User blog:Argronar/Yasuo and proposed Item changes

Hello everyone,

Today I wish to talk about, the champion everyone loves to hate, and the proposed changes to Critical Strike Chance. and to be precise.

So I was excited in the most recent patch to find myself able to play Yasuo well once more, of course the very skilled Yasuo players never let him go out of style, but being that I'm not nearly as experienced with him and had quite the tough time after his base HP nerf. He's been my favorite champion ever since I played him in Free Week, I almost immediately purchased him and proceeded to try to learn him, which was really quite the task. I've found him extremely enjoyable due to the outplay potential he provides, through and, the fact that if you land the  Knockup and jump on a Rammus with  you can still dice him to pieces no matter how tanky he's become. Overall I think the complexity of the champion is what draws me the most.

Now the main event. Currently on the PBE there are proposed changes to both and, namely their critical strike chance ratings are changes to 35% and 20% respectively. This is an increase by 5% to Phantom Dancer and a 5% reduction to Infinity Edge, in case anyone isn't super familiar with the percentages. What does have to do with Yasuo? Virtually nothing, you're right in that. The issue is that Yasuo typically goes for 100% crit chance through   and paired with critical strike chance from runes, Infinity edge also partially mitigates the Critical strike damage debuff that Yasuo has naturally from.

Now seeing that the percentage this will add up to between the items and runes is now 90% as opposed to the 100% it was previously, you can see this is an indirect nerf to Yasuo, or maybe it's intended I don't pretend to know what Riot has in mind with changes. Now I know a vast majority of people will be saying "Great Yasuo needed nerfing hard, he's so OP." and while I don't entirely disagree with you that he's incredibly snowbally and comes back from being behind rather easily, but honestly so do a lot of even more problematic champions and they aren't as difficult to play, comes to mind.

Now a lot of people might be thinking something to like "Well you still have a 90% critical chance isn't that enough?". Where most champions are concerned, sure it would be enough, with Yasuo, whose power comes from having a 100% crit chance, no it really isn't. That 10% is more impactful than a lot of people seem to realize. If a critical strike wasn't super impactful, why would some people run a rogue critical strike rune on their rune pages. That slight chance for it to happen is insane when it does. In this case that even larger chance for it to not happen is huge, it could be the difference between a kill and a death.

What does this mean for Yasuo? Do we suffer the missing 10% and stick with the same build? Or maybe we opt for a different setup to hit that 100%.

The current, I'll rehash for easy reference, is, , and 5% crit chance from runes. This totals out to 100% critical chance currently after the proposed changes it will be 90% critical chance.

Options to hit 100% post item changes (PD 35%, IE 20%)

Option 1: 35% crit chance,  15% crit chance, together being 50% then totaling 100% critical chance.

Option 2: 20% crit chance,  20% crit chance,  10% crit chance, together 50% totaling 100% critical chance.

Of these two options obviously neither includes runes, the runes for Yasuo can now be Attack Damage, maybe some Attack Speed, or whatever there needs to be, maybe Armor Pen. These two build theories have their advantages and disadvantages, which I will discuss next. Of course the options could be expanded if you don't care about wasting critical chance and running into 110% or something, but I'm trying to not waste valuable stats. What of the mana on triforce you ask? Who cares about 200 or 250 mana when a spellblade passive is added, not that big of a waste where I'm concerned. Mathematically 200 mana is 400g whereas 10% critical chance is 500g. Not as big of a difference, but the mana is less wasteful while providing all other stats that Yasuo can utilize, don't forget has an AP ratio.

Option 1: remains 2 items like the previous build, allowing for full itemization however you would have previously. This however sacrifices the damage bump that you receive from IE, so decreases your damage output simply due to not having the additional Critical Strike Damage. Additionally it has less damage in the build in the first place due to not having the 80 damage bump from IE and instead Youmuu's provides only 30 attack damage. This path does however provide for a tremendous amount of Armor Pen. 85% + 20 when you factor in the ult. You'll melt Tanks as though they forgot to build anything past cloth armor. Plus Ghostblade is an excellent duelist item, that paired with BotRK perhaps means you could out duel pretty much anyone, and the increased attack speed during the active effect is better for Not to mention the CDR for your ult and your W which are already low CDs.

Option 2: Now 3 items, preventing you from picking up something, be it LW, BotRK, or your defensive item, I'm a huge fan of GA on Yasuo. This does however provide you with a spellblade to give spike damage on top of your Statikk Shiv passive popping, allowing for some pretty substantial burst. Statikk and Tri provide a huge movement speed bump, allowing you to potentially sell boots for Zephyr to get replacement attack speed give some AD, CDR, and movement speed, plus you have free tenacity from it. Could make you quite the animal, but is extremely expensive.

I think both options are great in all honesty, they certainly each have their pros and cons, option 1 providing a bit more familiarity, while option 2 keeps his power similar perhaps even improving upon it.

In the end I want to know what all of you think, I'm looking forward to the patch in order to do a bit of experimenting. What are you guys going to do? Suffer the 10% missing Crit chance? Opt for an alternative build path? Maybe add more Critical Runes, which is an option I didn't talk about 20% crit chance starting the game would be disgusting during the early game.