My take on Yasuo.

Agree or not, please read the whole post.

I've seen Yasuo get compared to Riven a lot. They are both highly mobile resourceless skirmishers who benefit heavily from AD. So why is it that tank Yasuo is a problem right now, and tank Riven is not?

I have an idea as to why. Riven has her E, Valor. This gives her a shield that scales on her bonus AD.

I hear some of you saying, "But Yasuo has his flow shield from his passive and his W, Windwall."

This is true, but Valor is much more reliable because it can be activated when needed, it lasts longer, it is stronger, and it is available much more often.

Yasuo's Flow Shield is barely noticeable when playing him. It definitely helps him, but it pops way too fast, then you have no other defensive stats other than what you get from your items, runes, masteries, buffs, and so on. He can still use his Windwall but that only helps against projectiles and he needs to be at close range to be able to deal damage.

So because of this, players need to decide to invest in offensive or defensive stats. He is meant to be played offensive, but if you are not already ahead, offensive stats are significantly less reliable than defensive stats.

Everyone keeps saying that he needs to be nerfed so he doesn't benefit as much from defensive stats. I just don't understand what it is that they can nerf within his kit that will accomplish this since he already doesn't benefit from defensive stats based on any part of his kit. He benefits from defensive stats in the same way that anyone benefits from them. instead he needs to be encouraged to build offensive and nerfing his damage will not do that. Purely nerfing his base damage and increasing his damage ratios wont fix the issue either. All that will do is make it so a mostly defensive kit will be stronger with a little bit of offense. He needs to gain defense from offensive stats.

I have an idea, but I don't know if this would honestly be the best way to fix the problem without a complete rework.

His Flow Shield is honestly his most useful defensive ability.

I think buffing this can be helped with one or multiple of the following

• Gain flow faster,

• Resolve: Yasuo generates 1% (+1% per XX bonus AD) of his maximum Flow for every 59 / 52 / 46 units he travels by any means.

  • Gaining Resolve faster through bonus AD will make her Flow Shield up more often. It would still not be controlled, but it would be more noticeable. I do not know what would be a good number of bonus AD to have it scale on, but this would need to be balanced heavily.

• Increase the amount of damage blocked

• At maximum Flow, the next instance of champion or monster damage against Yasuo consumes all of his Flow and shields him for 100 - XXX (based on level) (+100% bonus AD) damage

  • Decreasing the base stats of the shield late game and adding a 100% bonus AD scale would help to reward Yasuo for buying AD. (Kinda the whole idea)

• Increase the duration.

• for up to 1 (+ 0.25 per XXX Total AD) seconds.

  • I sometimes feel that his shield is simply too short, and gets popped too soon to be useful when engaging or being engaged upon.

I want to repeat that I do not expect that all three of these would work because together they would all be pretty strong, but one or two of the three would be helpful.

I suppose it could be possible for these figures to be scaled by other offensive stats but I think attack speed, movement speed, and critical strike chance are already very heavily focused for his kit. When I try to look for what stats would be good to balance a champion around, I look at what items are available that provide those stats, and other stats that are valuable to the champion. There are several items that provide attack speed, movement speed, and critical strike chance, but few items that provide either of these and attack damage. Because of this, I feel that basing these stats on AD would not overly buff his offense, however, I also want to say that I do understand that some changes to his other stats may be needed as well.

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And of course, I fully expect that I will most likely get downvotes on this, even if it is a good idea. People just don't like Yasuo right now, and are honestly being childish about it. I can say this for sure though, Riot is absolutely not going to delete him, so you might as well get on board with the idea of him either being adjusted, or him continuing to be strong.