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Yasuo and Fighter/Assassins balance

Cardbox frog·8/25/2014, 7:02:37 PM·5 votes·1,701 views

Multiple times I have seen posts made by Riot employees openly accepting the fact that melee fighters are the most ambiguous and unbalanced class out there. There are exceptions to the rule, those that fall on the fighter/tank/utility spectrum are not terribly affected by this: Renekton, Shyvanna, Trundle, Xin Zhao, Wukong and Warwick are all (arguably) viable and fun picks.

However, fighter champs outside those are usually on a somewhat unhealthy position. The fighters with high DPS (fighter/assassins) usually relay on cheap tools like untargetability to get on melee and use their high DPS to one-off the enemy champions before there can be any sort of retaliation or else they are dead. In other words, this sort of champions either starve or carry very hard. Jax, Fiora, MasterYi, Tryndamere and even Poppy all fall into this category.

Which brings me to Yasuo, a champion who lives on a tier of his own. You see, while one may argue that Yasuo shares most traits of the previously mentioned champs, the great difference here is that he is not hard-gated by items/experience/kills in the same way that those champs are. Thanks to his passive crit chance, god-like utility wind-wall, free armor penetration and long-ranged clean initiation, even an underfeed Yasuo can still one-shot squishies during a teamfight with confidence.

And that's problematic, because that makes Yasuo a pretty safe pick. If you are ahead, you carry. If you are not feed you can always assassinate and stall until late game. Where are his weaknesses? As far as I know, Yasuo is a champ that can respond to almost any kind situation.

  • Can duel against tanks/fighters.
  • Can trade with pokers/marksmen.
  • Can deal tons of damage and/or apply good control on team fights.
  • Can Split-push + help secure Drakes.
  • Can protect towers with statik-shiv+wind-wall.

Just to be clear, I am not saying “OMG YASUO IS BROKEN, RITO NERF PLOX”, that would be ridiculous. A broken champ makes the game unplayable and Yasuo is nowhere close to that. There are a handful of ways to deal with him, like well-timed cc or a burst-shower. However, on his current state, Yasuo seems to be rather unhealthy for to the game as a whole. He needs some kind of revision/rework to add some real weaknesses, which is not exactly the same as a nerf just look how Gragas ended up.

I understand the concept behind Yasuo and I think it's a really cool idea. A hard-to-use champ with very flashy moves that can carry the game hard if mastered properly. People love that kind of characters, if not ask Lee Sin. However, I don't think that worked properly with Yasuo, he is too safe and “all-over-the-place” to fit that role. The rework should reinforce this idea by making him really strong&snowbally if you used like clockwork but punishing every mistake hard even if Yasuo is slightly ahead.

15 Comments

majulito8/25/2014, 9:06:57 PM4 votes

I think his passive is his biggest problem. Once you hit 100% crit you increase the value of your ad and lifesteal and he does it in two items. One that helps him farm and gives him mobility and the other that makes his crits stronger.

Other annoying things is shield refresh after using his ult, free bonus armor pen after ult against everyone (why does he need to counter tanks and why are people who weren't caught being penalized?), windwall last almost 4s thats pretty long and often leads to blocking things that weren't even intended to by the yasuo to block.

Eapenator8/25/2014, 9:12:11 PM4 votes

I completely agree with everything you said.

Yasuo is an absolutely amazing champion that utilizes being melee and utlizing high AD, while still being in a semi balanced character. Riot has made leaps and bounds from when they created Master YI, fiora, poppy, and tryndamere.

This being said, currently Yasuo brings a little too much to the table, for reliability issues, which are now a non -factor since everyone knows how to play him. They need to do something about his wind wall because

a) it has nothing to do with the rest of his kit. It doesn't actively enhance anything b) it feels terrible to play against yasuo because of this wall. Skill shot users should feel good when they predict their opponent. Not only does yasuo have a dash for mobility in lane, but when he makes a mistake, he has a get out of jail free card.

my suggestion - remove the wall or shorten the duration to 1 auto. Preserves Yasuo's play style as well as make him think more consciously of the wall as opposed to ' i close the gap, and then throw a wall up to frustrate you since you can't fight back.

Pyrobob48/26/2014, 7:31:50 AM2 votes

I think part of his problem is that he isn't really that hard to be good with. His absolute mastery level might be fairly high, but the level at which he can easily carry a game is actually pretty low.

But I suppose this is fairly subjective. Personally, I don't consider myself all that skillful. I'm not particularly mechanically sound. I've never been very good at champs like Lee, or Kat. Yassuo, however, I found quite easy to pick up and do really well with. Maybe that's just me, though.

Knight SoIaire 8/25/2014, 8:37:48 PM2 votes

i personaly would decrease his dmg but i wold like to make his shield usefull atm riot is cutting everythign else to keep him as an assasin

Earl Eulrich8/25/2014, 10:06:42 PM1 votes

the critdmg should be lowered to ~60% + windwall duration to a max of 1sec to make it a reactive spell and not a zoning tool. And either the shield-refresh has to go or some of his armorpen on the ult.

Worgslarg8/26/2014, 1:15:51 AM1 votes

Did you read the meddler posts on game design? They said they seemed happy with yasuo's passive, and there are other ways to tune him down a bit.

Yasuo's passive is fine, however crit chance itself needs to go out the door.

Imo, he needs a slight nerf to his damage, and imo the rest of the comments in this thread are either windwall op nerf asap or his passive's op, nerf asap.

Chilly Willies8/26/2014, 4:45:05 PM1 votes

I agree. I think the Wind Wall provides way too much counter play and is not extremely satisfying. I have an idea to balance it though. What if the Wind Wall, instead of lasting 4 seconds, started at 1 second and scaled off of Attack Speed?