isn't at nearly as much of a cost to him as it can be to them. A number of ultimate abilities with much longer cooldowns than Wind Wall are projectiles that can be unmade by it.

His dash used to be a big problem, such as it's stacking damage allowing Yasuo to lvl 1 cheese his opponents, but that has been nerfed. It takes practice for Yasuo to learn how to get the most out of using his dashes, just as it takes practice to learn how to predict and play around it. That said, it is still very frustrating to play against if you can't predict it and end up missing all of your skillshots. The fact that this skill requires practice to learn how to predict may be part of the reason he is so much more of a problem in lower levels of ranked play, because those of us that are in that level of play may not have as much time to practice or learn how to play around it.

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Now on to behavior and expectations:

I propose that Yasuo has a higher skill floor than people expect. Everybody has at some point seen a godlike Yasuo player dominating a game. IT doesn't look hard, and he's got a lot of up-front power that we expect should help him stomp games. I think that leads to people just starting out with him to expect to do well (obviously this is a mistake, but it is one that a lot of people make nonetheless). What results is a situation where the player can do poorly -> not understand why -> start looking for other reasons for the game going poorly. This isn't a problem that is unique to Yasuo, it is prevalent throughout this game and makes up a majority of the toxicity we see in game.

The other reason I think Yasuo is so hated in this community is actually confirmation bias. We are more likely to remember negative experiences than neutral ones. It used to be a survival trait from humanity's early days, something we did so that we wouldn't eat poisonous plants or go near dangerous animals a second time. After many many Yasuo games, even if they are equal parts good and bad, we are more likely to remember the toxic, selfish and childish players than the mature ones who did their job and played carefully.

I think that the combination of his kit's expected power, the frustrating parts of his kit, and common toxicity and confirmation bias cause a larger than average amount of hatred for the champion and his playerbase in this community.