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Way to Rework the Wanderer (Yasuo Rework Idea)

Genova Fearbane··4 votes·1,763 views

Through recent posts (http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/lBkYPFEW-as-a-plat-1-yasuo-main-with-400-yasuo-games-yasuo-needs-a-damn-rework ) and such, the community seems to be in favor of reworking Yasuo. So I thought I might present my ideas for such an occurence, based on my own experiences playing as and against Yasuo, to the community. So let's get into it shall we?

Way of the Wanderer Yasuo's infamous double critical chance has been the subject of much controversy and debate. While it grants him insane power spikes, it's also a core part of his kit, and I rather like the idea of a champion that is built around critical striking. So instead of simply removing this aspect, I would prefer to see it reworked into something like:

Yasuo gains 1% crit chance for every 11 bonus ad he has OR Yasuo gains 1% crit chance for every 2.5% crit chance he has (Does not stack with itself)

The numbers may be off, but the concept is that Yasuo would only gain around 35% crit chance from his passive at most rather than the normal 50%, and his power spikes would become less outrageous. I like the first idea the most, because it means Yasuo can utilize this part of his kit without having to build crit chance, allowing his build style more flexibility.

Steel Tempest Return the on-hit effects for the third strike.

Windwall Ah, yes. The infamous windwall. Beloved and berated by so many. This ability, unique at the time of it's creation, makes it impossible to defeat Yasuo as a champion who relies upon projectile abilities, and made it useless against teams who had very little use for projectiles whatsoever. However, it remains a unique and key part of Yasuo's kit.

Windwall now costs 20% of Yasuo's maximum flow (AKA 20 Flow Stacks) However, grants 1% flow back for every projectile blocked from an enemy champion. (Max 2/4/6/8/10% return) Windwall is now destroyable and has HP: 250/375/500/625/750 + (75% AP) Now passively grants Yasuo bonus max flow: 10/20/30/40/50 Wall size reduced to: 300/335/370/405/440 units (from 300/350/400/450/500 units)

Windwall costing part of Yasuo's flow and the introduction of it being destructible is a huge blow to it's usage, and give projectile-based champions (such as Ahri) a bit more breather room. So to compensate, it should passively grant Yasuo bonus maximum flow to make it not completely useless against teams who utilize very few projectile abilities. While the HP I've given the shield may seem a bit large to some, take note that the wall has NO resistances, making any damage dealt to it true damage. The idea is that the wall can block a decent amount of initial projectiles, not just one or two, unless Yasuo decides against putting many points into the ability. The idea behind the AP scaling is to give this ability some hidden power, and make sheen a bit more viable for Yasuo. I also added flow return when it blocks projectiles from enemy champions, meaning that it rewards quick reactions to block a barrage of enemy spells and should be used more wisely to take advantage of this aspect, rather than just plopping it down wherever. This is also reinforced by the flow cost. Again, the numbers could be subject to tweaking.

Sweeping Blade Here I wanted to emphasize Sweeping Blade's niche as a kiting/combat utility ability by increasing combat utility, while decreasing spammability.

Base Damage reduced to 15/30/45/60/75 (from 70/90/110/130/150) Scaling changed to: 0.55 Bonus AD + 0.6 AP (from 0.6 AP) Increased Damage from multiple dashes removed Now decreases target's armor by 5/7.5/10/12.5% for 4 seconds Dash Block Time increased to 11/10.5/9/7.5/6 seconds (from 10/9/8/7/6 seconds) Range decreased to 450 (From 475)(Does not effect dash distance)

These changes are designed to make Sweeping Blade more useful in combat situations, while preventing spamming. The concept is to make dashing on certain targets during a fight feel more meaningful and require more timing.

Last Breath Yasuo's unique ability that is based entirely around knock-ups is a bit of a let down on damage, despite the awesome looking animation. The following changes should help make key Last Breaths more decisive, as well as make it more important to decide what target(s) to jump on, rather than indulging leesindrome.

Base Damage increase to 200/325/450 (from 200/300/400) This ability now ignores 50% of target's armor. Armor penetration granted after use reduced to 20% and duration decreased to 10 seconds. (From 50% and 15 seconds) Cooldown increased to 120/100/80 seconds (From 85/55/30 seconds) Range increased to 1500 (From 1200)

This makes Last Breath more impactful, as well as less spammable, meaning players need to pay more attention an analyze the situation better.

Base Stats Now with the pesky abilities out of the way, Yasuo's numbers can be buffed back up.

Base HP increased to 480 (from 462) Base Movement Speed increased to 345 (from 340) HP per level increase to 84 (from 82) Armor per level decreased to 3.2 (from 3.4)

Armor per level scaling is reduced to deepen the divide between fighter and mADC builds, meaning you have to think more about what to buy and why.

Overall I think this is a decent way to go in my view, but of course I made it so I can't really say. It's numbers are subject to change, but I think that this would reel Yasuo in, making him more reliable as well as less frustrating to fight against, and maintaining his unique kit and preserving most of his playstyle.

TL;DR Less critical chance Windwall has hp and costs flow Sweeping blade more damage Last Breath more damage, longer cooldown Slightly tankier

10 Comments

clyphen2 votes

This was a very well written and thought out post! I agree with you on the idea of giving the windwall hp, so it has a limit to how much spam it can block. Hope to see some changes soon!

Wehrmacht Bunny1 votes

The only thing he needs right now, and yes I main him, is Health and increased damage.

His windwall has a hefty cooldown and without his windwall he would be absolute trash against any ranged champion in lane.(He pretty much is now due to how low his health is.)

His R needs way more damage. I'm sorry to say it, but having to rely on a two Q's then a skill shot to actually use the ultimate, then it do barely anything is just stupid. The 50% armor penetration is useless when you're getting instant killed because of such low health.

His R should actually have this, 300/375/450/550 + 50% armor penetration. Remember one thing before everyone downvotes me or says I'm wrong. It's so increadably hard to use his Ultimate. Not just because of the two Q's and skill shot, but knowing when is the right time to use it. If you just R right into 2-3 enemies without your team around, you're history. It's not like going Garen and being able to take 1k hits, or Nasus and being unstoppable in mega form.

His E is perfect where it is. Everyone says you can spam it, but you really can't because you can't hit the same target twice within 10 seconds.

His Q needs a damage buff. Just slightly, not anything major.

Lastly, he needs to be more tanky. Having him as an assassin without any damage bursts is just dumb. Give him base health as Nasus so he is actually a threat in early and mid game. But don't make him too tanky like mid/late game nasus.

Genova Fearbane1 votes

The only thing he needs right now, and yes I main him, is Health and increased damage.

His windwall has a hefty cooldown and without his windwall he would be absolute trash against any ranged champion in lane.(He pretty much is now due to how low his health is.)

His R needs way more damage. I'm sorry to say it, but having to rely on a two Q's then a skill shot to actually use the ultimate, then it do barely anything is just stupid. The 50% armor penetration is useless when you're getting instant killed because of such low health.

His R should actually have this, 300/375/450/550 + 50% armor penetration. Remember one thing before everyone downvotes me or says I'm wrong. It's so increadably hard to use his Ultimate. Not just because of the two Q's and skill shot, but knowing when is the right time to use it. If you just R right into 2-3 enemies without your team around, you're history. It's not like going Garen and being able to take 1k hits, or Nasus and being unstoppable in mega form.

His E is perfect where it is. Everyone says you can spam it, but you really can't because you can't hit the same target twice within 10 seconds.

His Q needs a damage buff. Just slightly, not anything major.

Lastly, he needs to be more tanky. Having him as an assassin without any damage bursts is just dumb. Give him base health as Nasus so he is actually a threat in early and mid game. But don't make him too tanky like mid/late game nasus.

The problem though, is with his passive crit mostly. It gives him quite a hefty power spike after getting items like static shiv and infinity edge. This makes him both unreliable and difficult to play against. His windwall lacks any use against champions who don't really use projectiles or ranged autos, and completely decimates those who rely on projectiles. It's too much. I do agree his ult could use a damage buff, but it also lacks significance. There is no Yasuo who worries whether he should save his ult for later or use it now. It's spammability makes it mundane, and not really significant for anything other than holding people in place. And making him tanky, particularly early, contradicts a hyper-carry late game swordsman. Riot wants to make him a late game carry, not a lane bully. Putting those two together makes it extremely difficult to counter without significant help. So instead it would probably be a better idea to give him more scaling health, to give him a weaker early game in trade for a stronger late game.

DocRedgrave3 votes

This is where I blow your arguments out of the water:

  1. You're forgetting Tryndamere can get a maximum crit chance of 100% with ZERO penalties to it through a full fury bar, an IE, a Ghostblade and a Stattik Shiv. If you're complaining about Yasuo's ability to have 100% crit chance in two items then why aren't you complaining about Tryndamere?
  2. Yasuo's Wind Wall is only decimating to AP mids that use HIGH COOLDOWN PROJECTILE SPELLS such as Lux and Morgana. Low Cooldown skillshot champions such as Ziggs and Ezreal can easily outmaneuver Wind Wall and spam spells reliably.
  3. If you're going to talk about spammable ultimates you should have mentioned Katarina. She's packing a 60 / 52.5 / 45 Cooldown ultimate. If you're going to screw with Yasuo's ultimate just because it's "spammable", then is Katarina next?
Wehrmacht Bunny1 votes
  1. If you're going to talk about spammable ultimates you should have mentioned Katarina. She's packing a 60 / 52.5 / 45 Cooldown ultimate. If you're going to screw with Yasuo's ultimate just because it's "spammable", then is Katarina next?

Don't forget, Katarinas Ult gets reset after 3 kills, and lets be honest, it's not hard to get three kills with her R because it targets 3 people and does so much damage. So in reality, she has unlimited R's.

Genova Fearbane2 votes

This is where I blow your arguments out of the water:

  1. You're forgetting Tryndamere can get a maximum crit chance of 100% with ZERO penalties to it through a full fury bar, an IE, a Ghostblade and a Stattik Shiv. If you're complaining about Yasuo's ability to have 100% crit chance in two items then why aren't you complaining about Tryndamere?
  2. Yasuo's Wind Wall is only decimating to AP mids that use HIGH COOLDOWN PROJECTILE SPELLS such as Lux and Morgana. Low Cooldown skillshot champions such as Ziggs and Ezreal can easily outmaneuver Wind Wall and spam spells reliably.
  3. If you're going to talk about spammable ultimates you should have mentioned Katarina. She's packing a 60 / 52.5 / 45 Cooldown ultimate. If you're going to screw with Yasuo's ultimate just because it's "spammable", then is Katarina next?

And this is where I counter:

  1. Tryndamere can achieve 100% crit chance with a FULL fury bar and 3 items. It takes time to fill said fury bar as well and he needs one more item than Yasuo, which is quite significant, and makes Yasuo's power-spikes awkward. Yasuo can instantly enter combat with an IE and shiv with 95% crit chance, not counting runes. And Tryndamere's only innate sustain feature, his Q, requires him to drain the fury, while Yasuo's crit chance remains regardless, even when his innate shield passive is triggered. Yasuo also carries a significantly higher amount of utility than Tryndamere, being able to knock-up, block projectiles, dash, and his ult is an instant position change.

  2. Yasuo's windwall isn't easy to maneuver around when he's stabbing you in the face. And it has absolutely no differentiation between a high damage ult such as viegar's, and a minion's auto-attack. It can also negate an adc's entire damage output for most of a teamfight, given that most don't last much longer than 8 to 10 seconds depending. Ziggs and ezreal are both extremely squishy, and in a duel ziggs and ezreal will try to unload their entire barrage only to have it be blocked by a windwall and then be instantly destroyed by a mADC. The point is it takes time to maneuver, time you most often don't have.

  3. Katarina's ult deals damage over time, and is instantly ended by hard cc. But the problem with Yasuo's ult isn't that it's spammable, but that it's not really impactful other than being used to hold people in place. The damage it deals is quite negligible, and Yasuo players don't have to think twice about using it. Katarina players do, however, because of the threat of interruption.

Your problem is you focused on the negative sides of these changes. The idea isn't to lower Yasuo's power levels, this is to bring him into balance, allow him to feel more reliable while allowing more counter-play. I love Yasuo and his kit, but I just feel as though it's really awkward right now.

DocRedgrave1 votes

I admit I have seen absolutely no positive factor in just about every suggestion to a Yasuo "nerf". They're either demanding Wind Wall function more like Unbreakable or Yasuo gets his crit bonuses thrown out the window. As a mid lane main I can tell you both of those are beyond unnecessary. He's completely balanced now in my opinion. I actually discovered that a large majority of people that I have met who flame at how "op" Yasuo is actually lack the mechanics to play against a Yasuo.

As an example, I had a situation about a week after Yasuo's release where I was facing a Lux mid as Yasuo. She'd throw her combo on me every 30 seconds (literally) without thinking and I'd wall it off effortlessly. Post-6 she kept repeating the same mistakes and it frustrated her to the point where she'd spam her ultimate on me whenever possible. After we beat them Lux began throwing nasty insults at me, exclaiming that Yasuo is a champion for "faggots" and accusing me of being such.

On one last note it takes a skilled reaction time to actually utilize Wind Wall in clever manners such as blocking off an AD carry's attacks. To be honest I still haven't mastered the timing for it yet.

Wehrmacht Bunny2 votes

I admit I have seen absolutely no positive factor in just about every suggestion to a Yasuo "nerf". They're either demanding Wind Wall function more like Unbreakable or Yasuo gets his crit bonuses thrown out the window. As a mid lane main I can tell you both of those are beyond unnecessary. He's completely balanced now in my opinion. I actually discovered that a large majority of people that I have met who flame at how "op" Yasuo is actually lack the mechanics to play against a Yasuo.

As an example, I had a situation about a week after Yasuo's release where I was facing a Lux mid as Yasuo. She'd throw her combo on me every 30 seconds (literally) without thinking and I'd wall it off effortlessly. Post-6 she kept repeating the same mistakes and it frustrated her to the point where she'd spam her ultimate on me whenever possible. After we beat them Lux began throwing nasty insults at me, exclaiming that Yasuo is a champion for "faggots" and accusing me of being such.

On one last note it takes a skilled reaction time to actually utilize Wind Wall in clever manners such as blocking off an AD carry's attacks. To be honest I still haven't mastered the timing for it yet.

Exactly, which is why I hope Riot doesn't listen to people like the OP or the guy with 255 upvotes on his nerf Yasuo thread. Too many people don't play Yasuo, yet think he's OP because they got outplayed, or never change their tactics up. They want to nerf a champion that already sucks pretty much right now.

This is why we can't have nice things!

Wehrmacht Bunny1 votes

How does windwall decimate any ranged champion? It stays up for like 5 seconds, and is so small early game you can just walk next to it and fire away at Yasuo who is so slow he wouldn't be able to avoid it.

His Crit is fine where it is. He needs it to be a melee carry, without it he just becomes a useless assassin/fighter. He already has no damage burst and to take away his crit would make him nothing.

His R isn't spammable at all. You need to know when to use it. Yasuo can't trade to save his life. So even if you did R someone, your chances of losing are still pretty high. Not only that but if you just randomly use you R, your chances of getting rolled is extremely high. 90% of my matches with Yasuo I only use his R like 4-5 times in a 50 minute match because of how hard it is to actually R someone without a good Janna or Blitzcrank. Even then, like 2 of them are sucessful that I walk away from while the other 3 get me instantly killed.

I also watch a lot of pro players use Yasuo and they tend to fail even hard then I do with only being able to use his R twice or three times total. And most if not all of them get wrecked.

Yasuo is to squishy, too weak in damage to be a viable pick most of the time. His early game is horrendous, and his mid game is just pathetic. Late game he can be good but only with a decent team who communicates.

Honestly though, if they just gave him more health I would love it.

Genova Fearbane2 votes

How does windwall decimate any ranged champion? It stays up for like 5 seconds, and is so small early game you can just walk next to it and fire away at Yasuo who is so slow he wouldn't be able to avoid it.

His Crit is fine where it is. He needs it to be a melee carry, without it he just becomes a useless assassin/fighter. He already has no damage burst and to take away his crit would make him nothing.

His R isn't spammable at all. You need to know when to use it. Yasuo can't trade to save his life. So even if you did R someone, your chances of losing are still pretty high. Not only that but if you just randomly use you R, your chances of getting rolled is extremely high. 90% of my matches with Yasuo I only use his R like 4-5 times in a 50 minute match because of how hard it is to actually R someone without a good Janna or Blitzcrank. Even then, like 2 of them are sucessful that I walk away from while the other 3 get me instantly killed.

I also watch a lot of pro players use Yasuo and they tend to fail even hard then I do with only being able to use his R twice or three times total. And most if not all of them get wrecked.

Yasuo is to squishy, too weak in damage to be a viable pick most of the time. His early game is horrendous, and his mid game is just pathetic. Late game he can be good but only with a decent team who communicates.

Honestly though, if they just gave him more health I would love it.

Windwall can completely negate nearly all the damage from an adc or the burst of an apc, which is all the time he needs to blow them up. Moving around the windwall doesn't help if Yasuo can just position himself again on the other side or if he's cutting you in half with his sword.

The problem isn't really his crits. It's the unreliability of his power-spikes when he buys an item. He suddenly becomes extremely more menacing with a statikk shiv in hand, a lot more than Riot probably intended. The problem isn't his damage, it's how quickly he gets it.

First off, if you're saying a 35 second cd ult isn't spammable, you really need to re-evaluate cooldowns. And don't tell me he can't trade, a single crit Q with only a shiv and IE deals 500 damage without other items, runes, or masteries. And that's what he has his windwall for. And randomly use you r? That's not the problem. People don't worry about being caught without it, or having a fight start with it on cd, because it's not really significant.

That's because, more often than not, pro players know how to position themselves better, meaning using anything that puts you in the middle of a fight is much riskier than doing it in lower elo, especially how quickly players react to save their carries.

Yasuo is not a very viable pick I agree. But the big problem is that Riot has sacrificed a large amount of his stats to keep the ridiculous 2x crit chance. While I do like the concept, the doubling of nearly any stat puts far too much power in one's hands, and with recent nerfs this means Yasuo players HAVE to get crit to play Yasuo. It's not an option to build him differently, greatly restricting his flexibility. His early game is horrendous, as he's supposed to have a weak early game. His mid game is only 'meh' if you don't get fed early, which is difficult to do, but of course is part of champions with high skill-caps.

I would love to see them just slap some hp on him, but that honestly won't fix the problem. In his current state there is no sweet spot where he'll be accepted as an average champ. He's either a must-ban or a troll pick.

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