Yasuo suggestion. Not buffs nor nerfs, just for his coolness.
To avoid confusion, I still play Yasuo about everyday, and I enjoy it. This isn't a RITO PLZ DO THIS thread, it's just my personal fantasy that I wanted to share. Anyway. As much as I enjoy playing Yasuo, I often wished somethings could change. I think he is in a rather OK spot as of now (or is he?). So the suggestions I make here are largely for fun and thematical purposes, not nerfs or buffs. If he becomes imbalanced as a result, we can always work out the math, so that he falls back to a balanced spot. To begin with, Yasuo is, from what I feel so far, the most team dependent and match-up dependent champion in league. Yes I agree match-ups and choosing the right champions is part of the game, but this? Seems a bit too much, for me at least. I would explain more in detail along with his skills, but I just don’t feel any champion should have this kind of steep difference at the point of champion selection. Blind pick or draft, it could get overbearing sometimes for either himself or the opponent. And hey, why should this lone wonderer be so picky about his team (knock up plz) or opponents (plz be projectilez)?
Passive: Way of the Wanderer It always felt weird that his passive, unlike other champions, has TWO very distinct and unrelated functions. Thematically, I think the flow shield should stay, and the critical modifier should go – in fact, moved to his Q as explained later. Meanwhile, the shield probably can have a tweak too. Right now, even though this is Yasuo’s skill, the one with the initiative is often the opponent. I know it is considered as a sort of counter play option for the opponent, and yes Yasuo may simply try to run a mile away from the auto attack, or time his offense when shield is about to come up. However in a more stale situation where going in isn’t really a good option, Yasuo should be allowed a proper option to respond to the enemy who tries to pop it. For example, the shield only pops if Yasuo is facing the damage source? Hence if Yasuo turns his back on the auto, he will be able to conserve his shield. This also means if Yasuo turns around at the wrong time, he can eat big damage from enemies and the shield wouldn’t help him.
Q: Steel Tempest As mentioned before, instead of giving Yasuo innate double crit chance (and to balance it, Riot had to reduce the crit multiplier), how about we shift the double crit chance to his Q ONLY, BUT in return delete the crit damage penalties? His overall damage output should remain about the same (and if not, we can always re-balance it). This would make his Q more impactful, make Yas more skill-oriented (rather than an auto attacker who has an extra attack every 1.3 sec), and gives enemies more counter play rewards for dodging it. Plus it is thematically more reasonable with his melee-caster identity, it just didn’t make sense that the powerful thrust which is Q would do less crit damage than his auto when Yas had 333 damage or more.
W: Wind Wall Ah the Wall. Nightmare of many and source of much complaint. As much as I love it, it does sometimes feel overwhelming, and sometimes feel completely useless. It would wreck champions that are heavily projectile-based, and be a waste of slot against champions that use lasers or ground targeted abilities, or any melee champion for that matter. As many others have suggested, it should have a durability as a projectile blocker, and perhaps have a split second of invincibility upon cast just so it can sort of deal with melee and lasers. As a more detailed example, Durability: 30/60/90/120/150. One auto chips 5 points, one ability with X cooldown will chip X points. If the durability is exceeded, it blocks the final projectile then dissapear. It can still stop ultimates even at level one, but then the opponent can rest assured that the rest of the projectiles can go right through. This will stop projectile champions from eating dirt all the time, and gives Yas more incentive of putting early points into the shield.
E: Sweeping Blade I’ve got the least to say about this skill. Some still find the low CD toxic, some have adapted, and I think it’s the one skill that has the least problems in his kit. I was tempted to make him able to ward jump with some sort of penalty, but I bet his opponents would hate it. I know I would. Plus I hate ward jump in general. It just doesn’t make sense. lol.
R: Last Breath Okay. It is strong. Really. But it is nothing if you can’t cast it. If I say his W picks the enemies, then his R picks his teammates. And if he fails both checks, he is bound to have a much harder life. Not saying impossible, just unnecessarily hard. Now my suggestion here may sound absurd, but it removes his unnecessary team dependence, which suits his lone samurai image. Make Yasuo able to cast it on a SINGLE enemy even WITHOUT knock-up. But only have about half the cast range, damage, and no armour penetration buff afterwards. This stops his ultimate from being completely useless in case the fight is way too fast and bursty for him to have time to charge up. But of course, once he made the decision and used it without knock-up, he has to stick with the mediocre results for the rest of the fight. The above is definitely a buff in terms of versatility. So, to balance things up: He could combo it as he always had, and score a satisfying aoe ult, full animation, damage and buff, but ONLY with his OWN knock-up. So his old best friend Malphite is no longer his best friend. Just a teammate A. Of course there’s the saying “if you are a good yas, you don’t need your team to do it”, but hey, this change would normalize the joy or agony caused by his team composition, and as much as I have promoted skill-requirement and counter-plays by changing his Q and Passive, this eases the pain of those unlucky Yas players that just couldn’t land Q when he needed it most. Furthermore, the skill requirement of a perfectly executed R is now all on the Yasuo player, it is no longer about “how well my malph can land his R”.
Well that’s about all for now. Believe me, I attempted some crazy reworks with him when I was bored. This is the tamest version I came up with, without changing him tooooo much. I’m sure many others have had similar thoughts here and there, and as I don’t read the forums that much, I wouldn’t know. Just felt like sharing my thoughts (/rant). Hopefully it was worth the read for you Yas fans/haters.
