Hint for the lazy ones out there:
All information regarding my choices can be found in the notes of the corresponding field. Just hover your mouse over the little "+Notes" and you will see them. I will also, for convenience put them in their own section with some more indepth information.

Hello and welcome to my pretty simple Yasuo-guide. It's my first guide here on Mobafire so do not be too cruel with me ;)

This guide will be covering Yasuo, the newest addition to the League. His playstyle can be described as swift and fast. Normally you will see Yasuo build tons of damage and getting ready to own anyone he touches. This guide takes a different approach. While we add in some early damage to kill squishies without worries, we still want to get most of the one skill, that for me makes this champion really good: His ult.
But this here is the introduction so not too much shall be told.

So, let us get some pros and cons regarding Yasuo.

Pros:

- He is a really mobile champion when played correctly
- He requires skill (which is attractive for some people)
- He is a samurai
- His skin is a freaking Cowboy-Samurai
- His lategame is really strong
- His midgame can be really strong
- He was made for Trinit... tons of damage

Cons:

- His early is... meh.
- His midgame can be... meh.
- He gets countered by tons of champions in the current meta
- Playing him with more than 60ms delay makes you feel uncomfortable
- He requires skill (which is not attractive for most people)

Let us start off with our runes.

We choose 5x Greater Mark of Critical Chance. This grants us 5*0.93 = 4.7 * 2 = 9.3 = 9% Critchance on level 1. This is great to get off some lucky crits and swing the lane in our favor, negating our kinda bad early. Get 2-3 crits of for 140 damage each and you already halfway won your lane.

Second 4x Greater Mark of Attack Damage. 3.85 damage is always nice to have and for me is better than Armor Penetration. Again, we want the flat values to help our early - our late is strong anyways.

9x Greater Seal of Armor and 9x Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist are kinda standard these days - early defense against AD-harass and somemore Magic Resist to survive at the key points, when the mages hit level 11/16.

For Quints I choose 3x Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage, again valuing the flat values over something scaling/etc. One might switch these out for movementspeed or lifesteal, I prefer raw damage again.


Other possible options for runes would be:

Offensive

Double Edged Blade - Dealing 2% more damage while receiving 1% more is a trade you can make. You arguably do not need to as from plain math it won't help you (5 guys deal 1% more damage compared to 1 person dealing 2% more) still it is an improvement in 1v1 and could maybe secure you a kill.

- Fury grants us 4% attack speed. Nice for more lasthits and somehow better trades.

- 10 Damage on leel 18 is nice to have. Still we mostly get this for the next mastery.

- 4 flat attack damage is a really nice way to start things of. That's 4/10 of a longsword basically being 144 free gold for one single point. A must have!

- 3 points in this give us 5% damage against targets below 50% health. It is a great way to get out somehow more damage in longer fights.

- 5% bonus attack damage for 3 points is really, really neat. It will not affect us too much as we do not relie on that much damage with this build, still there will be some free points it earns us and is worth the investion.

- Getting 5% health back with each kill might not be that much but sometimes it could just be enough to get down a second or third one.

- For a single point we get 5% attackspeed per crit, with up to 3 stacks. That's amazing as Yasuo is build around critting. It's awesome early, mid and late, so no waste at all.

- Flat 6% armor penetration and also 6% magic penetration (our E deals magic damage!) are surely strong and again good for early, mid and late.

- 3% more damage. For everything we use. That's kinda amazing. It might not be that much, but imagine, we have a vayne at 49% health, we hit her with let's say 150 damage and crit. That makes 150*1.8 = 270 * 1.03 = 278.1 * 1.05( Executioner )* 1.02 Double Edged Blade ~= 298 damage. That's 28 damage more (and it almost neglects the -10% crit damage we get from our passive)

Defense

- Although 2 damage might not be much it still is something and could possibly help us survive with 1-2 hp. You never know what happens!

- 5% more bonus armor and magic resist are great for our late and enhance our item power. More armor = more lifetime = more fun!

- This one grants us 2 less damage from everything the enemy might throw at us. Together with Block this can neglect 40 damage from 10 autoattacks, which might really save us, mostly earlygame.

- 36 flat health are more than one [Quint if Life] grants us. That's kinda bestly.

- 3% more health is nice yet again. Given we got 2.9k life, we get 87 more, which might not be the greatest amount of all times but still could help us survive one more auto.

The start

We start off with a longsword, granting us 10 attack damage for easier lasthits and better trades. Also we can grab ourselves 3x Health Potion to mitigate some poke.

Regarding the trinket: For me it depends on my team which trinket I choose. Most of the time I take the Warding Totem but sometimes also the Farsight Orb might be a good idea.

First back

If everything went well and we didn't get killed or too low, we can grab this sweetheart on our first back. It grants us much needed health to keep up with the tankyness, damage - which is always nice - and on-hit-movementspeed, which simply rocks.

Best would be to have enough money for both Phage and boots. However if we do not have enough money in our back at this point it's not that bad. Just wait for a bit and get your Phage (or get boots + crystal, however you like it)

sightward Theses 2 are always important, no matter what. Get them whenever you are basing. Potions save your life more often than you might think and wards are even more important in season 4 with the limitation of 3 wards per person - get them and help your team win the game.

Core Items

Getting these is simply for the tenacity they offer. 35% lower CC-duration is simply said monstrous. Also the MR helps us mitigate some damage from casters. You might get Ninja Tabi first and sell them later for this one if you have a hard time in lane.

Your main damage source. Grants you the amazing spellblade ability triggering on almost each Q you send at your enemies. Amplifies your damage by a lot and also grants you some movement speed and other nice goodies.

A great source of tankiness against AD. Also the passive is great for clearing waves and adds up quite some damage over time (Just think about standing in 5 enemies for 10 seconds... 5*40*10 = 2000 magic dmg...)

Another great item with the new passive. The shield now is much more reliable. MR, huge amounts of life and -most of all - this great shield made me choose this one over Spirit Visage.

So, when you got these 3 you are ready for late. They will cost quite something, though, so keep on farming to get them!

I got 'em all... what shall I do now?

When the game is still going on and you need more goodies to be stronger you have to choose. Either you go more tanky. Pick up Randuin's Omen or Warmog's Armor and throw in a Cloak of Agility for 30% more critical chance.
Or go more offensive with e.g. Atma's Impaler or Frozen Mallet. You could also consider getting a Last Whisper if you would really want to.

Early Game

Early game is all about not loosing. Without your junglers help the chance of winning your lane is minimal, so just try to not fall behind too much. Get as much CS as possible with your Q as it enables you to keep some distance. Try not to use your E too much as it pushes the wave when you stack it up (The damage is kinda high with +100%). Best would be to have the wave on your side of the river but not exactly at your tower as you will always loose some cs to it.
Trading: Trading early with Yasuo can be an efficient way to make sure not to loose your lane. When you see that you will get 2 before they do (you killed the wave faster than they did for whatever reason) try to get yourself to 3 Q-stacks right as you hit 2, e into your enemy and knock him up with the Q. Get one more auto off and e away again. If you are lucky and crit: Gratulations you just made your lane way easier. If not... fear not, it could be much worse. E.g. when their laner gets 2 first. If this happens you have to be really, really defensive. They will outdamage you so hard in 99% of all cases that you should really fear them - and you don't even have your E to get away if they jump on you. If the wave is in the middle of the lane and this happens you surely will loose some CS - but that's WAY better then loosing your life in an attempt to secure yourself 20 gold.

Combos (I will add some images for these asap):

Q (minion) -> E (minion as often as you like, close gap) -> Q (enemy) -> E (enemy, get behind them and move away so you don't take damage) -> Q (enemy, knock them up and get another auto off) -> E (minion, get the hell out of there)
This one is really strong and if you have your shield up makes for a really save trade - IF your enemy does not have a gap closer + cc (e.g. Jax, Irelia). If they do, I double dare you to do this... you will always loose the trade.

2xQ -> E (minion) -> Q (enemy, knock him up and get one auto off) -> E (minion, get the hell out of there)
The shorter version of 1, if you get lucky with crits you can deal quite some damage here and you are way safer against CC + Gapclose as you can get away through minions. Keep in mind, that there actually have to be minions for this to work (but not too many so you don't take ~200 minion damage while doing this)

Mid Game

Mid game usually is the point when the first objectives are contested. People start to group and get down towers and claim dragons and jungle control. Top lane at this point can pan out in 2 ways. Either you join your team to win fights and rush down objectives or you stay and start splitting. Splitting, or split-pushing CAN win you games - however it really depends on your skill and on the skill of your teammates whether it's going to be successful or not. Splitpushing requires 2 main things:
1.) Awareness of the map.
2.) Pressure.
First off it is important that you always keep your imaginary third eye on the minimap. Each 2-3 seconds you should take a peek if you can still see 3+ enemies. If you don't - run like a lil' girl as enemies are probably collapsing on you (and even if they are not - better safe then sorry). Secondly you can not push without pressure in the other lanes. If there is nothing better to do for your enemies besides killing you they will prolly do just that - kill you. And surely you don't want to die. So make sure your team is in any other lane or at any objective and pressures the enemies. Still make sure your team can escape in a 4v5 or they will just die and you gained nothing but bad scores.
Other than that keep on farming. When you have your Trinity Force you can actually start fighting (and winning against) most enemies if they aren't overly fed or overly tanky.

Late Game

Late game is where you can shine, your bright moment. You want a team with some sort of heavy knock-up engage. The truly most epic thing you can have is Orianna with her Command: Shockwave. Get the ball on you with Command: Protect and dive right in there, make her use her ult and get all of the enemies with your Last Breath. Often you win teamfights just based on such an initiation, crippling 3+ enemies for several seconds while getting them pretty low.
However this does not mean that you won't win without knockups. Still, they make things easier. Yet there are other ways to engage fights. As you are a tanky champ you can often engage a fight without dying, so flash into e, into knockup Q into R can often lead to nice 3 man ults which giving your team time to follow and win the fight. Besides engaging you have 2 more important roles.
1.) Protect your squishies with your windwall.
2.) Kill their squishies.
The first one is pretty simple. Get your windwall between their squishies and yours. You surely do not want an Ashe to ult your AD or an Caitlyn to freely hit your poor Jinx. Getting the wall in the right place (which sounds easier as it is) can win teamfights alone. Try to fight in the jungle and you can block off whole paths with the wall making it really really hard for the enemy AD to kill somebody.
The second one might be harder and depends on the situation. Surely you should kill their AD. You are the Bruiser, you deal damage and still do not die so easily. Yet you can get shutdown really hard if they have some hard peel. Examples are Thresh, Janna or Leona. If those decide to stay at the side of their AD it's often a better idea to simply block him off with a windwall and help your squishies kill their tanks faster than their squishies kill your team.
Think situational and win your game!


Videos with footage from games will follow soon.

Well, I guess the title kind off gives it away. There certainly are some (top-lane) champions you surely do not want to be matched up against. Some will straight out kill you without much you can do, others will just be an annoyance or a skill-based matchup.

Renekton

Difficulty: 9/10

Renekton is one of the champions you should make sure to not face in your lane. He can completely denie your farm and outtrade you whenever he likes. You dash in, knock him up and as soon as hes down he can just double E on your face, stun you up and kill you in an instant. There is not much you can do about him, at 6 it does not get much better as his ult gives him more life than you can take with yours. Only reason he gets 9/10 is though to you scaling much better. Once you got some items you can kill/survive against him (normally around Trinity + Sunfire)

Tips: Try to not fight him early on, call for your junglers help. If he pushes up to your tower you can get him if your jungler has some CC and damage early on. If you see Renekton logged in in SoloQ or - even worse - Ranked 5v5s possibly pick somebody else.

Jax

Difficulty: 10/10

Well Jax could have been designed for one sole purpose - kill Yasuo. He counters you in each and every aspect of the game. He deals more damage than you can at the crucial levels of 3,5 and 6 and can still easily trade with you at later stages of the game. He can dodge all of your autos and if you engaged on him you are already dead as he can simply follow your E with his Leap Strike.

Tips: Best advice: Do not pick Yasuo. However, if you somehow got him up against you, first off, try to laneswap. You will do better in a 1v2 compared to a 1v1 against Jax and he will loose quite something, too. If you for whatever reason are still in the same lane as Jax, never ever engage on him when your jungler is not in reach of < 10 Teemos. If you engage on him he simply mitigates 90% of your damage with his E (which also blocks your Q as far as I know) then stun you up and deal ~5x the damage you could have dealt to him. If he engages with his stun up, try to dodge away by using E against a minion or just straight through him. If you don't get stunned it's okay, get away with the help of minions, if you have your third Q up you could even try to Q him up and auto him once - if you aren't 6 yet. Don't ever dare to all in him with your jungler if one of you is below 50% and you are not certain whether you can kill him - free doubles on Jax aren't exactly what you want. Play it safe and hope your team carries you.

Riven

Difficulty: 7/10

Let's talk about Riven. I gave her a 7 out of 10 as you can possibly beat her when you play it right. Riven is a somehow 'skillshot'-based melee. All of her spells (besides her W) have a somehow predictable casting time. However once again, make sure to NEVER engage on her if your jungler is not in reach of < 10 Teemos. She simply outdamages you until you have Trinity + Sunfire. At this point you can fight her but still have to watch out for that CC-chain of her as it can blow you up in an instant.

Tips: 1.) Play it safe. Do not engage on her and ask your jungler for some help. Riven has exceptional escape at level 3 where she has her Q, W and E (most of the time) so try to utilize on this by punishing her with a level 2 gank when you are blue side (coming through their jungle - wards!). Getting an early level lead against her can swing the lane in your favor. 2.) Dodge. As said before all of her skills come with a somehow predictable animation. If she loads up her Q go back and wait for her third one to time out. You will maybe loose 1-2 CS for that but when you get caught by her Q you will loose at least 50% of your health. When she goes full ham on you with her Qs, try to E through minions away from her. When she used her W without hitting you you are one lucky boy and can trade with her by E-Qing into her and getting out again. If you hit 6 and she didn't you can all in her as long as her Q is on CD and she is at least pushed a tad. Make sure you don't dive to far as you want minions to get out when she turns on you by getting a random level 6. 3.) Get to late. When you got your items you can trade with her kinda well as she is reliant on her CC-chain with Q into W. When you can dodge both of them she is most likely easy to kill as she won't deal that much damage thanks to your shield. She is all about the burst so avoid the burst and kill her afterwards. And also: Use your wall to block her Wind Slash!

Dr. Mundo

Difficulty: 4/10

Mundo is a champ the pros recently started to pick up. Laning against him can be a pain in the arse with his permanent slow and his tankyness lategame is more than ridiculous. However your skillset kinda counters him out. His Q is a skillshot not that easy to land and most of the time you can E-dodge out of it. In a worst case scenario when he hit you once you can shield up the following with your W so you won't be permaslowed. You can trade with him when you have your knock-up up but should remember that his W greatly reduces the CC-duration.

Tips: Be semi-aggressive in the early levels. Engage on him when you have your shield + 3rd Q and get some autos off. He gets tanky with items and isn't that strong before 6 when you can dodge his Qs. Still, do not go for an extended trade as his E damage and W damage will burn you down quite fast. So get in, get your Q down, get an auto off and get out again. If you can repeat this several times he will soon be out of potions and thats the time to all in him. When you hit 6 before he does, do not wait for him to get there but use your advantage by E-Qing on him and using your ult asap. The cooldown is really short so just use it whenever you knock him up and can see an opportunity of killing him. When he gets some items he will be a massive tank so try to group earlier as normal as his splitpush is not the strongest early on (however by far not the worst as his E is kinda beastly). Just hope your team does not fall behind too much and you will win this one.

Olaf

Difficulty: 6/10

Olaf again sneaked his way up to the spotlight in the last couple of weeks. With his new skillset he can lay out quite some damage and just as Mundo he can permanently slow down his enemies when done right. This one surely is not easy but still there is a chance of you winning it when you play it out right and save. Your main objective yet again is to not die and farm up so you can get to the stage where you simply said outkill him.

Tips: Farm early. His early game is arguably strong still you have to remember some key things. His Axes cost 60 Mana. You can simply outlast him manawise when he starts throwing them at you, while you can easily dodge them with your E. When he does not land his axes he has no way to keep up with you as you are simply to mobile. You can even trade when you have your knockup ready. Knock him up and dash away and he won't even stand a chance of fighting back. When played right you will not die once to him, however when played wrong he will do things to you you can't even imagine in your worst dreams. When you get to late you are imho more effective for your team as you can engage really hard while his damage will get kinda lackluster when your ADC has an escape and knows how to play. So all in all: You can farm early if you do it right and scale hard into lategame. Try to not die to ganks by making sure you have vision up at all times.

Nidalee

Difficulty: 1/10

When you ever see a Nidalee locked in for possibly top lane you should start getting on the floor and crying for the possible luck you have. Just kidding, but still Nidalee is a very favorable matchup for you. She can't trade with you in the early levels, she can't trade with you at level 6 and... well she can't ever trade with you. You outdamage her kinda hard if you play it right and she does not have any cc to stop you from wrecking her.

Tips: Play aggressive. Make sure you have vision down and play the lane out aggressive. You should not push too hard but can keep it pushed a tad as Nidalee can't follow well on early ganks. You should dodge here spears which should not be too hard given you have your E and for worst case your W (use it, she has her spears and autos and negating auto damage leaves you far worse then negating her spear-damage). When you hit 6 before her just jump on her and at least get her flash when not the kill as she can't do anything about it. When she gets 6 she can deal quite some damage with her cougar form - however you are Yasuo, the definition of mobility. When she W to you you can most of the time E through her without taking a single point of damage, laying your own damage down on her. She will possibly go tanky but still she will never be able to outtrade you by any means so just make sure your kill count keeps rising.

More matchups will be added later on when I have more time to play.

Changelog:

15.12.13 - Released the guide, version 0.1
16.12.13 - Item-section was added, also some general gameplay
17.12.13 - Added some matchups and rune-options, reworked the masteries

Well, if you are still with me, thanks a lot. If you just skipped everything to get here - still thanks for opening my guide.

I love to see feedback and some comments below.


Kind regards
Aesri