Is Yasuo an Assassin, or a Melee Carry?

TehNACHO·May 7, 2015·3 votes·2,640 views

Serious question.

I like to poke fun at his kit, specifically his passive, but it occurred to me how oddly distributed his power is: Assassin traits:

Double Crit Chance accelerates his scaling extremely hard. This leads to an extremely large mid game power spike as he accumulates Critical Chance items
The crit reduction bites away at his late game capabilities. This forces his late game to fall off.

Melee Carry traits:

Attack speed scaling on Q largely benefits Yasuo's DPS more than anything else.
Yasuo's ultimate grants a 50% Bonus Armor Penetration, mitigating his damage falling off against tanks.

I wanted to point this out because this is probably a large contributor to why Yasuo is such a polarizing champion. Those who don't complain about Yasuo's mobility or Wind Wall are usually complaining about him "hyper scaling", or being "impossible" to shut down, the moment he buys Critical Chance.

10 Comments

Dies to WolvesMay 7, 20152 votes

He's a melee carry (or light fighter or whatever the hell is the current term for it). that can play assassin-ish, kinda like master yi

primary = melee carry, secondary = assassin

thing is, carries can have so much DPS that they end up assassinating people

PhifeMay 7, 20151 votes

only thing that makes him an assassin is the pure amount of crit he has.

TehNACHOMay 7, 20151 votes

Well I mean it is what I pointed out .-.

My point is, it messes with his power curve. If he's supposed to be a more traditional melee carry, his power spike should be closer to the late game, not early on in the mid game.

PhifeMay 7, 20151 votes

Thats not true, jax is a melee carry and he power spikes at lvls 4 / 6 / 9 / 11 / obv 18

TehNACHOMay 7, 20151 votes

I always considered him more of a raid boss...

Anywho, most every champion spikes at level 6, so that's more of a null point.

And besides what sounds like a cheese strat for Level 4 (at which case I'd remind you of the level 1 Yasuo cheese strat), this still sounds far better than Yasuo. Depending on the lane and his farm, he can easily hit a Shiv somewhere in the level 6-8 range. Much earlier than Jax in this example.

Colgate GatorMay 7, 20151 votes

I'd say most meele AD Carries fall in the Assassin category

S H A Y C 0May 7, 20151 votes

Yasuo is Samurai

SIaytonMay 7, 20151 votes

*Ronin

AlorasenceMay 12, 20151 votes

He's a really squishy fighter.

MLDzXnRRRMay 12, 20151 votes

Crit = burst dmg = assasin. Fiora, Yi, Nocturne, Jax, Trundle are all melee DPS without the need for Crits, because of their steroids. If you build crit on them, you have assasins with high burst and sustained dmg/