Not that you really care about balance, but here's a way to make Yasuo fair and solidify his theme.

So, without conqueror, Yasuo is actually fun to play against level 1-7ish. Then he backs, buys one crit item, and can just entirely ignore his kit and statcheck you to death with his autos that crit 90% of the time with one item and do absurd damage -- then it gets to be infuriating. And when he buys lifesteal and autos you for 500-600+ on top of his Q that has a 2 second CD... he just becomes a statcheck late game with hyper mobility and all kinds of survival tools and CC.

And he really has no counterplay other than him fucking up, since he has an answer to every situation.

A samurai is all about precision and control, right (and a bit of showmanship)? So, instead of autoing at the speed of light and running around like a monkey, make him into a real samurai type thing. Give him some real counterplay, and lower his bullshit synergy with lifesteal and crit items while preserving his ability-oriented gameplay and all the things that make Yasuo... Yasuo.

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So, first off, cap Yas's attack speed. I feel like 0.8-1.2ish would be fine. You could increase his base AD or something if you need to, or make extra AS give him bonus MS or something. There's a reason for this later on.

Passive: His shield is fine for a melee skirmisher thing, but the double crit is redundant at this point:

• His autos cannot crit.
  • His Q can still crit, though.

Q: His Q can stay the same stab thing he has, but a few changes to it:

• First, lower the base damage.

• Second, a passive on his Q: When Yas autos, he creates weak points on the enemy (stacking 3 times).

  • Using his Q on an enemy with this debuff will consume the stacks to make it deal X% extra damage per stack (maybe it could pierce 15% armor per stack as well).

AS would still lower the CD on his Q

W: This can stay the same, but it needs to spawn in FRONT of Yas, not inside of him. Just change the animation slightly and make him slash the ground in front of him or slash upwards and make a wall of wind.

######But if you're feeling nice, have it break after blocking an ultimate ability (still blocks the ability).

E: This one needs some changes:

• First, make it a skillshot instead of targeted.

  • So Yas dashes in a straight line (speed and distance scaling with MS maybe), autoing everything he passes through (these autos can crit, and gain the double crit from his passive)

    • 100% AA damage for first target struck, 80% for second, 50% for everything else
      • If a champion is the first target struck, they gain two stacks of his auto passive thing.

  • Give it a limited number of charges, maybe 2-3, that recharges based on AS.

  Now has a ~10s CD per charge that drops down to ~3.

R: So, Yas's R is bullshit as it is currently. So let's give it more counterplay (which you supposedly like) and give Yas some clear windows of power where he's scary and feels good about what he's doing:

• New passive: When Yas lands a Q on a target with 3 stacks of his auto passive, his ult activates (one cast per 3 stack Q, does not stack) -- uses the Shiiiiinng sound from the current Q stacks, and has the wind blowing around him like it does.

• Yas's ult is now a two-part. First part, he dashes (not a blink) incredibly fast in a direction (after a slight delay, maybe 0.2ish seconds, the whole sheathe grab thing you know?). If he hits a champion, he throws them into the air (using the current E>Q tornado combo animation), and deals a small amount of damage. If a champion is thrown into the air, he leaps up after them, does his thing he does now, and slams them into the ground, doing extra damage.

  • After casting (and hitting a champ), every auto (and first hit of E) for the next ~5s will apply three stacks of his auto passive at once. The second part of the ult has a short CD per target hit -- hitting a target recently hit will just knock them up for a second.

Has a 10s CD (on both activation and second cast) per target, but otherwise has no cooldown

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Now, I'm not a professional game designer, and that could very well be broken, but it preserves Yas's identity as a fast skirmisher (while promoting the whole samurai feel) that relies on a lot of button mashing and twitchy fingers, preserves his teamfight power (but now it's on him rather than his team stacking knockups), but adds meaningful windows of power to his kit, allows people other than himself to counterplay him, and, imo, would give him some high points in his gameplay that feel good, rather than just the one and done ult we have now that then reverts to statchecking.

Plus, since he's got some actual counterplay now, and doesn't just auto people to death (AKA, not infuriating and annoying), maybe his ban rate will go down and Yas mains can feed with play him more! Or maybe we can just move away from near 100% pick/ban status, and I won't need to see him every game.