Since some champion mains have been very vocal recently (Shen, Riven, Vel’Koz), I thought I would also take the opportunity to farm free internet points and maybe get Riot’s attention on the current state of my favorite champion in the game, Yasuo.

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I don’t think this champion needs any introduction; but why do I (a random on the internet) think he is so bad ? From LeagueOfGraphs, we can see that, in Emerald+ he is currently sitting at around 10.4% Pick Rate across 3 different roles (mid, top and ADC), with an overall 48% winrate and a 17.4% banrate. Although he is still a fairly popular (and hated) champion, those stats are a fair bit lower than they used to be, and there are a few reasons why.

I will mostly focus on midlane Yasuo, as it is his most popular role by far, and as such the one that affects his stats the most and it also means it’s the role that most people want to play him in.

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1. The current midlane meta is awful for Yasuo

I’ll quickly go over the obvious; in a world where Orianna is very strong and popular, and completely ignores Yasuo’s main defensive tool against ranged champions, he will struggle a bit to find his footing. This part is not something that is that relevant when it comes to the champion’s state, but it is a factor when it comes to his strength, so I thought I would mention it.

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2. Current itemization

A few seasons back, Yasuo was a champion with a lot of build diversity. Some may remember the horrors of Frozen Mallet yasuo toplane, Trinity Force Yasuo, the days where you would have to make a choice between PD and Statikk… I remember building Tabis/Mercs pretty often in season 8/9, although I’m not sure if they were the most optimal boots to go for, they felt pretty viable in my shitter elo.

Those days are long gone.

Nowadays, Yasuo is a champion that builds AS boots, Kraken (sometimes BORK!) first, and then IE. Of course, that is not necessarily a bad thing, and it is even something that Riot pushed for, notably when they changed his ultimate’s armor pen to only apply to critical hits. But because of those changes, when Yasuo’s items get changed a bit, he also suffers (or gets improved!) massively. The obvious example here is Shieldbow losing its attack speed, which deeply hurt Yasuo … after the few patches where he abused Galeforce instead. I can’t mention items without of course talking about how ADC mains hate us alongside Yone/Tryndamere players because we “ruin their items” (whatever that means?). The big overlap here is something that I would love to see adressed eventually (melee-only attack speed on shieldbow in exchange for less AD pretty please).

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3. The effect of Lethal Tempo on Yasuo’s balance framework

Now, this one may be a controversial take even among Yasuo players, but I strongly believe that Lethal Tempo has made Yasuo a less interesting champion to play and play against overall.

Once again, let’s go a few seasons back. Before lethal tempo was any good on Yasuo, people ran Conqueror, or Fleet at times. You would be rewarded for taking long trades that stack it up and gain some damage (+ some healing). It’s kind of the same thing with Lethal Tempo, right ?

Not really.

The Lethal Tempo Yasuo playstyle is a lot more degenerate; your goal is just to dash to your target somehow, and then you run them over. If they are a mage or an ADC not named Vayne, you WILL win. The sheer dps increase, especially in early levels when your Q cooldown is “supposed” to be long is completely absurd, and it’s part of why Yasuo does better in a long lane (bot) where he doesn’t get dicked on by a bruiser (top) or completely ignored by a mage who is simply not allowed to walk up unless they want to perish.

Because these days Yasuo is balanced AROUND Lethal Tempo being so good on him, this means that he will basically only be strong when he has it stacked up and is destroying someone (i.e. he is only strong when he gets to abuse it), otherwise he will not be able to do much. I personally think that this is a lot less interesting than what he had before with Conqueror (less strong in stacked-up trades but could do more overall, also had the option to run Fleet pretty often), as this also makes him skewed towards lower elos, against people who will not respect his bullshit. For a champion that I fell in love with due to the idea that “as long as you play perfectly, you can win any fight”, this is a huge fall from grace.

Before you start typing angry comments that my point conveniently ignores the fact that Yasuo has ONLY been buffed since Lethal Tempo was reworked in 11.23, you also have to take into account the fact that not only was Conqueror nerfed in 11.21 to seemingly further push Yasuo into that rune choice (it was buffed back up in 11.24, but was still weaker than 11.20 and before). Of course, many other things happened around that time because that’s just how it is with pre-season, but my point is that after all that, Yasuo ended up becoming a less interesting champion overall, one that I would almost call gimmicky at this point, being only strong either when he gets to bypass half of his early cooldown on his main DPS spell, or …

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4. Overreliance on synergy with teammates

Simply put, Yasuo, if you’re not playing him to run over people with LT, is an ult kitten for Diana. (+ Gragas / others)

I don’t exactly know how we got to that point, but I imagine that nowadays, a decently important part of balancing Yasuo is that you have to make him not broken with Diana/others. This is because, at least these days, in mid game or late game fights, it is so difficult to do anything on Yasuo without setup from your teammates. You can’t really dash through everything to get to the backline because you’re extremely squishy (depsite what Yasuo haters might say, and especially since you’re gonna only get your first “defensive” item, Shieldbow, as your third item), so you die instantly when you get CC’d. So what you end up doing is hitting the frontline and maybe putting up a windwall to avoid dying in the process. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you can hit a tornado on the adc, at which point you can run in alone and maybe trade 1 for 1.

Or, you could simply have 1 (one) teammate set you up with a much easier to hit AOE knockup, which you can follow up with your ult to allow them to hit their stuff. This might also be a reason why Yasuo is better as an adc these days, because not only are you sharing a lane with someone who can help you do your job, you also free up the midlane for someone who can also potentially set you up (Orianna).

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I know this is a lot of words, and not many people sympathize with Yasuo players, but these days, he just doesn’t feel as fun or good as he used to. You might call it a skill issue, but when I see that people like Pzzang who are dedicated to the champion have 52% winrate on him and 61% winrate on Yone, it just breaks my heart.