Welcome to my Yasuo guide.



Obligatory Mood-Setting Soundtrack Play Video



Read at your leisure, enjoy your stay and feel free to leave any thoughts in the comments.

If you want a champion that you can just instantly pick up and wreck with, a champion who is broken op from your first game with them, a champion that you can instantly kill carries with, destroy tanks left and right without a thought, and generally be an unkillable nuisance....

Then Yasuo is not for you.

is HARD.
is VERY HARD.
You will be bad at him.
You will suck at him.
You will want to stop playing him.






Just remember that being bad at something is the first step towards being kind of good at something.

4 Critical Chance Reds
5 Flat AD Reds
9 Flat Armor Yellows
9 Flat MR Blues
2 Lifesteal Quintessences
1 Flat AD Quintessence



I like running 4.6% crit chance because that translates to 9% with Yasuo's passive.
Shiv + IE give you a flat 90% crit, you do the math.

I run Lifesteal Quints over AD because you hardly feel the damage difference. Plus, since Yasuo has TWO significant forms of damage mitigation it means that the enemy constantly has to expend a lot of resources just to make harass stick. And lifesteal quints make it even less sticky.

Not a whole lot to say about masteries.



Get all the Armor Pen you can from since will multiply your Armor Pen by 1.5 when you need it most.



and mean your auto attacks and compliment each other very nicely.

Awesome passive that comes in 2 parts, both of which are ripe for abuse.

They're easier to explain with the interactions they have with items and other abilities, so give the tooltip a quick read and watch for references below that will go in depth with the specific interactions.






Yasuo's bread to his butter.
The closest comparison I can think of is Ezreal's .

Auto attack reset, stack it while dashing through a minion wave, hard cc that can crit, ez pz last hitting, this skill does it all.

For new players, I'd highly recommend playing against bots for your first Yasuo game specifically so you get a feeling for how it works. There's really not any other ability in the game quite like it; it might take you awhile to get used to it.




Arguably the strongest non-ultimate ability in the game.
It's an incredibly straightforward ability - use it to block projectiles - but it's incredibly nuanced.



-It always gets cast a set distance away from you, you can't cast it directly on top of yourself making fights when you're melee distance from your target incredibly sketchy.
-If you're against an all melee lane, you can use it to block ranged minion agro.
-Blocks Dragon and Baron normal attacks, doesn't stop Baron's rain though.
-Blocks wight/wraith jungle camp damage.
-Can deny a combo opener on combo reliant champs (Lee Sin's Q, Leona E)
-Be aware of enemies with global skillshots, a'la Ezreal, Draven, Jinx
-It's easy to to second guess yourself and hold onto Wind wall for too long because you're waiting for That Super Important Thing That Would Be Perfect To Wind Wall but the fact of the matter is, that chance rarely comes. It's better to windwall early than it is to die with it still up.




Yasuo's butter to his bread. Contrary to popular belief, this ability DOES have a cooldown.
(.8 - .3 seconds is still a cooldown)

There are 2 important things to know about
1) The damage increases by 25% for every cast, so if you can get a 4th dash onto an enemy combined with your spin, that's an incredibly strong nuke early game. Just be aware that you're telegraphing your intent to be aggressive and by charging your dash on minions you won't be able to use those same minions to dash to safety.

2)You can cast mid-dash to do a neat spin move that's great for harass/wave clear. It's also fantastic for when you don't want to miss your knockup on a skillshot, just dash-spin and it's a guaranteed ult setup.

It has a lot of other uses, like the notorious sprint up a creep line, but most of those are incredibly context sensitive. A lot of them only come through experience, so play him for awhile and get creative.






IGEI TON

Yasuo's ultimate comes in 3 wicked parts.


Part 1: 50% bonus armor penetration from all sources.
It's not a significant damage increase early/midgame, but it DOES make you hit harder.

It also makes your sword glow. Tell me that's not awesome.


Part 2: shield refresh. This is INCREDIBLY vital when dueling, and I'd argue that it's the sole reason top Yasuo is even viable. Be aware of this, but don't get too crazy with it.



Part 3: 1 second knockup that can be applied at any point during another knockup. This ability has incredibly odd cast window, as it's CC that can only be applied when the enemy is already CC'd. When your enemy is knocked up via the good Yasuos will always sneak in an extra auto attack before ulting.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the max CDR for is 1.33 meaning that during lategame, it comes off CD either during or instantly after your ult lockdown, allowing you to follow up with a point blank 50% bonus armor pen

Other notes:
-You can only cast on enemies that you have sight of. If they walk in a bush right before your tornado lands, you don't get points for partial credit.
-You instantly teleport to the knocked up enemy within range, allowing you to jump over walls and move surprising distances instantly.
-You cannot cast if you can't move.
-If you ult someone who is knocked up just WITHIN enemy tower range, you will automatically teleport to just OUTSIDE tower range. In other words, your ult will almost never put you in tower agro.

Pretty standard open. Get this against just about everybody unless you have a specific reason to get something else (cloth/5 vs Riven, boots/4 vs Syndra, etc)



Both of these are fantastic for the first back, once you get them it's a nice damage spike and you are well on your way to

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Get this if you've been forced to go back early and have no money for anything else.



This goes great with lifesteal quints and for providing about 20 hp back per auto, 27~ per

This is a Statikk Shiv appreciation paragraph.
Let's have a moment of silence and appreciate how awesome Statikk Shiv is.
Thank you.




Now that the moment is over, lets get into WHY Shiv is so great on Yasuo.

+Bonus magic damage that can proc off your Q
+Bonus MAGIC damage that will not be mitigated via armor
+Bonus magic damage that can CRIT
+ counts as an auto attack, granting 10 Static Charges
+Walking around charges both and simultaneously
-Bonus movespeed to charge both passives
-Attack speed that halves your cooldown
-20% Crit, 40% after your passive; 49% with my rune setup
-Makes a cool sound effect when the bonus magic damage procs

The second best scaling item on Yasuo ( being first obviously), and only by a close margin. This is the stuff that makes squishies pull their hair out after you instantly 2 shot them.

Get it when you can, but just be aware of how obnoxious it is saving up 1550g for



The THIRD best scaling item on Yasuo, by a somewhat larger margin. This is the stuff that makes tanks pull out their hair because you STILL crit them for 1/8 of their hp when they have 400 armor. When combined with your mastery armor pen and the bonus off of your ult passive, you're sitting at a pretty sexy 48% armor pen.



Pretty solid item.
+Nuke active that slows them, heals you and provides a nifty speed boost
+Makes your Q cast time nonexistant, kiting Udyr has never been easier
-Attack speed
-Attack damage
-Lifesteal



This is basically a snowball buy for closing out the game.
Makes you hit like a truck and if you can't be bursted, they simply can't kill you before you kill them.
If you can get past the hefty gold cost, then this is a really good buy.

Everyone's friendly neighborhood armor item.





Get this if you find yourself consistently getting picked at bad times or if you want to ruin a combo burst mage's day






This plus your passive plus your ult passive refresh makes like...
THREE shields...





Suppression/chain cc counter.
Get an early and sit on it all game. The cost to upgrade Scimitar simply is too pricey for midgame and doesn't provide stats that you really need.

> >

Experiment with taking E over Q at level 1.

Common lane matchups you'll probably find yourself in



Difficulty: EASY
Oh my god, if there is a hard counter in League, this is it. AND IT'S COMPLETELY IN YOUR FAVOR.
Outpush her, outtrade her, outscale her, outroam her, wipe the floor with her before level 6.
AP Nid's entire gimmick is landing clutch spears - and you're the 1 guy who can 100% deny that.
Once she gets Cougar Form, be aware that she can pretty much instantly kill you if your health drops below 300, but she still won't be winning any trades.
Farm hard for an early shiv then 1v2 and take her tower. Put her down hard and take her out of the game.





Difficulty: Medium
Riven top hard counters Yasuo top due to her ability to consistently all in him with her superior mobility and early game damage, but that strategy doesn't work so well mid when there is always a nearby tower.
Go ham at level 1 and especially level 2, you can almost always pick up an early kill that will delay her lane dominance.
Expect to play passively at all stages after level 3, when you do fight, use minions to dash around until her shield wears off then trade with her. If you can avoid the majority of her combo and not expend resources until her shield is gone, then you win the matchup.
After level 6 it is IMPERATIVE that you her
Be scared of her after level 7+.
Be very scared.







Difficulty: Medium-Medium Hard
You'll wipe the floor with her early, but once she starts getting levels and items she does more damage than you can compete with, and you'll be within her danger zone the entire time.
Success in this lane depends on how hard you can abuse her terrible early game. Expect to play incredibly passively after level 9.






Difficulty: Hard
This is an incredibly difficult matchup due to Syndra's ability to constantly harass you with orbs while staying out of retaliation range herself. Start E at level 1 and and dash around whenever you feel she's about to drop on orb on your head.
If you can close the gap with your knockup primed you can do some heavy damage, but unless the stars align I would avoid trying to trade with her altogether.
Your has an odd relationship with her ult. It won't block the first 3 orbs but it will stop any additional ones she's already dropped.
If you get caught by her stun at any point, expect to take heavy damage or flat out die.
Consider rushing an early , even before






Difficulty: Hard
This is one of my favorite matchups, right up there with Garen vs Renekton.
You both do equal amounts of damage, have similar threat ranges and can deny the other's primary damage in their combo (Zed can shadow out of your slow moving tornado, and you can Wind Wall his shurikens), the winner of the lane will be whoever outplays the other the hardest.
Your best bet is to simply farm it out, try and trade whenever you have your passive and go aggressive when his shadow is down.
If Yasuo can get more than 1 , every trade is his.
At level 6 the lane is entirely up for grabs.