I'm gonna complain about Yasuo for a bit.

Beached Manatee··4 votes·617 views

Thematically, I think Yasuo's pretty cool, but that's where my love of him ends. In fact, I've come to consider Yasuo mains scum of the earth and want nothing to do with him. Let's go through his kit and see exactly why I think so.

First, his passive. Not only is he a resourceless champion, but he also gets double crit chance and a shield!? The crit chance thing alone is now extremely op, considering how he can just build item 3031 item 3087 and have 250% basic attack damage as well as healing 15% of that (I'm not gonna say nerf that mastery because it really is helpful in a pinch early game and rewarding of the 4/6 items build late game on ADCs) per hit. I honestly don't think this plays into him thematically at all, so there isn't any reason to keep it (I mean, we keep Veigar's q, but nerf it, because of his whole gotta-prove-how-evil-I-am business). The shield is fine, but it shouldn't just go off of any motion, considering he has 3 dashes he can just chain to regain it after getting hit. Perhaps, instead, making it so that it only builds on walking, making him work for it.

Also, force him to use mana. He has the damage and the sustain to merit it, but no, for some reason we choose not to.

Now, I'm gonna go off about his R. Yes, it is cool, but it just does too much for too little. Yay, they have to be knocked up to take damage and be completely immobilized, but Yasuo himself needs to only press the button. After all, it works on any knockup, no matter how small: Aatrox Alistar Azir Blitzcrank Braum Fizz Gragas Janna JarvanIV Jayce Kalista LeeSin Lulu Malphite Nami Nautilus Poppy RekSai Riven Sejuani Shyvana Singed Sion Thresh Trundle Velkoz Vi Volibear MonkeyKing XinZhao Zac Ziggs Zyra (I'm not sure if it works with pushes/pulls such as Corki Darius Diana Draven Gnar Hecarim Maokai Quinn Rammus Tristana Viktor) Now, now, I know it's not the only skill a champion has that works with the abilities of others, such as Talon with most any cc or Cassiopeia with Singed Teemo (and maybe Gromp buff and Twitch, unsure there), but Talon, though I'm not fast to defend him, only does it with attacks that occur while the effect is in place and Cass only uses a single ability with a small pool of champions. Plus, neither of those are the suppress and uninterruptable damage that Yasuo ult brings. Do a few of the following: make it only hit people knocked up by his ablities, lower its damage, lower its cast radius, allow it to be interrupted (though it does ruin it a bit thematically), or increase its cooldown (and if you go without the first, PLEASE lower his difficulty rating, considering how easy it is to have a team with at least one other person with a knock up and how pressing a button in the vicinity of such an event is not hard). Also, if you give him mana, you can have it have a sort of refresh effect (not a full one) on a kill.

Now, his e. I honestly think this is a more reasonable ability of his, perhaps lowering the distance, the number, and/or the speed of the dashes. I really like the q interaction on this one though. Though, the passive interaction is a little strong. As well, on mana, it should probably cost a little per dash and maybe have a time limit on using all the dashes before going on cooldown.

Oh dear god, his w. Blocking any projectile that comes his way is extremely op. Things it should not block are things thrown over it, such as Syndra's balls with her w and Zilean's q, or things that go under it, such as Braum r, Rek'Sai q, or Malphite q. As well, I think that it shouldn't erase things that it does block, instead, perhaps only slowing their missile speeds by a scaling amount. This would allow for much more strategy, such as forcing the player to dodge the incoming Jinx r instead of leaving her to cry about it or to give time for Soraka to fully heal you before that Veigar r lands.

Lastly, his q. I'm honestly just thinking that it shouldn't crit or deal on-hit effects with the tornado, maybe increasing in size on would-be crits to make up for my suggested changes to his r.

So tell me what you think about these suggestions, hope you liked them!

13 Comments

IronwallJackson1 votes

First, I'll preface by stating that I'm a Yasuo main. This makes me biased in his favor, but it also helps to make me intimately familiar with his kit and why everything works the way it does.

Now I'll give you the TDLR, because my full response is gonna get a little bit "game balance/mechanics 101."

The long and short of it is that there's absolutely zero fat in Yasuo's kit. Nothing about it there haphazardly or simply to put his power above the curve. Every single aspect of it works in tandem to create his playstyle, and while this is pretty much true of every champion in League, it's especially so for Yasuo. Now comes the long post.

IronwallJackson1 votes

Let's start off with his crit passive, since that's where you started. Have you thought about why it's there? I mean, really, have you stopped to consider his kit and how it fits into it? It's one of two damage steroids in his kit, and it's perhaps the most important. His double crit passive (with crit damage reduction) gives Yasuo a bunch of free stats for a reason: his stats are bad. I'm serious, go look at his stats. Aside from a decent move speed, there's nothing remarkable about them. His defensive stats are all straight up garbage, he has more AD than ADCs do, but it less than almost anything else that wants to get in melee range.

How does his steroid make up for all of his shit stats? It doesn't, but we'll get to that. His crit passive provides another benefit, you see. It frees up his inventory. Because he reaches max crit with few items, he can afford to devote between zero and two more items to his offensive power, leaving the rest for defense and/or utility. If you're asking yourself why this is at all desirable, then answer is those shitty stats I mentioned. Full damage Yasuo is awful and dies to everything in the late game. He's squishy as hell, but has to get into melee range to do everything, wich makes him even more vulnerable.

Now we have to ask, "why not raise his stats so that he's not reliant on that crit?" That one's also easy. See, all the melee carries have damage steroids, gap closers, and damage mitigation/sustain. This is because, in order to function as per their design concept (melee autoattackers), they need to be able to engaged ranged enemies, survive the approach, fight them, and still be reasonably expected to win. Those three things are what it takes to get that job done. Damage mitigation/sustain, gap closers, and damage steroids. Gap closers are basically non-negotiable, but you know what happens when you take out the other two? Those deficiencies have to be made up for with raw stats, base values, and ability scaling. You know what champions run around with those sorts of stats? Juggernauts and Bruisers. Absolutely no one wants to see what Yasuo is like as a hypermobile bruiser. That would be nightmarish.

Continued in the next post.

IronwallJackson1 votes

Now we talk about his cooldowns and resourcelessness.

Does he spam his E and Q? Yes. But does he have good waveclear with them? Not at early levels. But is it free? Yes. And is the damage good? It's decent, but save for his whirlwind, they're close range abilities and are thus awarded their power due to the inherent risk of melee range.

Actually, let's go over that E and the passive shield. Why are they there? Short answer: damage mitigation and gap closing, though the former does both to some extent. Because yasuo has mid-lane-mage-tier paper defenses, he needs to avoid damage altogether rather than tanking it. That's difficult to do when you need to cs and fight at close range. Thus, his E is on a basically non-existent cooldown and his shield refreshes. Those two things are how he survives ranged harass during the laning phase. That and his W, but we'll get there in a bit. Also, let's not forget that in order to access all of his mobility, there need to be enemies close by, be they safe creeps or dangerous assassins. His mobility is situational.

NOW let's go over the W. Wind Wall is one of the most powerful abilities in the game. This much is unarguable. Why is there? Two reasons. One: it's there to survive mid lane. Without it, he is much, much more vulnerable. Two: it gives him utility. The lack of any utility is the reason why Tryndamere, Yi, and old Fiora didn't see much pro play. Big damage is nice, but theirs isn't safe and they bring nothing to the team aside from it. If they fall behind, there's a good chance they won't catch back up, and then they're useless to the team. Yasuo shares all those traits except the latter. Even as his most ineffectual, he still has an ability that can turn the tide of a team fight or help secure an objective.

I'd go and say a lot about his Q, but there's not that much to it, honestly. It's a larger, stronger auto for a champion that needs more range and oomph at a point in the game where his scaling and values aren't good. It falls off as he scales into the late game and doesn't need that damage as badly as he did before. It gives him some longer range poke and engage when charged, works like an empowered autoattack, save for the fact that it, itself, is a counts-as AA for the first target hit, then as an inline nuke for the others instead of as an AA with extra bits on top. It's fine. I literally can't think of anything to try to justify it because it doesn't need any.

Almost done, next one coming up.

IronwallJackson2 votes

I think all that's really left to talk about is his ultimate. At least that's the only thing worth mentioning that comes to mind. Anyway, it's strong. Not so much as far as damage goes, since his dps will easily surpass its total damage dealt, but definitely with the other effects. It allows him to engage very safely from a distance while filling up his flow bar to max, then grants his 50% bonus arpen for free. The key word there is "bonus." That means that while it is an all around damage steroid, it's nothing outrageous unless fighting something that's stacked up a lot of armor. Why the arpen there at all? The answer is once again slot efficiency.

Yasuo needs a way to fight against champions that have itemized against him, but buying armor penetration means he either gives up tankiness or sustain, and neither of those things is very desirable. Remember those shit stats? Yeah, those influence everything.

Why the shield though? Safety. It gives him extra survivability for going into a fight at a range where dodging isn't going to be a realistic option and he might get bombarded with abilities if it's used during a team fight.

Why let it proc off of all displacements? That's another of Yasuo's tradeoffs. His ultimate is the only one in the game that I can think of that can't be used at will. It has a requirement. An opponent has to be displaced or he can't ult at all. There will be times when Yasuo can't charge his Q. During a siege, moving forward to some minions could get him killed, and the same thing applies during a team fight. In small scale fights, it's awkward but workable. In big fights, it's not. This restriction opens up how much power the ability can be given. Part of that power is put into the ultimate itself, and the rest goes into the ally procs.

The fact that his ult works that way opened up all sorts of synergy and made new viable team comps. It's one of the other reasons Yasuo sees pro play. When he has team synergy, he becomes that much better. But again, that power is gated.

One last thing before my closing statement. The attack speed cooldown on his Q and the low CD on his ult. I forgot to mention them. I believe those are there because the design team didn't want Yasuo players building CDR, like, at all. It might have something to do with keeping his W less available to him. Might be the same reason why the internal timer on his E doesn't change with anything other than ability levels. Might be that slot efficiency thing from before. I don't know this one for sure, to be honest.

CONCLUSION: Yasuo is a machine with loads of interconnected parts. Yes, there's a high skill in/power out ratio to him, but it's really nothing outstanding, especially in high elo play where all of the non-scrubs put bronzies like me to shame by actually knowing what they're doing. Yasuo isn't overpowered. He's not.

IronwallJackson1 votes

Brother I don't know if you'll even bother reading any of this, but I hope you and several other people do, because this will be the most thorough explanation as to why Yasuo does the way he do that you're likely to get until someone from Riot shows up to correct all of my misconceptions and prove how wrong I am.

Beached Manatee1 votes

I suppose it is true that all of those building for slot efficiency make sense, but doesn't that only make it worse? He takes much less to become extremely powerful, so a good early game leads to a snowballing destruction machine that most teams can't deal with in time to turn against it or a bad early game doesn't slow him down enough to prevent him from doing about the same. Also, on the q and e having poor lane clear, I've never seen anyone out-farm a Yasuo, even a terrible one, in laning phase. Overall, I've seen maybe one or two people get more farm than one by avoiding team fights all game and only farming. I suppose his early game is extremely weak, if you consider mid-game beginning on level 2...

IronwallJackson1 votes

Actually, Yasuo is very powerful during levels 1 and 2. His growth slows down significantly after that, so his relative power takes a dip until he picks up some items. The reason for that is that his abilities' base damages don't grow very much from level to level, so until he has those items to augment his power, he'll end up scaling poorly when compared to other mid-laners with legit damage per spellcast.

It's an odd affair, really. High power, into lower, then steadily rises.

Anyway, what I meant about his waveclear being not so great at early levels has less to do with his ability make a wave disappear, and more to do with the means through which he does so. His damage is decent enough that spamming his abilities inside a wave will shred it pretty quickly, but by doing that, he can also easily overextend and land in a bad position. Once he's a little bit stronger and takes less time to clear the wave, the risk factor diminishes quite drastically.

As for the snowballiness that his kit gives him... yeah, it's there. No denying that he snowballs very quickly because of how easily he reaches "full build." Champions with kits that allow them to accelerate into their end games before others can (Riven , Rengar, Akali, Fiora , etc) will always be snowbally, and I suppose Riot makes these to incentivise aggressive play. Again, I don't know whether it's a positive or negative trait, but it's admittedly troublesome for those on the opposing team.

RaiseYourDongers1 votes

https://gyazo.com/5108593c739760158ad316381020045d And people are complaining about yasuo smh...

Beached Manatee1 votes

I suppose the flat win rates show that Mundo and Quinn are much more op by position, but Yasuo still has an over 50% win rate and stomps both combined in popularity. I guess I should share my source http://loldb.gameguyz.com/statistics/1/0/2/0/0/30 Champion:Win% Rank/Play% Rank Mundo: 4/73 Quinn: 65/89 Yasuo: 22/1 When you can be most played and still have a <50% win rate, there's a bit of a problem (in my opinion)

Goosetard1 votes

Champs with slightly elevated winrates but low playrates mean people who "specialize" in those champions play them a lot and it shows. That doesn't mean they don't need tuning, but either way it's beside my main point, which is:

I think people complain about Yasuo because if he does everything right there's very few options you're left with. With those other champions you've noted, there's more of a give-and-take with strategic counterplay. There's plenty of counterplay in a Yasuo lane--but mostly from Yasuo. If he plays well, you'll probably lose. If he plays poorly, you'll probably win. The player agency is very skewed towards Yasuo.

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