YASUO Guide - by dignitas/Scarra
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Yasuo |
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The Authors
This guide was written by Tristam 'Rampant' Mizak together with Team Dignitas' mid laner William 'Scarra' Li.
INTRODUCTION
Yasuo has made his mark in the professional and solo-queue scene immediately after his release, and there is little wonder why. His mobility, superior dueling ability, and ultimate's synergy with other knock-up holding champions has allowed him to easily step into the mid-lane and dominate games. A Melee AD Carry who has avoided the pitfalls of the others in his class, he's able to step into the back line and assassinate high priority targets with his ultimate, Last Breath, and provides the unique utility projectile-blocking ability in Wind Wall. This guide, made in consultation with our mid laner William 'Scarra' Li, hopes to explain why Yasuo has broken out into play and how you can dominate with him.
Why you should play Yasuo - Yasuo's greatest strength is that he has one of the most powerful level one and two in the game. Steel Tempest [Q] and Sweeping Strike [E] give him the ability to adapt to his lane opponent and offer sickening amounts of early-game damage to push them out early. He has a wide variety of good or neutral match-ups in lane, and ontop of his great early game, it's not hard to synergize a single other knock-up champion on your team to provide a reliable follow-up on their initiation with Last Breath [R]. Finally, Wind Wall [W] provides the ability to negate projectiles of any kind, allowing you to block critical ultimates (such as Gragas' Explosive Cask) or force the enemy AD Carry into the fight.
Why you shouldn't play Yasuo - Yasuo's greatest weakness is that he is horrendous if he gets behind. Enemies who choose to stomp on you early can slow down your Statikk Shiv rush, leaving you with absolutely no damage in Zeal and Avarice Blade. He's also fairly one-dimensional on what he provides - lots and lots of damage. You pick Yasuo for his damage primarily, and if you want utility from him, you're pretty much limited to throwing out Wind Wall [W] every half-minute. His build is also mildly inflexible - you want to rush Statikk Shiv and Infinity Edge as quickly as possible so that you can put out assured critical strikes, and any early deviation from such a build sacrifices that damage.
RUNES
For your reds, you're going to go five Greater Marks of Critical Chance and four Greater Mark of Attack Damage. For your blues, you're going to go with one Greater Glyph of Critical Chance and eight Greater Glyphs of Magic Resist. The reason you're taking the critical chance runes is that when combined with your core build of Statikk Shiv and Infinity Edge, you'll have a 99.8% Crit Chance once they're all doubled by Way of the Wanderer.
For your yellows, you're going to go with nine Greater Seals of Armor. These and the eight Magic Resist blues are intended in giving you the best survivability during your early game aggression and are the standard for the mid lane.
Finally, your Quintessences should be either three Greater Quintessences of Lifesteal or two alongside a single Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage. This choice depends really on your own personal preference, the extra 2% Lifesteal versus the 2.25 Attack Damage is really dealer's choice.
MASTERIES
For our masteries, we're going to go a traditional 21/9/0 build. In the Offense Tree, we're going to be going down the normal attack damage path with a few deviations. We'll be picking up Double-Edged Sword for the flat 2% damage increase as we're not too concerned about the drawback. Spell Weaving is an easy pick up for us as our basic attacks will easily build up its stacks. Frenzy becomes a constant free 15% attack speed once we hit our core build.
In the Defense Tree, our pick ups are mostly concerned with survivability in the early game. Block and Unyielding mitigate a small amount of damage from early trades, and Veteran's Scars and Juggernaut provide a nice additional 50 hit points at level one.
SUMMONER SPELLS - Flash and Ignite
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Flash is picked for obvious reasons, in that it allows you to escape as well as lets you get in range to Last Breath/Steel Tempest/Sweeping Blade. Ignite is an essential part of every assassin's kit.
SKILL ORDER
Our skill order at level one isn't immediately clear-cut, our choice is going to depend on who our opponent in the middle lane is. If we're facing a ranged opponent, taking Sweeping Blade [E] first is our plan. It allows us to do two things in lane against them: trade early and build up some more Flow to endure their early harassment. If we're facing a melee champion first, taking Steel Tempest [Q] first is ideal, and from there we'll poke, poke, and poke some more. Either way, take the other one at level two.
Wind Wall [W] should be picked up at level three or four, if you're feeling incredibly greedy. You should only consider delaying picking up Wind Wall if your lane opponent doesn't have a skillshot/projectile attack, you're not afraid of any jungle pressure, and you're planning on going all-in at level three. Every time I haven't taken it at three, I've gotten ganked less than thirty seconds later and felt terrible about it, so usually taking it at three is the better play.
Skill Mastery - Way of the Wanderer [Passive]
Yasuo has no secondary resource used to cast his abilities, rather he has Flow. Flow is not consumed by any ability and builds with every step he takes. Once he hits his maximum Flow, Resolve becomes active
Intent: Yasuo's critical strike chance is doubled, but the damage dealt by his critical strikes is reduced by 10% (reduced by 25% for Steel Tempest).
Resolve: At maximum Flow, the next time Yasuo would take damage from a champion or monster he first converts his Flow into a shield (60/65/70/75/85/95/110/125/145/170/200/240/290/350/420/500/590/690) that absorbs damage. After two seconds, if not already depleted, Yasuo loses all his Flow.
Way of the Wanderer is what allows Yasuo to be relatively tanky despite his low resistances/health and is the lynchpin in winning successful trades as him. Flow's shield increases greatly over his levels. Initially, it does little more than absorb a single auto-attack, but during the late game it is better than Barrier in absorbing burst and is insanely easy to reactivate. There is never a reason to not be building up your Flow if you have lost it due to an earlier trade, and as such you should always be moving, whether that be by using Sweeping Blade [E] to quickly rebuild your flow or by simply running around behind the minion wave. The shield from Resolve also allows you to make what are essentially free trades with your opponents, dashing in quickly with Sweeping Blade and attacking and then falling back after two seconds or when the shield breaks.
The Intent half of Way of the Wanderer is what really guides our item build, we want crit and we want it quickly. It also affects our Statikk Shiv's Static Charge, so that the Shiv crits for 180 damage regularly.
Skill Mastery - Steel Tempest [Q]
Consecutive casts of Steel Tempest within 10 seconds form a chain. On the first two uses, Yasuo thrusts his sword forward, dealing physical damage (20/40/60/80/100 [+100% AD]) to all enemies in a short line. If it is cast during Sweeping Blade [E], the area of effect is changed to a circle around Yasuo. On the third use, Yasuo brandishes his sword causing a whirlwind to tear forward in a long line dealing physical damage and knocking airborne all enemies hit. If cast during Sweeping Blade, the effect is a knock-up in a circle around Yasuo.
Steel Tempest is treated as a basic attack in that it applies on-hit effects, can critically strike, and its cooldown/cast time is reduced based upon Yasuo's bonus attack speed and is unaffected by cooldown reduction.
Steel Tempest is Yasuo's farming tool, primary damage source, means to push, and crowd-control. As such we're relying on it quite a bit in lane. In lane, its primary use is going to be to farm individual minions and harass our lane opponent. Don't be afraid to throw out a stab in passing while in lane to whittle down your opponent, as Steel Tempest isn't tied to a resource and is, as such, a free harassment tool. Steel Tempest is also a fairly efficient pushing tool, especially in conjunction with Sweeping Blade. The fact that it applies on-hit effects means that we also rely on it to sustain with our lifesteal and can rely on Statikk Shiv procs through it to deal a massive amount of damage.
The third usage of Steel Tempest calls a whirlwind in a straight line that knocks up all those that it hits (or in a circle around you after using Sweeping Blade). This whirlwind can serve as a set-up for your ultimate, and your opponents have to respect it, so use it as a zoning tool. You have 10 seconds to sit on it while you farm with auto-attacks, Shiv procs, and Sweeping Blade, and at the end you can throw it downrange toward your opponents. If you want to use the whirlwind to initiate your ultimate, the line offers the potential to hit from range but Sweeping Blade into the strike is a surer bet.
If you use Q into an unseen area and knock-up a target, you will see and hear an effect, but you will not be able to Last Breath [R] on top of them.
Use Q to farm, use Q to harass, use Q to zone, and use Q to simply use Q. You always max Q first because we rely on it for a majority of our sustain and its incredibly reliable damage.
Skill Mastery - Wind Wall [W]
Passively, Yasuo generates a percentage of his maximum Flow whenever he uses Sweeping Blade [E] (4/8/12/16/20%) in addition to the normal amount generated for the distance moved.
When used, Yasuo creates a gust of wind that moves forward to form a wall away from himself. The wall drifts forward over 4 seconds, blocking all enemy projectiles with the exception of tower hits. The walls width scales with each point placed into this ability (300/350/400/450/500 units).
Wind Wall is a powerful ability in two respects. The first is that its the only ability that can reliably block all ranged abilities (with two very notable exceptions in Thresh's and Kayle's autoattacks). Throwing it out in the middle of a fight can block the ultimates of enemy mids, the autoattacks of enemy AD Carries, and the crowd control of supports, all for the low cost of a 26-18 second cooldown. If you feel like it would benefit you not to be hit by one of these abilities, throw Wind Wall out freely.
Wind Wall always goes out to its maximum range, so if you're in close-quarters combat with an enemy and cast it, it'll block maybe one ability as it flies past and ends up behind them. If you're going to use it to block their abilities, you need to throw it out before you reach them so that the wall forms a nice protective bubble that you can stick your sword out of and they can't retaliate through without moving. In teamfights, throwing Wind Wall in front of any enemy AD Carry means that they need to reposition or risk doing no damage for 4 seconds during the fight. Wind Wall also has an incredibly quick cast-time which means you can reasonably react to abilities and cast it to block them.
The second respect that makes Wind Wall powerful is that it allows you to refill your Flow during fights incredibly quickly. Sweeping Blade itself normally gives you around 7% Flow, so at max level, four Sweeping Blades or three and a little bit of movement will fill your Flow up giving you another 600+ damage shield. Adding on the maximum Flow given to you by Last Breath and that's an additional 1800 hit points of buffer your enemies have to burst down in order to get to you. While you max W last, thats only because the active only becomes incredibly important during the teamfight portion of the game.
Skill Mastery - Sweeping Blade [E]
Yasuo dashes a short distance in the direction of the target enemy, dealing magic damage (70/90/110/130/150 [+60% AP]) and marking them briefly. The speed of the dash scales with Yasuo's bonus movement speed. Each cast increases the next dash's damage by 25% for 5 seconds, up to a maximum of 100% bonus damage. Yasuo cannot dash to an enemy that has been marked. The mark lasts for 10/9/8/7/6 seconds.
Sweeping Blade is the ability that gives Yasuo an incredible amount of mobility. As long as there is an unmarked enemy nearby, Yasuo can make a series of quick leaps to close the distance to a target or escape his enemies' grasps. Sweeping Blade can pass over terrain and ignores collision, making it an ideal way to get in and out of combat cleanly. Sweeping Blade also charges your Flow (and is enhanced by Wind Wall's [W] passive) so it can be used to generate enough shield to survive a lethal attack.
In lane, Sweeping Blade is an ideal pushing and harassment tool. Using Sweeping Blade on one melee minion and the three caster minions will let you hit your enemy with a fully charged dash and then will allow you to abscond by jumping back through the front line. This also pushes the lane incredibly quickly. This is the ideal strategy at level one against ranged champions who would seek to harass you. Dashing in, dealing one autoattack, and dashing out means that you'll deal around 200 damage and take two attacks in return (one of which will be absorbed by your passive). When combined with Steel Tempest [Q], Sweeping Blade's pushing power becomes even more pronounced.
In teamfights, keep track of targets you've jumped to, as nothing feels worse than bashing E trying to leap to an already marked target to escape CC. Also, while it is a dash, you are not immune to Crowd Control effects while dashing. Stuns and knock-ups will stop you cold in your tracks. Keep this in mind when trying to escape from a Jungler gank by charging at them, hoping to E and run past them.
Skill Mastery - Last Breath [R]
Yasuo blinks to the nearest visible airborne target champion to your curor, instantly generating maximum Flow. Upon arriving, he suspends all airborne units around him in the air for an additional second while dealing physical damage (200/300/400 [+150% AD]) to all of them. Once he lands, Yasuo gains 50% penetration to bonus armor for 15 seconds. Casting Last Breath will reset the chain on Steel Tempest.
This is why Yasuo is such a strong dueling champion and why he has an insane amount of synergy with even a single displacement effect on your team. An incredibly powerful nuke, it should be used with intent to kill in lane, either alone or during a gank. Certain Junglers, especially Vi, make these kills even more of a sure thing and will allow you to snowball off them. It's penetration is counted before any other values of penetration, so it doesn't waste any of your Masteries/Items penetration, and has the range so that you can stay out of a fight (or run away from one) only to return once an ability hits a high priority target.
Usually waiting to hit a high priority target with your R is ideal if only due to the sheer amount of damage Last Breath does. Combined with the Steel Tempests you can cast while in midair and ulting you can delete a squishy target immediately through the burst. Remember that your cursor picks the nearest target to it when ultimating, so you can influence whether you ultimate the Ashe rather than the Leona.
ITEM BUILD
Much like your first ability, your starting items depend heavily on the lane you expect to be facing. In general, you're going to be going into one of three item paths: Doran's Blade, Doran's Shield, or Cloth/5. Doran's Blade starts are made when going against targets that aren't going to deal a large amount of autoattack damage to you, such as Gragas and Ryze or other melee ADs. This gives you the damage so that you can bully them away before they gain the ability to hurt you. Doran's Shield starts are picked when you're facing enemies, normally ranged, that are planning on harassing you with a lot of autoattacks, such as Ziggs and Orianna. Cloth Armor starts are for battles against AD Assassins who have a better chance of bursting you down than you do of bursting them down, such as Kha'Zix, Talon, and Fiora.
After your first time back, you can pick up boots and then have a choice to make. If you feel that you need the sustain in lane, you can go into a Vampire Scepter. This is also the pick if you feel that your lane opponent is going to go heavy sustain, so that they can't win through attrition against you. If you don't need the sustain and are ahead, you should go straight into a Statikk Shiv rush, picking up Zeal. This is a dangerous time for you, because you before Shiv you deal absolutely no damage, so play careful into your next back. We're choosing to rush Shiv because you scale incredibly well off of every statistic it gives you, as well as the 180 magic damage burst of the Static Charge that we can easily build up through Sweeping Blade [E].
After picking up your Statikk Shiv, you should go into your second core item, Infinity Edge. However, you can pick up your upgraded boots after you go back. If you're ahead, Berserker's Greaves is a fine gamble to take. The additional attack speed not only helps your basic attacks, but shortens the cooldown on Steel Tempest, so Zerker's help you more than the average AD. However, if you're worried about durability/crowd control, Ninja Tabi and Mercury's Treads are fine choices.
After the core items have been built, you'll want to build a Bloodthirster or Last Whisper, depending on whether you need the armor penetration now or if Last Breath's penetration is working fine for the moment. Then finish the other one, building into a defensive item. Often times, this defensive item is going to be Guardian Angel. GA gives you the power to dive in quickly (and possibly recklessly) and forces the enemy team to sit on you to finish you off due to your ability to instantly build up a shield and kill their back line.
MATCHUPS
Yasuo current success isn't only due to a great kit, but also due to his good matchups against most played mid laners in the game. His best matchup is by far Gragas, who is absolutely helpless against you between levels one and five. Your passive can absorb the burst Gragas is able to pump out, and Wind Wall can block both Explosive Cask and Barrel Roll. The mobility of Sweeping Blade and Tempest allow you to dart around the minion wave, dodging his abilities and whittling him down, potentially setting up a kill at level 6.
Against the other common mid laners, such as Orianna, Ahri, and Ziggs, Yasuo is mostly a skill matchup that relies on you getting in and out of melee range near them without being interrupted. Wind Wall is able to block many of their abilities, but they're able to harass you and each time they break your Flow barrier with an autoattack, you need to fill it back up as quickly as possible. This is the same against most other ranged mages that you'll face in the mid lane.
Against AD Assassins, your goal is to use your Barrier and Flow to absorb their burst while you retaliate. The exact means of retaliation depends on the target. Diving past your minions with Sweeping Blade is a definite way to hurt Zed, but can be absolute suicide against Kha'Zix (due to his isolation damage), who you want to keep at range and hit with the third proc of Steel Tempest. At 6, you both will gain a massive amount of damage, and at that point its whomever can whittle down the target or gets Jungle help first.
Your worst matchup is probably Kayle. Kayle's Righteous Fury ignores your wind wall, and her levels one and two are even better than yours. She's able to match your roaming by speeding herself up with Divine Blessing, and she is able to burst you down with Reckoning because it stops you from building back up your Flow. Finally, Intervention is able to let her ignore your ultimate's massive burst damage. This lane is miserable as she bullies you around the lane.
Katarina and Akali are also bad matchups for Yasuo, despite them both being melee range mages. Quite a bit of Yasuo's strength in the mid lane comes from being resourceless, allowing him to win fights through attrition. Katarina and Akali are both able to negate Yasuo's passive by using their marks to do extra damage, as they are broken into two parts of damage.
CONCLUSION
Yasuo is the sort of snowball champion that, if he's allowed to get going, can 1v5 a team and take a turret afterwards. His late game damage potential and mobility allows him to shine where other AD Melee Carries have failed in the past. However, he is incredibly reliant on this snowball. Stunting him early with jungle pressure can force him into subpar item choices, and once he's behind he tends to stay in that position. His reliance on Shiv for his early damage means that he might get stuck with an Avarice blade, and if he hasn't gotten first blood by 14 minutes you've gotten past his incredibly strong early game. Don't let this deter you from picking Yasuo, however. For every game he gets stuck behind everyone else, there's another where he is dominating the enemy team on the back of his early kills.