Advanced Yasuo guide

In-depth Yasuo guide which covers everything from basics all the way through to subtle in-game mechanics.
Useful no matter if you wanna pick Yasuo up or master him.

Season 6 Yasuo guide by Master league player

Summoner Spells

Flash
Flash
Ignite
Ignite
OR
Flash
Flash
Exhaust
Exhaust
OR
Flash
Flash
Cleanse
Cleanse

Runes

Mark of Attack Speed
x9
Mark of Attack Damage
x9
Seal of Armor
x9
Seal of Scaling Health
x9
Glyph of Magic Resist
x9
Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist
x9
Quintessence of Attack Speed
x3

Items

Starting items
Core
Situational

Abilities

Yasuo
Yasuo
Yasuo
Yasuo
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18

MASTERIES

5/5
0/5
5/5
0/5
5/5
0/5
Ferocity: 18
5/5
0/5
5/5
0/5
0/5
0/5
Cunning: 12
0/5
0/5
0/5
0/5
0/5
0/5
Resolve: 0

INTRODUCTION TO LoL YASUO GUIDE

Hello, I’m Siegmeyer. I’ve started playing League in season 2 as mid/jungle main and I’ve sticked to these 2 roles throughout all the years I play this game. I’ve reached challenger at the start of season 3 and played tons of games at high-elo with tons of success ever since.

Yasuo has been picked up by me at the day of his release and has remained as my main and my go-to pick even to this day. Yasuo is my favourite champion in the game – I love everything about him, he’s got an unique feel to him, that makes you want to outplay everybody and be the last man standing after a huge teamfight. This champion’s kits and deep skill-cap are one of the reasons I could keep having lots of fun while playing League even after so many games over the years.

That’s exactly why I’m writing this guide – both to share my love and admiration for the champion and to teach you as much as possible using my knowledge, which comes from thousands of games as Yasuo on high-elo.

 

YASUO IN LoL

Yasuo definitely is one of the most fun champions in the game, but he’s also as hard to master as he is fun to play. He’s endless skill-cap makes every situation you’re in a good way out, but sometimes that will take insane amounts of skills and mind-gaming your opponent, nonetheless nearly everything is possible with proper Yasuo play. If you went into combat with amateur Yasuo he would probably Wind Wall sometime at the start and charge in mindlessly, spamming Qs and waiting for E+Q+R combo to get available while expert Yasuo would first of all keep enemy positioning at all times and make him move into a position from which he’ll be forced to use that one spell which he saves his Wind Wall for, moreover he would probably opt for combo with both more risk and much more DPS like auto attack+charged up Q+auto attack+R+Q+auto attack – as you can see the possibilities are nearly endless and both your skill and experience as a Yasuo player will come into these kinds of decisions on what to do, how to position yourself and how your enemy will move.

Just with like other very hard champions, you shouldn’t get discouraged by bad results. Focus only on your own mistakes, take every failure and loss as a chance to learn – even a game with troll or afk can be productive that way! 

 

RUNES FOR THE UNFORGIVEN

Runes come down to your build and enemy team:

AS vs AD marks – Your goal as a Yasuo player is to get 1,4 AS as soon as possible, because it minimizes your Q CD down to 1,33 second and AS marks are your big help here, but if you’ll opt for Berserker’s Greaves in your build you can go for AD marks instead, which will give you more lane dominance early on.

Scaling and Flat Seals + Glyphs – Purely up to your match-up
Magic Damage Mid – HP/level Seals + Flat MR Glyphs
Physical Damage Mid – Flat Armor Seals + MR/level Glyphs
Physical Mid + Magic Damage early game jungler – Flat Armor Seals + Flat MR Glyphs

ADVANCED ABILITY TIPS

Passive – Way of the Wanderer
If you walk in straight lines your passive will charge up slightly quicker and also here’s a bit about his reduced criticals: his auto attack critical damage is 90% of base value, while Q’s is 75%, nonetheless Q deals a damage equal to your auto attack AD + 100 (at skill level 5). After applying some math to this formula everything you need to know is that Q will be better than your auto attack as long as your auto attacks deal damage (to real targets) below 300.

Steel Tempest
Your Q acts as an auto attack reset so it ramps up your DPS massively and with enough attack speed and reaction time you can even make it that your auto attack and Q are registered at the same time which pretty much makes it look like one auto attack with the damage of 2 auto attacks in the game

Wind Wall
It stops everything that can be count as a projectile, pretty much to any extent. Things like Orianna’s ball and Rumble ult stop at the spot where your Wind Wall begins and can’t go through it. Wind Wall also grants you vision of the terrain you cast it on. 

Sweeping Blade
It’s damage stacks up so before trading in lane it’s very good to hit creeps twice with it and to pretty much try and keep the spell at 2 stacks at all times. Also it’s actual dash range can be extended if you are very close to the target you wanna dash to, because of that you can perform many various over-the-wall dashes which will very often save your life if used properly.

Last Breath
Remember that your ulti grants you great buff which penetrates 50% of all target’s bonus armor (mastery included) and it also refreshes your passive shield. That is why you should pretty much always look to use your ulti at the start of the teamfight, this armor penetration buff is your late-game bread and butter against any kind of tank.

 

ITEM BUILDS FOR YASUO

YASUO IN EARLY GAME

You’ll pretty much always start with Doran’s + HP potion. Afterwards you’ll usually want another Doran’s Blade, because you won’t be getting more lifesteal for a long time. Your next buys will be Zeal and Phantom Dancer, if there will be a situation where you’ll be slightly short in gold for Phantom Dancer then you can buy tier 1 boots. If you’ll face multiple magic damage threats in the enemy team (let’s say Elise jungle + Lissandra mid) then you should rush Hexdrinker, you can even start with a Longsword + Refillable Potion and possibly buy it on the first recall, of course mid game upgrade it to Maw (after PD completion).

YASUO IN EARLY GAME

Your choices start here:
Berserker’s Graves if you went with AD marks and want full DPS or are just simply ahead 
Ninja Tabi versus physical damage (mainly 2+ auto attackers, example would be Caitlyn adc + Riven top)
Mercury Threads against magic damage and/or CC, Mercury’s are my usual go-to, because hard CC is Yasuo’s biggest counter and you’ll be up against magic damage Mid most of the time anyway.

Afterwards start working on your IE (if you feel confident you can even complete your tier 2 boots AFTER IE). Here’s how you’ll calculate whether it’s better to buy crit or AD in-game while buying your IE:
Cloak gives you 20% which is multiplied by your passive to give you 40% crit. 40% crit is equal in DPS value to about 40% of your AD, so if you’ll have choice between B.F. Sword and Cloak just take check if that 45 AD is more than 40% of your current AD. After IE you should get to Bloodthirster, starting with the Lifesteal component.

Afterwards everything is up to the enemy team comp, but items like Sterak’s, Maw and Randuin’s will be your usual go-to defensive items.

Yasuo item builds season 6 guide

SITUATIONAL ITEMS FOR YASUO

  • Dead Man’s Plate over Randuim’s – Only when you’ll face AD-casters instead of usual crit-based ADC (Varus, Ez etc.).
  • Thornmail – Against 2+ Auto Attack based champions (any normal, crit-based adc + Yasuo), usually in combo with Ninja Tabis and Randuim’s + Sterak’s.
  • Banshee’s/Spirit Visage/Locket of Iron Solari – These items with Maw, which will be surely bought in that scenario, are your good friends against lots of Magic Damage. Usually SV will be the best out of the 3, but sometimes you’ll have to be the one buying Locket instead of your support or you’ll maybe opt for Banshee’s in order to enable yourself to do some crazy engages against multum of CC in the enemy team.
  • Mercurial/QSS – Against things like Malza/WW/Skarner ulti targeted at you.
  • Guardian Angel – Good 6th item for that one game-deciding late game team fight.
  • Last Whisper items – These are your options when you are 1-man carrying the game.and the enemy stacks massive amounts of armor, Lord Dominik’s Regards is better item of the 2 options, because the tanks will usually be the armor stackers.

 

YASUO MATCH UPS

Here’s a very important part of the guide – YASUO SHOULDN’T EVER BE CONFIDENTLY BLIND PICKED IN CHAMPION SELECT. This champion has got multum of counters and if your enemy is smart then he’ll just simply pick an impossible match-up, some people even go as far as to pick some bruiser from top lane and send him mid just to fuck you up completely, and that’s very smart and shouldn’t be considered tryharding – afterall we play rankeds to win games and champion select is part of the strategical aspect of League.

To deduce when you should be picking Yasuo we simply can gloss over his kit and notice that Wind Wall is a spell with lots and lots of potential and situationally this will be your strongest spell, best tool for countering enemy spells and outplaying everyone. Sometimes picking Yasuo will just come down to counting the amount of spells you can block with his W, it might be as simple as that. 

Yasuo season 6 guide on Boosteria

Other than looking for the champions we can counter, you should also avoid certain champions that will counter you – there are 4 types of these:
Champions who leave little to no counterplay – I’m talking mostly about bruisers who will have tons of survivability and DPS combined with kits in which you have next to nothing to nullify with your Wind Wall, examples would be Volibear, Irelia, Jax, Olaf.

Champions with point and click CC – Crowd Control is your true greatest enemy, because it stops you from DPSing and these champions will have unavoidable CC, example would be Maokai, Nautilus, Rammus.

AD matchups mid lane – You should avoid them overall, because you don’t have good itemization against them. Even ninja tabis aren’t so great here.

AP mids that are complete counters to Yasuo – Vlad, Fizz, Kayle, Cho, Annie, Ekko, Azir, Akali, Diana, Swain

These 4 groups of champions should be avoided by you, if you’ll see them already picked it’s often very smart not to pick Yasuo into them. Even if you’ll get ahead their bare champion mechanics will limit what you can do in team fights by a large margin.

 

MECHANICS OF YASUO

There are still few mechanics which I haven’t mentioned in the ability section. You should learn and master these if you want to improve as a Yasuo player. I suggest you go into a custom game and train there until you can get these down at least 9 out of 10 times you try to pull them off.

W + Q interaction
If you’ve got your Tornado charged up then you can use your W and Q immedietaly after to use a Q with no cast time. 

Perfect CSing
If you auto attack and instantly E the target you pretty much hit it in the exact same moment, just as with your Q auto attack reset. You can use this in lane and pretty much never miss a last hit if you do this correctly, just keep practicing and you’ll get this down.

R + Q intercation
You can squeeze 1 Q in after using your ultimate, just before the enemies land on the ground. The easy way is to simply mash the Q button onto the mid-air enemy for the duration of R animation

E Wall Jump
You can jump to monsters through certain thin walls with your E, granted you have vision of the monster behind it. A way to grant yourself vision without using your trinket is simply casting W while standing as close to the wall as possible, Wind Wall will appear on the other side and grant you the vision to jump with your E. There are 4 spots to do this trick: 2 thin Raptor walls, 1 on Gromp and 1 on Krugs

Positioning
It’s not really that big of a mechanic, but on Yasuo it’s so important I couldn’t avoid talking about it. You can avoid so many deaths just by positioning yourself well and manipulating your enemies into moving where you want them to and then most probably outplaying them with your E dash. This is useful especially when somebody is ganking you – if you are getting approached from the direction you want to run (think getting ganked from behind in lane) then most of the times you can just walk up to the enemy and use him to launch yourself with E into safety.

 

MID GAME STAGE

One of your important objectives as Yasuo in the mid-game will be tearing towers down. Mid Lane T1 is your most important target – it will deny vision to the enemy team and open up the jungle for your team to step in and take control of. Apart from that you should attend every single dragon fight and most of the small skirmishes, exception here would be a chance to push down a tower.

LATE GAME STAGE

As you gather your items you’ll become a force to be reckoned with. You’ll be capable of 1v1ing everyone who has anything you can soak up with your Wind Wall and more and more tanks and bruisers as the game goes on, all depending on theirs and your build of course. Your main targets at team fights should be adc and then mid laner. Only exception to this rule should be where the mid is carrying harder and you can block him out with Wind Wall and pretty much 100-0 with your damage combo. Other than that every adc is your whipping boy – you can deny all of their DPS with a well placed wall and obviously there’s no way they can melee you.

CONCLUSION

If you want to see what League has to offer then you should play Yasuo. He’s an excellent benchmark to your set of skills as a player: raw mechanics, timing, knowledge of spell interactions and cooldowns, map awareness – as long as you’ll keep playing him you’ll improve in all of these areas! 

 

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1 COMMENT

  1. Gork

    Hm, is this guide still can be considered as an actual? I don’t watch all the patch notes, but still. I do not remember that Riot changed Yasuo at all. Really hope that I can use this guide to learn this samurai.

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